Ice Station ss-1

by Matthew Reilly

  "I got what I wanted," Sarah Hensleigh said. "So did Brian."

  "Did you kill him?" Renshaw asked. "The car accident?"

  "No," Hensleigh said. "I didn't. ICG wasn't involved in that at all. It was exactly that, an accident. Call it whatever you want, destiny, fate. It just happened."

  "Did you kill Bernie Olson?" Schofield asked quickly.

  Sarah paused before she answered that

  "Yes," she said. "I did."

  "Oh, you fucking bitch," Renshaw said.

  "Bernie Olson was a liar and a thief," Hensleigh said. "He was going to publish Renshaw's findings before Renshaw did. I didn't really care about that. But then when Renshaw struck metal fifteen hundred feet down, Olson told me he was going to publish that, too. And I just couldn't allow that to happen. Not without the ICG knowing about it first"

  "Not without the ICG knowing about it first," Schofield repeated bitterly.

  "It's our job to know everything first."

  "So you killed him," Schofield said. "With sea snake venom. And you made it look like Renshaw did it."

  Sarah Hensleigh looked at Renshaw. "I'm sorry, James, but you were far too easy a target. You and Bernie fought all the time. And when you fought that night, it was just too good an opportunity to miss."

  Schofield looked at his watch. "Sarah, listen. I know you don't believe me, but we have to get out of here. There is a nuclear missile?"

  "There is no missile," Hensleigh snapped. "If there were, the SEALs wouldn't be here."

  Schofield glanced at his watch again.

  10:36 p.m.

  Shit, he thought. It was so frustrating. They were stuck here, at the mercy of Sarah Hensleigh. And she was just going to wait here until the nuke arrived and killed them all.

  It was at that moment that Schofield's watch flicked over to 10:37 p.m.

  Schofield hadn't known about the eighteen Tritonal 80/20 charges that Trevor Barnaby had laid in a semicircle around Wilkes Ice Station with the intention of creating an iceberg.

  Hadn't known that exactly two hours ago?at 8:37 p.m.? when Barnaby had been inside the diving bell alone, Barnaby had set a timer to detonate the Tritonal charges in two hours' time.

  The eighteen Tritonal charges exploded as one and the blast was absolutely devastating.

  Three-hundred-foot geysers of snow shot up into the air. A deafeningly loud groan echoed out across the landscape as a deep semicircular chasm formed in the ice shelf. And then suddenly, with a loud, ominous crack, that part of the ice shelf containing Wilkes Ice Station and everything below it? a whole three cubic kilometers of ice?suddenly dropped away and began to fall into the sea.

  Down in the ice tunnel in the cavern, the world tilted crazily. Chunks of ice rained down on everyone inside the tunnel. The collective boom of the eighteen Tritonal charges going off sounded like an enormous thunderclap.

  At first, Schofield thought it was the nuclear missile Thought that Romeo had made a terrible mistake and that the nuke had arrived half an hour earlier than expected. But then he realized that it had to be something else?if it had been the nuke, they would all have been dead by now. The tunnel lurched suddenly and Sarah Hensleigh was thrown off balance. Renshaw seized the opportunity and dived forward, tackling her. The two of them hit the ice wall hard, but Hensleigh threw Renshaw clear of her.

  Schofield was still holding Gant. He put her down and made to stand up, but Sarah Hensleigh whirled around and pointed her gun right at his face.

  "I'm sorry, Lieutenant. I kind of liked you," she said.

  Despite the cacophony of sound all around them, the sound of the gun going off inside the small ice tunnel was deafening.

  Schofield saw Sarah Hensleigh's chest explode with blood.

  Then he saw her eyes bulge and her knees buckle as she dropped to the floor, dead.

  Schofield's Desert Eagle was still smoking when Gant put it back in Schofield's thigh holster. Schofield had never had a chance to draw it, but Gant, down by his knees, had.

  Kirsty just stared at the scene with her mouth open. Schofield rushed over to her.

  "Jesus, are you OK," he said. "Your mother..."

  "She wasn't my mother," Kirsty said quietly.

  "Would it be all right if we talked about this later?" Schofield asked. "In about twenty-two minutes this place is gonna be water vapor."

