Which was why, when Schofield saw Gant lift the small hand-held crossbow?it was about the size of a .44 Magnum?from inside the food can, he knew that these men were not scientists from d'Urville. They were soldiers. Elite soldiers.
Cleverly, they had anticipated that he would know the names of all the scientists at d'Urville, so they had appropriated their names. To add to the illusion, they had also brought with them two actual scientists from the French research station?Luc Champion and Henri Rae?people whom the residents of Wilkes would know personally.
The final touch was probably the best touch of all: they had allowed Luc Champion, one of the civilians, to take the lead when the Marines had arrived at Wilkes Ice Station, bolstering the illusion that they were all merely scientists, following the lead of their superior.
That the French had taken five of the residents of Wilkes Ice Station?innocent civilians?out on a hovercraft under the pretense that they were being taken back to safety and then executed them in the middle of the snow plains made Schofield furious. In a detached corner of his mind, he conjured up a picture of what the scene must have looked like? the American scientists, men and women, crying, pleading, begging for their lives as the French soldiers moved among them, leveling their pistols at their heads and blasting their brains all over the inside of the hovercraft.
That at least two French scientists?Champion and Rae? had gone along with the French commandos made Schofield even angrier. What could they have been promised that would make them party to the murder of innocent academics?
The answer, unfortunately, was simple.
They would be given the first opportunity to study the spacecraft when the French got their hands on it.
Frantic voices shouted over Schofield's helmet intercom. "?return fire!"
"?clear!"
"?Samurai is down! Fox is down!"
"?can't get a fucking shot?"
Schofield looked out from behind the doorway and saw Gant lying flat on her back on the catwalk halfway between the dining room and the main entrance passageway. She wasn't moving.
His gaze shifted to Augustine Lau, lying sprawled out on the catwalk in the dining room doorway. Lau's eyes were wide open, his face covered in blood, blood that had sprayed up from his own stomach as Latissier's barrage of gunfire had assailed him from practically point-blank range.
Not far from Schofield, in the tunnel leading to the main entrance to the station, Buck Riley leaned out and returned fire with his MP-5, drowning out the tinny rat-a-tat sound of the French-made FA-MAS with the deep, puncturelike firing sound of the German-made MP-5. Next to him, Hollywood did the same.
Schofield snapped around to look over at Montana, huddled in the entrance to the western tunnel. "Montana. You OK?"
When Latissier had opened fire a few moments earlier, Montana and Lau had been the closest men to him, standing in the doorway to the dining room. When Latissier's gun came up firing, Montana had been quick enough to duck back behind the doorway. Lau hadn't.
And while Lau had performed what infantry soldiers call the danse macabre under the brutal weight of Latissier's fire, Montana had scrambled back along the catwalk to the nearest point of safety, the west tunnel.
Schofield saw Montana speak into his helmet mike fifty feet away. His gravelly voice came over Schofield's headset "Check that, Scarecrow. I'm a little shook up, but I'm OK."
"Good."
More bullets slammed into the ice above Schofield's head. Schofield ducked back behind the doorway. Then, quickly, he peered out around the door frame. But this time as he did so he heard a strange whistling sound.
With a sharp thwump, a four-inch-long arrow lodged into the ice barely five centimeters from Schofield's right eye.
Schofield looked up and saw Petard in the dining room, with his crossbow raised. No sooner had Petard fired his crossbow than Luc Champion hurled a short-barreled submachine gun over to him and Petard rejoined the battle with a sharp volley of gunfire.
Peering around the door frame, Schofield looked quickly over at Gant again. She was still lying motionless on the catwalk, halfway between the dining room and the main entrance tunnel.
And then suddenly her arm moved.
It must have been a reflex of some sort as she slowly regained consciousness.
Schofield saw it instantly and spoke into his helmet mike. "This is Scarecrow; this is Scarecrow. Fox is still alive. I repeat, Fox is still alive. But she's out in the open. I need cover so I can go out there and get her. Confirm."
