Ice Station, page 33
The compressed air was the main risk. After thirty years of storage, there was a risk that it had gone toxic.
There was only one way to find out.
Schofield tested it – he took a deep inhalation and looked at Renshaw. When he didn’t drop dead, he declared the air okay.
The two men worked on the scuba gear for about twenty minutes. Then, as they were nearing readiness, Renshaw said quietly, ‘Did you ever get to see Bernie Olson’s body?’
Schofield looked over at Renshaw. The little scientist was bent over a pair of mouthpieces, washing them out with seawater.
‘As a matter of fact, I did,’ Schofield said softly.
‘What did you see?’ Renshaw said, interested.
Schofield hesitated. ‘Mr Olson had bitten his own tongue off.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘His jaw was also locked rigidly in place and his eyes were heavily inflamed – red-rimmed, bloodshot.’
Renshaw nodded. ‘And what were you told happened to him?’
‘Sarah Hensleigh told me you stabbed him in the neck with a hypodermic needle and injected liquid drain cleaner into his bloodstream.’
Renshaw nodded sagely. ‘I see. Lieutenant, could you have a look at this please?’ Renshaw pulled a waterlogged book from the breast pocket of his parka. It was the thick book that he had taken from his room when they had evacuated the station.
Renshaw handed it to Schofield. Biotoxicology and Toxin-Related Illnesses.
Renshaw said, ‘Lieutenant, when someone poisons you with drain cleaner, the poison stops your heart, just like that. There’s no struggle. There’s no fight. You just die. Chapter 2.’
Schofield flipped the watersoaked pages to Chapter 2. He saw the heading: Toxin-Related Instantaneous Physiological Death.
He saw a list of what the author had called ‘Known Poisons’. In the middle of the list, Schofield saw ‘industrial cleaning fluids, insecticides’.
‘The point is,’ Renshaw said, ‘there are no outward signs of death by such a poison. Your heart stops, your body just stops.’ Renshaw held up his finger. ‘But not so, certain other toxins,’ he said. ‘Like, for instance, sea snake venom.’
‘Sea snake venom?’ Schofield said.
‘Chapter 9,’ Renshaw said.
Schofield found it. Naturally Occurring Toxins – Sea Fauna.
‘Look up sea snakes,’ Renshaw said.
Schofield did. He found the heading: Sea Snakes – Toxins, Symptoms and Treatment.
‘Read it,’ Renshaw said.
Schofield did.
‘Out loud,’ Renshaw said.
Schofield read, ‘The common sea snake (Enhydrina schistosa) has a venom with a toxicity level three times that of the king cobra, the most lethal land-based snake. One drop (0.03 mL) is enough to kill three men. Common symptoms of sea snake envenomation include aching and stiffness of muscles, thickening of the tongue, paralysis, visual loss, severe inflammation of the eye area and dilation of the pupils, and most notably of all, lockjaw. Indeed, so severe is lockjaw in such cases, that it is not unknown for victims of sea snake envenomation to –’
Schofield cut himself off.
‘Read it,’ Renshaw said softly.
‘– to sever their own tongues with their teeth.’ Schofield looked up at Renshaw.
Renshaw cocked his head. ‘Do I look like a killer to you, Lieutenant?’
‘Who’s to say you didn’t put sea snake venom inside that hypodermic syringe?’ Schofield countered.
‘Lieutenant,’ Renshaw said, ‘at Wilkes Ice Station, sea snake venoms are kept in the Biotoxins Lab, which is always – always – locked. Only a few people have access to that room and I’m not one of them.’
Schofield remembered the Biotoxins Laboratory on B-deck, remembered the distinctive three-circled bio-hazard sign pasted across its door.
Strangely, though, Schofield also found himself remembering something else.
He remembered Sarah Hensleigh telling him earlier: ‘Before all this happened, I was working with Ben Austin in the Bio Lab on B-deck. He was doing work on a new antivenom for Enhydrina schistosa.’
Schofield shook the thought away.
No. Not possible.
He turned to Renshaw, ‘So who do you think killed Bernie Olson?’
