Ice Station ss-1

by Matthew Reilly

  "Like what?"

  "Like other sources of breakthrough technology," Trent said.

  "Such as?"

  "Well, for one thing, business."

  "Business? You mean private companies?"

  Trent nodded.

  "You're telling me that the government of the United States has planted people inside private corporations to spy on them?"

  "Microsoft. IBM. Boeing. Lockheed," Trent said, deadpan. "Plus, of course, all of the other major Navy, Army, and Air Force contractors, especially if they have contracts with other countries."

  "Holy shit," Cameron said.

  "There are other places, too."

  "Like..."

  "Like universities," Trent said. "Universities are high on the list of ICG-compromised organizations. Cloning sheep? ICG knew about in 1993. Cloning humans?ICG knew about it last year." Trent shrugged. "It makes sense. Universities are the cutting edge. If you want to find out what's in the pipeline, it's best to put your people in the pipe."

  Cameron didn't say anything for a full minute.

  The sheer concept of an America-wide intelligence-gathering conspiracy made his spine tingle. An octopus-like network, with its tentacles stretching out from a small boardroom in the Pentagon to all the corners of the country, penetrating every major business and university. It was worth checking out some more.

  Andrew Trent interrupted his thoughts.

  "Mr. Cameron," he said seriously. "The ICG is a dangerous organization. A very dangerous organization. It owes its allegiance to one thing and one thing only. The United States of America. So long as America wins, the ICG doesn't care what it has to do. It will kill to achieve that goal. It will kill you and it will kill me. Mr. Cameron, patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. An organization that is prepared to infiltrate its own armed forces and kill its own men to keep this country's secrets safe is not one you want to mess with lightly."

  Cameron nodded solemnly. Then he said, "Mr. Trent, do you have anything, anything at all, with names or something that I could?"

  Trent grabbed a sheet of A4 paper from the table beside him.

  "The results of my search so far," he said. "Names, positions held, and rank, if any." He handed the sheet to Cameron.

  Cameron took it, scanned it quickly. It read:

  TRANSMIT MO. 767-9808-09001

  REF NO. KOS-4622

  SUBJECT: THE FOLLOWING IS AN ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PERSONNEL AUTHORIZED TO RECEIVE SECURE TRANSMISSIONS.

  NAME

  LOCATION

  FIELD/RANK

  ADAMS, WALTER K.

  LVRMRE LAB

  NCLR PHYSCS

  ATKINS, SAMANTHA E.

  GSTETNR

  CMPTR SFTWRE

  BAILEY, KEITH H.

  BRKLY

  AERONTL ENGNR

  BARNES, SEAN M. N.

  SEALS

  LTCMMDR

  BROOKES, ARLIN F. A.

  RNGRS

  CPTN

  CARVER, ELIZABETH R

  CLMBIA

  CMPTR SCI

  CHRISTIE, MARGARET V.

  HRVRD

  IDSTRL CHMST

  DAWSON, RICHARD K.

  MCROSFT

  CMPTR SFTWRE

  DELANEY, MARK M.

  IBM

  CMPTR HRDWRE

  DOUGLAS, KENNETH A.

  CRAY

  CMPTR HRDWRE

  DOWD, ROGER F.

  USMC

  CPRL

  EDWARDS, STEPHEN R.

  BOEING

  AERONTL ENGNR

  FAULKNER, DAVID G.

  JPL

  AERONTL ENGNR

  FROST, KAREN S.

  USC

  GNTC ENGNR

  GIANNI, ENRICO R.

  LCKHEED

  AERONTL ENGNR

  GRANGER, RAYMOND K. A.

  RANGERS

  SNR SGT

  HARRIS, TERENCE X.

  YALE

  NCLR PHYSCS

  JOHNSON, NORMA E.

  U.ARIZ

  BKJTOXNS

  KAPLAN, SCOTT M.

  USMC

  GNNY SGT

  KASCYNSKI, THERESA E.

  3M CORP

  PHSPHTES

  KEMPER, PAULENE J.

  JHNS HPKNS

  DRMTLGY

  KOZLOWSKI, CHARLES R.

