Ice Station ss-1
Page 38
Schofield frowned.
Renshaw nodded at the screen. On it was a list of some sort, with a message written above it.
Schofield read the message. After a moment, his jaw dropped. The e-mail read:
SCARECROW,
THIS IS HAWK. BE ADVISED:
AWARE OF YOUR LOCATION.
USMC PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT HAS YOU LISTED AS DEAD.
SECONDARY TEAM IS EN ROUTE TO YOUR LOCATION.
SUSPECT THAT YOUR MISSION HAS BEEN TARGETED FOR TERMINATION BY ICG.
FEAR THAT THIS SECONDARY UNIT WILL BE HOSTILE TO YOUR INTERESTS. WOULD HATE FOR THE SAME FATE TO BEFALL YOU AS BEFELL ME IN PERU.
WITH THIS IN MIND, SCAN THE FOLLOWING LIST OF KNOWN ICG INFORMERS. MY UNIT IN PERU HAD BEEN INFILTRATED LONG BEFORE I GOT THERE. YOURS MIGHT BE, TOO.
TRANSMIT NO. 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
P.S. SCARECROW, IF AND WHEN YOU GET BACK TO THE STATES, CALL A MAN NAMED PETER CAMERON AT THE WASHINGTON POST IN D.C. HE WILL KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME.
GOOD HUNTING, HAWK
Schofield stared at the e-mail for a moment, stunned.
"Hawk" was Andrew Trent's call sign.
Andrew Trent, who?Schofield had been told?had died in an "accident" during that operation in Peru in 1997.
Andrew Trent was alive....
Renshaw printed off a copy of the e-mail and handed it to Schofield. Schofield scanned the e-mail again, thunderstruck.
Somehow, Trent had discovered that he was down in Antarctica. He had also discovered that a secondary team was on its way to Wilkes. Most disturbing of all, however, he had discovered that the United States Marine Corps had already listed Schofield as officially dead.
And so Trent had sent Schofield this e-mail, complete with a list of known ICG informers, in case Schofield had any traitors in his unit.
Schofield looked at the time of the e-mail. 7:32 p.m. It must have been transmitted via satellite during the 7:30 p.m. break in the solar flare.
Sctiofield scanned the list. A couple of names leaped out at him.
KAPLAN, SCOTT M. USMC GNNY SGT
Snake. As if Schofield needed to know that Snake was a traitor. And then:
KOZLOWSKI, CHARLES R. USMC SGT MJR
Oh, God, Schofield thought.
Chuck Kozlowski. The Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, the highest-ranking enlisted soldier in the Corps, was a member of the ICG.
And then Schofield saw another name that made him freeze in horror.
LEE, MORGAN T. USMC SGT
"Oh, no," Schofield said aloud.
"What?" Renshaw said. "What is it?"
Montana, Schofield thought. Montana's real name was Morgan Lee. Morgan T. Lee. Schofield looked up in horror. Montana was ICG.
Down in the hangar, Gant and the others were searching for information about the black plane.
In a small workshop, Santa Cruz was looking at some schematics. Sarah Hensleigh was sitting at a desk behind him, with a pencil and paper out.
"Nice name," Cruz said, breaking the silence.
"What?" Sarah said.
"The name of the plane. Says here that they called it the Silhouette," Santa Cruz said. "Not bad."
Sarah nodded. "Hmmm."
"Any luck with that code?" he asked.
"I think I'm getting closer," Hensleigh said "The number that we were given, 24157817, seems to be a series of prime numbers: 2,41,5,7, until you get to 817. But 817 is divisible by 19 and 43, which are also prime numbers. But then, again, 817 could be two numbers, 81 and 7, or maybe even three numbers. That's the hard part, figuring out just how many numbers 24157817 is supposed to represent"
He smiled. "Better you than me, ma'am."
"Thanks."
At mat moment, Montana came into the workshop. "Dr. Hensleigh?" he said.
"Yes."
"Fox said to tell you that you might like to have a look at something she's found over in the office. She said it was a codebook or something."
"All right." Hensleigh got up and left the workshop.
Montana and Santa Cruz were alone.
Santa Cruz resumed his examination of the ship's schematics.
He said, "You know, sir, this plane is something else. It's got a standard turbofan power plant with supercruise capability. And it's got eight small, retro jets on its underbelly for vertical takeoff and landing. But the strange thing is, both of these power plants run on regular jet fuel."
"So?" Montana said from the doorway.
"So ... what does the plutonium core do?" Santa Cruz said, turning to face him.
Before Montana could reply, Cruz turned back around to face his schematics. He pulled some handwritten notes out from under them.
