The killers were back.
‘Unlock him,’ Barnaby called to the SAS soldiers guarding Snake. ‘Gentlemen, to the drilling room.’
With his hands cuffed firmly behind his back, Schofield was led down the southern tunnel of E-deck. As he walked past the storeroom, he stole a quick glance inside it.
The storeroom was empty.
Mother was gone.
But Barnaby hadn’t said anything about Mother before. . .
They hadn’t found her.
The SAS men marched Schofield down the long narrow corridor and shoved him into the drilling room. Schofield stumbled inside and spun around.
Snake was shoved into the drilling room a couple of seconds later. His handcuffs had been removed.
Schofield looked at the drilling room around him. In the centre of the room stood the large black core-drilling apparatus. It looked like a miniature oil well, with a long, cylindrical plunger suspended in the middle of a black skeletal rig. The plunger, Schofield guessed, was the part of the machine that drilled down into the ice and obtained the ice cores.
On the far side of the core-drilling machine, however, Schofield saw something else.
A body.
Lying on the floor.
It was the crumpled, blood-smeared body of Jean Petard, untouched since Petard had been shredded by the hailstorm of shrapnel from his own Claymore mines several hours earli –
‘Gentlemen,’ Barnaby said suddenly from the doorway. It was the only way in or out of the room. ‘You are about to fight for the privilege of living. I will return in five minutes. When I return, I expect one of you to be dead. If, after that time, both of you are still alive, I will shoot you both myself. If, on the other hand, one of you is dead, the winner will get to live for a short while and die in a more noble fashion. Any questions?’
Schofield said, ‘What about these cuffs?’ His hands were still handcuffed behind his back. Snake’s were free.
‘What about them?’ Barnaby said. ‘Any more questions?’
There were none.
‘Then, do as you will,’ Barnaby said, before he left the room and closed the door behind him, locking it.
Schofield immediately turned to Snake. ‘All right, listen, we have to figure out a way to –’
Snake slammed into Schofield hard.
Schofield was lifted clean off the floor and rammed with stunning force into the wall behind him. He doubled over, gasped for breath, and looked up just in time to see Snake’s open palm rushing at his face. He ducked quickly and Snake’s hand hit the wall.
Schofield’s mind went into overdrive. Snake had just come at him with a standard hand-to-hand combat move – an open-palmed punch that was designed to send the other guy’s nose back into his brain, killing him with one hit.
Snake was out to kill him.
In five minutes.
The two men were still close so Schofield thrust up hard with his knee and caught Snake in the groin. Schofield leapt clear of the wall. Once he was clear of Snake and the wall, Schofield jumped up quickly and brought his cuffed hands forward – under his feet – so that they were now in front of his body.
Snake came at him with a flurry of kicks and punches. Schofield parried each blow with his cuffed hands and the two men parted and began to circle each other like a pair of big cats.
Schofield’s mind raced. Snake would want to get him onto the floor. While he remained on his feet, he would be okay – because even with his hands cuffed, he could still parry any blow Snake threw at him. But if they both went to the ground, it would be all over. Snake would have him in no time.
Got to stay off the floor . . .
Got to stay off the floor . . .
The two Marines circled each other – on either side of the black drilling apparatus in the centre of the room.
Suddenly Snake grabbed a length of steel from the floor and swung it hard at Schofield. Schofield ducked, too late, and took a glancing blow to the left side of his head. He saw stars for a second and lost his balance.
Snake was on him in an instant, launching himself across the room, tackling Schofield hard, driving him back against the wall.
Schofield’s back slammed into a power switch on the wall and instantly, across the room, the vertical plunger on the drilling machine suddenly whirred to life and began to spin rapidly. It emitted a shrill, roaring sound like that of a buzzsaw.
Snake threw Schofield to the floor.
No!
Schofield hit the floor hard and rolled immediately –
– only to find himself lying face-to-face with Jean Petard.
Or, at least, what was left of Petard’s face after it had been ripped to shreds by the blast of the Claymore mines.
And then at that moment – in that fleeting moment – Schofield caught a glimpse of something inside Petard’s jacket.
A crossbow.
Schofield reached desperately for the crossbow with his cuffed hands. He got his hands around the grip, got a hold of it and –
– then Snake crash-tackled into him, and both men slid across the floor and slammed into the drilling machine in the centre of the room. The sound of the spinning plunger roared in their ears.
Schofield lay on his back, on the floor. Snake knelt astride him.
And in a sudden instant, Schofield saw that he still had the crossbow in his hands. He blinked. He must have kept hold of it when Snake had crash-tackled him.
It was then that Snake hit Schofield with a pulverising blow.
Schofield heard his nose crack and saw the blood explode outwards from his face. His head slammed back against the floor. Hard.
The world spun and for a fleeting instant Schofield blacked out. Suddenly Schofield felt a wave of panic – if he blacked out completely, that would be the end of it. Snake would kill him where he lay.
Schofield opened his eyes again and the first thing he saw was the spinning plunger of the drilling machine hovering three feet above his head!
It was right over the top of him!
