Ice Station (8 page)

No sooner had Schofield and Gant fallen clear of the railing than it
was assaulted by a torrent of bullets. A brilliant cascade of
white-orange impact sparks exploded above their heads as they dropped
clear of the catwalk.

Schofield and Gant fell.

The Maghook's cable splayed out above them. They whipped past
B-deck, past Riley and Hollywood, who spun around at the unexpected
sight of a pair of bodies dropping past them.

Then Schofield hit a black button on the forward grip of the launcher
and a clamping mechanism inside the muzzle bit into the unspooling
cable.

Schofield and Gant jolted to a sudden stop, just below B-deck, and the
Maghook's cable began to swing them in toward the catwalk. They
swung in fast, over the C-deck catwalk, and dropped down onto the
metal gangway.

As soon as his feet hit the catwalk, Schofield pressed down twice on
the trigger of the launcher. When he did so, up on A-deck, the
grappling hook's claws responded by immediately collapsing inward
with a sharp snick, and the hook was sucked back through the
hole it had created in the dining room wall. The grappling hook fell
down into the central shaft of the ice station, reeled in by the
launcher. In a couple of seconds it was back in Schofield's hands,
and he and Gant hurried inside the nearest doorway.

“Grenade!”

Riley and Hollywood ran flat out down the northern tunnel of B-deck
and dived around the corner.

Just as they cleared the corner a booming explosion rocked the ice
tunnel behind them. Hard on the heels of the explosion came the
concussion wave and then—

Riley and Hollywood ducked behind the corner as a swarm of dartlike
objects shot past them at phenomenal speed and thudded into the
opposite wall of the tunnel.

The two Marines looked at each other in astonishment.

A fragmentation charge.

A fragmentation charge is basically a conventional grenade that has
been filled with hundreds of tiny pieces of metal— tiny
sharp-edged, skewed pieces of metal designed to be as
difficult as possible to extract from the human body. When the charge
detonates, it sends a wave of these lethal fragments rocketing out in
every direction.

“I've always said it,” Riley said wryly as he
popped his clip and jammed a fresh magazine into the receiver of his
MP-5. “Always said it: never trust the fucking French.
There's just something about 'em. Maybe it's those beady
little eyes they all got. Those assholes are supposed to be our
goddamn allies.”

“Fuckin' French,” Hollywood agreed thoughtfully as he
peered around the corner with one eye.

His jaw dropped. “Oh, shit—”

“What?” Riley spun around just in time to see a second
grenade bounce around the corner and come to rest five feet away from
them.

Five feet.

Out in the open.

There was nowhere to go. They couldn't get clear. Couldn't run
down the corridor and get away in ti—

Riley launched himself forward. Toward the grenade. He slid along the
frost-covered floor, feet first, soccer-style. When he was within
range he let loose with a powerful kick and sent the grenade skittling
back down the north tunnel, back toward the central shaft.

As Riley kicked the grenade, Hollywood lunged forward and grabbed him
by the shoulder plates and yanked him back behind the corner.

The grenade detonated.

Another deafening explosion boomed out.

A new wave of metal shards blasted out from the corridor, whipped past
Riley and Hollywood, and slammed into the wall opposite them.

Hollywood turned and looked at Riley. “Fuck my Roman sandals,
man, this is some serious fucking catastrophe.”

Riley was already up on his feet. “Come on; we're not staying
here.”

He looked over toward the other side of the north tunnel and saw
Rebound appear at the opposite corner. With him were Corporal Georgio
“Legs” Lane and Sergeant Gena “Mother” Newman.
They must have come round from the western side of B-deck.

Riley said, “All right, everyone, listen up. As far as I'm
concerned, this is now a split op. If we cluster and get cornered,
we're all gonna be turned into strawberry fuckin' do-nuts. We
have to split up. Rebound, Legs, Mother, you head back west, round the
outer tunnel. Hollywood and I'll go east. Once we figure out where
we are and what we can do with our position, then we can figure out
how the hell we're going to regroup with the others and nail these
fuckers. You all OK with that?”

