Ice Station ss-1

by Matthew Reilly

  The two men arrived at a corner console. It consisted of two screens mounted above a keyboard. Next to the screens was a broadcast-quality reel-to-reel recording machine.

  "Wanna hear it?" Somerville asked, his finger poised above the PLAY button on the reel-to-reel machine.

  "Shoot."

  Emmett Somerville hit the switch. The reels began to rotate.

  At first Cameron heard nothing, then static. He looked expectantly at Emmett the Geek.

  "It's coming," Somerville said.

  There was a wash of some more static and then, suddenly, voices.

  "?copy, one-three-four-six-two-five? "

  "?contact lost due to ionospheric disturbance?"

  "-?forward team?"

  "?Scarecrow? "

  "?minus sixty-six point five? "

  "?solar flare disrupting radio?"

  "?one-fifteen, twenty minutes, twelve seconds east?"

  "?how," static, "get there so?"

  "?secondary team en route?"

  Pete Cameron slowly shut his eyes. It was another bum steer. Just more indecipherable military gobbledygook.

  The transmission ended and he turned and saw that Somerville was watching him eagerly. Clearly, the SETI technician wanted something to come of his discovery. He was a nobody. Worse, a nobody out in the middle of nowhere. A guy who probably just wanted to see his name in the Washington Post in anything other than an obituary. Cameron felt sorry for him. He sighed.

  "Could you play it again for me," he said, reluctantly pulling out his notepad.

  Somerville practically leaped for the REWIND button.

  The tape played again and Cameron dutifully took notes.

  It was ironic, Schofield thought, that Petard, the last French commando, should be killed by one of his own weapons. Especially when it was a weapon that France had obtained from the United States by virtue of their alliance under NATO.

  The M18A1 mine is better known throughout the world as the "Claymore." It is made up of a concave porcelain plate that contains hundreds of ball bearings embedded in a six-hundred-gram wad of C-4 plastic explosive. In effect, a Claymore is a directable fragmentation grenade?its lethality is dependent not on the force of its relatively small initial blast, but rather on the devastating fan-shaped spray of shrapnel that it emits. If one sits behind a Claymore, one will not be harmed by its shrapnel blast. If one is caught in front of it, one will be shredded to pieces.

  The most well-known characteristic of the Claymore, however, is the simple instruction label that one finds embossed on the forward face of the mine. It reads: THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY.

  Or, in French, BRAQUEZ CE CÔTÉ SUR L'ENEMMI.

  If you ever found yourself looking at those words, you knew you were looking at the wrong end of a Claymore.

  The two Claymores in the drilling room had been central to the French commandos' last-ditch plan to beat the Marines. After it was all over, Schofield pieced together that plan:

  They had sent someone down to the drilling room, ahead of the others. Once there, that person had set up the two Claymores so that they faced the door. The Claymores would then be connected to a trip wire.

  Then, the other French commandos would pretend to retreat to the drilling room, deliberately allowing the Marines to follow them.

  Of course, the Marines would know that the drilling room was a dead end, so they would think that the French, in their desperate attempt to flee, had run themselves into a corner, into a trap.

  Surrender would be inevitable.

  But as the Marines entered the drilling room to secure the French troops, they would break the trip wire and set off the two Claymores. The Marines would be cut to ribbons.

  It was an audacious plan. A plan that would have changed the course of the battle.

  And it was cunning, too. It turned a full-scale retreat? hell, a total surrender?into a decisive counterattack.

  But what Petard and the French had not accounted for was that one of the American soldiers might come upon their trap while they were setting it.

  Schofield was proud of Rebound. Proud of how the young Marine had handled the situation.

  Rather than blow the lid on the French plan and continue with unpredictable hand-to-hand fighting, Rebound had coolly allowed the French to believe that their plan was still afoot.

  But he had changed one thing.

  He had turned the Claymores around.

  That was what Petard had seen when Rebound had spoken to him in the drilling room. He had seen those chilling words.

  THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY.

  Pointing at him.

  Rebound had got the better of him. And when Rebound stepped forward across the trip wire, it was to be the last thing that Petard ever saw. The battle, at last, was over.

  An hour later, the station's lights were back on and all of the bodies, French and American, had been found and accounted for. At least, those bodies that could be found.

  The French had lost four men to the killer whales; the Americans, one. Eight other French commandos and two more U.S. Marines?Hollywood and Ratman?had been found in various locations around the ice station. They had all been confirmed dead.

  The Americans also had two wounded, both quite seriously. Mother, who had lost one of her legs to the killer whale, and, rather surprisingly, Augustine "Samurai" Lau, the very first Marine to have been gunned down by the French.

  Mother was faring better than Samurai. Since her wound was a localized one?confined to the lower extremity of her left leg?she was still conscious. In fact, she still had full movement in all of her other limbs. The flow of blood from the wound had been stopped, and the methadone took care of what pain there was. The only enemy that remained was shock. Thus it was decided that Mother would remain in her storeroom on E-deck, under constant supervision. To move her might trigger a fit.

  Samurai, on the other hand, was in a much worse state. He was in a self-induced coma, his stomach having been ripped to shreds by Latissier's barrage of gunfire at the very beginning of the battle.

  The young Marine's body had responded to the sudden trauma in the only way it knew how?it had switched itself off. At the time they found him alive, Schofield had marveled at the ability of the human body to take care of itself in the face of such extreme crisis. No amount of methadone or morphine could have quelled the pain of that many gunshot wounds. So Samurai's body had done the next-best thing: it had simply turned off its sensory apparatus and was now awaiting external help.

  The problem was whether or not Schofield could provide that external help.

  Anything greater than basic medical knowledge is rare in a frontline unit. The closest thing such units have to a doctor is the team medic, who is usually a low-level Corporal. Legs Lane had been Schofield's medic, and he was now deader than dead.

  Schofield walked quickly around the A-deck catwalk. He'd just come up from E-deck, where he had checked on Mother, and was now wearing a new pair of silver antiflash glasses. Mother had given them to him. She'd said that in her state, she wouldn't be needing them anymore.

  Schofield poked his head around the dining room door. "What do you think, Rebound?" he said.

  Inside the dining room, Rebound was working feverishly over Samurai's inanimate body. The body lay flat on its back on a table in the center of the room. Blood dripped off the edges of the table, forming a red puddle on the cold porcelain floor.

  Rebound looked up from what he was doing. He shook his head in exasperation.

  "I can't keep up with the blood loss," he said to Schofield. "There's just too much internal damage. His whole gut's been blown apart."

  Rebound wiped his forehead. A slick of blood appeared above his eyes. He looked hard at Schofield. 'This is way out of my league, sir. He needs someone who knows what he's doing. He needs a doctor."

  Schofield stared at Samurai's prone body for a few seconds.

  "Just do what you can," he said, and then he left the room.

  "OK, people, list
en up," Schofield said. "We don't have much time, so I'm going to keep this short."

  The six remaining able-bodied Marines were gathered around the pool on E-deck. They all stood in a wide circle. Schofield stood in the middle.

  Schofield's voice echoed up through the shaft of the empty station: "This station is obviously a lot hotter than we originally thought. I'm thinking that if the French were willing to take a chance to grab it, others will, too. And whoever those others might be, by now they've had some time to get their shit together and prepare for a full-scale attack. Have no doubt, people, if anyone else decides to hit this station they will almost certainly be better prepared and more heavily armed than those French pricks we just exterminated. Opinions?"

  "Concur," Buck Riley said.

  "Same," Snake said. Book Riley and Snake Kaplan were the two most senior enlisted men in the unit. It meant something that they both agreed with Schofield's assessment of the situation.

  Schofield said, "All right, then. What I want to happen now is this. Montana..."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I want you to go topside and position our two hovercrafts so that their range finders are pointed outward, so that they cover the entire landward approach to this station. I want maximum coverage, no gaps. Trip wires aren't going to cut it anymore with this place; we use the range finders from here. As soon as anyone comes within fifty miles of this station, I want to know about it."