  Kirsty nodded.

  "Mr. Renshaw," Schofield said, looking at the shuddering walls all around him. "What's happening?"

  Renshaw said, "I don't know?"

  At that moment, the whole tunnel lurched suddenly and dropped about ten inches.

  "It feels like the ice shelf has been dislodged from the mainland," Renshaw said. "It's becoming an iceberg."

  "An iceberg ...," Schofield said, his mind turning. All of a sudden, his head snapped up and he looked at Renshaw. "Are those elephant seals still out in that cave?"

  Renshaw looked out through the fissure.

  "No," Renshaw said. 'They're gone."

  Schofield crossed the tunnel and picked up Gant in his arms, carried her toward the fissure. "I thought that might happen," he said. "I killed the bull. They're probably out looking for him, now."

  "How are we going to get out of here?" Renshaw said.

  Schofield hoisted Gant up into the fissure and pushed her through. Then he turned to face Renshaw, his eyes gleaming.

  "We're gonna fly out of here."

  The big black fighter stood magnificently in the middle of the underground cavern?its sharply pointed nose tilted downward and its sleek black wings swept low. Large chunks of ice rained down from the cavern's high ceiling and exploded against its fuselage.

  Schofield and the others raced across the shaking floor of the cavern and took shelter underneath the belly of the big black plane.

  As Schofield held her in his arms, Gant showed him the keypad and the entry-code screen.

  The entry-code screen glowed green.

  24157817 :_________________________

  ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE

  "Did anybody figure out the code?" Schofield said.

  "Hensleigh was working on it, but I don't think she ever figured it out."

  "So we don't know the code," Schofield said.

  "No, we don't," Gant said.

  "Great."

  At that moment, Kirsty stepped up alongside Schofield and peered at the screen.

  "Hey," she said, "Fibonacci number."

  "What?" Schofield and Gant said at the same time.

  Kirsty shrugged self-consciously. "Two-four-one-five-seven-eight-one-seven. It's a Fibonacci number."

  "What's a Fibonacci number?" Schofield said.

  "Fibonacci numbers are a kind of number sequence," Kir-sty said. "It's a sequence where each number is the sum of the two numbers before it." She saw the amazed looks around her. "My dad showed it to me. Does anybody have a pen and a piece of paper?"

  Gant had the diary she had found earlier in her pocket. Renshaw had a pen. At first it dribbled with ink-colored water, but then it worked. Kirsty began to scribble some numbers in the diary.

  She said, "The sequence goes like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. You just add the first two numbers to get the third. Then you add the second and the third to get the fourth. If you just give me a minute ...," Kirsty said as she began to scribble frantically.

  Schofield looked at his watch.

  10:40 p.m.

  Twenty minutes to go.

  As Kirsty scribbled in the diary, Renshaw said to Schofield, "Lieutenant, exactly how do you plan to fly out of here?"

  "Through there," Schofield said absently, pointing at the pool of water over on the other side of the cavern.

  "What?" Renshaw said, but Schofield wasn't listening. He was busy looking down at the diary as Kirsty wrote in it.

  After two minutes, she had three rows of numbers written out. Schofield wondered how long this was going to take. He looked at the numbers as she wrote them:

  0,1,1, 2, 3,
5, 8,13, 21, 34, 55, 89,144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10,946, 17,711, 28,657, 46,368, 75,025, 121,393, 196,418, 317,811, 514,229, 832,040, 1,346,269, 3,524,578, 5,702,887, 9,227,465, 14,930,352, 24,157,817

  "And see that," Kirsty said. 'There's your number. 24157817."

  "Holy shit," Schofield said. "OK, then. What are the next two numbers in the sequence."

  Kirsty scribbled some more.

  39,088,169, 63,245,986

  "That's them," Kirsty said, showing the diary to Schofield.

  Schofield took it and looked at it. Sixteen digits. Sixteen blank spaces to fill. Amazing. He punched the keys on the keypad.

  The screen beeped.

  24157817 3908816963245986

  ENTRY CODE ACCEPTED. OPENING SILHOUETTE

  There came an ominous droning sound from within the big black ship and then suddenly Schofield saw a narrow flight of steps fold down slowly from the ship's black underbelly.

