Ice Station ss-1

by Matthew Reilly

  He set the timer on the Tritonal charge for ten minutes and then left it on the pilot's chair. Then he picked up Gant and carried her out of the cockpit and into the missile bay. Then he carried her down the steps and out of the Silhouette.

  The flight deck was deserted.

  In the orange twilight, Schofield and his motley collection of survivors stood in front of the ominous black plane. The big black Silhouette, with its sharply pointed down-turned nose and its sleek, low-swept wings, looked like a gigantic bird of prey as it sat there on the deserted flight deck of the Wasp in the cold Antarctic twilight.

  Schofield led the others across the empty flight deck, toward the five-story superstructure in the middle of the ship. It was a strange sight?Schofield with Gant in his arms, Renshaw and Kirsty, and last of all, loping across the flight deck behind them, staring in awe at the massive metal vessel all around her, Wendy.

  As they approached the island, a door opened at the base of the massive structure and a white light glowed from inside it.

  Suddenly a man's shadow appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the light behind him. Schofield came closer and recognized the owner of the shadow, recognized the weathered features of a man he knew well.

  It was Jack Walsh.

  The Captain of the Wasp. The man who, four years ago, had defied the White House and sent a team of his Marines into Bosnia to get Shane Schofield out.

  Walsh smiled at Schofield, his blue eyes shining.

  "You've been getting a lot of noses out of joint today, Scarecrow," he said evenly. "Lot of people talking about you."

  Schofield frowned. He had kind of expected a warmer reception from Jack Walsh.

  "Why have you cleared the deck, sir?" Schofield said.

  "I didn't?" Walsh began, cutting himself off as suddenly another man brushed rudely past him and stepped out onto the flight deck and just stood there in front of Schofield.

  Schofield had never seen this man before. He had carefully groomed white hair, a white mustache, and a barrel-like torso.

  And he wore a blue uniform. Navy. The number of medals on his breast pocket was staggering. Schofield guessed he must have been about sixty.

  "So this is the Scarecrow," the man said, looking Schofield up and down. Schofield just stood there on the flight deck, holding Gant in his arms.

  "Scarecrow," Jack Walsh said tightly, "this is Admiral Thomas Clayton, the Navy's representative to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He assumed command of the Wasp about four hours ago."

  Schofield sighed inwardly.

  An Admiral from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jesus.

  If what he had heard about the ICG was correct, the Joint Chiefs were its head, its brain. Schofield was looking at one of the heads of the ICG.

  "All right!" Admiral Clayton yelled loudly to someone standing in the doorway behind Walsh. "Get out there!"

  At that moment, a stream of men?all of them dressed in blue coveralls?poured out of the doorway in front of Schofield and headed across the deck toward the Silhouette.

  Admiral Clayton turned to Schofield. "Seems this mission is not going to be a complete waste of time after all. We heard the commentary of your dogfight with the F-22s. A cloaking device, huh? Who would have thought it."

  Schofield looked back out at the deck, saw the men in blue coveralls reach the stern end of the flight deck, saw them begin to swarm all over the Silhouette. A couple of them went up the steps and inside the big black plane.

  "Captain Walsh," Schofield said, indicating Gant. "This Marine needs medical attention."

  Walsh nodded. "Let's get her to the infirmary. Deckhand!"

  A deckhand appeared, took Gant from Schofield, carried her inside.

  Schofield turned to Kirsty and Renshaw. "Go with her. Take Wendy, too." Kirsty and Renshaw obeyed, went inside the island. Wendy hopped in through the doorway after them. Schofield made to follow them, but as he did, there came a shout from over by the Silhouette.

  "Admiral!" one of the men in blue coveralls called out from underneath the pointed nose of the Silhouette.

  "What is it?" Admiral Clayton said, walking over to the plane.

  The man held up the Tritonal 80/20 charge that Schofield had left inside the cockpit. Clayton saw it. He didn't seem at all perturbed by its presence.

  Admiral Clayton turned to Schofield from fifty yards away. "Attempting to destroy the evidence, Lieutenant?"

  The Admiral took the charge from the man, turned the pressurized lid, and calmly flicked the disarm switch.

