Eternity Base

Chapter 21

Riley met Devlin halfway down the stairs of the shaft. “What the hell happened?”

Devlin slumped down on the metal steps, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “It was Vickers!”

“What?” Riley asked, grabbing him by the arm.

“It was Vickers.” Devlin was dazed. “He killed Kerns and he was trying to kill me! And then they shot him.”

“Who shot him?”

“I don’t know! Some men with guns!”

Riley looked up the stairs. “Where is Vickers now?”

“Outside. He’s dead. Kerns is dead!”

A dull echo sounded from above as two shots rang out. Riley let go of Devlin and sprinted up the remaining stairs. The door was shut. Riley slid the blade of the broken pick through the wheel and jammed it against the side wall.

The rest of the party assembled on the stairs around Devlin, yelling confused questions at him. They’d heard the initial rifle fire and had followed Riley here from the mess hall to see what was happening.

“Everyone shut up!” Riley yelled sharply. He knelt down next to Devlin. “All right. Tell us what happened. Who shot Vickers? Who’s up there right now?”

Devlin took a deep breath. “Vickers had gone inside after hooking up the satellite dish, and I went out with Kerns. Then Vickers came back out with the M16 and shot Kerns. He was getting ready to kill me when someone else shot him. I could see the blood. They kept shooting — I could feel the bullets going by me — so I dove for the door and just got in. I managed to get it shut.” Devlin looked up. “That’s all I know.”

“Did you see who they were?” Sammy asked.

Devlin shook his head. “No. I caught a glimpse of several people moving out there. I think Vickers must have seen them and maybe that’s why he started shooting. Or maybe he just didn’t want the message to go out. I don’t know.”

Riley craned his head up. There were no more sounds from the door. That worried him.

“Who could have done that?” Conner asked.

“Someone who wants us dead or who wants the goddamn bombs, or both.” Even as he answered, Riley knew what the immediate course of action had to be. “All right. Listen up and do what I say. I don’t know who these people are. For all we know they could be Americans, but one thing’s for sure: they aren’t friendly. They’ve already killed Vickers, and I don’t think they’d hesitate to shoot any of us.

“Sammy, you take Conner, Swenson, and Devlin to the reactor. I want you to wait by the first door. If you hear Lallo or me, open it. If it’s anybody else, retreat and shut the second door, securing that one too. You all should be safe in there.”

He turned to the cameraman. “You come with me.”

“What are you going to do?” Conner shook herself out of her shock.

“What I should have done when we first found the bombs.”

“Maybe we can talk to these people,” Devlin suggested tentatively.

Riley grabbed him by the shoulders. “Kerns and Vickers are dead. You would be too if you hadn’t acted so quickly. If they get in and catch us, we’ll all be dead. We don’t have time to stand here and discuss things.” He pushed Devlin toward the corridor. “Move!”

The four headed off down the east tunnel. Riley sprinted for the armory, with Lallo puffing along behind. He threw open the door and headed directly for the cases lining the wall, calling over his shoulder, “Grab two Ml6s and two pistols!”

Riley looked at the bombs. He wasn’t even sure which access panel opened onto the PAL keypad. On the top side of each bomb were at least six metal plates secured with numerous Phillips-head screws. He didn’t have time for that. He needed a more expedient way to neutralize the bombs.

He used a bayonet to open a crate of 5.56mm ammunition. He threw a couple of bandoliers over his shoulder and tossed two more to Lallo. ‘The magazines are in that locker. Start loading.”

Riley then grabbed a crate marked C-4 and tore off the lid. He took out several blocks of the plastique explosive, then looked for caps and a fuse. He found them on the other side of the room. For good measure, he grabbed a few other items.

Lallo was still fumbling with his second magazine, loading it round by round, when Riley finished collecting what he needed.

“There’s a speed loader in each bandolier,” Riley explained. “Here…” He pulled a small metal piece out of the green bag. Taking ten-round clips, he used the speed loader to slam them down into the magazines, leaving out the last two rounds on the second clip. Eighteen rounds per twenty-round magazine: it echoed through Riley’s brain almost like a chant as he quickly loaded six magazines. The last two rounds were left out to prevent the magazine spring from overcompressing and malfunctioning.

Riley slammed a magazine home in each weapon and handed one to Lallo. “You know how to use this?” Lallo shook his head. Riley was already regretting his decision not to take Sammy or Swenson instead.

“Come on.” As Riley led the way out of the armory, he gave his quickest class yet on the Ml6: “This is the safety. It’s on right now. If you want to fire, you push it to semi. Then you aim and pull the trigger. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Riley kicked open the door to unit A2.

