Eternity Base

Chapter 18

The tension was palpable. Riley looked up from the crates where he’d been counting ammunition. “We’ve been through everything, and we have one Ml6, four magazines, and eighty rounds of ammunition missing. That’s besides one Claymore, but we know where that went.”

Conner was biting the inside of her mouth as she tried to figure out the next move. “Should we search for the rifle?”

Devlin waved his hands about. “It could be anywhere. And if we found it, we still wouldn’t know who stole it. Any one of us could have come in here and taken it.”

Riley agreed. “A search would be a waste of time. There is one thing I think we have to do, though.”

“What?” Conner asked.

“We need to make sure these bombs can’t be used. We need to destroy the PAL codes.”

“How do you propose we do that?” Devlin asked.

“I blow up the safe that holds them.”

“No.” They all turned to look at Sammy. “Destroying the codes doesn’t do anything. If our saboteur was sent by whoever built this base, then that person could already have the PAL codes.”

Conner rubbed her forehead. “You’ve got a point there.”

“Then we neutralize the bombs by another means,” Riley said. He pointed at the two crates. “I told you that these bombs have a six-digit

PAL code that allows limited try followed by lockout. I’ll enter two wrong codes and cause both bombs to go into lockout. That will mean they can’t be exploded.”

“Bullshit!” Everyone looked at Devlin in surprise. “How do we know you don’t already have the codes like Sammy said. You could arm the bombs with the correct six digits instead of entering the wrong ones.”

“Why would I do that?” Riley asked.

“I don’t know!” Devlin turned to Conner. “Listen to me. What’s to stop Riley from arming the bomb with a time delay? Then he kills us or just holds us at gunpoint and leaves, taking Swenson with him. If one of those bombs goes off, all evidence of this base will be gone.”

Riley was shaking his head. “That’s stupid. You can hold a gun on me while I do it.”

‘That still won’t do us any good if you arm the bomb,” Devlin argued. “We wouldn’t know how to stop it. We’d all have to leave and the base would still blow. You’d have achieved your mission of destroying the real evidence of this base.

“You’re also the only one among us with the military training necessary to do the acts of sabotage we’ve already had. You’re the one who would know how to rig that mine — and that would make it more than just luck that you avoided it.”

Vickers spoke for the first time. “You know, it’s quite a coincidence that Riley is the only one of us who was involved in all three incidents.”

“What do you mean?” Conner asked.

“He’s the one who found Swenson. He says he just happened to wake up and find him out in the snow. He’s the one who figures out how to replace the destroyed transmitter so quickly, almost as if he’d known what had happened. He’s the one who just happens to see the trip wire for the mine and saves himself and Sammy. It would have been real easy for him to have avoided all those disasters if he was the one who planned them.”

“But why would I do that?” Riley didn’t seem overly concerned by the accusations.

Vickers pointed at the bomb. ‘To make us trust you enough to arm the bombs.”

Riley shook his head. “If I had the PAL codes, I could have armed them at any time. I wouldn’t need your trust.”

“Hold it!” Sammy yelled. “We’re all going a little nuts here. None of you are making much sense. Let’s calm down a little.”

“What if someone other than Riley enters a six-digit code on the bombs?” Lallo asked. “Pick six numbers at random and enter them.”

Riley laughed, the sound incongruous in the air of fear and mistrust that permeated the room. “Well, I’d have to say we run into the same problem. Since I know I’m not the person doing all this stuff, I trust myself, but I certainly don’t trust any of you. If you’re not going to allow me to lock out the bombs because you don’t trust me, I’m certainly not going to allow any of you to do it either.”

Conner slapped her hand on a crate of ammunition. “Forget about the goddamn bombs for a minute. Our real problem is that someone here is trying to stop us from getting out this story about the base. Even if the tapes in Atlanta have been compromised, we can still get the truth out. Once the support team gets here, we can go live on satellite feed and that will mean whoever it is has failed. Until then we have to stick together and work together. There’s nothing else we can do.”

“I don’t like the idea of being cooped up in here with a killer on the loose,” Devlin muttered.

“Well, there isn’t anything you can do about it,” was Conner’s reply. She looked around the room, from one person to another. “Let’s continue on with the work we planned. We stay in parties of at least two from here on out, though.”

“I still think we ought to open up the power access tunnel to the reactor,” Devlin suggested.

“Good idea.” Conner turned to the rest of the team. “Riley, Sammy, and Devlin work on opening up the reactor tunnel. Kerns, Vickers, and Lallo work on the west tunnel. I’ll be with the group down at the west tunnel. We’ll meet back at the mess hall in four hours.”

The old man looked up as the door opened and two men walked in. The short one was carrying a briefcase, the taller one nothing. The short man placed the briefcase on the desk, and they both stared at the old man.

