Ice Station (46 page)

Somehow, Trent had discovered that he was down in Antarctica. He had
also discovered that a secondary team was on its way to Wilkes. Most
disturbing of all, however, he had discovered that the United States
Marine Corps had already listed Schofield as officially dead.

And so Trent had sent Schofield this e-mail, complete with a list of
known ICG informers, in case Schofield had any traitors in his unit.

Schofield looked at the time of the e-mail. 7:32 p.m. It must have
been transmitted via satellite during the 7:30 p.m. break in the solar
flare.

Sctiofield scanned the list. A couple of names leaped out at him.

KAPLAN, SCOTT M. USMC GNNY
SGT

Snake. As if Schofield needed to know that Snake was a traitor. And
then:

KOZLOWSKI, CHARLES R. USMC
SGT MJR

Oh, God, Schofield thought.

Chuck Kozlowski. The Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, the
highest-ranking enlisted soldier in the Corps, was a member of the
ICG.

And then Schofield saw another name that made him freeze in horror.

LEE, MORGAN T. USMC
SGT

“Oh, no,” Schofield said aloud.

“What?” Renshaw said. “What is it?”

Montana, Schofield thought. Montana's real name was
Morgan Lee. Morgan T. Lee. Schofield looked up in horror. Montana was
ICG.

Down in the hangar, Gant and the others were searching for information
about the black plane.

In a small workshop, Santa Cruz was looking at some schematics. Sarah
Hensleigh was sitting at a desk behind him, with a pencil and paper
out.

“Nice name,” Cruz said, breaking the silence.

“What?” Sarah said.

“The name of the plane. Says here that they called it the
Silhouette,” Santa Cruz said. “Not bad.”

Sarah nodded. “Hmmm.”

“Any luck with that code?” he asked.

“I think I'm getting closer,” Hensleigh said “The
number that we were given, 24157817, seems to be a series of prime
numbers: 2,41,5,7, until you get to 817. But 817 is divisible by 19
and 43, which are also prime numbers. But then, again, 817 could be
two numbers, 81 and 7, or maybe even three numbers. That's the
hard part, figuring out just how many numbers 24157817 is supposed to
represent”

He smiled. “Better you than me, ma'am.”

“Thanks.”

At mat moment, Montana came into the workshop. “Dr.
Hensleigh?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Fox said to tell you that you might like to have a look at
something she's found over in the office. She said it was a
codebook or something.”

“All right.” Hensleigh got up and left the
workshop.

Montana and Santa Cruz were alone.

Santa Cruz resumed his examination of the ship's schematics.

He said, “You know, sir, this plane is something else. It's
got a standard turbofan power plant with supercruise capability. And
it's got eight small, retro jets on its underbelly for vertical
takeoff and landing. But the strange thing is, both of these
power plants run on regular jet fuel.”

“So?” Montana said from the doorway.

“So ... what does the plutonium core do?” Santa Cruz said,
turning to face him.

Before Montana could reply, Cruz turned back around to face his
schematics. He pulled some handwritten notes out from under them.

“But I think I figured it out,” he said. “I was telling
Fox about this before. These notes I found say that the engineers at
this hangar were working on some new kind of electronically generated
stealth mechanism for the Silhouette, some kind of electromagnetic
field that surrounded the plane. But to generate this electromagnetic
field they needed a shitload of power, something in the
neighborhood of 2.71 gigawatts. But the only thing capable of
generating that kind of power is a controlled nuclear reaction. Hence,
the plutonium.” Santa Cruz nodded to himself, pleased.

He never noticed Montana stepping up quickly behind him.

“I tell ya,” Santa Cruz went on, “this has been one
seriously fucked-up mission. Spaceships, French troops, British
troops, secret bases, plutonium cores, ICG traitors. Fuck. It's just—”

Montana's knife entered Santa Cruz's ear. It went in hard and
penetrated Santa Cruz's brain in an instant.

The young private's eyes went wide; then he fell forward and
slammed down face-first on the desk in front of him. Dead.

Montana extracted his bloody knife from Santa Cruz's skull and
turned around—

—and saw Libby Gant standing in the doorway to the workshop,
with a bundle of papers in her hands, staring at him in apoplectic
horror.