There were no objections. Rebound and the others quickly got to their
feet and hustled off down the opposite ice tunnel.

Riley and Hollywood began to run east, following the curve of the
outer tunnel.

As he ran, Riley said, “All right, what's this? B-deck,
right. OK. What's on B-deck?”

“I don't—” Hollywood cut himself off as they
cleared the bend in the tunnel and saw what lay ahead of them.

Both men stopped instantly and immediately felt their blood run cold.

Schofield fired up into the central shaft of
Wilkes Ice Station with his Desert Eagle.

He and Gant were down on C-deck, inside a room that opened out onto
the central catwalk. Schofield stood in the doorway, gun in hand,
looking out across the central shaft and up at A-deck.

Behind him, inside whatever room this was, Gant was down on her
haunches, shaking off her dizziness. She had taken off her helmet,
revealing a short crop of snow-white blond hair.

Gant looked curiously at her helmet, at the arrow lodged in it. She
shook her head and put the helmet back on, arrow and all. She also
donned her anti-flash glasses, concealing much of the thin line of
dried blood that ran down from her forehead to her chin. Then she
grabbed her MP-5 determinedly and joined Schofield at the doorway.

“You OK?” Schofield asked over his shoulder as he aimed his
pistol up at A-deck.

“Yeah; did I miss anything?”

“Did you see the part where that bunch of French pricks
posing as scientists decided to pull guns on us?” Schofield fired
off another round.

“Yeah, I caught that part.”

“What about the part where we found out that our new friends had
six more guys stashed away in their hovercraft?”

“No, missed that.”

“Well, that's the”—he fired off another angry
round— “story so far.”

Gant looked at Schofield. Behind those opaque silver glasses was a
seriously pissed-off individual.

In fact, Schofield wasn't really angry at the French soldiers
per se. Sure, at first he'd been annoyed at himself for
not picking that the French “scientists” were actually
soldiers. But then they had got to Wilkes first, and they had
brought with them two genuine scientists, a particularly clever ploy
that had been enough to throw Schofield and his team off the scent.

What really made him angry, however, was that he'd lost the
initiative in this battle.

The French had caught Schofield and his team off guard, taken them by
surprise, and now they were dictating the terms of this
fight. That was what really made Schofield pissed.

He tried desperately to fight his anger. He couldn't allow himself
to be angry. He couldn't afford to feel that way.

Whenever he found himself beginning to feel angry or upset, Schofield
always remembered a seminar he'd attended in London in late 1996
given by the legendary British commander Brigadier General Trevor J.
Barnaby.

A burly man, with piercing dark eyes, a fully shaven head, and a
severe black goatee, Trevor Barnaby was the head of the SAS—had
been since 1979—and was widely regarded as the most brilliant
front-line military tactician in the world. His strategic ability with
regard to small incursionary forces was extraordinary. When it was
executed by the finest elite military unit in the world, the SAS, it
was invincible. He was the pride and joy of the British military
establishment, and he had never failed on a mission yet.

In November 1996, as part of a USA-UK “knowledge share
agreement” it was decided that Barnaby would give a two-day
seminar on covert incursionary warfare to the most promising American
officers. In return, the United States would instruct British
artillery units on the use of mobile Patriot II missile batteries. One
of the officers chosen to attend Trevor Barnaby's seminar was
Lieutenant Shane M. Schofield, USMC.

Barnaby had had a cocky, hard-edged lecture style that Schofield had
liked—a rapid-fire series of questions and answers that had
proceeded in a simple, logical progression.

“In any combat exchange,” Barnaby had said, "be it a
world war or an isolated two unit standoff, the first question you
always ask yourself is this: what is your opponent's
objective? What does he want? Unless you know the answer to that
question, you'll never be able to ask yourself the second
question: how is he going to get it?

