Ice Station (47 page)

Six hundred. Seven hundred.

Eight—

And then suddenly Schofield saw it.

“All right, let go!” he yelled.

The others immediately let go of the falling metal catwalk.

They hovered in the water as the catwalk disappeared into the gloom
beneath them.

Schofield swam over to the ice wall.

A large, round hole had been burrowed into it. It looked like a tunnel
of some sort, a tunnel that descended into aiky darkness.

Wendy swam up alongside Schofield and disappeared inside the dark
tunnel. She popped out again several seconds later.

Schofield hesitated.

Renshaw must have seen the doubt in his eyes. “What choice do we
have?” he said.

“Right,” Schofield said, pulling out his flashlight. He
clicked it on. Then he kicked with his feet and swam into the tunnel.

The tunnel was narrow, and it meandered steeply downward. Schofield
swam in the lead, with Kirsty behind him and Renshaw bringing up the
rear. Since they were swimming downward, they made swift progress.
They just allowed the lead weights on their weight belts to pull them
down.

Schofield swam cautiously. It was quiet here, like a tomb....

And then suddenly Wendy whipped past him from behind and darted off
down the tunnel in front of him.

Schofield looked at his depth gauge.

They had reached a thousand feet.

Dive time was twelve minutes.

“Bigbird, this is Blue Leader. Target is now in missile range. I
repeat. Target is now in missile range. Preparing to launch AMRAAM
missiles.”

“You may fire when ready, Blue Leader.”

“Thank you, Bigbird. All right, people. I have missile lock.
Missile bay is open. Target appears to be unaware of our presence. OK.
This is Blue Leader, Fox One.. .fire!”

The squadron leader jammed down on bis trigger.

At that moment, a long, sleek AIM-120 AMRAAM missile slid out from the
missile bay of the F-22 and shot forward after its prey.

The British fighter saw the missile on its scopes straightaway.

The greatest problem for stealth aircraft is that although an aircraft
itself may be invisible to radar, any missiles hanging from its wings
will not be invisible. Hence, all stealth aircraft like the F-22, the
F-117A stealth fighter, and the B-2A stealth bomber carry their
missiles internally.

Unfortunately, however, as soon as a missile is fired, it will be seen
instantly on radar. Which meant that the moment the F-22 launched its
AMRAAM missile at the E-2000 over the horizon, the British plane saw
the missile on its scopes.

The British pilot gave himself one minute at the most.

“General Barnaby! General Barnaby! Report!”

There was no reply.

Which was strange, because Brigadier General Barnaby knew that this
time—2200 hours to 2225 hours—was a designated contact
time, one of only two times a break in the solar flare would permit
radio contact. Barnaby had reported in at 1930, another designated
contact time, right on schedule.

The British pilot tried the secondary frequency. Still no luck. He
tried to hail Nero, Barnaby's second in command.

Still no luck.

“General Barnaby! This is Backstop. I am under attack! I
repeat, I am under attack! If you do not answer me in the
next thirty seconds, I will have to assume that you are dead and
pursuant to your orders I will have no choice but to fire upon the
station.”

The British pilot looked at his missile light—it was blinking.
He had already preset the coordinates of Wilkes Ice Station into the
guidance computer of his AGM-88/HLN cruise missile.

The designator letters on the missile said it all.

AGM stood for air-to-ground missile, H for
high-speed, and L for long-range. N however, had a
special meaning.

It stood for nuclear.

Thirty seconds expired. Still no word from Barnaby.

“General Barnaby! This is Backstop! I am launching the eraser...
now/” The British pilot hit his trigger, and a split
second later the nuclear-tipped cruise missile attached to the end of
his wing streaked away from his plane.

The missile only just got away, for a bare two seconds
later—just as the British pilot was reaching for his ejection
lever—the American AMRAAM missile slammed into the back of the
E-2000 and blew it and its pilot out of the sky.

The American pilots saw the bright orange explosion on the night
horizon, saw the blip on their scopes disappear.

A couple of them cheered.