  USMC

  SGT MJR

  LAMB, MARK I.

  ARMALTE

  BLLSTCS

  LAWSON, JANE R.

  U.TEX

  INSCTCIDES

  LEE, MORGAN T.

  USMC

  SGT

  MCDONALD, SIMON K.

  LVRMRE LAB

  NCLR PHYSCS

  MAKIN, DENISE E.

  U.CLRDO

  CHMCL AGNTS

  NORTON, PAUL G.

  PRNCTN

  AMNO ACD CHNS

  OLIVER, JENNIFER F.

  SLCN STRS

  CMPTR SFTWRE

  PARKES, SARAH T.

  USC

  PLNTLGST

  REICHART, JOHN R.

  USMC

  SGT

  RIGGS, WAYLON J. N.

  SEALS

  CMMDR

  SHORT, GREGORY J.

  CCA CLA

  LQO SCE

  TURNER, JENNIFER C.

  UCLA

  GNTC ENGNR

  WILLIAMS, VICTORIA D.

  U.WSHGTN

  GEOPHYS

  YATES, JOHN F.

  USAF

  CPTN

  Cameron glanced up from the list, shook his head in disbelief. "How do you know all this, Mr. Trent?"

  "I've made some discreet inquiries," Trent said. "Primarily by shadowing the people mentioned on that list."

  Cameron held up the sheet of paper. "So how'd you get this list in the first place?"

  Trent smiled. It was the first real smile Cameron had seen from Trent for the hour that he had known him.

  "You remember those guys I told you about who were parked in the van outside my parents' house?"

  "Yes...."

  "Well, I followed one of them home. Stopped him in the doorway to his apartment and asked him a few questions. He was very cooperative, once he was ... properly motivated."

  "What happened to him?" Cameron asked warily.

  When he answered, Trent's voice was hard, cold, entirely devoid of emotion.

  "He died."

  Snake stood handcuffed to the same pole as Henri Rae and Luc Champion on E-deck. His weapons and body armor had been removed. He just stood there, cuffed to the pole, dressed in his camouflaged full-body combat fatigues.

  Schofield, Riley, and Rebound stood on the deck in front of him, looking at him. Mother was also out on the pool deck, sitting in a chair, looking like Cleopatra on a chaise. Schofield had had Book and Rebound carry her out onto the deck for this.

  Last of all, behind Schofield, stood James Renshaw. He was the only civilian on the pool deck.

  The atmosphere was tense. No one spoke.

  Schofield looked at his watch.

  It was 3:42 p.m.

  He remembered what Abby Sinclair had said about the solar flare in the atmosphere above Wilkes Ice Station. A break in the solar flare would be passing over the station at 3:51.

  Nine minutes.

  He would have to make this quick. Gant and the others were still down in the cavern, and he wanted to contact them and find out exactly what was down there before he called McMurdo.

  Schofield pressed a button on the side of his watch and the display changed. The stopwatch screen appeared. It displayed numbers ticking upward:

  1:52:58

  1:52:59

  1:53:00

  Damn, Schofield thought.

  It was going to be close. After he spoke with the people at McMurdo at 3:51, they would have less than an hour to figure out a way to seek out and destroy the French warship hovering off the coast waiting to fire its missiles at Wilkes Ice Station.

  "All right," he said, turni
ng to the group assembled around him. "Book. Rebound. You first."

  Book and Rebound told their story.

  They had both been outside, working on the station's antenna, out by one of the outer buildings.

  "And then you called and asked for one of us to go and check on Mr. Renshaw," Book said. "Snake took the call, so he went to do it. He came back after about fifteen minutes and said that everything was fine, said that Mr. Renshaw was still in his room and that it had just been a false alarm."

  Schofield nodded?that was when he had been shot.

  Book said, "A little later, I got up to go and check on Mother, but Snake stopped me and said that he'd do it. I didn't think anything of it at the time, so I said sure, if he wanted to."

  Schofield nodded again?that was when the attack on Mother had happened.

  He stepped forward so that he stood right in front of Snake. "Sergeant," he said. "Would you care to explain yourself?"

  Snake said nothing.

