Ice Station Read online

  He reached the edge and peered out over the rim, down into the crevasse.

  ‘Oh shit . . .’

  Ten metres behind him, Buck Riley spoke into his helmet mike, ‘What’s the story, Rebound?’

  ‘They’re here, sir,’ Simmons’ voice was almost resigned. ‘Conventional craft. Got somethin’ in French written on the side. Thin ice scattered all about underneath it. Looks like they tried to cross a snow bridge that didn’t hold.’

  He turned to face Riley, his face grim, his voice tinny over the short range radio frequency. ‘And sir, they’s pretty fucked up.’

  The hovercraft lay forty feet below the surface, its rounded nose crumpled inward by the downward impact, every one of its windows either shattered or cracked into distorted spiderwebs. A thin layer of snow had already embarked upon the task of erasing the battered vehicle from history.

  Two of the hovercraft’s occupants had been cata-pulted by the impact right through the forward windshield. Both lay against the forward wall of the crevasse, their necks bent backwards at obscene angles, their bodies resting in pools of their own frozen blood.

  Rebound Simmons stared at the grisly scene.

  There were other bodies inside the hovercraft. He could see their shadows inside it, and could see star-shaped splatters of blood on the insides of the cracked windows of the hovercraft.

  ‘Rebound?’ Riley’s voice came over his helmet intercom. ‘Anybody alive down there?’

  ‘Don’t look like it, sir,’ Rebound said.

  ‘Do an infra-red,’ Riley instructed. ‘We got twenty minutes before we gotta hit the road and I wouldn’t want to leave and find out later that there were some survivors down there.’

  Rebound snapped his infra-red visor into place. It hung down from the brow of his helmet, covering both of his eyes like a fighter pilot’s visor.

  Now he saw the crashed hovercraft through a wash of electronic blue imagery. The cold had taken effect quickly. The whole crash site was depicted as a blue-on-black outline. Not even the engine glowed yellow, the colour of objects with minimal heat intensity.

  More importantly, however, there were no blobs of orange or yellow within the image of the vehicle. Any bodies that were still inside the hovercraft were ice cold. Everyone on board was most certainly dead.

  Rebound said, ‘Sir, infra-red reading is nega –’

  The ground gave way beneath him.

  There was no warning. No pre-emptive cracking of the ice. No sense of it weakening.

  Rebound Simmons dropped like a stone into the crevasse.

  It happened so fast that Buck Riley almost missed it. One second, he was watching Rebound as he peered out over the edge of the crevasse. The next second, Rebound simply dropped out of sight.

  The black rope slithered out over the edge after Rebound, uncoiling at a rapid rate, shooting out over the rim.

  ‘Hold fast!’ Riley yelled to the two Marines anchoring the rope. They held the rope tightly, taking the strain, waiting for the jolt.

  The rope continued to splay out over the edge until whack!, it went instantly taut.

  Riley stepped cautiously over to the right, away from the edge of the crevasse, but close enough so that he could peer down into it.

  He saw the wrecked hovercraft down at the bottom of the hole, and the two bloodied and broken bodies pressed up against the ice wall in front of it. And he saw Rebound, hanging from his rope, two feet above the hovercraft’s banged-open starboard door.

  ‘You okay?’ Riley said into his helmet mike.

  ‘Never doubted you for a second, sir.’

  ‘Just hold on. We’ll have you up in a minute.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Down in the crevasse, Rebound swung stupidly above the destroyed hovercraft. From where he hung he could see in through the open starboard door of the hovercraft.

  ‘Oh, Jesus . . .’ he breathed.

  Schofield knocked loudly on the big wooden door.

  The door was set into the square-shaped base structure that supported the main dome of Wilkes Ice Station. It lay at the bottom of a narrow ramp that descended about eight feet into the ice.

  Schofield banged his fist on the door again.

  He was lying flat on the parapet of the base structure, reaching down from above the door to knock on it.

  Ten yards away, lying on his belly in the snow at the top of the ramp with his legs splayed wide, was Gunnery Sergeant Scott ‘Snake’ Kaplan. His M-16E assault rifle was trained on the unopened door.

