Polar Quest Read online

  “Yep. Sure would.”

  Annja leaned closer to the soldier and smiled warmly at him. “I was hoping to see the colonel and ask him a few questions.”

  “About what?”

  “The report from the laboratory about the nature of the artifacts that were found.”

  The soldier frowned. “What do you want to see that for?”

  “I’ve got some questions about the carbon dating exactitude algorithm that I need cleared up.” She smiled and hoped the line of technobabble would suffice. “It’s pretty complicated stuff, but if I can see the report, it’ll help me understand a little better about what it is we’ve got down here.”

  The soldier leaned closer to her. “I hear they’re from outer space.”

  “Could be,” Annja said. “But I won’t know until I see the report. Is there any way you could see your way to helping me get a copy of it?”

  “I would, sure, but I don’t have access to it,” he said.

  Annja sighed. “Why not? I thought you were in charge of everything here.”

  “Well, most things, yeah. But not stuff like that. It’s top secret stuff that gets read only by the colonel. Maybe Major Braden, too, but I’m not sure. Anyway, they get to read it and then I’m pretty sure it gets destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?”

  “If it’s a hard copy, they’ll burn it. If it’s an e-mail they’ll delete the file and make sure it can’t be undeleted.”

  “And they don’t read the reports here?”

  The soldier glanced around. “I’m not supposed to be telling you this or anyone else for that matter, but when a classified message comes in, I route it to the colonel’s private terminal in his shelter.”

  “He’s got a computer in his tent?”

  “Yep.”

  “That must be nice, huh?”

  The soldier grinned. “Rank has its privileges, ma’am.”

  “Indeed it does,” Annja said. “Well, maybe I’d better go see the colonel then about getting a copy of the report for myself, huh?”

  “You can try, but I don’t think he’ll let you see it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s classified stuff. Anything relating to this dig site has already been classified top secret. That means unless you have the proper security clearance, identification and a need-to-know, you aren’t going to get a copy of it.”

  Annja frowned. “I don’t suppose you can whip me up any of that stuff here, can you?”

  “Afraid not, Miss Creed. I’d be glad to help you out but I can’t. Far as I know, the colonel doesn’t show that stuff to anyone. He said something one time about things needing to be kept compartmentalized. Otherwise we’d have havoc back home if people knew we were looking at alien artifacts and whatnot.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” Annja said. “Do you know if the colonel is over at his shelter now?”

  “I don’t know. I think he’s still at breakfast. He and Major Braden have been hanging out quite a bit, but I think that’s because the colonel really enjoys talking with him about security and stuff.”

  Annja smiled. “Yes, that Major Braden certainly has an eye for security.”

  “Your best bet is to wander over and knock on his door. Who knows? He might just be there.”

  Annja smiled at him. “Thank you. I’ll do that.”

  24

  Outside in the dim light, the snow fell harder, coming at Annja in small, dry flakes that pelted the few bits of exposed skin she had. The frozen landscape was brutal and as the wind screamed in her ears; the entire environment seemed almost entirely…dead.

  Colonel Thomson’s shelter was several yards away from the admin shelter, and Annja moved quickly. Some people moved past her, but no one stopped to speak. Out here, it was always a matter of getting from point A to point B in the least amount of time possible.

  And Annja wanted to get to Thomson’s shelter soon before he came back to it and found her there.

  The only way I’m going to be able to do this, she thought, is if I can sneak in and get access to his computer system. She frowned. There would be a security system of some sort on his laptop. She’d need a password and without knowing anything of his past, she’d have a hard time guessing it.

  Still, there might be a way.

  Instead of heading for the colonel’s shelter, Annja turned and headed for her own shelter. Inside, she flipped open her laptop and booted it up. She’d need some way to connect to the outside world, though. And she didn’t have a satellite phone.

  But Dave did. She’d seen him unpack it earlier in the trip when they first arrived. She hadn’t thought much of it then, just figured it was something he always carried. A just-in-case solution in the event he needed it. Now, however, she found herself wondering why he had one.

  Not that it mattered. At the moment, she needed its ability to reach out and touch someone. Annja peered out of the door but saw no one heading toward her shelter. She ducked back inside and went right for Dave’s bag.

  The sat phone was about twelve inches long, and Annja found a USB jack on the side of it that she could hook up to her laptop. She switched it on and found her way to the Internet dial-up connection. It was extremely slow working on dial-up rather than broadband, but at least she had a line out.

  She headed right for the message board she knew her hacker friend Knightmare always hung out on. In the forum area, she posted a quick note:

  K, it’s Digger A. Drop me a line—got a project for you.

  Then she sat back and waited. No sooner had she posted it than her e-mail indicator light turned green. She had a new e-mail waiting for her. Annja clicked over and saw it was from Knightmare.

  Can you video? Go to Yahoo if you can.

  Annja clicked on her Yahoo Instant Messenger video feed and peered into the camera on her laptop. An instant later, Knightmare’s face popped up on her screen.

  “Yo, Annja.”

  “What’s up, Knight?”

