Ice Station ss-1

by Matthew Reilly

  Still somewhat dazed from the fight, Schofield rose to his knees. He turned away from the hideous sight of Snake's body pinned underneath the blood-spattered drilling machine and quickly put the crossbow in his thigh pocket. Then he spun and began looking about himself for any kind of weapon he could use?

  His eyes fell instantly on the body of Jean Petard, lying on the floor nearby.

  Still breathing hard, Schofield crawled over to it, knelt beside it. He began rifling through the dead Frenchman's pockets.

  After a few seconds, he pulled a grenade out from one of Petard's pockets. It had writing on it: M8A3-STN.

  Schofield knew what it was instantly.

  A stun grenade. A flasher.

  Like the one the French commandos had used earlier that morning. Schofield put the stun grenade into his breast pocket

  The door to the drilling room burst open. Schofield instantly fell back to the floor, tried to look tired, wounded.

  Two SAS commandos stormed into the drilling room with their guns up. Trevor Barnaby strode in behind them.

  Barnaby winced when he saw Snake's body lying flat on the floor, face-down, with its head positioned underneath the large black drilling apparatus?complete with a gaping red hole right through the middle of it

  "Oh, Scarecrow," Barnaby said. "Did you have to do that to him?"

  Schofield was still breathing hard, and he had tiny flecks of blood splattered all over his face. He didn't say anything.

  Barnaby shook his head. He almost seemed disappointed that Schofield hadn't been killed by Snake.

  "Get him out of here," Barnaby said quietly to the two SAS men behind him. "Mr. Nero."

  "Yes, sir."

  "String him up."

  Down in the cave, another battle was under way.

  No sooner had the first SAS diver stepped out of the water than a second SAS man was up and standing in the shallows behind him.

  The first SAS commando stormed out of the water, firing hard. The second man followed him up, sloshing through the knee-deep water with his gun up when suddenly?whump!? he was violently yanked beneath the surface of the water.

  The first commando?up on dry land and oblivious to the fate that had befallen his partner?snapped to his right and drew a bead on Montana, just as Gant bobbed up from behind her boulder and took him out from the left.

  Gant turned, saw more SAS commandos surfacing in the pool with their sea sleds.

  Then suddenly something else caught her eye.

  Movement.

  A large black object just slid out from one of the wide ten-foot holes in the ice wall above the pool and dropped smoothly into the water.

  Gant's jaw dropped.

  It was an animal of some sort.

  But it was so huge. It looked like ... like a seal. A great, big, enormous seal.

  At that moment, another massive seal emerged from a second hole in the ice wall. And then another. And another. They just slid out from their holes and splashed down into the pool, raining down on the team of SAS divers from every side.

  Gant just watched them with her mouth wide open.

  The pool was a broiling froth now, choppy and frothy. Suddenly another SAS diver went under, replaced by a slick of his own blood. And then abruptly the man next to him fell forward in the water as one of the enormous seals plowed into him from behind and drove him under. Gant saw the animal's glistening wet back rise above the water for an instant before it submerged on top of the British soldier.

  A couple of SAS divers made it to land. But the seals just followed them right out of the water. One diver was on his hands and knees, clawing his way across the ice, trying desperately to get away from the water's edge, when a giant seven-ton seal launched itself out of the pool right behind him.

  The massive creature landed on the ice a bare two feet behind him, and the earth shook beneath its weight. The big seal then lumbered forward and clamped its jaws shut around the SAS man's legs. Bones crunched. The man screamed.

  And then, before he even knew what was happening, the big seal began to eat him.

  Roughly, with great slashing bites. The high-pitched tearing sound of flesh being ripped from bone filled the cavern.

  Gant stared at the scene in silent awe.

  The SAS men were screaming. The seals were barking. Several of mem began eating their victims while they were still alive.

  Gant just stared at the seals. They were huge. At least as big as killer whales. And they had bulbous round snouts that she had seen in a book once.

