Ice Station (6 page)

“It can see me from all the way down there?” Gant said,
glancing at Kirsty. “I thought whales were supposed to have poor
eyesight out of the water.”

“For their size, killer whales have bigger eyes than most other
whales,” Kirsty said, “so their eyesight out of the water is
better.” She looked at Gant. “You know about them?”

“I read a lot,” Gant said, casting a sideways glance
at Hollywood, before turning back to face the killers.

The two killer whales continued to prowl slowly around the pool.
Gliding through the still water, they seemed patient, calm. Content to
bide their time until their prey appeared. Down on the pool deck Gant
saw Schofield and the two Marine divers watching the killer whales as
they ominously circled the pool.

“How do they get in here?” Gant said to Kirsty. “What
do they do—swim in under the ice shelf?”

Kirsty nodded. “That's right. This station is only about a
hundred yards away from the ocean, and the ice shelf out that way
isn't very deep, maybe five hundred feet. The killers just swim in
under the ice shelf and surface here inside the station.”

Gant looked down at the two killer whales on the far side of the pool.
They seemed so calm, so cold, like a pair of hungry crocodiles
searching for their next meal.

Then, their survey complete, the two killer whales slowly began to
submerge. In a moment they were gone, replaced by two sets of ripples.
Their eyes had remained open the whole way down.

“Well, that was sudden,” Gant said.

Her eyes moved from the now-empty pool to the diving platform beside
it. She saw Montana emerge from the south tunnel with some scuba tanks
slung over his shoulders. Sarah Hensleigh had told them that there was
a small goods elevator in the south tunnel—a
“dumbwaiter”—that they could use to bring their diving
gear down to E-deck. Montana had been using it just now.

Gant's gaze moved to the other side of the platform, where she saw
Schofield standing with his head bowed, holding a hand to his ear, as
though he were listening to something on his helmet intercom. And then
suddenly he was heading toward the nearest rung-ladder, speaking into
his helmet mike as he walked.

Gant watched as Schofield stopped at the base of the rung-ladder on
the far side of the station and turned to look directly at her. His
voice crackled over her helmet intercom. “Fox. Hollywood.
A-deck. Now.”

As she hastened toward the rung-ladder nearest her, Gant spoke into
her helmet mike. “What is it, sir?”

Schofield's voice was serious. “Something just set off
the trip wire outside. Snake's up there. He says it's a French
hovercraft.”

Snake Kaplan drew a bead on the hovercraft.

The lettering on the side of the vehicle glowed bright gfeen in his
night-vision gunsights. It read: DUMONT D'URVILLE— 02.

Kaplan was lying in the snow on the outskirts of the station complex,
bracing himself against the driving wind and snow, following the newly
arrived hovercraft through the sights of his Barrett M82A1A sniper
rifle.

Gunnery Sergeant Scott “Snake” Kaplan was forty-five years
old, a tall man with dark, serious eyes. Like most of the other
Marines in Schofield's unit, Kaplan had customized his uniform. A
weathered tattoo of a fearsome-looking cobra with its jaws bared wide
had been painted onto his right shoulder plate. Underneath the picture
of the snake were the words: KISS THIS.

A career soldier, Kaplan had been with the Marine Corps for
twenty-seven years, during which time he had risen to the magic rank
of Gunnery Sergeant, the highest rank an enlisted Marine can reach
while still getting his hands dirty. Indeed, although further
promotion was possible, Snake had decided to stay at Gunnery Sergeant
rank, so that he could remain a senior member of a Marine Force
Reconnaissance Unit.

Members of Recon Units don't care much for discussions about rank.
Membership in a Marine Force Reconnaissance Unit alone gives one
privileges to which even some officers cannot lay claim. It is not
unknown, for instance, for a four-star General to consult a senior
Recon member on matters of combat technique and weaponry. Indeed,
Snake himself had been approached on several such occasions. And
besides, since most of those who were selected for the Recons were
Sergeants and Corporals anyway, rank wasn't really an issue. They
were with the Recons, the elite of the United States Marine
Corps. That was rank in itself.