Voices came in like a roll call. "Hollywood, check that!"
"Rebound, check that!"
"Montana, check that."
"Book, check that," Buck Riley said. "You're all clear, Scarecrow. Go!"
"All right, then, now!" Schofield yelled as he broke cover and scampered out onto the catwalk.
All around him, in perfect unison, the Marines whipped out from their cover positions and returned fire at the dining room. The noise was deafening. The ice walls of the dining room exploded into a thousand pockmarks. The combined strength of the assault forced Latissier and Petard to cease firing for a moment and dive for cover.
Out on the catwalk, Schofield fell to his knees next to Gant.
He looked down at her head. The arrow from Cuvier's crossbow had lodged in the forehead guard of her Kevlar helmet, and a narrow stream of blood ran out from her forehead and down the side of her nose.
Seeing the blood, Schofield leaned closer and saw that the force of the crossbow had been so strong that the arrow had penetrated Gant's helmet. Nearly a whole inch of the arrow had passed through the Kevlar so that now its glistening silver tip was poised right in front of Gant's forehead.
The helmet had held the arrow clear of her skull by millimeters.
Not even that. The razor-sharp point of the arrow had actually nicked her skin, drawing blood.
"Come on; let's go," Schofield said, even though he was sure Gant couldn't hear him. The Marines' cover fire continued all around them as Schofield dragged Gant back along the catwalk, toward the main entrance passageway.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the French commandos popped up from behind a hole in the wall of the dining room, with his rifle raised.
Still dragging Gant, Schofield quickly brought his pistol up, aimed through the sights, and loosed two quick rounds. If the FA-MAS sounded tinny, and the MP-5 sounded like puncture noises, then Schofield's I.M.I. "Desert Eagle" automatic pistol sounded like a cannon. The French commando's head exploded in a splash of red as both rounds found their mark on the bridge of his nose. His head jolted back sharply?twice?and he dropped instantly out of sight
"Get out of there, Scarecrow! Move!" Riley's voice yelled through Schofield's earpiece.
"I'm almost there!" Schofield yelled above the gunfire.
Suddenly another voice came over the intercom.
It was calm, clinical. There was no gunfire in the background behind it.
"Marine Force, this is Snake, I am still at my post outside. I report that I now have visual on six more hostiles exiting the second French hovercraft. I repeat I am looking at six more armed men disembarking the French hovercraft and approaching the main entrance of the station."
A sudden jarring shot rang out over the intercom. Snake Kaplan's sniper rifle.
"Marine Force, this is Snake. Make that five more hostiles approaching the main entrance of the station."
Schofield looked back at the tunnel leading to the main entrance behind him. That was where he and Gant were heading. Riley and Hollywood were there right now, firing at the dining room. Beside them, Sergeant Mitch "Ratman" Healy was doing the same.
And then suddenly, without warning, Healy's chest exploded. Shot from behind by a high-powered weapon.
Healy convulsed violently as a gout of blood spewed out from his rib cage. The force of the impact and the subsequent nervous convulsion bent his back forward at an obscene angle, and Schofield heard a sickening crack as the young soldier's spine bro
ke.
Riley and Hollywood were out of the entrance passageway in a nanosecond. As they fired into the tunnel behind them, at some unseen enemy, they backed quickly toward the nearest rung-ladder that led down to B-deck.
Unfortunately, since they had only just arrived at the station, the six Marines who had gone with Riley to investigate the crashed hovercraft had been gathered around the main entrance passageway when the fighting had broken out. Which meant that now they were caught in between two hostile forces: one in the dining room in front of them and another coming in through the main entrance behind them.
Schofield saw this. "Book! Go down! Go down! Take your guys down to B-deck!"
"Already on it, Scarecrow."
Schofield and Gant were in an even worse position. Caught out on the catwalk between the dining room and the main entrance passageway, they had nowhere to go, no doorways to hide behind, no passageways to duck into. Just a metal catwalk three feet wide, bounded on one side by a sheer ice wall and on the other by a seventy-foot drop.
