The Citadel (14 page)

Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Brothers pulled in the yoke, and the heavily laden Cessna bounced a few times and then was in the air. Reaching sufficient altitude, the plane banked and headed for the search area. Vaughn was crowded in the back with Tai, Logan, Smithers, and Burke. The plane was almost as crowded with people and equipment as it had been on the flight from New Zealand. If they found the area the base was in, Vaughn wanted to be prepared to land and try to find it. He was keeping a close eye on Brothers, not sure the knock on the head hadn't affected the pilot.
Their course followed the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf to the east. Ross Island faded behind them, and after an hour and a half Roosevelt Island appeared below and then slid to the rear. They slowly decreased the distance to the Ford Mountain Range, looming up in front of them. As they approached the first mountains, Brothers increased power, and the wings groped in the thin air for even more altitude until he had sufficient height to clear them.
While the magnificence of the peaks that jutted out of the white impressed Vaughn, what struck him more was the depth of the sea of ice that swept the flanks of those mountains. It was hard to imagine an ice sheet almost two miles thick.
Brothers piloted them over a glacier and through a pass, putting them on the opposite side of the mountain range. Now they turned north, flew along the eastern side of the mountains, looking to their left, searching for the three mountains. Vaughn had taped the photocopy of the picture against the bulkhead above the left side window, and he and Logan were scanning in that direction.
Brothers flew straight up the middle of the mountain chain. The weather was remarkably clear, and the peaks seemed startlingly close to Vaughn. It seemed possible to reach a hand out the window and caress the rock. He glanced right at the map board on Logan's lap. He had their route marked on the plastic cover with grease pencil.
"Everyone look carefully," Logan yelled out over the whine of the engine. "McKinley should be coming up soon." His words disappeared into the rumble of the engine without any reply from the others.
"That's McKinley," Brothers yelled out from the front a short while later. He immediately banked to the left, and the nose of the aircraft settled on a northeasterly route.
Vaughn tapped Logan on the shoulder, gesturing for the map board. Logan passed it back, and Vaughn oriented it, checking the map against what he could see below.
"Can we move to the right a little bit?" he called out to Brothers.
Visibility was unrestricted, and far out to the front through a gap in the range they could even see the ice pack on the coast. To the left and right, isolated mountaintops poked out of the white carpet of ice.
"There. That's it," Vaughn calmly announced.
Three peaks, backdropped against further nunatuks. Tai leaned across Vaughn, her body tight against his as she looked up at the Xerox taped on the fuselage and then out again. She leaned forward and tapped Brothers on the shoulder. "There. We're pretty close on line."
Vaughn looked at their guide and asked, "What do you think, Logan?"
Logan nodded. "Close. You have to consider the fact that the photo was taken from the ground. We're up much higher than that.
"Brothers," he called out, "drop down and let's see how they look."
Brothers did that, and they circled down until they were barely a hundred feet above the ice. Then the pilot pointed the nose straight at the peaks, and all six of the plane's occupants stared ahead.
Tai was the first to break the silence. "That's it. Let's land."
"All right," Brothers said, looking over his shoulder. "Let me find a flat stretch. We don't want to be buckling our landing gear. It's a long walk back to Base."
Brothers flew along and then did a long loop to circle around again. And again. And again, all the time searching the ice-covered ground. Vaughn was almost certain they were in the right area. The three peaks matched, and the basin was surrounded on three sides by mountains. The bowl was about twelve miles long by thirty wide, open to the south. If they could land and get an azimuth on the peaks to exactly match the photo, he believed they could get very close to the Citadel. The passes revealed no sign of any structure, but that didn't surprise him. The ice and blown snow would have covered the above-surface portions of the Citadel long ago.
"All right," Brothers announced. "I've got a stretch that looks like it might work."
"'Might'?" Tai repeated.
Brothers ignored her. "Everyone make sure you're buckled up tight."
Brothers slowly pushed forward on the yoke and reduced throttle. The ice crept closer and closer to the plane as they descended.
"Let's hope there are no crevasses," the pilot said in a cheerful tone.
Then the skis touched and they were down—for the moment.
"Shit," Burke yelled as they became airborne again, bouncing over a small ridge and then slamming back down on the ice once more.
The plane was shuddering, and the right wing tipped down as that ski hit a divot in the ice. They turned right slightly, and then Brothers straightened them out. The plane gradually came to a halt.
"Well, that was fun," he said.
Vaughn looked over his shoulder. "Can you taxi closer to those three nunatuks until we get on the exact right azimuth from the photo?"
"I can do it," Brothers said, but he glanced back at Logan. "The question is: how stable is the ice here?"
Logan licked his lips. "Actually, the ice should be all right here. We're on a pretty solid base. You have to worry about crevasses when you're on a glacier, but we're above solid ground now. Should be all right."
"Let's do it," Vaughn ordered.
"To the right," Tai said. Brothers looked at her questioningly. "If you want to line them up, go to the right."
The pilot increased throttle and worked his pedals. The Cessna slithered along.
"Hold it," Tai called out after three minutes of moving very slowly. "What do you all think?"
Six sets of eyes peered to the north.
"Yes." Vaughn was the first to answer.
"Yes." Logan echoed him. The other three said nothing.
"Let's get skiing." Vaughn unbuckled. He slapped Logan on the shoulder. "Which do you want? North or south?"

