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‘I’m standing
on an ice shelf – seems solid enough.’

‘
Go for it
then. By the way, there’s a sweep setting on the jamming device –
might be more effective at blocking Nuttall’s
transmissions.’

‘Okay, yes got
it. I’ll leave it off for now though, thanks for everything.’

The reality was
always the same. Barton was more often than not, only a few feet
from Poppy who, as we know, is the essence of Madeline. But
Madeline was eight thousand miles away. Confusing and complicated,
yes and sometimes Madeline seemed to disregard or possibly forget
this basic fact. She now considered herself to be completely alone,
miles from the nearest friendly human and hidden deep down in a
crevasse. Adding to this fairly serious predicament, the world was
about to face Armageddon and she was unsure of where Adam was. All
in all, the situation was dire but somehow she experienced a wave
of euphoria. Her confidence had recharged. She
would
complete this mission, she
would
save the world - if she
could, and then she would track down Nuttall and then she
would
do what she did best.

She scraped any
loose snow off the ice shelf and kicked off her snow shoes – she
was as ready as she ever would be. She selected level 5 explosive
motion, crouched right down until her bottom was almost touching
her feet and did the grasshopper jump of her life.

Meanwhile all
the officers and Generals in the Situation room had seen Madeline
fall into the crevasse. Previously the spy satellite had allowed
them to see her bounding across the frozen terrain. It was an
amazing sight – almost surreal. They were limited as to how far
they could zoom in but it certainly was an unnatural, Olympiad
sight. They now all held their breaths in complete silence.
Telephone weren’t answered and coffee went cold. Absolutely nothing
could they do but wait, hope she hadn’t fallen down too far and was
able to crawl out. The words, DEFCON ONE were almost forming on the
Defence secretary’s lips but suddenly and amazingly, from the
opening in the ground, they watched her fly out as though she was
fired out of a cannon. She landed rather ungainly several feet away
from the crevasse, immediately got to her feet, put her snow shoes
back on and began to run like the wind again. They all cheered then
answered the telephones that were still ringing and slurped deeply
into their cold coffees.

It wasn’t long
before she could just about make out the array of huge horn devices
in the far distance. Things were going well apart from being behind
schedule and her power reserves being worryingly low - she
desperately needed a thirteen amp socket.

As she got
closer to the horns, their enormous size was realised. All gleaming
white, some twenty metres long with the opening bell ends some two
metres in diameter. Each one was supported on four hydraulic arms
which were rooted in the compacted ice beneath. From the satellite
view in the situation room, she remembered there were at least
forty horns but due to the size and spacing, she could barely see
four in the poor visibility of the snow storm. For some reason,
each one had a slightly different angle of elevation. It truly was
a feat of engineering especially being constructed on such hostile
terrain. Presumably the ultrasound sound was all about her but she
couldn’t hear a thing – not a thing, just the howling of the icy
cold wind.

Contrary to
belief, Madeline had no desire to be violent, to kill, to maim or
even to be nasty but it was regrettably in her job description. She
was there principally to explode the fuel tanks but without fuel,
the generators wouldn’t work. Without the generators running there
would be no power to give her a recharge and this was something she
desperately needed. She had to get into the living quarters first
with as few casualties as possible and find a mains socket.

She selected
infrared vision in an attempt to cut through the poor visibility
caused by the snowstorm. No trace of a greeting party could be seen
which could only mean one thing - Nuttall hadn’t as yet alerted the
base staff to an imminent visitor. If he had they would no doubt be
ready waiting with the most effective fire power they had. She had
an idea, she had to be quick. It appeared that the base
communicated by way of a single satellite dish on top of the base
building. It was a good way off but if she could keep steady, with
her laser on full, she could melt and destroy the arm sticking out
at the front of the dish. She lowered herself into a box split on
the ground to act as a ‘di’ pod to steady herself, held her breath,
raised her arm and fired her finger laser. It was a perfect shot -
the dish was permanently out of action.