Upon the unit's arrival at Wilkes Ice Station, Snake had been put
in charge of setting up the laser trip wire on the landward side of
the station, about two hundred meters out. The trip wire was not
really that much different from the range finder units on the
hovercrafts. It was merely a series of boxlike units through which a
tiny invisible laser beam was directed. When something crossed the
beam, it triggered a flashing red light on Kaplan's forearm guard.

Moments ago, something had crossed the beam.

From his post on A-deck, Kaplan had immediately radioed Schofield,
who, sensibly, had ordered a visual check. After all, it might have
just been Buck Riley and his team, returning from their check of that
disappearing signal. Schofield had set follow-up time at two hours,
and it had been nearly that long since Schofield's team had
arrived at the station. Buck Riley and his crew were due here any
minute now.

Only this wasn't Buck Riley.

“Where is it, Snake?” Schofield's voice said
over Snake's helmet intercom.

“Southeast corner. Coming through the outer circle of buildings
now.” Snake watched as the hovercraft slowly made its way through
the station complex, carefully negotiating its way between the small
snow-covered structures.

“Where are you?” Snake asked as he stood, picked up his
rifle, and started jogging back through the snow toward the main dome.

“I'm at the main entrance,” Schofield's
voice said. “Just inside the front door. I need you to take
up a covering position from the rear.”

“Already on it.”

With the driving snow, visibility was limited, so the hovercraft
proceeded slowly through the complex. Kaplan hurried along parallel to
it, a hundred yards away. The vehicle came to a halt outside the main
dome of the ice station. It was slowly beginning to lower itself from
its cushion of air when Shake dropped into the snow forty meters away
and began to set up his sniper rifle.

He had just put his eye to his telescopic sight when the side door of
the hovercraft slid open and four figures stepped out of it into the
snowstorm.

“Good evening,” Schofield said with a
crooked smile.

The four French scientists just stood there in the doorway to the ice
station, dumbstruck. They stood in two pairs, with each pair carrying
a large white container between them.

In front of them stood Schofield, with his MP-5 held casually by his
side. Behind Schofield stood Hollywood and Montana, with
their MP-5s raised to shoulder height and their eyes looking straight
down the barrels of their guns. Guns that were pointed right at their
new visitors.

Schofield said, “Why don't you come inside.”

“The others are safely back at d'Urville,” the leader of
this new group said as he sat down at the table in the dining room
alongside his French colleagues. Like the others, he had just passed a
thorough pat-down search.

He had a lean face, hollow, with sunken eyes and high cheekbones. He
had said his name was Jean Petard, and Schofield recognized the name
from his list. He also remembered the short bio that had appeared
under the name. It had said that Petard was a geologist, studying
natural gas deposits in the continental shelf. The names of the other
three Frenchmen were also on the list.

The four original French scientists were also there in the dining
room—Champion, Latissier, Cuvier, and Rae. The remaining
residents of Wilkes were now back in their quarters. Schofield had
ordered that they remain there until he and his squad had checked out
the occupants of this newly arrived hovercraft. Montana and Lance
Corporal Augustine “Samurai” Lau, the sixth and last member
of Schofield's team, stood guard by the door.

“We hurried back as fast as we could,” Jean Petard added.
“We brought fresh food and some battery-powered blankets for the
return trip.”

Schofield looked over at Libby Gant. She was over by the far wall of
the dining room, examining the two white containers the Frenchmen had
brought with them.

“Thank you,” Schofield said, turning back to face Petard.
'Thank you for all you have done. We arrived here only several
hours after you did and the people here have told us how good you have
been to them. We thank you for your efforts."

“But of course,” Petard said, his English fluent. “One
must look after one's neighbors.” He offered a wry smile.
“You never know when you yourself might be in need of
assistance.”

“No, you don't.”

At that moment Snake's voice crackled over Schofield's
earpiece: “Lieutenant, we have another contact crossing the
trip wire.”

