Ice Station Page 12

  The big animal’s sliding movement stopped and it ground to a halt, with the French soldier – screaming madly, blood pouring from his mouth – held tightly within its jaws. The whale then began to shuffle its enormous frame awkwardly backwards along the deck. After a few moments, it reached the edge and fell back into the water, taking the screaming Frenchman down with it.

  Wendy had known. You weren’t truly safe from the killers until you were well clear of the water’s edge.

  The six people remaining on the deck understood at once.

  Get away from the edge.

  Schofield saw Gant join Rebound on the other side of the pool. Saw them both hurriedly pick up Mother by the shoulders and start to drag her away from the edge. As they did so, Schofield caught a fleeting glimpse of Mother’s lower body. The bottom half of one of her legs was missing.

  At that moment there came a sudden, resounding whump! from behind Schofield and he felt the deck beneath him shudder violently. He spun instantly, faced the pool, and saw the smiling face of one of the killer whales sliding across the deck toward him!

  The whale slid across the deck fast.

  Schofield was still on his knees.

  The whale rolled onto its side, opened its mouth wide.

  Schofield dived away from the massive creature, saw the battered ejection seat lying on the deck four feet behind him. If he could just get to it, and leap over it, he’d be safe. Schofield scrambled across the deck on his hands and knees, toward the big ejection seat.

  The whale kept coming. Fast.

  Schofield clawed at the deck, crawled as fast as he could. Not fast enough. He wasn’t going to make it. He wasn’t going to be able to get over the ejection seat in time.

  Schofield saw water spread out on the deck all around him. The wash from the advancing killer whale.

  It was right behind him!

  Schofield’s adrenalin surged and he dived forward. He knew he wasn’t going to make it over the chair so he slammed himself, back first, into the ejection seat.

  He was now facing the pool, ‘sitting’ in the battered ejection seat as it lay crumpled on its side. He looked up and the killer whale filled his entire field of vision.

  It was right on top of him! Less than a metre away. It came roaring toward him.

  There was no chance of it slowing down.

  No chance of it missing him.

  And Shane Schofield shut his eyes as the killer whale’s jaws came slamming down around his head.

  There came a sudden, otherworldly clang!, a noise louder than anything Schofield had ever heard in his life.

  Schofield had expected to feel pain – sharp, sudden, burning pain – as the killer whale’s teeth chomped down hard on his head. But strangely, he didn’t feel any pain.

  Bewildered, he opened his eyes . . .

  . . . and saw two long rows of razor-sharp teeth stretching away from him into darkness. In between the two long rows of teeth sat an obscenely fat, pink tongue.

  It took a second for Schofield’s brain to put it all together.

  His head was inside the killer whale’s mouth!

  But for some reason – some unfathomable, incredible reason – he was still alive.

  It was then that Schofield looked up and saw that his head was surrounded on three sides by the battered steel headrest of the ejection seat.

  The killer whale’s ferocious bite had come down hard on the headrest, on either side of Schofield’s head. But the steel headrest had been strong enough to withstand the incredible force of the bite – it had halted the big whale’s teeth only millimetres short of Schofield’s ears. Now, two severe dents in the headrest jutted inwards on either side of his head. One of them – sharp and jagged – had drawn a tiny bead of blood from Schofield’s left ear.

  Schofield couldn’t see anything else. His entire upper body, from chest to head, was completely covered by the killer whale’s mouth.

  Suddenly, the ejection seat jolted beneath him.

  It scraped loudly against the metal deck, and Schofield fell back into the seat as the whole thing lurched forward.

  The movement stopped suddenly, almost as soon as it had begun, and Schofield rocked forward and shuddered to a halt. He suddenly realised what was happening.

  The whale was dragging him back toward the pool.

  The ejection seat jolted once again and Schofield felt the seat slide another three feet across the deck.

  In his mind’s eye, Schofield could picture the whale’s movements. It was probably shuffling backwards – as the other one had done before with the Frenchman – undulating its massive body back across the deck as it dragged the four-hundred-pound ejection seat toward the edge of the deck.