‘Try warning
them now Nuttall!’

‘
Your
precious boyfriend will die horribly for that,’ said
Nuttall.

‘That’s funny,
I thought he was dead already.’

She turned her
little jamming device on, set it on sweep and gave it a test.

‘Let me hear
Adam’s voice and I might reconsider.’

No reply came
back. At that moment, two people emerged from the building.
Madeline had somehow forgotten that is was an intolerable seventy
below zero. A high tech skin tight thermal suit and almost depleted
power reserves were keeping her body reasonably warm but the men
didn’t benefit from fuel cells. Their bulbous clothing, furry hoods
and cumbersome gloves were all they had to keep the incessant
bitter weather from their bones. They had guns and fired several
shots but in the awful conditions, who knows where the bullets
went; Madeline’s laser finger was far more effective. Two short
blasts of green light flashed across the icy compound and rendered
them unconscious…

And then
Madeline collapsed where she stood. The over use of the laser gun
had used up every last drop of energy, there was absolutely nothing
left. To say the least, this was very inconvenient and very
annoying. All kinds of warning lights were now flashing away in her
vision to notify her of this critical failure. This was very
irritating and unnecessary as she couldn’t move – she couldn’t even
put her thumb and forefinger together to cancel the warning lights
and bleeps.

Predictably it
wasn’t long before two more men emerged from the building. They
dragged the two stunned men inside, out of the cold and then walked
over to Madeline. She couldn’t move, couldn’t fire her weapon and
couldn’t speak but she could listen. They kicked her several times
and satisfied themselves that she was unconscious or dead, if she
wasn’t dead, she soon would be. They looked for the fancy laser gun
but for some reason, couldn’t find it.

The two men she
lasered came round within a few minutes with nothing more than a
slight headache. They wrongly assumed that one of the many bullets
they had fired at the female intruder had done the job.

Madeline was,
to put it mildly, in a predicament. There was no one, not even Adam
to save her this time. All her energy reserves were depleted and
her core temperature was already below zero. How the hell was she
going to get out of this? There was only one thing for it, she
switched on her entertainment system and watched a film –
Mission Impossible
would have to do.

Back in the
Situation room there was deep gloom. They could vaguely see their
only chance of resolution lying ‘dead’ on the frozen ground. They
had less than four days before the naval fleets reached the east
coast of the USA. They now had a decision to make: Whether to
target their entire nuclear arsenal at the rest of the world or
just fire one at the South Pole. Naturally, the most logical and
considerate direction was at Antarctica. An intercontinental
ballistic missile would do the job but there had to be no failure
this time. One nuclear warhead would be certain to blow up the base
- and most of Antarctica in the process. Yes, there would be a few
minor problems: raised sea levels, tsunamis and global warming but,
as history goes, when war is at stake, minor consequences such as
these are never taken into consideration.

There were a
few generals who preferred the rest of the world option instead for
no reason other than just to be belligerent. It was up to the
President to make the decision.

The President
and the Secretary of State took it in turns to make several phone
calls to the rest of the world’s leaders. Sadly all the
conversations roughly went the same way:

‘Good evening
Chancellor, hope you are keeping well. I trust our long standing
friendship remains intact and ask you to recall your navy as a
gesture of goodwill…’

‘
Bollocks!’

Perhaps not
exactly the same reply from all the other country leaders but
generally it meant the same thing…

DEFCON 2 was
now in force.

Chapter 31:
Two at a time

There were
grounds to celebrate. It was in the bag, the population of the
world had been fully cerebrally conditioned. World wide hatred
ensued and it was all down to the effects of the ultrasound,
transmitted from the horns on their base. They had also defeated
the infamous British agent Madeline Bull – she lay dead, outside in
the insufferably cold and hostile conditions.

