Ice Station, page 34
At that moment, one of his corporals came up to him. It was the same corporal who had reported to him before. ‘Sir, the Tritonal charges are all set.’
The corporal offered Barnaby a small black unit the size of a thick calculator. It had a numbered keypad on it. ‘The detonation unit, sir.’
Barnaby took it. ‘How are the outer markers looking?’
‘We have five men stationed along the outer perimeter monitoring the horizon with laser rangefinders, sir. Last check, there was no one within fifty miles of this place, sir.’
‘Good,’ Barnaby said. ‘Good.’
He turned his attention back to the pool and the American Marine hanging helplessly above it.
‘Gives us a little time for some R&R,’ Barnaby said.
‘Jesus, can’t this thing go any faster,’ Schofield said as he stared at the depth counter. It ticked slowly downward as they rose through the water. They were still 190 feet from the surface. Still at least seven minutes away.
Schofield watched the image of Book on the screen.
‘Shit!’ Schofield said. ‘Shit!’
‘Mr Nero,’ Barnaby said.
Nero pressed a button on the Maghook’s launcher and suddenly, the Maghook began to play out its rope and Book began to descend toward the pool, head-first.
The water beneath him was choppy. Killer whales sliced through it in every direction. Suddenly, one of them rose above the surface beneath Book and blew a spray of water out of its blowhole.
Book’s head descended toward the water. He was one foot above it when he jolted to a sudden halt.
‘Mr Riley!’ Barnaby called from the safety of the deck.
‘What?’
‘Rule Britannia, Mr Riley!’
Nero hit the button again and Book’s head and upper body plunged underwater.
No sooner was Book underwater than a line of sharp
white teeth whooshed past his face.
Book’s eyes went wide.
There were so many of them! Killer whales all around him. A slow-moving forest of black and white. The whales seemed to prowl around the water.
And then suddenly Book saw one of them spot him, saw it turn suddenly in the water and come at him – at speed.
Book hung there, upside-down in the water, totally exposed, unable to move.
The killer charged at him.
The SAS commandos cheered when they saw the enormous dorsal fin of the killer make a bee line for the submerged Marine.
In the diving bell, Schofield was glued to the monitor.
‘Come on, Book,’ he said. ‘Tell me you’ve got something up your sleeve.’
Book shook his hands behind his back. The cuffs wouldn’t budge.
The killer came at him.
Fast.
It opened its jaws and rolled onto its side and –
– slid past him, brushing roughly against the side of Book’s body.
The SAS commandos booed.
In the diving bell, Schofield breathed a sighed of relief.
Behind him, Renshaw said softly, ‘It’s over.’
‘What do you mean, it’s over?’
‘Remember what I told you before. They stake their claim with the first pass. Then they eat you.’
Book screamed with frustration under the water.
He couldn’t get his hands free.
Couldn’t . . . get . . . his . . . hands . . . free . . .
And then he saw the killer whale again.
It was coming at him a second time. The same whale.
The killer whale powered through the water, faster this time, moving with purpose, its high dorsal fin cutting hard through the chop.
Book saw its jaws open again, and this time he saw the white teeth and the pink tongue and as it came closer and closer his terror became extreme.
The killer whale didn’t roll sideways this time.
It didn’t brush past him this time.
No, this time, the seventon killer whale ploughed into Book with pulverising force and before Book even knew what had hit him, the big whale’s jaws came crashing down around his head.
Inside the diving bell, Schofield stared at the monitor in silence.
‘Holy Christ,’ Renshaw breathed from behind him.
The image on the screen was absolutely horrifying.
A fountain of blood spewed out from the water. The whale had crunched into Book’s suspended body and consumed his entire upper half. Now it was shaking the corpse violently, trying to wrench it free from the rope – like a great white shark grappling with a piece of meat hung out over the side of a boat.
Schofield didn’t say anything.
He swallowed back the vomit welling in his throat.