  "Got it," Montana said.

  "And while you're up there," Schofield said, "see if you can get on the radio and raise McMurdo. Find out when our reinforcements are coming. They should've been here by now."

  "You got it," Montana said. He hurried away.

  "Santa Cruz ...," Schofield said, turning.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Eraser check. I want this whole facility swept from top to bottom for any kind of eraser or delay switch, OK? There's no knowing what kinds of little surprises our French friends left behind for us. Got it?"

  "Yes, sir," Santa Cruz said. He broke out of the circle and headed for the nearest rung-ladder.

  "Snake..."

  "Sir."

  "The winch that lowers the diving bell. Its control panel is up on C-deck, in the alcove. That control panel was damaged by a grenade blast during the fight. I need those winch controls working again. Can you handle it?"

  "Yes, sir," Snake said. He, too, left the circle.

  When Snake had gone, Riley and Gant were the only ones left on the deck.

  Schofield turned to face them. "Book. Fox. I want vou two to do a full prep of our dive gear. Three divers, four-hour dive compression, low-audibility gear, plus some auxiliaries for later."

  "Air mix?" Riley asked.

  "Saturated helium-oxygen. Ninety-eight to two," Schofield said.

  Riley and Gant were momentarily silent. A compressed air mix of 98% helium and 2% oxygen was very rare. The almost negligible amount of oxygen indicated a dive to a very high-pressure environment.

  Schofield handed Gant a handful of blue capsules. They were N-67D antinitrogen blood-pressure capsules, developed by the Navy for use during deep-dive missions. They were affectionately known to military divers as "the pills."

  By retarding the dissolution of nitrogen in the bloodstream during a deep dive, the pills prevented decompression sickness?better known as the bends?among divers. Since the pills neutralized nitrogen activity in the bloodstream, Navy and Marine Corps divers could descend as quickly as they liked without fear of nitrogen narcosis and ascend without the need for making time-consuming decompression stops. The pills had revolutionized military deep-diving.

  "Planning a deep dive, sir?" Gant said, looking up from the blue pills in her hand.

  Schofield looked at her seriously. "I want to find out what's down in that cave."

  Schofield walked quickly around the curved outer tunnel of B-deck, deep in thought.

  Things were moving fast now.

  The French attack on Wilkes had taught him a lot. Wilkes Ice Station?or, more precisely, whatever lay buried in the ice beneath Wilkes Ice Station?was now officially worth killing for.

  But it was the implications of that lesson that gave Schofield a chill. If France had been willing to launch an impromptu snatch-and-grab for whatever was down in that cave, it was highly probable that other countries would be willing to do the same.

  There was one additional factor, though, about possible further attacks on Wilkes that caused Schofield particular concern: if someone was going to launch an attack on Wilkes. they would have to do it soon?before a full-strength U.S. force arrived at the station.

  The next few hours would be very tense.

  It would be a race to see who would arrive first.

  American reinforcements or a fully-equipped enemy force.

  Schofield tried not to think about it. There were a lot of things to do, and one matter in particular required his attention first.

  After the battle with the French had concluded, the remaining scientists from Wilkes?there were five of them, three men and two women?had retired to their living quarters on B-deck. Schofield was heading for those living quarters now. He was hoping to find among those scientists a doctor who might be able to help Samurai.

  Schofield continued to walk around the curved outer tunnel. His clothes were still wet, but he didn't care. Like all of the other Marines in his unit, he was wearing a thermal wet suit under his fatigues. It was practically standard attire for Recon Units working in arctic conditions. Wet suits were warmer than long Johns and didn't get heavy if they got wet. And by wearing one's wet suit instead of carrying it, a Recon Marine lightened his load, something very important for a rapid-response unit.