Schofield frowned. Now things were starting to happen a little too
fast. Four French scientists he could handle. Another four and the
French were starting to show a little too much interest in
Wilkes Ice Station. But now, if there were more of them—

“Wait, Lieutenant; it's all right. It's one of ours.
It's Riley's hovercraft.”

Schofield let out a sigh of relief that he hoped nobody saw and headed
out of the room.

Over by the wall of the dining room, Libby Gant was sifting through
the two large containers that the French scientists had brought with
them. She pushed aside a couple of blankets and some fresh bread.
There was also some canned meat down at the bottom of the container.
Corned beef, ham, that sort of thing. All were packed in sealed cans,
the kind that has a key attached to the side that you use to peel back
the lid.

Gant pushed a couple of the cans aside and was looking for more
beneath them when suddenly one of the cans caught her eye.

There was something wrong about it.

It was a little larger than the other, medium-sized cans— about
fourteen inches in length—and it was roughly triangular in
shape. At first Gant couldn't tell what it was that struck her
about this particular can. It was just that something about it
didn't look right...

And then she realized.

The seal on this can had been broken.

The peel-back lid, it seemed, had been opened and then set
back into place. It was barely visible. Just a thin black
line around the edge of the lid. If you were only giving the cans a
cursory glance, you would almost certainly miss it.

Gant turned to look back at Schofield, but he had left the room. She
looked up quickly at the French scientists, and as she did so, she saw
Petard exchange a quick glance with the one named Latissier.

Schofield met Buck Riley at the main entrance. The two men stood out
on the A-deck catwalk, about thirty feet away from the dining room.

“How was it?” Schofield asked.

“Not good,” Riley said.

“What do you mean?”

“That signal we lost, it was a hovercraft. French markings. From
d'Urville. It had crashed into a crevasse.”

Schofield looked up sharply at Riley. “Crashed into a
crevasse?” He looked back quickly at the Frenchmen in the dining
room. Only moments earlier, Jean Petard had said that the other
hovercraft had arrived safely back at d'Urville.

“What happened?” Schofield said. “Thin ice?”

“No. That's what we thought at first. But then Rebound got a
closer look.”

Schofield turned back around. “And?”

Riley gave him a serious look. “There were five dead bodies in
that hovercraft, sir. And all of them had been shot through the back
of the head.”

Gant's voice exploded across Schofield's helmet intercom.

“Sir, this is Fox. There's something wrong here. Their
food containers have been compromised.”

Schofield spun around and saw Libby Gant coming out of the dining
room. She was walking quickly toward him, carrying a food can of some
sort, peeling the lid back.

Behind her Schofield saw Petard, in the dining room, rising to his
feet, watching Gant, and then watching Schofield himself.

It was then that their eyes met.

It was only for an instant, but that was all either man needed. In
that moment, there was a flash of understanding.

Gant cut across Schofield's line of sight with Petard. She had
opened the can now and was pulling something out of it. The object she
extracted from the can was small and black, and it looked a little
like a small crucifix, the only difference being that the shorter,
horizontal beam of the object was bent in a semicircle.

Schofield's eyes widened when he saw it and he opened his mouth to
shout, but it was too late.

In the dining room, Petard dived for the two white containers, just as
Latissier—who hadn't been patted down since he had been at
the station when the Marines had arrived— threw open his parka,
revealing a short-barreled French-made FA-MAS assault rifle. At the
same time, the one named Cuvier pulled both of his hands free of his
pockets, revealing two models of the same weapon that Gant now had in
her hand. Cuvier immediately fired one of them at Gant just as she
turned to face him and Schofield saw her head snap backwards with the
impact as she fell to the floor.

Deafening gunfire exploded through the silence as Latissier jammed his
finger down on the trigger of his assault rifle and sprayed the dining
room with a blanket of suppressing fire. His arc of gunfire cut
through the air like a scythe, and it practically ripped Augustine Lau
in two.

Latissier didn't let go for a full ten seconds and the sustained
burst of machine-gun fire caused everybody else to hit the deck.