‘Why, someone who had access to the Biotoxins Lab, of course,’ Renshaw said. ‘That could mean only Ben Austin, Harry Cox, or Sarah Hensleigh.’
Sarah Hensleigh . . .
Schofield said, ‘Why would any of them want to kill Olson?’
‘I have no idea,’ Renshaw said. ‘No idea.’
‘So as far as you know, not one of those people had a motive to kill Olson?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But you had a motive,’ Schofield said. ‘Olson was stealing your research.’
‘Which kind of makes me the ideal person to set up, doesn’t it?’ Renshaw said.
Schofield said, ‘But if someone really wanted to set you up, they would have actually used drain cleaner to kill Olson. Why go to the trouble of using sea snake venom?’
‘Good point,’ Renshaw said. ‘Good point. But if you read that book, you’ll find that drain cleaner has a 59% mortality rate. Sea snake venom has a 98% mortality rate. Whoever killed Olson wanted to make sure that he died. That’s why they used the sea snake venom. They did not want him to be resuscitated.’
Schofield pursed his lips in thought.
Then he said, ‘Tell me about Sarah Hensleigh.’
‘What about her?’
‘Do you two get along? Do you like her, does she like you?’
‘No, no and no.’
Schofield said, ‘Why don’t you like her?’
‘You really want to know?’ Renshaw sighed deeply. He looked away. ‘It’s because she married my best friend – actually, he was also my boss – and she didn’t love him.’
‘Who was that?’ Schofield asked.
‘A guy named Brian Hensleigh. He was head of geophysics at Harvard before he died.’
Schofield remembered Kirsty telling him about her father before. How he had taught her advanced maths. And how he had died only recently.
‘He died in a car accident, didn’t he?’
‘That’s right,’ Renshaw said. ‘Drunk driver jumped the kerb and killed him.’ Renshaw looked up at Schofield. ‘How come you know that?’
‘Kirsty told me.’
‘Kirsty told you,’ Renshaw nodded slowly. ‘She’s a good kid, Lieutenant. Did she tell you that she’s my goddaughter?’
‘No.’
‘When she was born, Brian asked me to be her godfather, you know, in case anything ever happened to him. Her mother, Mary-Anne, died of cancer when Kirsty was seven.’
Schofield said, ‘Wait a second. Kirsty’s mother died when she was seven?
‘Yep.’
‘So, Sarah Hensleigh isn’t Kirsty’s mother?’
‘That’s right,’ Renshaw said. ‘Sarah Hensleigh was Brian’s second wife. Sarah Hensleigh is Kirsty’s stepmother.’
Suddenly, things began to make sense to Schofield. The way Kirsty hardly ever spoke to Sarah. The way she withdrew into herself whenever she was near Sarah. The natural response of a child to a stepmother she didn’t like.
‘I don’t know why Brian married her,’ Renshaw said. ‘I know he was lonely, and, well, Sarah is attractive and she did show him quite a bit of attention. But she was ambitious. Boy, was she ambitious. You could see it in her eyes. She just wanted his name, wanted to meet the people he worked with. She didn’t want him. And the last thing she wanted was his kid.’
Renshaw laughed sadly. ‘And then that drunk driver skipped the kerb and killed Brian and in one fell swoop, Sarah lost Brian and got the kid she never wanted.’
Schofield asked. ‘So why doesn’t she like you?’
Renshaw laughed again. ‘Because I told Brian not to marry her.’
Schofield shook his head. Obviously there had been a lot more going on at Wilkes Ice Station before he and his Marines had arrived than initially met the eye.
‘You ready with those mouthpieces?’ Schofield asked.
‘All set.’
‘This conversation is to be continued,’ Schofield said, as he got to his feet and began to shoulder into one of the scuba tanks.
‘Wait a second,’ Renshaw said, standing. ‘You’re going back in there now? What if you get killed going back in? Then there’ll be nobody left who believes my story.’
‘Who said I believed your story?’ Schofield said.
‘You believed it. I know you believed it.’