“What are we doing here?” Lallo asked nervously.

“We’re going to destroy the PAL codes and instructions for the bombs. Keep an eye on the corridor.”

Riley knelt down and laid out the explosives before him. As he was unwinding the fuse the sharp crack of an explosion roared through the base. Riley dropped the explosives and grabbed his Ml6. He’d run out of time.

Pak was the first to leap over the door. Kim’s charges had blown the door off its hinges and into the top of the stairwell. Weapon first, Pak sidled down the stairs, his men right behind, the muzzles of their weapons searching every corner.

Stopping short of the first intersection, Pak deployed his men in two-man teams. He’d gotten a sketch of the layout of the base with the OPLAN, so he had an idea of where he was and what lay ahead. He signaled for two teams to head down the east tunnel, clearing in that direction; he would take the rest directly to A2 to secure the codes and then to Al for the bombs.

As the first two men stepped forward into the intersection, a burst of automatic fire ripped into them, slamming both to the floor. Pak slid the muzzle of his AK-47 around the corner and blindly fired a magazine in that direction as Kim pulled one of the men back under cover. The other lay motionless in the center of the intersection.

“Smoke,” Pak ordered.

Lee took a grenade off his combat vest, pulled the pin, and threw it into the north tunnel. Bright red smoke immediately billowed out and filled the corridor.

“Go,” Pak ordered, gesturing his instructions.

Two men stepped out into the corridor and moved slowly forward, while two more sprinted down the corridor to loop around and catch whoever had done the firing from the flank.

Riley was sure he’d hit two of them. All he’d seen were two men bundled up in dark-colored clothes. He and Lallo were just to the south of the intersection of the north and west tunnels, using the corner of B2 to protect themselves.

He gave the smoke enough time to completely fill the corridor and then pulled the trigger, emptying eighteen rounds into the fog. As he smoothly switched magazines, his answer was dozens of rounds of return fire ricocheting off the walls.

“They’re going to try and flank us,” Riley whispered to Lallo. “Let’s go.”

Weapon ready at his waist, Riley moved into the smoke-filled corridor, heading for the door on the north end of B2. He opened it, and just as he slid in, he spotted two figures out of the corner of his eye.

He quietly shut the door behind Lallo as the two men passed by, moving toward their old location.

Riley made his way through the mess hall to the far door. Were the flankers already around, or were they right in front of the door? Screw it, Riley thought. He swung the door open and stepped out. No one.

He opened the door to C2 and hustled Lallo through, then across into the south tunnel. As they moved out into that hallway, Riley could hear voices behind them, yelling in a foreign tongue. He recognized the language with a quiet chill — Han Gul, Korean.

“All right.” He leaned against the outside wall of the library. Lallo was looking at him with large eyes; the knuckles on the hands gripping the M16 were turning white. Riley whispered his plan. “We have to cross and get into the generator room. If these guys have their shit together, they’ve left someone overwatching the east tunnel.

“We go together — you on the right, me on the left. If there’s someone there, I’m going to fire. You keep going no matter what. If I don’t make it, go to the access tunnel to the left of the control panel. Crawl down it until you come to the first hatch. Devlin should be on the other side. Call out and have him open it, then go in and make sure you seal that hatch and the next one. Do you understand?”

Lallo nodded.

“Ready? GO!”

Riley stepped out, weapon tight in against his shoulder, aiming up the tunnel. He and the two Koreans at the other end fired simultaneously. Riley could sense — whether it was by sound or feel, he couldn’t quite say — bullets passing by him.

In the second and a half it took to cross the corridor, he had emptied his magazine, as had the two men. Miraculously, Riley was untouched. He slid into the safety of unit C3.

The scream that tore through the air informed him that Lallo hadn’t been as fortunate. Riley spun around. The cameraman was lying in the middle of the tunnel, hands grasping his left leg, blood pouring over his fingers. His M16 lay on the floor, forgotten.

Even as Riley started to move out to pull him to safety, a burst of automatic fire walked up the floor, sending chips of wood flying. The rounds stitched a pattern across Lallo’s midsection, the velocity of the rounds punching him three feet down the south tunnel where he came to rest, dead.

Riley turned and ran through the door to the power plant, hoping the Koreans would move cautiously down the corridor. He slid into the power access tunnel. There was no way he could replace the grate from the inside, so there would be little doubt about which direction he had gone. He’d have to trust the strength of the double hatches.

He crawled the distance to the first hatch and pounded on it. “It’s me, Riley.” The wheel slowly turned and the door opened. Riley slid through, pushing past Sammy. “Shut it.”

