"You have a plan, then?"
Yol smiled. "Yes, sir."
Kim settled back in his seat. "Let me hear it."
Yol tapped a button, and three Special Forces officers carrying charts and paper hustled into the room. A lieutenant colonel took over the briefing, his pointer going to the same spot in Indonesia. As he progressed, the pointer slid down to Antarctica and then north again, but didn't come back to the Korean peninsula.
At the end of fifteen minutes, Kim had caught Yol's enthusiasm. The briefing officers wrapped up and left the room, leaving the two of them alone. Kim Jong II had known General Yol for his entire adult life. He had only one question for his old friend: "It is a very daring plan. You think you can do it?"
"Yes."
"Send the message and begin all the preparations."
Antarctica
Vaughn slid to a halt and looked back over his shoulder. The plane didn't look very far away, but he estimated he'd come at least four miles. He reached for the sonar emitter slung over his shoulder and pointed it down. As he pressed the trigger, he watched the small screen on the back. Negative. After five seconds he turned it off and reshouldered it.
Every thirty push-offs with his right ski, he halted and repeated the process, with the same negative result. At least the cross-country skiing felt good and kept him warm. He was moving north, so he had the mountains to his front. His course was centered on the middle peak. He estimated it was about four to five miles ahead of him, and sensed he was moving slightly uphill as he continued. The surface was definitely not as flat as it had appeared from the air, and he appreciated Brothers's talents even more. Occasionally Vaughn crossed low ridges of compressed ice and had to traverse to get over them.
Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. The echo just below the surface shocked Vaughn for a moment. He blinked and stared at the screen for ten seconds. It was still there. He looked around the immediate area. The surface ice was relatively even except for a six-foot ridge running in an angle across his front. There was no sign of anything man-made.
He pulled his backpack off, slid out one of the thin plastic poles with a flag attached and stuck it in the ice. Then he began to ski, ten paces only now, past the flag, trying to search out the dimensions of whatever it was under the ice. He continued to receive a positive response as he approached the ridge.
Vaughn traversed up the small incline of ice and stood on top of the buckled ice. His flag was over eighty meters away. This had to be the base. He noted an outcropping from the ice ridge about ten meters away and skied along the top to it. Snow had piled up, forming a large block, perhaps fifteen feet to a side and eight feet high. Vaughn aimed the sonar into the snow pile. Positive response. There was something in there too.
He looked to the south. His view of the plane was blocked by a large ridge he had crossed about a mile back. He secured the sonar over his shoulder and skied down off the ridge and back to his ruck. He was getting tired but threw it over his shoulder and set out to the south with long distance-eating glides on the skis.
Tai shivered and considered asking Brothers to crank the engine to get the heat going, but she held off. They only had so much fuel, and they'd been on the ice for almost three hours. The windows had fogged over from the breathing of the remaining occupants, and she used her mitten to scrape a small hole in her porthole so she could peer out.
A figure appeared on the horizon, skiing toward the plane with smooth, powerful strides. She kept the glass clear and watched the bundled man come closer.
"One of them is back," she said.
Smithers swung open the side door, and the wind removed what little body heat had built up inside the plane. The skier stepped out of his bindings and passed the skis in, where Smithers slid them along the floor. The man stepped in and shut the door behind him.
"Anything?" Tai asked as Logan slid his parka hood down.
"Nothing." He slumped down in his seat and leaned back. "I went about eight kilometers out and took a slightly different route back and picked up nothing."
There was a roar as Brothers started the engines. In a minute welcome heat poured out of the vents, and the windows started slowly clearing.
"Let's taxi north and pick up Vaughn on his way back," Tai suggested.
Brothers shook his head. "Uh-uh. I know where the safe runway is to take off on." He pointed out the front window. "Right back the way we came. Plus there's too many small ridges that way. We wouldn't get far."
"Besides," Logan added, "we don't know if Vaughn is taking a straight-back route. Even though it isn't likely, we might just miss him."
Tai sighed and resumed her watch out the window. Brothers shut off the engines after five minutes, and the heat slowly dissipated out the skin of the plane.
The pilot turned in his seat and tapped his headset. "I just got the weather report from McMurdo," he said. "It doesn't sound good. They only give us another three to four hours max of good weather and then we're going to get hit with high winds, which means very low visibility."
Tai knew they weren't going anywhere without Vaughn. She wondered what was taking him so long. He should have been back a half hour ago according to the plan.
Twenty minutes later Smithers called out. "I see him."
Tai leaned over and looked out the opposite side porthole. Vaughn was rapidly moving toward the plane. They opened the door as he arrived, and he threw his backpack in, followed by the skis and himself.
"Anything?" Tai asked.
"Yes."
She waited, but Vaughn was busy cleaning the snow off his boots and then shutting the door. "Well?"
Vaughn removed his snow goggles and smiled. His voice, though, was weak with exertion. "There's something under the ice about four miles from here. I checked it as much as I could and left a flag there. It's pretty big, whatever it is. At least eighty meters long, maybe more. It's either your base or a big-ass flying saucer that got buried under the ice."
Everyone in the plane looked at Tai expectantly, waiting for her instructions. Vaughn accepted a cup of coffee from Smithers's thermos and cradled it in his hands.
"Can we land up there?" she asked him.
Vaughn nodded. "I think there's a good level area to the north of the spot. I couldn't really tell because I didn't ski over it, but I think it's worth a look." He looked forward at Brothers. "It runs northwest-southeast."
Brothers shook his head. "We've got bad weather coming. If we don't head for home now we may get stuck out here."
"What happens if we're stuck out here?" Tai asked.
He shrugged. "We have our emergency gear, but it depends how long the weather stays bad. It could stay bad for a week, in which case it could be an awfully long time to be cooped up in this plane on top of the ice."
"I don't think staying here's a good idea," Vaughn threw in.
"What if we get into the base?" Tai said.
"What?" Vaughn was confused.
"What if we get into the Citadel? It would be out of the wind. They probably left quite a bit of supplies in there."
Vaughn was shaking his head. "Even if what I found is the Citadel, it was all covered up. How are we going to get in?"
Tai was considering the idea. "They had to have an access shaft."
"I think I found it when I was checking out the dimensions," Vaughn said. "There is something that's covered with blown snow next to an ice ridge."
"We've got shovels and pickaxes in the plane's gear. We can give it a shot," Tai suggested.
"I don't like it." Logan shook his head. "If you want my opinion, we go back to Earth First South and wait until we get good weather. We know where the place is now and can come back."