Robert Doherty - The Citadel

"But more importantly, the ship's later history is a lesson on how brutal conditions are here and in the Arctic. In the 1830s the Terror was on an exploration mission in Hudson Bay when it got caught in the ice. The ship was pressed over fifty feet up the side of a cliff by the pressure of the ice on its hull. It was repaired and was Captain Ross's second ship-he was in command of the Erebus- on his expedition down here from 1840 to 1843.

"They successfully did that mission but weren't so lucky on their next one to Baffin Bay. The ships were last seen entering the bay and then not heard from again for over a decade, until someone found both ships, completely abandoned by their crews and icebound. Not a single one of either ship's crew was ever found. One hundred percent casualties. Their bodies are still buried somewhere in the ice, as are a lot of other bodies."

"We're going down," Brothers yelled over his shoulder.

Tai was startled. "What?"

"We're going in for our landing," Brothers qualified with a smile.

"Smart-ass," Tai muttered.

"We don't have much of a runway," Brothers told them as they descended. "We land on the ice on the Ross Ice Shelf itself, as it's the flattest thing around. The reception party should have marked out a reasonably good stretch for us. We don't need much," he added in way of encouragement.

Vaughn watched the slopes of Erebus come closer, and then the plane punched into a thick cloud layer and all view was blanketed. Suddenly, the clouds parted and they were in the clear again. The plane was very low now, and Brothers banked hard left, over land.

"That's McMurdo Station!" Logan yelled. Vaughn pushed his face up against the glass and looked below. The sprawl of buildings and numerous large storage tanks surprised him-McMurdo was much larger than he had imagined. Somehow he had pictured something out of the old science fiction movie The Thing : a few Quonset huts huddled in the snow. At a rough guess he would say there were at least forty buildings down there.

"All right. Everyone buckle up." Brothers swung out over the ice now, very low. They roared over a snow tractor with a large red flag tied off to the top. Brothers pulled up and did another flyby. A man on top of the tractor was holding a green flag pointing in a northeasterly direction.

On the third pass, Brothers finally dipped his wings down. With a hiss and then a steady rumble, the skis touched the ice, a thin mist of snow pluming up on either side. Gradually, they slithered to a halt. Brothers turned the plane around and taxied it back to the tractor. Vaughn could now see that the tractor had a flatbed trailer hitched to it with several drums piled on top.

The silence as Brothers turned off the engines was as shocking as any loud sound. They'd lived with that noise for many hours. As their senses adjusted, the steady whine of wind bouncing off the skin of the plane became noticeable. With the airplane's heater off, the temperature immediately started dropping inside.

"Everyone bundle up." Logan was cinching down his hood.

Vaughn pulled his own cold weather equipment out of his duffel bag. He was wearing a Gore-Tex camouflage parka over Patagonia Pile jacket and bib pants that zipped on the sides and the crotch. Tai wore the same thing. Logan and his two men's outer layer was bright orange. They all had polypropylene underwear next to their bodies to wick away any moisture from their skin. Large rubber cold-weather boots-Logan had referred to them as Mickey Mouse boots-covered their feet. The boots had a layer of air trapped in them that insulated the feet remarkably well, but Vaughn knew from experience they also brought about a lot of foot sweating, which had to be carefully monitored.

Brothers swung open his door, and the blast of cold air slammed into Vaughn's lungs with one quick gulp. Brothers scrambled out and Vaughn followed suit, his feet crunching into the snow. Despite his cold weather training in Special Forces, he'd never felt such cold. The air stung his face, the only exposed part of his body. His skin rebelled, trying to shrink from the pain of the cold, and he felt his muscles tighten, as if he could make himself smaller and that would in some way make him warmer. He forced his muscles to relax.

The other members of the party piled out and stood looking around. To the north, Mount Erebus was a solid wall reaching up into the cloud covering. To the south, an endless line of ice disappeared where the clouds seemed to touch down. To the west, the Royal Society Range blotted out the space between cloud and ice. They looked amazingly close, as if they could be walked to in an hour or two, yet Vaughn knew from the map that they were almost a hundred miles away.

The tractor kicked into life, drawing his attention away from the scenery. It roared up, treads clattering, placing the trailer alongside the plane. The driver, looking like a bear in his bright orange garments, waved down at them, pumping his fist. He seemed to be in a bit of a rush.

"Let's offload," Logan called out.

As they busied themselves transferring the gear from plane to trailer, Smithers used a sledgehammer to drive ice pitons into the ground. One for each wing, one for the tail, and one for the nose; Brothers attached a rope to each piton to secure the plane to the ice.

Once all the equipment was off the aircraft, Vaughn watched as Logan gave Tai a boost up onto the wooden platform that made up the floor of the trailer. She tried to get as comfortable as possible among the bags and cases. Vaughn and the three other members of the party climbed on board, and all grabbed on for dear life as the driver threw the tractor into gear and roared off toward the looming form of Mount Erebus.

Logan leaned over to put his face between Vaughn and Tai. "Welcome to Antarctica."

Democratic People's Republic of Korea Embassy, Manila

The ambassador's aide frowned as the secretary entered the meeting room and hurried over to his chair. "Mr. Choegu, there is an urgent message for you," she whispered in his ear.

Making his excuses to the delegation of trade bureaucrats from Singapore, Choegu walked swiftly to his office. The encoded message sat on the center of his desk, only the word URGENT readable in Han Gul, the rest in unintelligible seven letter groups. He turned and unlocked the safe behind his desk and pulled out the onetime pad.

He wrote the letters out in longhand as he deciphered the message on a single sheet of paper with a hard plastic board underneath in order not to leave an impression copy. As the words coalesced into meaning, Choegu felt both excited and confused.

– ABU SAYIF SAY THERE IS AN ABANDONED AMERICAN MILITARY BASE IN ANTARCTICA.

– BASE IS SUPPOSED TO CONTAIN NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

– WILL CONTINUE TO MONITOR AND RELAY INFORMATION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

– ABU SAYIF WILL BE IN CONTACT WITH MORE INFORMATION SOON.

– RAWSS.

Choegu knew who Rawss was-one of their deep cover agents in Manila. He didn't even try to sort out the various pieces of the puzzle. He immediately pulled out another onetime 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 embassy building. A guard with an automatic rifle stood in front of a steel door. Despite his rank and stature, Choegu had to show his identification card to the guard, who knew perfectly well who he was.

Satisfied, the guard opened the steel door and Choegu stepped inside. Another steel door awaited him. An eye appeared at the small peephole, and he once again showed his identification. The door opened and he entered.

"Sir?" the man who had let him in asked.

Choegu held out the piece of paper. "Send this immediately."