Ice Station ss-1

by Matthew Reilly

  "Kirsty told you." Renshaw nodded slowly. "She's a good kid, Lieutenant. Did she tell you that she's my goddaughter?"

  "No."

  "When she was born, Brian asked me to be her godfather, you know, in case anything ever happened to him. Her mother, Mary Anne, died of cancer when Kirsty was seven."

  Schofield said, "Wait a second. Kirsty's mother died when she was seven?"

  "Yep."

  "So, Sarah Hensleigh isn't Kirsty's mother?"

  "That's right," Renshaw said. "Sarah Hensleigh was Brian's second wife. Sarah Hensleigh is Kirsty's stepmother."

  Suddenly things began to make sense to Schofield. The way Kirsty hardly ever spoke to Sarah. The way she withdrew into herself whenever she was near Sarah. The natural response of a child to a stepmother she didn't like.

  "I don't know why Brian married her," Renshaw said. "I know he was lonely, and, well, Sarah is attractive and she did show him quite a bit of attention. But she was ambitious. Boy, was she ambitious. You could see it in her eyes. She just wanted his name, wanted to meet the people he worked with. She didn't want him. And the last thing she wanted was his kid."

  Renshaw laughed sadly. "And then that drunk driver skipped the curb and killed Brian and in one fell swoop Sarah lost Brian and got the kid she never wanted."

  Schofield asked. "So why doesn't she like you!'

  Renshaw laughed again. "Because I told Brian not to marry her."

  Schofield shook his head. Obviously there had been a lot more going on at Wilkes Ice Station before he and his Marines had arrived than initially met the eye.

  "You ready with those mouthpieces?" he asked.

  "All set."

  "This conversation is to be continued," Schofield said as he got to his feet and began to shoulder into one of the scuba tanks.

  "Wait a second," Renshaw said, standing. "You're going back in there now? What if you get killed going back in? Then there'll be nobody left who believes my story."

  "Who said I believed your story?" Schofield said.

  "You believed it. I know you believed it."

  "Then it looks like you'd better come with me. Make sure I don't get killed," Schofield said as he walked over to the window set into the iceberg and looked out through it.

  Renshaw paled. "OK, OK, let's just slow down for a second here. Have you given any thought to the fact that there is a pod of killer whales out there? Not to mention some kind of seal that kills killer whales?"

  But Schofield wasn't listening. He was just staring out through the window set in the ice. In the distance to the southwest?at the top of one of the nearby ice cliffs?he saw a faint intermittent green flash. Flash-flash. Flash-flash. It was the green beacon light mounted on top of Wilkes Ice Station's radio antenna.

  "Mr. Renshaw. I'm going back in there... with or without you, whatever might be in the way." Schofield turned to face him.

  "Come on. It's time to retake Wilkes Ice Station."

  Wrapped in two layers of oversized 1960s-era wet suits, Schofield and Renshaw swam through the icy silence, breathing with the aid of their thirty-year-old scuba gear.

  They both had the same length of steel cable tied around their waists?cable that stretched all the way back to the large cylindrical spooler inside Little America IV, about a mile to the northeast of Wilkes Ice Station. It was a precaution, in case either of them got lost or separated and had to get back to the station.

  Schofield held a harpoon gun that he had found inside the Little America station out in front of him.

  The water around them became crystal clear as they swam underneath the coastal ice shelf and into a forest of jagged stalactites of ice.

  Schofield's plan was that they would swim under the ice shelf?depending on how deep it went?and come up inside Wilkes Ice Station. Outside, he had taken his bearings from the position of the green beacon light atop the station's radio antenna. He figured that if he and Renshaw could keep swimming in the general direction of the beacon, once they went under the ice shelf they would eventually be able to spot the pool at the base of the station.

  Schofield and Renshaw were in a world of white. Ghostly-white ice formations?like mountain peaks turned upside-down?stretched downward for nearly four hundred feet.

