The Citadel

by Robert Doherty

  Min's face twisted in a sneer as he read the concept of operations. Those desk-bound fools in Kaesong! He looked up at the thatched roof of the hut that comprised his team's headquarters. Hyun was a small man, less than five and a half feet tall and weighing no more than 120 pounds dripping wet. He was the spitting image of Bruce Lee, the major difference being that Min had actually killed many more men than Bruce Lee had ever simulated killing in his movies.

  "Get me Hyun," he snapped at Kim Chong Man. As his executive officer scurried out to the airstrip, Min leafed through the pages of the OPLAN, his mind trying to rationalize the words. This was going to be difficult, very difficult.

  Min had been on this island for four months, supposedly advising the other groups on various Special Forces techniques, particularly bomb-making and covert operations. At least that's what they were supposed to be doing. Min had found that the other groups did not like getting advice. In his personal opinion, the real reason he and his men were here was to make a small political statement to these other groups that North Korea supported them in some manner.

  Min had been in Special Forces for twenty-one years and had run more than his share of classified missions, so he was no stranger to being awakened in the middle of the night and handed an OPLAN. This one, however, was different in several important aspects. The first was the fact that it was outside of his immediate area of operations. The second was the strategic significance of the mission. It all looked very nice on paper, but implementation was going to require great sacrifices and effort. One of Min's favorite adages was that nothing was impossible to the man who didn't have to do it.

  Typical bureaucratic thinking, Min thought with disdain as he read through. It was the same type of thinking that had left him in the DMZ infiltration tunnel north of Seoul two years ago when they should have pulled out at the first sign of compromise. Indecision in his chain of command had left him and his old team in there long enough for the South Koreans to flood it. Min shuddered as he remembered the torrent of water pouring into the tunnel and the muffled screams of the men who couldn't escape.

  Hyun stepped in and snapped a salute, breaking Min out of his black reverie. "Captain Hyun reporting as ordered, sir."

  Min looked at the short man in the flight suit with undisguised disgust. "What is your aircraft's range?"

  Hyun blinked. "It is 6,500 kilometers with a one hour reserve, sir."

  "We need to go 9,700 kilometers."

  Hyun looked at Kim, who had accompanied the pilot in, and then back at the major. "We will have to refuel somewhere then, sir."

  "If we had someplace to land and refuel I would have told you that." Min's voice was ice cold. "We need to travel 9,700 kilometers without refueling."

  "That is impossible, sir."

  "Make it possible. You have one hour to be ready to leave." Min turned his gaze to his XO. "Bring the team in and I will brief them."

  Antarctica

  "How long do you think he's been down here?" Vaughn asked as the rest of the party piled up their gear in the dimly lit space at the base of the stairs. The three flashlights combined with the dull reflected light from the still open door to produce a gloomy effect. The man wore unmarked Army fatigues under olive-drab cold-weather gear. There was no name tag on his shirt. He had the insignia of a captain pinned to his collar.

  "He was probably the last one," Tai said, then corrected herself. "Well, the next to last one in here. Sometime in the fifties."

  Vaughn pulled a poncho out of his rucksack and gently draped it over the body. "Whoever he worked for shot him in the back to keep him from talking about what he did and what he saw here. Judging by the size of the wounds, I'd say it was a small caliber gun. Probably a.22. You have to be damn good to kill someone with a gun that small."

  Tai turned to the rest of the group. "We have got to find out everything we can about this place. I want to know who built it and why."

  Vaughn began organizing the group. He stared down the corridor, his eyes trying to pick up details. His flashlight reflected off the metal sides and faded out after thirty feet. The ceiling, ten feet above, consisted of steel struts holding metal sheeting that blocked out the ice and snow. Conduits, pipes, and wires crisscrossed the ceiling, going in all directions. The corridor itself was about ten feet wide, and the floor was made up of wood planks, each separated by a few inches to allow snow and ice to fall through the cracks to the sloping steel floor below.

  It was as cold down here as it was outside, but at least they were out of the wind. Vaughn went over to Smithers. "How's the head?"

  Smithers pulled back the bandage. "I think the bleeding has stopped." He looked around. "We could use some heat, though."

  Logan spoke up. "There ought to be some sort of generator or space heaters down here."

  "You think they would still work after all this time?" Vaughn asked.

  Logan nodded. "Oh, yes. Antarctica is the perfect place to preserve things. This body is proof of that-the man looks the same as the day he died. Think about it-the temperature never gets above freezing. There's no moisture. No bacteria.

  "There are supplies in Shackleton's hut on Ross Island that were placed there in 1907 and are still edible today. I have no doubt that if we find the power source down here, or even a portable heater, we can get it going." He pointed his flashlight at a lightbulb set in a protective cage on the ceiling. "We might even get the lights on."

  Tai shined her lights down the corridor. "Where do you think we'd find the power source?"

  Logan shrugged. "I don't know. Let's go take a look."

  Vaughn turned to the rest of the party. "Brothers, Burke, stay here with Smithers. Break out your sleeping bags and get in them. We're going to see if we can find the power source and get some heat going."

