Some thought he should have been Commandant, the highest-ranking officer in the United States Marine Corps, but Walsh's history of disdain for any kind of politician had prevented that. The Commandant is required to liaise regularly with members of Congress, and everyone knew?Walsh more than anyone?that Jack Walsh wouldn't be able to stomach that. Besides, Walsh had said he would rather command the Wasp and liaise with soldiers. The Marines loved him for it.
Riley went on. "When Scott O'Grady got lifted out of Bosnia on 8 June 1995, they put him on the cover of Time magazine. He met the President. He did the whole PR thing.
"When Shane Schofield got lifted out of Bosnia five months later, nobody heard a thing. There were no TV cameras waiting on the deck of the Wasp to photograph him as he stepped off that helicopter. There were no newspaper reporters there to take down his story. Do you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because when Shane Schofield landed on the Wasp after being extracted from that farmhouse in Bosnia by a team of United States Marines, he was the worst-looking thing you have ever seen.
"The extraction had been bloody. Fierce as hell. The Serbs hadn't wanted to give up their prized American pilot and they'd fought hard. When that chopper returned and hit the tarmac on the Wasp, it had four seriously wounded Marines on board. It also had Shane Schofield.
"The medics and the doctors and the support crews charged out and got everybody off the chopper as fast as they could. There was blood everywhere, wounded men screaming. Schofield was taken away on a gurney. He had blood pouring out of both of his eyes. The extraction had been so fast?so intense?that no one had even had a chance to put gauze patches over his eyes."
Riley paused. Gant just stared.
"What happened after that?" she asked.
"Jack Walsh copped shit from the White House and the Pentagon. They hadn't wanted him to send anyone in for Schofield because Schofield wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. The White House didn't want the 'political damage' that would follow from an American search-and-rescue mission for a downed spy plane. Walsh told them where to shove it, said they could fire him if they wanted to."
"What about Scarecrow? What happened to him?"
"He was blinded. His eyes had been ripped to shreds. They took him to Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Maryland. It's got the best eye surgery unit in the country, or so they tell me."
"And?"
"And they fixed his eyes. Don't ask me how, 'cause I don't know how. Apparently, the razor blade cuts were fairly shallow, so there was no damage to his retinas. The real damage, they said, was to the outer extremities of his eyes?the irises and the pupils. Purely physical defects, they said. Defects which could be fixed." Riley shook his head. "I don't know what they did?some fancy new laser-fusing procedure, someone told me?but they did it; they fixed his eyes. Hell, all I know is that if you can afford it?and in Scarecrow's case, the Corps could?you don't need glasses these days.
"Of course, there was still the scarring on his skin, but otherwise, they did it. Schofield could see again. Twenty-twenty." Riley paused. "There was only one hitch."
"What was that?"
"The Corps wouldn't let him fly again," Riley said. "It's standard procedure across all the armed forces: once you've had eye trauma of any kind, you can't fly a military airplane. Hell, if you wear reading glasses, you're not allowed to fly a military kite."
"So what did Scarecrow do?"
Riley smiled. "He decided to become a line animal, a ground Marine. He was already an officer from his flying days, so he kept his commission. But that was all he kept. He had to start all over again. He went from flight status, Lieutenant Commander, to ground force, Lieutenant Second Class, in an instant.
"And he went back to school. Back to the Basic School at Quantico. And he did every course they had. He did tactical weapons training. He did strategic planning. Small arms, scout/sniper. You name it, he did it. He did it all. Apparently, he said he wanted to be like those men who'd come in and got him out of Bosnia. What they'd done for him he wanted to be able to do."
Riley shrugged. "As you can probably imagine, it didn't take long for him to get noticed. He was too clever to stay a Second Lieutenant for long. After a few months, they upped him to Full Lieutenant, and before long, they offered him a Recon Unit. He took it. That was almost two years ago now."
