Ice Station (45 page)

The result was instantaneous.

The harpoon shot through the cracked glass of the porthole, puncturing
the high-pressure atmosphere of the diving bell. With the integrity of
the diving bell lost, the immense weight of the ocean pressing in all
around it suddenly became overwhelming.

The diving bell imploded.

Its spherical walls came rushing inward at phenomenal speed as the
colossal pressure of the ocean crushed it like a paper cup. Trevor
Barnaby—Brigadier General Trevor J. Bar-naby of Her
Majesty's SAS—was crushed to death in a single pulverizing
instant.

Shane Schofield just hung there in the water as he watched the remains
of the diving bell sink into the darkness.

Barnaby was dead. The SAS were all dead.

He had the station back

And then he had another thought and a wave of panic swept over him. He
was still a hundred feet below the surface. He would never be able to
hold his breath long enough to get back up.

Oh, Jesus, no.

No....

At that moment, Schofield saw a hand appear in front of his face and
he almost jumped out of his skin because he thought it must have been
Barnaby, that Barnaby had somehow managed to escape from the diving
bell a second before it had—

But it wasn't Trevor Barnaby.

It was James Renshaw.

Hovering in the water above Schofield, breathing through his
thirty-year-old scuba gear.

He was offering Schofield his mouthpiece.

It was 9:00 p.m. when Schofield stepped back up
onto E-deck.

It was 9:40 by the time he had searched the station from top to
bottom, searching for any SAS commandos who might still have been
alive. There weren't any. Schofield picked up various weapons as
he went—an MP-5, a couple of nitrogen charges. He also got his
Desert Eagle back from Renshaw.

He also looked for Mother, but there was no sign of her.

No sign at all.

Schofield even looked inside the dumbwaiter that ran between the
different decks, but Mother wasn't inside it either.

Mother was nowhere to be found.

Schofield sat down on the edge of the pool on E-deck, exhausted. It
had now been more than twenty-four hours since he had last slept and
he was beginning to feel it.

Beside him, Renshaw's scuba gear from Little America IV lay dumped
on the deck, dripping. It still had the long length of steel cable
tied to it—the cable that stretched back down through the water,
down under the ice shelf and out to sea, back to the abandoned station
in the iceberg about a mile off the coast Schofield shook his head as
he looked at the ancient scuba gear. Behind him on the deck sat one of
the British team's sea sleds—a sleek, ultramodern unit. The
exact opposite of Little America IV's primitive scuba gear.

Renshaw was upstairs in his room on B-deck, getting some bandages,
scissors, and disinfectant to use on Schofield's wounds.

Kirsty was standing on the deck behind Schofield, watching him,
concerned. Schofield took a deep breath and shut his eyes. Then he
grabbed his nose and—craaaack—his broken nose
went back into place.

Kirsty winced. “Doesn't that hurt?”

Schofield grimaced and nodded. “A lot.”

Just then, there came a loud splash and Schofield spun around just in
time to see Wendy burst up out of the water and land on the metal
deck. She loped over to him and Schofield patted her on the head.
Wendy immediately rolled over onto her back and got him to pat her on
the belly. Schofield did so. Behind him, Kirsty smiled.

Schofield looked down at his watch.

9:44 p.m.

He thought about the breaks in the solar flare that Abby Sinclair had
told him about earlier.

Abby had said that breaks in the flare would be passing over Wilkes
Ice Station at 7:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.

Well, he'd missed the 7:30 break.

But there were still sixteen minutes until the last break passed over
the station at 10:00 p.m. He'd try to get on a radio then and call
McMurdo.

He sighed, turned around. He had some things to do before then,
though.

He saw a Marine helmet on the deck. Snake's, he guessed. Schofield
reached over and grabbed it, put it on his head.

He then positioned the helmet's microphone in front of his mouth.
“Marines, this is Scarecrow. Montana. Fox. Santa Cruz. Do you
copy?”

At first there was no reply; then suddenly Schofield heard,
“Scarecrow? Is that you?”

It was Gant. “Where are you?” she said.

“I'm up in the station.”

“What about the SAS?”

“Killed 'em. Got my station back. What about you? I saw that
Barnaby sent a team down there.”

“We had a little help, but we took care of them without any
losses. Everyone's accounted for. Scarecrow, we have got a lot to
talk about.”

Down in the ice cavern, Libby Gant looked out from behind the
horizontal fissure.