  Clayton smiled at Schofield. "Really, Scarecrow," he called. "You'll have to do better than that to beat me."

  Schofield just stared at Clayton, standing over by the Silhouette. "I'm sorry about the deck, sir," Schofield said quietly.

  Behind him, Jack Walsh said, "What?"

  "I said, I'm sorry about the deck, sir," Schofield repeated.

  At that moment, there came a sudden high-pitched whining sound. And then before anyone knew what was happening, the whine became a scream and then, like a thunderbolt sent from God himself, the sixth and final missile from the Silhouette came shooting down out of the sky and slammed into the Silhouette at nearly three hundred miles per hour.

  The big black fighter plane shattered in an instant, exploded into a thousand pieces. Every man inside or near it was killed instantly. The fuel tanks of the big black plane exploded next, causing a red-hot fireball of liquid fire to flare out from the destroyed plane. The fireball billowed out across the deck and engulfed Admiral Clayton. It was so hot, it wiped the skin from his face.

  Admiral Thomas Clayton was dead before he hit the ground.

  Shane Schofield stood on the bridge of the Wasp as it sailed east across the Southern Ocean, into the morning sun. He took a sip from a coffee mug with the words CAPTAINS MUG written on it. The coffee was hot.

  Jack Walsh came out onto the bridge and offered him a new pair of silver antiflash glasses. Schofield took them, put them on.

  It had been three hours now since the Silhouette had been destroyed by one of its own missiles.

  Gant had been taken to the infirmary, where her condition had worsened. Her blood loss had been severe. She had lapsed into a coma about half an hour ago.

  Renshaw and Kirsty were in Walsh's stateroom, sleeping soundly. Wendy was playing in a dive preparation pool belowdecks.

  Schofield himself had had a hot shower and changed into a tracksuit. A corpsman had attended to his wounds, reset his broken rib. He had said that Schofield would need further treatment when he got back home, but with a few painkillers he would be OK for now. When the corpsman had finished, Schofield had returned to Gant's bedside. He had only come up to the bridge when Walsh had called for him.

  When he'd got there, Walsh had told him that the Wasp had just received a call from McMurdo Station. Apparently, a battered Marine hovercraft had just arrived at McMurdo. In it were five people?one Marine and four scientists?claiming that they had come from Wilkes Ice Station.

  Schofield shook his head and smiled. Rebound had made it to McMurdo.

  It was then that Walsh demanded a rundown of the events of the preceding twenty-four hours. Schofield told him everything?about the French and the British, the ICG, and the Silhouette. He even told Walsh about the help he had received from a dead Marine named Andrew Trent.

  When Schofield had finished recounting his story, Walsh just stood there for a moment in stunned silence. Schofield took another sip from his mug and looked aft, through the slanted panoramic windows of the bridge. He saw the gaping hole at the stern end of the flight deck where the missile had hit the Silhouette. Jagged lengths of metal stuck out into the hole; wires and cables hung loosely from it.

  Of course, Walsh had accepted Schofield's apology for the damage to the deck. He hadn't much liked Admiral Clayton anyway; the asshole had assumed command of Walsh's ship, and no skipper appreciated that. And then when Walsh heard about Schofield's experiences with the ICG down at Wilkes Ice Station, he had no pit
y for Clayton and his ICG men at all.

  As he stood there gazing down at the hole in the flight deck, Schofield began to think about the mission again, in particular about the Marines he had lost, the friends he had lost, on this foolish crusade.

  "Uh, Captain," a young Ensign said. Walsh and Schofield turned together. The young Ensign was sitting at an illuminated table inside the communications room that adjoined the bridge. "I'm picking up something very peculiar here...."

  "What is it?" Walsh said. He and Schofield came over.

  The Ensign said, "It appears to be some kind of GPS transponder signal, coming from just off the coast of Antarctica. It's emitting a valid Marine code signal."

  Schofield peered at the illuminated table in front of the Ensign. It had a computer-generated map drawn on it. Down on the coast of Antarctica?just off the coast, actually?there was a small, blinking red dot, with a blinking red number alongside it: 05.

  Schofield frowned. He remembered pressing his own Navistar Global Positioning System transponder when he and Renshaw had been marooned on the iceberg. His GPS transponder code was "01" since he was the unit commander. Snake was 02; Book was 03. The numbers then ascended in order of seniority.

