‘What is it?’ Walsh said. He and Schofield came over.
The ensign said, ‘It appears to be some kind of GPS transponder signal, coming from just off the coast of Antarctica. It’s emitting a valid Marine code signal.’
Schofield peered at the illuminated table in front of the ensign. It had a computer-generated map drawn on it. Down on the coast of Antarctica – just off the coast, actually – there was a small, blinking red dot, with a blinking red number alongside it: 05.
Schofield frowned. He remembered pressing his own Navistar Global Positioning System transponder when he and Renshaw had been marooned on the iceberg. His GPS transponder code was ‘01’ since he was the unit commander. Snake was 02, Book was 03. The numbers then ascended in order of seniority.
Schofield tried to remember who ‘05’ was.
‘Holy shit,’ he said, realising. ‘It’s Mother!’
The Wasp sailed toward the rising sun.
As soon as Schofield realised who the GPS signal represented, Jack Walsh had sent a call to McMurdo. The Marines there – trusted Marines – sent a patrol boat out along the coast to pick up Mother.
A whole day later, as the Wasp entered the Pacific Ocean, Schofield got a call from the patrol boat. It had found Mother, on an iceberg just off the destroyed coastline. Apparently, the crew of the patrol boat – all of them dressed in airtight radiation suits – had found her inside an old station of some sort, a station buried within the iceberg.
The skipper of the patrol boat said that Mother was suffering from severe hypothermia and radiation sickness from the fallout and that they were about to put her under sedation.
It was then that Schofield heard a voice at the other end of the line. A woman’s voice, shouting wildly, ‘Is that him? Is that Scarecrow?’
Mother came on the line.
After some obscene pleasantries, she told Schofield how she had hidden inside the elevator shaft, and how she had lapsed into unconsciousness. Then she told him how she had been woken by the sound of the Navy SEALs’ gunfire as they had entered Wilkes Ice Station. Minutes later, she had heard every word of Schofield’s conversation with Romeo, heard about the nuclear-tipped cruise missile heading towards Wilkes.
And so she had crawled out of the dumb waiter shaft – while the SEALs were still in the station – and headed for the pool deck, grabbing a couple of fluid bags from the storeroom on the way. When she got to the pool deck, she saw Renshaw’s thirty-year-old scuba gear, lying on the deck, with a cable attached to it.
A steel cable that had led – with the help of the last remaining British sea sled – all the way back to Little America IV, one mile off the coast.
Schofield was amazed. He congratulated Mother and said his goodbyes, said he would see her back at Pearl. And as they took Mother away at the other end to sedate her, Schofield heard her shout, ‘And I remember you kissed me! You hot dog!’
Schofield just laughed.
Five days later, the USS Wasp sailed into Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
A cluster of TV cameras was waiting on the dock when it arrived. Two days earlier, a charter plane fly-ing over the south Pacific had spotted the Wasp and seen its damaged flight deck. One of the pilots had captured the damage on video camera. The TV news stations had eaten it up and now they were keen to find out what had happened to the great ship.
At the top of the gangway, Schofield watched as two midshipmen carried Gant off the ship on a stretcher. She was still in a coma. They were taking her to the nearby military hospital.
Renshaw and Kirsty met Schofield at the top of the gangway.
‘Hey there,’ Schofield said.
‘Hi,’ Kirsty said. She was holding onto Renshaw’s hand.
Renshaw put on a bad Marlon Brando accent. ‘Who’d have thought it? I’m the Godfather.’
Schofield laughed.
Kirsty spun around. ‘Say, where’s –’
At that moment, Wendy slid out from a nearby doorway. She loped straight up to Schofield and began nuzzling his hand. From tip to tail, the little fur seal was dripping wet.
‘She’s, ah, taken a bit of a liking to the ship’s dive preparation pool,’ Renshaw said.
‘So I see,’ Schofield said, as he gave Wendy a gentle pat behind the ears. Wendy preened, then she dropped to the deck and rolled onto her back. Schofield shook his head as he dropped to his haunches and gave her a quick pat on her belly.
