The Citadel

by Robert Doherty

  Suddenly there was no more weight on the rope. Tai was still, not believing she was alive. Her feet were pressed up against the far side ice wall, and the rifle, dug into the near side, kept her in a precarious balance in the mouth of the crevasse. Carefully, she looked down below. The crevasse widened and descended into a blue darkness as far as she could see. Vaughn was standing there, ten feet below on a narrow ledge of ice, looking up with wide eyes.

  "Vaughn!" she cried out.

  "Yeah. Are you all right?" The voice echoed off the walls.

  "I can't move!" she replied.

  "Hold still! I'm on a small ledge down here. Let me try to climb up. Burke?"

  The reply from above echoed down. "Yeah?"

  "Are you stable?" Vaughn asked.

  "I got my feet dug in. I can hold, but I don't think I can get enough traction to pull the two of you up."

  "All right, just hold on, then," Vaughn said.

  Tai wasn't about to go anywhere. She could hear Vaughn working with his entrenching tool below her. The minutes passed, and she felt her feet shift on the ice, her heart going to her throat. How far would she fall if she slipped? she wondered. Would the fall kill her or would she lie down there broken but alive, the cold taking the final toll on the way to an icy grave, preserved forever here?

  "Hang tough." She heard Vaughn's labored breathing, and out of the corner of her eye she could finally see him moving. He would reach up and dig out a hold in the ice with the shovel and haul himself up. It was a slow process, and she wasn't sure how long she could hold here, her numb hands wrapped around the rifle, all feeling in her feet already gone. She assumed her feet were still at the end of her legs. She knew they weren't moving only because she could feel her knees shivering inside her heavy pants.

  Vaughn reached Tai's level, and she carefully turned her head to look at him. He gave her a forced smile. "Some ride, eh?"

  He was now wedged like she was-his back and feet against the ice. She watched as he squirmed his way up until he could get over the lip. He disappeared over the forward side, then his head reappeared. "I'm anchored up here with Burke. Ready?"

  Tai shook her head. "I can't feel my feet."

  Vaughn puffed out a deep breath. "All right. We'll pull you up. When I yell, you pull your feet out. Okay?"

  "Can you do it?"

  "We'll do it." He was gone.

  Tai anxiously waited.

  "Ready?"

  Tai briefly closed her eyes. "Yes."

  "Let go."

  Tai tucked her knees in and fell for an interminable split second, and then the rope tightened down on her waist, causing her to exhale sharply and stopping her. She scrabbled at the ice with her dead hands and feet, trying to help Vaughn and Burke as much as she could. Inch by inch she went up until she could slap an arm down on the surface. The pressure on the rope was maintained, and she continued up until she could get her waist over and roll onto the surface.

  She lay there, savoring the sight of the open sky. Vaughn crawled up next to her and collapsed, throwing an arm over her and pulling her in tight. "You all right?" he asked.

  "Yes," she whispered.

  Vaughn leaned over her. "Do you want to go on?"

  She got to her feet with great effort. "Yes."

  Geneva

  "We have the other eleven names," the Senior Assessor informed the High Counsel.

  The names were projected on one of the large screens and on the High Counsel's own office screen. All eleven were either very high in the United States government or very rich men.

  "They went international," the High Counsel noted as he read one of the names.

  "Pablo Escovan," the Senior Assessor noted. "The head of the Mexican drug cartel. The richest man in Mexico."

  "This is a mess," the High Counsel said. "Only three of those names are ours. Have you projected courses of action?"

  "Yes, sir. With a sixty-four percent recommendation: wipe out Majestic-12."

  The High Counsel sighed. "CARVE?" he asked, using an acronym they had developed.

  "Criticality," the Senior Assessor began, reciting from the first letter of the acronym. "These men are the members of the group that established the Citadel and kept it secret from us all these years. They have been pursuing their own course of action for over fifty years. If they are gone, Majestic-12 is gone.

