Ice Station (52 page)

The Wasp sailed toward the rising sun.

As soon as Schofield realized who the GPS signal represented, Jack
Walsh had sent a call to McMurdo. The Marines there—trusted
Marines—sent a patrol boat out along the coast to pick up
Mother.

A whole day later, as the Wasp entered the Pacific Ocean,
Schofield got a call from the patrol boat. It had found Mother, on an
iceberg just off the destroyed coastline. Apparently, the crew of the
patrol boat—all of them dressed in airtight radiation
suits—had found her inside an old station of some sort, a
station buried within the iceberg.

The skipper of the patrol boat said that Mother was suffering from
severe hypothermia and radiation sickness from the fallout and that
they were about to put her under sedation.

It was then that Schofield heard a voice at the other end of the line.
A woman's voice, shouting wildly, “Is that him? Is that
Scarecrow?”

Mother came on the line.

After some obscene pleasantries, she told Schofield how she had hidden
inside the elevator shaft and how she had lapsed into unconsciousness.
Then she told him how she had been woken by the sound of the Navy
SEALs' gunfire as they had entered Wilkes Ice Station. Minutes
later, she had heard every word of Schofield's conversation with
Romeo, heard about the nuclear-tipped cruise missile heading toward
Wilkes.

And so she had crawled out of the dumbwaiter shaft— while the
SEALs were still in the station—and headed for the pool deck,
grabbing a couple of fluid bags from the storeroom on the way. When
she got to the pool deck, she saw Renshaw's thirty-year-old scuba
gear, lying on the deck, with a cable attached to it.

A steel cable that had led—with the help of the last remaining
British sea sled—all the way back to Little America IV, one mile
off the coast.

Schofield was amazed. He congratulated Mother and said his good-byes,
said he would see her back at Pearl. And as they took Mother away at
the other end to sedate her, Schofield heard her shout, “And
I remember you kissed me! You hot dog!”

Schofield just laughed.

Five days later, the USS Wasp sailed into Pearl Harbor in
Hawaii.

A cluster of TV cameras was waiting on the dock when it arrived. Two
days earlier, a charter plane flying over the South Pacific had
spotted the Wasp and seen its damaged flight deck. One of the
pilots had captured the damage on video camera. The TV news stations
had eaten it up, and now they were keen to find out what had happened
to the great ship.

At the top of the gangway, Schofield watched as two midshipmen carried
Gant off the ship on a stretcher. She was still in a coma. They were
taking her to the nearby military hospital.

Renshaw and Kirsty met Schofield at the top of the gangway.

“Hey there,” Schofield said.

“Hi,” Kirsty said. She was holding onto Renshaw's hand.

Renshaw put on a bad Marlon Brando accent. “Who'd have
thought it? I'm the Godfather.”

Schofield laughed.

Kirsty spun around. “Say, where's—”

At that moment, Wendy slid out from a nearby doorway. She loped
straight up to Schofield and began nuzzling his hand. From tip to
tail, the little fur seal was dripping wet.

“She's, ah, taken a bit of a liking to the ship's dive
preparation pool,” Renshaw said.

“So I see,” Schofield said as he gave Wendy a gentle pat
behind the ears. Wendy preened; then she dropped to the deck and
rolled onto her back. Schofield shook his head as he dropped to his
haunches and gave her a quick pat on her belly.

“The captain even said she could stay here until we found
somewhere else for her to live,” Kirsty said.

“Good,” Schofield said. “I think it's the least we
can do.” He gave Wendy a final pat and the little seal leaped to
her feet and dashed away, heading back downstairs toward her favorite
pool.

Schofield stood up again and turned to face Renshaw. “Mr.
Renshaw, I have a question for you.”

“What?”

“What time did the people from your station dive down to the
cave?”

“What time?”

“Yes, the time,” Schofield said. “Was it day or
night?”

“Uh,” Renshaw said. “Night, I believe. I think it was
somewhere around nine o'clock.”

Schofield began to nod to himself.

“Why?” Renshaw said.

“I think I know why the elephant seals attacked us.”

“Why?”

“Remember I said that the only group of divers to have approached
that cave unharmed was Gant's group?”

“Yeah.”

“And I said that it was because her group had used low-audibility
breathing gear.”