‘Then it looks like you’d better come with me. Make sure I don’t get killed,’ Schofield said as he walked over to the window set into the iceberg and looked out through it.
Renshaw paled. ‘Okay, okay, let’s just slow down for a second here. Have you given any thought to the fact that there is a pod of killer whales out there. Not to mention some kind of seal that kills killer whales –’
But Schofield wasn’t listening. He was just staring out through the window set in the ice. In the distance to the south-west – at the top of one of the nearby ice cliffs – he saw a faint, intermittent green flash. Flash-flash. Flash-flash. It was the green beacon light mounted on top of Wilkes Ice Station’s radio antenna.
‘Mr Renshaw. I’m going back in there . . . with or without you, whatever might be in the way.’ Schofield turned to face him.
‘Come on. It’s time to retake Wilkes Ice Station.’
Wrapped in two layers of oversized, 1960s-era wetsuits, Schofield and Renshaw swam through the icy silence, breathing with the aid of their thirty-year-old scuba gear.
They both had the same length of steel cable tied around their waists – cable that stretched all the way back to the large cylindrical spooler inside Little America IV, about a mile to the north-east of Wilkes Ice Station. It was a precaution, in case either of them got lost or separated and had to get back to the station.
Schofield held a harpoon gun that he had found inside the Little America station out in front of him.
The water around them became crystal clear as they swam underneath the coastal ice shelf and into a forest of jagged stalactites of ice.
Schofield’s plan was that they would swim under the ice shelf – depending on how deep it went – and come up inside Wilkes Ice Station. Outside, he had taken his bearings from the position of the green beacon light atop the station’s radio antenna. Schofield figured that if he and Renshaw could keep swimming in the general direction of the beacon, once they went under the ice shelf, they would eventually be able to spot the pool at the base of the station.
Schofield and Renshaw were in a world of white. Ghostly-white ice formations – like mountain peaks turned upside-down – stretched downward for nearly four hundred feet.
Schofield frowned inside his diving mask. They would have to go quite a way down before they could come up again inside the station.
Schofield and Renshaw swam down the side of one of the enormous ice formations. Through his mask, the only thing Schofield could see was a wall of solid white ice.
After a while, they came to the bottom of the ice formation – the pointed ‘peak’ of the inverted mountain. Schofield slowly swam underneath the peak, and the wall of white glided out of his view –
– and he saw it.
Schofield’s heart nearly skipped a beat.
It was just hanging there in the water in front of him, suspended from its winch cable, making its slow journey back up toward the station.
The diving bell.
Heading back up toward the station.
And then Schofield realised what that meant.
The British had already sent a team down to investigate the cavern.
Schofield hoped to hell that his Marines down in the cavern were ready.
As for him and Renshaw, they had to get to that diving bell. It was a free ride up to Wilkes Ice Station that Schofield did not want to miss.
Schofield spun in the water to signal Renshaw. He saw the short scientist behind him, swimming under-neath the inverted mountain peak. He signalled for Renshaw to pick up the pace and the two men hurried through the water toward the diving bell.
‘How many are down there?’ Barnaby asked softly.
Book Riley didn’t say a word.
Book was on his knees, with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was down on E-deck, by the pool. Blood poured out from his mouth. His left eye was half-closed, puffed and swollen. After falling from the speeding hovercraft with Kirsty, Book had been brought back to Wilkes. As soon as he had arrived at the station, he had been taken down to E-deck to face Barnaby.
‘Mr Nero,’ Barnaby said.
The big SAS man named Nero punched Book hard in the face. Book fell to the deck.
‘How many?’ Barnaby said. He was holding Book’s Maghook in his hand.
‘None!’ Book yelled through bloody teeth. ‘There’s no one down there. We never got a chance to send anyone down there.’
‘Oh, really,’ Barnaby said. He looked at the Maghook in his hands thoughtfully. ‘Mr Riley, I find it very difficult to believe that a commander of the calibre of the Scarecrow would neglect to make the task of sending a squad down to that cave the very first thing that he did once he got here.’
‘Then why don’t you ask him.’
‘Tell me the truth, Mr Riley, or very soon I am going to lose my temper and feed you to the lions.’
