Ice Station ss-1

by Matthew Reilly

  "My dad was killed in a car wreck last year," Kirsty said flatly.

  Schofield stopped in midstride. He turned to look at Kirsty. The little girl was staring down at her shoelaces.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  Kirsty cocked her head to one side. "It's OK," she said, and then resumed walking.

  They came to a door sunken into the outer tunnel, and Schofield stopped in front of it. "Well, this is my stop."

  "Mine, too," Kirsty said.

  Schofield opened the door and let Kirsty and Wendy enter in front of him. He followed them inside.

  It was a common room of some sort. Some ugly orange couches, a stereo, a television, a VCR. Schofield guessed that they didn't get regular TV transmissions down here so they just watched videos on the television.

  Sarah Hensleigh and Abby Sinclair sat on one of the orange couches. They were also now wearing dry clothes. The three other scientists from Wilkes?three men named Llewellyn, Harris, and Robinson?were there, too. After seeing what the fragmentation grenades had done to Hollywood and one of their colleagues they had spent the remainder of the battle holed up in their rooms. Now they looked tired and weary, afraid.

  Kirsty went over and.sat down on the couch next to Sarah Hensleigh. She sat down silently and didn't say anything to her mother. Schofield remembered the first time he had seen Sarah and Kirsty together?back before the French had arrived at Wilkes. Kirsty hadn't said much then either. Schofield hadn't noticed any tension between them then, but he noticed it now. He put it out of his mind as he walked over to Sarah.

  "Is anyone here a medical doctor?" Schofield asked her.

  Sarah shook her head. "No. No, Ken Wishart was the only doctor at the station. But he?" She cut herself off.

  "But he what?"

  Sarah sighed. "But he was on board the hovercraft that was supposed to be heading back to d'Urville."

  Schofield shut his eyes, once again imagined the fate of the five scientists who had been on board the doomed hovercraft.

  A voice crackled over his helmet intercom. "Scarecrow, this is Montana."

  "What is it?" Schofield said.

  "I've set up the range finders around the outer perimeter just like you wanted. You wanna come up and check it out?"

  "Yes, I do," Schofield said. "I'll be up in a minute. Where are you?"

  "Southwest corner."

  "Wait for me," Schofield said. "Have you had any luck getting through to McMurdo?"

  "Not yet. There's a shitstorm of interference on every frequency. I can't get through."

  "Keep trying," Schofield said. "Scarecrow, out."

  Schofield turned and was about to leave the common room when someone tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He turned. It was Sarah Hensleigh. She was smiling.

  "I just remembered," she said. "There is a medical doctor at this station after all."

  After the battle was over, the Marines had found the two French scientists, Luc Champion and Henri Rae, cowering in a cupboard in the dining room on A-deck.

  They had not offered any resistance. Indeed, as they had been dragged unceremoniously out of the cupboard to face their conquerors the horror on their faces had said it all. They had backed the wrong side in this fight. The men they had deceived were now their captors. The price for their treachery would be high.

  Both men had been taken down to E-deck, where they were handcuffed to a pole in plain view. Schofield's team had work to do, and Schofield didn't want to waste any of his manpower guarding the two French scientists. By cuffing the two Frenchmen to a pole out in the open the Marines down on E-deck could work as well as keep an eye on them.

  Schofield stepped out onto the B-deck catwalk. He was about to speak into his helmet mike when Sarah Hensleigh came out onto the catwalk behind him.

  "I have something I have to ask you," she said. "Something I couldn't ask you back in the common room."

  Schofield held up a hand, spoke into his helmet mike: "Rebound. This is Scarecrow. How's Samurai?"

  Rebound's voice came in over his earpiece. "I've managed to stop the bleeding for the moment, sir, but he's still pretty bad."

  "Stable?"

  "As stable as I'm gonna get him."

  "All right, listen. I want you to go down to E-deck and grab that French scientist named Champion, Luc Champion," Schofield said. He looked at Sarah as he spoke. "I've just been informed that our good friend Monsieur Champion is a surgeon."

