Jarvis frowned. ‘You think that MJ-12 will respond to that?’
‘They will not want to lose Wilms as an asset, and if Wilms can be convinced that I’m no longer a threat then they may be more comfortable meeting him,’ Mitchell replied. ‘All that’s required is that MJ-12 believe that I have acted alone and that I am not in your custody. Your agents will be able to follow me and track me as much as they wish, I’m not running anywhere.’
‘You’ve displayed a remarkable knack for evading arrest,’ Jarvis said. ‘My superiors are not going to want you walking the streets at all, monitored or not.’
‘I can’t bring you Wilms while I’m shackled in a cell,’ Mitchell pointed out. ‘The longer I’m here the more chance there will be of MJ-12 learning of my location and realizing that I’m now working for the DIA, or worse closing ranks and making themselves even harder to locate.’
Jarvis bit his lip, unsure of whether Mitchell’s plan would be enough to convince Nellis to cut Mitchell loose.
‘They’ll need more,’ Jarvis said. ‘How much do you know about Antarctica?’
Mitchell tilted his head as he replied.
‘Not as much as I’d like right now,’ he admitted, ‘but the plan to recover Black Knight has been years in the making. I take it that you have personnel involved in an attempt to recover the device as we speak?’
‘We have a team in the region,’ was all that Jarvis was willing to share.
‘Then they will be going toe to toe with a man named General Andrei Veer,’ Mitchell said. ‘He’s an American of Lithuanian descent and former Army Ranger recruit who was thrown out of his training cadre shortly before graduation for striking a senior officer. He’s built himself a nice little career heading mercenary units in countries like Bosnia, Syria, Afghanistan and others. Wilms uses him for paramilitary ventures that need to be kept under the radar, operations funded by Majestic Twelve.’
‘How do you know this?’ Jarvis enquired.
‘Because I hired him,’ Mitchell replied. ‘Veer is a blunt instrument, the difference between a lock-pick and a grenade. He’s not stupid however, and he has the ability to raise hundreds of men to his banner if the price is right, mostly disaffected soldiers who were thrown out of their own regiments for various crimes. He always picks from elite units: airborne, rangers, Special Forces even if he can recruit them, and they rely on superior numbers and firepower to achieve their objectives. How many people do you have on the ground in Antarctica?’
Jarvis smiled tightly.
‘We deployed an advance force of twelve Navy SEALs, supporting a small team of scientists.’
Mitchell stared at Jarvis as though he was insane.
‘You sent twelve men on one of the most important recovery missions in human history?’
‘We needed to be discreet.’
‘They’ll need a damned miracle,’ Mitchell shot back. ‘Where’s Ethan Warner?’
‘Embedded with the SEALs,’ Jarvis replied, ‘along with Hannah Ford.’
Mitchell nodded and held up his wrists.
‘Wilms is the man holding the sword of Damocles over the Antarctic,’ Mitchell explained. ‘If things go wrong for them down there, he’ll destroy the entire site and everything in it.’
‘How?’ Jarvis demanded.
‘Like I said, that’s not how we play this game,’ Mitchell said as he held up his manacled wrists. ‘If you want me to get Wilms we’re going to have to move fast because if I can’t get him to help you identify MJ-12, your boy Warner and his team are as good as dead.’
XXIV
The SEALS gathered at the entrance to the subterranean base as Ethan peered into the inky blackness of the interior, the steel blast doors hanging open where they had been presumably left more than seventy years before.
‘What the hell could be living down here?’ Hannah asked the soldiers urgently.
The pile of scat on the dock was large enough to belong to something of significant size, but there were no visible prints or any other traces of a large animal that Ethan could see as he surveyed the area.
‘There’s nothing down here,’ Riggs insisted. ‘We’ve got more important things to worry about.’
Ethan turned and looked at the lieutenant. ‘Such as?’
‘Time,’ Riggs replied. ‘It’s only going to be a matter of time before those soldiers find their way in here after us, and when that happens we don’t have anywhere left to run.’
The SEALs acknowledged this with a grim silence and a brief exchange of understanding glances that Ethan deciphered as a tacit agreement that the mission would be completed regardless of casualties or the danger of the entire team not making it out of Antarctica alive.
Lieutenant Riggs cocked his rifle and turned toward the entrance to the base.
‘On me,’ he ordered. ‘Del Toro and Saunders, rear guard.’
Two of the SEALS repositioned to the rear of the team as Riggs set off into the base and was consumed by the darkness. Ethan followed with Hannah alongside him, her voice carrying in the bitter cold.
‘I don’t like this one damned bit,’ she uttered. ‘This wasn’t what I signed up for when I agreed to work for Jarvis.’
Ethan smiled grimly as they entered a cold corridor, dripping water echoing in a symphony around them and the floor of the tunnel slick with frigid water and a thin crust of ice. Above their heads, icicles as hard and sharp as swords forested the interior.
‘Get used to it,’ he said, ‘working for this department of the DIA means being ready for just about anything.’
‘Is this the kind of thing you and Lopez used to do?’
Ethan fought off a pall of sadness as he was again reminded of his partner lying unconscious in hospital.
‘Every time we deployed for the DIA we got shot at, abducted, attacked, pursued or otherwise harassed by people who would rather we were dead. It’s not your average nine to five job.’
‘You’re not kidding,’ Hannah sighed, ‘my first deployment and I’m freezing to death a hundred fifty feet beneath the ass of the world. It’s not the march of hope and glory I had in mind.’
Ethan said nothing more as they followed Lieutenant Riggs and the SEALs through the darkened corridor, which ended at an open blast door. The door was more like a hatch, hanging on thick steel hinges and glistening with crystals of frost that sparkled in the flashlight beams.
The corridor beyond was walled with metal panels, a thin film of ice encrusting the floor as the soldiers peered inside.
‘This looks like the spot where the docks end and the base starts,’ Riggs said. ‘We’ll keep heading inward toward the signal until we find it.’
The corridor was featureless as they walked through it, several of the metal panels having fallen aside to reveal interior walls built from concrete that had in places cracked with the bitter cold and the expansion of frozen water trapped within them. Chunks of ceiling masonry littered their path as they eased their way inside, and Ethan watched closely as Riggs and another soldier led the way down the corridor to a junction, this one marked with German writing stencilled onto the wall opposite.
KOMMANDOZENTRALE
‘Command center,’ Hannah interpreted the sign.
‘Not just a pretty face then?’ Ethan smiled as he glanced at her.
He could not tell if Hannah was appalled or embarrassed by his comment as she averted her eyes and pushed on in pursuit of Riggs. They turned right and followed the corridor to a stairwell that led up toward another hatch, this one sealed shut.