Robert Doherty - The Citadel

Min was uncertain what words would be correct to say good-bye to his soldier, so he simply stood in front of his man and saluted. Yong looked up and returned the gesture with his nonwounded arm. Before he had second thoughts, Min turned and swiftly walked back to the east ice storage room. He climbed up the ramp and crunched across the ice to the cab of the SUSV. He got into the cab and nodded at Sun. The medic threw the vehicle in gear, and the treads slowly started turning. At a crawl of ten miles an hour they headed away from the base. Min directed the driver to their one last stop before heading for the mountains lining the coast. The sled bobbed along in their wake, its cargo securely tied down.

Geneva

Dyson's body was strapped to the chair in the middle of the Intelligence Center. His dead eyes stared straight ahead. The man who had been "working" on him packed up his equipment and left the center.

Then the High Counsel spoke to the Assessors. "I want a Course of Action Projection based on what we just learned about Majestic-12."

"With what parameters?" the Senior Assessor asked.

"I want to know what the possible outcomes will be if we exterminate Majestic-12."

Pine Barrens, New Jersey

The two men walked down the corridor, the squeak of their shoes echoing off the cinder-block walls. They went into a small room with a secure satellite link to Geneva. "I got everything out of Whitaker," the Tall Man said into the mike. "He put the bomb on the airplane carrying the engineers."

"Why?" the Senior Assessor asked.

"To keep the location secret and for $500,000. He also helped wiped out the convoy that accompanied the four MK-17 bombs down there."

"That was years later, so Lansale kept him on retainer. What about the submarines?"

"He didn't know about those."

"Terminate him."

Pentagon

As questions bombarded him, the head of the Intelligence Service Agency didn't like the role reversal. The hastily assembled officers and senior administration officials wanted answers, and he, unfortunately, didn't have many. Being the bearer of bad news had a historically poor rating.

The ranking officer in the room, Army Chief of Staff General Morris, listened to the confusion for five minutes before he cut to the heart of the matter. "Gentlemen, we have to accept the fact that there are bombs down there and there is nothing we can presently do to make that knowledge disappear. Given that, there are two courses of action we have to pursue.

"Our primary concern must be to secure the bombs. I say that is primary because of the potential physical threat they represent. Our secondary concern is to find out where these bombs came from and how they ended up at this base. Attached to that second concern is to find out why and how this Citadel was built."

Morris looked about the room to make sure everyone, particularly the President's National Security Advisor, was following him. With the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the Middle East, this problem was his problem. "In line with the first, I am going to have certain military forces alerted and deployed to the Antarctic to secure the weapons and remove them."

"Won't that violate the Antarctic accord?" an Air Force general asked.

Morris bit off a sarcastic reply. "The accord has already been violated. It is now time for damage control, and we have to get those bombs out of there.

"To help solve the second problem, the various intelligence organizations have all been notified and are investigating the situation." He swung his gaze to the ISA director. "I want your sources to find out everything they have on this. I also want everything you've received from the personnel you've already detained in connection with this incident." Morris fixed a full colonel at the end of the table with his gaze. "What do we have that can get there ASAP to secure those weapons?"

The colonel looked at the large map at the end of the room. "To be honest, not much, sir. I think the closest ground forces would come from either Panama or Hawaii. Elements of the 7th Fleet are operating off of Australia. The big problem is that we have no way to deploy forces by air there without an in-flight refuel. That's the most isolated place in the world-you have a minimum of a two-thousand-mile flight from the nearest land." "I don't want problems. I want results."

"Yes, sir."

Antarctica

Kim laid the satchel charge in the middle aisle of the Earth First plane. They'd just found it, parked four hundred meters away from the base, and Major Min had directed him to destroy it. He estimated that thirty pounds of explosive would more than do the job. Kim pulled the fuse igniter and hopped out the door. He ran back to the SUSV and clambered into the cab, next to Min. The driver immediately threw it into gear, and they headed away.

Three minutes later the dull crack of the explosion sounded through the blowing snow, but the flash was lost in the white fog. Thirty miles directly ahead lay the coast.

"I wonder why they haven't cut off the power?" Brothers asked.

"Maybe they don't care if we're hiding in here," Vaughn suggested.

"Maybe they've already left;" Logan added. "Surely they wouldn't want to hang around any longer than they have to."

The five of them were sitting in a semicircle, facing the hatch. There had been no noise for quite a while. Tai had to admit to herself that she was surprised the power was still on and that the North Koreans hadn't tried to finish them off. The more she thought about it, the more it didn't make much sense.

She nudged Vaughn. "What do you think?"

He considered his reply for a few seconds. They were all deferring to him since he was the only one who'd had some sort of plan, which was why they were alive now. "This whole thing doesn't make sense. Skipping the issue of why the Koreans-be they South or North-would want two nuclear bombs, we're left with the question of how they think they can get away with this.

"Even if they had wiped us all out here and tried to make it look like an accident-say a fire destroying the base and all the bodies-they've got to know that someone else knows about the bombs. The U.S. would then send a team down here to search for the bombs, and when they didn't find them, the heat would be on."

"Maybe they were hoping there would be enough of a time delay before that was discovered, that they could get away," Tai offered.

"True," Vaughn agreed. "But then they would have had to kill all of us." He shook his head, which was beginning to throb with a splitting headache. "They've got a long trip back to Korea with those things, and then what are they going to do with them once they get there?"

"Whatever happens," Logan said, "the United States government is going to look pretty stupid. How could they have put nuclear weapons down here and then just forgotten about them?"

Vaughn had spent quite a bit of time thinking about that. "There's a lot of ways that could have happened. You all probably don't realize the shear number of atomic weapons the U.S. has. If I remember rightly, there were over three thousand of these MK/B 61s built. And that's just one of several types of weapon in the inventory. There's easily over ten thousand weapons in various places all over the world, and that's just the U.S.'s. Add in the former Soviet Union's and it's a wonder no one has had some stolen or turn up in the wrong hands before this."

"Well, let's pray that these two never get used," Tai said.

"Amen to that," Brothers added.

Logan abruptly stood up. "I can't sit here any longer and just allow this to happen."

"What are you going to do?" Vaughn asked.

"You're probably right," Logan said to Vaughn, "the access tunnel is most likely booby-trapped." He pointed to the ceiling. "I say we go up to the surface and come back down the main shaft. They won't expect us coming that way-that's if they're still here. Or we go for the plane."