After the short-lived battle with the British dive team, she and the
others had retreated to the fissure, not to get away from the SAS
commandos—they were all dead—but rather to get away from
the giant elephant seals that had begun to prowl around the cavern
after gorging themselves on the SAS troops. Right now, Gant saw, the
seals were clustered around the big black ship, like campers gathered
around a campfire.

“Like what?” Schofield's voice said.

“Like a spaceship that isn't a spaceship,” Gant said.

“Tell me about it,” Schofield said wearily.

Gant quickly told him about what she had found. About the
“spaceship” itself and the keypad on it, about the hangar
and the diary and the earthquake that had buried the whole station
deep within the earth. It looked like a top-secret military project of
some sort—the secret construction by the U.S. Air Force of some
special kind of attack plane. Gant also mentioned the reference in the
diary to a plutonium core inside the plane.

Then she told Schofield about the elephant seals and the bodies inside
the cave and how the seals had cut down the SAS troops as they had
emerged from the water. Their viciousness, Gant said, was shocking.

Schofield took it all in silently.

He then told Gant of the elephant seal that he had seen earlier on the
monitor inside Renshaw's room, told her about the abnormally large
lower canines that protruded up from its lower jaw like a pair of
inverted fangs. As he spoke, an image formed in his mind—an
image of the dead killer whale they had seen surface earlier; it had
had two long tearing gashes going all the way down its belly.

“We saw a couple of seals with teeth like that, too,” Gant
said. “Smaller ones, though. Juvenile males. The one you saw must
have been the bull. From what you're saying, though, it seems like
only the males have large lower canines.”

Schofield paused at that. “Yes.”

And then at that moment, something clicked inside his head. Something
about why only the male elephant seals had abnormally large
lower teeth.

If the spaceship really had a plutonium core inside it, then it was a
good bet that that core was slowly emitting passive radiation. Not a
leak. Just passive ambient radiation, which occurred with any
nuclear device. If the elephant seals had set up a nest near the ship,
then over time the passive radiation from the plutonium might have had
an effect on the male seals.

Schofield remembered seeing the infamous Rodriguez Report about
passive radiation near an old nuclear weapons facility in the desert
in New Mexico. In nearby towns, there were found to be unusually high
instances of genetic abnormality. There were also found to be
strikingly higher instances of such abnormalities in men than
in women. Elongated fingers was a common mutation. Elongated dentures
was another. Teeth. The writers of the report had linked the
higher incidence of genetic abnormalities in men to testosterone, the
male hormone.

Perhaps, he Schofield thought that was what had happened here.

And then suddenly he had another thought. A more disturbing thought.

“Gant, when did the SAS team arrive in the cave?”

“I'm not sure, somewhere around eight o'clock, I
think.”

“And when did you arrive in the cave?”

“We left the diving bell at 1410 hours. Then it took us
another hour or so to swim up the tunnel. So I'd say about three
o'clock.”

Eight o'clock. Three o'clock.

Schofield wondered when the original team of divers from Wilkes Ice
Station had gone down to the cave. There was something there,
something that he couldn't quite put his finger on just yet. But
it might have been able to explain ...

Schofield looked at his watch.

9:50 p.m.

Shit, time to go.

“Gant, listen; I have to go. There's a window in the solar
flare coming over the station in ten minutes and I have to use it. If
you and the others are safe down there, do me a favor and look around
that hangar. Find out everything you can about that plane, OK?”

“You bet.”

Schofield clicked off. But no sooner had he done so than he heard a
voice from somewhere high up in the station.

“Lieutenant!”

Schofield looked up. It was Renshaw. He was up on B-deck.
“Hey! Lieutenant!” he shouted.

“What?”

“I think you better see this!”

Schofield and Kirsty entered Renshaw's room
through the square hole in the door.

Renshaw was standing over by his computer.

“It's been on all day,” Renshaw said to Schofield,
“but I only looked at it just now. It said I had new mail, so I
brought up my e-mail screen and had a look. It came in at 7:32 p.m.
and it's from some guy in New Mexico named Andrew Wilcox.”

“What's it got to do with me?” Schofield said. He
didn't even know anyone named Andrew Wilcox.

“Well, that's the thing, Lieutenant. It's addressed to
you.”

Schofield frowned.

Renshaw nodded at the screen. On it was a list of some sort, with a
message written above it.

Schofield read the message. After a moment, his jaw dropped. The
e-mail read:

SCARECROW,

THIS IS HAWK. BE ADVISED:

AWARE OF YOUR LOCATION.