  Schofield frowned inside his diving mask. They would have to go quite a way down before they could come up again inside the station.

  The two of them swam down the side of one of the enormous ice formations. Through his mask, the only thing Schofield could see was a wall of solid white ice.

  After a while, they came to the bottom of the ice formation?the pointed "peak" of the inverted mountain. Schofield slowly swam underneath the peak, and the wall of white glided out of his view?

  ?and he saw it

  His heart nearly skipped a beat.

  It was just hanging there in the water in front of him, suspended from its winch cable, making its slow journey back up toward the station.

  The diving bell.

  Heading back up toward the station.

  And then Schofield realized what that meant.

  The British had already sent a team down to investigate the cavern.

  Schofield hoped to hell that his Marines down in the cavern were ready.

  As for him and Renshaw, they had to get to that diving bell. It was a free ride up to Wilkes Ice Station that Schofield did not want to miss.

  Schofield spun in the water to signal Renshaw. He saw the short scientist behind him, swimming underneath the inverted mountain peak. He signaled for Renshaw to pick up the pace and the two men hurried through the water toward the diving bell.

  "How many are down there?" Barnaby asked softly.

  Book Riley didn't say a word.

  Book was on his knees, with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was down on E-deck, by the pool. Blood poured out from his mouth. His left eye was half-closed, puffed and swollen. After falling from the speeding hovercraft with Kirsty, Book had been brought back to Wilkes. As soon as he had arrived at the station, he had been taken down to E-deck to face Barnaby.

  "Mr. Nero," Barnaby said.

  The big SAS man named Nero punched Book hard in the face. Book fell to the deck.

  "How many?" Barnaby said. He was holding Book's Maghook in his hand.

  "None!" Book yelled through bloody teeth. "There's no one down there. We never got a chance to send anyone down there."

  "Oh, really," Barnaby said. He looked at the Maghook in his hands thoughtfully. "Mr. Riley, I find it very difficult to believe that a commander of the caliber of the Scarecrow would neglect to make the task of sending a squad down to that cave the very first thing that he did once he got here."

  "Then why don't you ask him?"

  "Tell me the truth, Mr. Riley, or very soon I am going to lose my temper and feed you to the lions."

  "There's no one down there," Book said.

  "OK," Barnaby said, turning abruptly to face Snake. "Mr. Kaplan," he said. "Is Mr. Riley telling me the truth?"

  Book looked up sharply at Snake.

  Barnaby said to Snake, "Mr. Kaplan, if Mr. Riley is lying to me, I will kill him. If you lie to me, I will kill you."

  Book looked up at Snake with wide, pleading eyes.

  Snake spoke. "He's lying. There are four people down there. Three Marines, one civilian."

  "You son of a bitch!" Book said to Snake.

  "Mr. Nero," Barnaby said, tossing Book's Maghook to Nero. "String him up."

  Schofield and Renshaw surfaced together inside the slow-moving diving bell.

  They climbed up out of the water and stood on the metal deck that surrounded the small pool of water at the base of the spherical diving bell.

  Renshaw removed his mouthpiece, gasped for breath. Schofield scanned the interior of the empty diving bell, looking for weapons, looking for anything.

  He saw a digital depth counter on the far wall. It was ticking downward as the diving bell ascended: 360 feet. 359 feet. 358 feet.

  "A-ha," Rens
haw said from the other side of the bell.

  Schofield turned. Renshaw was standing in front of a small TV monitor that was attached to the wall high up near the ceiling. Renshaw clicked it on. "I forgot about this," he said.

  "What is it?" Schofield asked.

  "It's another of old Carmine Yaeger's toys. You remember the old guy I told you about before, the guy who used to watch the whales all the time. Do you remember I told you he used to watch them sometimes from inside the diving bell? Well, this monitor is another one of his video feeds of the station's pool. Yaeger had it installed so he could watch the surface of the pool while he was underwater in the bell."

  Schofield looked up at the small black-and-white monitor.

