Schofield had seen the detonator cord when he had been standing on the deck only moments before. He had forgotten that he’d tied a loop of it around his wrist back in Little America IV. The SAS, when they had frisked him and relieved him of all his weapons earlier, must have missed it, too.
The burning tip of the cigarette touched the detonator cord a split second before Schofield’s wrists disappeared below the surface.
The detonator cord ignited instantly, just as Schofield’s wrists disappeared into the inky red water.
It burned bright white, even under the water, and cut through the chain-link of Schofield’s handcuffs like a knife through butter. Suddenly Schofield’s hands broke apart, free.
At that moment, a pair of jaws burst through the red haze around Schofield’s head and Schofield saw the enormous eye of a killer whale looking right at him. And then suddenly, it disappeared back into the haze and was gone.
Schofield’s heart was racing. He couldn’t see a thing. The water around him was impenetrable. Just a murky cloud of red.
And then suddenly a series of bizarre-sounding clicks began to echo through the water around him.
Click-click.
Click-click.
Schofield frowned. What was it? The killers?
And then it hit him.
Sonar.
Shit!
The killer whales were using sonar clicks to find him in the murky water. Many whales were known to use sonar – sperm whales, blue whales, killers. The principle was simple: the whale made a loud click with its tongue, the click travelled through the water, bounced off any object in the water, and returned to the whale – revealing to it the object’s location. Sonar units on man-made submarines operated on the same principle.
Schofield was desperately searching the cloudy red haze around him – searching for the whales – when suddenly one of them exploded out of the haze and rushed toward him.
Schofield screamed underwater, but the whale slid past him, brushing roughly against the side of his body.
It was then that Schofield remembered what Renshaw had told him earlier about the killer whales’ hunting behaviour.
They brush past you to establish ownership.
Then they eat you.
Schofield did a vertical sit-up, broke the surface. He heard the SAS commandos on E-deck cheer. He ignored them, gulped in air, went under again.
He didn’t have much time. The killer whale that had just staked its claim on him would be coming back any second now.
Loud clicks echoed through the red water around him.
And then suddenly, a thought struck Schofield.
Sonar . . .
Shit, Schofield thought, patting his pockets, do I still have it?
He did.
Schofield pulled Kirsty Hensleigh’s plastic asthma puffer from his pocket. He pressed the releasing button and a short line of fat bubbles rushed out from the puffer.
Okay, need a weight.
Need something to weigh it down . . .
Schofield saw them instantly.
Quickly, he pulled his stainless steel dogtags from around his neck and looped their neckchain around the puffer’s releasing button so that it held it down.
A continuous stream of fat bubbles began to rush out from the puffer.
Schofield felt the body of water around him rock and sway. Somewhere out in the red murk of the pool, that killer whale was coming back for him.
Schofield quickly released the small asthma puffer, now weighed down by his steel dogtags.
The puffer sank instantly, leaving a trail of fat bubbles shooting up through the water behind it. After a second, the puffer sank into the murky red haze and Schofield lost sight of it.
A moment later, the killer whale roared out of the haze, coming right at Schofield, its jaws bared wide.
Schofield just stared at the massive black-and-white beast and prayed to God that he had remembered it right.
But the killer just kept coming. It came at him fast – frighteningly fast – and soon Schofield could see nothing but its teeth and its tongue and the closing yawn of its jaws and then –
Without warning, the killer whale banked sharply in the water and veered downward, chasing after the asthma puffer and its trail of bubbles.
Schofield sighed with relief.
In a dark corner of his mind, Schofield thought about sonar detection systems. Although it is widely stated that sonar bounces off an object in water, this is not entirely true. Rather, sonar reflects off the microscopic layer of air that lies in between an object in water and the water itself.
So when Schofield sank the asthma puffer – spewing out a trail of nice, fat air bubbles behind it – he had, at least insofar as the sonar-using killer was concerned, created a whole new target. The whale must have detected the stream of bubbles with its clicking and assumed that it was Schofield trying to get away. And so it had chased after it.
Schofield didn’t think about it anymore.
He had other things to do now.
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out Jean Petard’s stun grenade. Schofield pulled the pin, counted to three and then did a quick sit-up in the water and broke the surface. He then tossed the stun grenade vertically into the air and let himself fall back underwater squeezing his eyes shut.
Five feet above the surface of the pool, the stun grenade reached the zenith of its arc and hung in the air for a fraction of a second.
Then it went off.
Trevor Barnaby saw the grenade pop up out of the water. It took him an extra second to realise what it was, but by then it was too late.
Along with every one of his men, Barnaby did the most natural thing in the world when he saw a foreign object pop up out of a pool of water.
He looked at it.
The stun grenade exploded like an enormous flashbulb, blinding all of them. The SAS men on E-deck recoiled as one, as a galaxy of stars and sunspots came to life on the insides of their eyes.
Schofield did another sit-up in the water. Only this time, when he broke the surface, he had Petard’s cross-bow gripped in his hands, reloaded and ready to go.
Schofield took his aim quickly and fired.
The crossbow’s arrow shot across the expanse of E-deck and found its target. It slammed into the Maghook’s launcher, wedged as it was between the rungs of the rung-ladder.
