The Citadel (13 page)

Earth First South Station, Antarctica

Tai's first glimpse of Earth First South Station confirmed what she had expected. A large, squat box building looking more like several trailer homes sealed together than a research station sat on the ice. Established several hundred meters from the base of Mount Erebus, it was painted bright red, and just to the right a cluster of antennas was tied off to a tower. A colorful banner reading EARTH FIRST was strung along the front.
It had taken the tractor almost forty-five minutes to get them off the ice shelf and up here to the station. As they pulled in front with a clatter, a couple of people stepped out of the building to greet them. As Logan did the introductions, Tai could see Vaughn hanging back. She knew their camouflage cold weather suits didn't fit with the bright outfits and colorful banner hung on the outside of the station, and the lackluster handshakes from the station personnel confirmed that.
"Let's get our equipment inside," Logan ordered.
Vaughn helped Tai haul their gear bag inside, not wanting the Earth First people to handle it, especially the weapons cases. They were directed down a short corridor and into a small room barely containing three sets of bunk beds. Tai dumped her gear onto one bed while Vaughn put his across from her. Then they rejoined Logan in the mess hall/meeting room as Logan briefed a skinny bearded man on their mission to find the Citadel. Logan had introduced him as Peter McCabe, Earth First's foremost Antarctic expert. When Logan showed him the faxed photocopy of the picture, McCabe sat down at the table and looked at it for a long time.
"This looks familiar. It's rare that you have three nunatuks that close to each other." He pulled out a large chart. "Show me again where you think this place might be, based on the air time."
"The range of the resupply aircraft comes out to roughly five hundred miles." Logan traced a half arc around McMurdo Station.
"It's not to the west," McCabe firmly announced. "That would put it very close to the French station there. I've been in that area quite a bit lately, and I'd certainly recognize these peaks if they were in that area."
He stared at the map a long time, his eyes boring in as if he could see the actual ground from just looking at the two dimensional paper. Tai took the opportunity to look over at Vaughn. He appeared to be out of sorts around the civilians, and she shared some of his feelings.
McCabe turned the map around and placed the photo down on it. He tapped a spot on the far side of the Ross Sea. "It's here. I'd be willing to bet that middle peak is Mount Grace. The one on the right is McKinley Peak. The lower one on the left must be this one that has no name."
Logan shook his head. "Are you sure? I'd have thought they'd put the base farther south." He pointed at the map. "Down here along the Shackleton coast perhaps."
McCabe looked up. "No. That's Mount Grace. I knew I'd seen that silhouette before. To the south of it is the glacier where they launched the Byrd Land South Pole traverse in '60. When you fly out in that direction you put the glacier on the right and McKinley on your left. Then it's open ice until you hit the Executive Committee Mountain Range."
Vaughn spoke for the first time. "How soon can we take off again?" he asked Brothers.
The pilot was chewing on the end of his bushy mustache. "Ah, well, mate, the plane, it can take off right now. The problem is the pilot. I just put in eight nonstop hours and I could use a couple of hours to rest. How about in four hours?"
Tai could tell Vaughn wasn't happy about the delay. She half expected him to try and order the pilot to take off immediately. Vaughn sighed and looked around the table. Smithers and Burke had not said a word, but simply listened to the discussion.
"All right," Vaughn said. "It's presently 3:15 P.M. local time here. We take off at seven-fifteen. The—"
"What about darkness?" Tai interrupted. "We won't be able to find the place in the dark."
Logan laughed. "There is no night in the summer down here. The sun gets a little lower on the horizon, but it never sets."
"As I said," Vaughn continued, "I want everyone gathered in this room ready to go at six. That will give us plenty of time to make it down to the plane and be in the air at seven-fifteen. Are there any questions?"
Tai saw McCabe looking at Logan, his eyes full of questions about the two people in military camouflage, but the man had the common sense not to say anything in front of Vaughn.
Vaughn looked over at her. "I'm going to get some sleep. I'll see you all at six."
He left the conference room then, but reappeared almost immediately, his duffel bag over his shoulder.
"Where are you going?" Tai asked as he placed his hand on the door leading outside.
"I'm going to sleep outside. I'll be on the lee side of the building when you want me." With that he stepped out, and the door slammed shut behind him.
"You brought a weird man with you, Tai," was Logan's only comment before he turned to his crew and to give some more instructions.
Tai tugged on her parka, grabbed her backpack, and went outside after Vaughn. She found him on the far side of the building, digging in the snow. He briefly glanced up at her, but she said nothing, watching him.
