by Bob Mayer
“What if there’s a fire down here? Would those bombs go off?” Conner interrupted his thoughts.
“It has thermal safety devices that would prevent accidental detonation due to fire,” Riley replied.
“How do you think the bombs got here?” Conner asked. “I thought you said those things were tightly controlled.”
“How did this base get here?” Riley replied. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Sammy pointed at the blue binder. “Do you think we should open the safe?”
Riley shook his head. “I looked at it. It’s set in the ground and requires a combination. We don’t have that. I recommend we don’t mess with it. You’ve got the bombs. You don’t need the codes.” Riley suddenly stood.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to start earning my money.” He looked at Sammy. “You want to give me a hand?”
“Sure,” she replied.
With that they were gone. Conner speculated for a few seconds about what Riley might be up to, but then dismissed her sister and Riley from her mind as she opened up her portable computer and got to work, preparing her story.
SNN HEADQUARTERS, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Falcon carefully read the reply from ISA headquarters.
No further information on Eternity Base.
Confirm information that U.S. Air Force C-130, tail number
6204 from 487th TAS, Clark Base, Hawaii, was reported as
MIA 21 December 1971, Vietnam
Actual location U.S. Army Engineer unit, B Company, 67th
Engineer Battalion, from August 1971 through December 1971
was Chi Lang, Vietnam, OPCON MACV-SOG.
Falcon scanned the page-long printouts for pertinent information on the people he’d had checked out. The fact that Riley was an ex-Special Forces man who’d run counterterrorist operations caught his attention. He wondered if there was a connection between that and the MACV-SOG cover-up. There were so many classified organizations conducting various operations that Riley could still be working for the government.
This whole damn thing didn’t make much sense. The end of the message indicated that his superiors thought the same.
Request all information you have on Eternity Base.
Priority One.
Slowly he put the papers down on his desk. The report had yielded no significant information. Eternity Base’s cover had been back- stopped all the way through the classified files in the ISA’s database. Although Falcon knew such a thing was in the realm of possibility—especially for something that had happened so long ago—it meant that the secret of Eternity Base could be a bad story publicity wise. Since they didn’t know what the base was or what the original cover story had been, there was no way to plan for damage control.
Falcon typed into his computer and studied the data that Young had already sent. His forehead wrinkled in concern as he saw that the last transmission had been coded only for Parker’s ID and password. Why had she done that? What had she found that was so important—more important than the existence of the base and the finding of the body? Falcon was worried about what Parker now knew that he didn’t.
Falcon tapped a finger against his teeth as he pondered the situation. Wheels were turning, but he wasn’t sure where they would lead him. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he searched other databases. He stopped when he found the order from Parker sending the new support team to Antarctica ASAP. Why hadn’t he been informed of that? Falcon slammed a fist down on his desktop in frustration. Damn Parker and his penchant for secrets.
Falcon reopened the data file on information that Young had sent prior to the coded message. There had to be something that would help him figure out what was going on.
Chapter 16
KAESONG, NORTH KOREA
The headquarters for the North Korean Special Forces is located twenty-five miles north of the famous border city of Panmunjom. This puts it in close proximity to the demilitarized zone, where many of its units’ covert activities are conducted. Tonight, however, Gen. O Gulc Yol, the army chief of staff and former commander of the Special Forces Branch, had his eyes focused on a map that had never before been unfurled in his operations room. The fact that his staff had even been able to find the map on such short notice was quite an accomplishment. General Yol had been awakened by the duty officer and given Kang’s message from New York just forty-five minutes ago.
Yol pointed a gnarled finger, broken many times in hand-to-hand combat training, at the map. “It is there, sir.”
There were only two people in the world to whom General Yol would have shown such deference. One was Kim II Sung, the leader of North Korea for forty years, who had died two years ago. The other was the man who presently stood opposite him looking at the map—Kim’s son, Kim Jong II. “It is very far away,” Yol said.
“Yes, sir, but it is a golden opportunity. It gives us a lever that is the perfect solution to the problem that has kept us from implementing the Orange III plan.”
Kim, designated heir to Kim II Sung, rubbed the side of his face. He had watched his father slowly die without having seen completed his dream of uniting the two Koreas. It was unthinkable that his father’s life-long vision had not been realized. He would not allow the same thing to happen to himself.
The recent reduction of American forces in South Korea had left that threat a paper tiger. Kim had no doubt that his massive army—sixth largest in the world—could now overcome their enemies to the south. The problem was that the Americans still held a real threat—tactical nuclear weapons.
Korea is a land of mountains and narrow plains. It is along these narrow plains that any offensive movement has to advance. And tactical nuclear weapons were the ideal countermeasure to such movement. If that one factor could be removed, the entire balance of power in the peninsula would shift to the North’s favor.