Finally, he could take it no longer. “What do you want?” Not a word had been said to him since he’d been picked up on the beach, flown into Otis Air Force Base, cross loaded onto a military jet, and flown down here. He knew that the men were from his government because their procedures and resources were too complex for a foreign government operating in the United States.

The taller one, whom the old man had correctly guessed was in charge, spoke. “We need information, Mr. Glaston. Or should I say Colonel Glaston, U.S. Army, Retired?”

“What information?” Glaston asked warily. In twenty-three years of duty, most of it with the ultrasecret Intelligence Support Agency, he’d participated in more than his share of covert operations, any one of which might interest these people.

The tall man reached into his pocket and laid an ID card on the desktop. “I’m with your old organization, Mr. Glaston. We need information on an operation you were involved in that we have no record of.” The short man flicked one of the locks on the briefcase.

Glaston frowned as he searched his memory. “What are you talking about? Everything I did at ISA was fully debriefed and recorded.”

“Eternity Base?” the tall man simply asked.

Glaston felt a sledgehammer hit him in the chest. “I’ve never heard of it.”

The short man pressed the second lock and swung up the lid. He turned it so Glaston could see inside. Various hypodermic needles were arrayed along the top, and serum vials were secured in the bottom. The tall man gestured at the contents with a wave of his hand. “The art of interrogation has developed to much higher levels than when you retired. We’re less crude and much more effective.

“You know, of course, that everyone talks eventually.” The tall man reached in and pulled out a needle, holding it up to the light. “With these sophisticated drugs, that eventually comes much sooner. Unfortunately, the side effects cannot always be controlled. I would like to avoid resorting to such methods.” He laid down the needle. “Why is it that we have no records of Eternity Base?”

Glaston considered his options. “What do I get out of this?”

The tall man shrugged. “It depends on what you tell us.”

Glaston sighed. He knew what the tall man had said was true — he would talk sooner or later. He’d been on the other side of this desk too many times not to know that. Jesus, to have it come to this all because of that stupid base! He slumped back in the chair.

“I was the ops supervisor for the construction of Eternity Base in late 1971 in Antarctica. It was a group of buildings — twelve to be exact — that were buried under the ice. The sections—”

“We know what’s down there,” the tall man interrupted. “What we want to know is who was behind the op and why.”

That meant they’d found it, Glaston realized. That, in a strange sort of way, relieved him. He’d often thought about the base over the past twenty-five years, wondering if it had ever been shut down and the bombs removed. “I worked directly for Lieutenant General Woodson.”

The two men exchanged glances. They both knew that Woodson had been head of the ISA in the early seventies. “How did Woodson give you this assignment?”

“Personal briefing.” Glaston sighed again. If they’d been down there they’d found everything, and it wouldn’t do him any good to hold back. Except for the plane. That he could never mention. He hoped they hadn’t turned up any information on that.

“It was an unofficially sanctioned mission — no paper trail and denial if uncovered. Woodson brought me back to Washington from Vietnam, where I was doing liaison work between CCS — Combat and Control South, MACV-SOG — and the Agency. Trying to keep the Green Beanies and the spooks from each other’s throats.

“When I got to D.C., Woodson told me he had a mission that could be very profitable to both of us and had the president’s blessing.” Glaston ignored the disgusted looks the two men exchanged. If they hadn’t done work for cash yet, they would someday. It was much easier to put your life on the line with a substantial bank account to back you up. A government pension wasn’t enough for this line of work.

“Who was Woodson working for?”

“Someone with the code name Peter. I had a number in Colorado where I contacted him. I don’t know who Peter was, and I certainly don’t remember that phone number. It was probably a cutout anyway.”

“Woodson never told you who the place was for, or even what it was designed for?”

“It was easy to see what it was designed for. It was a survival shelter. As far as the who goes, it had to be somebody with a lot of money and resources, along with leverage at the White House. Woodson and I supplied the manpower and the aircraft; Peter supplied all the equipment.”

“What happened to the C-130 that was doing the flights from McMurdo to the base?”

Glaston’s heartbeat escalated. “It went down a couple of hours out of McMurdo on the way home. I had to cover it up somehow, so I used the MACV-SOG cover.”

The tall man looked at him dispassionately. He turned to his partner. “I’ll be back in an hour. Prep him.”

“Wait a second!” Glaston yelled as the short man pulled out a vial of clear liquid and picked up the nearby needle. “I’m telling you everything. You said if I cooperated, that wouldn’t be necessary.” He thought briefly of the courier and realized that finding his body must be the reason they were doing this to him.