  The ejection seat moved again and Schofield felt a sudden rush of warm air wash over his face.

  It had come from within the whale.

  Schofield couldn’t believe it. The killer whale was huffing and puffing, breathing hard as it held this unusually heavy prize within its jaws and dragged it back toward the water! Schofield wriggled in his seat as another rush of warm air hit his face and the seat jolted once again.

  His feet were still sticking out from the base of the ejection seat, out from the side of the whale’s propped-open mouth. If he could just wriggle down that way, Schofield thought, he might be able to slip out of the chair – and out of the whale’s mouth – before it reached the water.

  Schofield moved slowly, gingerly, easing himself down in the ejection seat, not wanting to alert the whale to his plan.

  Suddenly, the seat lurched sideways. It screeched hideously as it slid across the metal deck. Schofield quickly grabbed hold of the armrests to stop himself falling forward onto the big animal’s teeth.

  He lowered himself further. Now his waist was out of the chair and his eyes were level with the whale’s sharp, pointed teeth. The whale grunted as it heaved on the heavy steel chair.

  Slowly, Schofield lowered himself an inch further out of the chair.

  And then he encountered a problem.

  He was now sitting so low in the ejection seat that he couldn’t keep a hold on the armrests anymore. He needed something to hold onto, something from which he could push himself out of the seat. Schofield desperately looked around himself, searching for something to grab onto.

  Nothing.

  There was absolutely nothing to hold onto.

  And then Schofield’s gaze fell upon the killer whale’s teeth in front of him.

  I don’t believe this, Schofield thought as he reached up with both hands and took hold of two of the killer whale’s enormous white teeth.

  Suddenly the ejection seat jolted and slid again and Schofield felt it lift slightly off the deck. He had a sudden, horrifying thought.

  It’s reached the edge of the deck.

  And now it’s tipping over it . . .

  Holy shit.

  Schofield gripped the whale’s teeth tightly and pushed hard off them, and hurled himself clear of the ejection seat. He slid out from the chair, out from the side of the big whale’s mouth, and fell clumsily onto the deck just in time to see the killer whale’s rear end drop back into the pool. As its tail entered the water, the big whale’s body tipped upward, and its head reared up, lifting the entire ejection seat off the deck. Then the killer whale’s enormous black-and-white frame began to slide downward, into the water, and the great predator took its prize to a watery grave.

  Schofield was on his feet in seconds, moving quickly across the deck toward Rebound, Gant and Mother.

  He spoke into his helmet mike as he ran. ‘Montana, this is Scarecrow, report.’

  ‘Still up on A-deck, Scarecrow. Snake and Santa Cruz’re up here with me.’

  ‘How many up there?’ Schofield asked.

  ‘I count it as five military and two civilian,’ Montana’s voice said. ‘But two of the military guys just made a break for one of the ladders and went down a level. What? Oh, fuck –’

  The connection cut off. Sch
ofield heard a scuffle.

  ‘Montana –’

  Suddenly, a French commando stepped out onto the deck in front of Schofield himself.

  He was the last of the five French soldiers who had fallen into the pool, the only one of them to come out of it alive. He looked like death warmed up – dripping wet, scowling, and mad as hell. He glared at Schofield, then raised his crossbow.

  Without missing a beat, Schofield drew a throwing knife from a sheath strapped to his knee and threw it underhanded. The knife whistled through the air and thudded into the Frenchman’s chest. He dropped instantly. The whole thing took two seconds. Schofield never stopped walking. He stepped over the slumped body, retrieved his knife and the dead French commando’s crossbow, and kept moving.

  He spoke into his helmet mike again, ‘Montana, I say again, are you all right?’

  ‘I copy, Scarecrow. I’m okay. Revision on my previous count: make that four military and two civilians. Put me down for one more frog.’

  ‘Put me down for one, too,’ Schofield said.

