by Bob Mayer
*****
“Big Boot, this is Eagle One. The ship is leaving. Over.”
“Roger. Break. Eye One, this is Big Boot. Status of the Osprey? Over.”
“Fifteen minutes out. Over.”
“Roger. Break. Eagle One. Is there anything on the ice? Over.”
“Wait one. Over.”
*****
Pak 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 the controls. The TV automatic target identification system blanked and then showed in slow motion what the camera had picked up on the previous pass.
“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.”
*****
Riley 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 yards away, and his arms were moving.
“Oh, shit!” Riley exclaimed. He stood up and began running.
Chapter 31
RUPPERT COAST, ANTARCTICA
With shaking fingers, Pak punched in the six-digit code, one number at a time. 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 Pak took a deep breath. Once more he began.
*****
Riley was less than fifty yards away. He threw the M16 to his shoulder and stared down the iron sights. The head of the Korean wavered in them. Riley 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 impacted with the ice that had jammed into the barrel when Sammy used it to break her fall. Riley felt the pain in his hands as the breach exploded.
Riley realized his error in a heartbeat as the Korean lifted his head at the sound of the small explosion and stared at him, their eyes locking over the bomb.
*****
Where had he come from? Pak wondered as he swung up his AK- 47, pressing the metal folding stock into his shoulder. His eye never left the other man’s as he lined up the front sight post with the rear and pulled the trigger.
The rounds roared across the fifty yards, slamming into the man and throwing him onto the ice. Pak let the weapon fall back on its sling and checked the piece of paper again. What number had he been on? His fatigued mind struggled to remember.
*****
Riley’s breath came in deep, painful gasps. His right side was on fire, and he could feel the blood seeping into his layers of clothing. He knew he had to move. He put every ounce of energy into his legs. Nothing. Riley tried to scream, but a moan was all he managed. He focused his mind: he had to stop the Korean, or the Russian sub would be destroyed and he would die.
*****
Pak tried to concentrate on the LED screen. Yes, he was up to the fourth number. He held his finger over the keys. He had no feeling in his hand anymore, so he guided it down by sight. When the dead finger rested on the proper number, he pushed.
The fifth now. Pak looked at the number on the code sheet. He matched it with the keyboard. His right hand would no longer hold steady. Pak took his left hand and placed it over his right forearm, steadying it. He pushed down and glanced up at the LED screen. The ENTER sign was still flashing on the top. Yes, the five were correct.
Pak checked the sixth number. He forced his finger over and down. He hesitated as he thought of his family, so far away in Korea. Pak sighed. With his finger an inch away from the keyboard, stars exploded on the right side of Pak’s head. He rolled away from the bomb onto the ice and looked up, trying to see his attacker.
A figure loomed above. Pak put his arms up to block the blow that swung down on him. He felt his left forearm shatter as steel hit bone. The pain brought his foggy mind into sharp focus. Pak was desperately reaching for his AK-47 on its sling when he stared into the greenest eyes he’d ever seen. A woman!
She swung the shovel again. He rolled away from the next blow but slid much farther than he’d intended, trying too late to slow his momentum.
*****
Sammy collapsed to her knees, dropping the bloody entrenching tool as the Korean fell into the water hole. She started to stand when the man suddenly surged out of the water and grabbed her left forearm with his right hand.
The Korean pulled her down to the edge of the hole. He looked up at her, his dark eyes boring in. Sammy felt herself drawn in by them, bending over, her face lowering down to the water so close to being frozen.
The entrenching tool blurred by the side of her face and smashed into the Korean’s head. His grip loosened on her arm and he slipped beneath the surface. Sammy collapsed to the ice and Conner slid down beside her, dropping the e-tool and wrapping her sister in her arms.
For a long minute, they held onto each other. Then they stood. There was no sign of the Korean. The bomb sat alone on the ice near them. Sammy and Conner carefully walked over to it. The cover on the control panel was off.
“Oh, shit,” Sammy muttered. She turned away and looked back. “Dave!”
Chapter 32
RUPPERT COAST, ANTARCTICA
Riley had managed to crawl almost ten feet, leaving a trail of red on the ice, before he could go no farther. A logical part of his mind recognized that he was going into shock from the combination of loss of blood and cold, but the fact didn’t bother him very much. It would be only moments before the Korean finished entering the code and the bomb went off, so oblivion wasn’t far off either way.
As he retreated into unconsciousness, a persistent voice calling his name intruded. With great difficulty, Riley cracked his eyes and peered up. A sharp blow across his cheek barely elicited a response from his frozen skin.
“Wake up, goddamnit!”
Riley found a scrap of energy and tried to focus. “What?” he muttered.
“The Korean was messing with the bomb. We stopped him, but I need to know if he finished arming it.” Sammy leaned close. “Are you hurt bad?”