Schofield saw the leading edge of the spinning cylinder – the sharply serrated leading edge – the edge that was designed to cut down through solid ice.
And then suddenly Schofield saw Snake move in front of the plunger, his face contorted with anger, and then Schofield saw Snake’s fist come rushing down at his face.
Schofield tried to raise his hands in his defence but they were still cuffed together, pinned underneath
Snake’s body. Schofield couldn’t get them up –
The blow hit home.
The world became a blur. Schofield struggled desperately to see through the haze.
He saw Snake draw his hand back again, preparing for what would no doubt be the final blow.
And then Schofield saw something off to the right.
The switch on the wall that had started the drilling machine. Schofield saw three big round buttons on the switch panel.
Black, red and green.
And then, with startling clarity, the words on the black button suddenly came into focus.
‘LOWERDRILL’.
Schofield looked up at Snake, saw the rapidly spinning plunger right above his head.
There was no way Schofield could shoot Snake with the crossbow, but if he could just angle his hands slightly, he might be able to . . .
‘Snake, you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I never liked you.’
And with that Schofield raised his cuffed hands slightly, aimed his crossbow at the big black button on the wall, and fired.
The arrow covered the distance in a millisecond and . . .
. . . hit the big black button right in its centre – pinning it to the wall behind it – just as Schofield thrust his head clear of the drilling machine and the plunger, spinning at phenomenal speed, came rushing down into the back of Snake’s head.
Schofield heard the sickening crunch of breaking bone as Snake’s whole body was yanked violently downwards ??
? head-first – by the weight of the plunger and then suddenly, grotesquely, the plunger – its shrill buzzing filling the room – carved right through Snake’s head and a flood of thick red-and-grey ooze poured out from his skull and then with a final sprack! the plunger popped out through the other side of Snake’s head and continued on its way down into the ice hole beneath it.
Still somewhat dazed from the fight, Schofield rose to his knees. He turned away from the hideous sight of Snake’s body pinned underneath the blood-spattered drilling machine and quickly put the crossbow in his thigh pocket. Then he spun and quickly began looking about himself for any kind of weapon he could use –
Schofield’s eyes fell instantly on the body of Jean Petard, lying on the floor nearby.
Still breathing hard, Schofield crawled over to it, knelt beside it. He began rifling through the dead Frenchman’s pockets.
After a few seconds, Schofield pulled a grenade out from one of Petard’s pockets. It had writing on it: M8A3-STN.
Schofield knew what it was instantly.
A stun grenade. A flasher.
Like the one the French commandos had used earlier that morning. Schofield put the stun grenade into his breast pocket.
The door to the drilling room burst open. Schofield instantly fell back to the floor, tried to look tired, wounded.
Two SAS commandos stormed into the drilling room with their guns up. Trevor Barnaby strode in behind them.
Barnaby winced when he saw Snake’s body lying flat on the floor, face-down, with its head positioned underneath the large black drilling apparatus – complete with a gaping red hole right through the middle of it.
‘Oh, Scarecrow,’ Barnaby said. ‘Did you have to do that to him?’
Schofield was still breathing hard, and he had tiny flecks of blood splattered all over his face. He didn’t say anything.
Barnaby shook his head. He almost seemed disappointed that Schofield hadn’t been killed by Snake.
‘Get him out of here,’ Barnaby said quietly to the two SAS men behind him. ‘Mr Nero.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘String him up.’
Down in the cave, another battle was underway.
No sooner had the first SAS diver stepped out of the water, than a second SAS diver was up and standing in the shallows behind him.
The first SAS commando stormed out of the water, firing hard. The second man followed him up, sloshing through the knee-deep water with his gun up when suddenly – whump! – he was violently yanked beneath the surface of the water.
The first commando – up on dry land and oblivious to the fate that had befallen his partner – snapped to his right and drew a bead on Montana, just as Gant bobbed up from behind her boulder and took him out from the left.
Gant turned, saw more SAS commandos surfacing in the pool with their sea sleds.
Then suddenly something else caught her eye.
Movement.
A large black object just slid out from one of the wide, ten-foot holes in the ice wall above the pool and dropped smoothly into the water.
Gant’s jaw dropped.
It was an animal of some sort.
But it was so huge. It looked like . . . like a seal. A great, big, enormous seal.
At that moment, another massive seal emerged from a second hole in the ice wall. And then another. And another. They just slid out from their holes and splashed down into the pool, raining down on the team of SAS divers from every side.
Gant just watched them with her mouth wide open.
The pool was a broiling froth now, choppy and frothy. Suddenly, another SAS diver went under, replaced by a slick of his own blood. And then abruptly the man next to him fell forward in the water as one of the enormous seals ploughed into him from behind and drove him under. Gant saw the animal’s glistening wet back rise above the water for an instant before it submerged on top of the British soldier.
A couple of SAS divers made it to land. But the seals just followed them right out of the water. One diver was on his hands and knees, clawing his way across the ice, trying desperately to get away from the water’s edge when a giant, sevent-on seal launched itself out of the pool right behind him.