Down in the cavern, Montana and Sarah Hensleigh stared at the screen above the keypad. Gant had left them. She had gone back over to the fissure she had found at the other end of the cavern.
Sarah Hensleigh stared at the screen.
24157817 – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE
‘It’s a way in,’ she said.
Eight digits were already displayed on the screen. 24157817. Then there were sixteen blank spaces to be filled in with the entry code.
‘Sixteen gaps to fill,’ Montana said. ‘But what’s the entry code?’
‘More numbers,’ Hensleigh said thoughtfully. ‘It’s got to be some kind of numerical code, a code that follows on from the eight numbers already on the screen.’
‘But even if we could figure out the code, how do we insert it into the spaces?’ Montana said.
Sarah Hensleigh leaned forward and pressed the first black button on the keypad.
A number ‘1’ appeared instantly on the screen – in the first blank space.
Montana frowned. ‘How did you know that?’
Hensleigh shrugged. ‘If this thing has instructions written in English, then it’s man-made. Which means this keypad is also man-made. Which means it’s probably just a regular keypad, with numbers set out on it like on a calculator or a telephone. Who knows, maybe the guys who built it just didn’t get round to putting numbers on it.’
Hensleigh hit the second button.
A ‘2’ sprang up in the next blank space. Hensleigh smiled, vindicated.
Then she began to whisper to herself. ‘Sixteen digit code, ten digits to choose from. Shit. We’re talking trillions of possible combinations.’
‘Do you think you can crack it?’ Montana said.
‘I don’t know,’ Hensleigh said. ‘It depends on what the first eight digits are supposed to mean, and whether I can figure that out.’
At that moment, Montana leaned forward and pressed the first button fourteen times. On the screen, the blank spaces filled up quickly.
The screen beeped suddenly. And then a new prompt appeared at the bottom:
24157817 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
INCORRECT CODE ENTERED – ENTRY DENIED
ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE
The screen then reverted back to the original screen, with the original eight numbers and the sixteen blank spaces.
Hensleigh looked at Montana, perplexed. ‘How did you know that?’
Montana smiled. ‘It gives you a second chance if you enter the wrong code. Like most military entry-code systems.’
At the other end of the cavern, Gant was crouched down on the ground over by the fissure she had found at the base of the ice wall. She pointed her flashlight inside the horizontal fissure.
Gant wanted to know more about this cavern. There was something about the cavern itself and the man-made ‘spaceship’ they had found in it that made her wonder . . .
Gant peered in through the fissure. In the beam of her flashlight, she saw a cave. A round, ice-walled cave that seemed to stretch away to the right. The floor of the cave was about five feet beneath her.
Gant lay down on her back and shimmied through the fissure, and began to lower herself down to the floor of this new cave.
And then suddenly, without warning, the ice beneath her gave way and Gant fell clumsily to the floor of the cave.
Clangggggg-!
The sound of her landing on the floor of the cave reverberated all around her. It had sounded like someone hitting a piece of steel with a sledgehammer.
Gant froze.
Steel?
And then slowly – very slowly – she gazed down at the floor beneath her.
The floor was covered with a thin layer of frost, but Gant saw it clearly. Her eyes widened.
She saw the rivets first – small round domes on a dark grey background.
It was metal.
Thick, reinforced metal.
Gant panned her flashlight around the small cave. It was cylindrical in shape – like a train tunnel – with a high, round ceiling that rose above the horizontal fissure through which she had come. The horizontal fissure was about halfway up the wall. In fact, Gant could almost see through the thick ice wall above the fissure, as if it were translucent glass.
Gant swung her flashlight around and pointed it at the tunnel leading away from her.
And then she saw it.
It looked like a door of some sort, made of heavy grey steel. It was set into the ice, and was completely covered in frost and icicles. It looked like a door on a naval vessel or submarine – solid-looking, hinged on a sturdy metal bulkhead.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Gant breathed.
