Ice Station Read online

‘We may have a slight problem,’ Riley said, as his eyes searched the tunnel around them. ‘I’ve lost contact with the rest of my team. My radio gear got hit by some ricocheting fragments before, so I’m off the air. I can’t hear the others and they can’t hear me.’

  Riley snapped round and looked the other way, out over Sarah’s head, toward that end of the tunnel that led to the catwalks and the massive shaft in the centre of the station.

  ‘Come with me,’ was all he said as he brushed past Sarah and led the way toward the central well of Wilkes Ice Station.

  ‘Book!’ Schofield whispered into his helmet mike, as he kept his eyes locked on the western tunnel of B-deck. ‘Book! Where are you? God damn it.’

  ‘No Book?’ Gant asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Schofield said. He and Gant were still crouched in their alcove on C-deck, on the eastern side of the station. They were waiting tensely for Rebound, Mother and Legs to come out from the western tunnel of B-deck.

  Rebound emerged first. Quickly but cautiously, gun up, eyes looking down his gunsights, sweeping his MP-5 in a brisk 180-degree arc, searching for any sign of trouble.

  As soon as he saw Rebound emerge, Schofield immediately opened fire on A-deck, forcing whoever was up there to take cover. Gant came up five seconds later and did the same.

  Schofield pulled back behind the alcove’s wall to reload. As he did so, he watched as Gant fired off three short bursts.

  It was then that he saw something strange happen.

  The yellow tongue of fire that flashed out from the muzzle of Gant’s gun suddenly leapt forward a full two metres. It was only for a second, but it looked incredible. For a short moment, Gant’s compact MP-5 machine pistol had looked like a flame-thrower.

  Schofield was momentarily confused. What the hell had caused that? Then, suddenly, it hit him, and he spun and looked back at the –

  All of a sudden, Gant yelled, ‘I’m dry!’ and Schofield snapped back to the present. He immediately opened fire on the A-deck catwalk while she reloaded.

  As he lay down a suppressing fire on A-deck, Schofield saw Legs and Mother hurry out onto the B-deck catwalk behind Rebound. They were firing for all they were worth back into the tunnel from which they had come.

  Legs went dry. Schofield watched as Legs popped his clip and let it drop to the catwalk, and then grabbed a fresh magazine. No sooner had he jammed it into the lower receiver of his gun than he was hit in the neck by some unseen opponent inside the western tunnel.

  Legs flailed backwards, losing his balance for a second, before turning his gun back toward the enemy and letting loose with an extended burst of gunfire that would have woken the dead. In 2.2 seconds thirty rounds were spent and that clip was dry, too. Mother grabbed him and yanked him out onto the catwalk, away from the tunnel.

  Now wounded and dripping with blood, Legs began to fumble with a new clip. The clip slipped through his bloody fingers and fell out over the railing, dropping fifty feet through the air until it splashed into the pool at the bottom of the station. At that point, Legs cut his losses, tossed his MP-5 and pulled out his Colt .45. Single fire from here.

  Schofield and Gant continued to sweep the uppermost deck with their fire. Gant had watched as Legs’ clip dropped all the way down into the pool; had watched as one of the killer whales banked upward to see what it was that had fallen into its domain.

  Mother went dry. She cut the empty clip and reloaded fast.

  Schofield watched anxiously as the three of them – Mother, Rebound and Legs – moved along the catwalk between the west and the north tunnels of B-deck, heading toward the north tunnel.

  They were almost there when suddenly Buck Riley burst out from the north tunnel with four civilians in tow behind him.

  Right in front of Mother, Rebound and Legs!

  Schofield saw it as it happened and his jaw dropped.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he breathed.

  This was a disaster. Now four of his people were out in the open, with four innocent civilians! And any second now, the French would appear and cut them to ribbons.

  ‘Book! Book!’ Schofield yelled into his helmet mike. ‘Get out of there! Get off the catwa –’

  And then it happened and Schofield’s horror was complete.

