Ice Station (14 page)

The whale slid across the deck fast.

Schofield was still on his knees.

The whale rolled onto its side, opened its mouth wide.

Schofield dived away from the massive creature, saw the battered
ejection seat lying on the deck four feet behind him. If he could just
get to it and leap over it, he'd be safe. He scrambled across the
deck on his hands and knees, toward the big ejection seat.

The whale kept coming. Fast.

Schofield clawed at the deck, crawled as fast as he could. Not fast
enough. He wasn't going to make it.

He wasn't going to be able to get over the ejection seat in time.

Schofield saw water spread out on the deck all around him. The wash
from the advancing killer whale.

It was right behind him!

Schofield's adrenaline surged and he dived forward. He knew he
wasn't going to make it over the chair, so he slammed
himself, back first, into the ejection seat.

He was now facing the pool, “sitting” in the battered
ejection seat as it lay crumpled on its side. He looked up and the
killer whale filled his entire field of vision.

It was right on top of him! Less than a meter away. It came roaring
toward him.

There was no chance of it slowing down.

No chance of it missing him.

And Shane Schofield shut his eyes as the killer whale's jaws came
slamming down around his head.

There came a sudden otherworldly
clang!, a noise louder than anything Schofield had ever heard
in his life.

He had expected to feel pain—sharp, sudden, burning
pain—as the killer whale's teeth chomped down hard on his
head. But strangely, he didn't feel any pain.

Bewildered, he opened his eyes...

... and saw two long rows of razor-sharp teeth stretching away from
him into darkness. In between the two long rows of teeth sat an
obscenely fat, pink tongue.

It took a second for his brain to put it all together.

His head was inside the killer whale's month!

But for some reason—some unfathomable, incredible
reason—he was still alive.

It was then that Schofield looked up and saw that his head was
surrounded on three sides by the battered steel headrest of the
ejection seat.

The killer whale's ferocious bite had come down hard on the
headrest, on either side of Schofield's head. But the steel
headrest had been strong enough to withstand the incredible force of
the bite—it had halted the big whale's teeth only
millimeters short of Schofield's ears. Now, two severe dents in
the headrest jutted inward on either side of his head. One of
them—sharp and jagged—had drawn a tiny bead of blood from
his left ear.

Schofield couldn't see anything else. His entire upper body, from
chest to head, was completely covered by the killer whale's mouth.

Suddenly the ejection seat jolted beneath him.

It scraped loudly against the metal deck, and Schofield fell back into
the seat as the whole thing lurched forward.

The movement stopped suddenly, almost as soon as it had begun, and
Schofield rocked forward and shuddered to a halt. He suddenly realized
what was happening.

The whale was dragging him back toward the pool.

The ejection seat jolted once again, and he felt the seat slide
another three feet across the deck.

In his mind's eye, Schofield could picture the whale's
movements. It was probably shuffling backward—as the other one
had done before with the Frenchman—undulating its massive body
back across the deck as it dragged the four-hundred-pound ejection
seat toward the edge of the deck.

The ejection seat moved again and Schofield felt a sudden rush of warm
air wash over his face.

It had come from within the whale.

Schofield couldn't believe it. The killer whale was huffing and
puffing, breathing hard as it held this unusually heavy prize within
its jaws and dragged it back toward the water! Schofield wriggled in
his seat as another rush of warm air hit his face and the seat jolted
once again.

His feet were still sticking out from the base of the ejection seat,
out from the side of the whale's propped-open mouth. If he could
just wriggle down that way, he thought, he might be able to slip out
of the chair—and out of the whale's mouth—before it
reached the water.

Schofield moved slowly, gingerly, easing himself down in the ejection
seat, not wanting to alert the whale to his plan.

Suddenly the seat lurched sideways. It screeched hideously as it slid
across the metal deck. Schofield quickly grabbed hold of the armrests
to stop himself from falling forward onto the big animal's teeth.