"But I think I figured it out," he said. "I was telling Fox about this before. These notes I found say that the engineers at this hangar were working
on some new kind of electronically generated stealth mechanism for the Silhouette, some kind of electromagnetic field that surrounded the plane. But to generate this electromagnetic field they needed a shitload of power, something in the neighborhood of 2.71 gigawatts. But the only thing capable of generating that kind of power is a controlled nuclear reaction. Hence, the plutonium." Santa Cruz nodded to himself, pleased.
He never noticed Montana stepping up quickly behind him.
"I tell ya," Santa Cruz went on, "this has been one seriously fucked-up mission. Spaceships, French troops, British troops, secret bases, plutonium cores, ICG traitors. Fuck. It's just?"
Montana's knife entered Santa Cruz's ear. It went in hard and penetrated Santa Cruz's brain in an instant.
The young private's eyes went wide; then he fell forward and slammed down face-first on the desk in front of him. Dead.
Montana extracted his bloody knife from Santa Cruz's skull and turned around?
?and saw Libby Gant standing in the doorway to the workshop, with a bundle of papers in her hands, staring at him in apoplectic horror.
Schofield keyed his helmet mike. "Gant! Gant! Come in!"
There was no reply.
Schofield glanced at his watch.
9:58 p.m.
Shit. The break in the solar flare would be here in two minutes.
"Gant, I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can, listen up. Montana is ICG! I repeat, Montana is ICG! Don't turn your back on him! Neutralize him if you have to. I repeat, neutralize him if you have to. I've gotta go."
And with that, Schofield raced upstairs and headed for the radio room.
Gant ran across the cavernous hangar with Montana in hot pursuit. She sprinted past an ice wall just as a line of bullet holes erupted across it.
Gant unslung her MP-5 as she raced through the bulkhead doorway that led back to the fissure and the main cavern. She fired wildly behind her. Then she dived into the horizontal fissure and rolled through it just as Montana appeared in the bulkhead doorway behind her and let off another burst of gunfire.
Another line of bullet holes raked across the ice wall around Gant, only this time the line of bullet holes cut across the middle of her body.
Two bullets lodged in her breastplate. One opened up a jagged red hole in her side.
Gant stifled a scream as she rolled through the fissure, clutching her side. She clenched her teeth, saw the trickle of blood seep between her fingers. The pain was excruciating.
As she rolled out of the fissure and into the main cavern, she saw the elephant seals over by the spaceship, and indeed, no sooner was she out of the fissure than she saw one of the seals lift its head and look over in her direction.
It was the male. The big bull with its fearsome lower fangs. It must have returned sometime in the last half hour, Gant thought
The male barked at her. Then it began to move its massive body toward her, his bulging layers of fat rippling with every lumbering stride.
The bullet wound in Gant's side burned.
She crawled on her backside away from the fissure, keeping one eye on the approaching elephant seal and the other on the fissure itself. A snail trail of her blood stained the frosty floor behind her, betraying her path.
Montana emerged from the horizontal fissure, gun first.
Gant was nowhere to be seen.
He saw the trail of blood on the floor, leading off to the right, around and behind a large boulder of ice.
Montana followed the trail of blood. He quickly came round the ice boulder and let rip with a burst of gunfire. He hit nothing. Gant wasn't there. Her MP-5 just lay there on the floor behind the ice boulder.
Montana spun.
Where the hell was she?
Gant saw Montana come back round the ice boulder and catch sight of her.
She was now sitting on the floor in front of the horizontal fissure, clutching at her side with both hands. It had taken all of her strength?and both of her hands?to get to her feet and run back to the left-hand side of the fissure without spilling any more blood before Montana had emerged from the hole. She had actually intended to go back in through the fissure, but she had only managed to get this far.
Montana smiled, walked slowly over to her. He stood in front of her, with his back to the main part of the cavern.
"You're a complete son of a bitch, you know that," Gant said.
Montana shrugged.
"It's not even an alien fucking spaceship, and you're still killing us," Gant said, looking out into the cavern behind Montana.
"It's not just the ship anymore, Gant. It's what you know about the ICG. That's why you can't be allowed to go back."
Gant looked Montana right in the eye. "Do your fucking worst."
Montana raised his gun to fire, but at that moment a bloodcurdling roar echoed across the cavern.
Montana spun just in time to see the big bull elephant seal come charging across the cavern toward him, roaring loudly. The floor shook with its every booming stride.
Gant took the opportunity and rolled quickly back through the horizontal fissure behind her. She fell in a clumsy heap to the floor of the tunnel behind the fissure.
