Ice Station Page 15

  Schofield walked quickly around the A-deck catwalk. He’d just come up from E-deck where he had checked on Mother, and he was now wearing a new pair of silver anti-flash glasses. Mother had given them to him. She’d said that in her state, she wouldn’t be needing them anymore.

  Schofield poked his head around the dining room door. ‘What do you think, Rebound?’ he said.

  Inside the dining room, Rebound was working feverishly over Samurai’s inanimate body. The body lay flat on its back on a table in the centre of the room. Blood dripped off the edges of the table, forming a red puddle on the cold porcelain floor.

  Rebound looked up from what he was doing. He shook his head in exasperation.

  ‘I can’t keep up with the blood loss,’ he said to Schofield. ‘There’s just too much internal damage. His whole gut’s been blown apart.’

  Rebound wiped his forehead. A slick of blood appeared above his eyes. He looked hard at Schofield. ‘This is way out of my league, sir. He needs someone who knows what he’s doing. He needs a doctor.’

  Schofield stared at Samurai’s prone body for a few seconds.

  ‘Just do what you can,’ he said, and then he left the room.

  ‘Okay, people, listen up,’ Schofield said. ‘We don’t have much time, so I’m going to keep this short.’

  The six remaining able-bodied Marines were gathered around the pool on E-deck. They all stood in a wide circle. Schofield stood in the middle.

  Schofield’s voice echoed up through the shaft of the empty station. ‘This station is obviously a lot hotter than we originally thought. I’m thinking that if the French were willing to take a chance to grab it, others will, too. And whoever those others might be, by now they’ve had some time to get their shit together and prepare for a full-scale attack. Have no doubt, people, if anyone else decides to hit this station they will almost certainly be better prepared and more heavily armed than those French pricks we just exterminated. Opinions?’

  ‘Concur,’ Buck Riley said.

  ‘Same,’ Snake said. Book Riley and Snake Kaplan were the two most senior enlisted men in the unit. It meant something that they both agreed with Schofield’s assessment of the situation.

  Schofield said. ‘All right, then. What I want to happen now is this. Montana . . .’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I want you to go topside and position our two hovercrafts so that their rangefinders are pointed outward, so that they cover the entire landward approach to this station. I want maximum coverage, no gaps. Trip-wires aren’t going to cut it anymore with this place, we use the rangefinders from here. As soon as anyone comes within fifty miles of this station, I want to know about it.’

  ‘Got it,’ Montana said.

  ‘And while you’re up there,’ Schofield said, ‘see if you can get on the radio and raise McMurdo. Find out when our reinforcements are coming. They should’ve been here by now.’

  ‘You got it,’ Montana said. He hurried away.

  ‘Santa Cruz . . .’ Schofield said, turning.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Eraser check. I want this whole facility swept from top to bottom for any kind of eraser or delay switch, okay. There’s no knowing what kinds of little surprises our French friends left behind for us. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Santa Cruz said. He broke out of the circle and headed for the nearest rung-ladder.

  ‘Snake . . .’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘The winch that lowers the diving bell. Its control panel is up on C-deck, in the alcove. That control panel was damaged by a grenade blast during the fight. I need those winch controls working again. Can you handle it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Snake said. He, too, left the circle.

  When Snake had gone, Riley and Gant were the only ones left on the deck.

  Schofield turned to face them. ‘Book. Fox. I want you two to do a full prep of our dive gear. Three divers, four-hour dive compression, low-audibility gear, plus some auxiliaries for later.’

  ‘Air mix?’ Riley asked.

  ‘Saturated helium-oxygen. Ninety-eight to two,’ Schofield said.

  Riley and Gant were momentarily silent. A compressed air mix of 98% helium and 2% oxygen was very rare. The almost negligible amount of oxygen indicated a dive to a very high pressure environment.

  Schofield handed Gant a handful of blue capsules. They were N-67D anti-nitrogen blood-pressure capsules, developed by the Navy for use during deep-dive missions. They were affectionately known to military divers as ‘the pills’.