  There came a sudden creak, and Schofield held his breath as a sliver of light stretched out onto the snow beneath him and the door to the station slowly began to open.

  A figure stepped out onto the snow ramp beneath Schofield. It was a man. Wrapped in about seven layers of clothing. Unarmed.

  Suddenly, the man tensed, presumably as he saw Snake lying in the snow in front of him, with his M-16 pointed right at the bridge of the man’s nose.

  ‘Hold it right there,’ Schofield said from above and behind the man. ‘United States Marines.’

  The man remained frozen.

  ‘Unit Two is in. Secure,’ a woman’s voice whispered over Schofield’s earpiece.

  ‘Unit Three. In and secure.’

  ‘All right. We’re coming in through the front door.’

  Schofield slid down from his perch and landed next to the man on the snow ramp, and began to pat him down.

  Snake strode down the ramp toward them, his rifle up, pointed at the door.

  Schofield said to the man, ‘You American? What’s your name?’

  The man spoke.

  ‘Non. Je suis Français.’

  And then, in English. ‘My name is Luc.’

  There is a tendency among academic observers to view Antarctica as the last neutral territory on earth. In Antarctica, so it is said, there are no traditional or holy sites to fight over, no historical borders to dispute. What remains is something of a terra communis, a land belonging to the community.

  Indeed, by virtue of the Antarctic Treaty, since 1961 the continent has been divided up into what looks like an enormous pie-chart, with each party to the Treaty being allocated a sector of the pie. Some sectors over-lap, as with those administered by Chile, Argentina and the United Kingdom. Others cover monumentally vast tracts of land – Australia administers a sector of the pie which covers nearly a whole quarter of the Antarctic land mass. There is even one sector – that which covers the Amundsen Sea and Byrd Land – which belongs to no one.

  The general impression is one of a truly international land mass. Such an impression, however, is misguided and simplistic.

  Advocates of the ‘politically neutral Antarctica’ fail to acknowledge the continuing animosity between Argentina and Great Britain as to their respective Antarctic claims; or the staunch refusal of all of the parties to the Antarctic Treaty to vote on the 1985 UN Resolution that would have dedicated the Antarctic land mass to the benefit of the entire international community; or the mysterious conspiracy of silence among the Treaty nations that followed a little-known Greenpeace report in 1995 which accused the French government of conducting secret underground nuclear detonations off the coast of Victoria Land.

  More importantly, however, such advocates also fail to recognise that a land without clearly defined borders has no means of dealing with hostile foreign incursions.

  Research stations can often be a thousand miles apart. Sometimes, those research stations discover items of immense value – uranium, plutonium, gold. It is not impossible that a foreign state, desperate for resources, would, upon learning of such a discovery, send an incursionary force to appropriate that discovery before the rest of the world even knew it existed.

  Such an incident – insofar as it could be known – had never happened in Antarctica before.

  There’s always a first time, Schofield thought as he was led into Wilkes Ice Station by the Frenchman named Luc.

  Schofield had heard a recording of Abby Sinc
lair’s distress signal, heard her mention the discovery of a spacecraft buried within the ice underneath Wilkes Ice Station. If the scientists at Wilkes had, in fact, discovered an extra-terrestrial spacecraft, it would definitely be something other parties would be interested in. Whether or not they had the nerve to send a strike team in to get it was another question.

  In any case, it made him more than a little uneasy to be greeted at the doors of an American research station by a French national, and as he walked down the dark, ice-walled entrance tunnel behind Luc, Schofield found himself gripping his automatic pistol a little more tightly.

  The two men emerged from the darkened entry tunnel into brightly lit, wide open space. Schofield found himself standing on a thin metal catwalk overlooking a wide, cylindrical chasm of empty space.

  Wilkes Ice Station opened in front of him, a giant subterranean structure. Narrow, black catwalks ran around the circumference of the underground cylinder, surrounding the wide, central shaft. At the base of the enormous cylinder, Schofield saw a circular pool of water, in the middle of which sat the station’s diving bell.