  "Accessibility. It will be difficult to attack the remaining eleven at the same time under normal circumstances. Some of them are the most heavily guarded people on the planet. However, these are not normal circumstances. Our sources report that at least four that we know of are either en route or already at Area 51. The other seven we don't know about, but we should assume they also will be there shortly. An emergency meeting.

  "Recuperability. These are not men who share with underlings. And since they have managed to keep the existence of Majestic-12 from us for this long, we have to assume they have extensive cutouts in place. Thus, if we cut off the head, it is a very high probability there will be no one to take their places.

  "Vulnerability. Area 51 is a hard site. Their meeting place is deep underground. However, it is a United States military base. We have access to resources. We can do it.

  "Effect. Extensive. Economic turmoil. Political fallout in Washington. We have already alerted our public relations people to prepare for it. The presence of Escovan certainly helps. It will be costly but manageable."

  The Senior Assessor fell silent.

  "Action is authorized," the High Counsel finally said.

  Ruppert Coast, Antarctica

  "Come on!" Min exhorted his three exhausted partners. "There is the ship."

  The four leaned into the rope, and the sled creaked along the ice, making its way toward the ship, now less than two miles away.

  * * *

  "How close-do you-have to-get?" Tai asked in between puffs of breath as they crossed a high point where two sheets of ice had buckled together.

  "A quarter mile at maximum. I'd like to get closer than that," Vaughn replied. They were at least three-quarters of a mile behind the Koreans, and his best estimate was that it was going to be close, very close.

  There was also the additional problem of whether the ship, which lay ahead, had weapons on board. If it did, Vaughn had to assume that once he fired on the party pulling the sled, the ship would return fire. He didn't fancy the idea of being caught out on this ice in a running gun battle. That had only one foreseeable conclusion, which wasn't favorable for them.

  As they went along, he noticed black spots on the ice, about three hundred meters to the left. He dropped and pulled Tai and Burke down with him, out of sight. An ambush? He peered at the figures until he realized what he was looking at: seals, lying on the ice, near a water hole they'd broken in the ice. It was the first sign of animal life they'd seen.

  * * *

  "There they are!" Fatima exclaimed, pointing off the starboard bow.

  The captain trained his telescope in that direction. "There are four men, and they are pulling a sled with something on it."

  "I want you to get together a party of men to go out there and help them."

  The captain wasn't thrilled with that idea. His men were civilians, and he didn't want to risk them on the ice. As he turned to his executive officer to reluctantly relay the order, his eyes widened.

  Seven hundred meters off the port side the ice was erupting, three long black shafts pushing through. The shafts abruptly widened, and a massive black conning tower appeared, tossing the ice aside like child's blocks. It continued to emerge, and the ice behind the tower split to reveal a long black deck that sloped down 150 feet behind the tower. The exposed portion of the vessel was almost as long as the freighter.

  "What is that?" Fatima demanded.

  "A submarine," the captain replied.

  "I know that, you fool," she snapped. "Whose submarine? American?"

  "I don't know."

  "What should we do?"

  The captain
turned to look at her. "There is nothing we can do. We wait to see what they"-he nodded at the black hull-"do."

  * * *

  Min and his men halted, staring past the ship at the submarine. He knew in his heart it was all over. Even if they made it to the ship, the Americans would never let them sail away. He wondered how the plan had failed.

  "Sir?" Kim turned to look at him for instructions.

  Min turned to look back at his executive officer. "We go to the ship. Quickly."

  Four men strained for the ship in a direct line as quickly as they could go.

  * * *

  Vaughn had started sprinting as soon as the submarine began to surface, leaving Tai and Burke behind, yelling at them to stay put. He passed four seals around a small circle of open water, and the distance was now down to five hundred meters. Another two hundred and he could fire.