  Schofield tried to remember who "05" was.

  "Holy shit," he said, realizing. "It's Mother!"

  The Wasp sailed toward the rising sun.

  As soon as Schofield realized who the GPS signal represented, Jack Walsh had sent a call to McMurdo. The Marines there?trusted Marines?sent a patrol boat out along the coast to pick up Mother.

  A whole day later, as the Wasp entered the Pacific Ocean, Schofield got a call from the patrol boat. It had found Mother, on an iceberg just off the destroyed coastline. Apparently, the crew of the patrol boat?all of them dressed in airtight radiation suits?had found her inside an old station of some sort, a station buried within the iceberg.

  The skipper of the patrol boat said that Mother was suffering from severe hypothermia and radiation sickness from the fallout and that they were about to put her under sedation.

  It was then that Schofield heard a voice at the other end of the line. A woman's voice, shouting wildly, "Is that him? Is that Scarecrow?"

  Mother came on the line.

  After some obscene pleasantries, she told Schofield how she had hidden inside the elevator shaft and how she had lapsed into unconsciousness. Then she told him how she had been woken by the sound of the Navy SEALs' gunfire as they had entered Wilkes Ice Station. Minutes later, she had heard every word of Schofield's conversation with Romeo, heard about the nuclear-tipped cruise missile heading toward Wilkes.

  And so she had crawled out of the dumbwaiter shaft? while the SEALs were still in the station?and headed for the pool deck, grabbing a couple of fluid bags from the storeroom on the way. When she got to the pool deck, she saw Renshaw's thirty-year-old scuba gear, lying on the deck, with a cable attached to it.

  A steel cable that had led?with the help of the last remaining British sea sled?all the way back to Little America IV, one mile off the coast.

  Schofield was amazed. He congratulated Mother and said his good-byes, said he would see her back at Pearl. And as they took Mother away at the other end to sedate her, Schofield heard her shout, "And I remember you kissed me! You hot dog!"

  Schofield just laughed.

  Five days later, the USS Wasp sailed into Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

  A cluster of TV cameras was waiting on the dock when it arrived. Two days earlier, a charter plane flying over the South Pacific had spotted the Wasp and seen its damaged flight deck. One of the pilots had captured the damage on video camera. The TV news stations had eaten it up, and now they were keen to find out what had happened to the great ship.

  At the top of the gangway, Schofield watched as two midshipmen carried Gant off the ship on a stretcher. She was still in a coma. They were taking her to the nearby military hospital.

  Renshaw and Kirsty met Schofield at the top of the gangway.

  "Hey there," Schofield said.

  "Hi," Kirsty said. She was holding onto Renshaw's hand.

  Renshaw put on a bad Marlon Brando accent. "Who'd have thought it? I'm the Godfather."

  Schofield laughed.

  Kirsty spun around. "Say, where's?"

  At that moment, Wendy slid out from a nearby doorway. She loped straight up to Schofield and began nuzzling his hand. From tip to tail, the little fur seal was dripping wet.

  "She's, ah, taken a bit of a liking to the ship's dive preparation pool," Renshaw said.

  "So I see," Schofield said as he gave Wendy a gentle pat behind the ears. Wendy preened; then she dropped to the deck and rolled onto her back. Schofield shook his head as he dropped to his haunches and gave her a quick pat on her belly.

  "The captain even said she could stay here until we found somewhere else for her to live," Kirsty said.

  "Good," Schofield said. "I think it's the least we can do." He gave Wendy a final pat and the little seal leaped to her feet and dashed away, heading back downstairs toward her favorite pool.

  Schofield stood up again and turned to face Renshaw. "Mr. Renshaw, I have a question for you."

  "What?"

  "What time did the people from your station dive down to the cave?"

  "What time?"

  "Yes, the time," Schofield said. "Was it day or night?"

  "Uh," Renshaw said. "Night, I believe. I think it was somewhere around nine o'clock."

  Schofield began to nod to himself.

  "Why?" Renshaw said.

  "I think I know why the elephant seals attacked us."

  "Why?"