  Schofield arrived at the entrance to the south tunnel, where he found Gant and Rebound. They were dragging Mother into the tunnel.

  Schofield saw Mother’s leg immediately. A bloody, jagged piece of bone protruded from where her left knee should have been.

  ‘Put her somewhere safe, stop the flow and give her a hit of methadone,’ Schofield said quickly.

  ‘Got it –’ Gant said, looking up at him. She cut herself off abruptly.

  Schofield’s anti-flash glasses had been lost in the water in the battle with the killer whales and Gant saw his eyes for the first time.

  Two prominent vertical scars cut down across both of his eyes. They were unmissable, hideous. Each scar stretched downward in a perfectly straight line from eyebrow to cheekbone, scarring the eyelid in between.

  Gant winced when she saw them and regretted it as soon as she did so. She hoped Schofield didn’t notice.

  ‘How are you feeling, Mother?’ Schofield asked as they dragged Mother into the tunnel.

  ‘Nothing one good kiss from a fine lookin’ man like you wouldn’t fix,’ Mother growled through clenched teeth. Despite her pain, she too saw Schofield’s scarred eyes.

  ‘Maybe later,’ Schofield said, as he saw a door set into the tunnel wall ahead of them. ‘In there,’ he said to Gant and Rebound.

  They opened the door and dragged Mother inside, all four of them dripping wet. They were in a storeroom of some sort. Rebound immediately set to work on Mother’s leg.

  Schofield spoke into his helmet mike, ‘Marines, call in.’

  Names came in over the intercom as each Marine identified him or her self.

  Montana, Snake and Santa Cruz. All up on A-deck.

  Rebound and Gant, E-deck. They called in formally over their helmet intercoms even though they were standing right next to Schofield, so that the others would hear their voices and know for a fact that they were still alive. Even Mother said her name, just for the record.

  There was no word from Book, Hollywood, Legs, Samurai or Ratman.

  ‘Okay, everyone, listen up,’ Schofield said. ‘By my count these bastards are down to four now, plus the two civilians they brought along with them to jerk my chain.

  ‘This has gone far enough. It’s time to end it. We have a numerical advantage, seven against four. Let’s use it. I want a flush of this entire facility from the top down. I want these assholes pushed into a corner so we can finish them off without losing any more of our people. All right, this is how it’s gonna happen. I want –’

  There came a sudden thunking noise from above him and Schofield immediately looked upwards.

  There was a long silence.

  Schofield saw a line of fluorescent lights bolted to the ceiling above him. They stretched away at regular intervals down the southern tunnel to his right.

  And then, at that moment, as Schofield watched them, every single fluorescent light in the tunnel went out.

  The world glowed incandescent green.

  Night vision.

  With his scarred eyes masked by his night-vision goggles, Shane Schofield climbed up one of the rung-ladders between E-deck and D-deck. He moved slowly and carefully, deliberately. He remembered Book saying once that wearing night-vision goggles is like wearing a pair of low-powered binoculars strapped to your head – you see something and you reach out to grab it, only to find that it’s actually a lot closer than you think and you knock it over.

  The whole station was cloaked in darkness.

  And silence.

  Cold, eerie silence.

  With the entire station filled with the flammable propellant from the air-conditioners, all gunfire had ceased. The occasional shuffle of movement and the odd low whisper of someone speaking into a helmet microphone were all that could be heard in the pitch darkness.

  Schofield surveyed the green-lit station through his night-vision goggles.

  The battle had entered a new phase.

  Somehow, one of the French commandos must have managed to find the station’s fuse box and turn off all the lights. It was a desperate ploy, but a good one nonetheless.

  Darkness has long been the ally of numerically inferior forces. Even the advent of ambient-light technology – night-vision goggles and gunsights – hasn’t diminished the average military tactician’s opinion of the advantages of a small operation carried out under cover of darkness. It’s a simple maxim of warfare – landed, naval or airborne – nobody likes to fight in the dark.

