Ice Station (22 page)

Schofield watched Sarah Hensleigh closely as she spoke. She was
excited, speaking quickly. She was in her element.

“What paleontologists usually say,” she said, “is that
a whole matrix of factors contributed to the rise of the mammals, and
hence the rise of human life on Earth. The right distance from the
sun, the right temperature, the right atmosphere, the right oxygen
levels in the
atmosphere, and, of course, the extinction of the dinosaurs. We all
know about the Alvarez theory, how an asteroid slammed into the Earth
and killed all the dinosaurs and how the mammals rose out of the
darkness and took their place as the rulers of the world. What if I
was to tell you that there is evidence that there were at least
four other such asteroid impacts on this planet in the last
seven hundred million years.”

“Asteroid impacts,” Schofield said.

"Yes. Sir Edmund Halley once suggested that the entire Caspian
Sea was created by an asteroid collision hundreds of millions of years
ago. Alexander Bickerton, the famous New Zealand physicist who taught
Rutherford, hypothesized that the seabed of the entire South Atlantic
Ocean—between South Africa and South America—was one great
big bowl-shaped crater, caused by a massive asteroid impact
over three hundred million years ago.

“Now, if we assume—as we so readily do in the case of the
dinosaurs—that every time one of these cataclysmic asteroids hit
the Earth a civilization died, we can only ask, what other
kinds of civilizations, like that of the dinosaurs, have also been
destroyed? What several academics have suggested in recent
years—Joseph Sorenson from Stanford is the most well
known—is that one of these civilizations may have been
human.”

Schofield looked at the other Marines on the deck around him. They
were all listening to Sarah intensely, rapt in her story.

Sarah went on. “You see, on average, the Earth tilts on its
vertical axis half a degree every twenty-two thousand years. What
Sorenson postulated was that about four hundred million years ago the
Earth was tilted at an angle not unlike the angle it's tilted on
today. It was also no farther from the sun than it is now, so it had
similar mean temperatures. Ice core samples, like the ones we get from
this station, have shown that the air was a mix of oxygen, nitrogen,
and hydrogen, in quantities very similar to that of our own atmosphere
today. Don't you see it? The matrix was the same then as
it is now.”

Schofield was slowly beginning to believe what Sarah was saying.

Sarah said, "That cavern down there is fifteen hundred
feet below sea level; that's two-and-a-half thousand
feet below the average land level of Antarctica. The ice down there is
easily four hundred million years old. If it's upthrusted
ice from deeper down—ice that was raised by an earthquake or
something—then it could be a lot, lot older.

“I think that whatever is down there is something that was frozen
a long time ago. A long time ago. It could be alien; it could
be human, from human life that existed on this planet millions of
years ago. Either way, Lieutenant, it'll be the greatest
paleontological discovery this world has ever known and I want to see
it.”

Sarah stopped, took a deep breath.

Schofield just stood there, silent.

Sarah spoke softly. “Lieutenant, this is my life. This is my
whole life. Whatever's down there is perhaps the greatest
discovery in the history of mankind. I've been studying my whole
life for this—”

Schofield looked curiously at her, and she cut herself off, sensing
that he was about to speak.

“What about your daughter?” he said.

Sarah cocked her head. She hadn't expected him to ask that.

Schofield said, “You're willing to leave her up here
alone?”

“She'll be safe,” Sarah said evenly. Then she smiled.
“She'll be up here with you.”

Schofield hadn't seen Sarah Hensleigh smile before. It illuminated
her face, lit up the whole room.

Sarah said, “I'll also be able to identify our divers who
went down to that cave before, which might be—”

Schofield held up his hand. “It's all right; you convinced
me. You can go. But you use our scuba gear. I don't know
what happened to your people down there before, but I have a sneaking
suspicion that whatever's down there heard the noise of their
breathing gear and I don't want the same thing to happen to
us.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Sarah said seriously. “Thank
you.” Then she took off the glistening silver locket that she
wore around her neck and offered it to Schofield. “I'd better
not dive with this on. Can you keep it for me until I get back?”

Schofield took the locket, put it in his pocket. “Sure.”

