Tai seemed to remember lying safe and warm in a pair of strong arms. Was that a dream too? Or had that been reality and this a dream? Which was which? Then she saw it too. Tiny black figures against the white background, just below the top. An oblong shape on the ice to their left rear. Reality came flooding back.
"Is it them?"
"Yes." Vaughn's voice held an edge she had never heard before.
"How far away do you think they are?"
"It's hard to tell. Maybe four, five miles."
It had seemed closer than that to Tai. Four or five miles sounded like forever. "Can we catch them?"
"It depends on how far away the coast is," Vaughn replied. "They've got the high ground on us." Instead of immediately running off toward the Koreans like she expected him to, he turned and looked at her. "Are you all right?"
"I'm tired and I'm cold. But I can make it." Tai was surprised as soon as she said it, but it was true.
Vaughn's face was wind-burned, and the stubble of a two-day beard competed with the raw flesh for surface area. When he smiled at her, the lines around his eyes and cheeks cut deep divots. He glanced at Burke, who nodded his assent. "All right. Let's go."
They moved out, and the Koreans disappeared from sight as the two approached a small ice ridge. Vaughn was leading the way up when he caught sight of something black off to the right. He headed in that direction.
"What's that in the snow?" Tai asked as she also spotted the unnatural object.
"Wait here," Vaughn told her. He walked forward and stared down for a few brief seconds until he recognized what he was looking at, then quickly turned and bumped into Tai, with Burke standing next to her.
"I told you to wait back there."
"I'm not a child that you can tell what to do and what not to do." Tai looked over his shoulder. "What is that?"
"One of the Koreans. Or what's left of one of them," he replied.
Now she could recognize the pieces of white as bone and the charred flesh. Thankfully, there was no smell. "What could have done that to him?"
"I don't know how he died, but someone put a couple of thermal grenades on the body so it couldn't be identified." Vaughn tapped her on the shoulder. "Let's keep going. This means they'll be moving even slower."
* * *
Min collapsed. Getting to the top of this ridge, pulling the sled, was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. His entire body reverberated with pain overlaid with exhaustion. He lay there panting, feeling the sweat freeze on his skin. He knew he needed to do something, but he couldn't. Not now. He wanted to be home again, lying on the tiled floor of his parents house, feeling the heat rising through the floor from the burning coal he had to load every evening, hearing his mother in the kitchen pounding cabbage, preparing kimchee.
Min roused himself. "The radio," he called out. Ho pulled a package off the sled and handed it to him. With fumbling fingers inside his mittens, Min unwrapped the radio. He hoped it worked. They had wrapped it in metal foil to protect it from the EMP blast of the bomb, but he had little faith in the recommendations of scientists.
He threw the antenna out on the ice. Taking his mittens off, Min swiftly dialed in the correct frequency and turned the radio on. By the time he put his gloves back on, he had lost the feeling in all his fingers. A distant part of his mind told him that was bad, very bad.
Using both hands, he pushed the Send on the handset with a palm. "Tiger, this is Wolf. Over."
As each second of silence ticked by, Min's heart fell.
"Tiger, this is Wolf. Over."
"Wolf, this is Tiger. Over."
Min felt a wave of relief. "This is Wolf. We are within sight. Over."
"Roger." There was a brief break of squelch as if the other station went off the air. Then the voice came back. "Do you have the package? Over."
"Yes. Over."
"Roger. We will wait for you. Out."
Airspace, Ross Sea, Antarctica
"What language does that sound like?" the Signal Intelligence operator aboard the E-2 Hawkeye asked the other four men on board as he played back the message he had just intercepted.
He received negative replies from all, although the pilot suggested it was Asian. "Where'd you pick it up from?"
"Low power, high frequency radio coming from the southeast."
"Airborne platform?" the pilot asked.
"Negative. I don't think so-the signal was fixed," the SIGINT operator replied.
"I've got zip on the scope," the radar operator replied. "We're the only thing in the air other than the blip down near McMurdo."
