Choosers of the Slain Page 3

  He had disembarked from the United jetliner he had ridden from New Zealand to find Marine Three waiting on the tarmac for him, its rotors already turning. A ten-minute helicopter flight had transferred him from Dulles International to Andrews Air Force Base and to yet another waiting aircraft--in this case, a huge Boeing Seven Century SST.

  It was the Air Force VC-31 variant, a VIP transport in the blue and white livery of the Executive squadron. Frequently assigned to the State Department's shuttle-diplomacy operations, they had earned the collective nickname "The Kissinger Express."

  The Secretary was a spare and generally amiable New Englander. Into his mid-forties, he moved with the ease and vigor of a much younger man even when, as now, he was carrying a thirteen-hour accumulation of jet lag. Except for a short stint as a Marine officer, he had spent his entire adult life in the diplomatic service of the United States. He had reached the peak of his chosen profession because he was good at his job, and he was good at his job because he loved it.

  To Van Lynden, international diplomacy was truly "The Great Game." The give-and-take of high-stakes negotiation, the formation of international policy, the creation of history around the conference table, he relished it all. It beat even a good hand of stud poker, his second passion in life.

  Now, as he began to climb the mobile stairway to the transport's door, Van Lynden felt a familiar surge of adrenaline. Like a bird dog catching the first trace of a scent, he sensed the beginning of a challenge.

  The Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, Steven Rosario, was waiting for him just inside the hatchway.

  "Good evening, Mr. Secretary. Sorry about your vacation being interrupted."

  "No problem, Steve," Van Lynden replied. "I just hope someone was able to scare me up some fresh laundry. Other than this one suit, all I've got in my luggage is a week's worth of dirty fishing clothes."

  "Taken care of, sir. Mrs. Van Lynden sent you a couple of suitcases. She also instructs me to tell you that she sends her love as well. She would have come down herself, except that she knew that you'd be making a fast turnaround."

  "Ah, I guess I'm at her mercy when it comes to my selection of ties, then. So be it. I'll give her a call after we get airborne. Do we have a full crisis team on board?"

  "Yes, sir. We're ready to roll."

  "Good. Since you seem to be running the show, Steve, I suppose we must be bound for South America."

  "Sir?"

  Van Lynden chuckled at the younger man's puzzlement. "The inn I was staying at was on a party line, for God's sake. Thanks to having a madman as a driver, I was just barely able to catch the last direct flight stateside from Wellington this week. Since my recall, I haven't had a second's access to a secure phone or terminal. I don't have the faintest idea where I'm supposed to be going."

  "Uh, Buenos Aires, Mr. Secretary."

  Van Lynden gave Rosario a wry grin and a pat on the shoulder. "Well, that's a start."

  With greenish flame flickering in the throats of its methane-burning scramjets, the big transport lifted off from Andrews and climbed out over the Atlantic and away from the setting sun. Leveling out at 75,000 feet, the Boeing accelerated smoothly through the sound barrier to its triple-sonic cruising speed and began tracking on the Speedbird South flight lane to Argentina.

  In the airliner's comfortably appointed briefing lounge, introductions were being made.

  "Mr. Secretary, this is Dr. Caroline Towers of the National Science Foundation, currently the director of the United States Antarctic Research Program."

  Van Lynden found himself shaking hands with a slender, mid-fortyish, handsome woman in a conservative pantsuit. Her short brown hair appeared more sun bleached than graying and the hand he clasped was strong and work-roughened. Van Lynden suspected that whatever the doctor held her doctorate in, she wasn't of the test-tube-washing and paper-shuffling breed.

  "Dr. Towers is the closest thing we have to a diplomatic representative to the Antarctic," Rosario added.

  "Antarctic? As in the South Pole?"

  "Yes, sir. That's our crisis point."

  "Well, welcome aboard, Doctor. We don't often hear from your end of the world."

  Dr. Towers gave an acknowledging nod. "Generally, we've been able to keep our problems in the family, as it were, Mr. Secretary. At least until now. I just hope that you'll be able to help us contain this current mess."

