SEARCH BY KEYWORD
SEARCH STRING USED: LATITUDE – 66.5°
LONGITUDE 115° 20’ 12”
NO. OF ENTRIES FOUND: 6
TITLE AUTHOR LOCATION YEAR
DOCTORAL THESIS LLEWELLYN, D.K. STANFORD, CT 1998
DOCTORAL THESIS AUSTIN, B.E. STANFORD, CT 1997
POST-DOCTORAL THESIS HENSLEIGH, S.T. USC, CA 1997
FELLOWSHIP GRANT RESEARCH PAPER HENSLEIGH, B.M. HARVARD, MA 1996
‘THE ICE CRUSADE – REFLECTIONS ON A YEAR SPENT IN ANTARCTICA’
HENSLEIGH, B.M.
HARVARD, MA
AVAIL: AML
1995
PRELIMINARY SURVEY WAITZKIN, C.M. LIBCONG 1978
* * *
It was the list Alison had got from the All States Database. The list of every work that referred to Latitude – 66.5° and Longitude 115° 20’ 12”.
‘All right,’ Pete said.
‘What are you going to do with it?’ Alison’s voice said over the speaker phone.
‘We’re gonna use this list to find their addresses,’ Trent said, typing quickly at the keyboard. ‘The e-mail addresses of the academics down in Antarctica, so we can send a message to Schofield.’
‘We figure that most university professors have e-mail,’ Pete said, ‘and we’re hoping that Wilkes Ice Station is patched in to a satellite phone so that the message can get through.’
Suddenly Trent said, ‘All right, I got one! Hensleigh, Sarah T. The e-mail address is at USC in California, but it’s been routed to an external address: sarahhensleigh@wilkes. edu.us. That’s it!’
Trent typed some more.
‘All right,’ he said a minute later. ‘Excellent. They’ve got a universal address down there:
[email protected]. Excellent. Now, we can send an e-mail to anyone who has a computer at that station.’
‘Do it,’ Cameron said.
Trent typed a message, then did a quick cut-and-paste. When he was finished he practically slammed his finger down on the ‘SEND’ button.
Libby Gant stood in front of the heavy steel door set into the small ice tunnel.
It had a rusty pressure-wheel attached to it. With some difficulty, Gant turned it. She rotated it three times.
And then suddenly, Gant heard a loud clunking noise from within the great steel door, and the door creaked opened a fraction.
Gant pulled the door wide and shone her flashlight beyond it.
‘Whoa,’ she said.
It looked like an aeroplane hangar. It was so big, Gant’s flashlight wasn’t even strong enough to see the far end. But she could see enough.
She could see walls.
Man-made walls.
Steel walls, with heavy reinforcing girders holding up a high aluminium ceiling. Huge yellow robotic arms stood silently in the gloom, covered in frost. Halogen lights lined the ceiling. Some metal girders lay at awkward angles on the floor in front of her. Gant saw that several of them had jagged marks at their ends – they had been broken clean in two. Everything was covered in a layer of ice.
Gant saw a piece of paper at her feet. She picked it up. It was frozen solid, but she could still read the letterhead. It read:
ENTERTECH LTD.
Gant walked back to the small tunnel that led to the main cavern. She called to Montana and Hensleigh.
A few minutes later, Montana rolled through the horizontal fissure and walked with Gant into the giant subterranean hangar.
‘What the hell is going on here?’ he said.
They entered the hangar, their flashlights creating beams of light. Montana went left. Gant went right.
Gant came to an office-type structure which seemed to be overgrown with ice. The door to the office opened with a loud creak, and slowly, very slowly, Gant stepped inside.
A body was lying on the floor of the office.
A man.
His eyes were closed, and he was naked. His skin had turned blue. He looked like he was asleep.
Gant saw a desk on the far side of the office, saw something on it. Moving toward the desk, she saw that it was a book of some kind, a leatherbound book.
It just sat there on the desk all by itself. The rest of the desk was bare. It was almost, Gant thought, as if someone had left it there deliberately, so that it would be the first thing a visitor found.