  By retarding the dissolution of nitrogen in the bloodstream during a deep dive, the pills prevented decompression sickness – better known as the bends – among divers. Since the pills neutralised nitrogen activity in the bloodstream, Navy and Marine Corps divers could descend as quickly as they liked without fear of nitrogen narcosis, and ascend without the need for making time-consuming decompression stops. The pills had revolutionised military deep-diving.

  ‘Planning a deep dive, sir?’ Gant said, looking up from the blue pills in her hand.

  Schofield looked at her seriously, ‘I want to find out what’s down in that cave.’

  Schofield walked quickly around the curved outer tunnel of B-deck, deep in thought.

  Things were moving fast now.

  The French attack on Wilkes had taught him a lot. Wilkes Ice Station – or more precisely, whatever lay buried in the ice beneath Wilkes Ice Station – was now officially worth killing for.

  But it was the implications of that lesson that gave Schofield a chill. If France had been willing to launch an impromptu snatch-and-grab for whatever was down in that cave, it was highly probable that other countries would be willing to do the same.

  There was one additional factor, though, about possible further attacks on Wilkes that caused Schofield particular concern: if someone was going to launch an attack on Wilkes, they would have to do it soon – before a full-strength US force arrived at the station.

  The next few hours would be very tense.

  It would be a race to see who would arrive first.

  American reinforcements, or a fully-equipped enemy force.

  Schofield tried not to think about it. There were a lot of things to do, and one matter in particular required his attention first.

  After the battle with the French had concluded, the remaining scientists from Wilkes – there were five of them, three men and two women – had retired to their living quarters on B-deck. Schofield was heading for those living quarters now. He was hoping to find among those scientists a doctor who might be able to help Samurai.

  Schofield continued to walk around the curved outer tunnel. His clothes were still wet, but he didn’t care. Like all of the other Marines in his unit, he was wearing a thermal wetsuit under his fatigues. It was practically standard attire for Recon units working in arctic conditions. Wetsuits were warmer than long-johns and they didn’t get heavy if they got wet. And by wearing one’s wetsuit instead of carrying it, a Recon Marine lightened his load, something very important for a rapid-response unit.

  Just then, a door to Schofield’s right opened and a cloud of steam wafted out into the corridor. A sleek black object slid out of the haze and into the corridor in front of Schofield.

  Wendy.

  She was dripping with water. She looked up at Schofield with a goofy seal grin.

  Kirsty emerged from the steamy haze. The shower room. She saw Schofield instantly and she smiled.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. She was wearing a new set of dry clothes, and her hair was tousled, wet. Schofield guessed that Kirsty had just had the hottest shower of her life.

  ‘Hey, there,’ Schofield said.

  ‘Wendy loves the shower room,’ Kirsty said, nodding at Wendy. ‘She likes to slide through the steam.’

  Schofield suppressed a laugh and looked down at the little black fur seal at his feet. She was cute, very cute. She had also saved his life. Her soft brown eyes glistened with intelligence.

  Schofie
ld looked at Kirsty. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Warm now,’ she said.

  Schofield nodded. From the look of her, Kirsty seemed to have bounced back well from her ordeal in the pool. Kids were good like that, resilient. Schofield wondered what sort of therapy an adult would need after falling into a pool filled with ferocious killer whales.

  Schofield gave a lot of the credit to Buck Riley. Riley had been up on C-deck when Kirsty had been whizzed up there on Schofield’s Maghook, and for the remainder of the battle, Riley had kept Kirsty by his side, safe and sound.

  ‘Good,’ Schofield said. ‘You’re one tough kid, you know that? You ought to be a Marine.’

  Kirsty beamed. Schofield nodded down the tunnel. ‘You going my way?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, falling into step beside him as he began walking down the tunnel. Wendy loped down the corridor behind them.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Kirsty asked.

  ‘I’m looking for your mom.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kirsty said, a little softly.

  It was a strange response, and, through his reflective silver glasses, Schofield cast a sideways glance at Kirsty. She just stared at the floor as she walked. Schofield wondered what it meant.

