After a long two hours, she felt the familiar dip of the plane’s nose signaling a descent. The other two planes banked in opposite directions heading west and east to drop their teams further along the giant fissure.
Kathryn’s plane landed with a hard thud on the ice shelf which was flatter than the area closer to the crack. They came to a stop and the propellers slowed to an idling speed. Anderson’s men threw open the door and rolled a ladder outward for the exiting team. At the rear of the fuselage, they unlocked and opened a large custom door which allowed them to slide the snowmobiles out and down a steep ramp. Next were the food, bags, and fuel which also slid down the ramp with a hard thud. Kathryn’s guide was a large man named Andrew with light hair who, judging from his tattoos, appeared to be ex-military. He jumped out and helped pull the equipment out. Andrew gave a thumbs-up to the other crewmembers onboard and pulled the large sled of equipment toward one of the snowmobiles. Kathryn, Tadri, and their third member Pierre climbed down the metal folding ladder. Once their feet touched the ice, the ladder was quickly retracted back up into the open door behind them. They ran to Andrew who had clipped the supplies to the back of one of the snowmobiles with a large metal clasp.
Andrew climbed on and motioned to Kathryn who got on behind him. Pierre and Tadri climbed on the second snowmobile and both men started the engines. As Andrew led them away, the doors on the plane were closed. Less than a minute later the engines roared back to life, and the C130 began rolling forward.
As they sped toward the edge of the ice shelf, Kathryn looked back over her shoulder at Pierre and Tadri, and then at the plane in the distance which had just lifted back up into the air. From the time it touched down, the entire drop-off had taken less than ten minutes. She hoped the others would go as smoothly.
26
President Carr stood in the White House conference room, facing the large monitor with his arms folded across his chest. He watched the video of Keister and Clay speaking with Palin. Behind him around the large table sat Stevas, Miller, Langford, Clay, Keister, and his military chiefs. The video ended with Palin scooting his chair back and the screen came to an abrupt end, frozen on the last frame of the video. Carr remained staring at the picture as the room fell silent. He slowly began shaking his head. “What in the hell are we dealing with here?” he said, turning around. Carr leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. “I mean Jesus,” he raised his voice, “do we even know whether this man is a friend or not?!” He looked around the table. “Well?!”
Stevas spoke up. “We need to assume not.” He continued when the President looked at him. “We cannot be sure of anything which means we have to assume the worst. This ring is huge, far larger than they would need to bring just a thousand people through. I don’t believe for a minute they have been here long. I think they came through and got caught before they could bring whatever comes through next!”
“So you’re saying what then?” asked the President.
“I’m saying we need to take action while we still can.”
“And what kind of action are we talking about?”
Stevas glanced around the room. “We destroy the damn thing.”
Clay looked at Langford who managed to remain completely still.
“Destroy the ring?” asked Miller, sitting across from him.
Stevas nodded. “Shut down the portal. Destroy it and by doing so we cut them off.”
Clay could not believe his ears. He looked at the military brass at the end of the table, and they seemed as un-phased as Langford. Was Clay the only one who thought Stevas had just gone off the deep end?
“Just like that?” replied Miller.
“That’s right,” Stevas said, looking back to the President. “Look, we have to be preemptive here. If we do it right we close down any possibility they have to attack us and with luck we trap them here as leverage.” The President did not answer. He was considering Stevas’ point. “At the very least that buys us time.”
Miller frowned. “Time for what?”
“To prepare, in case they come back. A defense, for Christ sake!”
Miller remained skeptical. “Wait a minute, how do they come back if we destroy this thing on our end?”
Stevas looked surprised by the question. He clearly did not have an answer. In fact, Clay wondered if he had even considered that. How could the President be listening to this man? Clay cleared his throat and everyone in the room turned to him.
“Excuse me,” he said slowly. “But I think we may be overlooking some things here.” Stevas gave him a cold stare, but Clay ignored him and asked the question anyway. “Surely we don’t believe they would be incapable of returning if we destroyed the ring. After all they got here before without a ring on this side. We don’t know how they would, but if they did come back shouldn’t we expect them to be a little…upset?”
Stevas’ stare grew even colder.
“And shouldn’t we be concerned at the ramifications of destroying this portal?”
Stevas looked hard at Clay when he replied. “Our experts don’t think there will be any negative side effects. We’re just pulling the plug.”
Miller broke in. “Who? Who doesn’t think so?”
Stevas turned to Miller with a slow and deliberate reply. “Experts.”
Langford looked at Stevas. “And how are you envisioning we destroy this ring?”
The Naval chief, Bruce Bishop, leaned forward at the other end of the table. “Subs.” Everyone turned to Bishop. “We can have the ring surrounded with two dozen Trident submarines inside of twenty-four hours.”
Clay’s heart sank. This sounded like something that had already been planned out and they were now just trying to sound objective for formality.
“They probably have some kind of defense, so launching a large number of torpedoes gives us the best chance of getting through. The intent is to do just enough damage to stop it from spinning.”
Everyone turned to the President who had remained quiet. He looked down thinking and finally raised his head. “Any other opinions?”
Clay had to keep himself from jumping out of his chair. “Uh…yes sir,” he said raising his hand. “How about not doing that?” It was not meant to be funny, but Clay could see Langford’s smirk out of the corner of his eye. Clay looked at the others. “I don’t understand. We know virtually nothing about this man, or these people, yet we are willing to start a war because we think they are going to attack us?”
“Tell me Mr. Clay,” said the President as he straightened, “how would you explain yourself to the country, to the world, if you are wrong? How would you explain it to them if we are attacked and you did nothing with what little time you had available?”
In his mind, the chance of an imminent attack was low and based on virtually no information. In fact, the information Stevas chose to cite was handpicked from everything else they knew. He denied the claim on how long they had been here, but he happily accepted as fact that the portal was from another planet. He would not accept the idea that they were here for a more benign reason, but he certainly accepted that there was a small number of them. He was choosing specific items to make his case and throwing out the rest, all while using everyone’s fear of the small chance he was right. Clay suspected he simply wanted to attack, but why?
“Mr. President,” Langford interrupted, putting a cautious hand on the table next to Clay’s. “I think what John is getting at here is to remind us that we make the best decisions when we have the most accurate information. In this case, we have very little information which means any decision we make now could easily be a bad one.”