In late 1991, the United States had removed all tactical nuclear weapons from the peninsula in a gesture meant to force the North Koreans to abandon their nuclear weapons program. The North ignored the gesture for the simple reason that it was seen as an empty one. The Americans maintained enough tactical nuclear weapons on the planes, submarines, and cruise missiles of the Seventh Fleet to more than make up for the lack of land-based ones.
Orange III was the classified operations plans (OPLAN) for a northern invasion of the south. Unfortunately, to Kim Jong Il’s mind, his father had not approved the implementation of the plan because of the high risk and cost potential if it failed—and fail it most likely would if the Americans used their nuclear weapons.
The fact that the North Koreans had their own small arsenal of nukes did not change that balance for two simple reasons: First, they had only limited abilities to project those weapons a few hundred miles into the South—and, of course, they could never touch the United States itself. Second, tactical nuclear weapons favored the defender, not the attacker.
North Korea had even opened its nuclear facilities to international inspection in 1992, having already made two dozen weapons and secreting them. They’d done that in exchange for political concessions from both the South and the Americans. For the past several years they had played the nuclear card close to their chest; there was not much more they could hope to gain in the political arena.
But now, now, there was a window of opportunity. This new information, if it was used properly, could make Orange III a reality.
Kim looked up at his old friend. “I cannot believe that the American government has abandoned two nuclear weapons and that this so-called news organization has not notified the military of their presence.”
Yol smiled, showing stained teeth, the result of constantly smoking cigarettes. “Imperialists are like that, sir. This news organization is more concerned with profit than duty and country. They will keep it a secret so they can have the story all to themselves.”
Kim thought it was all too strange. He just couldn’t understand Americans. “But the bombs? How could
they have just been left there?”
“I don’t know, sir. But the fact is they are there. Unguarded for the moment. And we must seize the moment.” Yol emphasized each word in the last sentence.
Kim was more cautious than his military chief. “Could it be a trap set by the Americans? Could they have discovered our source at SNN?”
Yol considered that very briefly. “I do not believe Loki has been compromised. I also see no reason for the Americans to go through such trouble to set up a trap. It is a trap only if they know of both the Orange III plan and Loki’s existence. Even then, they cannot expect us to launch a mission based on such information. I believe they would not have put the weapons so far away if they had considered such a trap.”
“But can we use these weapons?”
Yol held up the message he’d received from Kang. “The codes and instructions to arm the weapons are at the same base.”
“How much time do we have?” Kim asked.
Yol sat back down in his chair. “It will take the second American news team about twenty-four hours to arrive in New Zealand. Then they must wait until the weather is good enough to fly down to Antarctica, which will take another eight or so hours. And from what my intelligence officer tells me, the bad weather can last for weeks. When they finally arrive at the base, they will announce their story.”
“It will take us at least twenty-four hours also,” Kim remarked, looking at the wall map of the world. “In fact, I don’t believe we can reach Antarctica from here with any aircraft we have. And we certainly cannot refuel anywhere en route.”
Yol had already thought of that. “I have had my staff working on this since the message first came in. They concur with your analysis, sir. The distance is too great to be reached from here. Additionally, the Americans and their South Korean lackeys keep too close a watch for us to even try launching a team by air from any of our bases here.”
Yol’s finger slid across Antarctica and up into the Atlantic Ocean until it came to rest on a spot in Africa. “Here is our answer, if you will give me permission, sir.”
“You have a plan then?”
Yol smiled. “Yes, sir.”
Kim settled back in his seat. “Let me hear it.”
Yol tapped an intercom button, and three officers carrying charts and paper bustled into the room. A Special Forces lieutenant colonel started talking, his pointer beginning at the same spot in southwest Africa. As he progressed, the pointer made its way south to Antarctica and then north again—but not to the Korean peninsula.
At the end of fifteen minutes, Kim had caught Yol’s enthusiasm. The briefing officers wrapped up and left the room, leaving the two of them alone. Kim Jong II had worked with General Yol for his entire adult life. He had only one question for his old friend. “It is a very daring plan. You think you can do it?”
“Yes.”
“Send the messages.”
ISA HEADQUARTERS, SOUTHWEST OF WASHINGTON, D.C.
“How the hell can there be a base put in by our military that we don’t know about?” General Hodges demanded, his forehead glinting in the overhead lights.
No one at the table ventured an answer. Hodges hadn’t truly expected one. Thirty-one years in the military intelligence community had taught him that not only didn’t one hand know what the other was doing in the U.S. government, but that fingers on the same hand were often in the dark as to the action of the other fingers.
“Do we have anything to work from?”
Weaver, the analyst who worked with Falcon, their source at SNN, spoke up from the far end of the table. “We have a name from a letter that was left at the base.”
Hodges swung his flint-hard gaze down the table. “What’s the name?”
“Glaston. Apparently he was the man in charge of construction in 1971. He worked for ISA from ‘62 through ‘79. Direct action section. Code three alpha.”