"Relay it back to the ship, maybe they can figure it out," the pilot ordered.
"Roger."
McMurdo Station, Antarctica
The Osprey slowed as its engines switched from horizontal to vertical. Major Bellamy watched as the aircraft slowly settled down in a whirlwind of snow.
"Let's go," he yelled as his men followed him, hauling their two as-yet unopened bundles with them. They crowded into the cargo bay as the crew chief ran out and coordinated the refueling. Hoses were run from the fuel blisters, and JP-4 fuel was pumped in as Bellamy's men settled in. Bellamy went forward into the cockpit.
The pilot looked over his shoulder as Bellamy poked his head in. "Captain Jones." He nodded at the copilot. "As soon as we're topped off we'll be lifting."
"Have you heard anything about the target site?" Bellamy asked.
The pilot shook his head. "Nothing. We've got a Hawkeye in the air, and it should be in radar range of the site soon. I'm not sure if that will give us anything, but at least we'll know if we're the only ones in the sky."
Bellamy frowned. He'd expected something more.
"We're full," the pilot announced.
Bellamy made his way back to the rear. His men had opened the bundles and were passing out the weapons, each man receiving his according to his specialty and talents: silenced MP-5SD submachine guns, PM sniper rifles, SPAS 12 shotguns, M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAW), LAW 80 rocket launchers, and sidearms. If there was anybody left alive at the target site and they were antagonistic, Bellamy's men were ready.
Airspace, Ross Sea, Antarctica
The radar operator stared at his screen. "Shit, there's still nothing out here," he muttered to the man on his left. He'd never seen such a blank screen. Not a single aircraft in a six-hundred-mile radius, the Osprey having disappeared as it landed at McMurdo.
He flipped a switch and the radar went from air to surface. This was a different story. He stared at the screen, trying to make sense out of the jumbled mess. The surface bounce-back was very confusing, even where the sea should be. He was used to a flat reflection where ships stood out in stark relief to the ocean. Here, ice formations broke that image up into a confusing disarray.
The naval officer slowly started sorting the screen out, trying to see if there was anything identifiable. He fiddled with his controls, adjusting and tuning, like a kid playing a computer game.
"Hey, I've got something here," he told the SIGINT operator. Keying his mike, he relayed his report back to the Kitty Hawk. "Big Boot, this is Eye One. We have a surface target, bearing 093 degrees true. Distance, 273 miles. Speed zero. Over."
CHAPTER 15
Ruppert Coast, Antarctica
Min had been tempted to pile his survivors on board the sled and ride the glacier down, but wisdom had prevailed, and they lashed themselves as a human brake to the rear of the sled, keeping the bomb from getting away from them only with great difficulty.
They'd gotten off the glacier less than ten minutes ago, and now they were on top of the ocean, making their way across the ice. In most places it was so thick they couldn't tell the difference between it and the polar cap they'd been on, but in other places the ice thinned out and, with the snow scraped off by the wind, the ocean could be seen below. It was these areas that Min had his men skirt around. He estimated another four to six hours until they arrived at the freighter, which was now hidde
n by the surface ice.
Pentagon, Alexandria, Virginia
General Morris listened to the intercepted message as he tried to shake the cobwebs of sleep out of his brain. "That language sounds familiar," he remarked as the short exchange played out.
"It's Han Gul-Korean," Hodges informed him.
Morris felt a chill hand caress his spine. "Where did the Hawkeye say this originated from?"
Hodges tapped the map. "Here along the coast due north of the Citadel. It was someone on the shore communicating with a ship the Hawkeye has located as fixed in the ice pack right here, eight miles off the coast."
"Do you have a translation of the message?" Morris asked.
"Yes, sir." Hodges pressed a button on a tape player, and an unemotional voice spoke in English:
Station One: "Tiger, this is Wolf. Over."
Station One: "Tiger, this is Wolf. Over."
Station Two: "Wolf, this is Tiger. Over."
Station One: "This is Wolf. We are within sight. Over."