  "Yes, sir," Rebound said eagerly. He seemed relieved that someone more qualified might be able to take over Samurai's care. But then he seemed to check himself. "Uh, sir..."

  "What is it?"

  "Can we trust him?"

  "No," Schofield said firmly as he began to climb up the rung-ladder toward A-deck. He motioned for Sarah to follow him up. "Not a whit. Rebound, you just tell him that if Samurai dies, so does he."

  "Gotcha."

  Schofield reached the top of the rung-ladder and stepped up onto the A-deck catwalk. He helped Sarah up behind him. Almost immediately, he saw Rebound emerge from the dining room doorway not far away and jog for the opposite rung-ladder. He was going down to E-deck to get Champion.

  Schofield and Sarah headed for the main entrance to the station. As they walked along the catwalk, Schofield looked down at the station beneath him and thought about his people.

  They were scattered everywhere.

  Montana was outside. Riley and Gant were down on E-deck, getting the scuba gear ready for the dive to the cave. Snake was smack in the middle, in the alcove on C-deck, fixing the winch controls. And Santa Cruz was nowhere to be seen, since he was off conducting a search of the station for erasers.

  Christ, Schofield thought, they were spread all over the place.

  Schofield's helmet intercom crackled. It was Santa Cruz.

  "What is it, Private?" Schofield said.

  "Sir, I've conducted a search of the station and I've found no sign of any erasing device."

  "No erasers?" Schofield frowned. "Nothing at all?"

  "Not a thing, sir. My guess is they didn't expect things to happen so fast, so they didn't get a chance to lay any."

  Schofield thought about that.

  Cruz was probably right. The French team's plan had undoubtedly been cut short by Buck Riley's arrival at the station and his accidental discovery of what had really happened to the crashed French hovercraft. The French commandos' plan had been to win the Americans' trust and then shoot them in the back. Since that plan hadn't come to fruition, it was no surprise that they hadn't been able to set any erasers.

  "But I did find something, sir," Santa Cruz said.

  "What?"

  "I found a radio, sir."

  "A radio?" Schofield said dryly. It was hardly a mind-blowing discovery.

  "Sir, this ain 't no ordinary radio. It looks like a portable VLF transmitter."

  That got Schofield's attention. A VLF, or very low frequency, transmitter is a rare device. It has a frequency range of between 3 kHz and 30 kHz, which, in real terms; amounts to an unbelievably long wavelength. It is so long?or, in radio terms, so "heavy"?that the radio signal travels as a ground signal that follows the curvature of the Earth's surface.

  Until only very recently, signals traveling at such low frequencies required very high-powered transmitters, which were, of course, very large and cumbersome. Thus they weren't often used by ground forces. Recent developments in technology, however, had resulted in heavy but nonetheless portable, VLF transmitters. They looked and weighed about the same as the average backpack.

  The fact that the French had brought such a transmitter to Wilkes bothered Schofield. There was really only one use for VLF radio signals, and that was?

  No, that's ridiculous, Schofield thought. They couldn't have done that.

  "Cruz, where did you find it?"

  "Down in the drilling room," Santa Cruz's voice said.

  "Are you there now?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Bring it out to the pool deck," Sch
ofield said. "I'll come down after I check on Montana outside."

  "Yes, sir."

  Schofield clicked off his intercom. He and Sarah came to the entrance passageway.

  "What are erasers?" Sarah asked.

  "What? Oh," Schofield said. He only just remembered that Sarah wasn't a soldier. He took a deep breath. "Eraser is the term used to describe an explosive device that is planted in a battlefield by a covert incursionary force for use in the event that their mission fails. Most of the time, an eraser is set off by a delay switch, which is just an ordinary timer."

  "OK, wait a minute. Slow down," Sarah said.

  Schofield sighed, slowed down. "Small crack units like these French guys we met tonight usually find themselves fighting in places where they're not supposed to be, right? Like there would probably be an international incident if it could be proved that French troops were in a U.S. research station trying to kill everybody, right?"

  "Yeah...."

  "Well, there's no guarantee that these crack units are gonna succeed in getting what they came for, is there," Schofield said. "I mean, hey, they might come up against a team of tough hombres like us and wind up dead."

