Ice Station (36 page)

“My fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen,” Dufresne began,
“the Republic of France would like to express its total aid
unconditional support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, this
fine organization of nations that has served the West so well for
almost fifty years ...”

The speech dragged on, extolling the virtues of NATO and fiance's
undying loyalty to it. George Holmes shook his head. All morning, the
French delegation had been calling recesses, stalling the conference,
and now, all of a sudden, they were pledging their undying loyalty to
the organization. It didn't make sense.

Dufresne, finished speaking, sat down. Holmes was about to turn and
say something to Phil Munro when suddenly the British delegate to the
conference—a well-groomed statesman named Richard
Royce—pushed his chair back and stood up. “Ladies and
gentlemen,” Royce said in a very articulate London accent,
“if I may beg your indulgence, the British delegation requests a
recess.”

At that very same moment, directly across the road from the Capitol
Building and the NATO conference, Alison Cameron was entering the
atrium of the Library of Congress. Comprised of three buildings, the
Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. In fact, its
goal upon its founding was to be the single largest repository of
knowledge in the world. That is what it is.

Which was why Alison was not surprised to learn that the object of her
search—the mysterious 1978 “Preliminary Survey” by C.
M. Waitzkin—was to be found at the Library of Congress. If any
library was going to have it, the Library of Congress would be it.

Alison waited at the Inquiries Desk as one of the library's
attendants went down to the stack to get the survey for her. The
Library of Congress was a closed-stack library, which meant that the
staff got the books for you. It was also a non-circulating library,
which meant that you were not allowed to take books out of the
building.

The attendant was taking a while, so Alison began to browse through
another book she had bought on the way to the library.

She looked at the cover. It read:

THE ICE CRUSADE:

REFLECTIONS ON A YEAR SPENT IN

ANTARCTICA

DR. BRIAN HENSLEIGH

Professor in Geophysics, Harvard University

Alison scanned the introduction.

Brian Hensleigh, it appeared, was the head of Harvard University's
geophysics faculty. He was into ice core research—a study that
involved extracting cylindrical ice cores from the continental ice
shelves in Antarctica and then examining the air that had been trapped
inside those ice cores thousands of years before.

Apparently, so the book said, ice core research could be used to
explain global warming, the greenhouse effect, and the depletion of
the ozone layer.

In any case, it appeared that for the whole of 1994 this Hensleigh
fellow had worked at a remote research station in Antarctica
collecting ice core samples.

The name of that research station was Wilkes Ice Station.

And its location: latitude minus 66.5 degrees, longitude 115 degrees,
20 minutes, and 12 seconds east.

At that moment, the attendant returned and Alison looked up from the
book.

“It's not there,” the attendant said, shaking her head.

“What?”

“I checked it three times,” the attendant said.
“It's not on the shelf. 'Preliminary Survey' by C. M.
Waitzkin, 1978. It's not there.”

Alison frowned. This was unexpected.

The attendant—her name badge said her name was Cindy—
shrugged helplessly. “I don't understand it. It's just...
gone.”

Alison felt a sudden rush of excitement as something occurred to her.

“If it's not there, wouldn't that mean that someone is
reading it right now?” she asked.

Cindy shook her head. “No, the computer says that the last time
it was loaned out to anybody was in November 1979.”

“November 1979,” Alison said.

“Yeah, spooky, huh?” Cindy looked about twenty years old, a
college student no doubt. “I got the name of the borrower if
you're interested. Here.” She handed Alison a slip of paper.

It was a photocopy of a Request Form, similar to the one Alison
herself had filled out to get the survey.

The Library of Congress obviously kept every form on
file—probably for exactly this situation.

On the Request Form, in the box marked “Name of Person Requesting
Item,” was a name:

O. NIEMEYER

“It happens,” Cindy the attendant was saying. “This
Niemeyer guy probably liked it so much that he just walked out with
it. We didn't have magnetic tags on our books back then, so he
probably just slipped out past the guards.”

Alison ignored her.