Station Two: "Roger. Do you have the package? Over."
Station One: "Yes. Over."
Station Two: "Roger. We will wait for you. Out."
"Oh, sweet Jesus," Morris muttered to himself. Then he spoke up: "Do you have an ID on the ship?"
"No, sir. The E-2 is over two hundred miles away and at its fuel limit range. They just have a radar image. They're launching another E-2 right now to replace it and it will be able to get in a bit closer."
Morris turned to the duty officer. "Get the SecDef and General Kolstov here ASAP."
He looked at the situation map. The Kitty Hawk was still 1,100 miles from the Citadel, over 1,000 from the freighter. "What's the range on your attack aircraft from the carrier?" he asked the naval duty officer. "More specifically, do you have anything you can put on station over that ship?"
The naval officer didn't even have to consult his notes. "Not yet, sir."
"When, then?"
"We'll be able to launch some Tomcats in about three hours. They won't have much time on station-less than twenty minutes-and they'll have to carry a minimum armament load."
Morris stared at the situation map, the pieces falling in place even though he wasn't sure what they all meant. The North Koreans had one bomb and were still making for the ship. Once they made it on board, it was going to be a very ticklish situation. But it definitely fit in with the alerts they were hearing from the peninsula. Morris wondered what the North Koreans were going to do with one nuclear weapon, but he knew there were a variety of answers, none of them good.
If not for the alert from Area 51, the whole thing might have been overlooked, even the explosion, as no one would have initially thought of a nuclear weapon. The reaction here would have definitely been quite a bit slower. Damn, the sons of bitches almost got away with it, he thought. They still might, he reminded himself.
"How about the Osprey with the Special Forces men?" he asked.
"Just lifted from McMurdo. A little less than three hours out."
"Divert them directly to the coast."
"Yes, sir."
Morris looked up as Kolstov strode in. He idly wondered how the Soviet general managed to look so unruffled after being dragged out of his bunk down the hallway. The uniform was immaculate, and Kolstov's bald head gleamed under the overhead lights.
"I understand you have something new?" His English was perfect also.
"Yes." Morris quickly filled him in on the data picked up by the Hawkeye and then played the translation tape. He concluded with his best estimate of the situation. "I think this has something to do with the mobilization intelligence we are picking up in North Korea."
Kolstov raised an eyebrow. "You did not inform me of the situation in Korea."
"I didn't think it was applicable."
Kolstov nodded. "Yes. Hmm. Well, I was aware of the situation there from my own sources." Morris knew he meant the coded radio messages that poured in and out of the CIS Embassy. He had no doubt that the Russians kept a very close eye on the North Koreans.
"What are you going to do?" Kolstov asked.
"From the message, it appears that the ship is waiting for a party on foot that has one of the bombs. We're going to have to stop it."
"What if the party makes it on board the ship before you can stop it?" Kolstov was looking over Morris's shoulder at the situation board and could easily see that there were no U.S. forces in the immediate vicinity of the ship.
"Then we stop the ship," Morris coldly replied.
"Ah, my American friend. You have no right to stop that ship in international seas."
Morris bristled. He knew they never should have allowed the goddamn Russians in on this. This guy was going to give him bullshit arguments about freedom of navigation when a nuclear weapon was involved. "My job is to get that bomb back."
Kolstov appeared not to have heard. "In fact, my friend, you are not even certain that the package referred to in the message is your lost bomb. What if you attempt to board that ship and you are wrong?"
Morris bit his words off. "They've already detonated one bomb. That proves they are capable of doing it. I have no doubt they will not stop at detonating the second. I will not allow that ship anywhere near a potential target. I am not sure how this is tied in to what is presently happening in North Korea right now, but I am sure there is a connection.
"We have the potential here for all-out war on the Korean peninsula, and I believe your government is in agreement with mine that we don't want that. I am willing to take the chance that I am wrong to stop that ship."
"Ah," Kolstov said. "But what if your boarding that ship constitutes an act of war in the eyes of the North Koreans? What if they are drawing you into a trap?"
