Ice Station Page 6

  Schofield met Buck Riley at the main entrance. The two men stood out on the A-deck catwalk, about thirty feet away from the dining room.

  ‘How was it?’ Schofield asked.

  ‘Not good,’ Riley said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That signal we lost, it was a hovercraft. French markings. From d’Urville. It had crashed into a crevasse.’

  Schofield looked up sharply at Riley. ‘Crashed into a crevasse?’ Schofield looked back quickly at the Frenchmen in the dining room. Only moments earlier, Jean Petard had said that the other hovercraft had arrived safely back at d’Urville.

  ‘What happened,’ Schofield said. ‘Thin ice?’

  ‘No. That’s what we thought at first. But then Rebound got a closer look.’

  Schofield turned back around. ‘And?’

  Riley gave him a serious look. ‘There were five dead bodies in that hovercraft, sir. And all of them had been shot through the back of the head.’

  Gant’s voice exploded across Schofield’s helmet intercom.

  ‘Sir, this is Fox. There’s something wrong here. Their food containers have been compromised.’

  Schofield spun around and saw Libby Gant coming out of the dining room. She was walking quickly toward him, carrying a food can of some sort, peeling the lid back.

  Behind her, Schofield saw Petard, in the dining room, rising to his feet, watching Gant, and then watching Schofield himself.

  It was then that their eyes met.

  It was only for an instant, but that was all either man needed. In that moment, there was a flash of understanding.

  Gant cut across Schofield’s line of sight with Petard. She had opened the can now and was pulling something out of it. The object she extracted from the can was small and black, and it looked a little like a small crucifix, the only difference being that the shorter, horizontal beam of the object was bent in a semicircle.

  Schofield’s eyes widened when he saw it and he opened his mouth to shout, but it was too late.

  In the dining room, Petard dived for the two white containers, just as Latissier – who hadn’t been patted down since he had been at the station when the Marines had arrived – threw open his parka, revealing a short-barrelled, French-made FA-MAS assault rifle. At the same time, the one named Cuvier pulled both of his hands free of his pockets, revealing two models of the same weapon that Gant now had in her hand. Cuvier immediately fired one of them at Gant just as she turned to face him and Schofield saw her head snap backwards with the impact as she fell to the floor.

  Deafening gunfire exploded through the silence as Latissier jammed his finger down on the trigger of his assault rifle and sprayed the dining room with a blanket of suppressing fire. His arc of gunfire cut through the air like a scythe, and it practically ripped Augustine Lau in two.

  Latissier didn’t let go for a full ten seconds and the sustained burst of machine-gun fire caused everybody else to hit the deck.

  Wilkes Ice Station had become a battlefield.

  And everything went to hell.

  SECOND INCURSION

  16 June 0930 hours

  ‘This is Scarecrow! This is Scarecrow!’ Schofield yelled into his helmet mike as he ducked into a doorway amid the cacophony of gunfire. ‘I count eight hostiles! I repeat, eight hostile objects! I call it as six military, two civilians. Civilians are probably concealing weapons for use by the commandos. Marines, do not show prejudice!’

  Chunks of ice rained down all around him as Latissier’s stream of bullets impacted against the ice wall above him.

  It was the sight of the crossbow that did it.

  Each of the elite military units of the world has its own characteristic weapon. For the United States Navy SEALs, experts in close-quarter combat, it is the Ruger pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun. For the British Special Air Service – the famous SAS – nitrogen charges are the signature weapon. For US Marine Force Reconnaissance Units – the elite of the regular United States Marine Corps – it is the Armalite MH-12 Maghook, a grappling hook which also contains a high-powered magnet for adhesion to sheer, metallic surfaces.

  Only one elite force, however, is known for carrying crossbows.

  The Premier Régiment Parachutiste d’Infanterie de Marine, the crack French commando unit – known in English as the First Marine Parachute Regiment. It is the French equivalent of the SAS or the SEALs.

  Which is to say that it is not a regular force like, for example, the Marines. It is one step higher. It is an offensive unit, an attack team, an elite, covert force that exists for one reason and one reason only: to go in first, and to go in fast, and to kill everything in sight.

  Which was why, when Schofield saw Gant lift the small, hand-held crossbow from inside the food can, he knew that these men were not scientists from d’Urville. They were soldiers. Elite soldiers.

  Cleverly, they had anticipated that he would know the names of all the scientists at d’Urville, so they had appropriated their names. To add to the illusion, they had also brought with them two actual scientists from the French research station – Luc Champion and Henri Rae – people whom the residents of Wilkes would know personally.

  The final touch was probably the best touch of all: they had allowed Luc Champion, one of the civilians, to take the lead when the Marines had arrived at Wilkes Ice Station, bolstering the illusion that they were all merely scientists, following the lead of their superior.

  That the French had taken five of the residents of Wilkes Ice Station – innocent civilians – out on a hovercraft under the pretence that they were being taken back to safety, and then executed them in the middle of the snow plains, made Schofield furious. In a detached corner of his mind, he conjured up a picture of what the scene must have looked like – the American scientists, men and women, crying, pleading, begging for their lives as the French soldiers moved among them, levelling their pistols at their heads and blasting their brains all over the inside of the hovercraft.