  "Remember I said that the only group of divers to have approached that cave unharmed was Gant's group?"

  "Yeah."

  "And I said that it was because her group had used low-audibility breathing gear."

  Renshaw said, "Yeah. So did we. And as I recall it, the seals attacked us anyway."

  Schofield smiled a crooked smile. "Yeah. I know. But I think I figured out why. We dived at night."

  "At night?"

  "Yes. And so did your people, and so did Barnaby's men. Your people dived at nine o'clock. Barnaby's at around 8:00 p.m. Gant's team, however, went down at two in the afternoon. They were the only dive team to go down to that cavern in the daytime."

  Renshaw picked up what Schofield was saying. "You think those elephant seals are diurnal?"

  "I think that's a good possibility," Schofield said.

  Renshaw nodded slowly. It was quite common among unusually aggressive or poisonous animals to operate on what is known as a diurnal cycle. A diurnal cycle is essentially a twelve-hour passive-aggressive cycle?the animal is passive by day, aggressive by night.

  "I'm glad you figured that out," Renshaw said. "I'll keep it in mind for the next time I stumble onto a nest of radiation-infected elephant seals who want to defend their territory."

  Schofield smiled. The three of them descended the gangway. At the bottom, they were met by a middle-aged Marine Sergeant.

  "Lieutenant Schofield," the Sergeant saluted Schofield. "There's a car waiting for you, sir."

  "Sergeant. I'm going nowhere but the hospital, to check on Lance Corporal Gant. If anybody wants me to go anywhere else, I ain't going."

  "That's OK with me, sir," the Sergeant smiled. "My orders are to take you, Mr. Renshaw, and Miss Hensleigh to wherever you want to go."

  Schofield nodded, looked to Renshaw and Kirsty. They shrugged, sure.

  "Sounds good to me," he said. "Lead the way."

  The sergeant led them to a navy blue Buick with dark tinted windows. He held the car door open and Schofield got in.

  A man was already sitting in the backseat when Schofield sat down.

  Schofield froze when he saw the gun in the man's hand.

  "Have a seat, Scarecrow," Sergeant Major Charles "Chuck" Kozlowski said as Schofleld sat down in the backseat of the Buick. Renshaw and Kirsty got in behind Schofield. Kirsty inhaled sharply when she saw K
ozlowski's gun.

  Kozlowski was a short man, with a clean-shaven face and thick black eyebrows. He was wearing a khaki Marine day uniform.

  The sergeant got into the driver's seat and started the car.

  "I'm terribly sorry, Scarecrow," the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer in the Marine Corps said. "But you and your friends here represent a loose end that cannot be allowed to stand."

  "And what's that?" Schofield said, exasperated.

  "You know about the ICG."

  Schofield said, "I told Jack Walsh about the ICG. Are you going to kill him, too?"

  "Maybe not immediately," Kozlowski said. "But in good time, yes. You, on the other hand, represent a more immediate threat. We wouldn't want you going to the press, now, would we? No doubt, they will find out about what went on down at Wilkes Ice Station, but the media will get what the ICG tells them, not what you tell them."

  "How can you kill your own men?" Schofield said.

  Kozlowski said, "You still don't get it, do you, Scarecrow."

  "I don't get how you can kill your own men and think you're doing the country a favor."

  "Jesus, Scarecrow, you weren't even supposed to be there in the first place."

  That stopped Schofield. "What?"

  "Think about it," Kozlowski said. "How did you come to get to Wilkes Ice Station before anybody else?"

  Schofield thought back, right to the very beginning. He had been on the Shreveport, in Sydney. The rest of the fleet had gone back to Pearl, but the Shreveport had stayed down there for repairs. It was then that the distress signal had come through.

  "That's right," Kozlowski said, reading Schofield's thoughts. "You were in for repairs in Sydney when the Shreveport received the distress signal from Wilkes. And then some dumb-fuck civilian sent you down there right away."

  Schofield remembered the voice of the Undersecretary of Defense coming in over the speakers of the briefing room on board the Shreveport, instructing him to go down to Wilkes and protect the spacecraft.

  Kozlowski said, "Scarecrow, the Intelligence Convergence Group doesn't set out to kill American units. It exists to protect Americans?"