Gant had never known. She had been selected for Schofield's Recon Unit only a year ago, and it had never occurred to her to wonder how Schofield himself had become the team's commander. That sort of thing was officer stuff, and Gant wasn't an officer. She was enlisted, and enlisted troops know only what they are told to know. Things like the choice of team commander are left to the higher-ups.
"I've been in his team ever since," Riley said proudly.
Gant knew what he meant. Riley respected Schofield, trusted his judgment, trusted his appraisal of any given situation. Schofield was Riley's commander and Riley would follow him into hell.
Gant would, too. Ever since she had been in Schofield's Recon team, she had liked him. She respected him as a leader.
He was firm but fair, and he didn't mince words. And he had never treated her any differently from any of the men in the unit.
"You like him, don't you?" Riley said softly.
"I trust him," Gant said.
There was a short silence.
Gant sighed. "I'm twenty-six years old, Book. Did you know that?"
"No."
"Twenty-six years old. God," Gant said, lost in thought. She turned to Book. "Did you know I was married once?"
"No, I didn't."
"Got married at the ripe old age of nineteen, I did. Married the sweetest man you'd ever meet, the catch of the town. He was a new teacher at the local high school, just arrived from New York, taught English. Gentle guy, quiet. I was pregnant by the time I was twenty."
Book just watched Gant silently as she spoke.
"And then one day," Gant said, "when I was two and a half months pregnant I arrived home early to find him doing it doggy-style on the living room floor with a seventeen-year-old cheerleader who'd come round for tutoring."
Book winced inwardly.
"I miscarried three weeks later," Gant said. "I don't know what caused it. Stress, anxiety, who knows. I hated men after my husband did that to me. Hated them. That was when I enlisted in the Corps. Hate makes you a good soldier, you know. Makes you plant every single shot right in the middle of the other guy's head. I couldn't bring myself to trust a man after what my husband did. And then I met him."
Gant was staring off into space. Her eyes were beginning to fill with water.
"You know, when I was accepted into this unit, the selection committee put on this big celebration lunch at Pearl. It was beautiful, one of those great Hawaiian BBQ lunches? out on the beach, in the sun. He was there. He was wearing this horrible blue Hawaiian shirt and, of course, those silver sunglasses.
"I remember that at one point during the lunch everybody else was talking, but he wasn't. I watched him. He just seemed to bow his head and go into this inner world. He seemed so lonely, so alone. He caught me looking and we talked about something inane, something about what a great place Pearl Harbor was and what our favourite holiday spots were.
"But my heart had already gone out to him. I don't know what he was thinking about that day, but whatever it was, he was thinking hard about it. My guess is it was a woman, a woman he couldn't have.
"Book, if a man ever thought about me the way he was thinking about her..." Gant shook her head. "I would just ... Oh, I don't know. It was just so intense. It was like ... like nothing I have ever seen."
Book didn't say anything. He just stared at Gant.
Gant seemed to sense his eyes on her and she blinked twice and the water in her eyes disappeared.
"Sorry," she said. "Can't go showing my emotions now, can I. If I start doing that, people'll start calling me Dorothy again."
"You should tell him how you feel abou
t him," Book said gently.
"Yeah, right" Gant said. "Like I'd do that. They'd kick me out of the unit before I could say, 'That's why you can't have women in frontline units.' Book, I'd rather be close to him and not be able to touch him than be far away and still not be able to touch him."
Book looked hard at Gant for a moment, as if he was appraising her. Then he smiled warmly. "You're all right... Dorothy, you know that. You're all right."
Gant snuffed a laugh. "Thanks."
She bowed her head and shook it sadly. Then suddenly she looked up at Book.
"I have one more question," she said.
"What?"
Gant cocked her head. "How is it that you know all that stuff about him? All the stuff about Bosnia and the farmhouse and his eyes and all that?"
Riley smiled sadly.
Then he said, "I was on the team that got him out."