  Schofield said, "Sergeant, I said, would you like to tell me what in fucking hell is going on here."

  Snake didn't flinch. He just sneered coldly at Schofield.

  Schofield hated him, hated the very sight of him.

  This was the man who had shot him?killed him?and then checked to make sure that he was dead.

  Schofield had thought about his own shooting.

  In the end, it was the frosted glass on the deck that explained it. The white frosted glass that Schofield had stepped in only moments before he had been shot.

  It explained two things: why Snake was able to fire a gun safely in the gaseous atmosphere of Wilkes Ice Station and where he had fired it from.

  The answer, in the end, was simple.

  Snake hadn't fired his sniper rifle from inside the station at all. He had fired it from outside the station. He had broken a tiny round hole in the white frosted glass dome that towered above the central shaft of the station and he had then shot down through that hole at Schofield. The glass that he had dislodged from the dome to make the hole in it had fallen all the way down through the shaft to E-deck. The same glass that Schofield had stepped on only moments before he had been shot.

  Schofield just stared at Snake.

  Mother said softly, "He said he was ICG."

  Book and Rebound turned instantly at Mother's words.

  "Well, Sergeant?" Schofield said.

  Snake said nothing.

  Schofield said, "Not very talkative, huh?"

  "He was pretty fucking talkative when he was getting ready to fillet me," Mother said. "I say we cut his balls off and make him watch as we feed 'em to the fucking whales."

  "Good idea," Schofield said as he glared at Snake. Snake just sneered smugly back at him.

  Schofield felt the anger well up inside him. He was furious. Right now he just wanted to slam Snake up against the wall and wipe that smug look off his fucking face?

  "As a leader, you simply cannot afford to get angry or upset."

  Once again, Trevor Barnaby's words rang through Schofield's head.

  Schofield wondered whether Barnaby had ever had an infiltrator in his unit. He wondered what the famous SAS commander would have done in these circumstances.

  "Book," Schofield said. "Opinions?"

  Buck Riley just stared sadly at Snake and shook his head. He seemed to be the most deeply affected by the revelation that Snake was an ICG plant.

  "I didn't think you were a traitor, Snake," Book said. Then he turned to Schofietd. "It's not for you to kill him. Not here. Not now. Take him home. Send him to jail."

  As Book spoke, Schofield just glared at Snake. Snake stared defiantly back at him.

  There was a long silence.

  Schofield broke it. "Tell me about the Intelligence Convergence Group, Snake."

  "That's a nice wound," Snake said softly, slowly, looking at the adhesive gauze patch on Schofield's neck. The wound Snake himself had inflicted. "You ought to be dead."

  "It didn't suit me," Schofield said. "Tell me about the ICG."

  Snake smiled a cold, thin smile. Then he began to laugh softly.

  "You're a dead man," he said quietly. Then he turned to face the others. "You're all going to die."

  "What do you mean?" Schofield said.

  "You wanted to know about the ICG," Snake said. "I just told you about the ICG."

  "The ICG is going to kill us?"

  "The ICG will never let you live," Snake said. "It's not possible. Not after what you've seen here. When the United States Government gets their hands on that spaceship?or whatever it is that's down there?it can't possibly allow a handful of grunts like you to know about it. You're all going to die. Count on it."

  Snake's words hung in the air. Everyone on the deck was silent.

  Their reward for arriving at Wilkes Ice Station so quickly and defending it against the French was to be a death sentence.

  "Wonderful," Schofield said. "That's just wonderful. I bet you're pretty fucking proud of yourself," he said to Snake.

  "My loyalty to my country is greater than my loyalty to you, Scarecrow," Snake said defiantly.

  Schofield's teeth began to grind. He stepped forward. Book held him back.

  "Not now," Book said quietly. "Not here."

  "Lieutenant!" a woman's voice yelled from somewhere high up in the station. Schofield looked up.

  Abby Sinclair was leaning out over the railing of A-deck. "Lieutenant!" she yelled. "It's time!"

  Schofield strode into the radio room on A-deck. Book and James Renshaw came in behind him. Rebound had stayed down on E-deck to keep an eye on Snake.

  Abby was already seated at the radio console. She did a double take when she saw Renshaw enter the room.