  ‘This way,’ Luc said, guiding Schofield to the right. ‘They’re all in the dining room.’

  As he entered the dining room preceded by Luc, Schofield felt like an adult entering a pre-school class-room: a stranger who by the simple fact of his size and bearing just doesn’t fit in.

  The group of five survivors sat in a tight circle around the table. The men were unshaven, the women unkempt. They all looked exhausted. They looked up wearily as Schofield entered the room.

  There were two other men in the room, standing behind the table. Unlike the people seated at the table, these two, like Luc, seemed alert, clean and fresh. One of them was holding a tray of steaming drinks. He froze in mid-step as soon as he saw Schofield walk into the room.

  French scientists from d’Urville, Schofield thought. Here in response to the distress signal.

  Probably.

  At first, no one said anything.

  Everyone in the room just looked at Schofield, taking in his helmet and his silver anti-flash glasses; his body armour and his snow fatigues; the MP-5 machine pistol slung over his shoulder; the .44 automatic in his hand.

  Snake came in behind Schofield, and all eyes switched to him: similarly garbed, similarly armed. A clone.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Luc said gently to the others. ‘They are Marines. They are here to rescue you.’

  One of the women let out a gasp of air. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ she said. Then she started to cry. ‘Oh, thank God.’

  American accent, Schofield noted. The woman pushed back her chair and came toward him, tears pouring down her cheeks. ‘I knew you’d come,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d come.’

  She clutched Schofield’s shoulderplate and began sobbing into his chest. Schofield showed no emotion. He held his pistol clear of her, as he’d been trained to do.

  ‘It’s okay, ma’am,’ was all he said, as he guided her gently to a nearby seat. ‘It’s okay. You’re all right now.’

  Once she was seated, he turned to face the others. ‘Ladies and gentleman. We are Reconnaissance Unit Sixteen of the United States Marine Corps. My name is Lieutenant Shane Schofield, and this is Sergeant Scott Kaplan. We are here in response to your distress signal. We have instructions to secure this station and ensure that each of you is unharmed.’

  One of the men at the table let out a sigh of relief.

  Schofield went on. ‘So that you’re under no illusions, I will tell you now that we are a reconnaissance unit. We will not be extracting you. We are a front-line unit. We travel fast, and we travel light. Our task is to get here quickly, and make sure that you are all okay. If there’s an emergency situation, we will extract you, if not, our orders are to secure this station and wait for a fully equipped extraction team to arrive.’

  Schofield turned to face Luc and the other two men standing behind the table. ‘Now, I presume you gentlemen are from d’Urville. Is that correct?’

  The man with the tray in his hands swallowed loudly, his eyes wide.

  ‘Yes,’ Luc said. ‘That is correct. We heard the message on the radio, and we came as soon as we could. To help.’

  As Luc spoke, a woman’s voice crackled over Schofield’s earpiece. ‘Unit Two, sweep is clear.’

  ‘Unit Three. We have found three – no, actually, make that four – contacts in the drilling room. We’re on our way up now.’

  Schofield nodded at Luc. ‘Your names?’

  ‘I am Professor Luc Champion,’ Luc said. ‘This is Professor Jean-Pierre Cuvier, and holding the tray there is Dr Henri Rae.’

  Schofield nodded slowly, taking the names in, comparing them to a list he’d seen on the Shreveport two days previously. It had been a list of the names of every French scientist stationed at d’Urville. Champion, Cuvier and Rae were on it.

  There was a knock on the door and Schofield turned.

  Sergeant Morgan ‘Montana’ Lee stood in the doorway to the dining room. Montana Lee was a nugget of a man, stocky, and at forty-six years of age, he was the oldest member of the unit. He had a pug nose and a heavy-set, weathered face. Ten yards behind him stood his partner, Corporal Oliver ‘Hollywood’ Todd. Tall, black and lean, Hollywood Todd was twenty-one years old.

  And in between the two Marines stood the fruits of their sweep.

  One woman.

  One man.

  One young girl.

  And one seal.

  ‘They got here about four hours ago,’ Sarah Hensleigh said.

