Ice Station (17 page)

Rebound looked up from what he was doing. He shook his head in
exasperation.

“I can't keep up with the blood loss,” he said to
Schofield. “There's just too much internal damage. His whole
gut's been blown apart.”

Rebound wiped his forehead. A slick of blood appeared above his eyes.
He looked hard at Schofield. 'This is way out of my league, sir.
He needs someone who knows what he's doing. He needs a
doctor."

Schofield stared at Samurai's prone body for a few seconds.

“Just do what you can,” he said, and then he left the room.

“OK, people, listen up,” Schofield said. “We don't
have much time, so I'm going to keep this short.”

The six remaining able-bodied Marines were gathered around the pool on
E-deck. They all stood in a wide circle. Schofield stood in the
middle.

Schofield's voice echoed up through the shaft of the empty
station: “This station is obviously a lot hotter than we
originally thought. I'm thinking that if the French were willing
to take a chance to grab it, others will, too. And whoever those
others might be, by now they've had some time to get their shit
together and prepare for a full-scale attack. Have no doubt, people,
if anyone else decides to hit this station they will almost certainly
be better prepared and more heavily armed than those French pricks we
just exterminated. Opinions?”

“Concur,” Buck Riley said.

“Same,” Snake said. Book Riley and Snake Kaplan were the two
most senior enlisted men in the unit. It meant something that they
both agreed with Schofield's assessment of the situation.

Schofield said, “All right, then. What I want to happen now is
this. Montana...”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to go topside and position our two hovercrafts so
that their range finders are pointed outward, so that they cover the
entire landward approach to this station. I want maximum coverage, no
gaps. Trip wires aren't going to cut it anymore with this place;
we use the range finders from here. As soon as anyone comes within
fifty miles of this station, I want to know about it.”

“Got it,” Montana said.

“And while you're up there,” Schofield said, “see
if you can get on the radio and raise McMurdo. Find out when our
reinforcements are coming. They should've been here by now.”

“You got it,” Montana said. He hurried away.

“Santa Cruz ...,” Schofield said, turning.

“Yes, sir.”

“Eraser check. I want this whole facility swept from top to
bottom for any kind of eraser or delay switch, OK? There's no
knowing what kinds of little surprises our French friends left behind
for us. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Santa Cruz said. He broke out of the circle and
headed for the nearest rung-ladder.

“Snake...”

“Sir.”

“The winch that lowers the diving bell. Its control panel is up
on C-deck, in the alcove. That control panel was damaged by a grenade
blast during the fight. I need those winch controls working again. Can
you handle it?”

“Yes, sir,” Snake said. He, too, left the circle.

When Snake had gone, Riley and Gant were the only ones left on the
deck.

Schofield turned to face them. “Book. Fox. I want vou two to do a
full prep of our dive gear. Three divers, four-hour dive compression,
low-audibility gear, plus some auxiliaries for later.”

“Air mix?” Riley asked.

“Saturated helium-oxygen. Ninety-eight to two,” Schofield
said.

Riley and Gant were momentarily silent. A compressed air mix of 98%
helium and 2% oxygen was very rare. The almost negligible
amount of oxygen indicated a dive to a very high-pressure environment.

Schofield handed Gant a handful of blue capsules. They were N-67D
antinitrogen blood-pressure capsules, developed by the Navy for use
during deep-dive missions. They were affectionately known to military
divers as “the pills.”

By retarding the dissolution of nitrogen in the bloodstream during a
deep dive, the pills prevented decompression sickness—better
known as the bends—among divers. Since the pills neutralized
nitrogen activity in the bloodstream, Navy and Marine Corps divers
could descend as quickly as they liked without fear of
nitrogen narcosis and ascend without the need for making
time-consuming decompression stops. The pills had revolutionized
military deep-diving.

“Planning a deep dive, sir?” Gant said, looking up from the
blue pills in her hand.

Schofield looked at her seriously. “I want to find out what's
down in that cave.”

Schofield walked quickly around the curved outer
tunnel of B-deck, deep in thought.

Things were moving fast now.

