Entering the room, Vaughn switched on the ceiling heaters as the rest of the team settled in. Logan was still agitated by their most recent discovery-almost more than he had been over the discovery of the body. He now answered the question Brothers had raised in the corridor. "McMurdo had a nuclear reactor. The U.S. Navy set it up in '61 and got it on line in '62. They thought it would alleviate bringing in all the fuel oil every summer and be a cheap and effective way to keep McMurdo supplied with power."
"What happened?" Smithers was feeling better and seated on a chair, leaning back against the wall.
"The plant was closed in '72. They had a leakage of coolant water into the steam generator tank. The Navy shut the thing down, and it took them three years to remove it. When we get back to Earth First South Station, I can show you where the reactor was. They'd put it on Observatory Hill right near Erebus, which in and of itself wasn't too bright, as Erebus is still an active volcano.
"They shipped the reactor and 101 drums of radioactive earth back to the U.S. and buried it somewhere there. But even that didn't make the site clean enough. The Navy had to come back and dig out quite a bit more earth and ship it back. The site was only finally opened up for what the military termed 'unrestricted use' in 1979."
"There's no way they could have left a reactor down here unattended since the fifties," Vaughn said. "I don't know much about them, but I do know they require constant attention."
Logan nodded. "You're right. This one must be off line, and the rods aren't here. The plan must have been that whenever they were going to reoccupy this place, they'd bring the rods with them and use the oil generators until they could bring the reactor on line. But even so, the fact that the U.S. government put a nuclear reactor-even one without the nuclear fuel-down here and abandoned it is unbelievable."
Burke was more concerned with immediate matters. "What now? We have to wait the storm out, but what do you want to do in the meantime?"
Vaughn stood in front of the group. "We need to explore this place. Now that the lights are on, we should be able to figure out what this place was built for and maybe who built it." He looked at Smithers. "Can you help?"
Smithers nodded. "The bleeding has stopped. As long as I don't hit my head again I should be all right."
Logan grabbed his flashlight and headed for the door. "I'm going down to the power plant to see if I can't find out where the actual reactor is and take a look. They had to have offset it from this base a ways, and maybe I can find the location."
Logan, Burke, and Smithers left the room rapidly, leaving Tai, Vaughn, and Brothers. The pilot walked over to one of the beds and flopped down on it. "I'm going to catch me some shut-eye so I'll be ready to fly when this storm does break." With that, he pulled the pillow over his head.
"Let's take a walk," Vaughn suggested to Tai.
They left the rapidly warming room and returned to the first building they'd entered, the communications center. Vaughn turned on the heaters, then checked the gear lining the wall. "They've got a lot of redundant commo equipment here." He pointed. "That's an HF-high frequency-radio. A pair of them. Several FM, shorter range stuff." He fiddled with the knobs. A dull hiss was all that came out of the speakers.
Tai pointed to one corner of the room, where a bunch of wires disappeared into the ceiling. "There are the leads that go to the antennas."
"Which probably blew away on the surface a long time ago," Vaughn said as he turned the radio off.
A transmitter on the other side of the room caught Vaughn's attention. Several large boxes containing long-lasting batteries surrounded it. A placard on the front read: CITADEL TRANSPONDER. FREQUENCY 45.83.
"What's that?" Tai asked.
"That's how the builders of the base planned to find it once it was covered over. The transponder-if the batteries were still working-is initiated by an incoming plane's radio. The pilot dials up the proper frequency-45.83-on the radio and presses his transmit button. That turns on the transponder. The pilot then homes in on the radio beacon.
"It's the same system set up at small airfields. It allows pilots to turn on the runway lights when they approach at night and there's no one in the tower. The antenna for this transponder is probably built into the roof of the access shaft."
Vaughn checked the transponder, but as he suspected, the batteries were long dead. However, one gauge indicated they were slowly recharging now that the power to the base was on.