Pete Cameron called the Post’s office in Washington D.C. for the third time. He was sitting in Andrew Trent’s living room.
At last, Alison picked up.
Cameron said, ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling all afternoon.’
‘You’re not gonna believe what I found,’ Alison said.
She recounted for him what she had found on the All States Libraries Database: how the references to latitude and longitude that Cameron had picked up at SETI referred to the location of an ice station in Antarctica – Wilkes Ice Station.
Cameron pulled out his original notes from his visit to SETI, looked at them as Alison spoke.
Then Alison told him about the academics who lived down at the ice station and the papers and books they had written. She also told him about the Library of Congress and the ‘Preliminary Survey’ by C.M. Waitzkin.
‘It was signed out to an O. Niemeyer in 1979,’ Alison said.
Cameron frowned. ‘Niemeyer? Otto Niemeyer? Wasn’t he on the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Nixon?’
‘Under Carter, too,’ Alison said.
Andrew Trent came into the living room. ‘Did someone say Niemeyer?’
‘Yeah,’ Cameron said. ‘Otto Niemeyer. Know him?’
‘Know of him,’ Trent said. ‘He was Air Force. Full colonel. Got on a plane in ’79 and never came back.’
‘That’s the one,’ Alison said, over the phone. ‘Hey, who is that?’
‘Andrew Wilcox,’ Cameron said, looking at Trent.
‘Oh, hey, Andrew, nice to meet you,’ Alison said. ‘And yes, you’re right. Niemeyer got on a silver Air Force Boeing 727 at Andrews Air Force base on the night of 30 December 1979, heading for destination unknown. He never returned.’
‘Aren’t there any records about where he went?’ Pete asked.
‘That’s classified, baby,’ Alison said. ‘Classified. I was able to get a history on him, though. Niemeyer flew Phantoms in Vietnam. Got shot down over the Mekong Delta in ’65. POW for a year. Both legs broken. Rescued in ’66. Drove a desk at the Pentagon after that. Headed the USAF’s Procurement Division for six years from ’68 to ’74. Appointed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1972 by Nixon, continued there under Carter.
‘Apparently, Niemeyer was a player on the stealth project in ’77. He was on the Air Force selection committee that chose the B-2 stealth bomber, made by Northrop-Boeing. The official record, however, shows that Niemeyer voted for the loser in the tender, a consortium made up of General Aeronautics and a small electronics company from California called Entertech Ltd.’
Pete Cameron said, ‘So why would he steal a preliminary land survey about some university research station in Antarctica?’
‘See, that’s the thing,’ Alison said. ‘I don’t think it’s the same station.’
‘What?’
Alison said, ‘Listen, I was looking in this book I bought by one of those Antarctic guys, a guy named Brian Hensleigh. According to him, Wilkes Ice Station was built in 1991.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But Niemeyer disappeared in 1979.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Pete said.
‘What I’m saying is that Niemeyer was looking up a station at that location twelve years before Wilkes Ice Station was ever even thought of.’
Alison paused. ‘Pete, I think there were two stations. Two stations built on the same piece of land. One in 1978 – the one for which a land survey by C.M. Waitzkin was drawn up – and another in 1991.’
Pete Cameron leaned forward, spoke into the phone. ‘What do you mean, you think they built the second station on top of the first one?’
‘I don’t think the people who built the second station – Wilkes Ice Station – even knew about the first one,’ Alison said. ‘Brian Hensleigh doesn’t mention it at all in his book.’
‘So what was it?’ Pete said. ‘Niemeyer’s station, I mean.’
‘Who knows,’ Alison said.
At that moment, Andrew Trent saw the sheet of note-paper in Pete’s hand, took it, and began examining it.
Alison said, ‘So, what about you? Get anything newsworthy on your travels?’
‘You could say that,’ Cameron said, as he recalled in his mind everything Trent had told him about his unit’s slaughter, his official ‘death’ and the Intelligence Convergence Group.