  “You rang?”

  Annja smiled. Knightmare was a sixteen-year-old from Beverly Hills who enjoyed raiding all sorts of cryptic government files just for the fun of it. He certainly didn’t need any money. Form what Annja knew, Knightmare’s father was the head of a software company that had just gone public for billions of dollars.

  “Guess where I am?”

  “Someplace cold, judging from the parka.”

  “Antarctica.”

  His face lit up. “No shit?”

  “Really. But I need your help.”

  He nodded, getting his game face on. “What gives?”

  “I can’t go into details right now, but suffice it to say I’m on a covert government job right now. I need to get access to a computer network that is linked up to a defense satellite communications system. Can you help out?”

  Knightmare whistled. “That’s a tall order, pretty lady. Defense networks alone are tough game, but via satellite is tougher still. Their sat systems have multilevel encryption systems designed to kick out the genuinely curious such as myself from pursuing truth and freedom wherever our cyber circuits take us.”

  “Very poetic. Can you or can’t you help?” Annja asked.

  He grinned. “I take it time is of the essence?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can do, then. Gimme a sec.”

  Annja watched him rummage through some file cabinets near his desk. He pulled out a number of CDs and started flipping through them. “I’ve really got to start labeling my software,” he said absently.

  “Knight, I’m not sure how long I have this phone for. I didn’t exactly ask to borrow it.”

  He nodded and slipped a CD into the computer. “Okay, what’s the network protocol?”

  “Uh…”

  He sighed. “Annja, you’re making this tougher than it has to be.”

  “I don’t know what the protocol is. I’m on a classified government operation here. They don’t exactly broadcast it, you know?”

  “Fine
, fine, where are you, then?”

  “Horlick Mountain.”

  “Hang on, I have to find out the latitude and longitude and then overlay that with the geosynchronous orbits of all known defense satellites.” He spent a few seconds typing something into the computer. “Okay, got it. Let’s see, Navstar 5.”

  “Did you say Navstar?”

  “Yeah.”

  Annja frowned. “Okay. Keep going.”

  Knight kept typing. His fingers seemed to fly over the keys, and his eyes never left the screen. It felt weird seeing him look at the computer with such intensity. He wasn’t even looking at Annja, but it felt as if he was.

  “Hang on, I have to route this through a number of cutouts so they can’t trace it back to me. If they do, I’m screwed. My dad said he’d take my computer away.”

  “Not that,” Annja said.

  “Yeah, I’d be forced to hack through my PSP instead and that’s no fun.” He kept typing, rambling off a string of cities as he did so. “Rio, Dubai, Tokyo, Manila, Johannesburg, Stockholm, back to Capetown, over to Mumbai and then back to Wellington. That last one should give them pause.” He chuckled and kept typing.

  “How you doing?” Annja asked. At any moment, she figured Dave would definitely come through the door and see her on his sat phone. Then she’d have a lot of explaining to do.

  “Hang on, I’m picking up the stream of communications now. This will give me the information I need to tap into it. It should be small. How many computers have you seen where you are?”

  “Maybe five or six.”

  “So they can’t have a lot of traffic flowing back and forth. That helps me narrow it down.” He continued typing. “Okay, I think I’ve got it. Stand by.”

  Annja heard him clicking the keys and then saw the broad smile splash across his face. “I’m in.”

  “You can get into the computers?” Annja asked.

  “No, I just hooked on to their network. Cracking the security will take me a little longer. But at least I’ve got access. You proud of me or what?”

  “Excessively,” Annja said. “But I need access to one particular computer terminal.”

  “Is it on the network?”

  “I think so, yes. One of the people I spoke to said that he sent traffic and e-mails over to that terminal.”

  “Good, that means I can piggyback onto it.” Knightmare continued typing. “You know where it would be?”

  “Well, it wasn’t grouped with the other five computers, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  He frowned. “Lemme try something…”

  Annja glanced at the door. She needed to hurry this along or Dave would find out. And since she wasn’t yet sure if he was entirely trustworthy, she didn’t want him to know what was going on.

  “Got it.”

  Annja looked up. “You found the computer?”

  “Yep. Registered to a Colonel Thomson. Next time tell me, okay? That would have cut down on my time by like thirty seconds.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What do you need to know?”

  “You’re into his computer?”

  “Working on it, Annja. I’m not Superman, you know.” He typed a few more keys. “Looks like he’s got a nice long alphanumeric string here. Time for me to step aside and let the Icebreaker do his thing.”

  “Icebreaker?”

  “Little program I wrote some time back. It can crunch numbers and letters roughly ten thousand times faster than I can. In a single minute it can sometimes break a computer code. Cool, huh?”

  “Very,” Annja admitted.

  Knightmare slapped a new CD into the computer. “Hold on just a second…”

  Annja looked at the door. Did someone just walk by outside? She thought she could see a shadow in the light silhouetted against the wall of the shelter. Was it Dave? Or maybe Garin?

  “Knight, any luck on that?” she asked urgently.