  Vaughn, Tai, and Logan walked down the wood planking. After thirty feet the walls disappeared on either side and they entered a cross corridor. Straight ahead was a door. To the left, the corridor had a door, which was shut. To the right, the corridor was open for about ten feet, then a pile of ice and snow blocked the way.

  Logan shined his light where pipes in the ceiling disappeared into the pile. "Looks like that's where some ice buckled the ceiling."

  "Let's try the door on the left," Tai suggested.

  They turned left and tried that door. It wasn't locked and opened easily. The flashlights revealed a room about thirty feet long and ten wide, full of electronic equipment.

  "Looks like some sort of communications setup," Tai said. "Everything's way out of date, though."

  Logan pointed his light at a pair of large boxes that hung down from the ceiling, one at either end. "This is one of the prefab units. Looks like they're each heated separately by those space heaters. That leaves the corridors under the ice at outside temperatures. The top of each unit is probably heavily insulated to keep the rising heat in."

  "How would the power be provided?" Vaughn asked.

  "Most likely oil burning generators," Logan said. "That's what runs the majority of the bases here, although they would have had to airlift in all that oil. At McMurdo they bring it in by ship, so it's not a major logistical problem. Here, I don't know."

  Tai nodded. "The man I talked to who helped build this place said that they brought in a quite a few bladders of fuel."

  Vaughn turned for the door. "We need to find whatever it is that burns that fuel, then."

  Next, they went to the door that had been straight across. This unit seemed to be a nicely set-up living quarters. There were three sleeping areas, each separated by a thin wall. Traversing the entire length, they came to a door on the far side. They exited that and were faced with another side corridor extending off to the right and another door directly in front.

  "Let's go straight through until we get to the end," Vaughn said.. If there's nothing in this row, we'll work up the next one over."

  Logan swung open the door and they stepped in. Large stainless steel tanks lined both sides of a n
arrow walkway. The tanks were open on the top, and banks of dead lights hung low over them. There were pumps and various tubes arrayed throughout the room.

  "What is this?"

  Logan shined his flashlight inside one of the tanks. "I don't know. It reminds me of something I've seen before, but I can't place it right now."

  They walked the length of that unit and went through the door. The last unit on the row beckoned. Logan pushed open the door and they walked in.

  "Ah, this is more like it," Logan said as he turned the flashlight on the machinery inside. "This must be the power room. Look, there's a control panel." He walked over to a console full of dials and switches to the left of the door. "There's the 'on' for the master power, but I'm sure we have no battery power."

  He pressed the button with his thumb. Nothing.

  "There must be a small auxiliary generator around here to start the main off of." He flashed the light on the other side. "Here we go."

  Vaughn watched as he knelt down next to a medium-sized portable generator and unscrewed a cap, shining his flashlight inside. "It's even got fuel. Hold the light while I prime it."

  Vaughn hovered over his shoulder as Logan worked. After about five minutes Logan stood. "All right. Let's give it a shot." He held a knob attached to a cord in his hand and pulled.

  "Shit," he muttered as the cord didn't move. He pulled more carefully, and the cord slowly unwound. Then he squatted and thrust upward. The engine turned over once with a burp. "Damn. This thing is stubborn."

  Vaughn didn't say a word. He found it remarkable that they were trying to start a generator that had sat down there for almost half a century. The concept of a place where nothing deteriorated or rusted was a hard one to grasp.

  After five more tries the engine coughed, sputtered, and turned over for almost ten seconds before dying.

  "I've got it now." Logan adjusted the choke and pulled once more. The generator sputtered and then roared into life. He let it run on high for a few minutes and then turned the choke down.

  "All right. Let's see how we get the main started while that warms up." He took the flashlight from Vaughn's hands, played it over the control panel and laughed. "They've got all the instructions right here, almost as if they expected someone who didn't know how to run this thing to try and start it. Hell, it's even numbered.

  "Okay, we've already accomplished step one by getting the auxiliary started. The next step is to open up the main fuel line." He moved to the left of the console and looked up. "Here's the valve."

  Vaughn heard a few seconds of metal screeching.

  "Okay. We've got fuel. Now we prime this baby." Logan worked for a few minutes, following the instructions step by step. "Last-but not least-we open the power line from the aux to the main generator and give it some juice."

  Vaughn watched as lights flickered and glowed on the console. Gradually they steadied. Logan looked over the gauges. "Ready?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  He pressed the starter button. The lights on the board dimmed, and they heard a sputtering noise behind the console. The sputtering shifted to a whine and then a rhythmic rumble after thirty seconds.

  Logan was examining another row of controls to the right. "Here's a bunch of switches labeled north, middle and south, east and west tunnels." Vaughn looked over his shoulder at the schematic of the corridors of the base. At least he could get oriented now. The surface shaft where they had come down opened onto the north end of the east corridor.

  Logan threw all the switches, and light suddenly streamed in through the open doorway. "All right!" he yelled.

  Vaughn looked at the doorway and flicked on the light switch just inside of it. The room was flooded with the glow from the overheads. He looked down at the other end of the room. "What's that for?"