  * * *

  The present Hawkeye on station was the third one rotated in, as the earlier ones had exhausted their fuel supplies down to what was needed to get back to the Kitty Hawk. The radar operator had picked up the sub as soon as the mast breached the ice. Now he was busy guiding in the two F-14 Tomcats from the Kitty Hawk and the Osprey, matching the glowing green dots representing the planes with those of the ship and submarine.

  "Eagle One, this is Eye One. Assume heading eight-seven degrees, range 150 kilometers and closing. You've got a sub on the surface, about seven hundred meters to the east of the ship. Over."

  "Roger. Out," the pilot of the lead Tomcat acknowledged in the operator's left ear. In his right ear was the tactical center of the Kitty Hawk, demanding information.

  "Eye One, this is Big Boot. Do you have an ID on the submarine yet? Over."

  "Negative. Over."

  "Eye One, what is Eagle's ETA? Over."

  "ETA five minutes. Over."

  * * *

  Min was pulling at the front end of the rope when he felt the ice crackle beneath him. He halted and looked down in surprise. In his haste, he'd run onto a thinner portion. There was no way it would support the weight of the bomb, twenty feet behind him.

  "To the left," he ordered Kim, Sun, and Ho.

  As they turned, the thin ice exploded upward, and Min caught a glimpse of a massive black snout rising up into the air. The snout split in two, revealing two rows of glistening white teeth. Min could swear he saw a tiny black eye staring at him as the front half of the creature slammed down onto the ice, half out of the water, and the teeth closed on Kim.

  The XO's scream was cut short as the killer whale slid back with its meal into the hole it had just made in the ice. Min pulled out his knife and desperately slashed at the rope around his waist as he was pulled toward the hole. He succeeded inches short of the freezing water. Ho and Sun weren't so fortunate. The men slid in, and Min had a last glimpse of Ho's pleading eyes as the rope that was still attached to Kim and Sun pulled him under the ice to a freezing death. Min slashed down with his knife and cut the rope from the sled, then scrambled away from the thin ice to the far side of the sled and its precious cargo.

  * * *

  "What happened?" Araki screamed.

  "Killer whale," the captain curtly replied, saying a mental prayer for the three men. "That's how they hunt seals." He removed his eye from the telescope and turned to look at the two women. "Men. Seals. Not much difference, is there? What do we do now?"

  They all twisted their heads as two gray jets came roaring in low over the ice from the west.

  * * *

  "Big Boot, this is Eagle One. Over."

  "This is Big Boot. Over."

  "Roger. We've got a visual on the sub. You've got one Russian Delta-class boomer on ice. Over."

  There was a pause. "Roger. Maintain station and await further instructions. Break. Viking Two, break from patrol and head for target site, maximum speed. Over."

  "This is Viking Two. Roger. Out."

  Aboard the E-2 the radar operator exchanged a worried look with the SIGINT operator. The Delta was the largest submarine in the world and carried twelve missile launch systems for multiple warhead ballistic missiles. What was it doing here?

  The Viking the tactical operations center had diverted was the Kitty Hawk's primary antisubmarine defense system-a plane totally dedicated to killing submarines, carrying both torpedoes and depth charges for that purpose.

  The operator checked his screen. He estimated another fifty minutes before the Viking arrived. He had a feeling that whatever was being played out below would be over long before the Viking arrived.

  His eyebrows rose at the next message from the Kitty Hawk. "Eagle One, this is Big Boot. Delta submarine is to be considered friendly. I say again, Delta submarine is to be considered friendly. Out."

  * * *

  Vaughn came to an abrupt screeching halt after witnessing the killer whale attack. He looked down and saw a dark shape down through the ice. He quickly sidled left to thicker ice, figuring that if he couldn't see the whale, it couldn't see him,

  He twisted his head and watched as two planes with U.S. Navy markings flew by once more. About time, he thought. He moved forward slowly, aware that the lone man ahead could kill him as easily as the whales could.

  * * *

  Min glanced up as American planes flew by. He looked to the ship and beyond it to the submarine. He could not pull the bomb by himself. There was only one thing left to do. He reached inside his parka and pulled out a sheet of paper.