And any second now the second French team would be bursting in through the main entrance passageway and Schofield and Gant would be the first thing they saw.
A chunk of ice exploded next to Schofield's head, and he spun around. Petard was back on his feet in the dining room. Firing hard with his assault rifle. Schofield leveled his Desert Eagle at the dining room and fired six rapid shots back at Petard.
He looked back at the main entrance.
Ten seconds, at the most.
"Shit," he said aloud, looking at Gant, limp in his arms. "Shit."
He looked down over the railing of the catwalk and saw the pool of water way down at the bottom of the station. It couldn't have been more than sixty or seventy feet. They could survive the fall . . . .
No way.
Schofield looked at the catwalk on which he stood and then at the ice wall behind him.
Better.
"Scarecrow, you better get out of there!" It was Montana. He was now out on the catwalk, on the southern side of the station. From where he was standing he could see into the main entrance tunnel on the northern side. Whatever he saw there wasn't good.
"I'm trying, I'm trying," Schofield said.
Schofield fired off two more shots at Petard in the dining room before holstering his pistol.
Then he quickly reached over his shoulder and pulled his Maghook from its holster on his back. The Armalite MH-12 looks a little like an old-fashioned Tommy gun. It has two pistol grips: one normal grip with a trigger and one forward, support grip below the muzzle. In effect the Maghook is a gun, a compact, two-handed launcher that fires a grappling hook from its muzzle at tremendous speed.
At Schofield's feet, Gant began to groan.
Schofield pointed his launcher at the ice wall and fired. A loud metallic whump rang out as the grappling hook shot out from the muzzle and slammed into the ice wall. The hook exploded right through the wall, into the dining room. Once on the other side, its "claws" snapped open.
"Scarecrow! Get moving!"
Schofield turned, just as Gant groggily got to her feet beside him.
"Grab my shoulders," he said to her.
"Wha?huh?"
"Never mind. Just hold on," Schofield said as he threw her arms over his shoulders. The two of them stood close, nose to nose. In any other circumstance, it would have looked like an intimate clinch, two lovers about to kiss?but not now. Holding Gant tightly, Schofield spun and leaned his butt up against the railing.
He looked back toward the main entrance tunnel and saw shadows moving quickly over the ice walls of the passageway. Gunfire began to spew out from within the passageway.
"Hold tight," he said to Gant.
And then, with both hands holding the launcher behind Gant's back?and with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck?Schofield shifted his weight backward and the two of them tumbled over the railing and fell out into space.
No sooner had Schofield and Gant fallen clear of the railing than it was assaulted by a torrent of bullets. A brilliant cascade of white-orange impact sparks exploded above their heads as they dropped clear of the catwalk.
Schofield and Gant fell.
The Maghook's cable splayed out above them. They whipped past B-deck, past Riley and Hollywood, who spun around at the unexpected sight of a pair of bodies dropping past them.
Then Schofield hit a black button on the forward grip of the launcher and a clamping mechanism inside the muzzle bit into the unspooling cable.
Schofield and Gant jolted to a sudden stop, just below B-deck, and the Maghook's cable began to swing them in toward the catwalk. They swung in fast, over the C-deck catwalk, and dropped down onto the metal gangway.
As soon as his feet hit the catwalk, Schofield pressed down twice on the trigger of the launcher. When he did so, up on A-deck, the grappling hook's claws responded by immediately collapsing inward with a sharp snick, and the hook was sucked back through the hole it had created in the dining room wall. The grappling hook fell down into the central shaft of the ice station, reeled in by the launcher. In a couple of seconds it was back in Schofield's hands, and he and Gant hurried inside the nearest doorway.
"Grenade!"
Riley and Hollywood ran flat out down the northern tunnel of B-deck and dived around the corner.
Just as they cleared the corner a booming explosion rocked the ice tunnel behind them. Hard on the heels of the explosion came the concussion wave and then?