  Elephant seals.

  Gant noticed that there were two smaller seals in the group. These two smaller animals had peculiar teeth?strange elongated lower canines that rose up from their lower jaws and over their upper lips, like a pair of inverted tusks. The larger seals, she saw, did not have these tusks.

  Gant tried to recall everything she knew about elephant seals. Like killer whales, elephant seals lived in large groups made up of one dominant male, known as the bull or beach-master, and a harem of eight or nine females, or cows, which were all smaller than the bull.

  Gant felt a chill as she saw the sex of one of the big seals in front of her.

  These were the females of the group.

  The two smaller seals that she saw were their pups. Male pups, Gant noticed.

  Gant wondered where the bull was. He would almost certainly be larger than these females. But if the females were this big, how big would he be?

  More questions flitted through her mind.

  Why did they attack? Elephant seals, Gant knew, could be exceptionally aggressive, especially when their territory was under threat.

  And why now? Why had Gant and her team been allowed to pass safely through the ice tunnel only several hours before, while the SAS had been subjected to so violent an attack now?

  There came a sudden final scream from the pool followed by a splash and Gant looked out from behind her boulder.

  There was a long, cold silence. The only sound was that of waves lapping against the edge of the pool.

  All of the SAS divers were dead. Most of the seals were up inside the cavern now, bent over the spoils of their victory?the bodies of the dead SAS commandos. It was then that Gant heard a nauseating crunch and she turned round to see that the elephant seals had begun to feed en masse.

  This battle was well and truly over.

  Schofield stood on the pool deck of Wilkes Ice Station with his hands cuffed in front of him. One of the SAS commandos was busy tying the grappling hook of Book's Maghook around his ankles. Schofield looked off to his left and saw the high black fin of a killer whale slice through the murky red water of the pool.

  "Dive Team, report," an SAS radio operator said into his portable unit nearby. "I repeat. Dive Team, come in."

  "Any word?" Barnaby said.

  "There's no response, sir. The last thing they said was that they were about to surface inside the cavern."

  Barnaby gave Schofield a look. "Keep trying," he said to the radio operator. Then he turned to Schofield. "Your men down in that cave must have put up quite a fight."

  "They do that," Schofield said.

  "So," Barnaby said. "Any last requests from the condemned man? A blindfold? Cigarette? Shot of brandy?"

  At first, Schofield said nothing; he just looked down at his handcuffed wrists in front of him.

  And then he saw it.

  Suddenly he looked up.

  "A cigarette," he said quickly, swallowing. "Please."

  "Mr. Nero. A cigarette for the Lieutenant."

  Nero stepped forward, offered a pack of cigarettes to Schofield. Schofield took one with his cuffed hands, raised it to his mouth. Nero lit it. Schofield took a deep draw and hoped to hell that nobody saw his face turn green. He had never smoked in his life.

  "All right," Barnaby said. 'That's enough. Gentlemen, hoist him up. Scarecrow, it was a pleasure knowing you."

  Schofield swung, upside-down, out over the pool. His dog tags hung loosely off his chi
n, glistening silver in the white artificial light of the station. The water beneath him was stained an ugly shade of red.

  Book's blood.

  Schofield looked up at the diving bell in the center of the pool, saw Renshaw's face in one of the portholes?saw a single terrified eye peering out at him.

  Schofield just hung there, three feet above the hideous red water. He calmly held the cigarette to his mouth, took another puff.

  The SAS soldiers must have thought it a vain act of bravado?but while the cigarette dangled from Schofield's mouth they never saw what he was doing with his hands.

  Barnaby offered Schofield a salute. "Rule Britannia, Scarecrow."

  "Fuck Britannia," Schofield replied.

  "Mr. Nero," Barnaby said. "Lower away."