“I’m all right,” Riley said. ‘Take me to the bomb.”
As Sammy grabbed his arms, the pain brought him fully alert. He tried to help with little pushing motions of his feet as Sammy and Conner dragged him across the ice.
*****
“I can’t land on the ice,” the pilot said for the third time. “This aircraft needs fifty-six inches of solid ice to support it, and you can’t tell that by looking out the window.” The Osprey’s engines were in the helicopter position and they were cruising at forty knots above the ice.
Bellamy accepted the inevitable. “All right. Then give me a hover and we’ll fast-rope out.”
“OK.”
Bellamy turned to Captain Manchester and signaled. Manchester and an NCO began rigging the fast rope to bolts in the ceiling of the Osprey, while Bellamy looked out over the pilot’s shoulder. He could see both the submarine and the ship, which was slowly making its way out of the ice pack.
“Where’s the bomb?” he asked.
The pilot did a gentle bank right. ‘There,” he pointed.
The sled was a long black spot on the ice. Bellamy noted the three figures, two dragging one, less than twenty feet away. He ran back to the rear of the plane as his team lined up on the rope.
“There’re three people on the ice near the bomb. They make a move for it, take them out.”
The first man nodded and slipped the selector switch on his MP5 sub off safe. The plane came to a halt, and Manchester threw open the door.
*****
Sammy and Conner propped u
p Riley so he could look at the LED screen. He scanned it for ten long seconds and then shook his head. “He entered five of the six numbers on the PAL code. You stopped him before he could enter the last one. It’s all right. We’re safe.”
They looked up as the Osprey came to a hover overhead and a thick rope uncoiled out the door. Riley watched the first man slide down with the MP5 over his shoulder, quickly followed by a line of men, slithering down to the ice less than thirty feet away.
“Get me away from the bomb,” he told the women. “NOW!”
Sammy grabbed his jacket and pulled him back, the bomb between them and the men, just as bullets cracked by overhead.
“Cease fire!” someone was yelling. “We don’t want to hit the bomb. Alpha team, fan right. Bravo, cover.”
“I think we’d better surrender,” Riley suggested. “Just keep your hands far away from your sides and start yelling in English.”
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Sammy and Conner called out as four men rushed up, weapons at the ready.
“Freeze! You on the ground—hands away from your sides.”
“He’s wounded,” Sammy informed them.
“Step away!” One of the man carefully rolled Riley over while another kept a weapon on him. “Shit,” the man muttered as Riley’s blood-encrusted jacket came into view.
“Berkman, get over here. We’ve got some work for you.”
As the medic went to work on Riley, Major Bellamy checked the bomb. His heart gave a jump when he noted that five of the six numbers for the PAL code were entered. They’d been just in time. He didn’t understand what had happened or who these three people were, but he didn’t need to. His job was to simply secure everything. The powers-that-be would determine what to do about the prisoners.
He had one of his men do a quick bore sample to check for ice depth, and once he found a good spot, he ordered Manchester to land the Osprey. As soon as the aircraft settled down, he loaded the bomb, the prisoners, and his men on board and they lifted, heading back for the Kitty Hawk. As they took off, the Russian submarine slowly sank under the surface. There was nothing left except Riley’s blood and the rapidly retreating Korean ship.
Chapter 33
SNN HEADQUARTERS, ATLANTA
Cordon looked up from the computer screen as his door banged open and Stu Fernandez stormed in. He quickly blanked the screen. “What’s wrong?”
Fernandez leaned forward, both hands on Cordon’s desk. “The tapes are gone.”
“Which tapes?”
“Conner’s Antarctica tapes. Both the original and the edited version. They’re gone and no one knows where they are.”
Cordon frowned. “They weren’t signed out?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t you have a backup?”
“No. If you remember, you told me not to make copies, for security reasons.”
Cordon rubbed his chin. “Hmm. OK. It’s not a big deal. We’ll have the originals from Conner as soon as she links up with the support team. Just have her retransmit.”
Fernandez shook his head. “That’s another problem. We’ve had no contact with her for twenty-four hours. And someone ordered the support team to stay at McMurdo Station and not go forward to Eternity Base.”
Cordon held up a hand. “Listen. Just calm down. Mr. Parker is handling this whole situation personally. I suggest you get back to work and don’t worry about Eternity Base. Everything is being taken care of there. It is no longer your concern.”
“That’s my story!” Fernandez fumed. “Conner’s mine. You can’t—”
“Go back to your office.” Cordon’s voice was ice cold. “If you want to continue working here, I suggest you drop this whole subject.”
Fernandez pulled his hands off the desk and regarded his boss for a few seconds, then he turned and left.