"Any sort of paleontology is a waiting game," Sarah Hensleigh said as she trudged through the snow next to Schofield toward the outer perimeter of the station. "But now with the new technology, you just set the computer, walk away, and do something else. Then you come back later and see if the computer has found anything."
The new technology, Sarah had been saying, was a longwave sonic pulse that the paleontologists at Wilkes shot down into the ice to detect fossilized bones. Unlike digging, it located fossils without damaging them.
Schofield said, "So what do you do while you wait for the sonic pulse to find your next fossil?"
"I'm not just a paleontologist, you know," Sarah said, smiling, feigning offense. "I was a marine biologist before I took up paleontology. And before all this happened, I was working with Ben Austin in the Bio Lab on B-deck. He was doing work on a new antivenom for Enhydrina schistosa."
Schofield nodded. "Sea snake."
Sarah looked at him, surprised. "Very good, Lieutenant."
"Yeah, well, I'm not just a grunt with a gun, you know," Schofield said, smiling.
The two of them came to the outer perimeter of the station, where they found Montana standing on the skirt of one of the Marine hovercrafts. The hovercraft was facing out from the station complex.
It was dark?that eerie eternal twilight of winter at the poles?and through the driving snow Schofield could just make out the vast flat expanse of land stretching out in front of the stationary hovercraft. The horizon glowed dark orange
Behind Montana, on the roof of the hovercraft, Schofielc saw the hovercraft's range finder. It looked like a long-barreled gun mounted on a revolving turret, and it swept from side to side in a slow 180-degree arc. It moved slowly, taking about thirty seconds to make a complete sweep from left to right before beginning the return journey.
"I set them just like you said," Montana said, stepping down from the skirt so that he stood in front of Schofield "The other LCAC is at the southeast corner." LCAC was the official name for a Marine hovercraft. It stood for "Landing Craft?Air Cushioned." Montana was a stickler for formalities.
Schofield nodded. "Good."
Positioned as they were, the range finders on the hovercrafts now covered the entire landward approach to Wilkes Ice Station. With a range of over fifty miles, Schofield and his team would know well in advance if anybody was heading toward the station.
"Have you got a portable screen?" Schofield asked Montana.
"Right here." Montana offered Schofield a portable viewscreen that displayed the results of the range finders' sweeps.
It looked like a miniature TV with a handle on the left-hand side. On the screen, two thin green lines clocked slowly back and forth like a pair of windscreen wipers. As soon as an object crossed the range finders' beams, a blinking red dot would appear on the screen and the object's vital statistics would appear in a small box at the bottom of the screen.
"All right," Schofield said. "I think we're all set. I think it's time we found out what's down in that cave."
The trudge back to the main building took about five minutes. Schofield, Sarah, and Montana walked quickly through the falling snow. As they walked, Schofield told Sarah and Montana about his plans for the cave.
First of all, he wanted to verify the existence of the spacecraft itself. At this stage, there was no proof that anything was down there at all. All they had was the report of a single scientist from Wilkes who was himself now probably dead. Who knew what he had seen? That he had also been attacked soon after his sighting of the spacecraft?by enemies unknown?was another question that Schofield wanted answered.
There was a third reason, however, for sending a small team down to the cave. A reason that Schofield didn't mention to Sarah or Montana.
If anyone else did happen to make a play for the station?especially in the next few hours when the Marines were at their most vulnerable?and if they also managed to overcome what was left of Schofield's unit up in the station proper, then a second team stationed down in the cave might be able to provide an effective last line of defense.
For if the only entrance to the cave was by way of an underwater ice tunnel, then anybody wanting to penetrate it would have to get there by an underwater approach. Covert incursionary forces hate underwater approaches and for good reason: you never know what's waiting for you above the surface. The way Schofield saw it, a small team already stationed inside the cave would be able to pick off an enemy force, one by one, as they broke the surface.
Schofield, Sarah, and Montana came to the main entrance of the station. They trudged down the rampway and headed inside.