The launcher jolted out of its position, and swung free from the rung-ladder, swung toward the pool. When it had been wedged in between the rungs of the rung-ladder,the Maghook’s rope had been stretched up toward the retractable bridge on C-deck at a 45 degree angle.Now that it was released from the rung-ladder – and since Schofield was floating in the water and, therefore, not putting any weight on it at the other end – the launcher swung back like a pendulum, out over the pool and smacked into the middle of Schofield’s waiting hand.
All right!
Schofield looked up at the bridge on C-deck. The Maghook’s rope was now stretched over the bridge like a block-and-tackle – with the length of rope going up parallel to the length of rope going down.
Schofield gripped the launcher tightly as he hit the black button on the grip of the Maghook. Instantly, he felt himself fly up out of the bloodstained water as the reeling mechanism of the Maghook hoisted him up toward the bridge on C-deck, its rope speeding over the bridge itself, using it as a block-and-tackle.
Schofield came to the bridge and hauled himself up onto it just as the first SAS men down on E-deck reached for their machine guns.
Schofield didn’t even look at them. He was already running off the bridge when they started firing.
Schofield climbed the rung-ladder up to B-deck two rungs at a time.
When he got up onto what was left of the B-deck catwalk, he reloaded his crossbow. Then he dashed toward the east tunnel and headed for the living quarters. He had to find Kirsty and then somehow, he had to figure out a way to get out of here.
Suddenly, an SAS commando
rounded the corner in front of him. Schofield whipped his crossbow up and fired. The SAS commando’s head snapped backwards as the arrow lodged in his forehead and his feet went out from under him.
Schofield quickly went over to the body, crouched down over it.
The SAS commando had an MP-5, a Glock-7 pistol, and two blue grenades that Schofield recognised as nitrogen charges. Schofield took them all. The SAS man also had a lightweight radio headset. Schofield took that, too, wrapped it around his head, and ran off down the tunnel.
Kirsty. Kirsty.
Where were they keeping her? Schofield didn’t know. He presumed somewhere on B-deck, but only because that was where the living quarters were.
Schofield entered the circular outer tunnel of B-deck just in time to see two SAS commandos racing toward him. They raised their machine guns just as Schofield brought both of his guns up and fired them simultaneously. The two SAS men went down in an instant. Schofield didn’t miss a step as he strode over their bodies.
He moved swiftly round the circular corridor, looking left, looking right.
Suddenly a door to Schofield’s left opened and another SAS commando emerged, gun up. He managed to get a shot off before Schofield’s guns blasted to life and sent the commando flying back into the room from whence he had come.
Schofield entered the room after him. It was the common room.
He saw Kirsty instantly. He also saw two more SAS commandos who were in the process of shoving the little girl toward the door.
Schofield entered the common room warily, with both of his guns up.
When Kirsty saw Schofield step inside the common room with his two guns raised, she thought she had seen a ghost.
He looked awful.
He was soaked to the skin; his nose was broken; his face was bruised and his body armour was battered all over.
One of the SAS soldiers behind Kirsty stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Schofield step into the room. He held Kirsty out in front of him, put a gun to her head, used her as a shield.
‘I’ll kill her, mate,’ the commando said calmly. ‘I swear to fucking Christ, I’ll paint the walls of this room with her brains.’
‘Kirsty,’ Schofield said as he calmly levelled his pistol at the SAS man’s forehead, while at the same time aiming his MP-5 at the other SAS commando’s brain.
‘Yeah,’ Kirsty said meekly.
Schofield said evenly, ‘Shut your eyes, honey.’
Kirsty shut her eyes and the world went black.
And then suddenly she heard the double boom! boom! of guns being fired and she didn’t know whose guns had fired and then suddenly she was falling backwards, still in the grip of the SAS man who had grabbed hold of her to use as a shield. They hit the floor hard and Kirsty felt the SAS commando’s grip loosen.
Kirsty opened her eyes.
The two British soldiers were lying on the floor beside her. Kirsty saw their feet, their waists, their chests –
‘Don’t look at them, honey,’ Schofield said, moving to her. ‘You don’t want to see that.’
Kirsty turned around and looked up at Schofield. He picked her up and held her in his arms. Then Kirsty buried her head in Schofield’s shoulderplate and cried.
‘Come on. It’s time to get out of here,’ Schofield said gently.
Schofield quickly reloaded his weapons and grabbed Kirsty’s hand and the two of them left the common room.
They raced around the curved outer tunnel, heading for the east passageway. They turned the corner.
And suddenly Schofield stopped.
Mounted on the wall to his left he saw a large, rectangular black compartment. Written across it were the words: FUSE BOX.
The fuse box, Schofield thought. This must have been where the French cut the lights earlier . . .
Schofield got an idea.
He spun where he stood and saw the door leading to the Biotoxin Lab behind him. Next to it, he saw a door marked ‘STORAGE CLOSET’.
Yes.
Schofield wrenched open the door to the storage closet. Inside it, he saw mops and buckets, and old wooden shelves loaded with cleaning agents. Schofield quickly reached up and grabbed a plastic bottle of ammonia from one of the shelves.
