Ice Station (15 page)

But most important of all, they were running.

Schofield's team, on the other hand, was also split, but in a much
more advantageous way.

Schofield had three Marines up on A-deck—Montana, Snake, and
Santa Cruz—and another three down on E-deck: Gant, Rebound, and
himself.

If the Marines up on A-deck could flush the remaining French commandos
down through the station, soon those French soldiers would run right
into the Marines from the lower decks. And then the Marines—a
force of superior numbers, attacking from two flanks—would
finish them.

But Schofield didn't want to get carried away, didn't want to
get ahead of himself, because this would be no ordinary battle.

The fighting would be different.

For in the highly flammable gaseous atmosphere of the station, neither
side could use guns.

This would be old-fashioned, close-quarter fighting.

Hand-to-hand combat.

In near total darkness.

In other words, it would be knives in the dark.

But as he'd thought about it more closely, Schofield had suddenly
seen a problem with his plan.

The French had crossbows.

Schofield had looked at the crossbow he had taken from the dead French
commando on E-deck. Since it didn't create a spark of any kind, a
crossbow could be fired safely inside the gaseous atmosphere of the
station. Schofield tried to think back to his early weapons training
at the Basic School at Quantico, tried to remember the vital stats for
a hand-held crossbow. He remembered that the standard range of
accuracy for a small-size crossbow was not great, about the same as
that for a conventional six-shooter, roughly twenty feet.

Twenty feet.

Damn it, Schofield thought. Knives would be useless if the
French had a twenty-foot safety zone around themselves. With no
corresponding projectile-firing weapon, the Marines wouldn't stand
a chance. The thing was, they didn't have such a weapon.
At least, nothing that they could use safely in the station's
flammable gaseous environment.

And then it occurred to Schofield.

Maybe they did....

Schofield stepped up onto D-deck with his Maghook held out in front of
him at shoulder height, ready to fire. In his other hand, he held the
dead Frenchman's crossbow.

Although not exactly designed for accuracy, the Armalite MH-12 Maghook
launcher has the ability to shoot its magnetic grappling hook quite
substantial distances—over a hundred feet.

Initially, the MH-12 Maghook was intended for use in urban warfare and
antiterrorist operations—its chief purpose was to provide a
self-contained rope and grappling hook that could be used for scaling
the sides of buildings, or providing zip lines along which
antiterrorist units could slide and make rapid forced entries.

That being the case, the Maghook's small hand-held launcher had to
have the power to shoot its hook to great heights. The answer was a
state-of-the-art hydraulic launching system that provided 4,000 pounds
per square inch of enhanced vertical thrust. The way Schofield figured
it, if he fired his Maghook at an enemy soldier from a distance of
twenty feet, 4,000 pounds per square inch of thrust had to have some
chance of scoring a hit.

And indeed, as Schofield himself had discovered in the pool before, at
close range, underwater, a Maghook had the capacity to stun a
seven-ton killer whale. When fired at a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound
man at similar range, above water, the Maghook would probably
crack his skull.

Thus armed, the Marines were confident that they could handle the
French commandos' crossbows.

So the plan would go ahead.

Montana, Snake, and Santa Cruz would work their way down through the
station from A-deck, forcing the Frenchmen down, while Schofield,
Gant, and Rebound worked their way up from E-deck. They would
hopefully meet halfway and the rest would write itself.

Schofield and Gant had departed right away.

Rebound was to join them as soon as he had stemmed the flow of blood
from Mother's leg and started her up on an intravenous line of
methadone.

The three Marines on A-deck began their attack.

They moved quickly, using a textbook three-man flushing formation
known as “leapfrogging.” One Marine would move forward,
ahead of his partners, and fire his Maghook. Then, while he reeled his
hook in to reload, a second Marine would move in front of
him—“leapfrogging” him—and fire his Maghook at
the enemy. By the time the third man stepped forward and fired, the
first man was ready to fire again and the cycle continued.

