Ice Station (29 page)

“Its job is to hoard valuable information. To make sure that
no one knows about it except us. And the ICG will not
hesitate to kill in order to achieve that goal. Its job—its
reason for being—is to ensure that certain information is for
American eyes only. Because in the end, the ICG has only one ambition:
to keep America in the lead—way out in the lead— ahead of
the rest of the world.”

“Uh-huh,” Cameron said, “and you claim it does this by
inserting men into elite military units?”

“Compromising frontline military units is only one part of the
ICG's overall strategy, Mr. Cameron. It's also one of the
easiest parts. Think about it,” Trent said. "The Joint
Chiefs of Staff are part of the ICG. They can ensure that men of their
choosing—ultraloyal men, usually older enlisted men,
sergeants, gunnery sergeants, the career soldiers—get
placed in the right units. And by 'the right units' I mean the
rapid-response units, the frontline units that get to battle scenes
first. The Marine Recons, the Navy SEALs, the Army Rangers.

"But having men inside frontline military units is only good for
getting sudden things like enemy spy satellites that fall out
of the sky or meteorites that crash down to Earth.

“Look at it this way: A meteorite lands in the middle of the
Brazilian jungle. We send in the Marines. The Marines secure the area
and grab the meteorite. Then, if something of value is found inside
that meteorite, you eliminate the Marines who found it.”

“You eliminate them?”

“Think about it,” Trent said bitterly. "You can't
have a team of high-school-educated grunts running around with the
most highly prized national secrets—secrets that could put the
United States twenty years ahead of the rest of the
world— bouncing around inside their heads, now can you?

"Hell, you don't need sodium nitrate to get that sort of
information out of a low-level soldier. You give him a few beers, a
pretty girl, and the slightest hint that he has a chance of
getting a blow job and your average Marine Corporal will be telling
Miss Big Tits everything he knows about the glowing green meteorite he
found on a mission in the jungles of Brazil.

“Don't forget the value of these secrets, Mr. Cameron,”
Trent said. “The loss of a couple of foot soldiers does not even
begin to compare with the value of a twenty-year head start
on the rest of the world.”

Pete Cameron interrupted him. “All right, then, how often does
something like this happen? The elimination of an entire unit. I mean,
it's got to be pretty rare.”

Trent nodded. “It is rare. I only know of it happening on four
occasions in the last fifteen years.”

“Uh-huh.” Cameron cocked his head doubtfully. “Mr.
Trent, I see what you're saying, but something like this would
require a whole network of well-placed people. High-ranking
soldiers who aren't just part of the Joint Chiefs but who are well
placed in the bureaucracy—”

“Mr. Cameron, do you know who Chuck Kozlowski is?”

“I've heard the name—”

“Sergeant Major Charles R. Kozlowski is Sergeant Major of the
Marine Corps. Do you know what the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps
is, Mr. Cameron?”

“What?”

“The Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps is the highest-ranking
noncommissioned officer in the Corps. An enlisted man, Mr.
Cameron, the highest-ranking enlisted man. Chuck Kozlowski
has been a Marine for thirty-three years. He's one of the most
decorated soldiers in the country.”

Trent paused. “He's also ICG.”

Cameron stared at Trent for a long moment, then he wrote down the
name.

Chuck Kozlowski.

Trent said, “He's the guardian angel of every crooked soldier
in the Corps. Someone told me he even came down to Peru after my
incident and personally escorted the surviving
Marines—the traitors, all of them senior enlisted
men—back home. He reassigned them without even a blink. I'm
told he even recommended one for a fucking medal.”

“Jesus....”

“That's your network, Mr. Cameron. A network that has
infiltrated the enlisted ranks of the United States Marine Corps all
the way to the very top—to the extent that it even determines
which units its men are assigned to. But it doesn't stop
there. Like I said before, compromising elite military units is only
one part of the ICG's overall program. The ICG compromises a whole
lot more than just the military.”

“Like what?”

“Like other sources of breakthrough technology,” Trent said.

“Such as?”

“Well, for one thing, business.”

“Business? You mean private companies?”

Trent nodded.

“You're telling me that the government of the United States
has planted people inside private corporations to spy on
them?”

“Microsoft. IBM. Boeing. Lockheed,” Trent said, deadpan.
“Plus, of course, all of the other major Navy, Army, and Air
Force contractors, especially if they have contracts with other
countries.”

“Holy shit,” Cameron said.

“There are other places, too.”

“Like...”

“Like universities,” Trent said. “Universities are high
on the list of ICG-compromised organizations. Cloning sheep— ICG
knew about in 1993. Cloning humans—ICG knew about it last
year.” Trent shrugged. “It makes sense. Universities are the
cutting edge. If you want to find out what's in the pipeline,
it's best to put your people in the pipe.”

Cameron didn't say anything for a full minute.

The sheer concept of an America-wide intelligence-gathering conspiracy
made his spine tingle. An octopus-like network, with its tentacles
stretching out from a small boardroom in the Pentagon to all the
corners of the country, penetrating every major business and
university. It was worth checking out some more.