"And I'll tell you right now, ladies and gentlemen, the
second question is of far greater importance to you than the first.
Why? Because what he wants is unimportant insofar as strategy is
concerned. What he wants is an object, that's all. The worldwide
spread of communism. A strategic foothold on foreign territory. The
ark of the covenant. Who cares? Knowing of it means nothing,
in and of itself. How he plans to get it, on the other hand,
means everything. Because that is action. And action can be stopped.

“So, once you have answered this second question, then you can
proceed to question number three: what are you going to do to stop
him?”

When he had been speaking about command and leadership, Barnaby had
repeatedly stressed the need for cool-headed reason. An angry
commander, he'd said, acting under the influence of rage or
frustration, will almost certainly get his unit killed.

“As a leader,” Barnaby had said, “you simply cannot
afford to get angry or upset.”

Recognizing that no commanding officer was immune from feeling angry
or frustrated, Barnaby had offered his three-step tactical analysis as
a diversion from such feelings. “Whenever you feel yourself
succumbing to angry feelings, go through the three-step analysis. Get
your mind off the anger and get it back on the job at hand. Soon,
you'll forget about what pissed you off and you'll start doing
what you're paid for.”

And as he stood there in the doorway on C-deck, in the freezing-cold,
ice-covered world of Wilkes Ice Station, Shane Schofield could almost
hear Trevor Barnaby speaking inside his head.

OK, then.

What is their objective?

They want the spaceship.

How are they going to get it?

They're going to kill everybody here, grab the spaceship, and
somehow get it off the continent before anybody even knows it existed.

All right. But there was a problem with that analysis. What was
it—?

Schofield thought for a moment. And then it hit him.

The French had arrived quickly.

So quickly, in fact, that they had arrived at Wilkes before
the United States had been able to get a team of its own there. Which
meant they'd been close to Wilkes when the original distress
signal had gone out.

Schofield paused.

French soldiers had been at d'Urville when Abby Sinclair's
signal had gone out.

But the distress signal could never have been anticipated. It was an
emergency, a sudden occurrence.

And that was the problem with his analysis.

A picture began to form in Schofield's mind: they had seen an
opportunity, and they had decided to take it....

The French had had their commandos at Dumont d'Urville, probably
doing exercises of some sort. Arctic warfare or something like that.

And then the distress signal from Wilkes had been picked up. And
suddenly the French would have realized that they had one of their
elite military units within six hundred miles of the discovery of an
extraterrestrial spacecraft.

The prospective gains were obvious: technological advances to be
garnered from the propulsion system, the construction of the exterior
shell. Maybe even weapons.

It was an opportunity too good to pass up.

But the French commandos faced two problems.

First: the American scientists at Wilkes. They would have to be
eliminated. There could be no witnesses.

The second problem was worse: it was almost certain that the United
States would dispatch a protective Reconnaissance Unit to Wilkes. So a
clock was ticking. In fact, the French had realized that, in all
probability, U.S. troops would arrive at Wilkes before they could get
the spaceship off the continent.

Which meant there would be a firelight.

But the French were here by chance. They'd had neither the time
nor the resources to prepare a full-strength assault on Wilkes. They
were a small force facing the probability that the U.S. would arrive
on the scene, with a force of greater strength than theirs, before
they could make good their escape with the spacecraft.

They needed a plan.

And so they'd posed as scientists, concerned neighbors. Presumably
with the intention that they would earn the Marines' trust and
then kill them while their backs were turned. It was as good a
strategy as any for an impromptu force of inferior strength.

Which left one further question: how were they going to get the
spaceship out of Antarctica?

Schofield decided that that question could wait. Better to tackle the
battle at hand. So we ask again:

What is their objective?

To eliminate us and the scientists here at Wilkes.

How are they going to achieve that?

I don't know.

How would you achieve that?

Schofield thought about that. I'd probably try to flush us all
into the one place. That'd be much more efficient than attempting
to search the whole station for us and pick us off one by—

“Grenade!” Gant yelled.

Schofield was jolted back to the present as he saw a small black
grenade sail out over the A-deck railing and arc down toward him. Six
similar grenades went flying down from A-deck and into the three ice
tunnels that branched off into B-deck.