  There was an awkward silence and Schofield searched for something to say. ‘So, uh, how old did you say you were? Twelve, right?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘What is that, seventh grade?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Seventh grade,’ Schofield mused. He was at a total loss for something to say now, so he just said, ‘I guess you must be starting to think about a career, then.’

  Kirsty seemed to perk up at the question. She looked across at Schofield as they walked.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said seriously, as though career thoughts had been weighing heavily on her twelve-year-old mind lately.

  ‘So what do you want to do when you leave school?’

  ‘I want to be a teacher,’ Kirsty said. ‘Like my dad.’

  ‘What does your dad teach?’

  ‘He taught geology at a big college in Boston,’ Kirsty said. ‘Harvard,’ she added importantly.

  ‘And what do you want to teach?’ Schofield asked.

  ‘Math.’

  ‘Math?’

  ‘I’m good at math,’ Kirsty said, shrugging self-consciously, embarrassed and proud at the same time.

  ‘My dad used to help me with my homework,’ she went on. ‘He said I was much better at math than most other kids my age, so sometimes he would teach me stuff that the other kids didn’t know. Interesting stuff, stuff that I wasn’t supposed to learn until I was a senior. And sometimes he’d teach me stuff that they don’t teach you at all in school.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Schofield said, genuinely interested. ‘What sort of stuff?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Polynomials. Number sequences. Some calculus.’

  ‘Calculus. Number sequences,’ Schofield repeated, amazed.

  ‘You know, like triangular numbers and Fibonacci numbers. That sort of stuff.’

  Schofield shook his head in astonishment. This was impressive. Very impressive. Kirsty Hensleigh, twelve years old and a little short for her age, was apparently a very smart young lady. Schofield looked at her again. She seemed to walk on her toes, with a kind of spring in each step. She just looked like a regular kid.

  Kirsty said, ‘We used to do a lot of stuff together. Softball, hiking, once he even took me scuba diving, even though I hadn’t done the course.’

  Schofield said, ‘You make it sound like your dad doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore?’

  There was a short silence. Then Kirsty said softly, ‘He doesn’t.’

  ‘What happened?’ Schofield asked gently. He was waiting to hear a tale about fighting parents and a divorce. It seemed to happen a lot these days.

  ‘My dad was killed in a car wreck last year,’ Kirsty said flatly.

  Schofield stopped in mid-stride. He turned to look at Kirsty. The little girl was staring down at her shoelaces.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Schofield said.

  Kirsty cocked her head to one side. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, and then resumed walking.

  They came to a door sunken into the outer tunnel and Schofield stopped in front of it. ‘Well, this is my stop.’

  ‘Mine, too,’ Kirsty said.

  Schofield opened the door and let Kirsty and Wendy enter in front of him. He followed them inside.

  It was a common room of some sort. Some ugly orange couches, a stereo, a television, a VCR. Schofield guessed that they didn’t get regular TV transmissions down here so they just watched videos on the television.

  Sarah Hensleigh and Abby Sinclair sat on one of the orange couches. They were also now wearing dry clothes. The three other scientists from Wilkes – three men named Llewellyn, Harris and Robinson – were there, too. After seeing what the fragmentation grenades had done to Hollywood and one of their col-leagues they had spent the remainder of the battle holed up in their rooms. Now they looked tired and weary, afraid.

  Kirsty went over and sat down on the couch next to Sarah Hensleigh. She sat down silently and didn’t say anything to her mother. Schofield remembered the first time he had seen Sarah and Kirsty together – back before the French had arrived at Wilkes. Kirsty hadn’t said much then either. Schofield hadn’t noticed any tension between them then, but he noticed it now. He put it out of his mind as he walked over to Sarah.

  ‘Is anyone here a medical doctor?’ Schofield asked her.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No. No, Ken Wishart was the only doctor at the station. But he –’ She cut herself off.

  ‘But he what?’

  Sarah sighed. ‘But he was on board the hovercraft that was supposed to be heading back to d’Urville.’

