‘Tell us something we don’t know,’ Jarvis cut him off wearily. ‘We’ve known about LeMay for months. Tell me something new and interesting or I’ll have you sent for a swim wearing concrete slippers.’
Mitchell’s expression darkened.
‘Then perhaps you should look into a man who goes by the name of Victor Wilms,’ Mitchell said.
‘Who is Wilms?’
‘He’s a former Green Beret, served in the earliest days of the Vietnam War before transferring to MJ-12, or perhaps what he thought was a government branch at the time. He was responsible for recruiting me in DC forty years ago, and still holds a position of great trust within MJ-12.’
Jarvis eyed Mitchell suspiciously for a moment.
‘To what degree would this handler of yours be useful to us?’
‘I believe that he knows personally the founders and leaders of Majestic Twelve.’
Jarvis raised an eyebrow as though the revelation was no big deal to him, but his mind was already turning rapidly. With LeMay their single lead in hoping to identify the leaders of MJ-12, and with the embattled director likely now as much of a liability as an asset to the cabal, there was no guarantee that he would be meeting senior figures within MJ-12 any time soon. Dispatching Lopez and Vaughn to watch the director was costly in terms of time and manpower, and a long shot when there was no immediate likelihood of him meeting Majestic Twelve’s shadowy leadership.
But if Mitchell could identify and lead them to Wilms, a man with a far more likely chance of encountering the heads of MJ-12, then the DIA would have achieved a considerable intelligence coup against one of the most nefarious criminal organizations that had ever existed.
Jarvis offered Mitchell a wry smile.
‘And I take it that in order to expose this Wilms, if that’s his real name, you would have to be released to make contact?’
Mitchell nodded.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Wilms and I are not on the best of terms, but as I’m on the loose he may fear for his life as a result. The same will be true of LeMay – both have betrayed me, and Wilms has already voiced a fear of retribution on my part. If I attempt to meet with him on his own terms, to give him the confidence that I don’t intend to ice him, then you’ll be able to identify and tail him.’
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
Antarctica
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.
Lieutenant Riggs reached it and examined the locks.
‘Steel bolts, turned in from the other side,’ he reported as Ethan joined him.
‘Can we cut through them?’ Ethan asked.
‘Yeah, we’ve got a torch but it’ll take time we don’t have,’ Riggs replied. ‘We’ll use the thermite.’
Ethan knew well the power of thermite, a pyrotechnic composition of metal oxide and a metal powder fuel, usually aluminum. Ignited by heat, the thermite underwent an exothermic oxidation process that produced an extreme burst of heat inside a very small radius, as useful for welding as it was for melting and breaching metal structures.
Ethan eased back out of the way as the SEAL team’s explosives expert, Sully, hurried forward, examined the door for a few moments and then attached three slim thermite cylinders to the reverse side of the locking mechanism that was concealed from them on the far side of the door. He wedged the cylinders into place, Ethan guessing that the door was locked shut with three sliding bolts sunk into receptacles in the walls.
‘Fall back,’ Riggs ordered.
The team descended the stairs as the explosives expert finished his work and hurried back down the corridor. He swiftly activated a battery-operated detonator in his webbing, and then flipped a switch.
Ethan saw a bright light flare at the top of the stairwell as the battery-powered igniter inside the first thermite cylinder activated, followed by the second two in fearsomely bright bursts of light and heat. A hissing sound echoed down the corridor and Ethan saw a swirl of blue smoke that was followed by an acrid smell, the taint of burning metal filling the air.
The light faded out and Lieutenant Riggs ascended the stairwell once again. Ethan followed and saw three patches of glowing red metal shimmering in the darkness as he watched Riggs grab the door’s handle and heave back on it.
The heavy door rattled against its locks and then suddenly it swung open as two SEALs aimed their rifles into the darkened interior. Their flash lights illuminated a command center as they rushed in, their weapons sweeping the darkness efficiently.
‘Clear!’
At the harsh whisper Ethan and Hannah advanced with their weapons drawn and entered the command centre.
The center looked something akin to the bridge of a ship, with a central console running the length of the room and overlooking windows that gazed out over the submarine pens and the cavern itself. Ethan could see that the window glass was thickly frosted over, one or two of the panes smashed out to reveal the panorama beyond.
At the back of the command centre was a large map, and this was the sight that really attracted his attention.
‘That’s Antarctica,’ he said with some surprise, ‘but not with the ice on it?’
Doctor Chandler removed his glasses and peered up in amazement at the large map dominating the wall.
‘Good Lord,’ he uttered, enthralled. ‘That’s the Piri Reis map.’
‘The what?’ Riggs asked.
Chandler gestured to the map as the rest of the scientists and soldiers entered the command center.
‘It was found in 1929 by a group of historians,’ he said, ‘drawn on a piece of gazelle skin. It was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by an admiral of the Turkish fleet by the name of Piri Reis, who said that he’d compiled the map from older maps in the Imperial Library of Constantinople that dated back to the fourth century BC and even earlier.’
Hannah frowned at the map.
‘But that map shows mountain ranges, forests, lakes and stuff. How could he have known that was there if Antarctica was covered in a couple miles of ice?’
‘That’s the great mystery,’ Chandler said. ‘How could a fourth century map contain data that we have only recently discovered using orbital satellites and advanced technology? The latest possible date that the region of the Antarctic Piri Reis recorded was ice free was around four thousand BCE.’
‘What’s BCE?’ Ethan asked.
‘The modern form of historical dating, standing for Before Current Era,’ Chandler replied. ‘Historians, like scientists, have long since accepted that biblical history did not record real history, so they replaced BC with BCE, and AD, or
Anno Domini
– the Year of Our Lord, with Current Era, or CE.’
‘So this map was historically recent, recording ancient data,’ Hannah said.
‘ It’s well known that the first civilizations, according to traditional history, developed in the fertile crescent of the Middle East around the year three thousand BCE,’ Chandler confirmed, ‘and was followed within a millennium by the Indus Valley. Accordingly, none of the known civilizations of the time could have surveyed an ice free Antarctic.’