Renshaw said, “Yeah. So did we. And as I recall it, the seals
attacked us anyway.”

Schofield smiled a crooked smile. “Yeah. I know. But I think I
figured out why. We dived at night.”

“At night?”

“Yes. And so did your people, and so did Barnaby's men. Your
people dived at nine o'clock. Barnaby's at around 8:00 p.m.
Gant's team, however, went down at two in the afternoon.
They were the only dive team to go down to that cavern in the
daytime.”

Renshaw picked up what Schofield was saying. “You think those
elephant seals are diurnal?”

“I think that's a good possibility,” Schofield said.

Renshaw nodded slowly. It was quite common among unusually aggressive
or poisonous animals to operate on what is known as a diurnal cycle. A
diurnal cycle is essentially a twelve-hour passive-aggressive
cycle—the animal is passive by day, aggressive by night.

“I'm glad you figured that out,” Renshaw said.
“I'll keep it in mind for the next time I stumble onto a nest
of radiation-infected elephant seals who want to defend their
territory.”

Schofield smiled. The three of them descended the gangway. At the
bottom, they were met by a middle-aged Marine Sergeant.

“Lieutenant Schofield,” the Sergeant saluted Schofield.
“There's a car waiting for you, sir.”

“Sergeant. I'm going nowhere but the hospital, to check on
Lance Corporal Gant. If anybody wants me to go anywhere else, I
ain't going.”

“That's OK with me, sir,” the Sergeant smiled. “My
orders are to take you, Mr. Renshaw, and Miss Hensleigh to wherever
you want to go.”

Schofield nodded, looked to Renshaw and Kirsty. They shrugged, sure.

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “Lead the way.”

The sergeant led them to a navy blue Buick with dark tinted windows.
He held the car door open and Schofield got in.

A man was already sitting in the backseat when Schofield sat down.

Schofield froze when he saw the gun in the man's hand.

“Have a seat, Scarecrow,” Sergeant
Major Charles “Chuck” Kozlowski said as Schofleld sat down
in the backseat of the Buick. Renshaw and Kirsty got in behind
Schofield. Kirsty inhaled sharply when she saw Kozlowski's gun.

Kozlowski was a short man, with a clean-shaven face and thick black
eyebrows. He was wearing a khaki Marine day uniform.

The sergeant got into the driver's seat and started the car.

“I'm terribly sorry, Scarecrow,” the highest-ranking
noncommissioned officer in the Marine Corps said. “But you and
your friends here represent a loose end that cannot be allowed to
stand.”

“And what's that?” Schofield said, exasperated.

“You know about the ICG.”

Schofield said, “I told Jack Walsh about the ICG. Are you going
to kill him, too?”

“Maybe not immediately,” Kozlowski said. “But in good
time, yes. You, on the other hand, represent a more immediate threat.
We wouldn't want you going to the press, now, would we? No doubt,
they will find out about what went on down at Wilkes Ice Station, but
the media will get what the ICG tells them, not what you tell
them.”

“How can you kill your own men?” Schofield said.

Kozlowski said, “You still don't get it, do you,
Scarecrow.”

“I don't get how you can kill your own men and think
you're doing the country a favor.”

“Jesus, Scarecrow, you weren't even supposed to be there
in the first place.”

That stopped Schofield. “What?”

“Think about it,” Kozlowski said. “How did you come to
get to Wilkes Ice Station before anybody else?”

Schofield thought back, right to the very beginning. He had been on
the Shreveport, in Sydney. The rest of the fleet had gone
back to Pearl, but the Shreveport had stayed down there for
repairs. It was then that the distress signal had come through.

“That's right,” Kozlowski said, reading Schofield's
thoughts. “You were in for repairs in Sydney when the
Shreveport received the distress signal from Wilkes. And then
some dumb-fuck civilian sent you down there right away.”

Schofield remembered the voice of the Undersecretary of Defense coming
in over the speakers of the briefing room on board the
Shreveport, instructing him to go down to Wilkes and protect
the spacecraft.

Kozlowski said, “Scarecrow, the Intelligence Convergence Group
doesn't set out to kill American units. It exists to
protect Americans—”

“From what? The truth?” Schofield retorted.

