2:59:37
2:59:38
2:59:39
Once again, he pressed the arm switch on the Tritonal charge?twenty seconds?and fired.
The Maghook shot through the water ...
... hung there for a long time ...
... and then disappeared inside the torpedo port.
Yes!
Schofield quickly pressed the button marked "m" on his grip, and inside the torpedo tube the magnetic head of the Maghook responded immediately by releasing its grip on the silver-and-green Tritonal charge.
Then Schofield reeled in the Maghook, leaving the Tritonal charge inside the torpedo tube. And then he swam. Swam for all he was worth.
Inside the torpedo room of the French submarine, the world was deathly silent. A young Ensign called the countdown.
"Vingt secondes de premier lancer," he said. Twenty seconds to primary launch. Twenty seconds to the launch of the eraser, a nuclear-tipped Neptune-class torpedo.
"Dix-neuf... dix-huit... dix-sept..."
From the iceberg Renshaw saw Schofield break the surface, saw him swimming frantically through the water, Maghook in hand.
The French Ensign's count continued. "Dix ... neuf... huit... sept..."
Schofield was swimming hard, trying to put as much distance between himself and the sub as he could, because if he was too close when the Tritonal charge went off, the implosion would suck him right in. He'd been ten yards away when he'd fired the Tritonal charge. Now he was twenty yards away. He figured twenty-five and he would be OK.
Renshaw was yelling at him, "What the hell is happening!"
"Get away from the edge!" Schofield yelled as he swam. "Move!"
"Cinq ... quatre ... trois ..."
The French Ensign's count never got beyond "three." Because at that moment?at that terrible, stunning moment?the Tritonal charge inside the torpedo tube suddenly went off.
From where Renshaw stood, the underwater explosion was absolutely spectacular, and all the more so because it was unexpected.
It was instantaneous. The dark shadow under the surface that was the French submarine spontaneously erupted into an enormous cloud of white. An immense spray of water fifty feet high and two hundred feet long shot up out of the water and fell slowly back down to earth.
From water level, Schofield saw a horde of monstrous blue bubbles suddenly begin to billow out from a gaping hole in the bow of the submarine, like tentacles reaching out for him. And then just as suddenly they began to retrace their steps and, with terrifying force, the bubbles shot back in toward the submarine and Schofield suddenly felt himself getting sucked back toward the sub.
Implosion.
At that moment, the massive French sub collapsed in on itself like a great big aluminium can and the suction from the implosion ceased. Schofield felt the water's grip on him relax, and he let himself float to the surface. The submarine was gone.
A few minutes later, Renshaw pulled him out of the water and dragged him up onto the iceberg.
Schofield dropped down onto the ice?breathing hard, soaking wet, freezing cold. He was gasping for breath, his body overwhelmed with fatigue, and at that moment?with the French submarine destroyed and himself and Renshaw hopelessly marooned on an iceberg?the only thing in the world that Shane Schofield wanted to do was sleep.
In the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., the NATO conference reconvened.
George Holmes, the U.S. representative, leaned back in his chair as he watched Pierre Dufresne, the head of the French delegation, stand to speak.
"My fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen," Dufresne began, "the Republic of France would like to express its total aid unconditional support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, this fine organization of nations that has served the West so well for almost fifty years ..."
The speech dragged on, extolling the virtues of NATO and fiance's undying loyalty to it. George Holmes shook his head. All morning, the French delegation had been calling recesses, stalling the conference, and now, all of a sudden, they were pledging their undying loyalty to the organization. It didn't make sense.
Dufresne, finished speaking, sat down. Holmes was about to turn and say something to Phil Munro when suddenly the British delegate to the conference?a well-groomed statesman named Richard Royce?pushed his chair back and stood up. "Ladies and gentlemen," Royce said in a very articulate London accent, "if I may beg your indulgence, the British delegation requests a recess."
At that very same moment, directly across the road from the Capitol Building and the NATO conference, Alison Cameron was entering the atrium of the Library of Congress. Comprised of three buildings, the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. In fact, its goal upon its founding was to be the single largest repository of knowledge in the world. That is what it is.
Which was why Alison was not surprised to learn that the object of her search?the mysterious 1978 "Preliminary Survey" by C. M. Waitzkin?was to be found at the Library of Congress. If any library was going to have it, the Library of Congress would be it.
Alison waited at the Inquiries Desk as one of the library's attendants went down to the stack to get the survey for her. The Library of Congress was a closed-stack library, which meant that the staff got the books for you. It was also a non-circulating library, which meant that you were not allowed to take books out of the building.
The attendant was taking a while, so Alison began to browse through another book she had bought on the way to the library.
She looked at the cover. It read:
THE ICE CRUSADE:
REFLECTIONS ON A YEAR SPENT IN
ANTARCTICA
DR. BRIAN HENSLEIGH
Professor in Geophysics, Harvard University
Alison scanned the introduction.
Brian Hensleigh, it appeared, was the head of Harvard University's geophysics faculty. He was into ice core research?a study that involved extracting cylindrical ice cores from the continental ice shelves in Antarctica and then examining the air that had been trapped inside those ice cores thousands of years before.