Just then, there came a sudden groaning sound from the pool to his
left.

Schofield spun, just in time to see an enormous black shadow rise to
the surface of the pool amid a cloud of frothing white bubbles.

At first he thought the black shadow was one of the killer whales,
returning to the pool in search of more food. But whatever it was, it
wasn't swimming. It was just floating, rising up and up toward the
surface.

And then the enormous black object breached the surface with a loud
shooshing sound. Waves and bubbles shot out from every side
of it. White froth expanded all around it. Narrow rivulets of blood
snaked their way through the froth. The massive black object bobbed on
the surface. Everyone on the deck took a step forward.

Schofield stared at the black object in awe.

It was a killer whale.

But it was dead. Well and truly dead. The huge black-and-white carcass
just floated limply in the water, alongside the deck. It was one of
the larger ones, too, possibly even the male of the pack. It must have
been at least thirty feet long. Seven tons in weight.

At first Schofield thought it must have been the killer whale that
Mother had shot in the head during the battle— since that was
the only whale that he knew for sure was dead. He quickly changed his
mind.

This dead whale had no visible wound in its head. The one Mother had
shot would have had a hole the size of a basketball in its skull. This
one's forehead was unmarked.

And there was another thing.

This one had floated to the surface.

An animal killed in water will initially float, until its body fills
with water. Only then will it sink. The killer whale that Mother had
killed would have long since sunk to the bottom. This whale, on the
other hand, had been killed recently.

The dead carcass rolled slowly in the water. Schofield and the other
Marines on the deck just stared at it, entranced.

And then, slowly, it rolled belly-up and Schofield saw the great
whale's white underbelly and his jaw dropped.

Two long bloody gashes ran down the length of the big whale's
underbelly.

They ran in parallel. Two jagged uneven slashes that ran all the way
up the center of the whale's body, from its mid-section to its
throat. Sections of the big whale's intestines had fallen out
through the gashes—long, ugly cream-colored coils that were as
thick as a man's arm.

They weren't clean cuts either, Schofield saw. Each gash was a
tear, a rip. Something had punctured the whale's belly and then
ripped up the entire length of its body, tearing the skin apart.

Everyone on the deck stared at the bloody carcass, the understanding
visible on their faces.

There was something down in that water.

Something that had killed a killer whale.

Schofield took a deep breath and turned to face Sarah. “Want to
reconsider?” he said.

Sarah stared at the dead killer whale for a few seconds. Then she
looked back at Schofield.

“No,” she said. “No way.”

Schofield paced nervously around the pool deck,
alone.

He watched as in the middle of the pool the winch's cable plunged
into the water. At the end of that cable was the diving bell, and
inside the diving bell were three of his Marines plus Sarah Hensleigh.
The cable entered the water at a steady speed, as fast as it could go.

The winch had been lowering the diving bell into the water for almost
an hour now. Three thousand feet was a long way, almost a kilometer,
and Schofield knew it would take some time before it reached that
depth.

Schofield stood on the deserted deck. Twenty minutes earlier, he had
sent Book, Snake, and Rebound topside to try to raise McMurdo Station
on the portable radio again—he had to know when a
full-strength American force was going to arrive at Wilkes.

Now he stood alone on E-deck, the station around him silent save for
the rhythmic mechanical thumping of the winch mechanism up on C-deck.
The repetitive thump-thump-thump of the winch had an almost
soothing effect on him.

Schofield pulled Sarah Hensleigh's silver locket out of his
pocket. It glistened in the white fluorescent light of the station. He
turned it over in his hand. There was some writing engraved on the
back of it—

And then suddenly there came a noise and Schofield's head snapped
round. It had only lasted for an instant, but he had definitely heard
it.

It had been a voice. A male voice. But a voice that had been speaking
in...

.. . French.

Schofield's eyes fell instantly upon the VLF transmitter that sat
on the deck a few feet away from him.

Suddenly the transmitter emitted a shrill whistling sound. And then
the voice came again.

“La hyène,
c'est moi, le requin,” the voice said. “La
hyène, c'est
moi, le requin. Présentez votre rapport. Je
renouvele. Présentez
votre rapport.”