He lowered himself farther. Now his waist was out of the chair and his
eyes were level with the whale's sharp, pointed teeth. The whale
grunted as it heaved on the heavy steel chair.

Slowly, Schofield lowered himself an inch farther out of the chair.

And then he encountered a problem.

He was now sitting so low in the ejection seat that he couldn't
keep a hold on the armrests anymore. He needed something to hold onto,
something from which he could push himself out of the seat. He
desperately looked around himself, searching for something to grab
onto.

Nothing.

There was absolutely nothing to hold onto.

And then his gaze fell upon the killer whale's teeth in front of
him.

I don't believe this, he thought as he reached up
with both hands and took hold of two of the killer whale's
enormous white teeth.

Suddenly the ejection seat jolted and slid again and Schofield felt it
lift slightly off the deck. He had a sudden horrifying thought.

It's reached the edge of the deck.

And now it's tipping over it...

Holy shit.

Schofield gripped the whale's teeth tightly and pushed hard off
them, and hurled himself clear of the ejection seat. He slid out from
the chair, out from the side of the big whale's mouth, and fell
clumsily onto the deck just in time to see the killer whale's rear
end drop back into the pool. As its tail entered the water, the big
whale's body tipped upward, and its head reared up, lifting the
entire ejection seat off the deck. Then the killer whale's
enormous black-and-white frame began to slide downward, into the
water, and the great predator took its prize to a watery grave.

Schofield was on his feet in seconds, moving
quickly across the deck toward Rebound, Gant, and Mother over by the
south tunnel.

He spoke into his helmet mike as he ran. “Montana, this is
Scarecrow, report.”

“Still up on A-deck, Scarecrow. Snake and Santa Cruz're
up here with me.”

“How many up there?” Schofield asked.

“I count it as five military and two civilian,”
Montana's voice said. “But two of the military guys just
made a break for one of the ladders and went down a level. What? Oh,
fuck—”

The connection cut off. Schofield heard a scuffle.

“Montana—”

Suddenly a French commando stepped out onto the deck in front of
Schofield himself.

He was the last of the five French soldiers who had fallen into the
pool, the only one of them to come out of it alive. He looked like
death warmed up—dripping wet, scowling, and mad as hell. He
glared at Schofield, then raised his crossbow.

Without missing a beat, Schofield drew a throwing knife from a sheath
strapped to his knee and threw it underhanded. The knife whistled
through the air and thudded into the Frenchman's chest. He dropped
instantly. The whole thing took two seconds. Schofield never stopped
walking. He stepped over the slumped body, retrieved his knife and the
dead French commando's crossbow, and kept moving.

He spoke into his helmet mike again: “Montana, I say again, are
you all right?”

“I copy, Scarecrow. I'm OK. Revision on my
previous count: make that four military and two civilians. Put me down
for one more frog.”

“Put me down for one, too,” Schofield said.

Schofield arrived at the entrance to the south tunnel, where he found
Gant and Rebound. They were dragging Mother into the tunnel.

Schofield saw Mother's leg immediately. A bloody, jagged piece of
bone protruded from where her left knee should have been.

“Put her somewhere safe, stop the flow, and give her a hit of
methadone,” he said quickly.

“Got it—,” Gant said, looking up at him. She cut
herself off abruptly.

Schofield's antiflash glasses had been lost in the water in the
battle with the killer whales, and Gant saw his eyes for the first
time.

Two prominent vertical scars cut down across both of his eyes. They
were unmissable, hideous. Each scar stretched downward in a perfectly
straight line from eyebrow to cheekbone, scarring the eyelid in
between.

Gant winced when she saw them and regretted it as soon as she did so.
She hoped Schofield didn't notice.

“How are you feeling, Mother?” Schofield asked as they
dragged Mother into the tunnel.

“Nothing one good kiss from a fine-lookin' man like you
wouldn't fix,” Mother growled through clenched teeth. Despite
her pain, she, too, saw Schofield's scarred eyes.

“Maybe later,” Schofield said as he saw a door set into the
tunnel wall ahead of them. “In there,” he said to Gant and
Rebound.