“Where’s Lallo?”

“Dead.” Riley slumped against the corrugated steel tubing that made up the wall. “Secure it.”

Sammy flipped over the latch, locking the handle.

Riley looked around the tunnel and pulled off one of the green bags he had draped over his shoulders.

“What are you doing?”

“They blew in the door to the shaft, so they can probably blow this one too. I want to leave them a little surprise.”

Captain Lim craned his neck, looking out the window. They had just cleared the last mountains and broken into an intermittent cloud cover, leaving the storm behind. The sea of ice that surrounded Antarctica was spread out below as far as he could see to the north. There was no way he could land on that.

“We must turn back and try landing on the ice cap!” he pleaded with the impassive Sergeant Chong. “We are almost out of fuel.”

Chong fingered his slung AK-47 and took a deep breath, held it, and pulled the trigger. The first round blew the copilot’s brains against the right windshield, smearing it with red globules.

“What are you doing?!” Lim screamed, twisting in his seat, his eyes growing wide as the gaping muzzle of the AK-47 turned toward him. “If you kill me there will be no one to fly the plane!”

Chong’s finger increased pressure on the trigger.

“Please!” Lim begged.

Chong shot him through the chest three times, the third round blowing the pilot out of the seat. Without hands on the controls, the plane continued to glide forward smoothly. Chong reached over Lim’s body and pushed down on the yoke. The nose of the plane turned downward.

When the angle got too steep, the plane plummeted out of control toward the ice-covered water. The nose hit first. The rest of the plane crumpled and compressed as it punched through the ice into the freezing saltwater below.

In five minutes a black smear on the ice was all that was left to mark the grave of the IL-18.

Pak looked at the unprimed C-4 lying in front of the untouched safe and frowned. Someone in the news party had been very smart but not quick enough.

“Open that safe, but make sure you don’t destroy the contents,” Pak instructed Lieutenant Kim.

Kim slid off his backpack and pulled out his explosives, molding the plastique with his fingers, shaping the charge.

Sergeant Jae stuck his head in the door. “They are down a tunnel that is blocked by a steel door, sir!”

Pak nodded. “Blow the door and kill them.” Jae turned and sprinted away.

Pak checked his watch. Chong was most likely dead by now, along with Lim and his copilot. Song’s body was in the shaft. Nam had been killed in the first burst when they’d crossed the intersection, and Ho had been wounded, although not severely. Yong had a broken arm and Lee had sprained his knee. That left three wounded and four healthy men. Not good.

“Clear!” Kim yelled as he finished priming his charge.

He unraveled his det cord as they exited the unit. “Firing!” Kim pulled the igniter, and a soft burp of explosion echoed out the door. Pak walked in and checked the results. The door of the safe was off its hinges, the contents untouched. Pak pulled out the papers and leafed through until he found what he needed. Kim gathered his supplies. “I will assist Sergeant Jae.”

Pak nodded his concurrence, engrossed in translating the documents.

“What are you doing?” Devlin asked. They had secured the second door and now Riley was lining the tunnel ten feet in from the door with small white packages linked together with green cord.

“If they get through the first door and then get through this one, I’m going to blow the tunnel. That ought to stop them.”

“We’ll be trapped then!” Devlin exclaimed.

“If we don’t do it, we’ll be dead.”

A deep explosion sounded, reverberating down the tunnel. “That’s the first door,” Riley said grimly. He halted and waited, listening. A second, sharper explosion sounded, followed immediately by screams, faintly heard through the thick steel of the door. “That’s the Claymore. That’ll make them think twice about taking out this door.”

Pak looked at the mangled remains of Sergeant Jae. The corrugated steel tunnel had intensified the effects of the antipersonnel mine, channeling the thousands of ball bearings in a devastating tornado of death. Jae’s body had absorbed the majority of the impact, but some of the quarter-inch steel balls had gotten by him, and Yong’s right arm and leg were perforated. Sun had given Yong a shot of morphine and the screaming had stopped.

Kim came crawling back through the blood. “I can still blow the second door, sir.”

“I know.” Pak rubbed his chin. Someone in the news party certainly knew what he was doing. Pak had not expected such a fight. In fact, he had not expected any fight. He had been so concerned with simply getting here that he had not sufficiently war-gamed possible events upon arrival. Now was the time to cut his losses.

“Leave the door,” Pak announced.

Kim looked up at his team leader in surprise. “But they are still alive in there. Our orders are to leave no trace.”

Pak nodded grimly. “I know.”