  In perfect synchronisation, five French commandos burst out onto the B-deck catwalk.

  Three from the west tunnel. Two from the east.

  They opened fire without the slightest hesitation.

  What happened next almost happened too fast for Schofield to comprehend.

  The five French commandos on B-deck had just pulled off a perfect pincer manoeuvre. They’d flushed Mother, Rebound and Legs out onto the catwalk and now they were about to finish it off by firing upon them from both flanks.

  The appearance of Buck Riley and the four civilians was an added bonus. It obviously hadn’t been expected – when they had appeared out on the catwalk, all five of the French soldiers had had their guns firmly trained on Mother, Rebound and Legs.

  As it turned out, however, they never got a chance to turn their fire on Riley and the civilians anyway.

  The three French commandos who had emerged from the western tunnel fired first. White-hot tongues of fire shot out from the muzzles of their guns.

  At point-blank range, Legs, Mother and Rebound were all hit. Mother in the leg, Rebound in the shoulder. Legs took the brunt of it – two to the head, four to the chest – his whole body becoming a shuddering explosion of blood. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  But that was all Schofield saw.

  Because that was when it happened.

  Schofield watched in amazement as, at the exact moment that the French commandos on the western side of the station fired their rifles, two enormous fingers of fire shot out in both directions from where they stood.

  They looked like twin comets. Two seven-foot-tall balls of fire that rocketed around the circumference of the B-deck catwalk, leaving in their wake a wall of blazing flames.

  The whole of the B-deck catwalk disappeared in an instant as the spectacular curtain of flames shot up from every point on the circular metal catwalk, concealing from view everybody who had been standing on the deck.

  For a full second, Schofield could do nothing but stare. It had happened so fast. It was as if somebody had laid down a trail of gasoline on the B-deck catwalk and then lit a match.

  Then the penny dropped and Schofield immediately spun around to face –

  – the air-conditioning room.

  And in that instant, it all suddenly made sense.

  The air-conditioning cylinders had no doubt been substantially damaged by the detonation of the rocket-grenade minutes earlier. Thus punctured, they had immediately started spewing out their store of chloro-fluorocarbons.

  Highly flammable chlorofluorocarbons.

  That was what had happened when Schofield had seen the two-metre length of fire spew forward from the muzzle of Gant’s machine pistol only moments earlier. It had been a warning of things to come. But at that time, the CFCs hadn’t yet filled the station. Hence, the small, two-metre flame.

  But now . . . now the amount of flammable gas in the station’s atmosphere had multiplied considerably. So much so that when the French had opened fire on the Marines on B-deck, the whole deck had gone up in flames.

  Schofield’s eyes widened.

  The air-conditioning cylinders were still spewing out CFCs. Soon the whole station would be contaminated with flammable . . .

  The horror of the realisation hit Schofield hard.

  Wilkes Ice Station had become a gas oven.

  All it needed was one spark, one flame – or one gunshot – and the whole station would spontaneously combust.

  Rivets began to pop out of their sockets on B-deck.

  Spot fires burned all over the B-deck catwalk. Agonised screams echoed out across the open space of the ice station as soldiers and civilians alike lay writhing on the catwalk, their bodies alight.

  I
t looked like a scene from Hell itself.

  The three French soldiers on the western side of the station – the ones who had opened fire on Mother, Rebound and Legs – had been the first to go up in flames, the gaseous air around them having been ignited by the white-hot tongues of fire that had burst forth from the muzzles of their guns.

  The twin fireballs had immediately shot out from the barrels of their guns. One had surged forward while the other had turned on them and rushed with all its fury back at their faces.

  Now two of those French soldiers lay on the deck, screaming. The third was frantically banging himself against the ice wall nearby in a desperate attempt to put out the flames on his fatigues.

  Mother and Rebound were also alight. Beside them, Legs was already dead. His motionless body lay flat on the catwalk as it was slowly devoured by crackling, orange flames.