  Min bent over the gray carcass of the bomb. He stripped off his gloves and ignored the knife of cold that stabbed into every joint. He flipped the latch open on the control access panel.

  * * *

  "The submarine is signaling us!" the ship's executive officer exclaimed.

  The captain swung his telescope around to the port. A light on the conning tower was flashing international Morse code. "Copy!" the captain ordered. Something was going up on one of the tall black masts on the conning tower. The captain focused on that. He watched as it went up halfway, and then the wind caught it. It was the Russian flag.

  The captain pulled back from the telescope and turned to his executive officer. "What does the message say?"

  The XO ran a tongue over his lips and glanced at the political officer.

  "Go ahead!" The captain insisted.

  "Sir, it says: L-E-A-V-E-N-O-W."

  The captain ran his eyes over the familiar lines of his ship. Slowly, he reached for the speaking tube. "Engine Room. Port Engine. One quarter, reverse."

  "What are you doing?" Fatima demanded, grabbing the captain by his coat.

  "I am going home," the captain replied.

  "You cannot. I forbid it!"

  The captain pointed out the window to the left. "The Russians are there and say leave." He pointed up. "The Americans are there, and I believe they want us to leave. We have no weapons." He pointed out to the ice. "He is alone out there. We cannot help him." The ship shuddered as the engines engaged for the first time in hours, and the newly formed ice cracked around the hull. "We leave."

  Fatima looked around, taking in the scene. Then she reluctantly nodded. "We leave."

  * * *

  Vaughn picked his way along the ice, avoiding the sections where he could see the ocean, at the same time making sure he was out of sight of the Korean. There was no way the man could pull the bomb by himself.

  Vaughn's head snapped up as he heard the throb of engines and the crack of ice. The civilian ship was turning very slowly away. He looked farther and saw the flag above the submarine. It didn't make sense, but he didn't care. It was over. He continued forward, going slower, making sure he didn't expose himself to a chance shot from the man trapped on the ice.

  * * *

  "Big Boot, this is Eagle One. The ship is leaving. Over."

  "Roger. Break. Eye One, this is Big Boot. Status of Stinger? Over."

  "Fifteen minutes out. Over."

  "Roger. Break. Eagle One. Is there anything on the ice? Over."

  "Wait
one. Over."

  * * *

  Min winced as a jet screamed overhead again, barely thirty feet above the ice, but he didn't look up. His numbed fingers continued working.

  * * *

  "Big Boot, this is Eagle One." The naval flight officer in the backseat of the Tomcat glanced down at his video display and flicked controls. The TV automatic target identification system blanked and then showed what the camera had picked up on the previous pass in slow motion.

  "Uh, this is Eagle One. We've got four figures on the ice. One with…" The officer peered closer. "One with our object. It is not on board the ship. I say again, it is not on board the ship. Over."

  "Roger, Eagle One. Go to altitude and maintain position. Stinger will take care of this when they arrive. Over."

  "Roger. Out."

  * * *

  Vaughn did a quick peek over a block of ice, then stopped and took a slower look. The Korean was leaning over the bomb, a hundred meters away, and his arms were moving.

  "Oh, shit!" he exclaimed, then stood up and began running.

  CHAPTER 16

  Ruppert Coast, Antarctica

  With shaking fingers Min punched in the six-digit code, one by one. He cursed as his numbed fingertip slipped on the fifth digit and struck the wrong number on the numeric pad inside the access panel. The LED screen cleared, and Min took a deep breath. Once more he began.

  * * *

  Vaughn was less than fifty meters away. He threw the M-1 to his shoulder and stared down the iron sights. The head of the Korean wavered in them. Vaughn drew in a frigid breath and held it. The sights steadied and he pulled the trigger. The comforting recoil of the weapon was erased as the round made impact with the ice that had jammed into the barrel when Tai used it to break her fall. He felt the pain in his hands as the breach exploded.