USMC PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT HAS YOU LISTED AS DEAD.

SECONDARY TEAM IS EN ROUTE TO YOUR LOCATION.

SUSPECT THAT YOUR MISSION HAS BEEN TARGETED FOR TERMINATION BY
ICG.

FEAR THAT THIS SECONDARY UNIT WILL BE HOSTILE TO YOUR
INTERESTS. WOULD HATE FOR THE SAME FATE TO BEFALL YOU AS BEFELL ME IN
PERU.

WITH THIS IN MIND, SCAN THE FOLLOWING LIST OF KNOWN ICG
INFORMERS. MY UNIT IN PERU HAD BEEN INFILTRATED LONG BEFORE I GOT
THERE. YOURS MIGHT BE, TOO.

TRANSMIT NO. 767-9808-09001

REF NO. KOS-4622

SUBJECT:THE FOLLOWING IS AN ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PERSONNEL
AUTHORIZED TO RECEIVE SECURE TRANSMISSIONS.

NAME

LOCATION

FIELD/RANK

ADAMS, WALTER
K.

LVRMRE
LAB

NCLR
PHYSCS

ATKINS,
SAMANTHA E.

GSTETNR

CMPTR
SFTWRE

BAILEY, KEITH
H.

BRKLY

AERONTL
ENGNR

BARNES, SEAN M.
N.

SEALS

LTCMMDR

BROOKES, ARLIN
F. A.

RNGRS

CPTN

CARVER,
ELIZABETH R

CLMBIA

CMPTR
SCI

CHRISTIE,
MARGARET V.

HRVRD

IDSTRL
CHMST

DAWSON, RICHARD
K.

MCROSFT

CMPTR
SFTWRE

DELANEY, MARK
M.

IBM

CMPTR
HRDWRE

DOUGLAS,
KENNETH A.

CRAY

CMPTR
HRDWRE

DOWD, ROGER
F.

USMC

CPRL

EDWARDS,
STEPHEN R.

BOEING

AERONTL
ENGNR

FAULKNER, DAVID
G.

JPL

AERONTL
ENGNR

FROST, KAREN
S.

USC

GNTC
ENGNR

GIANNI, ENRICO
R.

LCKHEED

AERONTL
ENGNR

GRANGER,
RAYMOND K. A.

RANGERS

SNR
SGT

HARRIS, TERENCE
X.

YALE

NCLR
PHYSCS

JOHNSON, NORMA
E.

U.ARIZ

BKJTOXNS

KAPLAN, SCOTT
M.

USMC

GNNY
SGT

KASCYNSKI,
THERESA E.

3M
CORP

PHSPHTES

KEMPER, PAULENE
J.

JHNS
HPKNS

DRMTLGY

KOZLOWSKI,
CHARLES R.

USMC

SGT
MJR

LAMB, MARK
I.

ARMALTE

BLLSTCS

LAWSON, JANE
R.

U.TEX

INSCTCIDES

LEE, MORGAN
T.

USMC

SGT

MCDONALD, SIMON
K.

LVRMRE
LAB

NCLR
PHYSCS

MAKIN, DENISE
E.

U.CLRDO

CHMCL
AGNTS

NORTON, PAUL
G.

PRNCTN

AMNO ACD
CHNS

OLIVER,
JENNIFER F.

SLCN
STRS

CMPTR
SFTWRE

PARKES, SARAH
T.

USC

PLNTLGST

REICHART, JOHN
R.

USMC

SGT

RIGGS, WAYLON
J. N.

SEALS

CMMDR

SHORT, GREGORY
J.

CCA
CLA

LQO
SCE

TURNER,
JENNIFER C.

UCLA

GNTC
ENGNR

WILLIAMS,
VICTORIA D.

U.WSHGTN

GEOPHYS

YATES, JOHN
F.

USAF

CPTN

P.S. SCARECROW, IF AND WHEN YOU GET BACK TO THE STATES, CALL A
MAN NAMED PETER CAMERON AT THE WASHINGTON POST IN D.C. HE WILL KNOW
WHERE TO FIND ME.

GOOD HUNTING, HAWK

Schofield stared at the e-mail for a moment, stunned.

“Hawk” was Andrew Trent's call sign.

Andrew Trent, who—Schofield had been told—had died in an
“accident” during that operation in Peru in 1997.

Andrew Trent was alive....

Renshaw printed off a copy of the e-mail and handed it to Schofield.
Schofield scanned the e-mail again, thunderstruck.