"Let's move on," he said. They exited, and Vaughn paused. "Let's get oriented. Let's call the row of units closest to the entry shaft Row A. The next will be Row B, and so on. The long column to the left is One, the middle Two, and the one on the right Three. Thus we have just left Unit A2, which appeared to be a communications setup.
"This tunnel, designated the north tunnel on the power supply board, is blocked heading to Unit A1. We might be able to get to that unit by going up the west tunnel, but we will hold off on that until we work our way over there.
"Unit B3 is living quarters, where we have temporarily left our equipment and our pilot is catching some sleep." He opened the door directly across. "We are now entering Unit B2."
The first thing that caught his eye as he went through the door was Burke at the electric stove. Burke waved a ladle at them and then went back to stirring a large pot on top of the electric stove. "Dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes."
Vaughn led the way through the kitchen and dining area. "This appears to be the central area for meals, and probably was designed to double as the meeting area for the community that was to live here."
Tai followed him as they went to the next unit in line. This one was another set of living quarters except more lavish than the one they had set up in. There were two bedrooms and a small living room. Tai moved into the smaller bedroom and immediately noticed a large blue binder conspicuously placed on top of the bed. An envelope was taped to the binder.
She picked up the binder and stuck it in her backpack, then rejoined Vaughn in the other room. They went through the door and into C2, which turned out to be another set of living quarters. Then they crossed over to C3, which contained the strange metal tanks and light fixtures they had discovered earlier with Logan. Then on to D3, checking out the control panel for the nuclear reactor. Vaughn noticed just to the left of the panel that the grating was off and a dark tunnel beckoned. A small sign above it was labeled: POWER ACCESS TUNNEL.
"That must be where Logan has gone," Vaughn said. He led the way to the next unit, D2, which turned out to be an extremely well-stocked library. Not only were there numerous books on the shelves, but several file cabinets full of microfiche and three microfiche readers were set up on tables.
"Precomputer days," Tai noted.
Unit D1 was a dispensary with enough equipment to outfit a minor surgery. The shelves were stocked with numerous drugs.
C1 was an indoor greenhouse. Large banks of lights lined the ceiling, and trays filled with frozen soil were held in racks. There were lights on the bottom of the racks on down to the floor. Someone had spent quite a bit of time making every inch of space functional in the small room.
The west tunnel was blocked halfway up between B1 and B2 by the buckling of the ice ridge. Unit B1 itself was crushed halfway through. It appeared to be another bunk room.
Vaughn went back out into the main center tunnel. They'd been in all the units except A1, which was blocked. He now turned his attention to the set of large double doors on both ends of the main tunnel. He and Tai pulled open the set to the west. A large dark tunnel appeared. Groping inside the doors, Vaughn found a lever, which he pulled down. Sparks sputtered out of the ceiling, and then nothing. Using their flashlights, they probed the darkness, only to be met by the same wall of buckled ice that blocked off Unit A1. It had cut across the base diagonally and continued on through here.
"Let's try the other side," Vaughn said, led the way down the main cross tunnel and opened the doors there. He threw the lever, and large arc ligh
ts went on, revealing a massive tunnel burrowed out of the ice, extending almost two hundred meters straight ahead. There was a clear central passageway, but the rest of the twenty-meter-wide tunnel was crammed with mountains of supplies.
"Geez," Tai muttered as she took it in. "They were ready for a long stay."
Vaughn moved down the aisle, checking the labels on the boxes. Most of it was food. The last fifty meters of the storage tunnel housed a dozen snowmobiles, a bulldozer, a backhoe, several snow tractors of various sizes, and two large cabins on skis that looked like they could be hooked up to the back of the larger tractors.
The tunnel ended at a metal grating that ramped up and ended in the ceiling. "What do you make of that?" Tai asked.
"I think that's how they planned on getting these vehicles out of here," Vaughn replied. He pointed at sections of the metal grating stacked to the side. "They probably planned on running the bulldozer up the ramp and putting down the grating as they went until they reached the surface."
Tai looked at her watch. "Let's go to the mess hall and get some of that food."