The big seal loped across the cavern at incredible speed, covering the distance between the ship and the fissure in seconds.
Montana raised his gun, fired.
But the animal was too big, too close.
From inside the tunnel, Gant looked up and saw Montana's outline on the other side of the translucent ice wall above her.
And then suddenly?whump!?she saw Montana's body get slammed up against the other side of the translucent ice wall. A grotesque star-shaped explosion of blood flared out from Montana's body as the big seal slammed him against the ice wall with thunderous force.
Slowly, painfully, Gant got to her feet and peered out through the horizontal fissure into the main cavern.
She saw the elephant seal extract his fangs from Montana's belly. The long, blood-slicked teeth came clear of his wet suit and Montana just dropped to the floor. The elephant seal stood over his prone body in triumph.
And then suddenly Gant heard Montana groan.
He was still alive.
Just barely, but?yes?definitely alive. Gant then watched as the big seal bent down over Montana and ripped a large chunk of flesh from his rib cage.
Schofield strode into the radio room on A-deck on the tick of ten o'clock. Renshaw and Kirsty came in behind him. Schofield sat down in front of the radio console, keyed the microphone.
"Attention, McMurdo. Attention, McMurdo. This is the Scarecrow. Do you copy?"
There was no reply.
Schofield repeated his message.
No reply.
And then suddenly: "Scarecrow, this is Romeo; I read you. Give me a Sit-Rep."
Romeo, Schofield thought. Romeo was the call sign of Captain Harley Roach, the commanding officer of Marine Force Reconnaissance Unit Five. Schofield had met Romeo Roach on a couple of occasions before. He was six years older than Schofield, a good soldier, and a legend with the ladies? hence his call sign, Romeo.
What was more, he was a Marine. Schofield smiled. He had a Marine on the line.
"Romeo," Schofield said, relief sweeping over him. "Situation is as follows: we are in control of the target objective. I repeat, we are in control of the target objective. Heavy losses have been sustained, but the target objective is ours." The target objective, of course, was Wilkes Ice Station. Schofield sighed. "What about you, Romeo? Where are you?"
"Scarecrow, we are currently in hovercrafts, in a holding pattern approximately one mile from the target objective? "
Schofield's head jerked up.
One mile....
But that was right outside the front door....
"?and we are under orders to hold here until further instructed. We have strict instructions not to enter the station."
Schofield couldn't believe it
There were Marines outside Wilkes Ice Station, righ
t outside Wilkes Ice Station. Only one mile out The first thing Schofield wanted to know was?
"Romeo, how long have you been out there?"
"Ah, about thirty-eight minutes now, Scarecrow," Romeo's voice said.
Thirty-eight minutes, Schofield thought with disbelief. A squad of Recon Marines had been sitting on their asses outside Wilkes for the last half hour.
Suddenly a voice came over Schofield's helmet intercom? not over the radio room's speakers. It was Romeo.
"Scarecrow, I gotta talk to you privately."
Schofield clicked off the station's radio and spoke into his helmet mike. Romeo was using the closed-circuit Marine channel.
"Romeo, what the fuck are you doing?" Schofield said. He couldn't believe it. While he had been inside the station doing battle with Trevor Barnaby, a whole unit of Marines had been arriving at Wilkes Ice Station and waiting outside.
"Scarecrow, it's a fucking circus out here. Marines. Green Berets. Hell, there's a whole goddamn platoon of Army Rangers out here patrolling the one-mile perimeter. National Command and the Joint Chiefs sent every unit they could find to cover this station. But the thing is, once we got here, they ordered us to wait until a Navy SEAL team arrived. Scarecrow, my orders are very clear: if any one of my men moves toward that station before that SEAL team arrives, he is to be fired upon."
Schofield was stunned. For a moment he didn't say anything.
Suddenly the situation became clear to him.
He was in exactly the same position that Andrew Trent had been in in Peru. He had got to the station first He had found something inside it And now they were sending a SEAL team?the most ruthless, most deadly special forces unit the United States possesses?into the station.
A line from Andrew Trent's e-mail suddenly popped into Schofield's head:
USMC PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT HAS YOU LISTED AS DEAD.
Schofield swallowed deeply as the horror of the realization hit him.
They were sending in the SEALs.
They were sending in the SEALs to kill him.
SEVENTH INCURSION
16 June 2200 hours
"Romeo, listen to me," Schofield said quickly. "The ICG planted men in my unit. One of my own men began killing my wounded. That SEAL team they're sending in is going to come in here and kill me. You have to do something."
Schofield felt a chill run down his spine when he realized that he was saying to Romeo exactly the same thing that Andrew Trent had said to him from that temple in Peru.