Ice Station (33 page)

“OK,” he said. “Here we go....”

He yanked his steering yoke hard to the right.

The hovercraft immediately spun laterally on its axis and Renshaw
yelled, “Aaaahhhhh!!” as the whole vehicle snapped around in
a sharp one-eighty and then all of a sudden it was facing forward
again and he swung the steering yoke back in the other direction and
suddenly the vehicle was steady again and—good
God—traveling forward.

Renshaw was stunned. He jammed the hovercraft back into high gear.

“Holy shit,” he said. “I did it! I
did it!”

“Mr. Renshaw,” Schofield's voice said in his
ear. “I've seen kids on snowbikes do better slingshots
than that. Now, if you don't mind, would you kindly shut up and
get your ass over here. Rebound needs our help.”

Schofield's hovercraft came alongside Rebound's.

Both hovercrafts looked like hell. Rebound's was pockmarked all
over with bullet holes. Schofield's had no front windshield.

The three remaining British hovercrafts circled all around them, cut
across in front of them, swung in behind them.

Schofield brought his hovercraft closer to Rebound's, so that his
open left-side door was directly opposite Rebound's open
right-side door.

Schofield yelled, “OK! Send two of your passengers over to me!
Renshaw'll be over in a second! He can take two more!”

“Ten-four, Scarecrow,” Rebound's voice replied.

Schofield hit the cruise control button on his dashboard and hurried
back into the cabin of the hovercraft. He came to the open side door
and looked across the gap between the two speeding hovercrafts. He saw
Book standing in the doorway of the speeding white hovercraft, eight
feet away. He had Kirsty with him.

“OK!” Schofield yelled into his helmet mike as Rebound
brought his hovercraft closer. “Send her over!”

Book edged out onto the skirt of his hovercraft, gently bringing
Kirsty with him. The little girl looked scared to death as she stepped
out into the freezing, speeding wind.

Schofield ventured out onto his own skirt, his arms outstretched.

“Come on, honey!” he called. “You can do it!”

Kirsty tentatively stepped forward.

The ground raced by beneath them.

“Reach out! Reach out! And jump now!” Schofield yelled.
“I'll catch you!”

Kirsty jumped.

A timid, little girl's jump.

Schofield lunged forward and clutched hold of her parka and pulled her
inside the cabin of his speeding black hovercraft.

Once they were safely inside, he asked, “Are you OK?”

As Kirsty opened her mouth to answer him, the whole hovercraft was
rocked by a ferocious impact. The two of them were both thrown against
the frame of the open doorway. Kirsty screamed as she fell out through
the door, but Schofield threw out his hand and snatched her gloved
hand just in time.

They'd been rammed from the right. Schofield snapped round to see
what had hit them.

Another British hovercraft.

Schofield pulled Kirsty back inside the cabin and braced himself for
the next impact.

It never came.

Instead, the whole right-hand side of his hovercraft's cabin
simply exploded inward.

Kirsty screamed and Schofield dived on top of her, shielding her from
the flying debris. He tried to peer out through the smoke to see where
the British hovercraft was, to see what its owners were doing.

But he couldn't see the hovercraft.

He just saw smoke and haze.

And then, after a moment, Schofield heard the thud of feet landing on
the skirt of his hovercraft and he felt a knot tighten in his stomach
as he saw two wraithlike figures emerge from the smoke and enter his
cabin with their guns raised.

The two SAS commandos emerged from the smoky
haze. Schofield was on the ground, covering Kirsty, totally exposed.

“Scarecrow! Duck!” Book's voice shouted loudly
in his ear.

Schofield ducked and immediately heard the sharp whoosh!
whoosh! of two bullets flying low over his head and the first SAS
man dropped like a stone—shot by Book, from the other
hovercraft.

The second SAS commando was momentarily startled, and that was all
Schofield needed. He sprang to his feet like a cat and tackled the SAS
man and both men went flying against the dashboard of the hovercraft.

The ensuing hand-to-hand fight was all one-way traffic.

The SAS guy was all over Schofield. One hit to his injured throat and
Schofield couldn't breathe, another to the rib cage and Schofield
heard one of his ribs snap. He doubled over and the SAS man grabbed
him by his collar and belt and hurled him out through the destroyed
forward windscreen of the speeding hovercraft.

