Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Twenty feet.

Damn it , Schofield thought. Knives would be useless if the French had a twenty-foot safety zone around themselves. With no corresponding projectile-firing weapon, the Marines wouldn't stand a chance. The thing was, they didn't have such a weapon. At least, nothing that they could use safely in the station's flammable gaseous environment.

And then it occurred to Schofield.

Maybe they did....

Schofield stepped up onto D-deck with his Maghook held out in front of him at shoulder height, ready to fire. In his other hand, he held the dead Frenchman's crossbow.

Although not exactly designed for accuracy, the Armalite MH-12 Maghook launcher has the ability to shoot its magnetic grappling hook quite substantial distances?over a hundred feet.

Initially, the MH-12 Maghook was intended for use in urban warfare and antiterrorist operations?its chief purpose was to provide a self-contained rope and grappling hook that could be used for scaling the sides of buildings, or providing zip lines along which antiterrorist units could slide and make rapid forced entries.

That being the case, the Maghook's small hand-held launcher had to have the power to shoot its hook to great heights. The answer was a state-of-the-art hydraulic launching system that provided 4,000 pounds per square inch of enhanced vertical thrust. The way Schofield figured it, if he fired his Maghook at an enemy soldier from a distance of twenty feet, 4,000 pounds per square inch of thrust had to have some chance of scoring a hit.

And indeed, as Schofield himself had discovered in the pool before, at close range, underwater , a Maghook had the capacity to stun a seven-ton killer whale. When fired at a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man at similar range, above water, the Maghook would probably crack his skull.

Thus armed, the Marines were confident that they could handle the French commandos' crossbows.

So the plan would go ahead.

Montana, Snake, and Santa Cruz would work their way down through the station from A-deck, forcing the Frenchmen down, while Schofield, Gant, and Rebound worked their way up from E-deck. They would hopefully meet halfway and the rest would write itself.

Schofield and Gant had departed right away.

Rebound was to join them as soon as he had stemmed the flow of blood from Mother's leg and started her up on an intravenous line of methadone.

The three Marines on A-deck began their attack.

They moved quickly, using a textbook three-man flushing formation known as "leapfrogging." One Marine would move forward, ahead of his partners, and fire his Maghook. Then, while he reeled his hook in to reload, a second Marine would move in front of him?"leapfrogging" him?and fire his Maghook at the enemy. By the time the third man stepped forward and fired, the first man was ready to fire again and the cycle continued.

The two French soldiers on A-deck responded as they were supposed to?they retreated, hastened away from the rolling wave of powerful Maghook fire. They hurried for the ladders, climbed down the shaft.

However, as he fielded reports from Montana about the French soldiers' movement, Schofield noticed something odd about their evasive maneuvers.

They were moving too fast.

In their retreat down the shaft, the four French soldiers had completely avoided the destroyed B-deck catwalk and continued straight down to C.

They moved fluidly, in a swift two-by-two cover formation?the lead two men covering the forward flank, the rear two covering their pursuers behind, with a space of about ten yards between the two pairs.

Earlier, Montana had reported that all four of the French commandos were wearing night-vision goggles. They had come prepared.

They continued to move down the shaft fast.

Schofield had expected them to waste time in the tunnels as they tried to adopt a defensive position. But the French soldiers seemed to have other ideas. They darted into the C-deck tunnels only for so long as it took the Marines pursuing them from the levels above to join them. Then suddenly they appeared on the catwalk again and made for the rung-ladder leading down to D-deck.

At that moment, Schofield recalled something Trevor Barnaby had once said about strategy.

" Good strategy is like magic ," Barnaby had said. " Make your enemy look at one hand while you're doing something with the other ."

" They're moving for the southwest ladder ," Montana's voice said in Schofield's earpiece. " Scarecrow, you down there ?"

Schofield moved forward along the D-deck catwalk, the world green before his eyes. "We're on it."

He and Gant approached the southwest corner of D-deck, saw the rung-ladder that led up to C-deck.

Schofield spoke into his mike. "Rebound, where are you?"

" Finishing up now, sir ," Rebound's voice replied from the storeroom down on E-deck.

" Flanking west, Sarge ," the voice of José "Santa" Cruz said over the intercom.

Montana's voice: " Keep 'em coming, Cruz. Then send 'em down to the Scarecrow ."

On D-deck, Schofield and Gant arrived at the rung-ladder. They crouched, leveled their weapons at the empty ladder. They heard boots stomping fast on the metal catwalk above them, heard the distinctive snap-phew ! of a crossbow being fired.

" They're coming to the ladder ," Santa Cruz's voice said.

More footsteps clanged on the metal grating.

Any second now ...

Any second...

And then suddenly, clunk, clunk .

What the hell?

" Marines! Eyes shut! Flasher on the ground !" Santa Cruz's voice yelled suddenly.

Schofield immediately squeezed his eyes shut just as he heard the stun grenade bounce on the metal deck above him.

The stun grenade went off?like a flashbulb on a camera? and for a brief instant the whole of Wilkes Ice Station flared white.

Schofield was about to open his eyes when suddenly there came a new noise from his right. It sounded like someone doing up a zipper really, really fast.

Schofield spun right and opened his eyes, and his green world streaked laterally. His eyes searched the empty shaft, but he saw nothing.

" Ah, shit !" Cruz said. " Sir! One of them just went over the railing !"

The zipping sound that Schofield had just heard suddenly made sense. It had been the sound of someone rappelling down the central shaft on a rope.

Schofield froze for a split second.

Such a move wasn't a defensive move at all.

It was a coordinated move, a planned move, an attacking move.

The French weren't actually on the run.

They were carrying out a plan of their own.

Make your enemy look at one hand while you're doing something with the other....

Like a chess player caught in check a second before he intends to play his own killing move, Schofield felt his mind start to spin.

What were they up to?

What was their plan?

In the end he didn't have time to think about it, because no sooner had he heard Santa Cruz's message than a volley of arrows thudded into the ice wall all around him. Schofield ducked and spun and saw Gant dive to the floor behind him, and then he spun back round and before he knew what was happening a figure slid down the rung-ladder in front of him and Schofield found himself standing face-to-face with the Frenchman he knew as Jacques Latissier.

Rebound was crouched over Mother in the storeroom on E-deck.

Mother had tough veins, and, to make it even more difficult, Rebound was wearing his night-vision goggles as he tried to get the needle into her arm. He'd missed the vein on his first four attempts, and he had only now just managed to get the IV line flowing into Mother's arm.