Gant picked up the book. It was covered in a layer of frost and the pages were hard, like cardboard.
Gant opened it.
It appeared to be a diary of some sort.
Gant read an entry near the beginning:
2 June, 1978
Things are going well. But it’s so cold!! I can’t believe they brought us all the way down here to build a fucking attack plane! The weather outside is terrible. Blizzard conditions. Thankfully, our hangar is built below the surface, so we stay out of the weather. The sad irony is, we need the cold. The system’s plutonium core maintains its grade for longer in the colder temperatures . . .
Gant jumped ahead to a page not far from the end of the diary.
15 February, 1980
No one’s coming. I’m sure of it now. Bill Holden died yesterday and we had to cut Pat Anderson’s hands off they were so frostbitten.
It’s been two months now since the quake hit and I’ve given up all hope of rescue. Someone said Old Man Niemeyer was supposed to be coming down here in December, but he hasn’t showed.
When I go to sleep at night, I wonder if anyone but Niemeyer knows we’re here.
Gant flipped back some pages, looking for something. She found what she was looking for around the middle of the diary.
20 December, 1979
I don’t know where I am. We were hit by an earthquake yesterday, the biggest motherfucking earthquake you have ever seen. It was as if the earth opened up and just swallowed us whole.
I was down in the hangar when it happened, working on the bird. First, the ground began to shake and then suddenly this massive wall of ice just thrust up out of the ground and ripped the hangar in half. And then we just seemed to fall. Fall and fall. Massive chunks of the ice shelf (each one the size of a building, I estimated) caved in on either side of us as we were sucked down into the earth – I saw them make enormous dents in the roof of the hangar. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The quake must have ripped an enormous hole underneath the station and we just fell down into it.
We just kept going down. Down and down. Shaking and falling. One of the big robot arms fell on Doug Myers, crushed him to death . . .
Gant was stunned.
This ‘hangar’ had been an ice station.
An ice station that had been set up in the utmost secrecy to build a plane of some sort – a plane, Gant noticed, that used plutonium. But this station, it seemed, had originally been up on the surface – or rather, buried just underneath the surface like Wilkes Ice Station – until an earthquake had hit it and sucked it underground.
Gant flicked to the very last page of the diary.
17 March, 1980
I am the last one alive. All of my colleagues are dead. It has been almost three months now since the quake hit and I know no one is coming. My left hand is frost-bitten and gangrenous. I cannot feel my feet anymore.
I cannot go on. I am going to strip myself naked and lie down in the ice. It should only take a few minutes. If anyone should read this in the future, know that my name was Simon Wayne Daniels. I was an aviation electronics specialist for Entertech Ltd. My wife, Lily, lives in Palmdale, although I don’t know if she’ll be there when you read this. Please find her and tell her that I loved her and tell her that I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell her where I went.
It is so very cold.
Gant looked at the naked body on the floor at her feet.
Simon Wayne Daniels.
Gant felt a pang of sadness for him. He had died here, alone. Buried alive in this cold, icy tomb.
And then all of a sudden, Santa Cruz’s voice exploded across her helmet intercom, shattering her thoughts: ‘Montana! Fox! Get out here! Ge
t out here now! I have a visual on enemy divers! I repeat! Enemy divers are about to come up inside the cavern!’
The team of SAS divers made their way up the underwater ice tunnel with the aid of sea sleds. There were eight of them, and by virtue of their twin-propeller sea sleds, they moved quickly through the water. All of them wore black.
‘Base. This is Dive Team. Come in,’ the lead diver said into his helmet communicator.
‘Dive Team, this is Base,’ Barnaby’s voice came in over the intercom. ‘Report.’
‘Base, time is now 1956 hours. Dive time since leaving the diving bell is fifty-four minutes. We have a visual on the surface. We are coming up to the cavern.’
‘Dive Team, be aware. We have intel that there are four hostile agents inside that cavern waiting for you. I repeat, there are four hostile agents inside the cavern waiting for you. Use appropriate action.’
‘Copy Base. We will. Dive Team out.’
Gant and Montana came sprinting back into the main cavern.
They came up alongside Santa Cruz, who was manning the tripod-mounted MP-5s. He pointed down into the pool.
Several ominous black shadows could be seen rising up through the clear, aqua-coloured water.
The three Marines took up positions behind various boulders, MP-5s in their hands. Montana told Sarah Hensleigh to stay behind him and stay down.
‘Don’t be impatient,’ Montana’s voice said over their helmet intercoms. ‘Wait for them to breach the surface. It’s no use firing into the water.’
‘Got it,’ Gant said as she saw the first shadow rise steadily through the water toward the surface.
A diver. On a sea sled.
He came closer and closer, up and up, until strangely, just below the surface, he stopped.
Gant frowned.
The diver had just stopped there, about a foot below the surface.
What was he doing –
And then suddenly the diver’s hand shot up out of the water and Gant saw the object in his hand instantly.
‘Nitrogen charge!’ Gant yelled. ‘Take cover!’
The diver tossed the nitrogen charge and it bounced onto the hard, icy floor of the cavern. Gant and the other Marines all ducked behind their boulders.
The nitrogen charge exploded.
Supercooled liquid nitrogen splattered everything in sight. The gooey, blue poxy smacked against the boulders the Marines were hiding behind, splattered against the walls of the cavern. Some of it even hit the big black ship standing in the middle of the enormous cave.
It was the perfect diversion.
Because no sooner had the nitrogen charge gone off than the first SAS commando was charging out of the water with his gun pressed to his shoulder and his finger jamming down on the trigger.
The diving bell was almost at the surface now. It continued its slow rise upward.
An angry commander, acting under the influence of rage or frustration, will almost certainly get his unit killed.
Trevor Barnaby’s words echoed inside Shane Schofield’s head. Schofield ignored them.
After he had seen Barnaby feed Book Riley to the killer whales, his anger had become intense. He wanted to kill Barnaby. He wanted to rip his heart out and serve it up to him on a –
Schofield untied the length of cable wrapped around his waist and ripped the two bulky sixties wetsuits off his body. Then he grabbed his MP-5 and chambered a round. If he didn’t kill Barnaby, then he was damn well going to take out as many of them as he could.
As he readied his gun, Schofield saw a small Samsonite carry case on one of the shelves of the diving bell. He opened it. And saw a row of blue nitrogen charges sitting in a cushioned interior, like eggs in an egg-box.
The SAS must have left them here when they went down to the cave, Schofield thought as he grabbed one of the nitrogen charges and put it in his pocket.
Schofield looked outside. The killer whales, it seemed, had disappeared for the moment. For a brief instant, Schofield wondered where they had gone.
‘What are you doing?’ Renshaw said.
‘You’ll see,’ Schofield said as he stepped around the circular pool at the base of the diving bell.
‘You’re going out there?’ Renshaw said in disbelief. ‘You’re leaving me here?’
‘You’ll be okay.’ Schofield tossed Renshaw his Desert Eagle pistol. ‘If they come for you, use that.’
Renshaw caught the gun. Schofield didn’t even notice. He just turned around, and without even a second glance back at Renshaw, stepped off the metal deck of the diving bell and dropped into the water.
The water was near-freezing but Schofield didn’t care.
He kept hold of the diving bell and climbed up one of its exterior pipes, pulled himself up onto its spherical roof.
They were almost up at the station now.
And as soon as they got there, Schofield thought, as soon as they broke the surface, he was going to let rip with the most devastating burst of gunfire the SAS had ever seen – aimed first and foremost at Trevor J. Barnaby.
The diving bell rose through the water, approaching the surface.
Any second now, Schofield thought as he gripped his MP-5.
Any second . . .
The diving bell broke the surface with a loud splash.
And there, standing on top of it, holding onto its winch cable, dripping with water, was Lieutenant Shane Schofield, with his MP-5 raised.
But Schofield didn’t fire.
He blanched.
The whole of E-deck was lined with at least twenty SAS troopers. They stood in a ring around the pool, surrounding the diving bell.
And they all had their guns trained on Shane Schofield.
Barnaby stepped out from the southern tunnel, smiling. Schofield turned and saw him, and as he did so, he cursed himself, cursed his anger, cursed his impulsiveness, for he knew now that in the heat of the moment, in the pure anger that he had felt following Book’s death, he had just made the biggest mistake of his life.
Shane Schofield tossed his MP-5 over to the deck. It clattered against the metal decking. The SAS commandos caught hold of the diving bell with a long hook and pulled it through the water toward the deck.
Schofield’s mind was working again, and with crystal clarity. In the moment that he had broken the surface and seen the SAS troops with their guns pointed at him, his senses had returned with all their force.
He hoped to hell that Renshaw was keeping himself hidden inside the diving bell.
Schofield jumped down off the diving bell and landed with a loud clang on E-deck. He breathed a hidden sigh of relief when the SAS commandos released the diving bell and let it float back out into the centre of the pool. They hadn’t seen Renshaw.
Then two big SAS commandos grabbed Schofield roughly, pinned his arms behind his back and slapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. Another SAS soldier frisked Schofield thoroughly and pulled the nitrogen charge out of his pocket. He also took Schofield’s Maghook.
Trevor Barnaby came over. ‘So, Scarecrow. At last we meet. It’s good to see you again.’
Schofield said nothing. He noticed that Barnaby was wearing a black thermal wetsuit.
He’s planning on sending another team down to the cave, Schofield thought, with himself included.
‘You’ve been watching us from the diving bell, haven’t you,’ Barnaby said, grinning. ‘But so, too, have we been watching you.’ Barnaby smiled as he indicated a small grey unit mounted on the edge of the pool. It looked like a camera of some sort, pointed down into the water.
‘One never leaves any flank unguarded,’ Barnaby said. ‘You of all people should know that.’
Schofield said nothing.
Barnaby began to pace. ‘You know, when I was told that you were leading the American protective force on this mission, I’d hoped that we might get a chance to meet. But then, when I arrived, you flew the coop.’ Barnaby stopped his pacing. ‘And then I heard that you were last seen flying
off a cliff in a hovercraft and suddenly I was sure we wouldn’t be meeting.’
Schofield said nothing.
‘But now, well,’ Barnaby shook his head, ‘I’m so glad I was wrong. What a pleasure it is to see you again. It’s really quite a shame that we have to meet in these circumstances.’
‘Why is that?’ Schofield said, speaking for the first time.
‘Because it means that one of us has to die.’
‘My sympathies to your family,’ Schofield said.
‘Aha!’ Barnaby said. ‘Some fight. I like that. That’s what I always liked about you, Scarecrow. You’ve got fight in you. You may not be the greatest strategic commander in the world, but you’re a damned determined son of a bitch. If you don’t pick up something right away, you knuckle down and learn it. And if you find yourself on the back foot, you never give up. You can’t buy that sort of courage these days.’
Schofield said nothing.
‘Take heart, Scarecrow. Truth be told, you never could have won this crusade. You were hobbled from the start. Your own men weren’t even loyal to you.’
Barnaby turned to look at Snake Kaplan on the far side of the pool. Schofield turned to look, too.
‘You’d like to kill him, wouldn’t you,’ Barnaby said, staring at Snake.
Schofield said nothing.
Barnaby turned, his eyes narrowing. ‘You would, wouldn’t you?’
Schofield remained silent.
Barnaby seemed to think about something for a moment. When he turned back to face Schofield, he had a glint in his eye.
‘You know what,’ he said. ‘I’m going to give you the chance to do exactly that. A sporting chance, of course, but a chance nonetheless.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, since I’m going to kill you both anyway, I figure I might as well leave it up to the two of you to decide who gets fed to the lions and who dies on his feet.’
Schofield frowned for a second, not understanding, and then he looked back at the pool. He saw the high black dorsal fin of one of the killer whales cut through the water toward him.