Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

"But of course," Petard said, his English fluent. "One must look after one's neighbors." He offered a wry smile. "You never know when you yourself might be in need of assistance."

"No, you don't."

At that moment Snake's voice crackled over Schofield's earpiece: " Lieutenant, we have another contact crossing the trip wire ."

Schofield frowned. Now things were starting to happen a little too fast. Four French scientists he could handle. Another four and the French were starting to show a little too much interest in Wilkes Ice Station. But now, if there were more of them?

"Wait, Lieutenant; it's all right. It's one of ours. It's Riley's hovercraft."

Schofield let out a sigh of relief that he hoped nobody saw and headed out of the room.

Over by the wall of the dining room, Libby Gant was sifting through the two large containers that the French scientists had brought with them. She pushed aside a couple of blankets and some fresh bread. There was also some canned meat down at the bottom of the container. Corned beef, ham, that sort of thing. All were packed in sealed cans, the kind that has a key attached to the side that you use to peel back the lid.

Gant pushed a couple of the cans aside and was looking for more beneath them when suddenly one of the cans caught her eye.

There was something wrong about it.

It was a little larger than the other, medium-sized cans? about fourteen inches in length?and it was roughly triangular in shape. At first Gant couldn't tell what it was that struck her about this particular can. It was just that something about it didn't look right...

And then she realized.

The seal on this can had been broken.

The peel-back lid, it seemed, had been opened and then set back into place. It was barely visible. Just a thin black line around the edge of the lid. If you were only giving the cans a cursory glance, you would almost certainly miss it.

Gant turned to look back at Schofield, but he had left the room. She looked up quickly at the French scientists, and as she did so, she saw Petard exchange a quick glance with the one named Latissier.

Schofield met Buck Riley at the main entrance. The two men stood out on the A-deck catwalk, about thirty feet away from the dining room.

"How was it?" Schofield asked.

"Not good," Riley said.

"What do you mean?"

"That signal we lost, it was a hovercraft. French markings. From d'Urville. It had crashed into a crevasse."

Schofield looked up sharply at Riley. "Crashed into a crevasse?" He looked back quickly at the Frenchmen in the dining room. Only moments earlier, Jean Petard had said that the other hovercraft had arrived safely back at d'Urville.

"What happened?" Schofield said. "Thin ice?"

"No. That's what we thought at first. But then Rebound got a closer look."

Schofield turned back around. "And?"

Riley gave him a serious look. "There were five dead bodies in that hovercraft, sir. And all of them had been shot through the back of the head."

Gant's voice exploded across Schofield's helmet intercom.

"Sir, this is Fox. There's something wrong here. Their food containers have been compromised."

Schofield spun around and saw Libby Gant coming out of the dining room. She was walking quickly toward him, carrying a food can of some sort, peeling the lid back.

Behind her Schofield saw Petard, in the dining room, rising to his feet, watching Gant, and then watching Schofield himself.

It was then that their eyes met.

It was only for an instant, but that was all either man needed. In that moment, there was a flash of understanding.

Gant cut across Schofield's line of sight with Petard. She had opened the can now and was pulling something out of it. The object she extracted from the can was small and black, and it looked a little like a small crucifix, the only difference being that the shorter, horizontal beam of the object was bent in a semicircle.

Schofield's eyes widened when he saw it and he opened his mouth to shout, but it was too late.

In the dining room, Petard dived for the two white containers, just as Latissier?who hadn't been patted down since he had been at the station when the Marines had arrived? threw open his parka, revealing a short-barreled French-made FA-MAS assault rifle. At the same time, the one named Cuvier pulled both of his hands free of his pockets, revealing two models of the same weapon that Gant now had in her hand. Cuvier immediately fired one of them at Gant just as she turned to face him and Schofield saw her head snap backwards with the impact as she fell to the floor.

Deafening gunfire exploded through the silence as Latissier jammed his finger down on the trigger of his assault rifle and sprayed the dining room with a blanket of suppressing fire. His arc of gunfire cut through the air like a scythe, and it practically ripped Augustine Lau in two.

Latissier didn't let go for a full ten seconds and the sustained burst of machine-gun fire caused everybody else to hit the deck.

Wilkes Ice Station had become a battlefield.

And everything went to hell.

SECOND INCURSION

16 June 0930 hours

"This is Scarecrow! This is Scarecrow!" Schofield yelled into his helmet mike as he ducked into a doorway amid the cacophony of gunfire. "I count eight hostiles! I repeat, eight hostile objects! I call it as six military, two civilians. Civilians are probably concealing weapons for use by the commandos. Marines, do not show prejudice!"

Chunks of ice rained down all around him as Latissier's stream of bullets impacted against the ice wall above him.

It was the sight of the crossbow that did it.

Each of the elite military units of the world has its own characteristic weapon. For the United States Navy SEALs, experts in close-quarter combat, it is the Ruger pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun. For the British Special Air Service? the famous SAS?nitrogen charges are the signature weapon. For U.S. Marine Force Reconnaissance Units it is the Armalite MH-12 Maghook, a grappling hook that also contains a high-powered magnet for adhesion to sheer metallic surfaces.

Only one elite force, however, is known for carrying crossbows.

The Premier Régiment Parachutiste d'Infanterie de Marine, the crack French commando unit?known in English as the First Marine Parachute Regiment. It is the French equivalent of the SAS or the SEALs.

Which is to say that it is not a regular force like, for example, the Marines. It is one step higher. It is an offensive unit, an attack team, an elite covert force that exists for one reason and one reason only: to go in first, and to go in fast, and to kill everything in sight.

Which was why, when Schofield saw Gant lift the small hand-held crossbow?it was about the size of a .44 Magnum?from inside the food can, he knew that these men were not scientists from d'Urville. They were soldiers. Elite soldiers.

Cleverly, they had anticipated that he would know the names of all the scientists at d'Urville, so they had appropriated their names. To add to the illusion, they had also brought with them two actual scientists from the French research station?Luc Champion and Henri Rae?people whom the residents of Wilkes would know personally.

The final touch was probably the best touch of all: they had allowed Luc Champion, one of the civilians, to take the lead when the Marines had arrived at Wilkes Ice Station, bolstering the illusion that they were all merely scientists, following the lead of their superior.

That the French had taken five of the residents of Wilkes Ice Station?innocent civilians?out on a hovercraft under the pretense that they were being taken back to safety and then executed them in the middle of the snow plains made Schofield furious. In a detached corner of his mind, he conjured up a picture of what the scene must have looked like? the American scientists, men and women, crying, pleading, begging for their lives as the French soldiers moved among them, leveling their pistols at their heads and blasting their brains all over the inside of the hovercraft.