‘There’s no one down there,’ Book said.
‘Okay,’ Barnaby said, turning abruptly to face Snake. ‘Mr Kaplan,’ he said. ‘Is Mr Riley telling me the truth?’
Book looked up sharply at Snake.
Barnaby said to Snake, ‘Mr Kaplan, if Mr Riley is lying to me, I will kill him. If you lie to me, I will kill you.’
Book looked up at Snake with wide, pleading eyes.
Snake spoke. ‘He’s lying. There are four people down there. Three Marines, one civilian.’
‘You son of a bitch!’ Book said to Snake.
‘Mr Nero,’ Barnaby said, tossing Book’s Maghook to Nero. ‘String him up.’
Schofield and Renshaw surfaced together inside the slow-moving diving bell.
They climbed up out of the water, and stood on the metal deck that surrounded the small pool of water at the base of the spherical diving bell.
Renshaw removed his mouthpiece, gasped for breath. Schofield scanned the interior of the empty diving bell, looking for weapons, looking for anything.
He saw a digital depth counter on the far wall. It was ticking downwards as the diving bell ascended: 360 feet. 359 feet. 358 feet.
‘Ah-ha,’ Renshaw said from the other side of the bell.
Schofield turned. Renshaw was standing in front of a small TV monitor that was attached to the wall high up near the ceiling. Renshaw clicked it on. ‘I forgot about this,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ Schofield asked.
‘It’s another of old Carmine Yaeger’s toys. You remember the old guy I told you about before, the guy who used to watch the whales all the time. Do you remember I told you he used to watch them sometimes from inside the diving bell? Well this monitor is another one of his video feeds of the station’s pool. Yaeger had it installed so he could watch the surface of the pool while he was underwater in the bell.’
Schofield looked up at the small black-and-white monitor.
On the screen, he saw the same view of E-deck that he had seen when he was in Renshaw’s room earlier. The view from the camera on the underside of the retractable bridge on C-deck, looking straight down on E-deck.
Schofield froze.
He saw people on the screen.
SAS troops with guns. Snake still cuffed to the pole. And Trevor Barnaby, pacing slowly around E-deck.
And there was one other person.
There on the deck, down at Barnaby’s feet, having his feet tied up, was Book Riley.
‘All right, hoist him up,’ Barnaby said, once Nero had finished tying the Maghook’s cable around Book’s ankles.
Somebody else had already splayed out the Maghook’s rope and tossed its launcher over the retractable bridge on C-deck, creating a pulley-like mechanism.
Nero took the launcher from one of the other British commandos and wedged its grip between two rungs of the rung-ladder between E-deck and D-deck. Then he pressed the black button on the launcher that reeled in the rope.
As a result of the pulley mechanism – the rope being stretched taut over the bridge on C-deck – Book was suddenly lifted off the deck by his ankles. His hands were still cuffed behind his back. He swung out over the pool and dangled helplessly – head-down – in the air above the water.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ Renshaw asked as he and Schofield stared at the black-and-white monitor.
On the monitor they could see Book dangling directly beneath them, hanging from his own Maghook out over the water.
At that moment, the diving bell rocked slightly, and Schofield grabbed the wall to steady himself.
‘What was that?’ Renshaw said quickly.
Schofield didn’t have to answer him.
The answer lay right outside the windows of the slow-moving bell.
Several large dark shapes rose through the water all around the diving bell, their distinctive black-and-white outlines all too familiar.
The pod of killer whales.
They were heading up toward the station.
The first dorsal fin pierced the surface of the water and a murmur went up among the twenty or so SAS troops gathered around the pool on E-deck.
Book was still dangling upside-down above the pool. He saw it, too: the enormous black outline of a killer whale gliding slowly through the water beneath him. Book began to wriggle, but it was no use – his hands were firmly cuffed, his feet firmly bound.
His dogtags began to slip over his head. A couple of seconds later they dropped off his chin and plonked down into the water and sank fast.
Barnaby watched the killer whales from the poolside deck. ‘This should make things very interesting.’