Schofield keyed his helmet mike. “Gant!
Gant! Come in!”

There was no reply.

Schofield glanced at his watch.

9:58 p.m.

Shit. The break in the solar flare would be here in two minutes.

“Gant, I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can,
listen up. Montana is ICG! I repeat, Montana is ICG!
Don't turn your back on him! Neutralize him if you have to. I
repeat, neutralize him if you have to. I've gotta go.”

And with that, Schofield raced upstairs and headed for the radio room.

Gant ran across the cavernous hangar with Montana in hot pursuit. She
sprinted past an ice wall just as a line of bullet holes erupted
across it.

Gant unslung her MP-5 as she raced through the bulkhead doorway that
led back to the fissure and the main cavern. She fired wildly behind
her. Then she dived into the horizontal fissure and rolled through it
just as Montana appeared in the bulkhead doorway behind her and let
off another burst of gunfire.

Another line of bullet holes raked across the ice wall around Gant,
only this time the line of bullet holes cut across the middle of her
body.

Two bullets lodged in her breastplate. One opened up a jagged red hole
in her side.

Gant stifled a scream as she rolled through the fissure, clutching her
side. She clenched her teeth, saw the trickle of blood seep between
her fingers. The pain was excruciating.

As she rolled out of the fissure and into the main cavern, she saw the
elephant seals over by the spaceship, and indeed, no sooner was she
out of the fissure than she saw one of the seals lift its head and
look over in her direction.

It was the male. The big bull with its fearsome lower fangs. It must
have returned sometime in the last half hour, Gant thought

The male barked at her. Then it began to move its massive body toward
her, his bulging layers of fat rippling with every lumbering stride.

The bullet wound in Gant's side burned.

She crawled on her backside away from the fissure, keeping one eye on
the approaching elephant seal and the other on the fissure itself. A
snail trail of her blood stained the frosty floor behind her,
betraying her path.

Montana emerged from the horizontal fissure, gun first.

Gant was nowhere to be seen.

He saw the trail of blood on the floor, leading off to the right,
around and behind a large boulder of ice.

Montana followed the trail of blood. He quickly came round the ice
boulder and let rip with a burst of gunfire. He hit nothing. Gant
wasn't there. Her MP-5 just lay there on the floor behind the ice
boulder.

Montana spun.

Where the hell was she?

Gant saw Montana come back round the ice boulder and catch sight of
her.

She was now sitting on the floor in front of the horizontal fissure,
clutching at her side with both hands. It had taken all of her
strength—and both of her hands—to get to her feet and run
back to the left-hand side of the fissure without spilling
any more blood before Montana had emerged from the hole. She had
actually intended to go back in through the fissure, but she had only
managed to get this far.

Montana smiled, walked slowly over to her. He stood in front of her,
with his back to the main part of the cavern.

“You're a complete son of a bitch, you know that,” Gant
said.

Montana shrugged.

“It's not even an alien fucking spaceship, and you're
still killing us,” Gant said, looking out into the cavern behind
Montana.

“It's not just the ship anymore, Gant. It's what you know
about the ICG. That's why you can't be allowed to go
back.”

Gant looked Montana right in the eye. “Do your fucking
worst.”

Montana raised his gun to fire, but at that moment a bloodcurdling
roar echoed across the cavern.

Montana spun just in time to see the big bull elephant seal come
charging across the cavern toward him, roaring loudly. The floor shook
with its every booming stride.

Gant took the opportunity and rolled quickly back through the
horizontal fissure behind her. She fell in a clumsy heap to the floor
of the tunnel behind the fissure.

The big seal loped across the cavern at incredible speed, covering the
distance between the ship and the fissure in seconds.

Montana raised his gun, fired.

But the animal was too big, too close.

From inside the tunnel, Gant looked up and saw Montana's outline
on the other side of the translucent ice wall above her.

And then suddenly—whump!—she saw Montana's
body get slammed up against the other side of the translucent ice
wall. A grotesque star-shaped explosion of blood flared out from
Montana's body as the big seal slammed him against the ice wall
with thunderous force.