  Over by the rung-ladder, Nero pressed a button on the Maghook's launcher. The launcher itself was still wedged in between two rungs of the ladder while its rope was stretched taut over the retractable bridge up on C-deck, creating the same pulleylike mechanism that had been used to lower Book into the water.

  The Maghook's rope began to play out.

  Schofield began to descend toward the water.

  His hands were still cuffed in front of him. He held the cigarette between the fingers of his right hand.

  His head entered the murky red water first. Then his shoulders. Then his chest, his stomach, his elbows ...

  But then, just as Schofield's wrists were about to go under, Schofield quickly twisted the cigarette in his fingers and pointed it toward the loop of magnesium detonator cord that he had now looped around the chain link of his handcuffs.

  Schofield had seen the detonator cord when he had been standing on the deck only moments before. He had forgotten that he'd tied a loop of it around his wrist back in Little America IV. The SAS, when they had frisked him and relieved him of all his weapons earlier, must have missed it, too.

  The burning tip of the cigarette touched the detonator cord a split second before Schofield's wrists disappeared below the surface.

  The detonator cord ignited instantly, just as Schofield's wrists disappeared into the inky red water.

  It burned bright white, even under the water, and cut through the chain link of Schofield's handcuffs like a knife through butter. Suddenly his hands broke apart, free.

  At that moment, a pair of jaws burst through the red haze around his head and Schofield saw the enormous eye of a killer whale looking right at him. And then suddenly it disappeared back into the haze and was gone.

  Schofield's heart was racing. He couldn't see a thing. The water around him was impenetrable. Just a murky cloud of red.

  And then suddenly a series of bizarre-sounding clicks began to echo through the water around him.

  Click-click.

  Click-click.

  Schofield frowned. What was it? The killers?

  And then it hit him.

  Sonar.

  Shit!

  The killer whales were using sonar clicks to find him in the murky water. Many whales were known to use sonar? sperm whales, blue whales, killers. The principle was simple: the whale made a loud click with its tongue, the click traveled through the water, bounced off any object in the water, and returned to the whale?revealing to it the object's location. Sonar units on man-made submarines operated on the same principle.

  Schofield was desperately searching the cloudy red haze around him?searching for the whales?when suddenly one of them exploded out of the haze and rushed toward him.

  Schofield screamed underwater, but the whale slid past him, brushing roughly against the side of his body.

  It was then that Schofield remembered what Renshaw had told him earlier about the killer whales' hunting behavior.

  They brush past you to establish ownership.

  Then they eat you.

  Schofield did a vertical sit-up, broke the surface. He heard the SAS commandos on E-deck cheer. He ignored them, gulped in air, went under again.

  He didn't have much time. The killer whale that had just staked its claim on him would be coming back any second now.

  Loud clicks echoed through the red water around him.

  And then suddenly a thought struck Schofield.

  Sonar....

  Shit, he thought, patting his pockets. Do I still have it?

  He did.

  Schofield pulled Kirsty Hensleigh's plastic asthma puffer from his pocket. He pressed the releasing button, and a short line of fat bubbles rushed out from the puffer.

  OK, need a weight.

  Need something to weigh it down....

  Schofield saw them instantly.

  Quickly he pulled his stainless steel dog tags from around his neck and looped their neck chain around the puffer's releasing button so that it held it down.

  A continuous stream of fat bubbles began to rush out from the puffer.

  Schofield felt the body of water around him rock and sway. Somewhere out in the red murk of the pool, that killer whale was coming back for him.

  He quickly released the small asthma puffer, now weighed down by his steel dogtags.

  The puffer sank instantly, leaving a trail of fat bubbles shooting up through the water behind it. After a second, the puffer sank into the murky red haze and Schofield lost sight of it.

  A moment later, the killer whale roared out of the haze, coming right at Schofield, its jaws bared wide.

  Schofield just stared at the massive black-and-white beast and prayed to God that he had remembered it right.