She just stood there, entranced by the Request Form in her hand, by
this twenty-year-old piece of evidence that had been sitting in a
filing cabinet somewhere in the depths of the Library of Congress,
waiting for this day.

Alison's eyes glowed as they stared at the words:

O. NIEMEYER

Brigadier General Trevor Barnaby walked across
the pool deck of Wilkes Ice Station. He'd been in control of
Wilkes Ice Station for a little over an hour now, and he was feeling
confident.

Only twenty minutes ago he had sent a team of fully armed divers down
in the station's diving bell. But it would be at least ninety
minutes before they reached the underground cave. Indeed, the diving
bell's cable was still plunging into the pool at the base of the
station right now.

Barnaby himself was dressed in a black thermal wet suit. He planned to
go down to the underground cave with the second team—to see for
himself what was really down there.

“Well now,” he said as he saw Snake and the two French
scientists handcuffed to the pole. “What have we here? Why, if it
isn't Sergeant Kaplan.” By the look on his face, Snake was
obviously surprised that Barnaby knew who he was.

“Gunnery Sergeant Scott Michael Kaplan,” Barnaby said.
"Born: Dallas, 1953; enlisted in the United States Marine Corps
at age eighteen in 1971; small arms expert; hand-to-hand combat
expert; sniper. And as of 1992, under suspicion by British
Intelligence as a member of the American spy agency known as the
Intelligence Convergence Group.

“I'm sorry, what is it that they call you? Snake,
isn't it. Tell me, Snake, is this a common occurrence for you?
Does your commanding officer often chain you to poles, leaving you at
the mercy of the incoming enemy?”

Snake didn't say anything.

Barnaby said, “I would hardly have thought that Shane Schofield
would be the kind of master to chain up his loyal squad members. Which
means there must be some other reason why he chained you up,
n'est-ce pas?” Barnaby smiled. “Now, whatever
could that reason be?”

Snake still said nothing. Every now and then, his eyes would steal a
look at the diving bell's cable as it plunged into the pool behind
Barnaby.

Barnaby turned his attention to the two French scientists. “And
who might you be?” he asked.

Luc Champion blurted out indignantly, “We are French scientists
from the research station Dumont d'Urville. We have been detained
here against our will by American forces. We demand that we
be released in accordance with international—”

“Mr. Nero,” Barnaby said flatly.

A mountain of a man stepped out from behind Barnaby and stood next to
him. He was at least six-foot-five, with broad shoulders and impassive
eyes. He had a scar that ran down from the corner of his mouth to his
chin.

Barnaby said, “Mr. Nero, if you please.”

The big man named Nero calinly raised his pistol and fired at Champion
from point-blank range.

Champion's head exploded. Blood and brains instantly splattered
against the side of Snake's face.

Henri Rae, the second French scientist, began to whimper.

Barnaby turned to face him. “Are you French, too?”

Rae began to sob.

Barnaby said, “Mr. Nero.”

Rae saw it coming and he screamed, “No!” just as Nero raised
his gun again and a moment later the other side of Snake's face
was splattered all over with blood.

In the pitch-darkness of the crawl space at the base of the elevator
shaft, Mother snapped up at the sound of the gunshots.

Damn it, she thought. She must have blacked out again.

Got to stay awake, she thought.

Got to stay awake....

Mother stared at the clear plastic fluid bag she had brought with her.
It was connected by a tube to an intravenous drip that was stuck into
her arm.

The fluid bag was now empty.

Had been for the last twenty minutes.

Mother began to shiver. She felt cold, weak. Her eyelids began to
close.

She bit her tongue, trying to force her eyes open with the jolt of
pain.

It worked for the first few times. And then it didn't.

Alone at the base of the elevator shaft, Mother lapsed into
unconsciousness.

Out on E-deck, Trevor Barnaby stepped forward, his eyes narrowing.
“Sergeant Kaplan. Snake. You've been a naughty boy,
haven't you?”

Snake said nothing.

“Are you ICG, Snake? A turncoat? A traitor to your own
unit? I bet the Scarecrow wasn't too pleased when he found out. Is
that why he chained you to a pole and left you here for me?”