  “I need another minute, Annja. I’m going as fast as I can.”

  “Go faster. My cover might be blown here at any second.”

  “Your cover?”

  Annja sighed. “You know what I mean.”

  “Someone’s been watching too many spy movies.”

  “Yeah,” Annja said. “That’s exactly right.”

  “Hold on, I think I got something.”

  Annja leaned closer to the computer, as if she wanted to be right there looking over Knight’s shoulder as he read his screen.

  “Yep, I think I’ve got it. I’m in his hard drive.”

  Annja rubbed her hands together. “I need a certain file.”

  “Which one, there are a lot of them here…looks like the colonel likes his pornography, too.”

  Annja shook her head. “I don’t need that.”

  “What’s the name of the file?”

  She could hear laughing now. Someone was outside her shelter. “Look for something labeled something like Laboratory Report or something similar.”

  “Hang on.”

  The walls of the shelter kept the noise to a minimum and it was difficult trying to figure out if the voices she heard were of Dave and someone else talking or not. She couldn’t afford to take the risk. She might need to use the sat phone again.

  “Look, Knight, I need that file.”

  “There’s nothing here, Annja. No files like that one.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Can you send me any documents on the hard drive?”

  Knight looked at her. “Well, yeah, but you’re on a dial-up connection, right? It would take a while.”

  “Send me anything from the past week or so.”

  Knightmare typed a few keys. “That’s much better. Just three files. I’m sending them to you now.”

  Annja hit Refresh and then after another grueling minute, saw her green light flash. She had mail.

  “I think that’s it, Annja. I’ve got to get off the line now. They’ve detected me on the system.”

  “They have?” Annja asked, alarmed.

  “Yeah, be careful. There’s a chance they could work it back to you if they know you’ve got a sat phone.”

  “They don’t.”

  “Be careful anyway. I’m out.”

  Annja’s screen went dark and she quickly unplugged the sat phone and put it back in Dave’s backpack. She rushed back to her bed and sat down with her laptop as the door to the shelter opened and Dave walked in.

  “Hey.”

  Annja looked up and smiled. “Hey yourself.”

  “Any luck with Thomson?”

  Annja shook her head. “Nah, he wasn’t in so I just left and came back here. I wanted to jot down a few ideas I had in my journal. Nothing too elaborate, but you know…”

  Dave came closer to her. “Listen, sorry about how Zach and I got all over you at the cafeteria.”

  “It’s all right.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not. You’ve obviously got some thoughts on this and we didn’t respect them. I’m sorry for my part and I hope you weren’t too offended.”

  Annja smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  Dave nodded. “You coming to the dig site? I was just on my way down there when I thought I’d stop by and see if you were here.”

  Annja glanced at her laptop. She wanted to read that file now.

  Badly.

  But staying might look suspicious. Instead, she closed her laptop and smiled. “Yeah, I’m coming. Just let me get my stuff.”

  25

  Dave and Annja walked through the wind toward the dig site. Dave kept his head down, trying to ward off the cold as much as possible. Annja followed in his wake, using his larger body as a shield.

  When they reached the entrance, Dave held the door and Annja ducked inside. The warm air greeted them and she breathed easier now that they were out of the cold. “All this exposure to extremes of temperature can’t be good for my health,” Annja said. “Anyone ever do any research to see how that affects the human body?�
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  Dave shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’d rather be warm than cold.”

  Annja smiled. “At this point, I think that’s a rather foregone conclusion. Don’t you?”

  “Well, maybe.” Dave pointed at the entrance to the caverns. “You going down?”

  “Yeah.” Annja showed her identification to the armed guards and then led the way down the sloping walkway to the tunnel. As she walked, she was aware of Dave behind her. He wasn’t saying anything.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Huh? Yeah, fine. I was just thinking about something, that’s all.”

  “What about?” Annja asked. “It’s weird not hearing much of anything down here. It’s like we could get lost and scream and no one would hear us.”

  “We are basically inside a mountain, if you think about it,” Dave said. “Surrounded on all sides by rock and dirt. All that weight above and below us, pushing in on all sides like some giant vise.”

  Annja glanced back at him. “Are you trying to make me claustrophobic?”

  “Is it working?”

  Annja shook her head. “Remind me to tell you about the time I was locked in a coffin for several hours.”

  “Underground?”

  “No, in a funeral home. But the effect was the same. I had to make peace with being in that tight spot. And those caskets are remarkably airtight. I barely made it out of there alive.”

  Dave chuckled. “That must have been one for the journal.”

  “The what?”

  “Journal. What you were working on when I came back to the shelter.”

  Annja nodded quickly. “Well, yeah, it would have been, but I wasn’t keeping a journal back then. That’s only something I took up recently when my life started taking strange twists and turns that even I can’t figure out.”

  “Like coming down to the bottom of the world?”

  “Exactly.”

  Dave smiled and Annja turned back around. “What about you? Do you ever write things down?”

  “Never.”

  “So secretive, huh?” Annja laughed. “Got all sorts of things no one should ever know about rattling around in your head?”