When the door slammed shut, Cordon turned off the computer. He took his briefcase and left the building, walked three blocks, and turned the corner. He had to wait only five seconds before a car with tinted windows pulled up to the curb and the back door opened. Cordon got in and the car pulled away.
“Do you have them?”
Cordon pulled out the two tapes and handed them over.
DENVER, COLORADO
The Apache helicopter raced up on the Bell Jet Ranger and matched speed to the left of the smaller aircraft. The 30mm cannon that hung under the nose of the attack gunship turned until it was pointing directly at the Jet Ranger. The Apache pilot keyed his radio.
“Helicopter tail number four seven six, you are directed to assume a heading of one six five degrees. You are to make no radio transmissions. You have ten seconds to comply.”
The gunner in the front seat of the Apache nervously caressed his trigger and waited. The Jet Ranger made no change in course.
“You have five seconds.”
The gunner had destroyed numerous Iraqi tanks during the Gulf War and had no doubts about what his 30mm cannon could do. He couldn’t believe the other aircraft was ignoring them.
The pilot counted down. “Four. Three. Two. One.” The pilot switched to intercom. “What’s wrong with the guy?”
The gunner looked in his sight and zeroed in on the cockpit. The pilot was staring straight ahead, not even acknowledging their presence. There was someone in the backseat. ‘Try another frequency,” he suggested.
The Apache pilot did that, still getting no response. “Put some rounds across his front.”
The gunner let loose a five-round burst, the tracers flitting across the front of the Jet Ranger. Still nothing.
The Apache pilot keyed his radio to a different frequency. ‘Tango One Niner, this is Hawk. We are getting no response from the target. They are not acknowledging our warnings. Over.”
“This is Tango One Niner. Are you over open land? Over.”
The pilot glanced down. Nothing but open range land for miles, which was why they had picked this intercept point. “Roger. Clear as far as I can see. Over.”
“Put the target down. Over.”
“What!” the Apache pilot exclaimed, forgetting radio protocol.
“I say again. You are ordered to shoot down the target and give us the grid of the wreckage. We will take care of it from there. Over.”
The gunner looked over his shoulder at the pilot sitting behind him. “Are they serious?” he asked over the intercom.
“Fucking A, they’re serious. Put him down.”
The gunner shook his head. Orders were orders. They’d been told that this helicopter was being used by some drug smuggler. The gunner’s finger curled around the trigger, and he placed the crosshairs on the engine compartment. His finger twitched and 30mm bullets tore into the other aircraft, shredding metal.
The Jet Ranger plummeted straight down. The Apache pilot descended until they were at a hover over the smoldering wreckage. There was no way anyone could have survived the crash. He radioed in the site; within ten minutes an unmarked Blackhawk helicopter was on the scene, and they were ordered to depart.
USS KITTY HAWK OFF THE COAST OF ANTARCTICA
“I told them about Devlin, but they insisted they had to take us directly back here,” Conner fumed. ‘They said they would send out some planes to recover his body.”
Sammy shrugged. She wasn’t as worried about the dead as the living. Riley was propped up on the bed, his chest swathed in bandages and an IV hooked into each arm. He’d been unconscious ever since they’d brought him in from surgery. The doctor had said his prognosis for recovery was good.
There was a marine guard outside the wardroom door, and Conner had been pacing back and forth ever since Riley had been wheeled in fifteen minutes ago. Sammy was too weary to discuss anything right now. No one would tell them anything; she had a feeling they were waiting for someone to arrive, someone who would give them the “word,” whatever it was.
“They wouldn’t even give me any paper to write on,” Conner complained as she finally sat down.
Sa
mmy lay on the bed next to Riley, closed her eyes, and let sleep overtake her.
EIGHTH ARMY HEADQUARTERS, YONGSAN, SOUTH KOREA
“Sir, we have a reversal of several key indicators. Elements of the PKA I Corps are reported to be standing down. Three merchant ships that we have been tracking, ships that were suspected to have PKA Special Forces troops on board, have turned back.”
Patterson nodded. He knew that the message he had just received from the Pentagon had a lot to do with that. Apparently the Russians had talked to their former friends in the North and informed them that it would not be in their best interest to conduct offensive operations against the South. There had also been a veiled reference from General Morris that the Kitty Hawk battle group had been involved in a joint U.S.-Russian operation that had affected events here. The message between the lines to Patterson had been clear: don’t complain about the deployment of Seventh Fleet elements anymore.
For the time being, things on the peninsula would stay the same—a wary watching across barbed wire and antitank trenches. “Inform all units to reduce to a level four alert status.”
ISA HEADQUARTERS, SOUTHWEST OF WASHINGTON, D.C.
General Hodges impatiently tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “What about Kensington?”
The bald man raised his eyebrows. “What about him?”