After completing the slit in the snow, he removed the bungi cord from around a Therm-a-Rest pad and laid it down on the bottom of the trench. Unscrewing the valve on the top corner, the pad quickly expanded to full size, about an inch and a half thick, by a foot and a half wide, by six long.
Then he pulled out his sleeping bag. It was compressed inside a stuff sack, and he released the cinches and unrolled the bag. Vaughn then stretched a poncho across the top of the trench, fixing down the ends with snow, leaving an opening just large enough to crawl in. All done, he put the shovel down in the hole along with his bag in a place he had dug out near the head.
"Why are you sleeping out here?" Tai finally asked, unable to restrain her curiosity.
Vaughn looked up at her. "It takes about four days to acclimatize to a radically new environment. Or at least it takes me four days. Besides, I hate sleeping that close to a bunch of people. I'm a very light sleeper, and the slightest noise wakes me up." He smiled. "Hell, tell the nature lovers in there that I'm just loving nature."
"What's that?" Tai asked as he started to slip into a thin bag.
"It's a vapor barrier, or VB liner, that goes inside the sleeping bag," he explained. "The liner keeps my perspiration inside it. Makes for a damp sleep, but it's better for me to be damp than the bag. I can dry out. I might not be in circumstances where I can dry the bag out, and a wet sleeping bag will kill you here."
He proceeded to slide all the way in until the only thing visible from the trench was his face. Tai leaned over. "I guess I'll build my own snow trench."
"Good idea," Vaughn said.
"I need to send a sitrep to Royce first."
Vaughn looked at her. "Sure that's a good idea?"
"Let's not get into that," Tai replied.
"Whatever," Vaughn said, and shut his eyes.
Tai walked a dozen yards away and pulled out the small satcom radio from her backpack. She knelt in the snow, opened the small satellite dish and oriented it, then hooked the radio to it. She checked to make sure she had a clear bounce back from the Milstar satellite, which was just on the northern horizon.
Using a pen on the small keyboard on the radio, she summarized their situation and their intent to search for the Citadel shortly. Then she broke the gear down and put it back in the pack.
Tai went inside the base to the bunk room where their gear was stored. No one else was around. She opened one of the weapons cases, pulled out a 9mm pistol, loaded a magazine in it, and slid it in one of the pockets of her parka. She took a second one out and did the same, putting it in the opposite pocket. Then she pulled out her air mattress and sleeping bag from her duffel bag. As she turned for the door, it was thrown open. Vaughn stood there.
"The mess hall now!" he barked, and was gone as quickly as he'd come.
Tai rushed to the mess hall to find Vaughn leaning over an unconscious Brothers. The pilot was slumped in a chair, his clothes covered with melting ice and snow.
"What happened?" she asked.
"I found him outside, lying in the snow, just like this." Vaughn was checking the pilot's bare hands for frostbite as he spoke. "Another five minutes and he'd have frozen to death."
"How'd you find him?" Tai inquired.
"I heard a noise. Sounded like the main door slamming shut. I don't know." He shrugged. "Something just didn't seem right, so I got up and checked."
As Vaughn explained, the other members of the team filed in until all were assembled.
"So what happened to him?" Logan wanted to know. "Did he fall and knock himself out?"
Vaughn shook his head. "I don't think so." He broke open a medical kit and pulled out some smelling salts, waving them under Brothers's nose. The pilot gagged briefly, and then his eyes flickered open. He reached up for his head and moaned. Tai stepped forward and looked. A large purplish bruise was visible through the thinning hair on the back of the pilot's head.
Vaughn moved around to face Brothers. "What happened?" he asked.
Brothers tried shaking his head, but the pain got the better of him and he held still. "Shit. I don't know. I was going to take a piss and was in the corridor when someone whacked me on the back of the head. That's all I remember."
Six sets of eyes met, flickered to one another and then back to Brothers. The silence lasted almost a full minute, and then Vaughn asked, "Was anybody awake when he left?"
The three other men shook their heads.
Vaughn turned to Tai. "When I came in, all three were in their beds and appeared to be sleeping. You were in your room. The three people from Earth First were all accounted for also."
"That leaves you, then, doesn't it?" Logan observed.
Vaughn shrugged. "Then it would have been pretty stupid of me to have rescued him, wouldn't it?"
Tai decided to take charge before things went totally to shit. "Are you able to fly?" she asked Brothers.
He nodded carefully. "Aye. I don't think I have any permanent damage."
"Then we leave now." Vaughn turned to Smithers and Burke. "Get your gear ready to go. We leave for the plane in fifteen minutes."