Andrew Trent interrupted his thoughts.

“Mr. Cameron,” he said seriously. “The ICG is a
dangerous organization. A very dangerous organization. It
owes its allegiance to one thing and one thing only. The United States
of America. So long as America wins, the ICG doesn't care what it
has to do. It will kill to achieve that goal. It will kill
you and it will kill me. Mr. Cameron, patriotism is the
virtue of the vicious. An organization that is prepared to infiltrate
its own armed forces and kill its own men to keep this country's
secrets safe is not one you want to mess with lightly.”

Cameron nodded solemnly. Then he said, “Mr. Trent, do you have
anything, anything at all, with names or something that I
could—”

Trent grabbed a sheet of A4 paper from the table beside him.

“The results of my search so far,” he said. “Names,
positions held, and rank, if any.” He handed the sheet to
Cameron.

Cameron took it, scanned it quickly. It read:

TRANSMIT MO. 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

Cameron glanced up from the list, shook his head in disbelief.
“How do you know all this, Mr. Trent?”

“I've made some discreet inquiries,” Trent said.
“Primarily by shadowing the people mentioned on that list.”

Cameron held up the sheet of paper. “So how'd you get this
list in the first place?”

Trent smiled. It was the first real smile Cameron had seen from Trent
for the hour that he had known him.

“You remember those guys I told you about who were parked in the
van outside my parents' house?”

“Yes....”

“Well, I followed one of them home. Stopped him in the doorway to
his apartment and asked him a few questions. He was very cooperative,
once he was ... properly motivated.”

“What happened to him?” Cameron asked warily.

When he answered, Trent's voice was hard, cold, entirely devoid of
emotion.

“He died.”

Snake stood handcuffed to the same pole as Henri
Rae and Luc Champion on E-deck. His weapons and body armor had been
removed. He just stood there, cuffed to the pole, dressed in his
camouflaged full-body combat fatigues.

Schofield, Riley, and Rebound stood on the deck in front of him,
looking at him. Mother was also out on the pool deck, sitting in a
chair, looking like Cleopatra on a chaise. Schofield had had Book and
Rebound carry her out onto the deck for this.

Last of all, behind Schofield, stood James Renshaw. He was the only
civilian on the pool deck.

The atmosphere was tense. No one spoke.

Schofield looked at his watch.

It was 3:42 p.m.

He remembered what Abby Sinclair had said about the solar flare in the
atmosphere above Wilkes Ice Station. A break in the solar flare would
be passing over the station at 3:51.

Nine minutes.

He would have to make this quick. Gant and the others were still down
in the cavern, and he wanted to contact them and find out exactly what
was down there before he called McMurdo.

Schofield pressed a button on the side of his watch and the display
changed. The stopwatch screen appeared. It displayed numbers ticking
upward:

1:52:58

1:52:59

1:53:00

Damn, Schofield thought.

It was going to be close. After he spoke with the people at McMurdo at
3:51, they would have less than an hour to figure out a way
to seek out and destroy the French warship hovering off the coast
waiting to fire its missiles at Wilkes Ice Station.

“All right,” he said, turning to the group assembled around
him. “Book. Rebound. You first.”

Book and Rebound told their story.

They had both been outside, working on the station's antenna, out
by one of the outer buildings.

“And then you called and asked for one of us to go and check on
Mr. Renshaw,” Book said. “Snake took the call, so he went to
do it. He came back after about fifteen minutes and said that
everything was fine, said that Mr. Renshaw was still in his room and
that it had just been a false alarm.”

Schofield nodded—that was when he had been shot.

Book said, “A little later, I got up to go and check on Mother,
but Snake stopped me and said that he'd do it. I didn't think
anything of it at the time, so I said sure, if he wanted to.”

Schofield nodded again—that was when the attack on Mother had
happened.

He stepped forward so that he stood right in front of Snake.
“Sergeant,” he said. “Would you care to explain
yourself?”

Snake said nothing.

Schofield said, “Sergeant, I said, would you like to tell me what
in fucking hell is going on here.”

Snake didn't flinch. He just sneered coldly at Schofield.

Schofield hated him, hated the very sight of him.

This was the man who had shot him—killed him—and then
checked to make sure that he was dead.

Schofield had thought about his own shooting.

In the end, it was the frosted glass on the deck that explained it.
The white frosted glass that Schofield had stepped in only moments
before he had been shot.

It explained two things: why Snake was able to fire a gun
safely in the gaseous atmosphere of Wilkes Ice Station and
where he had fired it from.

The answer, in the end, was simple.

Snake hadn't fired his sniper rifle from inside the station at
all. He had fired it from outside the station. He had broken
a tiny round hole in the white frosted glass dome that towered above
the central shaft of the station and he had then shot down
through that hole at Schofield. The glass that he had
dislodged from the dome to make the hole in it had fallen all the way
down through the shaft to E-deck. The same glass that Schofield had
stepped on only moments before he had been shot.