Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

And any second now the second French team would be bursting in through the main entrance passageway and Schofield and Gant would be the first thing they saw.

A chunk of ice exploded next to Schofield's head, and he spun around. Petard was back on his feet in the dining room. Firing hard with his assault rifle. Schofield leveled his Desert Eagle at the dining room and fired six rapid shots back at Petard.

He looked back at the main entrance.

Ten seconds, at the most.

"Shit," he said aloud, looking at Gant, limp in his arms. "Shit."

He looked down over the railing of the catwalk and saw the pool of water way down at the bottom of the station. It couldn't have been more than sixty or seventy feet. They could survive the fall . . . .

No way.

Schofield looked at the catwalk on which he stood and then at the ice wall behind him.

Better.

" Scarecrow, you better get out of there !" It was Montana. He was now out on the catwalk, on the southern side of the station. From where he was standing he could see into the main entrance tunnel on the northern side. Whatever he saw there wasn't good.

"I'm trying, I'm trying," Schofield said.

Schofield fired off two more shots at Petard in the dining room before holstering his pistol.

Then he quickly reached over his shoulder and pulled his Maghook from its holster on his back. The Armalite MH-12 looks a little like an old-fashioned Tommy gun. It has two pistol grips: one normal grip with a trigger and one forward, support grip below the muzzle. In effect the Maghook is a gun, a compact, two-handed launcher that fires a grappling hook from its muzzle at tremendous speed.

At Schofield's feet, Gant began to groan.

Schofield pointed his launcher at the ice wall and fired. A loud metallic whump rang out as the grappling hook shot out from the muzzle and slammed into the ice wall. The hook exploded right through the wall, into the dining room. Once on the other side, its "claws" snapped open.

"Scarecrow! Get moving!"

Schofield turned, just as Gant groggily got to her feet beside him.

"Grab my shoulders," he said to her.

"Wha?huh?"

"Never mind. Just hold on," Schofield said as he threw her arms over his shoulders. The two of them stood close, nose to nose. In any other circumstance, it would have looked like an intimate clinch, two lovers about to kiss?but not now. Holding Gant tightly, Schofield spun and leaned his butt up against the railing.

He looked back toward the main entrance tunnel and saw shadows moving quickly over the ice walls of the passageway. Gunfire began to spew out from within the passageway.

"Hold tight," he said to Gant.

And then, with both hands holding the launcher behind Gant's back?and with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck?Schofield shifted his weight backward and the two of them tumbled over the railing and fell out into space.

No sooner had Schofield and Gant fallen clear of the railing than it was assaulted by a torrent of bullets. A brilliant cascade of white-orange impact sparks exploded above their heads as they dropped clear of the catwalk.

Schofield and Gant fell.

The Maghook's cable splayed out above them. They whipped past B-deck, past Riley and Hollywood, who spun around at the unexpected sight of a pair of bodies dropping past them.

Then Schofield hit a black button on the forward grip of the launcher and a clamping mechanism inside the muzzle bit into the unspooling cable.

Schofield and Gant jolted to a sudden stop, just below B-deck, and the Maghook's cable began to swing them in toward the catwalk. They swung in fast, over the C-deck catwalk, and dropped down onto the metal gangway.

As soon as his feet hit the catwalk, Schofield pressed down twice on the trigger of the launcher. When he did so, up on A-deck, the grappling hook's claws responded by immediately collapsing inward with a sharp snick , and the hook was sucked back through the hole it had created in the dining room wall. The grappling hook fell down into the central shaft of the ice station, reeled in by the launcher. In a couple of seconds it was back in Schofield's hands, and he and Gant hurried inside the nearest doorway.

"Grenade!"

Riley and Hollywood ran flat out down the northern tunnel of B-deck and dived around the corner.

Just as they cleared the corner a booming explosion rocked the ice tunnel behind them. Hard on the heels of the explosion came the concussion wave and then?

Riley and Hollywood ducked behind the corner as a swarm of dartlike objects shot past them at phenomenal speed and thudded into the opposite wall of the tunnel.

The two Marines looked at each other in astonishment.

A fragmentation charge.

A fragmentation charge is basically a conventional grenade that has been filled with hundreds of tiny pieces of metal? tiny sharp-edged, skewed pieces of metal designed to be as difficult as possible to extract from the human body. When the charge detonates, it sends a wave of these lethal fragments rocketing out in every direction.

"I've always said it," Riley said wryly as he popped his clip and jammed a fresh magazine into the receiver of his MP-5. " Always said it: never trust the fucking French. There's just something about 'em. Maybe it's those beady little eyes they all got. Those assholes are supposed to be our goddamn allies."

"Fuckin' French," Hollywood agreed thoughtfully as he peered around the corner with one eye.

His jaw dropped. "Oh, shit ?"

"What?" Riley spun around just in time to see a second grenade bounce around the corner and come to rest five feet away from them.

Five feet.

Out in the open.

There was nowhere to go. They couldn't get clear. Couldn't run down the corridor and get away in ti?

Riley launched himself forward. Toward the grenade. He slid along the frost-covered floor, feet first, soccer-style. When he was within range he let loose with a powerful kick and sent the grenade skittling back down the north tunnel, back toward the central shaft.

As Riley kicked the grenade, Hollywood lunged forward and grabbed him by the shoulder plates and yanked him back behind the corner.

The grenade detonated.

Another deafening explosion boomed out.

A new wave of metal shards blasted out from the corridor, whipped past Riley and Hollywood, and slammed into the wall opposite them.

Hollywood turned and looked at Riley. "Fuck my Roman sandals, man, this is some serious fucking catastrophe."

Riley was already up on his feet. "Come on; we're not staying here."

He looked over toward the other side of the north tunnel and saw Rebound appear at the opposite corner. With him were Corporal Georgio "Legs" Lane and Sergeant Gena "Mother" Newman. They must have come round from the western side of B-deck.

Riley said, "All right, everyone, listen up. As far as I'm concerned, this is now a split op. If we cluster and get cornered, we're all gonna be turned into strawberry fuckin' do-nuts. We have to split up. Rebound, Legs, Mother, you head back west, round the outer tunnel. Hollywood and I'll go east. Once we figure out where we are and what we can do with our position, then we can figure out how the hell we're going to regroup with the others and nail these fuckers. You all OK with that?"

There were no objections. Rebound and the others quickly got to their feet and hustled off down the opposite ice tunnel.

Riley and Hollywood began to run east, following the curve of the outer tunnel.

As he ran, Riley said, "All right, what's this? B-deck, right. OK. What's on B-deck?"

"I don't?" Hollywood cut himself off as they cleared the bend in the tunnel and saw what lay ahead of them.