Schofield thudded against the forward hood of the hovercraft. His body
ached; he couldn't breathe. He coughed up blood as he looked
up—

—just in time to see the SAS commando reach for his holster and
draw his service pistol.

At the sight of the gun, suddenly Schofield's breath came back to
him and everything became clear.

Speeding hovercraft.

Man, gun.

Certain death.

His body aching, Schofield rolled forward, toward the rounded bow of
the hovercraft. The black rubber skirt dropped away in front of him.
The ground rushed by beneath it at seventy miles an hour.

You are going to die....

Schofield found a handhold and quickly lowered his feet over the bow
of the speeding hovercraft. His feet touched the speeding earth and
skipped up off the surface.

The SAS man in the cabin seemed to be amused by what Schofield was
doing, and he paused for a fraction of a second as he leveled his
automatic pistol at Schofield's head.

Schofield—his face bruised, his teeth bloody, his body bent over
the inflated skirt at the bow of the hovercraft— looked up at
the SAS commando and smiled. He saw the SAS commando smile back at
him: And then he saw him raise his gun a little higher.

At that moment, Schofield ducked his head beneath the skirt of the
hovercraft. He heard the gun go off, heard the bullet ping off the top
of the skirt.

Schofield was hanging off the bow of the speeding hovercraft now,
pressing his body against the inflated rubber skirt. His feet were
dragging on the ground as it rushed by beneath him at incredible
speed.

Suddenly he heard a sound and he looked up and saw the SAS man
standing above him, on the forward hood of the hovercraft, looking
down at him, with his gun still in his hand.

And as the SAS commando raised his gun to fire, Shane Schofield knew
there was only one thing he could do. He released his grip on the
inflated rubber skirt and disappeared under the bow of the hovercraft.

The sound of the turbofans was absolutely
ear-shattering.

Schofield's helmet slammed down against the ground, and Schofield
slid on his back underneath the hovercraft.

The rush of air and the deafening roar of the four turbofans above him
was like being in a wind tunnel. Schofield saw the inflated insides of
the skirt, saw the rapidly rotating blades of the turbofans—

And then he shot out from underneath the speeding hovercraft, and the
deafening roar of the turbofans was gone as he slid on his back across
the flat, icy plain behind the hovercraft he had been
standing on only moments before.

Schofield didn't waste any time.

He rolled onto his stomach as he aquaplaned across the ice, and in one
swift movement he drew his Maghook from behind his back and looked up
at the rear of the hovercraft as it sped away from him. He raised the
Maghook and fired.

The bulbous magnetic head of the Maghook flew through the air, its
tail of rope unspooling wildly behind it. The magnet thudded into the
metal wall of the cabin just above the hovercraft's skirt and
stuck, and Schofield was suddenly yanked forward behind the speeding
hovercraft.

He was now being dragged across the ice plain behind the speeding
hovercraft, like a nailing water-skier trying desperately to get back
on his feet again.

And then abruptly the ground all around Schofield was raked with
gunfire.

Schofield spun to look behind him.

A second British hovercraft was right behind him!

It was bearing down on him, as if it were about to trample him.

Schofield rolled onto his back—holding onto his Mag-hook's
launcher with one hand—as he was dragged behind the first
hovercraft. With his free hand, he drew his Desert Eagle and fired
back at the pursuing hovercraft. The Desert Eagle boomed, ripped open
several holes in the skirt of the speeding hovercraft.

But the hovercraft didn't slow down.

It was almost on him.

It only had to get over him and then slow down slightly, and then the
hovercraft would lower itself and he would be chopped to shreds by the
turbofans underneath it.

The turbofans underneath it....

Schofield desperately searched his brain for something, anything,
anything that he could use to—

His helmet.

Still being dragged behind the first hovercraft, Schofield quickly
holstered his gun and yanked off his helmet.

He would have to get this just right. It would have to be
bouncing, bouncing high, so that it would get caught up in
the fan blades of the pursuing hovercraft.

Schofield tossed his helmet behind him.

The helmet flew through the air—it seemed to float for an
eternity—and then it bounced on its dome and the pursuing
hovercraft roared over the top of it.