Rebound, Schofield thought. Shit. I need Rebound.
But he was outside with the others and Schofield needed a French
speaker now.

“Rebound,” Schofield said into his helmet mike.

The reply came back immediately. “Yes, sir?”
Schofield could hear the swirling wind in the background.

“Don't say a word, Rebound. Just listen, OK,” Schofield
said, pressing a button on his belt that kept his helmet microphone
switched on. He leaned in close to the VLF transmitter so that his
helmet mike was near the transmitter's speaker.

The French voice came again.

“La hyène.
Vous avez trois heures pour présenter votre rapport. Je
renouvele, Vous avez trois heures pour présenter votre rapport. Si vous
ne le presentez pas lorsque I'heure nous serons contraint de
lancer l'engine d'efface. Je renouvele. Si vous ne le présentez pas lorsque
I'heure nous serons contraint de lancer l'engine d'efface.
C'est moi, le requin. Finis.”

The signal cut off and there was silence. When he was sure that it was
finished, Schofield said, “Did you get all that, Rebound?”

“Most of it, sir.”

“What did they say?”

“They said: Hyena. You have three hours to report. If you do
not report by that time we will be compelled to launch the
'l'engine d'efface,' the erasing
device.”

“The erasing device,” Schofield said flatly. “Three
hours. You sure about that, Rebound?”

Schofield grabbed his wristwatch as he spoke. It was an old Casio
digital. He started the stopwatch on it. The seconds began to tick
upward.

“Very sure, sir. They said it all twice,” Rebound
said.

Schofield said, “Good work, Private. All right. Now all we have
to do is figure out where these guys are—”

“Uh, excuse me, sir?” It was Rebound again.

“What is it?”

“Sir, I think I have an idea where they might be.”

“Where?”

“Sir, at the end of that transmission we just heard, they
said 'c'est moi, le requin'. Now, I missed the
start of the transmission. Did they say that at the very beginning?
'C'est moi, le requin'?”

Schofield didn't know; he didn't speak French. It had all
sounded the same to him. He tried to replay the radio message in his
head. “They may have,” he said. “No, wait, yes. Yes, I
think they did say that. Why?”

Rebound said, “Sir, le requin is French for
'shark.' 'C'est moi le requin' means
'this is Shark.' You know, like a military code name. The
French unit here at the station was called Hyena and that one we just
heard was called Shark. You know what I'm thinking,
sir—”

“Oh, damn,” Schofield said.

“That's right. I'm thinking they're out on the
water somewhere. Somewhere off the coast. I'll bet you a million
bucks that Shark is a warship or something sailing off the
coast of Antarctica.”

“Oh, damn,” Schofield said again, this time with
feeling.

It made sense that whoever sent that message was a ship of some kind.
And not just because of its code name. As Schofield knew, because of
their extraordinarily long wavelengths, VLF transmissions were
commonly used by surface vessels or submarines out in the middle of
the ocean. That was why the French commandos had brought the VLF
transmitter with them. To keep in contact with their warship off the
coast.

Schofield started to feel ill.

The prospect of a frigate or a destroyer patrolling the ocean a
hundred miles off the coast was bad. Very bad. Especially if
it was aiming some kind of weapon—in all likelihood, a battery
of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles—at Wilkes Ice Station.

It had never occurred to him that the French might not bring an
erasing device with them but would rather leave it with an
outside agent—like a destroyer off the coast—with
instructions to fire upon the station if that destroyer did not
receive a report by a given time.

Shit, Schofield thought. Shit. Shit. Shit.

There were only two things in the world that could stop the launch of
that erasing device. One, a report coming in from twelve dead
Frenchmen sometime within the next three hours. That
wasn't going to happen.

Which meant the second option was the only option.

Schofield had to get in contact with the U.S. forces at
McMurdo Station. And not just to find out when American reinforcements
would be arriving at Wilkes. No, now he had to tell the Marines at
McMurdo about a French warship sailing somewhere off the coast with a
phalanx of cruise missiles trained on Wilkes Ice Station. It would
then be up to the people at McMurdo to take out that
warship—within three hours.