  Over by the north tunnel, Buck Riley was trying to smother the flames on Abby Sinclair’s pants by rolling her over on the metal catwalk. Beside them, Sarah Hensleigh slapped frantically at a cluster of flames that had ignited on the back of Kirsty’s bulky pink parka. Warren Conlon just screamed. His hair was on fire.

  And then, suddenly, there came a sickening sound. The lurching, wrenching sound of bending steel.

  Riley looked up from what he was doing.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he moaned.

  Schofield also looked up at the sound.

  He scanned the catwalk above him, and saw a series of triangular steel supports that fastened the underside of the B-deck catwalk to the ice wall.

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, those supports began to slide out from the wall.

  Under the intense heat from the fire on B-deck, the long rivets that fastened the supports to the wall were starting to heat up. They were melting the ice around them, and were now starting to slide out from the wall!

  The rivets began to expand – thwack! thwack! thwack! – and in rapid succession began to crack open the ice-cold notches of their steel supports and fall to the catwalk below.

  The rivets clanked loudly as they dropped down onto the C-deck catwalk.

  One.

  Then two. Then three.

  Then five. Then ten.

  There were rivets everywhere, raining down on the C-deck catwalk. And then suddenly a new sound filled Wilkes Ice Station.

  The unmistakable, high-pitched squeal of rending metal.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Schofield said. ‘It’s gonna go.’

  B-deck went. Suddenly. Without warning.

  The entire catwalk – the whole, flaming circle – just fell away, dropping with a sudden jolt, taking every-body who was still on it down with it.

  Some sections of the catwalk managed to stay attached to the ice walls. Their fall ended abruptly, almost as soon as it had begun. They ended up pointing downward at a 45-degree angle.

  The remaining sections just slid out from the ice walls and dropped down into the central shaft of the station.

  Nearly everyone who had been standing on B-deck dropped with the collapsed sections of catwalk – eleven people in all.

  A tangled mix of civilians, soldiers and three broken sections of metal catwalk sailed down the central shaft of Wilkes Ice Station.

  They fell a full fifty feet.

  And then they landed.

  Hard.

  In water.

  In the pool at the bottom of the station.

  Sarah Hensleigh plunged underwater.

  A stream of bubbles shot up past her face and the world suddenly went silent.

  Cold. Absolute, unforgiving cold assailed all of her senses at once. It was so cold it hurt.

  And then suddenly, she heard noises.

  Noises that broke the ghostly, underwater silence – a series of muffled whumps in the water all around her. It was the sound of the others falling into the pool with her.

  Slowly, the curtain of bubbles in front of her face began to disperse, and Sarah began to make out a number of unusually large shapes moving smoothly through the water around her.

  Large, black shapes.

  They appeared to glide effortlessly through the silent, freezing water – each one frightening in its size; as large and as wide as a car. At that moment, a wash of white cut across Sarah’s field of vision and suddenly an enormous mouth, full of razor-sharp teeth, opened wide in front of her eyes.

  Pure fear shot through her body.

  Killer whales.

  Suddenly, Sarah broke the surface. Gulped in air. The cold of the water meant nothing now. One after the other huge black dorsal fins began to rise above the choppy surface of the pool.

  Before Sarah could even get a bearing on exactly where in the pool she was, something burst up out of the water next to her and she spun.

  It wasn’t a killer whale.

  It was Abby.

  Sarah felt her heart start again. A second later, Warren Conlon also came up beside her.

  Sarah spun around in the water. All five of the French soldiers who had been on B-deck when it blew were scattered around the pool. Three Marines were also in the pool. One of them, Sarah noticed, was floating face-down in the water.

  A scream echoed down through the central shaft of the station.

  A shrill, high-pitched squeal.

  The scream of a little girl.

  Sarah’s head snapped to look upward. There, high above her, hanging by one hand from the down-turned railing of the B-deck catwalk, was Kirsty. The Marine who had been with them when the catwalk had collapsed was lying face-down on the broken metal platform, reaching down desperately, trying to grab Kirsty’s hand.