‘Hey,’ Trent said suddenly from across the room. He held up Cameron’s SETI notes. ‘Where did you get these?’
Pete broke off from Alison and looked at the notes he had made at SETI.
COPY 134625
CONTACT LOST – > IONOSPHERIC DISTURB.
FORWARD TEAM
SCARECROW
– 66.5
SOLAR FLARE DISRUPT. RADIO
115, 20 MINS, 12 SECS EAST
HOW GET THERE SO – SECONDARY TEAM EN ROUTE
Pete told Trent about his visit to SETI, told him that those notes were his record of what had been caught on the airwaves by SETI’s radio telescopes.
‘And these co-ordinates,’ Trent said, pointing to the words ‘-66.5’ and ‘115, 20 MINS, 12 SECS EAST’, ‘they refer to a research station in Antarctica?’
‘That’s right,’ Pete said.
Trent looked hard at Pete Cameron. ‘Do you know anything about Marine Force Reconnaissance Units, Mr Cameron?’
‘Only what you’ve told me.’
‘They’re a forward team,’ Trent said.
‘Okay,’ Pete said, seeing the words ‘FORWARD TEAM’ on his notes.
‘Scarecrow . . .’ Trent said, staring down at the notes.
Pete looked from the notes to Trent. ‘What’s a Scarecrow? An operation?’
‘No,’ Trent said a little too suddenly. ‘Scarecrow’s a man. A Marine lieutenant. A friend of mine.’
Pete Cameron waited for Trent to say something more, but he didn’t. And then suddenly, Trent looked up into Cameron’s eyes.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Trent said. ‘Scarecrow’s down there.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alison said a few minutes later. ‘You think there are Marines down at that station?’
‘We think so, yes,’ Cameron said, excited.
‘Jesus, there’s a secondary team en route, too,’ Trent said, looking down at the notes again. ‘Shit.’
Trent turned to Cameron. ‘Hang up for a second. I have to make a phone call.’
Cameron told Alison he’d call her back.
Trent quickly dialled a number. Cameron just watched him.
‘Yes, hi, Personnel, please,’ Trent said into the phone. He waited a second, then said, ‘Yes, hi, I was wondering if you could tell me where I could find Lieutenant Shane Schofield, please. It’s a family emergency. Yes, I’ll hold.’
Trent waited a full minute before someone returned to the line.
‘Yes, hi,’ Trent said. ‘What – oh, I’m his brother-in-law, Michael.’ There was a pause. ‘Oh, no,’ Trent said softly. ‘Oh my God. Yes, thank you. Goodbye.’
Trent practically slammed the phone down. He turned to Cameron. ‘Holy shit.’
‘What?’
‘According to the United States Marine Corps Personnel Department, First Lieutenant Shane M. Schofield died in a training accident in the South Pacific at 0930 hours yesterday morning. Arrangements are being made to contact his family right now.’
Cameron frowned. ‘He’s dead?’
‘According to them he is,’ Trent said softly. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true, now does it.’ Trent paused. ‘The secondary team . . .’
‘What about it?’
‘There’s a secondary team on its way to Wilkes Ice Station right now, right?’
‘Yeah . . .’
‘And according to the United States Marine Corps, Shane Schofield is already dead, right?’
‘Yeah . . .’
Trent thought about that for a long moment. Then he looked up suddenly. ‘Schofield’s found something. They’re gonna kill him.’
Cameron got Alison back on the phone.
‘Quick, send it through now,’ he said.
‘All right. All right. Just hold on a second, honey buns,’ Alison said. Cameron heard the clicking of computer keys at the other end of the line.
‘Okay, I’m sending it through now,’ Alison said.
On the far side of the living room, Trent flicked on his computer. He clicked through several screens, came to his e-mail screen.
A small information bar at the bottom of the screen blinked:
YOU HAVE NEW MAIL.
trent clicked on the ‘open’ icon.