  "I hope we can too, whatever it is," Van Lynden replied, dropping into one of the padded captain's chairs slotted around the conference table. "Can you and Steve bring me up to speed on the situation? Just the basics on this first run-through."

  "I'm afraid it gets rather complex very rapidly," she replied, drawing the briefing-room control pad in front of her from across the table.

  She touched a series of keys and a flatscreen set into the forward bulkhead lit up, displaying a high-resolution map of the Antarctic continent. The touch of another key expanded the upper left quadrant of the map until it filled the screen, zooming in on a mountainous, glacier-covered extension of land, reaching out like a stumpy tentacle toward the tip of South America.

  "Mr. Secretary, this is the Antarctic Peninsula. The name is a comparatively recent compromise. For years, the British called it Graham Land. The Chileans called it O'Higgins Land. The Argentines referred to it as the San Martin Peninsula, and we called it the Palmer. Each nation marked it so on their own charts. No one would acknowledge any of the other names for fear of also acknowledging the associated territorial claim. Many of us at USARP had hoped that this kind of political posturing was no longer relevant. It appears we were wrong."

  She manipulated the control pad again. Fifteen glowing dots appeared along the peninsula coastline and on several of the offshore islands. Flanking each was a small national-flag symbol.

  "As you can see, several nations currently maintain research installations in the area. We have Palmer Station, Russia has Bellingshausen, and the Republic of Poland has Arktowsky. The others are equally divided between Argentina, Chile, and the United Kingdom.

  "Palmer and the European stations are all comparatively small, operating with, oh, between six and twenty personnel, depending on the season. They are oriented primarily toward pure scientific research. The South American bases are larger, small colonies really, intended to reinforce the territorial claims of their respective governments."

  "Just a moment, Doctor. Didn't the Antarctic Treaty of 1961 abrogate all territorial claims in that area?"

  "No, Mr. Secretary, that's a popular misconception. The Treaty of 1961 places all territorial claims in abeyance for the duration of the treaty. None of the signing powers, including the United States, have ever disavowed their claims. Nor does the treaty prevent the involved nations from taking actions to reinforce those claims."

  "Such as?"

  "Issuing postmarks, assigning magistrates, producing Antarctic citizens."

  "What?" Van Lynden and Rosario almost chorused the exclamation.

  "At the Chilean bases, Mr. Secretary, I have met young people in their teens who, barring the occasional holiday, have spent their entire lives on the ice."

  "That's incredible, Doctor."

  "Not really, not if you think about it. Chile and Argentina have always had a profound interest in the Antarctic, a sense of 'manifest destiny' if you will. They take their claims there very seriously, apparently more so than we even imagined."

  She returned her attention to the wallscreen. "At any rate, at approximately eight-thirty Washington time yesterday morning, Palmer Station"--the American flag next to one of the station symbols near the lower end of the peninsula flashed--"received a distress call from a small British research vessel lying off the British Antarctic Survey base in the South Orkney Islands."

  A U.K. symbol blinked beyond the northeastern tip of the headland.

  "They reported that Argentine troops were taking the station by force. When Palmer tried to get confirmation, neither the research ship n
or the South Orkney base replied.

  "Further investigation revealed that all of the BAS bases on the peninsula had gone off the air almost simultaneously. The station commander at Palmer then declared an emergency and notified our main installation at McMurdo Sound."

  Dr. Towers glanced across the table at the Assistant Secretary of State. "At this point, I believe Mr. Rosario should take over."

  Rosario nodded and picked up the narrative. "Upon being advised of the situation, the commanding admiral of Antarctic Support Command launched an immediate investigation. VXE-6, the Navy's polar-operations squadron, had a C-17 outfitted for photoreconnaissance on an ice-survey flight over the Weddell Sea and it was diverted to the South Orkneys. The aircraft was unable to contact the British either, so upon arrival, it descended to conduct a low-altitude observation pass over the base."