‘The captain even said she could stay here until we found somewhere else for her to live,’ Kirsty said.
‘Good,’ Schofield said. ‘I think it’s the least we can do.’ He gave Wendy a final pat and the little seal leapt to her feet and dashed away, heading back downstairs toward her favourite pool.
Schofield stood up again and turned to face Renshaw. ‘Mr Renshaw, I have a question for you.’
‘What?’
‘What time did the people from your station dive down to the cave?’
‘What time?’
‘Yes, the time,’ Schofield said. ‘Was it day or night?’
‘Uh,’ Renshaw said. ‘Night, I believe. I think it was somewhere around nine o’clock.’
Schofield began to nod to himself.
‘Why?’ Renshaw said.
‘I think I know why the elephant seals attacked us.’
‘Why?’
‘Remember I said that the only group of divers to have approached that cave unharmed was Gant’s group.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And I said that it was because her group had used low-audibility breathing gear.’
Renshaw said, ‘Yeah. So did we. And as I recall it, the seals attacked us anyway.’
Schofield smiled a crooked smile. ‘Yeah. I know. But I think I figure out why. We dived at night.’
‘At night?’
‘Yes. And so did your people, and so did Barnaby’s men. Your people dived at nine o’clock. Barnaby’s at around8:00p.m. Gant’s team, however, went down at two in the afternoon. They were the only dive team to go down to that cavern in the daytime.’
Renshaw picked up what Schofield was saying. ‘You think those elephant seals are diurnal?’
‘I think that’s a good possibility,’ Schofield said.
Renshaw nodded slowly. It was quite common among unusually aggressive or poisonous animals to operate on what is known as a diurnal cycle. A diurnal cycle is essentially a twelve-hour passive-aggressive cycle – the animal is passive by day, aggressive by night.
‘I glad you figured that out,’ Renshaw said. ‘I’ll keep it in mind for the next time I stumble onto a nest of radiation-infected elephant seals who want to defend their territory.’
Schofield smiled. The three of them descended the gangway. At the bottom, they were met by a middle-aged Marine sergeant.
‘Lieutenant Schofield,’ the sergeant saluted Schofield. ‘There’s a car waiting for you, sir.’
‘Sergeant. I’m going nowhere but the hospital, to check on Lance-Corporal Gant. If anybody wants me to go anywhere else, I ain’t going.’
‘That’s okay with me, sir,’ the sergeant smiled. ‘My orders are to take you, Mr Renshaw and Miss Hensleigh to wherever you want to go.’
Schofield nodded, looked to Renshaw and Kirsty. They shrugged, sure.
‘Sounds good to me,’ Schofield said. ‘Lead the way.’
The sergeant led them to a navy-blue Buick with dark, tinted windows. He held the car door open and Schofield got in.
A man was already sitting in the back seat when Schofield sat down.
Schofield froze when he saw the gun in the man’s hand.
‘Have a seat, Scarecrow,’ Sergeant-Major Charles ‘Chuck’ Kozlowski said as Schofield sat down in the back seat of the Buick. Renshaw and Kirsty got in behind Schofield. Kirsty let out a gasp when she saw Kozlowski’s gun.
Kozlowski was a short man, with a clean-shaven face and thick black eyebrows. He was wearing a khaki Marine day uniform.
The sergeant got into the driver’s seat
and started the car.
‘I’m terribly sorry, Scarecrow,’ the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer in the Marine Corps said. ‘But you and your friends here represent a loose end that cannot be allowed to stand.’
‘And what’s that?’ Schofield said, exasperated.
‘You know about the ICG.’
Schofield said, ‘I told Jack Walsh about the ICG. Are you going to kill him, too?’
‘Maybe not immediately,’ Kozlowski said. ‘But in good time, yes. You, on the other hand, represent a more immediate threat. We wouldn’t want you going to the press, now, would we? No doubt, they will find out about what went on down at Wilkes Ice Station, but the media will get what the ICG tells them, not what you tell them.’
‘How can you kill your own men?’ Schofield said.
Kozlowski said, ‘You still don’t get it, do you, Scarecrow.’