Slowly, painfully, Gant got to her feet and peered out through the
horizontal fissure into the main cavern.

She saw the elephant seal extract his fangs from Montana's belly.
The long, blood-slicked teeth came clear of his wet suit and Montana
just dropped to the floor. The elephant seal stood over his prone body
in triumph.

And then suddenly Gant heard Montana groan.

He was still alive.

Just barely, but—yes—definitely alive. Gant then watched
as the big seal bent down over Montana and ripped a large chunk of
flesh from his rib cage.

Schofield strode into the radio room on A-deck
on the tick of ten o'clock. Renshaw and Kirsty came in behind him.
Schofield sat down in front of the radio console, keyed the
microphone.

“Attention, McMurdo. Attention, McMurdo. This is the Scarecrow.
Do you copy?”

There was no reply.

Schofield repeated his message.

No reply.

And then suddenly: “Scarecrow, this is Romeo; I read you.
Give me a Sit-Rep.”

Romeo, Schofield thought. Romeo was the call sign of Captain
Harley Roach, the commanding officer of Marine Force Reconnaissance
Unit Five. Schofield had met Romeo Roach on a couple of occasions
before. He was six years older than Schofield, a good soldier, and a
legend with the ladies— hence his call sign, Romeo.

What was more, he was a Marine. Schofield smiled. He had a
Marine on the line.

“Romeo,” Schofield said, relief sweeping over him.
“Situation is as follows: we are in control of the target
objective. I repeat, we are in control of the target objective. Heavy
losses have been sustained, but the target objective is ours.”
The target objective, of course, was Wilkes Ice Station. Schofield
sighed. “What about you, Romeo? Where are you?”

“Scarecrow, we are currently in hovercrafts, in a holding
pattern approximately one mile from the target objective—
”

Schofield's head jerked up.

One mile....

But that was right outside the front door....

“—and we are under orders to hold here until further
instructed. We have strict instructions not to enter the
station.”

Schofield couldn't believe it

There were Marines outside Wilkes Ice Station, right outside
Wilkes Ice Station. Only one mile out The first thing Schofield wanted
to know was—

“Romeo, how long have you been out there?”

“Ah, about thirty-eight minutes now, Scarecrow,”
Romeo's voice said.

Thirty-eight minutes, Schofield thought with disbelief. A
squad of Recon Marines had been sitting on their asses outside Wilkes
for the last half hour.

Suddenly a voice came over Schofield's helmet intercom— not
over the radio room's speakers. It was Romeo.

“Scarecrow, I gotta talk to you privately.”

Schofield clicked off the station's radio and spoke into his
helmet mike. Romeo was using the closed-circuit Marine channel.

“Romeo, what the fuck are you doing?” Schofield
said. He couldn't believe it. While he had been inside the station
doing battle with Trevor Barnaby, a whole unit of Marines had been
arriving at Wilkes Ice Station and waiting outside.

“Scarecrow, it's a fucking circus out here. Marines.
Green Berets. Hell, there's a whole goddamn platoon of Army
Rangers out here patrolling the one-mile perimeter. National Command
and the Joint Chiefs sent every unit they could find to cover this
station. But the thing is, once we got here, they ordered us to wait
until a Navy SEAL team arrived. Scarecrow, my orders are very clear:
if any one of my men moves toward that station before that SEAL team
arrives, he is to be fired upon.”

Schofield was stunned. For a moment he didn't say anything.

Suddenly the situation became clear to him.

He was in exactly the same position that Andrew Trent had been in in
Peru. He had got to the station first He had found something inside it
And now they were sending a SEAL team—the most ruthless, most
deadly special forces unit the United States possesses—into the
station.

A line from Andrew Trent's e-mail suddenly popped into
Schofield's head:

USMC PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT HAS YOU LISTED AS DEAD.

Schofield swallowed deeply as the horror of the realization hit him.

They were sending in the SEALs.

They were sending in the SEALs to kill him.

“Romeo, listen to me,” Schofield said
quickly. “The ICG planted men in my unit. One of my own men began
killing my wounded. That SEAL team they're sending in is going to
come in here and kill me. You have to do something.”