  Rosario had taken over the control pad and now activated a second wallscreen. It began to flick through a series of film-frame blowups. There was a view of a scattering of white-clad men around a cluster of green-painted buildings. Another, closer view of a group of snow-camouflaged men, assault rifles clearly visible slung over their shoulders. A shot of a chunky, buff-bowed naval vessel, the autocannon on its foredeck up-angled and aimed at the camera. Finally, there was a photo of a small motor-sailor lying on its side in the ice-choked shallows, a line of shell holes punched into its hull.

  "The troops are Argentine Marine Corps Buzo Tactico Special Forces. The ship is an Argentine navy icebreaker. Everything else should be pretty much self-explanatory.

  "Our plane circled the area for several minutes, taking photographs and attempting to raise someone at the British station. Eventually, they were challenged and informed that they were violating Argentine national airspace. They were ordered to depart or be fired on."

  "Just a minute, Steve. Dr. Towers, who would these islands belong to if the Antarctic territorial claims weren't in abeyance?"

  The USARP Director shrugged her shoulders. "That's a very good question. Chile, Argentina, and Great Britain all claim the Antarctic Peninsula and its offshore islands. The British by right of first discovery and occupation. The South American states by proximity and occupation. Even the United States and Russia have potentially valid first-discovery claims. Conflicting boundaries and territorial-claim overlays are common throughout the continent, primarily due to the poor grade of cartography and record-keeping by the early explorers."

  "At the moment it appears that possession is nine-tenths of the law," Rosario commented. "Our intelligence now indicates that Argentina has seized all four of the British installations on the peninsula in a well-coordinated military action."

  Van Lynden frowned. "What's the status of the British base personnel?"

  "That's one of the few straight answers we've been able to get out of Buenos Aires since the incident began. With one exception, all the British are alive and well. They will shortly be repatriated through Chile. That one exception is the captain of the British research ship. The Argentines claim he was killed when they were, and I quote, 'forced to take defensive actions.'"

  One of the briefing-room printers began to buzz and rasp softly. Rosario swiveled his chair around and accepted the sheet of hard copy it produced.

  "It's a new estimate on Argentine force deployment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, Mr. Secretary."

  "Let's hear it."

  "Estimated platoon-strength units of the Buzo Tactico at each of the captured British installations and at each of the secondary Argentine bases. At their main San Martin base, they've airlifted in a full mountain-infantry battalion, plus additional light artillery, combat support, and heavy-lift helicopter elements. Currently, they have over two thousand combat troops deployed on the peninsula."

  The Secretary of State remembered his days as a Marine butter bar second lieutenant and what he had learned about the logistics of hostile-environment combat operations. Whatever the Argentines were up to, they were going for broke. An operation of this size and complexity was probably pushing their capacity for long-range power projection right to the limit.

  "My instinctive first question is why?" Van Lynden said. "Why launch a military action that will no doubt scar Argentina's relations with the major powers for years? Why all this over an area that's primarily a scientific curiosity?"

  "Possibly because Antarctica is also the last great untapped pool of natural resources on the surface of the Earth," Dr. Towers replied soberly. "Our mineralogy surveys have discovered indications of a wide spectrum of valuable metals, copper, titanium, iron, silver, even uranium and gold. The South Americans have been concentrating on this line of research far more than we have. They could very well have located commercially viable deposits.

  "In addition," she continued, "we know that the Antarctic has the world's largest deposits of coal, and, we suspect, oil and gas reserves over three times the size of the Alaskan North Slope fields."

  "But what good are they if no one can get at them?"

  "Until recently that has been the case, Mr. Secretary. The Antarctic's nearly impenetrable ice pack and extreme climatic conditions have made commercial development impossible. That's what has preserved the continent in its nearly pristine environmental condition."

  "Probably that's why we were able to get the Treaty of 1961 in the first place," Rosario commented. "None of the signing powers really had anything to lose."

  "Quite right," Towers agreed, "but times and technologies change. In Alaska, Canada, and Siberia, oil drilling and mining operations are routinely being conducted north of the Arctic Circle. Soon, it will be just as feasible to operate in the Antarctic."