  Schofield grabbed a parka off a hook on the wall and began to put it on.

  He said, "Anyway, these days, nearly all elite teams?the French Parachute Regiment, the SAS, the Navy SEALs? nearly all of them carry contingency plans just in case they fail in their missions. We call those contingency plans 'erasers' because that's exactly what they're designed to do: erase that whole team's existence. Make it look like that team was never there. Sometimes they're called cyanide pills, because if any of the enemy are caught, the eraser will ultimately act as their suicide pill."

  "So, you're talking about explosives," Sarah said.

  "I'm talking about special explosives," Schofield said. "Most of the time erasers are either chlorine-based explosives or high-temperature liquid detonators. They're designed to wipe off faces, vaporize bodies, destroy uniforms and dog tags. They're designed to make it look like you were never there.

  "Erasers are actually a relatively recent phenomenon. No one had ever really heard about them until a couple of years ago when a German sabotage team was caught in an underground missile silo in Montana. They were cornered, so they pulled the pin on three liquid-chlorine grenades. After those things went off, there was nothing left. No soldiers. No silo. We think the Germans were there to disable some ballistic nuclear missiles that we said didn't exist."

  "A German sabotage unit. In Montana," Sarah said in disbelief. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Germany supposed to be our ally?"

  "Isn't France supposed to be our ally?" Schofield replied, raising his eyebrows. "It happens. More often than you think. Attacks from so-called 'friendly' countries. They even have a term for it at the Pentagon; they call them Cassius Ops, after Cassius, the traitor in Julius Caesar."

  "They have a term for it?"

  Schofield shrugged into his coat. "Look at it this way. America used to be one of two superpowers. When there were two superpowers, there was a balance, a check. What one did the other countered. But now the Soviets are history and America is the only real superpower left in the world. We have more weapons than any other nation in the world. We have more money to spend on weapons than any other nation in the world. Other countries would go broke trying to keep up with our defense spending. The Soviets did. There are a lot of countries out there?some of whom we call friends? who think that America is too big, too powerful, countries who would really like to see America take a fall. And some of those countries?France, Germany, and to a lesser extent Great Britain?aren't afraid to give us a little push either."

  "I never knew," Sarah said.

  "Not many people do," Schofield said. "But it's one of the main reasons my unit was sent to this station. To defend it against any of our 'allies' who might decide to make a play for it."

  Schofield pulled his parka tight around himself and grabbed the handle to the main door leading outside.

  "You said you wanted to ask me about something," he said. "Can you talk as you walk?"

  "Uh, yeah, I guess so," Sarah said as she quickly grabbed a parka off one of the hooks.

  "Then let's go," Schofield said.

  Down on E-deck, Libby Gant was checking the calibration on a depth gauge.

  She and Riley were on the outer perimeter of the deck that surrounded the pool. It had been a good forty-five minutes since they had seen a killer whale, but they weren't taking any chances. They stayed well away from the water's edge.

  Gant and Riley were checking the unit's scuba gear, in preparation for the dive that would be made in the station's diving bell.

  They were alone on E-deck, and they worked in silence. Every now and then, Riley would wander over to the storeroom in the south tunnel and check on Mother.

  Gant put down the depth gauge she was holding and grabbed another. "What happened to his eyes?" she asked quietly, not looking up from what she was doing.

  Riley stopped working for a moment and looked up at her. When he didn't speak immediately, Gant raised her own eyes.

  For a while, Riley seemed to evaluate her. Then, abruptly, he looked away.

  "Not many people know what happened to his eyes," he said. "Hell, until today, not that many people had even seen his eyes."

  There was a short silence.

  "Is that why his call sign is Scarecrow?" Gant said softly. "Because of his eyes?"

  Riley nodded. "Norman McLean gave it to him."

  "The general?"

  "The General. When McLean saw Schoneld's eves, he said he looked like a scarecrow McLean had once had guarding his cornfield back in Kansas. Apparently, it was one of those scarecrows that had two slits for each eye, you know, like a plus sign."