They retraced their steps back to the east tunnel and turned right until they got to the shaft. When they entered the mess hall, Burke was ladling something into Logan's bowl.
"What did you find?" Vaughn asked Logan.
He looked up from his bowl. "I went down the access shaft to the reactor, but it was blocked by ice about fifty meters in. I assume the reactor is out that way another hundred meters or so."
Tai had the binder out and was paging through it. "The reactor is five hundred meters straight-line distance from the power room. Southwest," she said. "As you guessed, the rods aren't in. They were supposed to be brought in and put in place when the base was activated."
Everyone turned and looked at her. "You found the instruction book for this Tinkertoy set?" Vaughn said.
Logan got up and looked at the binder, flipping some pages. "Hydroponics!" he exclaimed, studying the diagram of the base and the label for Unit C3. "I knew I'd seen that somewhere before. They have a setup like that at UCLA."
"What's hydroponics?" Burke asked.
"It's the cultivation of plants in water rather than soil. They set aside Unit C3 to grow food just like the greenhouse in C1, except this one uses water instead of dirt." Logan shook his head. "But I don't understand why they needed to dedicate two units of their base to growing food when they have all the supplies in the ice storage tunnels." He pointed down at the diagram. "The one blocked ice tunnel to the west looks as if it's as large as the one to the east. That's a hell of a lot of food and supplies."
"It doesn't look like they thought they could count on a resupply," Vaughn remarked as looked at the pages. The binder listed the location of equipment and supplies along with instructions for the use of various equipment, but it didn't say anything about the purpose of the base or who was supposed to use it.
"Look at how far off they offset the reactor," Logan commented. "Over a quarter of a mile away. With all that ice in between, that made a very effective shield from the main base."
Vaughn's eyes focused on the one unit they hadn't been able to look at it. "Check out what Unit A1 is labeled: 'Special supply and armory.'" He looked up at Tai. "We have to get into that. It will be where the bombs are."
Tai nodded, reached into her pocket and pulled out a letter. "I also found this."
Vaughn handed her a pocket-nife with the blade open. She slit the top of the letter and pulled out a one-page handwritten note.
"Read it aloud." Logan said.
Vaughn cleared her throat and began reading.
"21 December 1956
To Whom It May Concern,
I have no clue who will read this letter or if it will ever be read.
You might be here trying to find out the truth.
You might be here in a desperate last stand against unknown enemies or threats.
Since I don't know who is reading or what the circumstances are, the less said, the better. Make of this place what you will.
David Lansale"
"The bastards set up a survivalist base down here," Logan said.
Vaughn shook his head. "No. It appears that way, but if you think about what Lansale wrote, he had no idea who would be the next people to come in here. And why they would be coming. This place was his ace in the hole for several different possibilities."
"Well," Logan said, "this place sure is set up to be a refuge in case of all-out nuclear war. Considering the time frame in which it was built and restocked into the mid-fifties, that was a pretty big concern. There are no worthwhile targets in Antarctica for a nuke, the winds off the coast would keep fallout to a minimum, and we've seen how the cold and lack of humidity would keep things preserved."
"Great place to live," Smithers muttered.
"It's also about as remote as you can get in Antarctica," Logan added. "Due north of here is the South Pacific Ocean-a spot on the middle of it is the world's farthest point from dry land. Without having an intermediary base like McMurdo, a direct flight here, especially back when this was built, is almost impossible."
Everyone turned as Brothers stomped back in, shaking snow off his coat. "I just poked my head out the door, and the weather's finally gone to crap. We won't be flying anywhere for a while."
South Pacific
"Why have you kept me alive?" Araki demanded of Fatima.
They were alone in the freighter's small galley, trying to get some food down as the ship lurched through the waves, pounding its way south. Fatima had a cup of coffee cradled in her thin hands, as much to keep them warm as to drink.
"So you can tell your superiors the truth," Fatima said. "You were tracking Nishin for a reason. To learn more, correct?"
"Yes."