  Just then, as she was looking up at Kirsty, Sarah felt the immense weight of one of the killers rush through the water between her and Conlon. The massive animal brushed against the side of her leg.

  And then suddenly, Sarah heard a shout.

  It had come from the other side of the pool, and Sarah spun around just in time to see one of the French commandos – his face blistered and scorched from the fireball – swimming frantically for the edge of the pool, his terrified, panicked whimpers interrupted only by short, desperate breaths.

  It was the only movement in the whole pool. Nobody else had even dared to move.

  Almost immediately, a towering black dorsal fin appeared alongside the desperate swimmer. After a second, it slowed, and then it ominously sank below the surface behind him.

  The result was as violent as it was sudden.

  With a hideous crack, the French commando’s body suddenly snapped backwards in the water. He turned in the water and opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out. His eyes just went wide. He must have seen that the whale had crushed the whole of his lower body with its bite and was now holding him firmly within its mighty jaws.

  The whale’s second yank was even more powerful than the first. It pulled the Frenchman under with such force that the man’s head jolted backwards and slapped down hard against the water as he went under and disappeared forever.

  Sarah Hensleigh gasped. ‘Oh, Jesus . . .’

  Buck Riley’s section of catwalk was still attached to the ice wall. Just. It hung downward at a steep angle, out over the central shaft.

  The three scientists – Riley didn’t know their names – had all been too slow. The sudden collapse of the catwalk had caught all three of them by surprise. Too slow to get a handhold, they had all fallen down into the shaft.

  Riley’s reflexes had been quicker. When the catwalk had fallen away beneath him, he had hit the deck and immediately garnered a fingerhold in the grating of the catwalk itself.

  The little girl had also been fast.

  As soon as the floor had dropped away beneath her, she had fallen to the catwalk and immediately started to slide toward the edge.

  Her feet had gone over the edge first, followed quickly by her waist, and then her chest. Just as her head fell clear of the railing, she threw out a desperate hand and miraculously caught hold of the hand railing.

  The raili
ng held for a second but, weakened by the force of the gas explosion, it suddenly buckled and snapped and swung out over the edge of the catwalk, so that it now hung upside-down out over the shaft.

  And so the little girl hung there, one-handed and screaming, from the upside-down railing of the catwalk, fifty feet above the killer-whale-infested pool.

  ‘Don’t look down!’ Riley yelled, as he reached for her hand. He had already seen the killer whales down in the pool, had just seen one of them take the French commando. He didn’t want the little girl seeing them.

  The little girl was crying, sobbing, ‘Don’t let me fall!’

  ‘I won’t let you fall,’ Riley said as he lay on his stomach and stretched out as far as he could, trying to grab her wrist. Small, isolated spot fires burned on the remnants of the catwalk all around him.

  His hand was about a foot away from the girl’s when he saw her frightened eyes begin to dart around.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Riley said suddenly, trying to distract her.

  ‘My hand is hot,’ she whimpered.

  Riley looked back along the railing. About five yards to his left, a small spot fire licked at the point where the down-turned railing met the catwalk.

  ‘I know it’s hot, honey. I know it is. Just keep holding on. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Kirsty.’

  ‘Hi, Kirsty. My name’s Buck, but you can just call me Book like everybody else does.’

  ‘Why do they call you that?’

  Riley cast a sideways glance at the spot fire licking against the railing.

  Not good.

  Under the intense heat of the explosion, the black paint on the railing had broken out into dry, paper-like flakes. If the fire came into contact with those flakes, the whole railing would go up in flames.

  Riley kept reaching out for Kirsty’s hand, stretched harder. Half a foot away. He almost had her.

  ‘Do you always,’ Riley breathed a weak half-laugh, ‘ask this many questions?’ He grimaced as he stretched. ‘If you’ – breath – ‘really wanna know’ – breath – ‘it’s because, once’ – breath – ‘one of my friends found out I was writing a book.’