  He gave Kirsty a kiss on the forehead. "I never thought math would save my life. Come on."

  And with that, Schofield and the others entered the big black ship.

  They came into a missile bay of some sort. Schofield saw six missiles locked into place on two triangular racks, three missiles per rack.

  He carried Gant across the missile bay and lay her on the floor just as Renshaw and Kirsty stepped up into the belly of the plane. Wendy hopped clumsily up the steps behind them. Once the little seal was safely inside, Renshaw pulled the stairs up behind her.

  Schofield headed forward, into the cockpit. "Talk to me, Gant!"

  Gant called forward, the pain evident in her voice: "They called it the Silhouette. It's got some kind of stealth feature that we couldn't figure out. Something to do with the plutonium."

  Schofield stepped into the cockpit.

  "Whoa."

  The cockpit looked amazing?futuristic, especially for a plane that was built in 1979. There were two seats: one forward and to the right, the other?the radar operator/gunner's chair?behind it and to the left. The steepness of the cockpit?it pointed sharply downward?meant that the pilot in the front seat sat well below the gunner in the backseat.

  He jumped into the pilot's seat just as?bang!?a large chunk of ice exploded against the outside of the canopy.

  Schofield stared at the console in front of him: four computer screens, standard control stick, buttons and dials and indicators everywhere. It looked like an amazing high-tech jigsaw puzzle. Schofield felt a sudden panic sweep over him.

  He would never be able to figure out how to fly this plane. Not in eighteen minutes.

  But then, as he looked at the console more closely, he began to see that it wasn't actually that much different from the consoles on the Harriers he had flown in Bosnia. This was a man-made aircraft, after all?why should it be different?

  He found the ignition switch, keyed it.

  Nothing happened. Fuel feed, he thought. Got to pump the fuel feed.

  He searched for the fuel feed button. Found it, pumped it. Then he hit the ignition switch again.

  Nothing hap?

  VRRRROOOOM!

  The twin turbines of the Silhouette's jet engines roared to life and Schofield felt his blood rush. The sound of the engines blasting to life was like nothing he had ever heard.

  He revved the engines. He had to warm her up fast.

  Time, he thought.

  10:45 p.m.

  Fifteen minutes to go.

  He kept revving the engines. Usually such a warm-up routine would take upward of twenty minutes. Schofield gave himself ten.

  God, this was going to be close.

  As he revved the engines whole sections of the cavern's ice walls began to collapse around the big black plane. After five minutes of revving, he looked for the vertical takeoff switch.

  "Gant! Where's the vectored thrust?" On modern vertical-takeoff-and-landing-capable fighters like the Harrier, vertical lift-off is achieved through directable, or "vectored," thrusters.

  "There aren't any," Gant called from the missile bay. "It has retrofiring jets instead! Look for the button that starts the retros!"

  Schofield searched for it. As he did so, however, he came across another button. It was marked: cloak mode. Schofield frowned.

  What the hell?

  And then suddenly he saw the button he was looking for:

  RETROS.

  He hit it.

  The Silhouette responded immediately and began to rise into the air. But then abruptly it jolted to a sudden halt. There came a loud grinding noise from behind it.

  "Huh?" Schofield said.

  He looked out through the back of the cockpit canopy, and he saw that the two tail fins of the Silhouette were still firmly embedded within the ice wall behind it.

  Schofield found the button marked afterburner. Punched it.

  Immediately a white-hot spray of pure heat burst out from the twin thrusters at the back of the Silhouette and began to melt the ice holding the rear of the plane captive.

  The ice melted quickly; the tail fins soon came free.

  Schofield checked his watch.

  10:53 p.m.

  The entire cavern lurched downward again.

  Come on, now; don't go yet. 1 just need a couple more minutes. Just a couple more minutes....

  Schofield kept warming the engine. He looked down at his watch as it ticked over to 10:54. Then 10:55.

  All right, time's up. Time to go.

  He hit the button marked retros again and the eight retro jets on the underside of the big black ship fired as one, shot out long white puffs of gas.

  This time, the Silhouette rose off the icy ground, and began to hover inside the enormous underground cavern. The cavern around it rumbled and shuddered. Chunks of ice rained down from the ceiling, banged down on the back of the big black plane.