Schofield felt a chill run down his spine when he realized that he was
saying to Romeo exactly the same thing that Andrew Trent had
said to him from that temple in Peru.

“What do you want me to do?” Romeo said.

“Tell them that there's nothing in here,” Schofield
said. “Tell them there's no spaceship buried in the ice. Tell
them it's just an old Air Force black project that got left down
here for some reason.”

“Uh, Scarecrow, I have no information on what's inside
that station. I don't know anything about spaceships buried in the
ice or Air Force black projects.”

“Well, that's what this is all about, Romeo. Listen to me. I
have fought French paratroopers for this station. I have fought Trevor
Barnaby and a platoon of SAS commandos for this station. I do
not want to be killed by a bunch of my own psycho countrymen
after all I've been through, you hear me!”

“Just hold on a second, Scarecrow.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

After a minute, Romeo said, “Scarecrow, I just consulted with
the Army Ranger Captain out here—guy named Brookes,
Arlin Brookes—and he said that he will shoot any of my
men who attempt to enter the station before the SEAL team arrives.
”

Schofield pulled out his printed copy of Andrew Trent's e-mail,
the list of ICG informers. His eyes fell on one entry:

BROOKES, ARMN F. A. RNGRS CPTN

Son of a bitch, Schofield thought. It was the same
guy he had run into outside the temple in Peru. Arlin F. Brookes. ICG
cocksucker.

Romeo said, “OK, Scarecrow. Listen up. I may not be able to
come in, but I'll tell you something I heard about thirty minutes
ago. The Wasp is sailing about
three hundred nautical miles off the coast, out in the open sea. After
we got here, I got a call from Jack Walsh on the Wasp. About
thirty minutes ago, a patrol of four Marine Harriers shot down a
British VC-10 tanker plane about 250 nautical miles off the coast
after the tanker tried to make a run for it.”

Schofield was silent.

He knew what Romeo was getting at.

Tanker airplanes exist for one reason and one reason only: to top up
the fuel on attack planes on long-distance missions.

If a British tanker airplane had been shot down 250 miles off the
coast, then it was a good bet that somewhere out there, there was
another British plane, an attack plane—a
bomber or a fighter—that had been getting its fuel from the
tanker. And it probably had orders to—

Oh, no, Schofield thought, realizing. It was
Barnaby's eraser.

Like the French team's eraser, that British fighter probably had
orders to fire upon Wilkes Ice Station if Trevor Barnaby didn't
call in within a certain time.

Romeo said, “The Air Force has been called in. They're
sweeping the air over the ocean with AWACS birds and F-22 fighters.
They're looking for a rogue British fighter and they have orders
to shoot on sight.”

Schofield fell back into his chair.

He frowned, rubbed his forehead. The world was closing in around him.

He was trapped. Totally and utterly trapped. The SEALs would be coming
in soon—whether or not they realized there was nothing to be
gained from this station. And even if Scho-field managed to evade them
after they stormed the station, there remained the possibility that
Wilkes would be destroyed by an air-to-ground missile from a rogue
British fighter off the coast.

There was one option, though, he thought.

Go outside and surrender to Romeo before the SEALs arrived. At least
that way, they would stay alive. And if Schofield had learned nothing
from this whole day, it was that if you stayed alive, you still had a
chance.

Schofield keyed his helmet mike. “Romeo, listen—”

“Oh, shit, Scarecrow. They're here.”

“What?”

“The SEALs. They're here. They just let them through the
outer perimeter. Four hovercrqfts. They're coming toward the
station complex now.”

One mile out from Wilkes Ice Station an armada of hovercrafts formed a
long, unbroken line. They were arrayed in a semicircle on the landward
side of the station and they were all pointed inward—pointing in
toward the station.

At that moment, however, four navy blue hovercrafts broke through the
line and glided across the ice plain toward the station. They wended
their way through the outer buildings of the station complex, in no
apparent hurry.

They were the SEAL hovercrafts.