  That at least two French scientists – Champion and Rae – had gone along with the French commandos made Schofield even more angry. What could they have been promised that would make them party to the murder of innocent academics?

  The answer, unfortunately, was simple.

  They would be given the first opportunity to study the spacecraft when the French got their hands on it.

  Frantic voices shouted over Schofield’s helmet intercom.

  ‘– return fire!’

  ‘– Clear!’

  ‘– Samurai is down! Fox is down!’

  ‘– can’t get a fucking shot –’

  Schofield looked out from behind the doorway and saw Gant lying flat on her back on the catwalk halfway between the dining room and the main entrance passageway. She wasn’t moving.

  His gaze shifted to Augustine Lau, lying sprawled out on the catwalk in the dining room doorway. Lau’s eyes were wide open, his face covered in blood, blood that had sprayed up from his own stomach as Latissier’s barrage of gunfire had assailed him from practically point blank range.

  Not far from Schofield, in the tunnel leading to the main entrance to the station, Buck Riley leaned out and returned fire with his MP-5, drowning out the tinny rat-a-tat sound of the French-made FA-MAS with the deep, puncture-like firing sound of the German-made MP-5. Next to him, Hollywood did the same.

  Schofield snapped around to look over at Montana, huddled in the entrance to the western tunnel. ‘Montana. You okay?’

  When Latissier had opened fire a few moments earlier, Montana and Lau had been the closest men to him, standing in the doorway to the dining room. When Latissier’s gun came up firing, Montana had been quick enough to duck back behind the doorway. Lau hadn’t.

  And while Lau had performed what infantry soldiers call ‘the danse macabre’ under the brutal weight of Latissier’s fire, Montana had scrambled back along the catwalk to the nearest point of safety, the west tunnel.

  Schofield saw Montana speak into his helmet mike
fifty feet away. His gravelly voice came over Schofield’s headset. ‘Check that, Scarecrow. I’m a little shook up, but I’m okay.’

  ‘Good.’

  More bullets slammed into the ice above Schofield’s head. Schofield ducked back behind the doorway. Then, quickly, he peered out around the doorframe. But this time as he did so he heard a strange whistling sound.

  With a sharp thwump, a four-inch-long arrow lodged into the ice barely two inches from Schofield’s right eye.

  Schofield looked up and saw Petard in the dining room, with his crossbow raised. No sooner had Petard fired his crossbow than Luc Champion hurled a short-barrelled sub-machine gun over to him and Petard rejoined the battle with a sharp volley of gunfire.

  Peering around the doorframe, Schofield looked quickly over at Gant again. She was still lying motion-less on the catwalk, halfway between the dining room and the main entrance tunnel.

  And then suddenly her arm moved.

  It must have been a reflex of some sort as she slowly regained consciousness.

  Schofield saw it instantly and spoke into his helmet mike. ‘This is Scarecrow, this is Scarecrow. Fox is still alive. I repeat, Fox is still alive. But she’s out in the open. I need cover so I can go out there and get her. Confirm.’

  Voices came in like a roll call. ‘Hollywood, check that!’

  ‘Rebound, check that!’

  ‘Montana, check that.’

  ‘Book, check that,’ Buck Riley said. ‘You’re all clear, Scarecrow. Go!’

  ‘All right, then, now!’ Schofield yelled as he broke cover and scampered out onto the catwalk.

  All around him, in perfect unison, the Marines whipped out from their cover positions and returned fire at the dining room. The noise was deafening. The ice walls of the dining room exploded into a thousand pock marks. The combined strength of the assault forced Latissier and Petard to cease firing for a moment and dive for cover.

  Out on the catwalk, Schofield fell to his knees next to Gant.

  He looked down at her head. The arrow from Cuvier’s crossbow had lodged in the forehead guard of her kevlar helmet and a narrow stream of blood ran out from her forehead and down the side of her nose.

  Seeing the blood, Schofield leaned closer and saw that the force of the crossbow had been so strong that the arrow had penetrated Gant’s helmet. Nearly a whole inch of the arrow had passed through the kevlar, so that now its glistening silver tip was poised right in front of Gant’s forehead.

  The helmet had held the arrow clear of her skull by millimetres.

  Not even that. The razor-sharp point of the arrow had actually nicked her skin, drawing blood.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ Schofield said, even though he was sure Gant couldn’t hear him. The Marines’ cover fire continued all around them as Schofield dragged Gant back along the catwalk, toward the main entrance passageway.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the French commandos popped up from behind a hole in the wall of the dining room, with his rifle raised.

  Still dragging Gant, Schofield quickly brought his pistol up, aimed through the sights and loosed two quick rounds. If the FA-MAS sounded tinny, and the MP-5 sounded like puncture noises, then Schofield’s I.M.I. ‘Desert Eagle’ automatic pistol sounded like a cannon. The French commando’s head exploded in a splash of red as both rounds found their mark on the bridge of his nose. His head jolted back sharply – twice – and he dropped instantly out of sight.