“We could have had an Army Ranger unit filled with ICG
men down at that station six hours after you got there. They could
have taken that station—even if the French had already
got there—and held it and no American soldiers would have had to
have been killed.”

Kozlowski shook his head. “But no, you just happened to
be in the area. And that's why we stack units like yours with ICG
men—for this very eventuality. In a perfect world, the ICG would
get there first every time. But if the ICG can't get
there first, then we make sure that Reconnaissance Units like yours
are properly constituted so as to ensure that whatever information is
found at the site stays at the site. For the sake of national
security, of course.”

“You kill your own countrymen,” Schofield said.

“Scarecrow. This didn't have to happen. You were just in the
wrong place at the wrong time. If anything, you got to Wilkes Ice
Station too fast. If this had all been done as it should have been
done, I wouldn't have to kill you now.”

The Buick came to the guard station at the outer fence of the
dockyard. A boom gate was lowered in front of it. The driver wound
down his window and had a short conversation with the boom gate guard.

And then suddenly the door next to Kozlowski was yanked open from the
outside and an armed Naval Policeman appeared in the open doorway with
his gun aimed squarely at Kozlowski's head.

“Sir, would you please get out of the car?” Kozlowski's
face darkened. “Son, do you have any idea who you are
talking to?” he growled.

“No, he doesn't,” a voice said from outside the car.
“But I do,” Jack Walsh said as he appeared outside the open
car door.

Schofield, Kirsty, and Renshaw all got out of the car, totally
confused. The navy blue Buick was surrounded by a swarm of Naval
Police, all with their guns out.

Schofield turned to Walsh. “What's going on? How did you
know?”

Walsh nodded over Schofield's shoulder. “Looks to me like you
got yourself a guardian angel.”

Schofield spun, looked for a familiar face amid the crowd. At first he
didn't see a single face that he knew.

And then suddenly he did. But it wasn't a face he expected to see.

There, standing ten yards behind the ring of Naval Police surrounding
the Buick, with his hands in his pockets, was Andrew Trent.

As Kozlowski and his driver were taken away in handcuffs, Schofield
walked over to Trent.

Standing with Trent were a man and a woman whom Schofield had never
met before. Trent introduced them as Pete and Alison Cameron. They
were reporters with the Washington Post.

Schofield asked Trent what had happened. How had the Naval
Police—backed up by Jack Walsh—known to stop
Kozlowski's car?

Trent explained. A couple of days ago, he had seen the amateur footage
of the Wasp's damaged flight deck on TV. Trent knew missile damage
when he saw it. Then, when he learned that the Wasp was
heading back to Pearl—“from a training exercise in the
Southern Ocean”.—he jumped on a plane to Hawaii.

The Camerons had come along with him. For if, by some chance, Shane
Schofield or, indeed, any survivors from Wilkes Ice Station
were on board the Wasp, then it would be the story—and
the scoop—of a lifetime. Other reporters saw a damaged flight
deck. The Camerons saw the inside running on the Wilkes Ice Station
story.

But when they had got to the dockyard at Pearl, Trent had seen Chuck
Kozlowski standing next to a navy blue Buick, waiting for the
Wasp to dock.

Trent had felt a sudden chill. Why was Kozlowski here? Had the ICG
won—as it had in Peru—and was Kozlowski here to
congratulate the traitors? Or was he here for some other reason? For
if Schofield had survived, then the ICG would almost
certainly want to eliminate him.

And so Trent and the two reporters had just watched and waited. And
then, when they saw Schofield emerge from the ship and get escorted to
Kozlowski's Buick, Trent had called the only person he could think
of who could—and would— pull rank on Chuck Kozlowski.

Jack Walsh.

“Who'd have thought it?” Walsh said, coming over.
“There I am, on the bridge of my wrecked boat, minding my own
business, when my comtech comes running in and says he's got some
guy on the external switch who says he has to talk to me.
Says it's an emergency regarding Lieutenant Schofield. Says
his name is Andrew Trent.” Walsh smiled. “I figured I
oughta take the call.”

Schofield just shook his head, amazed.

“You've been through a lot,” Trent said, putting his arm
around Schofield's shoulder.

“You should talk,” Schofield said. “I'd like to
hear about Peru sometime.”

“You will, Shane, you will. But first, I have a proposition for
you. How would you like to be on the front page of the Washington
Post?”