The massive creature landed on the ice a bare two feet behind him and the earth shook beneath its weight. The big seal then lumbered forward and clamped its jaws shut around the SAS man’s legs. Bones crunched. The man screamed.
And then before he even knew what was happening, the big seal began to eat him.
Roughly, with great, slashing bites. The high-pitched tearing sound of flesh being ripped from bone filled the cavern.
Gant stared at the scene in silent awe.
The SAS men were screaming. The seals were barking. Several of them began eating their victims while they were still alive.
Gant just stared at the seals. They were huge. At least as big as killer whales. And they had bulbous round snouts that she had seen in a book once.
Elephant seals.
Gant noticed that there were two smaller seals in the group. These two smaller animals had peculiar teeth – strange, elongated lower canines that rose up from their lower jaws and over their upper lips, like a pair of inverted tusks. The larger seals, Gant saw, did not have these tusks.
Gant tried to recall everything she knew about elephant seals. Like killer whales, elephant seals lived in large groups made up of one dominant male, known as the bull or beachmaster, and a harem of eight or nine females, or cows, which were all smaller than the bull.
Gant felt a chill as she saw the sex of one of the big seals in front of her.
These were the females of the group.
The two smaller seals that she saw were their pups. Male pups, Gant noticed.
Gant wondered where the bull was. He would almost certainly be larger than these females. But if the females were this big, how big would he be?
More questions flitted through Gant’s mind.
Why did they attack? Elephant seals, Gant knew, could be exceptionally aggressive, especially when their territory was under threat.
And why now? Why had Gant and her team been allowed to pass safely through the ice tunnel only several hours before, while the SAS had been subjected to so violent an attack now?
There came a sudden, final scream from the pool followed by a splash and Gant looked out from behind her boulder.
There was a long, cold silence. The only sound was that of waves lapping against the edge of the pool.
All of the SAS divers were dead. Most of the seals were up inside the cavern now, bent over the spoils of their victory – the bodies of the dead SAS commandos. It was then that Gant heard a nauseating crunch and she turned round to see that the elephant seals had begun to feed en masse.
This battle was well and truly over.
Schofield stood on the pool deck of Wilkes Ice Station with his hands cuffed in front of him. One of the SAS commandos was busy tying the grappling hook of Book’s Maghook around his ankles. Schofield looked off to his left and saw the high black fin of a killer whale slice through the murky red water of the pool.
‘Dive Team, report,’ an SAS radio operator said into his portable unit nearby. ‘I repeat. Dive Team, come in.’
‘Any word?’ Barnaby said.
‘There’s no response, sir. The last thing they said was that they were about to surface inside the cavern.’
Barnaby gave Schofield a look. ‘Keep trying,’ he said to the radio operator. Then he turned to Schofield. ‘Your men down in that cave must have put up quite a fight.’
‘They do that,’ Schofield said.
‘So,’ Barnaby said. ‘Any last requests from the condemned man? A blindfold? Cigarette? Shot of brandy?’
At first, Schofield said nothing, he just looked down at his handcuffed wrists in front of him.
And then he saw it.
Suddenly Schofield looked up.
‘A cigarette,’ he said quickly, swallowing. ‘Please.’
‘Mr Nero. A cigarette for the lieutenant.’
Nero stepped forward, offered a pack of cigarettes to Schofield. Schofield took one with his cuffed hands, raised it to his mouth. Nero lit it. Schofield took a deep draw and hoped to hell that nobody saw his face turn green. Schofield had never smoked in his life.
‘All right,’ Barnaby said. ‘That’s enough. Gentlemen, hoist him up. Scarecrow, it was a pleasure knowing you.’
Schofield swung, upside-down, out over the pool. His dogtags hung loosely off his chin, glistening silver in the white artificial light of the station. The water beneath him was stained an ugly shade of red.
Book’s blood.
Schofield looked up at the diving bell in the centre of the pool, saw Renshaw’s face in one of the portholes – saw a single terrified eye peering out at Schofield.
Schofield just hung there, three feet above the hideous red water. He calmly held the cigarette to his mouth, took another puff.
The SAS soldiers must have thought it a vain act of bravado – but while the cigarette dangled from Schofield’s mouth, they never saw what he was doing with his hands.
Barnaby offered Schofield a salute. ‘Rule Britannia, Scarecrow.’
‘Fuck Britannia,’ Schofield replied.
‘Mr Nero,’ Barnaby said. ‘Lower away.’
Over by the rung-ladder, Nero pressed a button on the Maghook’s launcher. The launcher itself was still wedged in between two rungs of the ladder while its rope was stretched taut over the retractable bridge up on C-deck, creating the same pulley-like mechanism that had been used to lower Book into the water.
The Maghook’s rope began to play out.
Schofield began to descend toward the water.
His hands were still cuffed in front of him. He held the cigarette between the fingers of his right hand.
His head entered the murky red water first. Then his shoulders. Then his chest, his stomach, his elbows . . .
But then, just as Schofield’s wrists were about to go under, Schofield quickly twisted the cigarette in his fingers and pointed it toward the loop of magnesium detonator cord that he had now looped around the chain-link of his handcuffs.