“I want this man Glaston.” Hodges turned to a man in a three-piece suit. “I want him ASAR You have priority one authorization.”
“Yes, sir.” The man headed for the door.
Chapter 17
LUBANGO, ANGOLA, SOUTHWEST AFRICA
Major Pak Roh Kim read once more the message his radio operator had decoded twenty minutes ago. It was the longest message he had ever seen transmitted over high frequency radio in his twenty-one years with Special Forces. He was holding a complete operations plan for a new mission that was to commence immediately.
Pak’s face twisted in a sneer as he read the concept of operations. Those desk-bound fools in Kaesong! He looked up at the thatched roof of the hut that comprised his team’s headquarters. Pak was a small man, less than five and a half feet tall and weighing no more than a hundred and twenty pounds. He was the spitting image of Bruce Lee, the major difference being that Pak had actually killed many more men than the actor had ever simulated killing in his movies.
“Get me Lim,” he snapped at Kim Chong Man. As his executive officer scurried out to the airstrip, Pak leafed through the pages of the OPLAN, his mind trying to rationalize the words in front of him. This was going to be difficult, very difficult.
Pak had been in Angola for a year and a half now, advising the Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government forces in their thirty year war against the UNITA rebels. In Pak’s personal opinion, the real reason he and his men were here was to gain combat experience. The MPLA would never defeat the rebels, especially since the Cubans had pulled out and run back to their island with their tails between their legs. Now one hundred and twenty North Korean Special Forces soldiers were supposed to do what thousands of Cubans hadn’t been able to accomplish.
Pak had run more than his share of classified missions, so he was no stranger to being awakened in the middle of the night and handed an OPLAN. This one, however, was different in several important aspects. The first was the fact that it was an operation outside of his immediate area of operations. The second was the strategic significance of the mission. It all looked very nice on paper, but implementation was going to require great sacrifices and effort.
Typical bureaucratic thinking, Pak snorted. This was the same type of thinking that had almost gotten him killed in a DMZ infiltration tunnel north of Seoul two years ago. He and his team should have been pulled out at the first sign of compromise, but indecision in the chain of command had left them in there long enough for the South Koreans to flood the tunnel. Pak shuddered as he remembered the torrent of water pouring in and the muffled screams of the men who didn’t make it out.
Lim stepped in and snapped a salute, breaking Pak out of his black reverie. “Captain Lim reporting as ordered, sir.”
Pak looked at the short man in the flight suit with unveiled disgust. “What is your aircraft’s range?”
Lim blinked. “It’s sixty-five hundred kilometers with a one-hour reserve, sir.”
“We need to go ninety-seven hundred kilometers.”
Lim stared nervously at the major. “Then we will have to refuel somewhere, sir.”
“If we had someplace to land and refuel, I would have told you that.” Pak’s voice was ice cold. “We need to travel ninety-seven hundred kilometers without refueling.”
‘That is impossible, sir.”
“Make it possible. You have one hour to be ready to leave.” Pak turned his gaze to his XO, who had come in behind the pilot. “Bring in the team and I will brief them.”
ETERNITY BASE, ANTARCTICA
Sammy sat down with her back against the crate containing one of the bombs and watched Riley, who was examining a rifle. They had run a power line into the armory, and now the overhead lights worked, along with the heat. They’d spent the past two hours doing what Riley referred to as “what-if” work. Sammy was happy to stay busy.
Riley pointed up at the heater, which was blowing out warm air. “The weapons are sweating now, and when they get exposed again to subfreezing temperatures they’re going to freeze up.”
Sammy shrugged. �
�I don’t think my sister is too worried about that.”
Riley put down the rifle and sat across from her. “I have to agree with that.” He looked around. “I wish I had a beer. I suppose they didn’t put any alcohol down here because it would have frozen. I’m not too sure I would have liked living in a survival shelter without beer.”
“How could the government have lost track of these weapons?” Sammy asked, tapping the crate.
Riley sighed. “These bombs are either a closely guarded secret or a complete oversight. Crazy as it sounds, the latter is most likely the truth. If someone from the government knew about these things, there would have been some monitoring of this place.”
Sammy disagreed. “That man who showed up in St. Louis certainly was keeping very good tabs on this place. He must have gotten on to me either through SNN or from the data runs I made on the computer at the Center.”
Riley shrugged. “I don’t know. We have that name—Glaston. If we can find out who he worked for, then we’ll have some answers. I’m more worried right now about who tried to kill Swenson and trashed Vickers’s radio. If whoever it is works for the same people who sent that man to St. Louis, then they really have their act together. That’s why I wanted to prepare for the shit to hit the fan.”
“If we can get into the reactor itself, I think we ought to move the stuff we gathered into that,” Sammy suggested. “It would be an ideal place to hide.”