The squadron leader smiled as he looked at the orange fireball on the
horizon. “SEAL team, this is Blue Leader. The bogey has been
eliminated. I repeat, the bogey has been eliminated. You are free to
enter the station. You are free to enter the station.”

Inside the SEAL hovercraft, the squadron leader's voice echoed
through the speaker: “You are free to enter the station. You
are free to enter the station.”

The SEAL commander said, “Thank you, Blue Leader. All units, be
aware. SEAL team is switching over to closed-circuit channels for the
assault on the station.”

He clicked off his radio, turned to his men.

“All right, people. Let's go fuck somebody up.”

Out over the Southern Ocean, the F-22 squadron leader continued to
look out through his canopy at the remains of the British E-2000. Thin
orange firetrails descended slowly down to earth like cheap fireworks.

Consumed as he was with this sight, the squadron leader didn't
notice a new, smaller blip appear on his radar screen—
a blip heading south, toward Antarctica—until almost thirty
seconds later.

“What the hell is that?” he said.

“Oh, Jesus,” someone else said. “It must
have got a missile off before it was hit!”

The squadron leader tried to raise the SEAL team again, but this time
he couldn't get through. They'd already switched over to
closed-circuit channels for their assault on Wilkes Ice Station.

The main doors to the station exploded inward and the SEAL team
stormed inside with their guns blazing.

It was a textbook-perfect entrance. The only problem was, the station
was empty.

Schofield looked at his depth gauge: 1470 feet.

He pushed on and a few minutes later, he emerged from the narrow
shortcut tunnel and found himself inside a wider, ice-wafted tunnel.

He knew where he was instantly, even though he had never been here
before.

On the far side of the underwater ice tunnel he saw a series of round
ten-foot holes carved into the tunnel walls. Sarah Hensleigh had told
him about them before. And Gant had mentioned them as well, when she
had approached the cave. The elephant seals' caves. He was inside
the underwater ice tunnel that led up to the spacecraft's cavern.

Schofield breathed a sigh of relief. Yes!

They swam out into the underwater ice tunnel. Beside him, Schofield
saw Kirsty let go of Wendy's harness, saw the little seal dart off
toward the surface. Schofield, Kirsty, and Renshaw followed, swimming
quickly upward, eying the holes in the ice walls around them
nervously.

Although the sight of the holes in the walls made him uneasy,
Schofield felt fairly certain that the elephant seals would not attack
them. He had a theory about that. So far, the only group of divers to
have approached the underwater ice cave unharmed had been Gant's
group—and they had all been wearing LABA tanks, low-audibility
breathing gear. The other groups to have gone down—the
scientists from Wilkes and the British—hadn't. And they had
been attacked. The way Schofield figured it, the elephant seals
hadn't been able to hear Gant and her team when they had
approached the cavern. And so they hadn't been attacked.

At that moment, Schofield caught sight of the surface and his thoughts
about the elephant seals were forgotten.

He looked at his depth gauge: 1490 feet.

Then he looked at his watch. It had taken them all of eighteen minutes
to get here. Very quick time.

And then suddenly a low whistle cut through the water.

Schofield heard it, tensed.

He saw Wendy hovering in the water above him, saw her body whip around
suddenly. She had sensed it, too.

Suddenly a second whistle answered the first and Schofield felt his
heart sink.

The seals knew they were there....

“Go!” Schofield said to Renshaw and Kirsty.
“Go!”

Schofield and Renshaw broke out into swift strokes, heading for the
surface. Renshaw was closest to Kirsty, so he just pushed up against
her LABA tanks, pushing her up through the water, forcing her to swim
faster.

Schofield looked at the surface above him. It looked beautiful,
glassy, calm. Like a smooth glass lens.

The whistles around them became more intense, and then suddenly he
heard a hoarse bark cut across the underwater spectrum.

Schofield spun in the water, looked about himself, then snapped up to
look at the lens-like surface again.

And at that moment, the lens shattered.

Elephant seals plunged into the water from every side. Others roared
out of the submerged holes in the walls and charged at Schofield and
the others. Their shrieks and barks and whistles filled the water.

