Eternity Base

by Bob Mayer

  “All right.” Before Conner could hang up, though, Sammy continued. “Listen, Conner, I want you to be careful. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to hide the existence of this place. Even though it was twenty-five years ago, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a dead issue. The fact that my boss couldn’t find anything in the classified files worries me more than if he had found something. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right then. You take care and be safe.”

  Sammy hung up the phone. She took the photographs and copied them, then returned the folder to the loading dock. She went to the ladies’ room, where she slid the pictures under her T-shirt and tucked it back in. At her desk she put on her leather jacket, then went over to Brad’s office to tell him she’d be out for a little while.

  She made it past the guard without arousing any suspicion and hopped on her motorcycle. There was an office supply store less than three blocks away. Sammy roared over there and parked her bike between two cars out front. She hurried in and gave the copies to the lady behind the counter along with Conner’s fax number. It all took less than a minute. Then she tore the copies into little pieces and deposited them in a trash can on her way out.

  Sammy opened the door with a feeling of relief that this whole episode was now out of her hands and into Conner’s. As she grabbed her helmet off the motorcycle seat, she noted a Chevy van blocking her in. Sammy put the helmet on and cranked the engine, waiting for the driver of the van to take the hint and move. After thirty seconds she beeped her horn. She couldn’t make out the truck’s occupants through the tinted windshield.

  “Goddamnit,” Sammy muttered. She got off her bike, walked up to the passenger side, and rapped on the door. The cargo door slid open and a man leaped out. He wrapped her in a bear hug and rolled back into the rear of the van, the door sliding shut.

  Sammy kicked backward, feeling her boot strike home, but the man holding her didn’t make a sound. Sammy struggled desperately, but her arms were locked to her sides with a grip of steel. She felt a prick in her wrist and looked down to see a needle sliding into the flesh. As she watched, the plunger was pushed.

  The last thing her conscious mind processed was the van pulling out into traffic.

  Chapter 6

  COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

  The phone woke the old man out of a deep sleep. The young woman who was sharing the bed rose without a word and slipped toward the door, not even taking the time to put on a robe. As the door closed on her pert rear end, the man hit the speaker button.

  “Peter here.”

  “This is Lazarus. I’ve checked out the Pintella woman. She knows little other than that the base is in Antarctica. The exact location is secure. She found some old photos in a file from the engineer unit that built the place. I will secure the photos.”

  “Good.”

  “We have another problem, though.” The man’s voice paused and then continued. “Pintella told someone about what she found.”

  “Who?”

  “Her sister. Conner Young. She’s a reporter for SNN. Apparently SNN is planning to send a news team down to Antarctica to check out the story.”

  Peter sat up in the bed, flexing the muscles in his right arm as his eyes focused on the phone. “I already know about the SNN contact. Is that the only person she told?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. I’ll handle SNN. You take care of your end there in St. Louis.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Peter terminated the conversation. He sat for a long time, thinking of options. He knew better than to react immediately—there were possibilities to be explored. And, of course, he already had a plan in place at SNN to provide damage control. After forty minutes and several phone calls, the course of action was determined. He dialed Atlanta.

  SNN HEADQUARTERS, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  “I’m Conner Young. I will be the team chief for this trip.” Conner looked at the three men assembled around the conference table. “I’d like each of you to introduce yourself.”

  An overweight man with thinning gray hair took the initiative. “I’m Les Lallo. Cameraman.”

  Seated next to him, a young man with a sallow face under an unruly mop of blond hair bobbed his head nervously. “Tom Kerns. Sound.”

  The last man’s voice rumbled. “Keith Vickers. Satellite communications and computer.” Vickers was a large man and looked as though he spent all his time off in the weight room. The muscles under the black skin of his arms rippled and flowed. His shaved head reflected the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

  Conner reached forward and hit a button on the remote built into the tabletop. The men studied the map that appeared on the screen. “What are we going there for?” Lallo asked as he recognized the location.

  “The purpose of our trip is to find a place called Eternity Base. It was constructed somewhere in Antarctica in 1971 by a U.S. Army engineer company.”

  “What do you mean ‘somewhere in Antarctica’?” Lallo pointed at the screen. “That’s a pretty big place.”

  “Right now, all we know is that this place is a little less than a two hour plane ride from McMurdo Station.” Conner wanted to keep the information about the faxed pictures to herself for the time being. Sammy’s warning had made some impression.

  “What kind of place is this Eternity Base?” Kerns asked. “And why do we want to find it?”

  “It’s a group of buildings constructed under the ice. We want to find it because the existence of the place has been secret.”

  Lallo was interested in her first sentence. “If it was built under the ice, how are you going to find it?”

  Conner fixed him with a stare. It was time to establish the chain of command. She’d found that men tended to usurp control unless firmly kept in their place. “You’re here to work the camera, right?”

  Lallo shrugged. “Yes.”

  “How we find Eternity Base is my problem and I’ll take care of it. The purpose of this meeting is to work out the logistics of getting from here to Antarctica.”