  Chaos. Absolute chaos.

  10:56 P.M.

  Schofield looked out through the tinted-glass canopy of the Silhouette. The whole cavern was tilting crazily. It was almost as if the whole ice shelf was lurching forward, moving into the ocean....

  It's falling off the mainland, he thought.

  "What are you doing!" Renshaw called from the missile bay.

  "I'm waiting for it to flip over!" Schofield called back.

  Suddenly Schofield heard Gant groan with pain. "Renshaw! Help her! Fix that wound! Kirsty! Get up here! I need you!"

  Kirsty came forward into the cockpit and climbed up into the high rear chair. "What do you want me to do?"

  "See that stick there?" Schofield said. 'The one with the trigger on it?"

  Kirsty saw a control stick in front of her. "Yeah."

  "Pull that trigger for me, will you?"

  Kirsty pulled the trigger.

  As soon as she did so, two dazzling-white pulses of light shot out from both wings of the big black fighter plane.

  The two tracer bullets slammed into the ice wall in front of the Silhouette and exploded in twin clouds of white. When the two clouds dissipated, Schofield saw a large hole in the ice wall.

  "Nice shootin," Tex," he said.

  He pulled back on his stick, and the Silhouette rose higher in the middle of the collapsing ice cavern.

  "All right, everybody, hold on, this thing is gonna go any second now," Schofield said. "Kirsty, when I say so, I want you to press down on that trigger and hold it down, OK?"

  "OK."

  Schofield peered out through the canopy, looked out at the crumbling ceiling of the ice cavern, looked out at the pool of water through which they had all entered the cavern?the water in the pool was sloshing madly against the ice walls.

  And then at that moment, it happened. The whole cavern just dropped?straight down?and then tilted dramatically. In that instant, Schofield knew that the whole of the ice shelf containing Wilkes Ice Station had come completely free of the mainland.

  It had become an iceberg.

  Wait for it, Schofield told himself. Wait for it....

  And
then, abruptly, the whole cavern tilted again.

  Only this time, the tilting was much more dramatic. This time the whole cavern rotated a full 180 degrees, right around the hovering Silhouette!

  The iceberg had flipped over!

  The whole cavern was now upside-down."

  Suddenly a torrent of water came rushing out of a wide hole in the "ceiling" of the cavern?the hole that only moments before had been the mouth of the underwater ice tunnel that had led up into the cavern.

  The underwater ice tunnel no longer led to the depths of the ocean. Now it led upward. Now it led to the surface.

  Schofield maneuvered the Silhouette so as to avoid the cascade of water pouring out of the ice tunnel. After a good twenty seconds, the rush of water abated and he pulled back on his stick. The Silhouette responded by rocking backwards in the air and pointing itself up at the wide hole in the ceiling.

  "All right, Kirsty, now!"

  Kirsty jammed down on her trigger.

  Immediately the Silhouette's wings spewed forth a devastating burst of tracer fire. The relentless wave of bullets disappeared inside the hole in the ceiling and assaulted any icy crags or outcroppings that dared to jut out of the walls of the ice tunnel.

  At that moment, Schofield hit the thrusters and the Silhouette shot up into the tunnel, just as, behind it, the ceiling of the enormous cavern spectacularly collapsed in on itself.

  The wing-mounted guns of the Silhouette blazed away, blasting at any imperfections in the ice tunnel as the big black plane flew upward through what had once been the underwater ice tunnel.

  Schofield guided the sleek black plane up through the tunnel, shooting through puffs of white cloud, rolling the big plane onto its side when the tunnel narrowed, praying to God that the tracer bullets were clearing the way.

  Up and up the Silhouette went, blasting away at the tunnel in front of it. Explosions boomed out all around the big black plane. The sound of its wing-mounted guns firing away was deafening.

  And then suddenly the tunnel behind the Silhouette began to collapse at a phenomenal rate.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Massive chunks of ice began to rain down from the ceiling of the tunnel behind the speeding plane. The Silhouette raced upward through the tunnel, blasting away at the walls of the tunnel in front of it while at the same time outrunning the collapsing tunnel behind it.