A list appeared immediately on the screen:
ALL-STATES LIBRARY DATABASE
The corporal offered Barnaby a small black unit the size of a thick calculator. It had a numbered keypad on it. ‘The detonation unit, sir.’
Barnaby took it. ‘How are the outer markers looking?’
‘We have five men stationed along the outer perimeter monitoring the horizon with laser rangefinders, sir. Last check, there was no one within fifty miles of this place, sir.’
‘Good,’ Barnaby said. ‘Good.’
He turned his attention back to the pool and the American Marine hanging helplessly above it.
‘Gives us a little time for some R&R,’ Barnaby said.
‘Jesus, can’t this thing go any faster,’ Schofield said as he stared at the depth counter. It ticked slowly downward as they rose through the water. They were still 190 feet from the surface. Still at least seven minutes away.
Schofield watched the image of Book on the screen.
‘Shit!’ Schofield said. ‘Shit!’
‘Mr Nero,’ Barnaby said.
Nero pressed a button on the Maghook’s launcher and suddenly, the Maghook began to play out its rope and Book began to descend toward the pool, head-first.
The water beneath him was choppy. Killer whales sliced through it in every direction. Suddenly, one of them rose above the surface beneath Book and blew a spray of water out of its blowhole.
Book’s head descended toward the water. He was one foot above it when he jolted to a sudden halt.
‘Mr Riley!’ Barnaby called from the safety of the deck.
‘What?’
‘Rule Britannia, Mr Riley!’
Nero hit the button again and Book’s head and upper body plunged underwater.
No sooner was Book underwater than a line of sharp
white teeth whooshed past his face.
Book’s eyes went wide.
There were so many of them! Killer whales all around him. A slow-moving forest of black and white. The whales seemed to prowl around the water.
And then suddenly Book saw one of them spot him, saw it turn suddenly in the water and come at him – at speed.
Book hung there, upside-down in the water, totally exposed, unable to move.
The killer charged at him.
The SAS commandos cheered when they saw the enormous dorsal fin of the killer make a bee line for the submerged Marine.
In the diving bell, Schofield was glued to the monitor.
‘Come on, Book,’ he said. ‘Tell me you’ve got something up your sleeve.’
Book shook his hands behind his back. The cuffs wouldn’t budge.
The killer came at him.
Fast.
It opened its jaws and rolled onto its side and –
– slid past him, brushing roughly against the side of Book’s body.
The SAS commandos booed.
In the diving bell, Schofield breathed a sighed of relief.
Behind him, Renshaw said softly, ‘It’s over.’
‘What do you mean, it’s over?’
‘Remember what I told you before. They stake their claim with the first pass. Then they eat you.’
Book screamed with frustration under the water.
He couldn’t get his hands free.
Couldn’t . . . get . . . his . . . hands . . . free . . .
And then he saw the killer whale again.
It was coming at him a second time. The same whale.
The killer whale powered through the water, faster this time, moving with purpose, its high dorsal fin cutting hard through the chop.
Book saw its jaws open again, and this time he saw the white teeth and the pink tongue and as it came closer and closer his terror became extreme.
The killer whale didn’t roll sideways this time.
It didn’t brush past him this time.
No, this time, the seventon killer whale ploughed into Book with pulverising force and before Book even knew what had hit him, the big whale’s jaws came crashing down around his head.
Inside the diving bell, Schofield stared at the monitor in silence.
‘Holy Christ,’ Renshaw breathed from behind him.
The image on the screen was absolutely horrifying.
A fountain of blood spewed out from the water. The whale had crunched into Book’s suspended body and consumed his entire upper half. Now it was shaking the corpse violently, trying to wrench it free from the rope – like a great white shark grappling with a piece of meat hung out over the side of a boat.
Schofield didn’t say anything.
He swallowed back the vomit welling in his throat.
Down in the cavern, Montana and Sarah Hensleigh stared at the screen above the keypad. Gant had left them. She had gone back over to the fissure she had found at the other end of the cavern.