‘I don’t get how you can kill your own men and think you’re doing the country a favour.’
‘Jesus, Scarecrow, you weren’t even supposed to be there in the first place.’
That stopped Schofield. ‘What?’
‘Think about it,’ Kozlowski said. ‘How did you come to get to Wilkes Ice Station before anybody else?’
Schofield thought back, right to the very beginning. He had been on the Shreveport, in Sydney. The rest of the fleet had gone back to Pearl, but the Shreveport had stayed down there for repairs. It was then that the distress signal had come through.
‘That’s right,’ Kozlowski said, reading Schofield’s thoughts. ‘You were in for repairs in Sydney when the Shreveport received the distress signal from Wilkes. And then some dumb-fuck civilian sent you down there right away.’
Schofield remembered the voice of the Undersecretary of Defense coming in over the speakers of the briefing room on board the Shreveport, instructing him to go down to Wilkes and protect the spacecraft.
Kozlowski said, ‘Scarecrow, the Intelligence Convergence Group doesn’t set out to kill American units. It exists to protect Americans –’
‘From what? The truth?’ Schofield retorted.
‘We could have had an Army Ranger unit filled with ICG men down at that station six hours after you got there. They could have taken that station – even if the French had already got there – and held it and no American soldiers would have had to have been killed.’
Kozlowski shook his head. ‘But no, you just happened to be in the area. And that’s why we stack units like yours with ICG men – for this very eventuality. In a perfect world, the ICG would get there first every time. But if the ICG can’t get there first, then we make sure that reconnaissance units like yours are properly constituted so as to ensure that whatever information is found at the site stays at the site. For the sake of national security, of course.’
‘You kill your own countrymen,’ Schofield said.
‘Scarecrow. This didn’t have to happen. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If anything, you got to Wilkes Ice Station too fast. If this had all been done as it should have been done, I wouldn’t have to kill you now.’
The Buick came to the guard station at the outer fence of the dockyard. A boom gate was lowered in front of it. The driver wound down his window and had a short conversation with the boom gate guard.
And then suddenly, the door next to Kozlowski was yanked open from the outside and an armed Naval Policeman appeared in the open doorway with his gun aimed squarely at Kozlowski’s head.
‘Sir, would you please get out of the car.’
Kozlowski’s face darkened. ‘Son, do you have any idea who you are talking to?’ he growled.
‘No, he doesn’t,’ a voice said from outside the car. ‘But I do,’ Jack Walsh said as he appeared outside the open car door.
Schofield, Kirsty and Renshaw all got out of the car, totally confused. The navy-blue Buick was surrounded by a swarm of Naval Police, all with their guns out.
Schofield turned to Walsh. ‘What’s going on? How did you know?’
Walsh nodded over Schofield’s shoulder. ‘Looks to me like you got yourself a guardian angel.’
Schofield spun, looked for a familiar face amid the crowd. At first he didn’t see a single face that he knew.
And then suddenly, he did. But it wasn’t a face he expected to see.
There, standing ten yards behind the ring of Naval Police surrounding the Buick, with his hands in his pockets, was Andrew Trent.
As Kozlowski and his driver were taken away in handcuffs, Schofield walked over to Trent.
Standing with Trent were a man and a woman whom Schofield had never met before. Trent introduced them as Pete and Alison Cameron. They were reporters with The Washington Post.
Schofield asked Trent what had happened. How had the Naval Police – backed up by Jack Walsh – known to stop Kozlowski’s car?
Trent explained. A couple of days ago, he had seen the amateur footage of the Wasp’s damaged flight deck on TV. Trent knew missile damage when he saw it. Then, when he learned that the Wasp was heading back to Pearl – ‘from a training exercise in the Southern Ocean’ – he jumped on a plane to Hawaii.
The Camerons had come along with him. For, if by some chance, Shane Schofield, or indeed, any survivors from Wilkes Ice Station were on board the Wasp then it would be the story – and the scoop – of a lifetime. Other reporters saw a damaged flight deck. The Camerons saw the inside running on the Wilkes Ice Station story.