Schofield stepped onto the A-deck catwalk and immediately headed for the dining room. Rebound should have been back there by now?with Champion?and Schofield wanted to see if the French doctor had anything to say about Samurai's condition.
Schofield came to the dining room door and stepped inside.
He immediately saw Rebound and Champion standing at the table on which Samurai lay.
Both men looked up quickly as Schofield entered, their eyes wide as saucers. They looked like thieves caught with their hands in the till, caught in the middle of some illegal act.
There was a short silence.
And then Rebound said, "Sir. Samurai's dead."
Schofield frowned. He had known Samurai's condition was critical and that death was a possibility, but the way Rebound said it was?
Rebound stepped forward and spoke seriously. "Sir, he was dead when we got here. And the doc here says he didn't die from his injuries. He says ... he says it looks like Samurai was suffocated."
Pete Cameron was sitting in his car in the middle of the SETI parking lot. The searing desert sun beat down on him. Cameron pulled out his cellular and called Alison in D.C.
"How was it?" she asked.
"Riveting," he said, flicking through his notes of the SETI recording.
"Anything to go on?"
"Not really. Looks like they got a few words off a spy satellite, but it's all Greek to me."
"Did you write any of it down this time?"
Cameron looked at his notes.
"Yes, dear," he said. "But I'm not so sure it's worth anything."
"Tell me anyway," Alison said.
"All right," Cameron said, looking down at his notes.
COPY 134625
CONTACT LOST?> IONOSPHERIC DISTURB.
FORWARD TEAM
SCARECROW
-66.5
SOLAR FLARE DISRUPT. RADIO
115, 20 MINS, 12 SECS EAST
HOW GET THERE SO?SECONDARY TEAM EN
ROUTE
Cameron read his notes aloud for her, word for word, substituting English for his own shorthand symbols.
"That's it?" Alison said when he was finished. "That's all?"
"That's it."
"Not much to go on."
"That's what I thought," Cameron said.
"Leave it with me," Alison said. "Where are you off to now?"
Cameron plucked a small white card off his dashboard. It was almost covered over by Post-its. It was a business card.
ANDREW WILCOX
Gunsmith
14 Newbury St, Lake Arthur, NM
Cameron said, "I thought that since I was down here in the Tumbleweed State, I'd check out the mysterious Mr. Wilcox."
"The mailbox guy?"
"Yeah, the mailbox guy."
Two weeks ago, someone had left this business card in Cameron's mailbox. Just the card. Nothing else. No message came with it, and nothing was written on it. At first, Cameron almost threw it in the trash as errant junk mail?really errant junk mail since it had come from New Mexico.
But then Cameron had received a phone call.
It was a male voice. Husky. He asked if Cameron had got the card.
Cameron said he had.
Then the man said that he had something that Cameron might like to look into. Sure, Cameron had said, would the man like to come to Washington to talk about it?
No. That was out of the question. Cameron would have to come to him. The guy was a real cloak-and-dagger type, super-paranoid. He said he was ex-Navy, or something like that.
"You sure he's not just another of your fans?" Alison said.
Pete Cameron's reputation from his investigative days at Mother Jones still haunted him. Conspiracy theorists liked to ring him up and say that they had the next Watergate on their hands or that they had the juice on some corrupt politician.
Usually they asked for money in return for their stories.
But this Wilcox character had not asked for money. Hadn't even mentioned it. And since Cameron was in the neighborhood ...
"He may well be," Cameron said. "But since I'm down here anyway, I might as well check him out."
"All right," Alison said. "But don't say I didn't warn you."
Cameron hung up and slammed the door of his car.
In the Post's offices in D.C., Alison Cameron hung up her phone and stared into space for a few seconds. It was midmorning and the office was a buzz of activity. The wide, low-ceilinged room was divided by hundreds of chest-high partitions, and in every one people were busily working away. Phones rang; keyboards clattered; people scurried back and forth.
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