Sarah Hensleigh stared at the screen.
24157817 – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE
‘It’s a way in,’ she said.
Eight digits were already displayed on the screen. 24157817. Then there were sixteen blank spaces to be filled in with the entry code.
‘Sixteen gaps to fill,’ Montana said. ‘But what’s the entry code?’
‘More numbers,’ Hensleigh said thoughtfully. ‘It’s got to be some kind of numerical code, a code that follows on from the eight numbers already on the screen.’
‘But even if we could figure out the code, how do we insert it into the spaces?’ Montana said.
Sarah Hensleigh leaned forward and pressed the first black button on the keypad.
A number ‘1’ appeared instantly on the screen – in the first blank space.
Montana frowned. ‘How did you know that?’
Hensleigh shrugged. ‘If this thing has instructions written in English, then it’s man-made. Which means this keypad is also man-made. Which means it’s probably just a regular keypad, with numbers set out on it like on a calculator or a telephone. Who knows, maybe the guys who built it just didn’t get round to putting numbers on it.’
Hensleigh hit the second button.
A ‘2’ sprang up in the next blank space. Hensleigh smiled, vindicated.
Then she began to whisper to herself. ‘Sixteen digit code, ten digits to choose from. Shit. We’re talking trillions of possible combinations.’
‘Do you think you can crack it?’ Montana said.
‘I don’t know,’ Hensleigh said. ‘It depends on what the first eight digits are supposed to mean, and whether I can figure that out.’
At that moment, Montana leaned forward and pressed the first button fourteen times. On the screen, the blank spaces filled up quickly.
The screen beeped suddenly. And then a new prompt appeared at the bottom:
24157817 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
INCORRECT CODE ENTERED – ENTRY DENIED
ENTER AUTHORIZED ENTRY CODE
The screen then reverted back to the original screen, with the original eight numbers and the sixteen blank spaces.
Hensleigh looked at Montana, perplexed. ‘How did you know that?’
Montana smiled. ‘It gives you a second chance if you enter the wrong code. Like most military entry-code systems.’
At the other end of the cavern, Gant was crouched down on the ground over by the fissure she had found at the base of the ice wall. She pointed her flashlight inside the horizontal fissure.
Gant wanted to know more about this cavern. There was something about the cavern itself and the man-made ‘spaceship’ they had found in it that made her wonder . . .
Gant peered in through the fissure. In the beam of her flashlight, she saw a cave. A round, ice-walled cave that seemed to stretch away to the right. The floor of the cave was about five feet beneath her.
Gant lay down on her back and shimmied through the fissure, and began to lower herself down to the floor of this new cave.
And then suddenly, without warning, the ice beneath her gave way and Gant fell clumsily to the floor of the cave.
Clangggggg-!
The sound of her landing on the floor of the cave reverberated all around her. It had sounded like someone hitting a piece of steel with a sledgehammer.
Gant froze.
Steel?
And then slowly – very slowly – she gazed down at the floor beneath her.
The floor was covered with a thin layer of frost, but Gant saw it clearly. Her eyes widened.
She saw the rivets first – small round domes on a dark grey background.
It was metal.
Thick, reinforced metal.
Gant panned her flashlight around the small cave. It was cylindrical in shape – like a train tunnel – with a high, round ceiling that rose above the horizontal fissure through which she had come. The horizontal fissure was about halfway up the wall. In fact, Gant could almost see through the thick ice wall above the fissure, as if it were translucent glass.
Gant swung her flashlight around and pointed it at the tunnel leading away from her.
And then she saw it.
It looked like a door of some sort, made of heavy grey steel. It was set into the ice, and was completely covered in frost and icicles. It looked like a door on a naval vessel or submarine – solid-looking, hinged on a sturdy metal bulkhead.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Gant breathed.
Pete Cameron called the Post’s office in Washington D.C. for the third time. He was sitting in Andrew Trent’s living room.