  Logan turned. The entire far end of the unit was filled with massive control panels with uncountable gauges. It made the main generator board look puny. A three-by-three-foot panel with a triangular warning sign was recessed into the left side. Logan walked the twenty feet to it and looked the setup over.

  "Oh my God. I don't believe it. I don't fucking believe it."

  Tai and Vaughn hurried up to him. "What's the matter?" Tai asked.

  Logan looked at Vaughn, his face ashen. "This is the control panel for a nuclear reactor."

  CHAPTER 9

  Geneva, Switzerland

  The head of the North American Table stood up when his counterpart from the Far East entered the anteroom to the Intelligence Center. They barely had time to greet each other as the door opened and one of the Assessors gestured for them to come into the I.C.

  An extra chair had been set up, and the two took their places in the center of the room. The video screens around the room flickered with various images and data, none of which the two got to take in, because as soon as they put on their headsets, the High Counsel spoke.

  "There have been reports from various sources that a small team left New Zealand and traveled to the Earth First South Station in Antarctica. This small team subsequently departed by aircraft from the station on a mission of unknown intent. We find this intelligence to be highly disturbing, given the timing, Senior Assessor."

  The Senior Assessor took over. "The computer estimates that there is a seventy-eight percent chance this team-three members of which are known to have worked for Agent Royce before-is searching for the Citadel. However, we have received no report from Royce that he has dispatched such a team."

  Dyson glanced at his counterpart and waited.

  "Explanation, Dyson?" the High Counsel demanded.

  "Sir, I don't have any further information on that. If Royce dispatched a team, it might be to track down Fatima if she is heading down there."

  "Not likely," the Senior Assessor said. "Fatima's whereabouts are unknown, but if she is in Antarctica right now, she would have had to fly, and we would know about it. So she is not there."

  "He could be setting up an ambush," Dyson suggested.

  The High Assessor didn't accept this explanation. "Royce worked for Lansale, who was behind the building of the Citadel and the compartmentalization of information about it. Lansale sent the packet to Fatima. It is possible that he gave information to Royce about the Citadel, and Royce is trying to determine the accuracy of that information. But he still should have filed a report on this to Area 51. No such report has been filed. Unless…"

  The last word hung in the air, and Dyson protested immediately. "We received no report."

  "And then there is the issue of the I-401," the High Counsel continued. "No report was ever filed on it."

  "Because we knew nothing of it," the head of the Far East Table said. "Much was lost at the end of World War II. If our Table was involved in the I-401 mission, the information was destroyed in the ruin of Japan near the end of the war."

  "Easy excuse," the High Counsel snapped. "Did you practice that on your flight here?" There was no chance for a reply as the High Counsel continued. "However, we believe you because the data supports you. The computer has done a Course of Action Projection on this entire mess. You are dismissed for the moment. Wait in the anteroom."

  The head of the Far East Table quickly left the Intelligence Center.

  "We want to know about Majestic-12," the High Counsel said to Dyson when he was left alone in the center of the room.

  "It's a cover story we use-" he began, but was quickly cut off.

  "That has been North America's line for over half a century," the High Counsel said. "But Majestic-12 is real, isn't it? And you're the head of it. The one thing that has kept the Organization intact for centuries has been absolute loyalty. Any time that loyalty has been breached, the penalty has been swift and severe.

  "Majestic-12," the High Counsel continued, "was formed in the heady days after World War II when the United States thought it was all-powerful. It was formed by members of the North American Table who instituted a coup against those who would not go along. That should have bee
n a warning sign picked up here, but there was so much going on in the world at the time that it was missed. A serious oversight. So ever since then, the North American Table has worn two faces. One it presents here. The other it keeps hidden from us as Majestic-12.

  "The computer projects this as the reason there have been recent problems with various agents in the North American division. They have received conflicting taskings. Although we never have to explain tasking to our agents, they are not stupid people. So while it would appear Lansale and perhaps Royce are rogue, we think the problem lies elsewhere. With Majestic-12. And we will act accordingly."

  Dyson started to get up, but that action was abruptly terminated as metal clamps snapped out of the armrests and legs of the chair, locking him in place.

  "You will tell us all you know," the High Counsel said.

  A door on the opposite side of the Intelligence Center opened, and a man walked in carrying an old-fashioned doctor's black bag.

  "Meet the new Curator," the High Counsel said as the man pulled a stainless steel table over next to the chair and opened his bag. He began laying out various implements on the table, the nature and implications of which caused Dyson to break out in a cold sweat.

  "You can make it easy, or you can make it hard on yourself," the High Counsel said. "We don't really care."

  Antarctica

  "How could they have put a nuclear reactor down here?" Brothers asked. "I thought reactors were huge and had lots of safety devices and all that."

  They were back in the first hallway, linking up with the rest of the team. Vaughn had given a brief summary to the other three members, who were still huddled in their sleeping bags.

  "I say we go to the first set of living quarters you found and set up," he said. Then Vaughn threw his gear over his shoulder and headed off. The others quickly got up, gathered their gear and followed. They left the body outside in the corridor, covered with a blanket, letting the cold continue its task of preservation.