But when they had got to the dockyard at Pearl, Trent had seen Chuck Kozlowski standing next to a navy-blue Buick, waiting for the Wasp to dock.
Trent had felt a sudden chill. Why was Kozlowski here? Had the ICG won – as it had in Peru – and was Kozlowski here to congratulate the traitors? Or was he here for some other reason? For if Schofield had survived, then the ICG would almost certainly want to eliminate him.
And so Trent and the two reporters had just watched and waited. And then, when they saw Schofield emerge from the ship and get escorted to Kozlowski’s Buick, Trent had called the only person he could think of who could – and would – pull rank on Chuck Kozlowski.
Jack Walsh.
‘Who’d have thought it?’ Walsh said, coming over. ‘There I am, on the bridge of my wrecked boat, minding my own business, when my comtech comes running in and says he’s got some guy on the external switch who says he has to talk to me. Says it’s an emergency regarding Lieutenant Schofield. Says his name is Andrew Trent.’ Walsh smiled. ‘I figured I oughta take the call.’
Schofield just shook his head, amazed.
‘You’ve been through a lot,’ Trent said, putting his arm around Schofield’s shoulder.
‘You should talk,’ Schofield said. ‘I’d like to hear about Peru sometime.’
‘You will, Shane, you will. But first, I have a proposition for you. How would you like to be on the front page of The Washington Post?’
Schofield just smiled.
On June 23 – two days after Schofield and the Wasp docked at Pearl – The Washington Post ran a front-page story containing a photo of Shane Schofield and Andrew Trent holding a copy of the previous day’s Post between them. Beneath the photo were displayed copies of their official United States Marine Corps death certificates. Schofield’s death certificate was three days old. Trent’s was over a year old.
The headline read:
ACCORDING TO THE US MILITARY,
THESE TWO MEN ARE OFFICIALLY DEAD.
The accompanying story about the events that transpired at Wilkes Ice Station – a feature that ran for three pages – was written by Peter and Alison Cameron.
Later stories that ran about the events at Wilkes Ice Station told of the ICG and the systematic infiltration by it of elite military units, universities and private corporations. Flashbulbs popped across the country for the next six weeks as ICG moles were expunged from various regiments, institutions and companies and charged under various statutes with espionage.
No mention, however, was made in any
of the newspaper and TV reports about the presence of French and British troops at Wilkes Ice Station.
Rumours abounded in the tabloids about which other countries had sent troops to Wilkes Ice Station. Iraq. China. Even Brazil had rated a mention.
It was claimed in some quarters that The Washington Post knew exactly who else had been down there. One rival newspaper even went so far as to say that the President himself had paid a surprise visit to Katharine Graham – the legendary owner of the Post – and asked her, in the name of America’s diplomatic relations, not to publish the names of the countries who had been present at Wilkes Ice Station. This rumour was never confirmed.
The Post, however, never mentioned Britain or France.
It reported that a battle had taken place down in Antarctica, but it steadfastly maintained that it did not know the identity of the opposing force or forces. Every article that appeared in the Post simply said that the conflict had been against ‘enemies unknown’.
In any case, the Wilkes Ice Station story ran for six whole weeks before it was forgotten.
A few days after the Wasp returned, the NATO conference in Washington D.C. concluded.
Every TV and newspaper article on the event showed the smiling faces of the American, British and French delegates standing on the steps of the Capitol Building, shaking hands in front of their interwoven flags, smiling for the cameras, and proclaiming that the NATO alliance would continue for another twenty years.
The French representative, Monsieur Pierre Dufresne, was quoted as saying, ‘This is the strongest treaty on earth.’ When asked where this strength emanated from, Dufresne said, ‘Our genuine friendship is our bond.’
In a private room at the Naval Hospital at Pearl Harbor, Libby Gant lay in a bed with her eyes closed. A soft beam of sunlight filtered in through the room’s window and draped itself across her bed. Gant was still in a coma.
‘Libby? Libby?’ A woman’s voice said, invading her consciousness.
Slowly, Gant’s eyes opened, and she saw her sister, Denise, standing above her.