  Lallo obviously felt put in his place, and he shut up. It was Kerns who asked the next question. “How do we even know it exists?”

  “Because there were photos taken of it.”

  The communications man, Vickers, stirred for the first time. “Do you have the photos? I’d like to take a look.”

  Conner shook her head. “I don’t have them yet.”

  Lallo and Kerns exchanged a look. The older man spoke very carefully. “Ms. Young, may I say something?”

  She nodded.

  “We’re going to be working together for ten days. Now, I know this is probably a very important story to you, since you’re new here. Tom and I... well, we want to help you out as much as possible. For this to work, you’ve got to tell us everything. That goes from the day-today stuff to the story. The better we understand how you are approaching the story, the better we can help you with the shots and the sound. We’re all a bit behind the power curve here because we got notified of this tasking less than an hour ago, so you’re going to have to bear with us a little bit.”

  Vickers agreed, pointing at the screen. “Mister Lallo is right about the location. This is a very big area.”

  Conner tapped the map. “We’re pretty certain that the base is to the south or east of McMurdo Station.” Her long, manicured finger swept across a large white area labeled Ross Ice Shelf and came to rest on the far side. “It’s probably somewhere here in the Transantarctic Mountains or in Marie Byrd Land. Maybe even in the vicinity of a base that was abandoned in 1972: Byrd Station, located right here.” Her finger was resting in the middle of what appeared to be a vast expanse of nothingness. She’d studied the map; based on what Devlin had told her and her own common sense, this was the best she could come up with.

  “We will be met in New Zealand by an expert on Antarctica, and with his help, and the information we do have, I feel certain we’ll find the base. We ha
ve four days from arriving at McMurdo, and we will have access to a plane from Our Earth the entire time to help us in the search.”

  Lallo nodded slowly. “Can I add something else, Ms. Young?”

  Conner considered him for a long second and then nodded.

  Lallo leaned forward in his seat. “I know you’re new here, but I’ve been on this kind of fishing expedition before. Sometimes Mr. Parker seems to get a wild hair up his ass, and he sends a news team out on some crazy story. Most of the time they come up with nothing, but every once in a while they hit pay dirt.” Vickers turned to his young partner, Kerns. “Tom, remember Mexico?”

  The soundman put his hands over his eyes. “Oh, God! Don’t remind me. I still have nightmares about that.”

  “What happened in Mexico?” Conner inquired.

  “We went down there because someone had some information—or so they claimed—about the lost treasure of Cortez,” Lallo explained. “We spent two whole weeks crawling through jungle and climbing mountains. Tom damn near had a heatstroke hauling his gear.”

  “Yeah, but at least we still have a job,” Kerns threw in.

  Lallo agreed. “Correct. That poor reporter we went with—what was his name? Hornacek or something? Anyway, Parker fired his ass the moment we got off the plane for coming back with nothing. That man uses people like sponges.”

  Conner looked at the map once more and turned back to the room with a big smile. “Well, you won’t have to worry about heatstroke this time.” She pulled the itinerary out of a folder. Time for business—not war stories. “We depart from Atlanta at six this evening. Nonstop to San Francisco. Then from there to ...” Conner ignored the dismayed look on all three men’s faces as she ran through the brutal travel schedule. “If all goes as planned, we arrive at Auckland International on Saturday evening at seven. From there we will be met by a representative of Our Earth, who will arrange transportation down to their base in the Antarctic.”

  She put down that piece of paper and picked up another, a copy of which she handed to each man. “This is the list of equipment I want brought.” She looked around. “Are there any questions?”

  Three heads indicated negatively. Conner felt good for the first time in a while. She was in charge, and that always gave her confidence.

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  The aide to the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations looked through the printout, as he did every day, seven days a week, every week of the year, marking the lines with highlighters. Blue meant forward to higher headquarters; green meant requires more information before forwarding; and yellow, no significance and delete.

  Three-quarters of the way through the printout a four-line entry caught his attention:

  News team to be dispatched 1130Z, 26th, from Atlanta to Antarctica to investigate report of U.S. Army base constructed there circa 1971. Code name of base: Eternity Base.

  The aide reread the lines again. He was intrigued—as much by what wasn’t mentioned in those four lines as what was. If his agent at SNN, Loki, had more information on Eternity Base, it would have been included. The lack of information meant that this was the first mention of Eternity Base that Loki had come across. Most interesting. The aide used his green marker and moved on to the next item.

  Chapter 7

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  Conner crossed and uncrossed her legs. She was already feeling cramped and they hadn’t even boarded yet. She turned her attention to the portable computer on her lap. She’d spent most of the afternoon packing and checking with Stu and hadn’t had a chance to run through the data Miss Suwon had given her. With twenty hours in the air, she would have plenty of time to examine it all in depth and try to condense the copious amount of information into a usable format. For now, she was fascinated with the history of Antarctica, something that hadn’t been taught in school. A continent without any native population didn’t lend itself to inclusion in standard courses.

  The lesson was interrupted as they were called to board. As soon as she’d checked the tickets, Conner had noted that they were traveling economy class. She had a feeling that the long hand of Louise Legere would follow them throughout this journey.