Kaesong, North Korea

The headquarters for the North Korean Special Forces is located just twenty-five miles north of the famous border city, Panmunjom. This location puts it in close proximity to the demilitarized zone, where many of its unit's covert activities are conducted. Tonight, however, General Guk Yol, the army Chief of Staff and former commander of the Special Forces Branch, had his eyes focused on a map that had never been unfurled in his operations room before. The fact that his staff had even been able to find the map was quite an accomplishment on such short notice. It was only forty-five minutes since General Yol had been awakened by the duty officer and given Choegu's message from Manila.
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 that General Yol had ever shown such deference to. One had been Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea for forty years. The other was the man who presently stood opposite him looking at the map—Kim's son, Kim Jong Il. "It is very far away."
"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 Jong, long the designated heir to Kim Il Sung, and now the ruler, rubbed the side of his face. The recent reduction of American forces in South Korea had left that threat a paper tiger. With the Americans embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were stretched perilously thin. Kim had no doubt his massive army—sixth largest in the world—could now overcome their enemies to the south. The problem was the real threat the Americans still held: their tactical nuclear weapons.
Korea is a land of mountains and narrow plains. It is along those 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 itself in a gesture to force the North Koreans to abandon their nuclear weapon program. The gesture had been ignored for the simple reason that it was seen as an empty one. The Americans maintained more than 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, known as OPLAN, for a northern invasion of South Korea. Unfortunately, Kim Jong Il rued, his father had never 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 only had limited abilities to project those weapons a few hundred kilometers into the south—they could never touch the United States itself to keep it from using the weapons. Second, tactical nuclear weapons favored the defender—not the attacker.
But now there was a window of opportunity. This new information could make Orange III a reality if it was used properly.
Kim looked up at his old friend. "I cannot believe that the American government has abandoned nuclear weapons in this place."
Yol smiled, showing stained teeth, the result of constantly smoking cigarettes. "Imperialists are like that, sir. Not only does one hand not know what the other is doing in the U.S. government, but fingers on the same hand are often in the dark as to the action of the other fingers."
"But the bombs—how could they have just been left there?"
"I don't know, sir. But it appears they are. Unguarded for the time being. We must seize the opportunity."
Kim was more cautious than his military commander. "Could it be a trap set by the Americans?"
Yol considered that very briefly. "I see no reason for the Americans to do that."
"But can we use these weapons even if we find them?"
"That, I do not know until we get our hands on them."
"And how can we do that?" Kim asked.
Yol turned to the map. "It is a long way," he admitted. "But we need not have to cover the entire distance."
Kim frowned. "Why not?"
Yol pulled down a larger scaled map that showed the entire Pacific region all the way down to Antarctica. "Because we have a team that could do the job right here." He tapped the map, indicating Indonesia. "If you will give me the permission, sir."
"You have a plan, then?"
Yol smiled. "Yes, sir."
Kim settled back in his seat. "Let me hear it."
Yol tapped a button, and three Special Forces officers carrying charts and paper hustled into the room. A lieutenant colonel took over the briefing, his pointer going to the same spot in Indonesia. As he progressed, the pointer slid down to Antarctica and then north again, but didn't come back 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 known 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 message and begin all the preparations."

Antarctica

Vaughn slid to a halt and looked back over his shoulder. The plane didn't look very far away, but he estimated he'd come at least four miles. He reached for the sonar emitter slung over his shoulder and pointed it down. As he pressed the trigger, he watched the small screen on the back. Negative. After five seconds he turned it off and reshouldered it.
Every thirty push-offs with his right ski, he halted and repeated the process, with the same negative result. At least the cross-country skiing felt good and kept him warm. He was moving north, so he had the mountains to his front. His course was centered on the middle peak. He estimated it was about four to five miles ahead of him, and sensed he was moving slightly uphill as he continued. The surface was definitely not as flat as it had appeared from the air, and he appreciated Brothers's talents even more. Occasionally Vaughn crossed low ridges of compressed ice and had to traverse to get over them.
Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. The echo just below the surface shocked Vaughn for a moment. He blinked and stared at the screen for ten seconds. It was still there. He looked around the immediate area. The surface ice was relatively even except for a six-foot ridge running in an angle across his front. There was no sign of anything man-made.
He pulled his backpack off, slid out one of the thin plastic poles with a flag attached and stuck it in the ice. Then he began to ski, ten paces only now, past the flag, trying to search out the dimensions of whatever it was under the ice. He continued to receive a positive response as he approached the ridge.
Vaughn traversed up the small incline of ice and stood on top of the buckled ice. His flag was over eighty meters away. This had to be the base. He noted an outcropping from the ice ridge about ten meters away and skied along the top to it. Snow had piled up, forming a large block, perhaps fifteen feet to a side and eight feet high. Vaughn aimed the sonar into the snow pile. Positive response. There was something in there too.
He looked to the south. His view of the plane was blocked by a large ridge he had crossed about a mile back. He secured the sonar over his shoulder and skied down off the ridge and back to his ruck. He was getting tired but threw it over his shoulder and set out to the south with long distance-eating glides on the skis.