  On the screen he saw the same view of E-deck that he had seen when he was in Renshaw's room earlier. The view from the camera on the underside of the retractable bridge on C-deck, looking straight down on E-deck.

  Schofield froze.

  He saw people on the screen.

  SAS troops with guns. Snake still cuffed to the pole. And Trevor Barnaby, pacing slowly around E-deck.

  And there was one other person.

  There on the deck, down at Barnaby's feet, having his feet tied up, was Book Riley.

  "All right, hoist him up," Barnaby said, once Nero had finished tying the Maghook's cable around Book's ankles.

  Somebody else had already splayed out the Maghook's rope and tossed its launcher over the retractable bridge on C-deck, creating a pulley-like mechanism.

  Nero took the launcher from one of the other British commandos and wedged its grip between two rungs of the rung-ladder between E-deck and D-deck. Then he pressed the black button on the launcher that reeled in the rope.

  As a result of the pulley mechanism?the rope being stretched taut over the bridge on C-deck?Book was suddenly lifted off the deck by his ankles. His hands were still cuffed behind his back. He swung out over the pool and dangled helplessly?head-down?in the air above the water.

  "What the hell are they doing?" Renshaw asked as he and Schofield stared at the black-and-white monitor.

  On the monitor they could see Book dangling directly beneath them, hanging from his own Maghook out over the water.

  At that moment, the diving bell rocked slightly, and Schofield grabbed the wall to steady himself.

  "What was that?" Renshaw said quickly.

  Schofield didn't have to answer him.

  The answer lay right outside the windows of the slow-moving bell.

  Several large dark shapes rose through the water all around the diving bell, their distinctive black-and-white outlines all too familiar.

  The pod of killer whales.

  They were heading up toward the station.

  The first dorsal fin pierced the surface of the water, and a murmur went up among the twenty or so SAS troops gathered around the pool on E-deck.

  Book was still dangling upside-down above the pool. He saw it, too: the enormous black outline of a killer whale gliding slowly through the water beneath him. He began to wriggle, but it was no use?his hands were firmly cuffed, his feet firmly bound.

  His dog tags began to slip over his head. A couple of seconds later they dropped off his chin and plonked down into the water and sank fast.

  Barnaby watched the killer whales from the poolside deck. "This should make things very interesting."

  At that moment, one of his corporals came up to him. It was the same corporal who had reported to him before. "Sir, the Tritonal charges are all set."

  The corporal offered Barnaby a small black unit the size of a thick calculator. It had a numbered keypad on it. "The detonation unit, sir."

  Barnaby took it. "How are the outer markers looking?"

  "We have five men stationed along the outer perimeter monitoring the horizon with laser range finders, sir. Last check, there was no one within fifty miles of this place, sir."

  "Good," Barnaby said. "Good."

  He turned his attention back to the pool and the American Marine hanging helplessly above it.

  "Gives us a little time for some R and R," Barnaby said.

  "Jesus, can't this thing go any faster?" Schofield said as he stared at the depth counter. It ticked slowly downward as they rose through the water. They were still 190 feet from the surface. Still at least seven minutes away.

  Schofield watched the image of Book on the screen.

  "Shit!" he said. "Shit!"

  "Mr. Nero," Barnaby said.

  Nero pressed a button on the Maghook's launcher, and suddenly the Maghook began to play out its rope and Book began to descend toward the pool, headfirst.

  The water beneath him was choppy. Killer whales sliced through it in every direction. Suddenly one of them rose above the surface beneath Book and blew a spray of water out of its blowhole.

  Book's head descended toward the water. He was one foot above it when he jolted to a sudden halt.

  "Mr. Riley!" Barnaby called from the safety of the deck.

  "What?"

  "Rule Britannia, Mr. Riley!"

  Nero hit the button again and Book's head and upper body plunged underwater.

  No sooner was Book underwater than a line of sharp white teeth whooshed past his face.

  Book's eyes went wide.

  There were so many of them! Killer whales all around him. A slow-moving forest of black and white. The whales seemed to prowl around the water.