Snake swallowed.

Barnaby stared at him coldly. “It's what I would have
done.”

At that moment, a young SAS corporal came up behind Barnaby.
“Sir.”

“Yes, Corporal.”

“Sir, the charges are being set around the perimeter.”

“At what range?”

“Five hundred yards, sir. In an arc, like you ordered.”

“Good,” Barnaby said. Soon after he had arrived at Wilkes,
Barnaby had ordered that eighteen Tritonal charges be placed in a
semicircular arc on the landward side of the station. They were to
have a special purpose. A very special purpose.

Barnaby said, “Corporal, how long do you expect the laying of the
charges to take?”

“Allowing for the drilling, sir, I'd say another hour.”

“Fine,” Barnaby said. “When they're all set, bring
me the detonation unit.”

“Yes, sir,” the corporal said “Oh, and, sir,
there's one other thing.”

“Yes.”

“Sir, the prisoners who fell from the American hovercraft have
just arrived. What should we do with them?”

Barnaby had already been told via radio of the soldier and the little
girl who had fallen from one of the escaping hovercrafts and been
picked up by his men.

“Take the girl to her quarters. Keep her there,” Barnaby
said. “Bring the Marine to me.”

Libby Gant was standing in a dark corner of the underground cavern,
alone. The beam of her flashlight illuminated a small horizontal
fissure in the ice wall.

The fissure was at ground level, at the point where the ice wall met
the floor. It was about two feet high and stretched horizontally for
about six feet.

Gant crouched on her hands and knees and peered down into the
horizontal fissure. She saw nothing but darkness. There did, however,
appear to be empty space in there—

“Hey!”

Gant turned.

She saw Sarah Hensleigh standing underneath the spacecraft at the
other end of the cavern, over by the pool, waving her arms.

“Hey!” Hensleigh called excitedly. “Come and have a
look at this.”

Gant walked over to the big black spaceship. Montana was already there
when she arrived. Santa Cruz was standing guard over by the pool.

“What do you think of that?” Hensleigh pointed at something
on the underbelly of the ship.

Gant saw it, frowned. It looked like a keypad of some sort.

Twelve buttons, arranged in three columns, four buttons per column,
with what looked like a rectangular screen at the top of it.

But there was something very odd about this “keypad.”

There were no symbols on any of the keys.

Like the rest of the ship, the keypad was completely and utterly
black—black buttons on a black background.

And then Gant saw that there was one button that did have markings on
it. The second button in the middle column had a small red circle
printed on it.

“What do you think it is?” Montana asked.

“Who knows,” Hensleigh said.

“It could be a way to open it up,” Gant suggested.

Hensleigh snorted. “Not likely. Do you know any aliens that use
keypads?”

“I don't know any aliens.” Gant said. “Do
you?”

Hensleigh ignored her. “There's no telling what it is,”
she said. “It could be an ignition key, or a weapons
system...”

“Or a self-destruct mechanism,” Gant said dryly.

“I say we just press it and find out,” Hensleigh said.

“But which button do we press?” Montana said.

“The one with the circle on it, I suppose.”

Montana pursed his lips in thought. He was the senior man down here.
It was his call. He looked to Gant.

Gant shook her head. “We're not here to see what it does.
We're just here to hold it until the cavalry arrives.”

Montana looked to Santa Cruz, who had come over from the pool to look.

“Press it,” Cruz said. “If I'm gonna buy it for
this fuckin' thing, I wanna see what's inside it.”

Montana turned back to face Sarah Hensleigh. She nodded.
“Let's see what it does.”

At last, Montana said, “OK. Press it.”

Sarah Hensleigh nodded and took a deep breath. Then she stretched out
with her hand and pressed the button with the red circle on it.

At first, nothing happened.

Sarah Hensleigh lifted her finger off the keypad and looked up at the
spaceship above her, as if she expected it to take off or something.

Suddenly there came a soft harmonic tone, and the screen above the
keypad began to glow.

And then another second later, a sequence of symbols appeared across
the screen.

“Oh, shit” Montana said.