Schofield guessed that the helmet must have bounced up into the
forward fan of the hovercraft, because in that moment, in that sudden,
shocking instant, the whole hovercraft just snapped over on itself and
did a complete seventy-mile-an-hour cartwheel—it just flipped
over on itself and came slamming down hard on its own cabin. The
battered hovercraft slid across the flat icy ground—on its roof,
right behind Schofield—for about fifty yards before it ground to
a halt and shrank into the distance behind him.

Schofield rolled back over onto his stomach. His body bounced roughly
on the hard, icy ground as it was dragged along behind the first
hovercraft at phenomenal speed. Tiny flecks of kicked-up ice assaulted
his silver antiflash glasses.

Then he hit the black button on his Maghook—the button that
reeled in the hook without demagnetizing it—and the Maghook
began to reel itself in, drawing Schofield forward, toward the rear of
the speeding hovercraft, until at last he reached the black rubber
skirt. The wind from the hovercraft's rear turbofan blasted his
face, but Schofield didn't care. He grabbed hold of a tie-down
stud on top of the skirt and hauled himself up onto the hovercraft.

Five seconds later, he was standing in the open left-hand side doorway
of the hovercraft. He got there just in time to see the SAS commando
slap Kirsty hard across the face and send her crashing to the floor.

“Hey!” Schofield called.

The SAS man turned and saw him, and a sneer formed around his mouth.

“Kirsty,” Schofield said, never once taking his eyes off the
British commando. “Cover your eyes, honey.”

Kirsty covered her eyes.

The SAS commando stared at Schofield for a long moment. They just
stood there, in the cabin of the speeding hovercraft, like two
gunfighters facing off against each other on a deserted western street

And then in a sudden blur of movement the SAS man went for his gun.

Schofield went for his.

Both guns came up fast, but only one went off.

“You can open your eyes now,”
Schofield said as he stepped forward—over the body of the dead
SAS commando—and bent down beside Kirsty.

Slowly, Kirsty opened her eyes.

Schofield saw the bruise forming around her left cheekbone. “Are
you all right?” he said kindly.

“No,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. She pulled her
asthma puffer out from her pocket and took two deep, sobbing puffs on
it.

“Me neither,” Schofield said, taking the asthma puffer from
her and gulping down a couple of puffs himself before putting the
puffer in his pocket.

Then he stood up and grabbed the steering vane of the British
hovercraft. As he drove, he popped the clip of his Desert Eagle and
jammed in a fresh magazine.

Kirsty stepped up alongside him. “When you ... when you went
under the hovercraft,” she said, “I thought... I thought you
were dead.”

Schofield jammed his pistol back into its holster and looked down at
Kirsty. He saw the tears in her eyes.

As he looked down at her, Schofield realized that he was still wearing
his silver antiflash glasses. He took the silver glasses off and
crouched down in front of Kirsty.

“Hey,” he said. “It's OK. It's all right.
I'm not going to die on you.I am not going to die on
you.” Schofield smiled. “I mean, hey, I can't die.
I'm the hero of this story.”

Despite herself, Kirsty smiled. Schofield smiled, too.

And then, to his surprise, Kirsty stepped forward and hugged him.
Schofield returned her hug.

As he held her, though, he heard a strange noise. A noise that he had
not heard before.

It was a loud, rhythmic, crashing noise.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

It sounded to Schofield like—

Like waves crashing on a beach.

With a sickening rush, Schofield realized where they were. They were
near the cliffs. Their evasive maneuvers during the hovercraft chase
had taken them out near the sheer three-hundred-foot cliffs that
towered over the bay. The loud, booming noise that he was hearing was
the sound of the mountainous waves of the ocean smashing against the
ice cliffs.

He was still holding Kirsty in his arms. As he held her, though,
something behind her caught his eye.

Attached to the side of the British hovercraft's dashboard was a
small compartment, mounted on the wall. Its door hung ajar. Inside the
compartment, Schofield could see two silver canisters. They were each
about a foot long, and cylindrical in shape. Each silver canister had
a wide green band painted across its midsection. Schofield saw some
lettering stencilled onto the side of one of the silver canisters:
TRITONAL 80/20.