  But the killer just kept coming. It came at him fast?fright-eningly fast?and soon Schofield could see nothing but its teeth and its tongue and the closing yawn of its jaws and then?

  Without warning, the killer whale banked sharply in the water and veered downward, chasing the asthma puffer and its trail of bubbles.

  Schofield sighed with relief.

  In a dark corner of his mind he thought about sonar detection systems. Although it is widely stated that sonar bounces off an object in water, this is not entirely true. Rather, sonar reflects off the microscopic layer of air that lies in between an object in water and the water itself.

  So when Schofield sank the asthma puffer?spewing out a trail of nice, fat air bubbles behind it?he had, at least insofar as the sonar-using killer was concerned, created a whole new target. The whale must have detected the stream of bubbles with its clicking and assumed that it was Schofield trying to get away.

  And so it had chased it.

  Schofield didn't think about it anymore.

  He had other things to do now.

  He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out Jean Petard's stun grenade. Schofield pulled the pin, counted to three, and then did a quick sit-up in the water and broke the surface. He then tossed the stun grenade vertically into the air and let himself fall back underwater squeezing his eyes shut.

  Five feet above the surface of the pool, the stun grenade reached the zenith of its arc and hung in the air for a fraction of a second.

  Then it went off.

  Trevor Barnaby saw the grenade pop up out of the water. It took him an extra second to realize what it was, but by then it was too late.

  Along with every one of his men, Barnaby did the most natural thing in the world when he saw a foreign object pop up out of a pool of water.

  He looked at it.

  The stun grenade exploded like an enormous flashbulb, blinding all of them. The SAS men on E-deck recoiled as one, as a galaxy of stars and sunspots came to life on the insides of their eyes.

  Schofield did another sit-up in the water. Only this time, when he broke the surface, he had Petard's crossbow gripped in his hands, reloaded and ready to go.

  He took his aim quickly and fired.

  The crossbow's arrow shot across the expanse of E-deck and found its target. It slammed into the Maghook's launcher, wedged as it was between the rungs of the rung-ladder.

  The launcher jolted out of its position and swung free from the rung-ladder, swung toward the pool.
When it had been wedged in between the rungs of the rung-ladder, the Maghook's rope had been stretched up toward the retractable bridge on C-deck at a forty-five-degree angle. Now that it was released from the rung-ladder?and since Schofield was floating in the water and, therefore, not putting any weight on it at the other end?the launcher swung back like a pendulum, out over the pool, and smacked into the middle of Schofield's waiting hand.

  All right!

  He looked up at the bridge on C-deck. The Maghook's rope was now stretched over the bridge like a block and tackle?with the length of rope going up parallel to the length of rope going down.

  Schofield gripped the launcher tightly as he hit the black button on the grip of the Maghook. Instantly he felt himself fly up out of the bloodstained water as the reeling mechanism of the Maghook hoisted him up toward the bridge on C-deck, its rope speeding over the bridge itself, using it as a block and tackle.

  Schofield came to the bridge and hauled himself up onto it just as the first SAS men down on E-deck reached for their machine guns.

  Schofield didn't even look at them. He was already running off the bridge when they started firing.

  Schofield climbed the rung-ladder up to B-deck two rungs at a time.

  When he got up onto what was left of the B-deck catwalk, he reloaded his crossbow. Then he dashed toward the east tunnel and headed for the living quarters. He had to find Kirsty, and then somehow he had to figure out a way to get out of here.

  Suddenly an SAS commando rounded the corner in front of him. Schofield whipped his crossbow up and fired. The SAS commando's head snapped backward as the arrow lodged in his forehead and his feet went out from under him.

  Schofield quickly went over to the body, crouched down over it.

  The SAS commando had an MP-5, a Glock-7 pistol, and two blue grenades that Schofield recognized as nitrogen charges. Schofield took them all. The SAS man also had a lightweight radio headset. Schofield took that, too, wrapped it around his head, and ran off down the tunnel.