  Conner followed the crowd onto the plane, slipping between businessmen hanging their suit bags and grabbing pillows. She claimed the window seat, Keith Vickers the one next to her. After they took off, she reopened her laptop and went back into the history of the seventh continent. By the time they were cruising west at 35,000 feet, she was totally engrossed, and the miles passed below, unnoticed.

  EAST ST. LOUIS, ILLINOIS

  Sammy had been regaining consciousness for brief interludes over the past hour, but every time she approached lucidity, a large wave of blackness had again engulfed her. This time, though, as she opened her eyes, she could actually think. Vague memories flitted about her brain, trying to tell her something had happened over the past several hours that she needed to recall, but try as she might, no concrete memory would form. There were disturbing visions that seemed like very bad dreams, but as she took in her surroundings, the present nightmare banished thoughts of the immediate past.

  With slow sweeps of her eyes, she checked out the situation. She was lying on the floor in a filth-strewn room. A single light bulb burned in the ceiling, casting long shadows across the room. A wooden door was the only link to the world outside. Her wrists were handcuffed behind her, the steel cutting uncomfortably into her skin.

  She was considering sliding her hands down her back and pushing her feet through to at least get her hands in front of her body when the door opened and the man from the van walked in.

  Sammy was truly scared now because the man made no attempt to disguise his identity. He had hair cut tight against his skull, his bright blue eyes emanating both intelligence and malice. After staring at her for a few minutes, he finally broke the silence: “Good day, Miss Pintella. You don’t have to worry. I’ve already gotten what I needed from you.” At Sammy’s confused look he smiled. “It’s part of the miracle of modern medicine. The first shot I gave you caused unconsciousness. The second one made you talk.” He squatted down and gazed into her eyes. “You don’t remember talking, do you?”

  Sammy didn’t answer. She curled up in a tight ball, her knees to her chest. The man poked her in the shoulder. “There’s no need for you to play dumb. I know quite a bit about you—one of the perks of the job. You told me everything I asked for. I know about your sister, but that’s no longer my problem. You also told me some very interesting personal information.”

  Sammy closed her eyes and starting rocking back and forth. He slapped her on the face. “Don’t tune me out.” He smiled, but it was only a moving of muscles in his face that didn’t touch the coldness of his strange eyes. “It’s kind of like looking into someone’s soul. Imagine being able to ask someone any question you want and get an honest answer. Psychologists ought to use my techniques. It would save a lot of time. Of course there’s too high a percentage of adverse side effects to make it feasible in the real world.”

  His eyes were flashes of blue, catching the light from the bulb above them. He pulled a pistol with a bulky barrel out of his shoulder holster. He put the muzzle against Sammy’s temple and stared at her with a crooked smile. He stayed like that, his eyes boring into hers, for a very long minute, then put the pistol away. “We need another two hours for the drug to clear your system. Wouldn’t do to have that found by some enterprising coroner. Might make people ask too many questions.” He stood up and looked down at her. “You understand, don’t you?”

  Sammy gazed back blankly.

  He stood and began pacing about the room. “You didn’t do very well with your life. Couldn’t even keep a husband. Maybe in your next life you’ll do better.”

  Sammy whispered to herself.

  The man spun about. “What did you say?”

  Sammy muttered again. The man knelt down next to her and reached for her shoulders, pulling her to her knees. “Speak up.
”

  She pressed her chest against his.

  “That’s not going to work,” the man said, as she leaned into him.

  Sammy kept her eyes on his. She could feel him growing hard against her stomach. Despite his protestations, he was staying close.

  “Not in the head,” she said softly.

  For the first time the man was confused. “What?”

  “Please don’t shoot me in the head. I’ll make it worth your while. Anywhere but the head.”

  The man stood up and moved a few feet away. Sammy awkwardly shuffled toward him on her knees until he was against the wall. She pressed her face into his crotch. He was most definitely hard now. Sliding her tongue up the zipper, she flipped out the steel tab and gripped it with her teeth.

  Sammy slowly pulled down the zipper. He wasn’t wearing underwear, and she could feel flesh for the first time. She pushed in harder, moving her head until she found the tip of his cock, then she drew it into her mouth.

  The man moaned. She took it in as far as she could and then let it pop out. She started licking one of his balls gently and then started sucking him again.

  “All right,” the man muttered as he leaned back against the wall. “I knew you liked to do this. The needle made you tell me all about what you like to do.”

  Sammy clamped down on the flesh in her mouth with all the power in her jaws, and the man’s scream echoed off the walls as he doubled over. Sammy rolled away to the right, tucking her knees to her chest and sweeping the handcuffed wrists down her back, over her feet, and up in front. Staggering to her feet she ran for the man; he was still doubled over, blood pouring over his hands as he grasped his groin.

  Sammy first struck him in the face with her manacled hands, then, looping her hands behind his head and pulling down with all her might, she slammed her left knee into his face, doubling the strength of the blow. His teeth clicked shut and his head rocked back. Blood exploded in a spray from his shattered nose.