  ‘Get out of there, Scarecrow! Move!’ Riley’s voice yelled through Schofield’s earpiece.

  ‘I’m almost there!’ Schofield yelled above the gunfire.

  Suddenly another voice came over the intercom.

  It was calm, clinical. There was no gunfire in the background behind it.

  ‘Marine Force, this is Snake. I am still at my post outside. I report that I now have visual on six more hostiles exiting the second French hovercraft. I repeat I am looking at six more armed men disembarking the French hovercraft and approaching the main entrance of the station.’

  A sudden, jarring shot rang out over the intercom. Snake Kaplan’s sniper rifle.

  ‘Marine Force, this is Snake. Make that five more hostiles approaching the main entrance of the station.’

  Schofield looked back at the tunnel leading to the main entrance behind him. That was where he and Gant were heading. Riley and Hollywood were there right now, firing at the dining room. Beside them, Sergeant Mitch ‘Ratman’ Healy was doing the same.

  And then suddenly, without warning, Healy’s chest exploded. Shot from behind by a high-powered weapon.

  Healy convulsed violently as a gout of blood spewed out from his ribcage. The force of the impact and the subsequent nervous convulsion bent his back forward at an obscene angle and Schofield heard a sickening crack as the young soldier’s spine broke.

  Riley and Hollywood were out of the entrance passageway in a nanosecond. As they fired into the tunnel behind them, at some unseen enemy, they backed quickly toward the nearest rung-ladder that led down to B-deck.

  Unfortunately, since they had only just arrived at the station, the six Marines who had gone with Riley to investigate the crashed hovercraft had been gathered around the main entrance passageway when the fighting had broken out. Which meant that now they were caught in between two hostile forces: one in the dining room in front of them, and another coming in through the main entrance behind them.

  Schofield saw this. ‘Book! Go down! Go down! Take your guys down to B-deck!’

  ‘Already on it, Scarecrow.’

  Schofield and Gant were in an even worse position.

  Caught out on the catwalk between the dining room and the main entrance passageway, they had nowhere to go, no doorways to hide behind, no passageways to duck into. Just a metal catwalk three feet wide, bounded on one side by a sheer ice wall and on the other by a seventy foot drop.

  And any second now, the second French team would be bursting in through the main entrance passageway and Schofield and Gant would be the first thing they saw.

  A chunk of ice exploded next to Schofield’s head and he spun around. Petard was back on his feet in the dining room. Firing hard with his assault rifle. Schofield levelled his Desert Eagle at the dining room and fired six rapid shots back at Petard.

  He looked back at the main entrance.

  Ten seconds, at the most.

  ‘Shit,’ he said aloud, looking at Gant, limp in his arms. ‘Shit.’

  He looked down over the railing of the catwalk and saw the pool of water way down at the bottom of the station. It couldn’t have been more than sixty or seventy feet. They could survive the fall . . .

  No way.

  Schofield looked at the catwalk on which he stood and then at the ice wall behind him.

  Better.

  ‘Scarecrow, you better get out of there!’ It was Montana. He was now out on the catwalk, on the southern side of the station. From where he was standing he could see into the main entrance tunnel on the northern side. Whatever he saw there wasn’t good.

  ‘I’m trying, I’m trying,’ Schofield said.

  Schofield fired off two more shots at Petard in the dining room before holstering his pistol.

  Then he quickly reached over his shoulder and pulled his Maghook from its holster on his back. The Armalite MH-12 looks a little like an old-fashioned Tommy gun. It has two pistol grips: one normal grip with a trigger, and one forward, support grip below the muzzle. In effect the Maghook is a gun, a compact, two-handed launcher that fires a grappling hook from its muzzle at tremendous speed.

  At Schofield’s feet, Gant began to groan.

  Schofield pointed his launcher at the ice wall and fired. A loud, metallic whump rang out as the grappling hook shot out from the muzzle and slammed into the ice wall. The hook exploded right through the wall, into the dining room. Once on the other side, its ‘claws’ snapped open.

  ‘Scarecrow! Get moving!’

  Schofield turned, just as Gant groggily got to her
feet beside him.

  ‘Grab my shoulders,’ he said to her.

  ‘Wha – huh?’

  ‘Never mind. Just hold on,’ Schofield said as he threw her arms over his shoulders. The two of them stood close, nose to nose. In any other circumstance, it would have looked like an intimate clinch, two lovers about to kiss – but not now. Holding Gant tightly, Schofield spun and leaned his butt up against the railing.

  He looked back toward the main entrance tunnel and saw shadows moving quickly over the ice walls of the passageway. Gunfire began to spew out from within the passageway.

  ‘Hold tight,’ Schofield said to Gant.

  And then, with both hands holding the launcher behind Gant’s back – and with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck – Schofield shifted his weight backwards and the two of them tumbled over the railing and fell out into space.

  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.