They opened the door and dragged Mother inside, all four of them
dripping wet. They were in a storeroom of some sort. Rebound
immediately set to work on Mother's leg.

Schofield spoke into his helmet mike: “Marines, call in.”

Names came in over the intercom as each Marine identified him- or
herself.Montana, Snake, and Santa Cruz. All up on A-deck.

Rebound and Gant, E-deck. They called in formally over their helmet
intercoms even though they were standing right next to Schofield, so
that the others would hear their voices and know for a fact that they
were still alive. Even Mother said her name, just for the record.

There was no word from Book, Hollywood, Legs, Samurai, or Ratman.

“OK, everyone, listen up,” Schofield said. "By my count
these bastards are down to four now, plus the two civilians they
brought along with them to jerk my chain.

“This has gone far enough. It's time to end it. We have a
numerical advantage, seven against four. Let's use it. I want a
flush of this entire facility from the top down. I want these assholes
pushed into a corner so we can finish them off without losing any more
of our people. All right, this is how it's gonna happen. I
want—”

There came a sudden thunking noise from above him and Schofield
immediately looked upward.

There was a long silence.

Schofield saw a line of fluorescent lights bolted to the ceiling above
him. They stretched away at regular intervals down the southern tunnel
to his right.

And then, at that moment, as Schofield watched them, every single
fluorescent light in the tunnel went out.

The world glowed incandescent green.

Night vision.

With his scarred eyes masked by his night-vision goggles, Shane
Schofield climbed up one of the rung-ladders between E-deck and
D-deck. He moved slowly and carefully, deliberately. He remembered
Book saying once that wearing night-vision goggles is like wearing a
pair of low-powered binoculars strapped to your head— you see
something and you reach out to grab it, only to find that it's
actually a lot closer than you think, and you knock it over.

The whole station was cloaked in darkness.

And silence.

Cold, eerie silence.

With the entire station filled with the flammable propellant from the
air conditioners, all gunfire had ceased. The occasional shuffle of
movement and the odd low whisper of someone speaking into a helmet
microphone were all that could be heard in the pitch-darkness.

Schofield surveyed the green-lit station through his night-vision
goggles.

The battle had entered a new phase.

Somehow, one of the French commandos must have managed to find the
station's fuse box and turn off all the lights. It was a desperate
ploy, but a good one nonetheless.

Darkness has long been the ally of numerically inferior forces. Even
the advent of ambient-light technology—night-vision goggles and
gun sights—hasn't diminished the average military
tactician's opinion of the advantages of a small operation carried
out under cover of darkness. It's a simple maxim of
warfare—landed, naval, or airborne—nobody likes to fight
in the dark.

“Marines, stay alert. Watch for flashers,” Schofield
whispered into his helmet mike. One of the great dangers of
night-vision fighting is the use of stun grenades, or
“flashers”— grenades that emit a sudden blinding flare
of light that is designed to temporarily disorient an enemy. Since
night-vision goggles magnify any given light source, if one
sees a flasher go off through a pair of night-vision goggles blindness
won't be temporary. It will be permanent.

Schofield peered up into the station's central shaft. No light
entered the station from outside the enormous frosted-glass dome that
topped the wide central shaft. It was June— early winter in the
Antarctic. Outside, it would be twilight for the next three months.

Blackness. Total blackness.

Schofield felt Gant's weight on the ladder behind him. They were
heading up the shaft.

As soon as the lights had gone out, Schofield had immediately ordered
his team to “go to green.” Then he had outlined his plan.

It was no use playing defense in a darkened environment They had to
stay on the attack. Had to. The team that would win this
battle would be the one that used the darkness to its advantage, and
the best way to do that was to stay on the offensive. As such,
Schofield's plan was simple.

Keep the French on the run.

They were down on numbers. Only four of the original twelve
French commandos were still alive. And Montana had just said that two
of those four had just evacuated A-deck. So they were also split into
two groups of two.