The two French soldiers on A-deck responded as they were supposed
to—they retreated, hastened away from the rolling wave of
powerful Maghook fire. They hurried for the ladders, climbed down the
shaft.

However, as he fielded reports from Montana about the French
soldiers' movement, Schofield noticed something odd about their
evasive maneuvers.

They were moving too fast.

In their retreat down the shaft, the four French soldiers had
completely avoided the destroyed B-deck catwalk and continued straight
down to C.

They moved fluidly, in a swift two-by-two cover formation—the
lead two men covering the forward flank, the rear two covering their
pursuers behind, with a space of about ten yards between the two
pairs.

Earlier, Montana had reported that all four of the French commandos
were wearing night-vision goggles. They had come prepared.

They continued to move down the shaft fast.

Schofield had expected them to waste time in the tunnels as they tried
to adopt a defensive position. But the French soldiers seemed to have
other ideas. They darted into the C-deck tunnels only for so long as
it took the Marines pursuing them from the levels above to join them.
Then suddenly they appeared on the catwalk again and made for the
rung-ladder leading down to D-deck.

At that moment, Schofield recalled something Trevor Barnaby had once
said about strategy.

“Good strategy is like magic,” Barnaby had said.
“Make your enemy look at one hand while you're doing
something with the other.”

“They're moving for the southwest ladder,”
Montana's voice said in Schofield's earpiece.
“Scarecrow, you down there?”

Schofield moved forward along the D-deck catwalk, the world green
before his eyes. “We're on it.”

He and Gant approached the southwest corner of D-deck, saw the
rung-ladder that led up to C-deck.

Schofield spoke into his mike. “Rebound, where are
you?”

“Finishing up now, sir,” Rebound's voice
replied from the storeroom down on E-deck.

“Flanking west, Sarge,” the voice of José “Santa” Cruz said
over the intercom.

Montana's voice: “Keep 'em coming, Cruz. Then send
'em down to the Scarecrow.”

On D-deck, Schofield and Gant arrived at the rung-ladder. They
crouched, leveled their weapons at the empty ladder. They heard boots
stomping fast on the metal catwalk above them, heard the distinctive
snap-phew! of a crossbow being fired.

“They're coming to the ladder,” Santa
Cruz's voice said.

More footsteps clanged on the metal grating.

Any second now ...

Any second...

And then suddenly, clunk, clunk.

What the hell—

“Marines! Eyes shut! Flasher on the ground!” Santa
Cruz's voice yelled suddenly.

Schofield immediately squeezed his eyes shut just as he heard the stun
grenade bounce on the metal deck above him.

The stun grenade went off—like a flashbulb on a camera—
and for a brief instant the whole of Wilkes Ice Station flared white.

Schofield was about to open his eyes when suddenly there came a new
noise from his right. It sounded like someone doing up a zipper
really, really fast.

Schofield spun right and opened his eyes, and his green world streaked
laterally. His eyes searched the empty shaft, but he saw nothing.

“Ah, shit!” Cruz said. “Sir! One of them
just went over the railing!”

The zipping sound that Schofield had just heard suddenly made sense.
It had been the sound of someone rappelling down the central shaft on
a rope.

Schofield froze for a split second.

Such a move wasn't a defensive move at all.

It was a coordinated move, a planned move, an attacking move.

The French weren't actually on the run.

They were carrying out a plan of their own.

Make your enemy look at one hand while you're doing something
with the other....

Like a chess player caught in check a second before he intends to play
his own killing move, Schofield felt his mind start to spin.

What were they up to?

What was their plan?

In the end he didn't have time to think about it, because no
sooner had he heard Santa Cruz's message than a volley of arrows
thudded into the ice wall all around him. Schofield ducked and spun
and saw Gant dive to the floor behind him, and then he spun back round
and before he knew what was happening a figure slid down the
rung-ladder in front of him and Schofield found himself standing
face-to-face with the Frenchman he knew as Jacques Latissier.

Rebound was crouched over Mother in the
storeroom on E-deck.