Many cans of
larger were steadily emptied and the team of four men predictably
became louder, high spirited and sozzled. They were promised
everything they ever wanted when the project had run its course:
money, land, power and so on. Right now though, they wanted
something else – they wanted their animal urges satisfying. They
wanted female company. The fact that there was a sex goddess within
the grounds of the base didn’t go unforgotten. Yes, she was
outside, frozen and dead – apparently… but for these four men,
tanked and frustrated, these minor details didn’t matter. They all
decided that they could cope with the dead bit but frozen was
definitely a turn off. She would have to be defrosted.

All four of the
team quickly donned their cumbersome suits and began the search.
Eventually they found her buried in the drifting snow. They dragged
her back inside and threw her in the boiler room - this was an
excellent place to warm up. The two side by side boilers ran
constantly and diligently, warming the room up to a nice 50
degrees.

The four men
worked out that after another four cans of Speckled Hen each, she
would be sufficiently defrosted and warmed up for a very
pleasurable experience… Then popular opinion decided that actually
four cans was too generous, three cans would be much more
realistic. So after a further one can each they decided to return
to take her thermal suit off - she would defrost quicker.

All four went
back into the boiler room and this time had a closer look at their
prey. Colour was coming back to her cheeks, not that it ever really
left, she was an android. The ice had melted from her hair – she
was absolutely gorgeous. They had a little fight to decide who was
to unzip her thermal suit and take it off. This matter couldn’t be
resolved so they all had a hand in the undressing. Her incredible
body revealed itself bit by bit, they had never seen such an erotic
sight in their sad pitiful lives. They decided that they would
drink the next two cans very quickly.

Removing
Madeline’s thermal suit was, in the scheme of things, the best
thing that could have happened. She thawed out very quickly. The
heat from the boilers rapidly penetrated her artificial
construction.

Mission
impossible
had no more than ten minutes to go when she noticed
her eyelids opening and her arms twitching. This was slightly
inconvenient because she would have to put the movie on pause.
Madeline hadn’t worked out what was happening but Barton had.

‘
Get
yourself plugged in quickly!
’ yelled Barton
.

She did as she
was told. She found the charging lead in the back pack of her
thermal suit, plugged one end in her navel and the other end in a
conveniently placed power socket.

‘
The heat
has expanded the remaining liquid hydrogen in your fuel cell
tank,’
explained Barton.

‘With you… like
eking out the last bit of deodorant from the can by warming it up.
Thanks Pops.’

She had a good
twenty minutes of charge before she heard the men noisily
returning. She unplugged and hid her charging lead and feigned
being dead again. The door burst open and four fairly inebriated,
sex starved Neanderthals rushed in. Within seconds, all four had
their trousers and underpants down to their ankles.

‘Me first!’

‘Fuck off!’

‘I’m the
leader, me first!’

‘Piss off… me
first

‘We’ll toss for
it!’

‘We can go in,
two at a time.’

‘Now
that
… is going too far!’ said Madeline springing to
life.

‘Holly
shit!’

‘Is that
supposed to be a euphemism,’ asked Madeline.

Her laser would
use a lot of her energy up but a little flatulence would use almost
none at all. After an almighty fart, all four were unconscious on
the warm floor with, for some reason, an intense sardonic grin on
their faces. She put her thermal suit back on and left the four
sleeping men, locked in the boiler room.

Down the short
corridor she soon found what presumably passed as the control
centre. The console in the centre of the room was very much like
you would find in a mixing studio. She sat down on the swivel chair
in front of it and attached herself to another handy power socket.
The panel had a count down timer at the top reading 11 hours, 15
minutes and 6 seconds decreasing a second at a time. From a rough
guess it appeared that each horn outside surrounding the base had a
corresponding slider, she slid the first one upwards. Out of a
monitor came a foreign language, perhaps Mandarin. The next slider
produced another foreign language, distinctly German, then another,
probably Japanese and another, Russian. The sixth slider produced a
familiar language – English.