Logan gestured at Brothers. "What about whoever knocked him out? I don't think it was chance that it was the pilot who was attacked. Somebody is trying to stop us from getting to this Citadel."
"And that's why we're leaving right away," Vaughn replied. "You have as much of an idea who did it as I do. But if we wait around here any longer, whoever it is will have a chance to do something else. I don't want to give them the opportunity. Let's load out."
When the others left the room to get their gear, Tai looked at Vaughn. "We've been infiltrated."
"No shit," he said.
Tai took one of the pistols out and offered it to Vaughn. He took it, checking the magazine. "Make sure you keep it close to your body," he said. "The gun is sweating in here and will freeze up if you don't keep it warm."
Tai nodded, took her pistol out, opened her parka and pile shirt and stuck it inside. "Going to be hard to get to in a hurry if I need it."
Vaughn was doing the same. He shrugged. "Everything is going to take longer down here. Let's hope if we need the guns, whoever we need them against is just as slow."

CHAPTER 7
Geneva, Switzerland

Dyson was not used to being made to wait. Before becoming the head of the North American Table, he had been CEO of one of the top three corporations in America. He'd advised Presidents. Been on the boards of dozens of organizations. He was worth untold billions.
And now he waited after having been summoned like an errant schoolboy to the principal's office.
After forty minutes the door to the Intelligence Center opened. There was no secretary to usher him in. Just the open door. Dyson got up and walked through, eyes blinking as he tried to adjust to the dimmer light inside. He saw the four Assessors in their chairs. He headed for the fifth chair, glancing at the large video displays lining the walls, trying to get a quick glimpse to see if any of the data referred to the current situation he had been summoned for. He could see that one of the large screens displayed a map of Antarctica, but his quick look couldn't reveal anything else.
He sat down, picked up the headset and put it on. He had never met the High Counsel in person. As far as he knew, none of the heads of the various Tables ever had.
"We have received your report," the High Counsel said, his voice coming through the headset. "It was woefully lacking in information. I want to assume that during your flight here you had time to reflect and come up with possible explanations."
Dyson cleared his throat. "I believe David Lansale planned all of this a long time ago, and he set it up that if he died, this information would be released to cause us problems."
"Explain."
"Understand that this is speculation on my part, not hard data," Dyson said.
"We understand."
Dyson could see that two of the four Assessors were watching him, the other two intent on the screens.
"I've tried to line up what we do know and added in the unknown of Lansale's motivations. Lansale was a very good agent, one of our best, and he participated in many top level assignments. But our psych profiles—which we did not have when he was first recruited out of the Office of Strategic Services in World War II—indicate he had maverick tendencies. He questioned things. I believe he questioned who he worked for.
"This all started when he parachuted into Japan as part of Doolittle's raid in World War II. He rendezvoused with Emperor Hirohito's nephew, Prince Chichibu, to negotiate for us. Part of those negotiations were the Golden Lily, the fledgling Japanese atomic weapon program, clemency for the Imperial family—all this is in your database. He did as he was ordered to do, and the mission was a success.
"However, I believe he did more than he was ordered to do. I think he began planning this Citadel operation. After all, the Japanese submarine, I-401, was tasked during the waning days of the war to conduct a mission to Antarctica
prior
to the establishment of the Citadel."
"Do we know what was on the I-401 or the two German submarines?" the High Counsel asked.
"I believe the I-401 carried part of the Golden Lily. We always knew parts of it were missing. Abayon and the Abu Sayif, of course, have recently revealed they held a significant portion of the treasure on Jolo Island, but there are still many missing pieces."
"And the German submarines?"
The American head shifted in his seat. "It might be part of the Nazi Black Eagle treasure. Most likely some of it that has never been accounted for in public or by us. But I fear that they also might have carried weapons of mass destruction." Dyson noted that all four Assessors were now looking at him.
"Explain," the High Counsel said.
"We know the Germans sent uranium to Japan via U-boat after they surrendered and before the Japanese did. Lansale helped keep that from developing into anything via his Japanese contacts in the Far East Table. But—we also know from Operation Paper Clip that a large amount of experimental nerve gas that the Germans developed went missing at the end of the war. I believe some of that gas was on those two U-boats that linked up with the I-401."
"And your agent did not get the location of the I-401 and the two German submarines, correct?"
"He only called in the information. He was supposed to fully debrief Royce later. He never made it to later. His body was found, and there was no sign of Fatima. We have to assume she's on the trail of the I-401."
There was a long silence. Then finally the High Counsel spoke. "You will remain here at the castle until the head of the Far East Table arrives. We will then coordinate our actions."