"Are you learning?"
"Yes."
"Then that is why you are still alive." Fatima took a sip of her coffee. "The world is at war, yet no one really seems to know what the sides are or who is fighting who. The more information everyone has, the clearer things will become."
Indonesia
"I have prepared the plane to fly 9,700 kilometers, sir." Captain Hyun stood underneath the massive nose of his plane.
"How?" No congratulations. Min didn't believe in them.
"Normal range is 6,500 kilometers. If we also use the one-hour reserve fuel supply, our possible range is extended to 7,125 kilometers. We will make the additional 2,575 kilometers using three of the fuel bladders here at the airfield. I have loaded them on board, and we will hand pump the fuel from the bladders to the main tanks as we progress."
Min nodded. His narrow eyes watched his team members loading their gear on board the aircraft. They'd been instructed only to gather their equipment. Min wanted to wait until they were in the air before fully briefing the team.
"May I inquire where we are going, sir?" Hyun held up his flight charts. "I need to plan a route."
"South," Min answered.
Hyun frowned. "South, sir? To Australia? New Zealand?"
"No. Straight south. Over the ocean."
"But, with all due respect, sir, there's nothing to the south."
Min turned his coal black eyes on the pilot, cutting him off. "You fly the plane, Captain. Let me worry about everything else. We take off in ten minutes."
Hyun stiffly saluted and retreated into the belly of his plane. Min stepped back and ran his eyes along the silhouette of the Soviet-made IL-18. It was an old plane, built in the late fifties. Four large propeller engines mounted on its wings reminded him of an old style airliner. With the plane many years obsolete, the Russians had dumped it on their so-called North Korean allies in exchange for desperately needed hard currency. The plane was the way Min and his fellow commandos had traveled to the small dirt runway on this island, and it was their only way out and back to North Korea.
Kim snapped to attention before him. "All loaded, sir!"
Min nodded. "Let us board then and take off."
Anta
rctica
Tai worked the small tractor's plow, carefully scraping away slivers of ice from the blockage. She wished the corridors were large enough to bring the bulldozer out from storage. She was sure that would have punched through in no time. As it was, the small tractor was very difficult to maneuver in the narrow confines of the west tunnel. She enjoyed doing work that didn't require thinking. As long as she concentrated on the task at hand she could keep the dark thoughts at bay. Despite her protestations to Vaughn, she felt like she was flying blind here, not sure who or what to believe.
The other members of the party-minus Brothers, who was seated in the mess hall reading a book-were standing in back of her, shovels in hand and waiting. Easing down on the accelerator, Tai pushed the corner of the plow blade into the ice. She'd been at it now for fifteen minutes and had worked through almost five feet of ice and snow. Of course, she reminded herself, they might not find anything on the other side. The ice also might have crushed everything behind the cave-in.
After scraping off another six inches, she dropped the blade, drew back the debris and piled it against the wall of Unit B1. She rolled forward again and dug in the blade. The tractor suddenly lurched, and Tai had to slam on the brakes as the blade broke through. She backed off and shut down the engine.
Vaughn came forward with a flashlight and shined the light through the hole. They could see wood planking on the other side-the continuation of the west corridor.
"Shovel time," Vaughn said. The others came forward, and they carefully began enlarging the hole Tai had punched.
When it was large enough for a person to go through, Vaughn gestured for Tai to lead the way. She slid through, followed by Vaughn, Logan, Smithers, and Burke. They moved up to where the west corridor met a north one. Vaughn went to the door of Unit A1 and swung it open. The five stepped inside. The glow of their flashlights lit up a well-equipped arms room.
Vaughn tried the light switch on the off chance a power cable from the rest of the base might still be functioning, but got nothing. He walked along the racks, noting the weapons. Two dozen M-1 rifles in mint condition. Some old.30 caliber machine guns and.45 caliber pistols. The walls of the unit were stacked with ammunition for the weapons. It was a gun collector's dream. Vaughn noted several cases of explosives.
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