Apparently, so the book said, ice core research could be used to explain global warming, the greenhouse effect, and the depletion of the ozone layer.
In any case, it appeared that for the whole of 1994 this Hensleigh fellow had worked at a remote research station in Antarctica collecting ice core samples.
The name of that research station was Wilkes Ice Station.
And its location: latitude minus 66.5 degrees, longitude 115 degrees, 20 minutes, and 12 seconds east.
At that moment, the attendant returned and Alison looked up from the book.
"It's not there," the attendant said, shaking her head.
"What?"
"I checked it three times," the attendant said. "It's not on the shelf. 'Preliminary Survey' by C. M. Waitzkin, 1978. It's not there."
Alison frowned. This was unexpected.
The attendant?her name badge said her name was Cindy? shrugged helplessly. "I don't understand it. It's just... gone."
Alison felt a sudden rush of excitement as something occurred to her.
"If it's not there, wouldn't that mean that someone is reading it right now?" she asked.
Cindy shook her head. "No, the computer says that the last time it was loaned out to anybody was in November 1979."
"November 1979," Alison said.
"Yeah, spooky, huh?" Cindy looked about twenty years old, a college student no doubt. "I got the name of the borrower if you're interested. Here." She handed Alison a slip of paper.
It was a photocopy of a Request Form, similar to the one Alison herself had filled out to get the survey.
The Library of Congress obviously kept every form on file?probably for exactly this situation.
On the Request Form, in the box marked "Name of Person Requesting Item," was a name:
O. NIEMEYER
"It happens," Cindy the attendant was saying. "This Niemeyer guy probably liked
it so much that he just walked out with it. We didn't have magnetic tags on our books back then, so he probably just slipped out past the guards."
Alison ignored her.
She just stood there, entranced by the Request Form in her hand, by this twenty-year-old piece of evidence that had been sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere in the depths of the Library of Congress, waiting for this day.
Alison's eyes glowed as they stared at the words:
O. NIEMEYER
Brigadier General Trevor Barnaby walked across the pool deck of Wilkes Ice Station. He'd been in control of Wilkes Ice Station for a little over an hour now, and he was feeling confident.
Only twenty minutes ago he had sent a team of fully armed divers down in the station's diving bell. But it would be at least ninety minutes before they reached the underground cave. Indeed, the diving bell's cable was still plunging into the pool at the base of the station right now.
Barnaby himself was dressed in a black thermal wet suit. He planned to go down to the underground cave with the second team?to see for himself what was really down there.
"Well now," he said as he saw Snake and the two French scientists handcuffed to the pole. "What have we here? Why, if it isn't Sergeant Kaplan." By the look on his face, Snake was obviously surprised that Barnaby knew who he was.
"Gunnery Sergeant Scott Michael Kaplan," Barnaby said. "Born: Dallas, 1953; enlisted in the United States Marine Corps at age eighteen in 1971; small arms expert; hand-to-hand combat expert; sniper. And as of 1992, under suspicion by British Intelligence as a member of the American spy agency known as the Intelligence Convergence Group.
"I'm sorry, what is it that they call you? Snake, isn't it. Tell me, Snake, is this a common occurrence for you? Does your commanding officer often chain you to poles, leaving you at the mercy of the incoming enemy?"
Snake didn't say anything.
Barnaby said, "I would hardly have thought that Shane Schofield would be the kind of master to chain up his loyal squad members. Which means there must be some other reason why he chained you up, n'est-ce pas?" Barnaby smiled. "Now, whatever could that reason be?"
Snake still said nothing. Every now and then, his eyes would steal a look at the diving bell's cable as it plunged into the pool behind Barnaby.
Barnaby turned his attention to the two French scientists. "And who might you be?" he asked.
Luc Champion blurted out indignantly, "We are French scientists from the research station Dumont d'Urville. We have been detained here against our will by American forces. We demand that we be released in accordance with international?"
"Mr. Nero," Barnaby said flatly.
A mountain of a man stepped out from behind Barnaby and stood next to him. He was at least six-foot-five, with broad shoulders and impassive eyes. He had a scar that ran down from the corner of his mouth to his chin.
Barnaby said, "Mr. Nero, if you please."
The big man named Nero calinly raised his pistol and fired at Champion from point-blank range.
Champion's head exploded. Blood and brains instantly splattered against the side of Snake's face.
Henri Rae, the second French scientist, began to whimper.
Barnaby turned to face him. "Are you French, too?"
Rae began to sob.
Barnaby said, "Mr. Nero."
Rae saw it coming and he screamed, "No!" just as Nero raised his gun again and a moment later the other side of Snake's face was splattered all over with blood.
In the pitch-darkness of the crawl space at the base of the elevator shaft, Mother snapped up at the sound of the gunshots.
Damn it, she thought. She must have blacked out again.
Got to stay awake, she thought.
Got to stay awake....
Mother stared at the clear plastic fluid bag she had brought with her. It was connected by a tube to an intravenous drip that was stuck into her arm.
The fluid bag was now empty.