Inside the lead hovercraft, the SEAL commander keyed his radio.
“Air Control, this is SEAL team, report,” he said. “I
confirm previous instructions. We will not enter the station
until we are sure you have the bogey.”

“SEAL team, this is Air Control. Stand by,” a voice
on the radio said. “We are standing by for a report from our
birds right now.”

At that very same moment, at a point 242 nautical miles out from
Wilkes Ice Station, six F-22 USAF fighters rocketed over the Southern
Ocean.

The F-22 is the most advanced air superiority fighter in the world,
the heir to the throne of the old F-15 Eagle. But while the F-22 looks
a little like the old F-15 Eagle, the F-22 has one thing the F-15
never had—stealth.

In the lead F-22, the squadron leader was listening to his helmet
radio. When the voice at the other end finished speaking, the squadron
leader said, “Thanks, Bigbird; I see him.”

On his computerized display screen the squadron leader saw a small
blip heading west. A readout on the screen read:

TARGET ACQUIRED: 103 NM WNW AIRCRAFT DESIGNATED: E-2000

An E-2000, the squadron leader noted. The Eurofighter 2000. A
twin-engine, highly maneuverable pocket fighter, the E-2000 was a
joint project of the British, German, Spanish, and Italian Air Forces.

On the squadron leader's screen the blip appeared to be flying
casually, completely unaware of the stealthy American fighters a
hundred miles behind it.

“All right, people, target has been acquired,” the F-22
pilot said. “I repeat, target has been acquired. It's time to
rock and roll.”

Inside Wilkes Ice Station, Shane Schofield didn't know what the
hell to do.

He knew he couldn't surrender to the SEALs. They were almost
certainly ICG. If they got him, they would kill him.

He considered going down to the cave and hiding down there—and
if necessary holding the spaceship for ransom— but then he
realized that it was no longer possible to get down to the cave since
the diving bell had been destroyed.

Schofield led Kirsty and Renshaw out of the radio room on A-deck and
down the rung-ladder to the lower decks.

“What's going on?” Renshaw said.

“We just got screwed,” Schofield said. His mind was racing.
Their only option now, he figured, was to hide somewhere inside the
station and hold out until the SEALs and everyone else were gone....

And then what are you gonna do? Schofield asked himself.
Walk home?

If you stay alive, you still have a chance.

Schofield slid down the rung-ladder, looked down at the pool on
E-deck.

And then he saw something.

He saw Wendy, lying on the deck, happily dozing off to sleep.

Wendy, he thought.

Something about Wendy....

The F-22 squadron leader spoke into his helmet mike, “Bigbird,
this is Blue Leader. Maintaining stealth mode. Estimate target will be
in missile range in... twenty minutes.”

Suddenly it hit Schofield.

He spun to face Kirsty. “Kirsty, how long can Wendy hold her
breath for?”

Kirsty shrugged. “Most male far seals can hold their breath for
about an hour. But Wendy's a girl, and a lot smaller, so she can
only hold her breath for about forty minutes.”

“Forty minutes...,” Schofield said, doing the calculations
in his head.

“What are you thinking?” Renshaw asked.

Schofield said, “It takes us roughly two hours to get from the
station to the cave, right. One hour to go down three
thousand feet in the diving bell and then another hour or so to go
up through the ice tunnel.”

“Yeah, so ...,” Renshaw said.

Schofield turned to face Renshaw. “When Gant and the others were
approaching the ice cavern, Gant said the strangest thing. She said
that they had a visitor. Wendy. Gant said that Wendy was swimming with
them as they made their way up the ice tunnel.”

“Uh-huh.”

Schofield said, “So, even if Wendy could swim twice as
fast as we can, if she swam all the way down and then all the way back
up the ice tunnel, she'd run out of breath before she got to
the cavern.”

Renshaw was silent.

Schofield said, “I mean, it'd be suicide for her not to turn
back after she'd swum for twenty minutes because
she'd have to know she could get back to an air
source—”

Schofield looked from Renshaw to Kirsty.

“There's another way into that ice tunnel,” he said.
“A shortcut.”

“SEAL team, this
is Blue Leader. We are closing in on the target. Estimate target will
be in missile range in fifteen minutes,” the voice of the
squadron leader said over the radio of the SEAL team's hovercraft.