  And then suddenly Book saw one of them spot him, saw it turn suddenly in the water and come at him?at speed.

  Book hung there, upside down in the water, totally exposed, unable to move.

  The killer charged at him.

  The SAS commandos cheered when they saw the enormous dorsal fin of the killer make a beeline for the submerged Marine.

  In the diving bell, Schofield was glued to the monitor.

  "Come on, Book," he said. 'Tell me you've got something up your sleeve."

  Book shook his hands behind his back. The cuffs wouldn't budge.

  The killer came at him.

  Fast.

  It opened its jaws and rolled onto its side and?

  ?slid past him, brushing roughly against the side of Book's body.

  The SAS commandos booed.

  In the diving bell, Schofield breathed a sigh of relief.

  Behind him, Renshaw said softly, "It's over."

  "What do you mean, it's over?"

  "Remember what I told you before. They stake their claim with the first pass. Then they eat you."

  Book screamed with frustration under the water.

  He couldn't get his hands free.

  Couldn't... get.. .his... hands... free....

  And then he saw the killer whale again.

  It was coming at him a second time. The same whale.

  The killer whale powered through the water, faster this time, moving with purpose, its high dorsal fin cutting hard through the chop.

  Book saw its jaws open again, and this time he saw the white teeth and the pink tongue and as it came closer and closer his terror became extreme.

  The killer whale didn't roll sideways this time.

  It didn't brush past him this time.

  No, this time, the seven-ton killer whale plowed into Book with pulverizing force, and before Book even knew what had hit him the big whale's jaws came crashing down around his head.

  Inside the diving bell, Schofield stared at the monitor in silence.

  "Holy Christ," Renshaw breathed from behind him.

  The image on the screen was absolutely horrifying.

  A fountain of blood spewed out from the water. The whale had crunched into Book's suspended body and consumed his entire upper half. Now it was shaking the corpse violently, trying to wrench it free from the rope?like a great white shark grappling with a piece of meat hung out over the side of a boat.

  Schofield didn't say anything.

  He swallowed back the vomit welling in his throat.

  Down in the cavern, Montana and Sarah Hens
leigh stared at the screen above the keypad. Gant had left them. She had gone back over to the fissure she had found at the other end of the cavern.

  Hensleigh stared at the screen.

  24157817 _________________________

  ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE

  "It's a way in," she said.

  Eight digits were already displayed on the screen. 24157817. Then there were sixteen blank spaces to be filled in with the entry code.

  "Sixteen gaps to fill," Montana said. "But what's the entry code?"

  "More numbers," Hensleigh said thoughtfully. "It's got to be some kind of numerical code, a code that follows on from the eight numbers already on the screen."

  "But even if we could figure out the code, how do we insert it into the spaces?" Montana said.

  Hensleigh leaned forward and pressed the first black button on the keypad.

  A number "1" appeared instantly on the screen?in the first blank space.

  Montana frowned. "How did you know that?"

  Hensleigh shrugged. "If this thing has instructions written in English, then it's man-made. Which means this keypad is also man-made. Which means it's probably just a regular keypad, with numbers set out on it like on a calculator or a telephone. Who knows, maybe the guys who built it just didn't get round to putting numbers on it."

  She hit the second button.

  A "2" sprang up in the next blank space. Hensleigh smiled, vindicated.

  Then she began to whisper to herself. "Sixteen-digit code, ten digits to choose from. Shit. We're talking trillions of possible combinations."

  "Do you think you can crack it?" Montana said.

  "I don't know," Hensleigh said. "It depends on what the first eight digits are supposed to mean, and whether I can figure that out."

  At that moment, Montana leaned forward and pressed the first button fourteen times. On the screen, the blank spaces filled up quickly.

  The screen beeped suddenly. And then a new prompt appeared at the bottom:

  24157817 12 11111111111111

  INCORRECT CODE ENTERED -

  ENTRY DENIED ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE