Ice Station, page 41
‘Here, swallow these,’ Schofield said as he handed a blue capsule to each of them. They were N-67D anti-nitrogen capsules. The same pills that Schofield had given to Gant and the others when they had gone down to the cavern earlier. They all quickly swallowed the pills.
Schofield discarded his fatigues and put his body armour and gunbelt back on over his wetsuit. As he went through the pockets of his fatigues he found, among other things, a nitrogen charge and Sarah Hensleigh’s silver locket. Schofield transferred both items to pockets in his wetsuit. Then he quickly began to put on one of the scuba tanks.
There were three tanks in all, all of them filled with four hours’ worth of a saturated helium-oxygen mix: 98% helium, 2% oxygen. They were the auxiliary tanks that Schofield had got Gant to prepare before she had gone down to the cave earlier.
As he put his own LABA gear on, Renshaw helped Kirsty get into hers.
Schofield got his tanks on first. When he was ready, he immediately began searching the deck around him for something heavy – something very heavy – since they would need a good weight to take them down fast.
He found what he was looking for.
A length of the B-deck catwalk that had fallen down to E-deck back when the whole of B-deck had gone up in flames earlier. The length of metal catwalk was about ten feet long, and made of solid steel. It even had a section of its handrail still attached to it.
When Renshaw was also ready, Schofield got him to help drag it to the edge of the pool. The big length of metal catwalk screeched loudly as they dragged it across the deck.
As they worked, Wendy hopped up and down beside them, like a dog begging to go for a walk.
‘Is Wendy coming with us?’ Kirsty asked.
Schofield said, ‘I hope so. I was hoping she would show us the way.’
At that, Kirsty leapt to her feet and hurried over to the wall by the side of the pool. She grabbed a harness from a hook and brought it back to the edge of the pool. Then she began to strap the harness around Wendy’s mid-section.
‘What’s that?’ Schofield asked.
‘Don’t worry. It’ll help.’
‘Fine, whatever. Just stay close,’ Schofield said as he and Renshaw positioned the length of catwalk on the edge of the deck, so that it was all-but-ready to fall off.
‘All right,’ Schofield said. ‘Everybody in the water.’
The three of them jumped into the water and swam back underneath the length of catwalk. Wendy happily leapt into the water after them.
‘All right, get a grip on the catwalk,’ Schofield’s voice said over their underwater headsets.
They all grabbed hold of the length of catwalk. They looked like a set of Olympic swimmers preparing to swim a backstroke race.
Schofield placed his hand over Kirsty’s, to make sure she didn’t lose her hold on the catwalk as it sank through the water.
‘Okay, Mr Renshaw,’ Schofield said. ‘Pull!’
At that moment, Schofield and Renshaw heaved on the catwalk, and suddenly the length of heavy catwalk tipped off the edge of the deck and fell into the water with a massive splash.
The metal catwalk sank through the water fast.
The three small figures of Schofield, Renshaw and Kirsty clung grimly to it as it fell. They were all pointing downwards, their feet flailing above them. Wendy swam quickly down through the water behind them.
Schofield looked at the depth gauge on his wrist.
Ten feet.
Twenty feet.
Thirty feet.
Down they went, falling fast, through the magnificent white underwater world.
As they fell, Schofield tried to keep one eye on the white ice wall to his left. He searched for a hole in it, searched for the entrance to the short-cut tunnel that led to the underwater ice tunnel.
They hit a hundred feet. Without the pills, the nitrogen in their blood would have killed them by now.
Two hundred feet.
Three hundred.
They flew downwards through the water. It became darker, harder to see.
Four hundred, five hundred.
They were falling so quickly.
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 dis-appeared 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 inky 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 downwards. Schofield swam in the lead, with Kirsty behind him and Renshaw bringing up the rear. Since they were swimming downwards, 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. Okay. This is Blue Leader, Fox One. . . fire!’
The squadron leader jammed down on his 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 straight away.
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 co-ordinates 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 inwards 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 short-cut tunnel and found himself inside a wider, ice-walled tunnel.
Schofield 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!
Schofield and the others swam out into the underwater ice tunnel. Then they swam quickly upward, watching the holes in the ice walls around them with more than a little trepidation.
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 Kirsty holding onto Wendy in the water beside him. Wendy 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. Kirsty just slapped Wendy’s flank and Wendy shot forward through the water.
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 Schofield heard a hoarse bark cut across the underwater spectrum. Schofield spun in the water, looked about himself, then he 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.
Wendy raced for the surface, with Kirsty clutching onto her harness. It was like a rollercoaster ride as Wendy ducked and weaved and banked and turned to avoid the biting teeth of the elephant seals charging at her and Kirsty from every side.
And then suddenly Wendy spotted a gap and caught a glimpse of the surface. With Kirsty clutching onto her harness, she went for it.
Elephant seals lunged and snapped at them from every side but Wendy was too quick. She hit the surface and exploded out of the water.
Kirsty hit the solid ice floor of the cavern with a hard thump. She looked up and saw Wendy moving quickly away from the edge of the pool. Kirsty leapt to her feet just as the earth shook behind her.
Kirsty turned. One of the elephant seals had launched itself out of the water behind her, and now it was loping across the flat floor of the cavern, chasing after her!
Kirsty ran, then stumbled, then fell.
The elephant seal continued its charge. Kirsty was on the floor of the cavern, totally exposed –
– and then suddenly boom! the elephant seal’s face exploded with blood and the big seal went sprawling head-first to the ground.
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.
Renshaw broke the surface on the other side of the pool and found himself right next to the edge when all of a sudden he felt a sharp pain around his right ankle and whump! he was yanked under.
Underwater, Renshaw looked down and saw that one of the elephant seals had its mouth around his right foot. This seal looked smaller than the others and it had those distinctive lower fangs that he had seen on the larger male before.
Renshaw used his spare foot to kick the small seal in the snout. The seal squealed with pain as it released him and Renshaw swam again for the surface.
Renshaw burst up out of the water, 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, larger seal 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 – Kirsty over on one side of the pool, Renshaw over on the other. Then he saw 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 the open jaws of the big bull seal rose up out of the water in front of him, obliterating his view of the big black ship.
The big seal was already moving fast and it ploughed 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 armour over his wetsuit, and the bull seal’s fangs had lodged in his kevlar breastplate.
The elephant seal drove him downward through the water, 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.
Down and down Schofield went, on the end of the giant seal’s nose. Bubbles shot out from the big animal’s 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 jammed 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 realised that it had lost him, 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 the 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 realised. It was the liquid nitrogen from the charge, expanding through the water, freezing the water as it went!
The wall of ice shot through the water towards Schofield, constantly expanding, like a living, breathing ice formation growing through the water.
Schofield watched it with wide eyes. If it enveloped him, he would be dead in an instant.