The SEALs sat rigidly in their places in the cabin of their
hovercraft. Not a trace of emotion crossed any of their faces.

Down on E-deck now, Schofield tossed the low-audibility breathing
tanks onto the deck. Kirsty was already putting on a thermal-electric
wet suit. It was so hopelessly big for her that she had to roll up the
sleeves and ankles to make it fit. Renshaw—already dressed in
his neoprene bodysuit—just went straight for the LABA gear.

“Here, swallow these,” Schofield said as he handed a blue
capsule to each of them. They were N-67D anti-nitrogen capsules. The
same pills that Schofield had given to Gant and the others when they
had gone down to the cavern earlier. They all quickly swallowed the
pills.

Schofield discarded his fatigues and put his body armor and gunbelt
back on over his wet suit. As he went through the pockets of his
fatigues he found, among other things, a nitrogen charge and Sarah
Hensleigh's silver locket. He transferred both items to pockets in
his wet suit. Then he quickly began to put on one of the scuba tanks.

There were three tanks in all, all of them filled with four hours'
worth of a saturated helium-oxygen mix: 98% helium, 2%
oxygen. They got Gant to prepare before she had gone down to the cave
earlier.

As he put his own LABA gear on, Renshaw helped Kirsty get into hers.

Schofield got his tanks on first. When he was ready, he immediately
began searching the deck around him for something
heavy—something very heavy—since they would need
a good weight to take them down fast

He found what he was looking for.

A length of the B-deck catwalk that had fallen down to E-deck back
when the whole of B-deck had gone up in flames earlier. The length of
metal catwalk was about ten feet long and made of solid steel. It even
had a section of its handrail still attached to it.

When Renshaw was also ready, Schofield got him to help drag it to the
edge of the pool. The big length of metal catwalk screeched loudly as
they dragged it across the deck.

As they worked, Wendy hopped up and down beside them, like a dog
begging to go for a walk.

“Is Wendy coming with us?” Kirsty asked.

Schofield said, “I hope so. I was hoping she would show us the
way.”

At that, Kirsty leaped to her feet and hurried over to the wall by the
side of the pool. She grabbed a harness from a hook and brought it
back to the edge of the pool. Then she began to strap the harness
around Wendy's midsection.

“What's that?” Schofield asked.

“Don't worry. It'll help.”

“Fine, whatever. Just stay close,” Schofield said as he and
Renshaw positioned the length of catwalk on the edge of the deck, so
that it was all-but-ready to fall off.

“All right,” Schofield said. “Everybody in the
water.”

The three of them jumped into the water and swam back underneath the
length of catwalk. Wendy happily leaped into the water after them.

“All right, get a grip on the catwalk,” Schofield's
voice said over their underwater headsets.

They all grabbed hold of the length of catwalk. They looked like a set
of Olympic swimmers preparing to swim a backstroke race.

Schofield placed his hand over Kirsty's to make sure she
didn't lose her hold on the catwalk as it sank through the water.

“OK, Mr. Renshaw,” Schofield said.
“Pull!”

At that moment, Schofield and Renshaw heaved on the catwalk, and
suddenly the length of heavy metal tipped off the edge of the deck and
fell into the water with a massive splash.

The metal catwalk sank through the water fast.

The three small figures of Schofield, Renshaw, and Kirsty clung grimly
to it as it fell. They were all pointing downward, their feet flailing
above them. Wendy swam quickly down through the water behind
them.

Schofield looked at the depth gauge on his wrist.

Ten feet.

Twenty feet.

Thirty feet.

Down they went, falling fast, through the magnificent white underwater
world.

As they fell, Schofield tried to keep one eye on the white ice wall to
his left. He searched for a hole in it, searched for the entrance to
the shortcut tunnel that led to the underwater ice tunnel.

They hit a hundred feet. Without the pills, the nitrogen in their
blood would have killed them by now.

Two hundred feet.

Three hundred.

They flew downward through the water. It became darker, harder to see.

Four hundred, five hundred.

They were falling so quickly.