  Just then, a door to Schofield's right opened and a cloud of steam wafted out into the corridor. A sleek black object slid out of the haze and into the corridor in front of Schofield.

  Wendy.

  She was dripping with water. She looked up at Schofield with a goofy seal grin.

  Kirsty emerged from the steamy haze. The shower room. She saw Schofield instantly and she smiled.

  "Hi," she said. She was wearing a new set of dry clothes, and her hair was tousled, wet. Schofield guessed that Kirsty had just had the hottest shower of her life.

  "Hey there," Schofield said.

  "Wendy loves the shower room," Kirsty said, nodding at Wendy. "She likes to slide through the steam."

  Schofield suppressed a laugh and looked down at the little black fur seal at his feet. She was cute, very cute. She had also saved his life. Her soft brown eyes glistened with intelligence.

  He looked at Kirsty. "How are you feeling?"

  "Warm now," she said.

  Schofield nodded. From the look of her, Kirsty seemed to have bounced back well from her ordeal in the pool. Kids were good like that, resilient. He wondered what sort of therapy an adult would need after falling into a pool filled with ferocious killer whales.

  Schofield gave a lot of the credit to Buck Riley. Riley had been up on C-deck when Kirsty had been whizzed up there on the Maghook, and for the remainder of the battle Riley had kept Kirsty by his side, safe and sound.

  "Good," Schofield said. "You're one tough kid, you know that? You ought to be a Marine."

  Kirsty beamed. Schofield nodded down the tunnel. "You going my way?"

  "Yeah," she said, falling into step beside him. Wendy loped down the corridor behind them.

  "Where are you going?" Kirsty asked.

  "I'm looking for your mom."

  "Oh," Kirsty said, a little softly.

  It was a strange response, and through his reflective silver glasses Schofield cast a sideways glance at Kirsty. She just stared at the floor as she walked. He wondered what it meant.

  There was an awkward silence and Schofield searched for something to say. "So, uh, how old did you say you were? Twelve, right?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "What is that, seventh grade?"

  "Mm"

  "Seventh grade," Schofield mus
ed. He was at a total loss for something to say now, so he just said, "I guess you must be starting to think about a career, then."

  Kirsty seemed to perk up at the question. She looked across at him as they walked.

  "Yeah," she said seriously, as though career thoughts had been weighing heavily on her twelve-year-old mind lately.

  "So what do you want to do when you leave school?"

  "I want to be a teacher," Kirsty said. "Like my dad."

  "What does your dad teach?"

  "He taught geology at a big college in Boston," Kirsty said. "Harvard," she added importantly.

  "And what do you want to teach?" Schofield asked.

  "Math."

  "Math?"

  "I'm good at math," Kirsty said, shrugging selfconsciously, embarrassed and proud at the same time.

  "My dad used to help me with my homework," she went on. "He said I was much better at math than most other kids my age, so sometimes he would teach me stuff that the other kids didn't know. Interesting stuff, stuff that I wasn't supposed to learn until I was a senior. And sometimes he'd teach me stuff that they don't teach you at all in school."

  "Yeah?" Schofield said, genuinely interested. "What sort of stuff?"

  "Oh, you know. Polynomials. Number sequences. Some calculus."

  "Calculus. Number sequences," Schofield repeated, amazed.

  "You know, like triangular numbers and Fibonacci numbers. That sort of stuff."

  Schofield shook his head in astonishment. This was impressive. Very impressive. Kirsty Hensleigh, twelve years old and a little short for her age, was apparently a very smart young lady. Schofield looked at her again. She seemed to walk on her toes, with a kind of spring in each step. She just looked like a regular kid.

  Kirsty said, "We used to do a lot of stuff together. Softball, hiking, once he even took me scuba diving, even though I hadn't done the course."

  "You make it sound like your dad doesn't do that sort of thing anymore?"

  There was a short silence. Then Kirsty said softly, "He doesn't."

  "What happened?" Schofield asked gently. He was waiting to hear a tale about fighting parents and a divorce. It seemed to happen a lot these days.