At last, Alison picked up.
Cameron said, ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling all afternoon.’
‘You’re not gonna believe what I found,’ Alison said.
She recounted for him what she had found on the All States Libraries Database: how the references to latitude and longitude that Cameron had picked up at SETI referred to the location of an ice station in Antarctica – Wilkes Ice Station.
Cameron pulled out his original notes from his visit to SETI, looked at them as Alison spoke.
Then Alison told him about the academics who lived down at the ice station and the papers and books they had written. She also told him about the Library of Congress and the ‘Preliminary Survey’ by C.M. Waitzkin.
‘It was signed out to an O. Niemeyer in 1979,’ Alison said.
Cameron frowned. ‘Niemeyer? Otto Niemeyer? Wasn’t he on the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Nixon?’
‘Under Carter, too,’ Alison said.
Andrew Trent came into the living room. ‘Did someone say Niemeyer?’
‘Yeah,’ Cameron said. ‘Otto Niemeyer. Know him?’
‘Know of him,’ Trent said. ‘He was Air Force. Full colonel. Got on a plane in ’79 and never came back.’
‘That’s the one,’ Alison said, over the phone. ‘Hey, who is that?’
‘Andrew Wilcox,’ Cameron said, looking at Trent.
‘Oh, hey, Andrew, nice to meet you,’ Alison said. ‘And yes, you’re right. Niemeyer got on a silver Air Force Boeing 727 at Andrews Air Force base on the night of 30 December 1979, heading for destination unknown. He never returned.’
‘Aren’t there any records about where he went?’ Pete asked.
‘That’s classified, baby,’ Alison said. ‘Classified. I was able to get a history on him, though. Niemeyer flew Phantoms in Vietnam. Got shot down over the Mekong Delta in ’65. POW for a year. Both legs broken. Rescued in ’66. Drove a desk at the Pentagon after that. Headed the USAF’s Procurement Division for six years from ’68 to ’74. Appointed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1972 by Nixon, continued there under Carter.
‘Apparently, Niemeyer was a player on the stealth project in ’77. He was on the Air Force selection committee that chose the B-2 stealth bomber, made by Northrop-Boeing. The official record, however, shows that Niemeyer voted for the loser in the tender, a consortium made up of General Aeronautics and a small electronics company from California called Entertech Ltd.’
Pete Cameron said, ‘So why would he steal a preliminary land survey about some university research station in Antarctica?’
‘See, that’s the thing,’ Alison said. ‘I don’t think it’s the same station.’
‘What?’
Alison said, ‘Listen, I was looking in this book I bought by one of those Antarctic guys, a guy named Brian Hensleigh. According to him, Wilkes Ice Station was built in 1991.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But Niemeyer disappeared in 1979.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Pete said.
‘What I’m saying is that Niemeyer was looking up a station at that location twelve years before Wilkes Ice Station was ever even thought of.’
Alison paused. ‘Pete, I think there were two stations. Two stations built on the same piece of land. One in 1978 – the one for which a land survey by C.M. Waitzkin was drawn up – and another in 1991.’
Pete Cameron leaned forward, spoke into the phone. ‘What do you mean, you think they built the second station on top of the first one?’
‘I don’t think the people who built the second station – Wilkes Ice Station – even knew about the first one,’ Alison said. ‘Brian Hensleigh doesn’t mention it at all in his book.’
‘So what was it?’ Pete said. ‘Niemeyer’s station, I mean.’
‘Who knows,’ Alison said.
At that moment, Andrew Trent saw the sheet of note-paper in Pete’s hand, took it, and began examining it.
Alison said, ‘So, what about you? Get anything newsworthy on your travels?’
‘You could say that,’ Cameron said, as he recalled in his mind everything Trent had told him about his unit’s slaughter, his official ‘death’ and the Intelligence Convergence Group.