  Schofield and Hensleigh were standing on A-deck, out on the catwalk that looked out over the rest of the ice station.

  As Hensleigh had already explained, Wilkes Ice Station was essentially a great, big, vertical cylinder that had been bored into the ice shelf. It dived five storeys straight down, all the way to sea level.

  Indented at regular intervals on the walls of the cylinder were metal catwalks which ran around the circumference of the cylinder. Each catwalk was joined to the one above it by steep, narrow rung-ladders, so that the whole structure looked kind of like a fire-escape.

  Branching out from each catwalk, burrowing into the icy walls of the cylinder, was a series of tunnels which formed the different levels of the station. Each level was made up of four straight tunnels that branched out from the central shaft to meet a curved outer tunnel that ran in a wide circle around the central well. The four straight tunnels roughly equated the four points on a compass, so they were simply labelled north, south, east and west.

  Each catwalk/level of Wilkes Ice Station was labelled A through E – A-deck being the highest, E-deck signifying the wide metal platform that surrounded the large pool of water at the base of the massive underground structure. On C-deck, the middle level, Sarah said, a narrow, retractable bridge was able to extend across the wide, central shaft of the station.

  ‘How many?’ Schofield asked.

  ‘There were five of them at first,’ Sarah said. ‘Four stayed here with us, while the fifth guy took the others back to d’Urville on their hovercraft.’

  ‘You know them?’

  Sarah said, ‘I know Luc and I know Henri – who I think wet himself when he saw you guys walk in – and I know of the fourth one, Jacques Latissier.’

  After Montana had led Hensleigh into the dining room a few minutes earlier, it hadn’t taken long for Schofield to figure out that she was the person to speak to about the previous week’s events at Wilkes Ice Station.

  While all the others looked either dejected or tired, Sarah had appeared collected and in control. Indeed, Montana and Hollywood had said that they’d found her while she had been showing one of the French scientists the core-drilling room down on E-deck. His name had been Jacques Latissier – a tall man with a thick black beard – and he was also on Schofield’s mental list.

  Sarah Hensleigh stared out over the central shaft of the station, deep in thought. Schofield looked at her. She was an attractive woman, about thirty
-five, with dark brown eyes, black shoulder-length hair and high arching cheekbones. Schofield noticed that around her neck she wore a glistening silver locket on a chain.

  At that moment, the little girl came out onto the catwalk. Schofield guessed that she must have been about ten. She had short blonde hair, a small button nose, and she wore thick glasses that hung down awkwardly over her cheeks. She looked almost comical in the bulky pink parka that she wore – it had a terribly oversized wool-lined hood that flopped down over her face.

  And behind the little girl, loping out onto the metal catwalk, came the seal.

  ‘And who is this?’ Schofield asked.

  ‘This is my daughter, Kirsty,’ Sarah said, putting her hand on the little girl’s shoulder. ‘Kirsty, this is Lieutenant Schofield.’

  ‘Hi there,’ Schofield said.

  Kirsty Hensleigh just stood there for a moment and stared up at Schofield, taking in his armour, his helmet and his weapons.

  ‘Cool glasses,’ she said at last.

  ‘Huh? Oh, yeah,’ Schofield said, touching his silver anti-flash glasses. Combined with his snow fatigues and his white-grey body armour, he knew the reflective, single-lens glasses made him look particularly icy. A kid would like that. Schofield didn’t take the glasses off.

  ‘Yeah, I guess they are pretty cool,’ he said. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twelve, almost thirteen.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’m kind of short for my age,’ Kirsty added matter-of-factly.

  ‘Me, too,’ Schofield said, nodding.

  He looked down as the seal flopped forward and started sniffing at his knee. ‘And your friend here. What’s his name?’

  ‘She’s a girl, and her name is Wendy.’

  Schofield reached down and let the seal sniff his hand. She wasn’t very big, about the size of a medium-sized dog and she happily wore a cute red collar.

  ‘Wendy. What kind of seal is she?’ Schofield asked, as he began to pat Wendy on the head.

  ‘Arctocephalus gazella,’ Kirsty said. ‘Antarctic fur seal.’