  "Hello, Abby," Renshaw said.

  "Hello, James," Abby said, cautiously.

  She turned to Schofield. "The break should be over us any second now." She flicked a switch on the console. The sound of static began to wash out from two wall-mounted speakers.

  Shhhhhhhhhh.

  "That's the sound of the solar flare," Abby said. "But if you wait just... a... few... seconds ..."

  Abruptly the shooshing sound cut off and there was silence.

  "And there it is," Abby said. "There's your break, Lieutenant. Go for it."

  Schofield sat down at the console and grabbed the microphone.

  He hit the talk button, but just as he was about to speak, a strange high-pitched whistling sound suddenly blared out from the wall-mounted speakers. It sounded like feedback, interference.

  Schofield released the microphone instantly, looked at Abby. "What did I do? Did I press something?"

  Abby frowned, flicked a couple of switches. "No. You didn't do anything."

  "Is it the solar flare? Could you have got the timing wrong?"

  "No," Abby said firmly.

  She flicked some more switches.

  Nothing happened.

  The system didn't seem to be responding to what she was doing. The high-pitched whistling sound filled the radio room. Abby said, "There's something wrong; this isn't interference from the flare. This is something else. This is different. It's almost as if it's electronic. As though someone was jamming us...."

  Schofield felt a chill run up the length of his spine. "Jamming us?"

  "It's as if there's someone between us and McMurdo, stopping our signal getting through," Abby said.

  "Scarecrow...," a voice said from somewhere behind Schofield.

  Schofield spun.

  It was Rebound.

  He was standing in the doorway to the radio room.

  "I thought I told you to stay down with?"

  "Sir, you better see this," Rebound said. "You better see this now." He held up his left hand.

  In it was the portable viewscreen that Schofield had brought inside from the hovercrafts earlier. The small TV screen that displayed the findings of the two range finders mounted on top of the hovercrafts outside. Rebound crossed the radio room quickly and handed the scre
en to Schofield. Schofield looked at the screen and his eyes instantly widened in horror.

  "Oh, Christ," he said. The screen was filled with red blips. They looked like a swarm of bees, converging on a point; were all approaching the center of the screen. Schofield counted twenty red blips. Twenty....

  All of them converging on Wilkes Ice Station. "Good God...."

  And then suddenly he heard a voice. A voice that made his blood run cold. It came from the speakers that lined the walls of the radio room. Loud and hard, as if it were a message from God himself.

  "Attention, Wilkes Ice Station. Attention," the voice said.

  It was a crisp voice, clipped and cultured.

  "Attention American forces at Wilkes Ice Station. As you will now no doubt be aware, your communication lines have been intercepted. It is no use attempting to contact your base at McMurdo?you will not get through. You are advised to lay down your arms immediately. If you do not lay down your defenses before our arrival, we will be forced to make an offensive entry. Such an entry, ladies and gentlemen, will be painful."

  Schofield's eyes went wide at the sound of the voice. The English accent was all too apparent.

  It was a voice that Schofield knew well. A voice from his past.

  It was the voice of Trevor Barnaby. Brigadier General Trevor J. Barnaby of Her Majesty's SAS.

  FIFTH INCURSION

  16 June 1551 hours

  "Oh, Jesus," Rebound said.

  "How long till they get here?" Book asked.

  Schofield's eyes were glued to the portable viewscreen. He looked at the box at the bottom of the screen. In it was a wire-frame picture of a hovercraft. The wire-frame hovercraft rotated within the box. Beneath it were the words: BELL TEXTRON SR.N7-S?LANDING CRAFT AIR CUSHIONED (UK).

  "It's the SAS," Rebound said in disbelief. "It's the fucking SAS."

  "Take it easy, Rebound," Schofield said. "We're not dead yet."

  He turned to Book. "Thirty-four miles out. Coming in at eighty miles an hour."

  "Definitely not friendly," Book said.

  Schofield said, "Thirty-four miles at eighty miles an hour. That gives us, what?"

  "Twenty-six minutes," Abby said quickly.

  "Twenty-six minutes." Schofield swallowed. "Shit."