‘Hey,’ Trent said suddenly from across the room. He held up Cameron’s SETI notes. ‘Where did you get these?’
Pete broke off from Alison and looked at the notes he had made at SETI.
COPY 134625
CONTACT LOST – > IONOSPHERIC DISTURB.
FORWARD TEAM
SCARECROW
– 66.5
SOLAR FLARE DISRUPT. RADIO
115, 20 MINS, 12 SECS EAST
HOW GET THERE SO – SECONDARY TEAM EN ROUTE
Pete told Trent about his visit to SETI, told him that those notes were his record of what had been caught on the airwaves by SETI’s radio telescopes.
‘And these co-ordinates,’ Trent said, pointing to the words ‘-66.5’ and ‘115, 20 MINS, 12 SECS EAST’, ‘they refer to a research station in Antarctica?’
‘That’s right,’ Pete said.
Trent looked hard at Pete Cameron. ‘Do you know anything about Marine Force Reconnaissance Units, Mr Cameron?’
‘Only what you’ve told me.’
‘They’re a forward team,’ Trent said.
‘Okay,’ Pete said, seeing the words ‘FORWARD TEAM’ on his notes.
‘Scarecrow . . .’ Trent said, staring down at the notes.
Pete looked from the notes to Trent. ‘What’s a Scarecrow? An operation?’
‘No,’ Trent said a little too suddenly. ‘Scarecrow’s a man. A Marine lieutenant. A friend of mine.’
Pete Cameron waited for Trent to say something more, but he didn’t. And then suddenly, Trent looked up into Cameron’s eyes.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Trent said. ‘Scarecrow’s down there.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alison said a few minutes later. ‘You think there are Marines down at that station?’
‘We think so, yes,’ Cameron said, excited.
‘Jesus, there’s a secondary team en route, too,’ Trent said, looking down at the notes again. ‘Shit.’
Trent turned to Cameron. ‘Hang up for a second. I have to make a phone call.’
Cameron told Alison he’d call her back.
Trent quickly dialled a number. Cameron just watched him.
‘Yes, hi, Personnel, please,’ Trent said into the phone. He waited a second, then said, ‘Yes, hi, I was wondering if you could tell me where I could find Lieutenant Shane Schofield, please. It’s a family emergency. Yes, I’ll hold.’
Trent waited a full minute before someone returned to the line.
‘Yes, hi,’ Trent said. ‘What – oh, I’m his brother-in-law, Michael.’ There was a pause. ‘Oh, no,’ Trent said softly. ‘Oh my God. Yes, thank you. Goodbye.’
Trent practically slammed the phone down. He turned to Cameron. ‘Holy shit.’
‘What?’
‘According to the United States Marine Corps Personnel Department, First Lieutenant Shane M. Schofield died in a training accident in the South Pacific at 0930 hours yesterday morning. Arrangements are being made to contact his family right now.’
Cameron frowned. ‘He’s dead?’
‘According to them he is,’ Trent said softly. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true, now does it.’ Trent paused. ‘The secondary team . . .’
‘What about it?’
‘There’s a secondary team on its way to Wilkes Ice Station right now, right?’
‘Yeah . . .’
‘And according to the United States Marine Corps, Shane Schofield is already dead, right?’
‘Yeah . . .’
Trent thought about that for a long moment. Then he looked up suddenly. ‘Schofield’s found something. They’re gonna kill him.’
Cameron got Alison back on the phone.
‘Quick, send it through now,’ he said.
‘All right. All right. Just hold on a second, honey buns,’ Alison said. Cameron heard the clicking of computer keys at the other end of the line.
‘Okay, I’m sending it through now,’ Alison said.
On the far side of the living room, Trent flicked on his computer. He clicked through several screens, came to his e-mail screen.
A small information bar at the bottom of the screen blinked:
YOU HAVE NEW MAIL.
trent clicked on the ‘open’ icon.
A list appeared immediately on the screen:
ALL-STATES LIBRARY DATABASE