  Schofield shut his eyes, once again imagined the fate of the five scientists who had been on board the doomed hovercraft.

  A voice crackled over his helmet intercom. ‘Scarecrow, this is Montana.’

  ‘What is it?’ Schofield said.

  ‘I’ve set up the rangefinders around the outer perimeter just like you wanted. You wanna come up and check it out?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Schofield said, ‘I’ll be up in a minute. Where are you?’

  ‘South-west corner.’

  ‘Wait for me,’ Schofield said. ‘Have you had any luck getting through to McMurdo?’

  ‘Not yet. There’s a shitstorm of interference on every frequency. I can’t get through.’

  ‘Keep trying,’ Schofield said. ‘Scarecrow, out.’

  Schofield turned and was about to leave the common room when someone tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He turned. It was Sarah Hensleigh. She was smiling.

  ‘I just remembered,’ she said. ‘There is a medical doctor at this station after all.’

  After the battle was over, the Marines had found the two French scientists, Luc Champion and Henri Rae, cowering in a cupboard in the dining room on A-deck.

  They had not offered any resistance. Indeed, as they had been dragged unceremoniously out of the cup-board to face their conquerors, the horror on their faces had said it all. They had backed the wrong side in this fight. The men they had deceived were now their captors. The price for their treachery would be high.

  Both men had been taken down to E-deck where they were handcuffed to a pole in plain view. Schofield’s team had work to do and Schofield didn’t want to waste any of his manpower guarding the two French scientists. By cuffing the two Frenchmen to a pole out in the open, the Marines down on E-deck could work as well as keep an eye on them.

  Schofield stepped out onto the B-deck catwalk. He was about to speak into his helmet mike when Sarah Hensleigh came out onto the catwalk behind him.

  ‘I have something I have to ask you,’ she said. ‘Something I couldn’t ask you back in the common room.’

  Schofield held up a hand, spoke into his helmet mike: ‘Rebound. This is Scarecrow. How’s Samurai?’

  Rebound’s voice came in
over his earpiece. ‘I’ve managed to stop the bleeding for the moment, sir, but he’s still pretty bad.’

  ‘Stable?’

  ‘As stable as I’m gonna get him.’

  ‘All right, listen. I want you to go down to E-deck and grab that French scientist named Champion, Luc Champion,’ Schofield said. He looked at Sarah as he spoke. ‘I’ve just been informed that our good friend Monsieur Champion is a surgeon.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Rebound said eagerly. He seemed relieved that someone more qualified might be able to take over Samurai’s care. But then he seemed to check himself. ‘Uh, sir. . .’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can we trust him?’

  ‘No,’ Schofield said firmly, as he began to climb up the rung-ladder toward A-deck. He motioned for Sarah to follow him up. ‘Not a wit. Rebound, you just tell him that if Samurai dies, so does he.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  Schofield reached the top of the rung-ladder and stepped up onto the A-deck catwalk. He helped Sarah up behind him. Almost immediately, he saw Rebound emerge from the dining room doorway not far away and jog for the opposite rung-ladder. He was going down to E-deck to get Champion.

  Schofield and Sarah headed for the main entrance to the station. As they walked along the catwalk, Schofield looked down at the station beneath him and thought about his people.

  They were scattered everywhere.

  Montana was outside. Riley and Gant were down on E-deck, getting the scuba gear ready for the dive to the cave. Snake was smack in the middle, in the alcove on C-deck, fixing the winch controls. And Santa Cruz was nowhere to be seen, since he was off conducting a search of the station for erasers.

  Christ, Schofield thought, they were spread all over the place.

  Schofield’s helmet intercom crackled. It was Santa Cruz.

  ‘What is it, Private?’ Schofield said.

  ‘Sir, I’ve conducted a search of the station and I’ve found no sign of any erasing device.’

  ‘No erasers?’ Schofield frowned. ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Not a thing, sir. My guess is they didn’t expect things to happen so fast, so they didn’t get a chance to lay any.’