  "Do you know how it happened?" Gant asked gently.

  At first Riley didn't answer. Then, finally, he nodded. But he didn't say anything.

  "What happened?"

  Riley took a deep breath. He put down the helium compressor he was holding in his hand and looked at Gant. "Shane Schofield wasn't always in command of a ground Recon Unit," he began. "He used to be a pilot, based on the Wasp."

  The USS. Wasp is the flagship of the United States Marine Corps. It is one of seven Landing Helicopter Dockships in the Corps, and it is the battle center for any major Marine expedition. Most casual observers mistake it for an aircraft carrier.

  What a lot of people don't know about the Marine Corps is that it maintains a sizable aviation wing. Although this air wing is used primarily to transport troops, it is also used to support ground attacks. For this purpose it is equipped with lethal AH-1W Cobra Attack Helicopters?instantly recognizable because of their skinny shape?and British-made (but American-modified) AV-8B Harrier II fighter jets, or, as they are more widely known throughout the world, Harrier jump jets. Harriers are the only attack planes in the world with the ability to take off and land vertically.

  "Schofield was a Harrier pilot on the Wasp. One of the best, so they tell me," Riley said. "He was in Bosnia in 1995, during the worst of the fighting there, flying patrol missions over the no-fly zone."

  Gant watched Riley closely as he spoke. He was staring off into space as he recounted the story.

  "One day, late in 1995, he got shot down by a mobile Serbian missile battery that Intelligence said didn't exist. I think they found out later that it was a two-man strike team in a jeep with six American-made Stingers in the backseat.

  "Anyway," Book said, "Schofield managed to eject a second before the Stingers took out his fuel tanks. He came down bang in the middle of Serb-held territory."

  Riley turned to face Gant.

  "Our lieutenant survived for nineteen days in the Serbian woodlands?alone?while over a hundred Serbian troops swept the forest looking for him. When they found him, he hadn't eaten in ten days.

  "They took him to a deserted farmhouse and tied him to a chair. Then they beat him with a wooden plank with nails s
tuck into it and asked him questions. Why was he flying over this area? Was he a spy plane? They wanted to know how much he knew about their positions because they thought he was up there providing air support for U.S. ground forces inside Serb territory."

  "U.S. ground forces were inside Serbian territory?" Gant asked.

  Riley nodded silently. "There were two SEAL teams in there. Carrying out covert surgical hits on Serbian leadership positions. Night hits. Good hits. They'd been causing chaos among the Serbs, absolute chaos. They'd be in and out before anyone knew they even existed. They'd go in, slash their victims' throats, and then vanish into the night. They were so good that some of the locals started saying they were ghosts come to haunt them for what they were doing to their own people."

  Gant said, "Did Scarecrow know about them? The SEAL teams inside Serb territory?"

  Book was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Yes. Officially, Schofield was patrolling the no-fly zone. Unofficially, he was sending grid coordinates of Serb leadership farmhouses to the SEALs on the ground. It didn't make any difference anyway. He never said a word."

  Gant watched intently as Riley took a deep breath. He was building up to something.

  "In any case," Book said, "the Serbs decided that Schofield had been carrying out reconnaissance for the SEAL teams, that he had been spotting strategic targets from the air and transmitting their coordinates to men on the ground. They decided that since he'd been seeing things that he wasn't supposed to be seeing, they would cut his eyes out."

  "What?" Gant said.

  Riley said, "They pulled a razor blade out of a drawer and they held him down. Then one of them stepped forward and slowly cut two vertical lines down across Schofield's eyes. Apparently, as he did it, the man with the razor blade quoted something from the Bible. Something about if your hand sins, cut it off, and if your eyes sin, cut them out."

  Gant felt sick. They had blinded Schofield. "What did they do then?" she asked.

  "They locked him in a cupboard and they let him bleed."

  Gant was still shocked. "So how did he get out?"

  "Jack Walsh sent a Recon team to go in and get him," Riley said.

  Gant's ears pricked up at the name. Every Marine knew of Captain John T. Walsh. He was the captain of the Wasp, the most revered Marine in the Corps.