Riley and Hollywood ducked behind the corner as a swarm of dartlike objects shot past them at phenomenal speed and thudded into the opposite wall of the tunnel.
The two Marines looked at each other in astonishment.
A fragmentation charge.
A fragmentation charge is basically a conventional grenade that has been filled with hundreds of tiny pieces of metal? tiny sharp-edged, skewed pieces of metal designed to be as difficult as possible to extract from the human body. When the charge detonates, it sends a wave of these lethal fragments rocketing out in every direction.
"I've always said it," Riley said wryly as he popped his clip and jammed a fresh magazine into the receiver of his MP-5. "Always said it: never trust the fucking French. There's just something about 'em. Maybe it's those beady little eyes they all got. Those assholes are supposed to be our goddamn allies."
"Fuckin' French," Hollywood agreed thoughtfully as he peered around the corner with one eye.
His jaw dropped. "Oh, shit?"
"What?" Riley spun around just in time to see a second grenade bounce around the corner and come to rest five feet away from them.
Five feet.
Out in the open.
There was nowhere to go. They couldn't get clear. Couldn't run down the corridor and get away in ti?
Riley launched himself forward. Toward the grenade. He slid along the frost-covered floor, feet first, soccer-style. When he was within range he let loose with a powerful kick and sent the grenade skittling back down the north tunnel, back toward the central shaft.
As Riley kicked the grenade, Hollywood lunged forward and grabbed him by the shoulder plates and yanked him back behind the corner.
The grenade detonated.
Another deafening explosion boomed out.
A new wave of metal shards blasted out from the corridor, whipped past Riley and Hollywood, and slammed into the wall opposite them.
Hollywood turned and looked at Riley. "Fuck my Roman sandals, man, this is some serious fucking catastrophe."
Riley was already up on his feet. "Come on; we're not staying here."
He looked over toward the other side of the north tunnel and saw Rebound appear at the opposite corner. With him were Corporal Georgio "Legs" Lane and Sergeant Gena "Mother" Newman. They must have come round from the western side of B-deck.
Riley said, "All right, everyone, listen up. As far as I'm concerned, this is now a split op. If we cluster and get cornered, we're all gonna be turned into strawberry fuckin' do-nuts. W
e have to split up. Rebound, Legs, Mother, you head back west, round the outer tunnel. Hollywood and I'll go east. Once we figure out where we are and what we can do with our position, then we can figure out how the hell we're going to regroup with the others and nail these fuckers. You all OK with that?"
There were no objections. Rebound and the others quickly got to their feet and hustled off down the opposite ice tunnel.
Riley and Hollywood began to run east, following the curve of the outer tunnel.
As he ran, Riley said, "All right, what's this? B-deck, right. OK. What's on B-deck?"
"I don't?" Hollywood cut himself off as they cleared the bend in the tunnel and saw what lay ahead of them.
Both men stopped instantly and immediately felt their blood run cold.
Schofield fired up into the central shaft of Wilkes Ice Station with his Desert Eagle.
He and Gant were down on C-deck, inside a room that opened out onto the central catwalk. Schofield stood in the doorway, gun in hand, looking out across the central shaft and up at A-deck.
Behind him, inside whatever room this was, Gant was down on her haunches, shaking off her dizziness. She had taken off her helmet, revealing a short crop of snow-white blond hair.
Gant looked curiously at her helmet, at the arrow lodged in it. She shook her head and put the helmet back on, arrow and all. She also donned her anti-flash glasses, concealing much of the thin line of dried blood that ran down from her forehead to her chin. Then she grabbed her MP-5 determinedly and joined Schofield at the doorway.
"You OK?" Schofield asked over his shoulder as he aimed his pistol up at A-deck.
"Yeah; did I miss anything?"
"Did you see the part where that bunch of French pricks posing as scientists decided to pull guns on us?" Schofield fired off another round.
"Yeah, I caught that part."
"What about the part where we found out that our new friends had six more guys stashed away in their hovercraft?"
"No, missed that."
"Well, that's the"?he fired off another angry round? "story so far."
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