Schofield emerged from the closet and hurried over to the fuse box. He yanked open the door and saw a series of wires, wheels and power units inside.
Kirsty was standing further down the east tunnel, looking out into the central shaft of the station.
‘Hurry up,’ she whispered. ‘They’re coming!’
Schofield heard voices over his newly acquired headset:
‘– Hopkins, report –’
‘– going after the girl –’
‘– perimeter team, return to the station at once. We have a problem here –’
At the fuse box, Schofield quickly found the wire he was looking for. He pulled back the sheath, exposed the copper wire. Then he punched a hole in the plastic ammonia bottle with the butt of his gun and positioned it above the exposed strand of wire. A small trickle of ammonia fluid began to drip slowly out of the bottle, down onto the exposed wire.
The drops of ammonia smacked rhythmically against the wire.
Smack-smack. Smack-smack.
At that moment, in time with the rhythm of the ammonia drops hitting the exposed wire, every light in the tunnel – indeed, every light in the whole station – began to flicker on and off, like a strobe. On. Off. On. Off.
In the flickering light of the tunnel, Schofield grabbed Kirsty’s hand and took off toward the central shaft. Once they got to the catwalk, they hurried up the nearest rung-ladder to A-deck.
Schofield strode around the A-deck catwalk, heading toward the main entrance to the station. The station around him flickered black and white. Darkness, light, darkness, light.
If he could just get to the British hovercrafts, he thought, he might be able to get away and get back to McMurdo.
There was movement everywhere. Shouts echoed through the station as the shadows of SAS commandos raced around the catwalks in the flickering light, searching for Schofield.
Schofield saw that some of the British commandos had tried to put on night-vision goggles.
But night vision would be useless now. With the station’s lights flickering on and off, anyone wearing night-vision goggles would be blinded every time the lights came on – which was every couple of seconds.
Schofield reached the main entrance passageway, just as an SAS soldier came bursting out of it onto the catwalk. The SAS man collided with Schofield, and Schofield was almost bowled over the catwalk’s railing.
The SAS man hit the deck, rose to his knees, raised his gun to fire but Schofield let fly with a powerful kick that connected with the SAS soldier’s jaw and sent him crashing down to the catwalk.
Schofield was about to step over the downed soldier’s body when suddenly he saw a large black satchel stretched over the man’s shoulder. Schofield grabbed it, opened it.
He saw two silver canisters inside the satchel. Two silver canisters with green bands painted around them.
Tritonal 80/20 charges.
Schofield frowned.
He had wondered earlier why the British would bring Tritonal charges to Wilkes Ice Station. Tritonal was an extremely powerful explosive, usually used for demolition purposes. Why would Barnaby have it here?
Schofield grabbed the satchel off the unconscious man’s shoulder.
As he did so, however, he heard shouts coming from inside the entrance passageway. Then he heard footsteps, and the click of safeties being removed from MP-5s.
The SAS commandos outside, the perimeter team . . .
They were coming back inside!
‘Kirsty! Get down!’ Schofield yelled. He spun quickly and brought both of his guns up just as the first SAS commando charged in through the main entrance of Wilkes Ice Station.
The first man went down in a hail of blood and bullets.
The second and the third learned
from his error and they entered the station firing.
‘Back inside!’ Schofield yelled to Kirsty. ‘We can’t go this way!’
Schofield slid down the nearest rung-ladder with Kirsty on his back.
They hit B-deck. A bullet pinged off the steel ladder next to Schofield’s eyes.
Schofield heard more voices over his British headset:
‘– the fuck did he go –’
‘– took the girl! Killed Maurice, Hoddle and Hopkins –’
‘– saw him on A-deck –’
And then Schofield heard Barnaby’s voice. ‘Nero! The lights! Either get them on or get them off! Find that fucking fuse box!’
The station was in chaos, absolute chaos. There was no steady light, just the terrible, incessant flickering.
Schofield saw shadows on the other side of B-deck.
Can’t go there.
Schofield looked out over the central shaft, and in a flickering instant, his eyes fell on the retractable bridge on C-deck.
The bridge on C-deck . . .
Schofield quickly checked his inventory.
One Glock pistol. One MP-5. Neither of which would be enough to take out twenty SAS commandos.
Schofield still had the satchel he had stolen from the SAS man who had come in from outside. Two Tritonal charges were in the satchel. He also had the two nitrogen charges he had liberated from the very first SAS commando he had killed after flying up out of the water on the Maghook.
‘All right,’ Schofield said, looking down at the narrow retractable bridge on the deck beneath him. ‘It’s time to end this.’
In the ghostly flickering light of the station, Schofield and Kirsty stepped out onto the retractable bridge on C-deck.
If anybody had seen them, they would have seen them walk right out onto the middle of the bridge; would then have seen Schofield crouch down on one knee and do something to the bridge for several minutes.
And then, when he was done, they would have seen Schofield just crouch down next to Kirsty and wait.
A few minutes later, the British found the fuse box and the flickering stopped and the lights to the station came on again. The station glowed white under its bright fluorescent lights.