Had been for the last twenty minutes.
Mother began to shiver. She felt cold, weak. Her eyelids began to close.
She bit her tongue, trying to force her eyes open with the jolt of pain.
It worked for the first few times. And then it didn't.
Alone at the base of the elevator shaft, Mother lapsed into unconsciousness.
Out on E-deck, Trevor Barnaby stepped forward, his eyes narrowing. "Sergeant Kaplan. Snake. You've been a naughty boy, haven't you?"
Snake said nothing.
"Are you ICG, Snake? A turncoat? A traitor to your own unit? I bet the Scarecrow wasn't too pleased when he found out. Is that why he chained you to a pole and left you here for me?"
Snake swallowed.
Barnaby stared at him coldly. "It's what I would have done."
At that moment, a young SAS corporal came up behind Barnaby. "Sir."
"Yes, Corporal."
"Sir, the charges are being set around the perimeter."
"At what range?"
"Five hundred yards, sir. In an arc, like you ordered."
"Good," Barnaby said. Soon after he had arrived at Wilkes, Barnaby had ordered that eighteen Tritonal charges be placed in a semicircular arc on the landward side of the station. They were to have a special purpose. A very special purpose.
Barnaby said, "Corporal, how long do you expect the laying of the charges to take?"
"Allowing for the drilling, sir, I'd say another hour."
"Fine," Barnaby said. "When they're all set, bring me the detonation unit."
"Yes, sir," the corporal said "Oh, and, sir, there's one other thing."
"Yes."
"Sir, the prisoners who fell from the American hovercraft have just arrived. What should we do with them?"
Barnaby had already been told via radio of the soldier and the little girl who had fallen from one of the escaping hovercrafts and been picked up by his men.
"Take the girl to her quarters. Keep her there," Barnaby said. "Bring the Marine to me."
Libby Gant was standing in a dark corner of the underground cavern, alone. The beam of her flashlight illuminated a small horizontal fissure in the ice wall.
The fissure was at ground level, at the point where the ice wall met the floor. It was about two feet high and stretched horizontally for about six feet.
Gant crouched on her hands and knees and peered down into the horizontal fissure. She saw nothing but darkness. There did, however, appear to be empty space in there?
"Hey!"
Gant turned.
She saw Sarah Hensleigh standing underneath the spacecraft at the other end of the cavern, over by the pool, waving her arms.
"Hey!" Hensleigh called excitedly. "Come and have a look at this."
Gant walked over to the big black spaceship. Montana was already there when she arrived. Santa Cruz was standing guard over by the pool.
"What do you think of that?" Hensleigh pointed at something on the underbelly of the ship.
Gant saw it, frowned. It looked like a keypad of some sort.
Twelve buttons, arranged in three columns, four buttons per column, with what looked like a rectangular screen at the top of it.
But there was something very odd about this "keypad."
There were no symbols on any of the keys.
Like the rest of the ship, the keypad was completely and utterly black?black buttons on a black background.
And then Gant saw that there was one button that did have markings on it. The second button in the middle column had a small red circle printed on it.
"What do you think it is?" Montana asked.
"Who knows," Hensleigh said.
"It could be a way to open it up," Gant suggested.
Hensleigh snorted. "Not likely. Do you know any aliens that use keypads?"
"I don't know any aliens." Gant said. "Do you?"
Hensleigh ignored her. "There's no telling what it is," she said. "It could be an ignition key, or a weapons system..."
"Or a self-destruct
mechanism," Gant said dryly.
"I say we just press it and find out," Hensleigh said.
"But which button do we press?" Montana said.
"The one with the circle on it, I suppose."
Montana pursed his lips in thought. He was the senior man down here. It was his call. He looked to Gant.
Gant shook her head. "We're not here to see what it does. We're just here to hold it until the cavalry arrives."
Montana looked to Santa Cruz, who had come over from the pool to look.
"Press it," Cruz said. "If I'm gonna buy it for this fuckin' thing, I wanna see what's inside it."
Montana turned back to face Sarah Hensleigh. She nodded. "Let's see what it does."
At last, Montana said, "OK. Press it."
Sarah Hensleigh nodded and took a deep breath. Then she stretched out with her hand and pressed the button with the red circle on it.
At first, nothing happened.
Sarah Hensleigh lifted her finger off the keypad and looked up at the spaceship above her, as if she expected it to take off or something.
Suddenly there came a soft harmonic tone, and the screen above the keypad began to glow.
And then another second later, a sequence of symbols appeared across the screen.
"Oh, shit" Montana said.
"What the ..." Hensleigh said.
The screen read:
"Numbers?" Montana said.
"English?" Sarah Hensleigh said. "What the hell is this thing?"
For her part, Gant just shook her head. And as she walked away from the "spaceship" she began to laugh softly.
Schofield and Renshaw lay flat on their backs of the cold hard surface of the iceberg, listening to the rhythmic sound of the waves crashing against the ice cliffs two hundred yards away.
They just lay there for a while, catching their breath.
After a few minutes, Schofield reached around with his hand until he found a small black unit attached to his waist. He pressed a button on the unit.
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