The French attack on Wilkes had taught him a lot. Wilkes Ice
Station—or, more precisely, whatever lay buried in the ice
beneath Wilkes Ice Station—was now officially worth
killing for.

But it was the implications of that lesson that gave Schofield a
chill. If France had been willing to launch an impromptu
snatch-and-grab for whatever was down in that cave, it was highly
probable that other countries would be willing to do the same.

There was one additional factor, though, about possible further
attacks on Wilkes that caused Schofield particular concern: if someone
was going to launch an attack on Wilkes. they would have to do it
soon—before a full-strength U.S. force arrived at the
station.

The next few hours would be very tense.

It would be a race to see who would arrive first.

American reinforcements or a fully-equipped enemy force.

Schofield tried not to think about it. There were a lot of things to
do, and one matter in particular required his attention first.

After the battle with the French had concluded, the remaining
scientists from Wilkes—there were five of them, three men and
two women—had retired to their living quarters on B-deck.
Schofield was heading for those living quarters now. He was hoping to
find among those scientists a doctor who might be able to help
Samurai.

Schofield continued to walk around the curved outer tunnel. His
clothes were still wet, but he didn't care. Like all of the other
Marines in his unit, he was wearing a thermal wet suit under his
fatigues. It was practically standard attire for Recon Units working
in arctic conditions. Wet suits were warmer than long Johns and
didn't get heavy if they got wet. And by wearing
one's wet suit instead of carrying it, a Recon Marine
lightened his load, something very important for a rapid-response
unit.

Just then, a door to Schofield's right opened and a cloud of steam
wafted out into the corridor. A sleek black object slid out of the
haze and into the corridor in front of Schofield.

Wendy.

She was dripping with water. She looked up at Schofield with a goofy
seal grin.

Kirsty emerged from the steamy haze. The shower room. She saw
Schofield instantly and she smiled.

“Hi,” she said. She was wearing a new set of dry clothes,
and her hair was tousled, wet. Schofield guessed that Kirsty had just
had the hottest shower of her life.

“Hey there,” Schofield said.

“Wendy loves the shower room,” Kirsty said, nodding at
Wendy. “She likes to slide through the steam.”

Schofield suppressed a laugh and looked down at the little black fur
seal at his feet. She was cute, very cute. She had also saved his
life. Her soft brown eyes glistened with intelligence.

He looked at Kirsty. “How are you feeling?”

“Warm now,” she said.

Schofield nodded. From the look of her, Kirsty seemed to have bounced
back well from her ordeal in the pool. Kids were good like that,
resilient. He wondered what sort of therapy an adult would need after
falling into a pool filled with ferocious killer whales.

Schofield gave a lot of the credit to Buck Riley. Riley had been up on
C-deck when Kirsty had been whizzed up there on the Maghook, and for
the remainder of the battle Riley had kept Kirsty by his side, safe
and sound.

“Good,” Schofield said. “You're one tough kid, you
know that? You ought to be a Marine.”

Kirsty beamed. Schofield nodded down the tunnel. “You going my
way?”

“Yeah,” she said, falling into step beside him. Wendy loped
down the corridor behind them.

“Where are you going?” Kirsty asked.

“I'm looking for your mom.”

“Oh,” Kirsty said, a little softly.

It was a strange response, and through his reflective silver glasses
Schofield cast a sideways glance at Kirsty. She just stared at the
floor as she walked. He wondered what it meant.

There was an awkward silence and Schofield searched for something to
say. “So, uh, how old did you say you were? Twelve, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What is that, seventh grade?”

“Mm”

“Seventh grade,” Schofield mused. He was at a total loss for
something to say now, so he just said, “I guess you must be
starting to think about a career, then.”

Kirsty seemed to perk up at the question. She looked across at him as
they walked.

“Yeah,” she said seriously, as though career thoughts had
been weighing heavily on her twelve-year-old mind lately.

“So what do you want to do when you leave school?”

“I want to be a teacher,” Kirsty said. “Like my
dad.”

“What does your dad teach?”

“He taught geology at a big college in Boston,” Kirsty said.
“Harvard,” she added importantly.