That hadn't occurred to Morris. This whole thing was so vague he wasn't sure which end was up. "Maybe," he conceded. "But we're going to make sure."
Kolstov held up a hand, palm out. "My friend, perhaps in the interest of world peace, I might be able to help you with your little problem."
Morris would rather have crawled naked over broken glass for a mile. But he forced a smile and said, "What do you have in mind, my friend?"
Ruppert Coast, Antarctica
"How are you feeling?" Vaughn asked as they all collapsed to their knees on the crest of the ridge.
"Tired," Tai replied.
"Ditto," Burke remarked.
"Are either of you sweating?"
"No."
"No."
"Good. Drink half your canteen. I'll melt some more water in a minute." Vaughn pulled his own canteen out of the flap pocket of his parka-the only place it could be carried and not freeze-and took a deep drink of the chilly water.
He peered down to the ocean, scanning in sections. "Look-out there!"
The ship lay like a black bug miles out in the ice pack.
"Where are the ones on foot? Have they reached it yet?" Tai asked.
"It doesn't appear to be moving, and I don't think they could make it that far this quickly." Vaughn brought his gaze in closer. After a minute he spotted them. "There. See that large square iceberg? To the left and in."
"They're halfway out there." Tai sounded resigned. "We'll never catch them."
The walk up the ridge had just about wiped out Vaughn. A quarter of the way up, seeing Tai occasionally stumbling with exhaustion, he'd taken her pack and strapped it on top of his own. For a little while she'd done all right, but he could tell she was at the limit of her resources.
"You stay here. I'll go after them alone." Vaughn knew if he didn't catch them before they got on the ship, the chase was in vain.
Tai shook her head. "I'll go with you. If it's a choice between being tired and being cold, I choose tired. As long as I keep moving I'll be all right."
"I'm not staying here alone," was Burke's only comment.
Vaughn was too numb to argue. He knew it was up to them to catch the Koreans or else they'd get away. He took the stove out and got it started
. He emptied his canteen in the metal cup and placed it on top of the stove. Once the water was boiling, he scooped up ice and melted it, gradually filling his, Tai, and Burke's canteens as they rested.
"Are you ready?" he asked as he put the stove away.
Tai stood. "Do you think we can catch them?"
In reply, Vaughn took two snap links and slipped them through small loops at the end of his twelve-foot length of rope. He reached under Tai's parka and hooked one end to her belt. He hooked the other to Burke's and then himself to the center.
"What's this for?" Tai asked.
Vaughn pointed to the left, where the deceptively smooth surface of the glacier glistened a quarter mile away. "We're going to make up some time going down."
Ruppert Coast, Antarctica
"Ready?"
Tai looked up at Vaughn and weakly nodded. Burke had a death grip around her and didn't say anything. They were both wrapped in a nylon poncho, lying on their back inside a sleeping bag, heads cushioned with their backpack. Vaughn's M-1 was on Tai's chest, her hands wrapped around it.
Vaughn began walking, the rope tightening around Tai's and Burke's waists, pulling them along on the ice. He accelerated to a jog, the slope helping increase their speed. Satisfied, he flopped down on his stomach, his Gore-Tex parka and pants sliding on the ice.
Linked together, the three tobogganed down the glacier, Vaughn trying to control speed and direction with the point of his entrenching tool. Tai had no doubt that they would be very black and blue if they survived this as they rattled over bumps in the ice.
They were three-quarters of the way down to the coast, Tai too numb to even feel anything anymore, when Vaughn broke through the ice into a crevasse. His yell gave Tai less than a second to react. She did the only thing she could, holding the M-1 up across her body as her feet slammed against the far side of the break. She started sliding down, the rope around her waist dragging her down, and desperately jammed the muzzle of the weapon into the ice. The poncho and sleeping bag fell off and disappeared into the depths. Tai came to a brief halt and then felt a tremendous jar as Vaughn reached the end of her rope and dangled below.
The Citadel Page 25