'How long do you estimate it would take to drift sixty miles?'
Friend thought a moment, then said, 'Taking into account the sweep of the currents in that part of the Antarctic, I should say no more than thirty-six hours.'
'Is there no way to stop the drift?' asked Loren.
'I don't see how' Friend shook his head. 'No, I doubt if a thousand nuclear bombs could melt enough of the ice shelf to make a difference. But, look, this is all theoretical. What else could possibly cause the Shelf to go drifting out to sea?'
Pitt looked at Sandecker, who returned the stare. Both men were envisioning the same nightmare, and both read each other's mind. Pitt's stare moved to Loren.
'The Wolfs' nanotech facility that processes minerals from seawater, how far is it from the Ross Ice Shelf?' he asked her.
Loren's eyes widened. 'Surely, you don't think-'
'How far?' Pitt gently pressured.
Finally, she drew a deep breath. 'The plant sits right on the edge.'
Pitt turned his attention to Friend. 'Do you have an estimate of the Ross Ice Shelf's size, Doctor?'
'It's immense,' said Friend, stretching out his hands for effect. 'I can't give you exact dimensions. All I know is that it's the world's largest body of floating ice.'
'Give me a few minutes,' said Yaeger, as he opened his laptop computer and began typing on the keyboard. They all sat quietly and watched while Yaeger linked up with his computer network at NUMA headquarters. Within a few minutes, he was reading off the data on his monitor. 'Estimates of its mass range as high as two hundred and ten thousand square miles, making it approximately the size of Texas. The circumference, not counting the perimeter facing the sea, is nearly fourteen hundred miles. Thickness runs from eleven hundred to twenty-three hundred feet. Ice scientists liken it to a gigantic floating raft' Yaeger looked up at the faces absorbed in his report. 'There is, of course, a mountain of additional information on the ice shelf, but those are the essentials.'
'How is it possible,' asked Pat, 'for man to force two hundred and ten thousand square miles of ice to crack and move apart?'
'I haven't the foggiest clue,' said Pitt. 'But I'll bet the farm the Wolf family has planned and worked for three generations to do just that.'
'Good Lord!' muttered Friend. 'It's unthinkable.'
'The pieces,' said Giordino darkly, 'are coming together.'
'By whatever means, they intend to break the ice shelf away from land and move it out to sea, upsetting Earth's rotation and causing an increase in its wobble. Once the imbalance is in the critical stage, a polar shift and a crust displacement will occur. Then the Wolfs' megaships, after surviving the resulting tidal waves, will be swept out to sea, where they'll drift before cruising around the altered Earth for several rears until the upheaval abates. When they are satisfied that Earth is livable again, they'll come ashore and establish a new order, the Fourth Empire, on the bodies of seven billion people, along with the mass destruction of animal and sea life.'
Everyone seated in the truck looked stricken, faces locked in abhorrence and despair. No one could conceive of such a horror. No mind could grasp the total inhumanity of such an act.
'God help us all,' Loren murmured softly.
Pitt looked at Sandecker. 'You must inform the President.'
'I've kept his science board and chief of staff, Joe Flynn, up to date on our investigation, but until now no one has taken the threat seriously.'
'They'd better reconsider damned quick,' said Giordino.
'We'd better rethink our options,' said Pitt, 'and come up with a plan of action. With only three days to go, we haven't got much time. Not if we want to stop the Wolfs from launching an apocalypse.'
36
The pilot lined up the Destiny Enterprises company jet for Ids approach and settled down on the long ice runway without the slightest hint of a bump. The plane, the last one of the fleet that had been sold off, was a custom-built Japanese Dragonfire twin-engine jet with no markings or identification numbers on its fuselage, wings, or tail. It was painted white and blended in with the snowy landscape, as it taxied toward what looked like a steep cliff against a high mountain covered with ice.
When the aircraft was less than two hundred yards from smashing into the mountain, the ice cliff miraculously parted, revealing a vast grottolike interior. The pilot slowly pulled back on the throttles, bringing the jet to a stop in the middle of the hangar, which slave labor had carved out of the mountain nearly sixty years earlier. The jet engines whined briefly, before their turbines decreased their rotation and slowly came to a quiet rest. Behind, the ponderous ice doors closed on a series of solid rubber wheels.
There were two other aircraft parked in the hangar, both Airbus Industrie military versions of the A340- 300. One was capable of carrying 295 passengers and twenty tons of freight. The other had been built purely as a cargo carrier. Both had maintenance men checking over the engines and filling the fuel tanks for the coming evacuation of Wolf personnel to the safety of the big superships waiting within the safety of the Chilean fjord.
The great hangar was a beehive of quiet activity. Workers in the various Wolf colored uniforms moved silently, conversing softly, as they packed the hundred or more wooden crates with the artifacts and wealth of Amenes, along with the looted art treasures from World War II and the sacred Nazi relics, all being readied for transportation to the Ulrich Wolf.
Fifty men in the standard Destiny Enterprises black security uniform stood at attention as Karl Wolf, along with his sister Elsie, exited the aircraft. He was wearing Alpine ski pants and a big suede jacket fined with alpaca wool. Elsie was dressed in a one-piece ski suit under a knee-length fur coat.
The man who directed the transportation project waited at the bottom of the boarding steps as they stepped to the ground.
'Cousin Karl, cousin Elsie, you do us an honor by coming.'
'Cousin Horst,' Karl greeted him. 'I felt it my duty to observe the doomsday system in its final stages.'
'An hour that is near at hand,' Elsie added proudly.
'How goes the evacuation?' asked Karl.
'Cargo and passengers are scheduled to arrive on the Ulrich Wolf ten hours before the cataclysm,' Horst assured him.
Then their brother, Hugo, and sister, Blondi, stepped forward to greet them. They took turns embracing.
'Welcome back to Valhalla,' Blondi greeted Karl.
'Other business has kept me away too long,' said Karl.
Hugo, who was the chief of the family security force, gestured toward a small electric automobile, one of a fleet of utility and heavy equipment vehicles that ran on batteries, to prevent a buildup of carbon monoxide inside the caverns. 'We'll take you to the control center, where you can see for yourself how we begin the end of the old world.'
'After I inspect your guards,' said Karl. Trailed by Elsie, he walked down the line of security guards in their black uniforms, who stood ramrod straight, with their P-10 automatics strapped to their hips and Bushmaster M17S rifles slung over their shoulders. He stopped occasionally and asked a guard his nationality and military history. When he reached the end of the line, he nodded in satisfaction.
'An intrepid company of men. You've done well, Hugo. They look like they can handle any intrusion.'
'Their orders are to shoot to kill any unidentified intruder that enters our perimeter.'
'I hope they perform with greater efficiency than Erich's men at the shipyard.'
'There will be no failure at this end,' Hugo said firmly. 'I promise you, brother.'
'Any sign of encroachment?'
'None,' answered Blondi. 'Our detection-control unit has seen no activity within a hundred and fifty miles of the facility.'
Elsie looked at her. 'One hundred and fifty miles does not seem far.'