“And what do you want to teach?” Schofield asked.

“Math.”

“Math?”

“I'm good at math,” Kirsty said, shrugging
selfconsciously, embarrassed and proud at the same time.

“My dad used to help me with my homework,” she went on.
“He said I was much better at math than most other kids my age,
so sometimes he would teach me stuff that the other kids didn't
know. Interesting stuff, stuff that I wasn't supposed to learn
until I was a senior. And sometimes he'd teach me stuff
that they don't teach you at all in school.”

“Yeah?” Schofield said, genuinely interested. “What
sort of stuff?”

“Oh, you know. Polynomials. Number sequences. Some
calculus.”

“Calculus. Number sequences,” Schofield repeated, amazed.

“You know, like triangular numbers and Fibonacci numbers. That
sort of stuff.”

Schofield shook his head in astonishment. This was impressive. Very
impressive. Kirsty Hensleigh, twelve years old and a little short for
her age, was apparently a very smart young lady. Schofield looked at
her again. She seemed to walk on her toes, with a kind of spring in
each step. She just looked like a regular kid.

Kirsty said, “We used to do a lot of stuff together. Softball,
hiking, once he even took me scuba diving, even though I hadn't
done the course.”

“You make it sound like your dad doesn't do that sort of
thing anymore?”

There was a short silence. Then Kirsty said softly, “He
doesn't.”

“What happened?” Schofield asked gently. He was waiting to
hear a tale about fighting parents and a divorce. It seemed to happen
a lot these days.

“My dad was killed in a car wreck last year,” Kirsty said
flatly.

Schofield stopped in midstride. He turned to look at Kirsty. The
little girl was staring down at her shoelaces.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Kirsty cocked her head to one side. “It's OK,” she said,
and then resumed walking.

They came to a door sunken into the outer tunnel, and Schofield
stopped in front of it. “Well, this is my stop.”

“Mine, too,” Kirsty said.

Schofield opened the door and let Kirsty and Wendy enter in front of
him. He followed them inside.

It was a common room of some sort. Some ugly orange couches, a stereo,
a television, a VCR. Schofield guessed that they didn't get
regular TV transmissions down here so they just watched videos on the
television.

Sarah Hensleigh and Abby Sinclair sat on one of the orange couches.
They were also now wearing dry clothes. The three other scientists
from Wilkes—three men named Llewellyn, Harris, and
Robinson—were there, too. After seeing what the fragmentation
grenades had done to Hollywood and one of their colleagues they had
spent the remainder of the battle holed up in their rooms. Now they
looked tired and weary, afraid.

Kirsty went over and.sat down on the couch next to Sarah Hensleigh.
She sat down silently and didn't say anything to her mother.
Schofield remembered the first time he had seen Sarah and Kirsty
together—back before the French had arrived at Wilkes. Kirsty
hadn't said much then either. Schofield hadn't noticed any
tension between them then, but he noticed it now. He put it out of his
mind as he walked over to Sarah.

“Is anyone here a medical doctor?” Schofield asked her.

Sarah shook her head. “No. No, Ken Wishart was the only doctor at
the station. But he—” She cut herself off.

“But he what?”

Sarah sighed. “But he was on board the hovercraft that was
supposed to be heading back to d'Urville.”

Schofield shut his eyes, once again imagined the fate of the five
scientists who had been on board the doomed hovercraft.

A voice crackled over his helmet intercom. “Scarecrow, this
is Montana.”

“What is it?” Schofield said.

“I've set up the range finders around the outer perimeter
just like you wanted. You wanna come up and check it out?”

“Yes, I do,” Schofield said. “I'll be up in a
minute. Where are you?”

“Southwest corner.”

“Wait for me,” Schofield said. “Have you had any luck
getting through to McMurdo?”

“Not yet. There's a shitstorm of interference on every
frequency. I can't get through.”

“Keep trying,” Schofield said. “Scarecrow, out.”

Schofield turned and was about to leave the common room when someone
tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He turned. It was Sarah Hensleigh.
She was smiling.

“I just remembered,” she said. “There is a medical
doctor at this station after all.”