Kirsty and Renshaw broke the surface first, right near the edge of the
pool. Renshaw—still in the water—pushed hard against the
underside of Kirsty's tanks, forcing her out of the water.

Kirsty stumbled frantically up onto dry land, slipped and fell, flat
onto her face, and turned just in time to see Renshaw get one arm out
of the water and begin to haul himself out
when—yank—Renshaw was suddenly wrenched violently
under the churning surface.

Kirsty screamed but cut herself off when she saw an enormous shape
rise up out of the water in front of her.

She dived away from the water's edge just as one of the elephant
seals launched itself out of the water and crashed down onto the ice
in front of her. Kirsty staggered and stumbled away from the edge,
turned, and saw that the giant seal was loping across the flat floor
of the cavern, chasing her!

Kirsty clawed at the icy ground, lost her footing, slipped, and fell.

The elephant seal charged. Kirsty lay sprawled on the floor of the
cavern, totally exposed, staring up at the gigantic demon bearing on
her and—

And then suddenly boom! the elephant seal's face exploded
in a fountain of blood and the big seal went crashing headfirst to the
ground.

Kirsty stared in awe as the elephant seal dropped to the floor,
revealing behind it: Schofield, hovering in the pool thirty feet away,
with his pistol extended.

He had just shot the seal through the back of the head!

Kirsty almost fainted.

Under the surface, James Renshaw was absolutely panic-stricken.

One of the seals had pulled him under and now it had him, had his foot in its
mouth!

Renshaw looked down in desperation, and then suddenly he frowned. The
seal that had him looked smaller than the others, and it had those
distinctive lower fangs that he had seen on the larger male before.

A juvenile male? Renshaw thought.

And then another thought hit him.

If it's young, you might have a chance to get out of
this.

So, with his spare foot, Renshaw kicked the small seal hard in the
snout.

The seal instantly squealed with pain and released his foot, and
Renshaw bolted for the surface.

He burst up out of the water a second later and saw the edge of the
pool right in front of him. Then he grabbed the nearest rock and
hauled himself out of the water just as another, much larger seal,
probably the juvenile's mother, swept through the water behind him
and narrowly missed biting his feet clean off.

Schofield was swimming madly for the edge of the pool.

As he swam, he caught fleeting glimpses of the cave around
him—he saw Kirsty over on one side of the pool, saw Renshaw over
on the other. And then he saw the the ship, the big black ship,
standing like an enormous, silent bird of prey in the middle of the
massive subterranean cavern.

And then suddenly his view of the big black ship was obliterated by
the sight of the big bull seal rising up out of the water right in
front of him!

The big seal was already moving fast and it plowed into Schofield at
phenomenal speed and Schofield gasped as he felt the wind get knocked
out of him and he went under.

The bull seal had rammed into his chest with its long lower fangs.
Ordinarily, Schofield guessed, this would have been enough to kill any
would-be victim, since the big seal's fangs would pierce the
victim's chest

But not with Schofield.

He was still wearing his body armor, and the bull seal's fangs had
lodged in his Kevlar breastplate.

The elephant seal drove him downward, pushing against his chest.
Schofield struggled, but it was no use. By virtue of his breastplate he was
practically impaled on the big animal's fangs.

The seal took Schofield down. Down and down, on the end of its nose.
Bubbles shot out from its heaving mouth as it expelled vast quantities
of air in its exertion.

Schofield had to do something.

He reached into his pocket, searched for whatever lay in there.

He pulled out a British nitrogen charge, looked at it for a second.

Oh, what the hell, he thought

Schofield quickly pulled the pin on the nitrogen charge and ammed the
live grenade into the open jaws of the big elephant seal.

Then he pushed himself off the big animal's fangs and the seal
shot past him in the water. It quickly realized that it had lost
Schofield, and when it did, the big seal began to turn around.

It was then that the nitrogen charge went off.

The bull seal's head exploded. Then it imploded. And then
most shocking thing of all happened. A wave of ice shot out
from the dead seal's body. At first Schofield didn't know what
it was, and then suddenly he realized.