  "Such things are currently against international law down there, aren't they?" Van Lynden inquired.

  "Yes. The Wellington Accord of 1991 extended the Antarctic Treaty's ban on mining for a further fifty years." An element of anger and frustration crept into her voice.

  "Many of us in the Antarctic community wanted something more permanent. And, damn it all, until this thing came up, I thought we had it."

  "The international park?"

  "Exactly, Mr. Secretary. For decades, the Treaty states have been considering the concept of having the Antarctic declared an international park under the protection and administration of the United Nations. The entire continent would be held in perpetuity as a wilderness area and a scientific preserve with all commercial exploitation, barring a degree of tourism, banned."

  "But hasn't that always been just a concept, Doctor?" Rosario asked. "I know that in recent years, the United States has come to favor the park idea but that there still wasn't a solid consensus among the Treaty states yet."

  "As I said, Mr. Rosario, times change. Some low-profile but very intense lobbying has been going on within world science circles these past few months. At last we've succeeded in turning several key obstructionist governments. At the next full meeting of the Antarctic Treaty states this July, we were sure that we would have the majority needed to get the act passed and the park created."

  Dr. Towers leaned forward across the table and her voice took on intensity. "Next year, 2007, has been named the second International Geophysical Year. A major Earth sciences program is being planned that will involve almost the entire global scientific community. It will be the premier international research project of this half of the twenty-first century.

  "The original Antarctic Treaty was a direct outgrowth of IGY One back in 1957. The committee we've had working on the park project couldn't imagine a better tribute to the concept of international scientific cooperation than to be able to take the next step with the actual creation of the park."

  Dr. Towers leaned back into the padding of her chair. "Or at least that's how we thought the scenario would go."

  Van Lynden cocked an eyebrow. "Is it necessary to ask who the opposition was?"

  "Argentina and Chile fought us every step of the way. Brazil too, to a lesser extent. Their stake in the Antarctic is somewhat small
er and of a lower national priority. Apparently the Argentines are willing to fight us with more than words."

  "You can almost see their point of view," Rosario mused. "For the last couple of centuries, exploitation has been the name of the game. Then, just as they get ready to do some exploiting of their own, somebody changes the rules on them."

  "Point of view or not, Steve, the Argentines have used armed forces against a close ally of the United States. They have also put their foot through a treaty to which we are a signatory. If I know our boss, he isn't going to take this lightly."

  "He's not, sir."

  Rosario lifted his briefcase onto the surface of the table and thumbed the security lock-check pads. He popped the latches and passed Van Lynden a dark blue folder bearing the embossed golden seal of the presidency.

  "Your instructions, Mr. Secretary. In summary, you are to proceed to Buenos Aires and seek to consult directly with President Sparza. You are to ascertain the intent of the Argentine action and you are to express in the strongest possible terms the opposition of the United States to these acts. You are to request that the Argentine government withdraw their troops and that they abide fully by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961."

  "I gather that those are to be firm requests?"

  "Yes, sir. The President has also sent along an official note of protest to be delivered by you to President Sparza. A copy of the text has been included in your briefing file."

  "Very good. Now, has there been a military response ordered?"

  "Yes, sir. Atlantic Fleet Command has been ordered to dispatch forces south. There is a major British deployment under way as well. CINCLANT will be ready to update you on that situation at your pleasure."

  "Again, very good." Van Lynden opened the file on the table before him. Settling his wire-framed glasses a little, he began to skim the opening paragraphs. After a moment, he looked up.

  "By the way, have the Argentines made any hostile gestures against any of the other peninsula installations--ours, the Chileans', the other European powers'?"

  "There has been nothing overt, barring that one threat to our plane," Dr. Towers replied. "The Chileans seem to be working with them. At least they're maintaining normal station-to-station communications. They've broken off direct contact with everyone else and they are refusing to allow foreign aircraft to land at San Martin or at any other of their bases. This is another major violation of the Antarctic Treaty--" Dr. Towers brought herself up short. "Pardon me, I'm going to have to get used to the fact that the treaty doesn't mean all that much anymore."