  ‘Marines, stay alert. Watch for flashers,’ Schofield whispered into his helmet mike. One of the great dangers of night-vision fighting is the use of stun grenades, or ‘flashers’ – grenades that emit a sudden blinding flare of light which is designed to temporarily disorient an enemy. Since night-vision goggles magnify any given light source, if one sees a flasher go off through a pair of night-vision goggles, blindness won’t be temporary. It will be permanent.

  Schofield peered up into the station’s central shaft. No light entered the station from outside the enormous frosted-glass dome that topped the wide central shaft. It was June – early winter in the Antarctic. Outside, it would be twilight for the next three months.

  Blackness. Total blackness.

  Schofield felt Gant’s weight on the ladder behind him. They were heading up the shaft.

  As soon as the lights had gone out, Schofield had immediately ordered his team to ‘go to green’. Then he had outlined his plan.

  It was no use playing defence in a darkened environment. They had to stay on the attack. Had to. The team that would win this battle would be the one that used the darkness to its advantage, and the best way to do that was to stay on the offensive. As such, Schofield’s plan was simple.

  Keep the French on the run.

  They were down on numbers. Only four of the original twelve French commandos were still alive. And Montana had just said that two of those four had just evacuated A-deck. So they were also split into two groups of two.

  But most importantly of all, they were running.

  Schofield’s team, on the other hand, was also split, but in a much more advantageous way.

  Schofield had three Marines up on A-deck – Montana, Snake and Santa Cruz – and another three down on E-deck – Gant, Rebound and himself.

  If the Marines up on A-deck could flush the remaining French commandos down through the station, soon those French soldiers would run right into the Marines from the lower decks. And then the Marines – a force of superior numbers, attacking from two flanks – would finish them.

  But Schofield didn’t want to get carried away, didn’t want to get ahead of himself, because this would be no ordinary battle.

  The fighting would be different.

  For in the highly flammable, gaseous atmosphere of the station, neither side could use guns.

  This would be old-fashioned, close-quarter fighting.

  Hand-to-hand combat.

  In near total darkn
ess.

  In other words, it would be knives in the dark.

  But as he’d thought about it more closely, Schofield had suddenly seen a problem with his plan.

  The French had crossbows.

  Schofield had looked at the crossbow he had taken from the dead French commando on E-deck. Since it didn’t create a spark of any kind, a crossbow could be fired safely inside the gaseous atmosphere of the station. Schofield tried to think back to his early weapons training at the Basic School at Quantico, tried to remember the vital stats for a hand-held crossbow. He remembered that the standard range of accuracy for a small-size crossbow was not great, about the same as that for a conventional six-shooter, roughly twenty feet.

  Twenty feet.

  Damn it, Schofield thought. Knives would be useless if the French had a twenty-foot safety zone around themselves. With no corresponding projectile-firing weapon, the Marines wouldn’t stand a chance. The thing was, they didn’t have such a weapon. At least, nothing that they could use safely in the station’s flammable, gaseous environment.

  And then it occurred to Schofield.

  Maybe they did . . .

  Schofield stepped up onto D-deck with his Maghook held out in front of him at shoulder height, ready to fire. In his other hand, he held the dead Frenchman’s crossbow.

  Although not exactly designed for accuracy, the Armalite MH-12 Maghook launcher has the ability to shoot its magnetic grappling hook quite substantial distances – over a hundred feet.

  Initially, the MH-12 Maghook was intended for use in urban warfare and anti-terrorist operations – its chief purpose was to provide a self-contained rope and grappling hook that could be used for scaling the sides of buildings, or providing zip lines along which anti-terrorist units could slide and make rapid forced entries.

  That being the case, the Maghook’s small, hand-held launcher had to have the power to shoot its hook to great heights. The answer was a state-of-the-art hydraulic launching system that provided four thousand pounds per square inch of enhanced vertical thrust. The way Schofield figured it, if he fired his Maghook at an enemy soldier from a distance of twenty feet, four thousand pounds per square inch of thrust had to have some chance of scoring a hit.