News team has discovered Eternity Base.
Inert nuclear reactor found at base. No evidence of rods ever being emplaced, but reactor core could not be reached.
Appears to be a base designed for select personnel to survive a nuclear war or similar disaster.
Weapons found in armory.
Two U.S.-manufactured nuclear weapons, serial numbers NTB-486929-350-98 and NTB-486929-350-56; both suspected model type MK/B 61 included in armory.
Arming codes and instructions for nuclear weapons also contained in safe at base.
Information being held here at highest level — eyes only J. Russell Parker. U.S. authorities currently not being notified.
News team is weathered in. Extent or duration of storm unknown.
Uncertain what reaction will be here. Expect they will hold information in attempt to have exclusive story.
Will continue to monitor and relay information as soon as possible. Have more detailed information on situation that I am in process of encoding.
Loki. 291435Z NOV 96.
Kang didn’t even try to sort out the various pieces of the puzzle. He immediately pulled out another one-time pad and transcribed the letters of the message verbatim as quickly as his hand could write.
Done, he rapidly walked up the stairs to the fourth floor of the brownstone that served as his country’s U.N. embassy. A stone-faced guard in an ill-cut three-piece suit stood before a heavy steel door. Despite Kang’s rank of full colonel in the army and having worked in this building for three years, the guard still demanded to see his identification card. Kang didn’t mind. If the guard had not asked, Kang would have minded very much, because his secondary role at the embassy was security chief.
Satisfied, the guard opened the door and Kang stepped into a small foyer, the door shutting behind him. There was a peephole in the next steel door; an oversized eye appeared and then the door opened.
“Yes, sir?” The technician on duty showed more proper respect for Kang’s position.
Kang thrust the encoded message into the man’s hand. “Send this immediately. Urgent priority.”
“Latest weather from McMurdo calls for at least another twenty-four to forty-eight hours of this storm,” Conner informed the group gathered around the mess table.
Swenson nodded. “Aye. I took a look about twenty minutes ago and couldn’t see more than ten feet from the door. The wind is howling. I hope my plane is all right.”
The warm air from the electric heater overhead blew gently across Conner as she looked around the room. So far, the only ones who knew about the nuclear weapons were her sister, Devlin, and Riley. She’d sent the information in a coded message to Atlanta forty- five minutes ago on the radio Riley had put together, and the reply had been encoded along with the weather report that Riley had just picked up.
Parker’s orders were to sit tight. He was rushing a larger support team from Atlanta down to their location. They ought to be in Antarctica as soon as the weather cleared. Upon their arrival, Parker wanted Conner to go live on regular SATCOM feed with the story.
Until then there was little her team could do. She herself had a lot of work to do, preparing what she would say. “I suggest we all get some sleep. When we get up I’d like to dig out the west tunnel and completely open up the way to unit Al. Until then there’s really nothing that needs to be done.”
She could tell that her team took that information with relief. They were all exhausted and immediately headed off to B3 to go to bed. Sammy and Riley waited for everyone else to leave. Conner eyed her sister and the security man warily.
When they were alone, Sammy got up and moved to the seat next to Conner. “What’s the plan from Atlanta?”
Conner acted surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Constance. You’ve been tied to the SATCOM shoestring ever since we got down here. I have to assume that you’ve already sent word to your superiors about the nukes. You’ve been up and down those stairs almost nonstop for the last couple of hours. I want to know what the plan is.”
“I do too,” Riley added. “You need to tell us what’s in those coded messages.”
“You really don’t have a need to know.” As soon as she said it, Conner realized she’d made a mistake. She hadn’t meant to be abrupt, but she was tired and excited at the same time and not thinking straight.
“Listen, lady.” Riley’s face was taut. “This isn’t a fucking game anymore. Those are nuclear weapons in there, not toys. Those things are supposed to be under strict control, yet here we have two abandoned in the middle of Antarctica. That worries me. It worries me a lot. Because we’re the ones who are sitting on them now.”
Conner gave a little ground. “They’re sending another news team down from the States. It’ll have the capability to do high-quality transmissions straight from here. When they arrive, we go live with the story.”
“Then what?” Sammy asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what do you think is going to happen then?”
Conner hadn’t really thought that through. “Then I suppose the government takes its bombs back and we return to Atlanta, and this is a hot story for about a week, or until some other crisis knocks it out of the headlines.”
Riley leaned forward. “Has it occurred to you that you’re going to be doing quite a bit of damage to the United States by airing this story?”
Conner choked back a laugh. “Hey, they put those things down here. Not me. I just report the news.”
“Has it occurred to you,” Riley persisted, “that the people who built this place and put those weapons down here are probably all retired or dead by now? Why do you think no one has been down here in so long? Why do you think the batteries on the transponder were dead?”
Conner shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We just report it.”
“We just report it,” Sammy said. “Is that it? What about these bombs?”
“Let’s take it easy,” Riley interceded. “We still don’t know who was behind the building of this base. We need to stay focused on that as far as the story goes. As far as reality goes, Sammy is right — we need to be concerned about those two bombs.”
“Who knows about the bombs in Atlanta?” Sammy asked.
“Only one person,” Conner said firmly. “Mister Parker, who runs SNN.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I coded the message for his eyes only, and the only one who can uncode it is Mister Parker.” Conner turned to Riley and asked a question of her own. “What kind of damage could those bombs do if one of them went off?”
Riley shook his head. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what they’re set at. I think the MK/B has four settings for yields ranging from ten to five hundred kilotons. So it depends on the setting.”
“You mean you can change the power of the bomb by flipping a switch?”
Riley gave her a weak smile. “Pretty neat, huh? The theory is the bomb is set for required yield prior to a mission, depending on the target profile. I’m sure there’s an access panel on the casing that opens to that control. I for one don’t plan on messing with it.”
“Well, for instance, what will a ten-kiloton blast do?” Conner felt somewhat embarrassed to be asking this. Somehow, she felt she ought to know more about the subject.
“A kiloton is equal to a thousand tons of TNT. So ten kilotons is ten thousand tons of TNT. If it blew here, it would take out this base but not much more than that.