Mother had tough veins, and, to make it even more difficult, Rebound
was wearing his night-vision goggles as he tried to get the needle
into her arm. He'd missed the vein on his first four attempts, and
he had only now just managed to get the IV line flowing into
Mother's arm.

The IV done, Rebound stood up and was about to leave Mother when,
strangely, he heard the sound of soft footsteps hurrying down the
tunnel outside the darkened storeroom.

Rebound froze.

Listened.

The sound of the footsteps faded as they hurried off down the southern
tunnel outside.

Rebound stepped forward and grabbed the doorknob and slowly, quietly,
turned it. The door opened and he peered out into the tunnel through
his night-vision goggles.

He looked left and saw the pool. Small waves lapped against the sides
of the deck.

He looked right and saw a long, straight tunnel stretching away from
him into darkness. He recognized it immediately as the elongated
southern tunnel of E-deck that led to the station's drilling room.

Since it was the lowest level in the ice station, E-deck housed the
station's drilling room—the room from which the scientists
dolled down into the ice to obtain their ice cores. So as to maximize
the depths to which the scientists could drill, the drilling room had
been constructed as far into the ice shelf as
possible—to the south of the station, where the ice was deepest.
The room was connected to the main station complex by a long, narrow
tunnel that stretched for at least forty meters.

Rebound heard the soft footsteps disappear down the long tunnel to his
right.

After a short moment of pause, he raised his Maghook and ventured out
into the tunnel after them.

Schofield fired his Maghook at Latissier.

The Frenchman ducked fast and the grappling hook thundered over the
top of him and flew through the rung-ladder behind him. The hook
looped itself over one of the rungs and knotted itself tight against
the ladder.

Schofield threw his Maghook down and raised his crossbow at the same
time as Latissier leveled his own at him.

The two men fired at the same time.

The arrows whistled through the air, crossing each other in midnight.

Latissier's arrow slammed into Schofield's armored shoulder
plate. Schofield's arrow lodged in Latissier's hand as the big
Frenchman covered his face with his forearm. He roared with pain as he
frantically began to reload his crossbow with his good hand.

Schofield quickly looked down at his own crossbow.

The French crossbows had five circular rubber slots on their sides in
which spare arrows were kept for quick reloading. Schofield's
crossbow had five empty slots.

The commando he had taken it from must have used all but the last of
his arrows earlier. Now there were none left.

Schofield didn't hesitate.

He took five quick steps forward and hurled himself at Latissier. He
slammed into the Frenchman and the two soldiers went sprawling onto
the catwalk behind the rung-ladder.

Gant was still lying facedown on the catwalk about five yards away
when she saw Schofield tackle Latissier. She leaped to her feet and
was about to go over and help him when suddenly another French
commando slid down the rung-ladder in front of her and, through a pair
of black night-vision goggles, stared right into her eyes.

Rebound slowly made his way down the long, narrow tunnel.

There was a door at the very end of the tunnel. The door to the
drilling room. It was ajar.

Rebound listened carefully as he approached the half-open door. He
heard soft, shuffling sounds from inside the drilling room. Whoever
had run past the storeroom earlier was now inside the drilling room,
doing something.

He heard the man speak softly into a microphone of some sort. He said,
“Le piège
est tendu.”

Rebound froze.

It was one of the French commandos.

Rebound pressed himself flat against the wall next to the door
and—still wearing his night-vision goggles—slowly peered
around the door frame.

It was like looking through a video camera. First, Rebound saw the
door frame, saw it slide out to the right of his green viewscreen.
Then he saw the room open up beyond it.

And then he saw the man—also wearing night-vision
goggles—standing right there in front of him, with a crossbow
pointed directly at Rebound's face.

Even though the French commando standing in front of her was wearing
night-vision goggles, Gant could tell that it was the one named
Cuvier.

Jean-Pierre Cuvier. The one who had shot her in the head with his
crossbow right at the start of all this. Even now, she could see the
tip of that same arrow sticking out from the front of her helmet. The
bastard seemed to smile when he realized that he was facing off
against the American woman he had shot earlier.