“I said it depended. You just told us you did freelance work while at the ISA. You broke the rules, and now we’re going to find out what other rules you might have broken in your career.”

The short man approached with the needle.

AS Captain Lim approached, Major Pak looked up from the plans he and his XO were studying. Pak was impressed that Lim had waited almost eight hours before coming out of the cockpit to talk to him. The interior of the IL-18 was stripped bare except for Pak’s team, their equipment, and the fuel bladders. The team was spread out on the vibrating steel floor, either sleeping or preparing their equipment for the infiltration.

“Sir, may I speak to you?” Lim inquired.

Pak nodded.

“Sir, as captain of this airplane it is my duty to inform you that we do not have enough fuel, even with all this, to make landfall in this direction.” Lim waved a hand at the bladders. “In two hours we will be too low on fuel to turn around and make it back to Angola.”

“There’s land ahead,” Pak quietly remarked.

Lim blinked. “We are heading for the South Pole, sir. There are no all-weather airstrips suitable for this aircraft down there.”

“I know that,” Pak responded. “My team will parachute out, and then you will attempt to land on the ice and snow farther away to ensure operational security. I will leave one of the members of my team on board to help you travel to our exfiltration point.”

Lim blanched. “But, sir—” He halted, at a loss for words.

Pak stood. “But what, captain?”

Lim shook his head. “Nothing, sir.” He turned and retreated to his cockpit.

Senior Lieutenant Kim looked at his team leader. “Our captain is a weak man.”

Pak turned his attention back to the papers. “Are you satisfied that your men know the parts of the plan that they need to?”

Kim nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Have you picked who will stay with the plane?”

“Yes, sir. Sergeant Chong has volunteered.”

“Good.”

Kim scratched his chin. “The only thing I don’t understand, sir, is why we are doing this.”

No one else would have dared say that to Pak, but the two of them had spent four years working together. They’d infiltrated the South Korean coastline three times and conducted extremely successful reconnaissance missions there. They owed their lives to each other.

“There are two U.S. nuclear weapons at our objective.”

Kim didn’t show any surprise. “But you briefed us that there is only a news team there. No military.”

“Correct.”

Now Kim was surprised. “You mean these two bombs are unguarded?”

Pak nodded. “Yes. Our objective is to seize those weapons along with their arming codes and instructions. And to leave no trace of our presence there.”

“How will we do that, and what will we do with the weapons? I thought our government already had nuclear weapons.”

“We are not going back home with the weapons.” Pak shook his head. “The rest is not for you to know yet, my friend. You will be told when it is time. Suffice it to say that if we are successful, Orange III will be implemented and it will succeed.”

Pak leaned back in his seat as his executive officer moved away. Although this whole plan had been jury-rigged on short notice, there was much precedent for the entire operation. The primary wartime mission of the North Korean Special Forces was to seize or destroy U.S. nuclear weapons. Pak had participated in the drawing up of plans for direct action missions against overseas targets, including the U.S. Seventh Fleet bases in Japan and the Philippines, and even Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

North Korea had never been shy about striking at enemies outside its own borders, and the Special Forces (SF) had been involved in every action. In 1968 thirty-one Special Forces soldiers had infiltrated across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and made their way down to Seoul to raid the Blue House, home of the South Korean president. The mission failed, with twenty-eight men killed, two missing, and one captured.

Shortly after that attack, on 23 January 1968, People’s Korean Army (PKA) Special Forces men in high-speed attack craft seized the USS Pueblo. Later that year, a large SF force of almost a hundred men conducted landings on the coast of South Korea in an attempt to raise the populace against the government. It failed, but such failures didn’t daunt the North Korean government. In 1969, a U.S. electronic warfare aircraft was shot down by the North Koreans, killing all thirty-one American service members on board.

As security stiffened in South Korea during the 1970s, North Korea moved its attention overseas, not caring about the international effect. In 1983, three PKA Special Forces officers planted a bomb in Rangoon in an attempt to kill the visiting South Korean president. That mission also failed. Later in 1983, four North Korean merchant ships infiltrated the Gulf of California to conduct monitoring operations against the United States mainland. One of the ships was seized by the Mexican authorities, but that didn’t prevent the North Koreans from continuing such operations.

Pak knew that history, and he also knew more than the average North Korean about the changes that had been sweeping the world in the nineties. Living in Angola, he had been exposed to more information than the tightly controlled society back in his homeland ever received. The breakup of the Soviet Union had never been acknowledged by Pyongyang, except in cryptically worded exhortations to the people, telling them they were the last true bastion of communism in the world. Pak truly believed he was part of the last line in the war against western imperialism — especially with the Cubans running home. If this mission succeeded, he would strike a blow greater than any of his Special Forces predecessors. That was enough for him.