* * *

Tai shivered and considered asking Brothers to crank the engine to get the heat going, but she held off. They only had so much fuel, and they'd been on the ice for almost three hours. The windows had fogged over from the breathing of the remaining occupants, and she used her mitten to scrape a small hole in her porthole so she could peer out.
A figure appeared on the horizon, skiing toward the plane with smooth, powerful strides. She kept the glass clear and watched the bundled man come closer.
"One of them is back," she said.
Smithers swung open the side door, and the wind removed what little body heat had built up inside the plane. The skier stepped out of his bindings and passed the skis in, where Smithers slid them along the floor. The man stepped in and shut the door behind him.
"Anything?" Tai asked as Logan slid his parka hood down.
"Nothing." He slumped down in his seat and leaned back. "I went about eight kilometers out and took a slightly different route back and picked up nothing."
There was a roar as Brothers started the engines. In a minute welcome heat poured out of the vents, and the windows started slowly clearing.
"Let's taxi north and pick up Vaughn on his way back," Tai suggested.
Brothers shook his head. "Uh-uh. I know where the safe runway is to take off on." He pointed out the front window. "Right back the way we came. Plus there's too many small ridges that way. We wouldn't get far."
"Besides," Logan added, "we don't know if Vaughn is taking a straight-back route. Even though it isn't likely, we might just miss him."
Tai sighed and resumed her watch out the window. Brothers shut off the engines after five minutes, and the heat slowly dissipated out the skin of the plane.
The pilot turned in his seat and tapped his headset. "I just got the weather report from McMurdo," he said. "It doesn't sound good. They only give us another three to four hours max of good weather and then we're going to get hit with high winds, which means very low visibility."
Tai knew they weren't going anywhere without Vaughn. She wondered what was taking him so long. He should have been back a half hour ago according to the plan.
Twenty minutes later Smithers called out. "I see him."
Tai leaned over and looked out the opposite side porthole. Vaughn was rapidly moving toward the plane. They opened the door as he arrived, and he threw his backpack in, followed by the skis and himself.
"Anything?" Tai asked.
"Yes."
She waited, but Vaughn was busy cleaning the snow off his boots and then shutting the door. "Well?"
Vaughn removed his snow goggles and smiled. His voice, though, was weak with exertion. "There's something under the ice about four miles from here. I checked it as much as I could and left a flag there. It's pretty big, whatever it is. At least eighty meters long, maybe more. It's either your base or a big-ass flying saucer that got buried under the ice."
Everyone in the plane looked at Tai expectantly, waiting for her instructions. Vaughn accepted a cup of coffee from Smithers's thermos and cradled it in his hands.
"Can we land up there?" she asked him.
Vaughn nodded. "I think there's a good level area to the north of the spot. I couldn't really tell because I didn't ski over it, but I think it's worth a look." He looked forward at Brothers. "It runs northwest-southeast."
Brothers shook his head. "We've got bad weather coming. If we don't head for home now we may get stuck out here."
"What happens if we're stuck out here?" Tai asked.
He shrugged. "We have our emergency gear, but it depends how long the weather stays bad. It could stay bad for a week, in which case it could be an awfully long time to be cooped up in this plane on top of the ice."
"I don't think staying here's a good idea," Vaughn threw in.
"What if we get into the base?" Tai said.
"What?" Vaughn was confused.
"What if we get into the Citadel? It would be out of the wind. They probably left quite a bit of supplies in there."
Vaughn was shaking his head. "Even if what I found is the Citadel, it was all covered up. How are we going to get in?"
Tai was considering the idea. "They had to have an access shaft."
"I think I found it when I was checking out the dimensions," Vaughn said. "There is something that's covered with blown snow next to an ice ridge."
"We've got shovels and pickaxes in the plane's gear. We can give it a shot," Tai suggested.
"I don't like it." Logan shook his head. "If you want my opinion, we go back to Earth First South and wait until we get good weather. We know where the place is now and can come back."
Brothers agreed. "I don't like the idea, missy," he said to Tai." I think we ought to go back."
She leaned forward in her seat. "We're going to have to weather out this storm somewhere—either at Earth First South or here. If we stay here, at least we won't get caught in the bad weather flying back. Plus, you have to remember we still have that forty-five-minute tractor ride back to the station from the ice shelf once we land. I think landing up near the base site and trying to dig in is the better option." She knew that time was the most precious commodity they had now. She made a command decision. "Let's try to land near the site."