Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Schofield was proud of Rebound. Proud of how the young Marine had handled the situation.

Rather than blow the lid on the French plan and continue with unpredictable hand-to-hand fighting, Rebound had coolly allowed the French to believe that their plan was still afoot.

But he had changed one thing.

He had turned the Claymores around.

That was what Petard had seen when Rebound had spoken to him in the drilling room. He had seen those chilling words.

THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY.

Pointing at him.

Rebound had got the better of him. And when Rebound stepped forward across the trip wire, it was to be the last thing that Petard ever saw. The battle, at last, was over.

An hour later, the station's lights were back on and all of the bodies, French and American, had been found and accounted for. At least, those bodies that could be found.

The French had lost four men to the killer whales; the Americans, one. Eight other French commandos and two more U.S. Marines?Hollywood and Ratman?had been found in various locations around the ice station. They had all been confirmed dead.

The Americans also had two wounded, both quite seriously. Mother, who had lost one of her legs to the killer whale, and, rather surprisingly, Augustine "Samurai" Lau, the very first Marine to have been gunned down by the French.

Mother was faring better than Samurai. Since her wound was a localized one?confined to the lower extremity of her left leg?she was still conscious. In fact, she still had full movement in all of her other limbs. The flow of blood from the wound had been stopped, and the methadone took care of what pain there was. The only enemy that remained was shock. Thus it was decided that Mother would remain in her storeroom on E-deck, under constant supervision. To move her might trigger a fit.

Samurai, on the other hand, was in a much worse state. He was in a self-induced coma, his stomach having been ripped to shreds by Latissier's barrage of gunfire at the very beginning of the battle.

The young Marine's body had responded to the sudden trauma in the only way it knew how?it had switched itself off. At the time they found him alive, Schofield had marveled at the ability of the human body to take care of itself in the face of such extreme crisis. No amount of methadone or morphine could have quelled the pain of that many gunshot wounds. So Samurai's body had done the next-best thing: it had simply turned off its sensory apparatus and was now awaiting external help.

The problem was whether or not Schofield could provide that external help.

Anything greater than basic medical knowledge is rare in a frontline unit. The closest thing such units have to a doctor is the team medic, who is usually a low-level Corporal. Legs Lane had been Schofield's medic, and he was now deader than dead.

Schofield walked quickly around the A-deck catwalk. He'd just come up from E-deck, where he had checked on Mother,and was now wearing a new pair of silver antiflash glasses. Mother had given them to him. She'd said that in her state, she wouldn't be needing them anymore.

Schofield poked his head around the dining room door. "What do you think, Rebound?" he said.

Inside the dining room, Rebound was working feverishly over Samurai's inanimate body. The body lay flat on its back on a table in the center of the room. Blood dripped off the edges of the table, forming a red puddle on the cold porcelain floor.

Rebound looked up from what he was doing. He shook his head in exasperation.

"I can't keep up with the blood loss," he said to Schofield. "There's just too much internal damage. His whole gut's been blown apart."

Rebound wiped his forehead. A slick of blood appeared above his eyes. He looked hard at Schofield. 'This is way out of my league, sir. He needs someone who knows what he's doing. He needs a doctor."

Schofield stared at Samurai's prone body for a few seconds.

"Just do what you can," he said, and then he left the room.

"OK, people, listen up," Schofield said. "We don't have much time, so I'm going to keep this short."

The six remaining able-bodied Marines were gathered around the pool on E-deck. They all stood in a wide circle. Schofield stood in the middle.

Schofield's voice echoed up through the shaft of the empty station: "This station is obviously a lot hotter than we originally thought. I'm thinking that if the French were willing to take a chance to grab it, others will, too. And whoever those others might be, by now they've had some time to get their shit together and prepare for a full-scale attack. Have no doubt, people, if anyone else decides to hit this station they will almost certainly be better prepared and more heavily armed than those French pricks we just exterminated. Opinions?"

"Concur," Buck Riley said.

"Same," Snake said. Book Riley and Snake Kaplan were the two most senior enlisted men in the unit. It meant something that they both agreed with Schofield's assessment of the situation.

Schofield said, "All right, then. What I want to happen now is this. Montana..."

"Yes, sir."

"I want you to go topside and position our two hovercrafts so that their range finders are pointed outward, so that they cover the entire landward approach to this station. I want maximum coverage, no gaps. Trip wires aren't going to cut it anymore with this place; we use the range finders from here. As soon as anyone comes within fifty miles of this station, I want to know about it."

"Got it," Montana said.

"And while you're up there," Schofield said, "see if you can get on the radio and raise McMurdo. Find out when our reinforcements are coming. They should've been here by now."

"You got it," Montana said. He hurried away.

"Santa Cruz ...," Schofield said, turning.

"Yes, sir."

"Eraser check. I want this whole facility swept from top to bottom for any kind of eraser or delay switch, OK? There's no knowing what kinds of little surprises our French friends left behind for us. Got it?"

"Yes, sir," Santa Cruz said. He broke out of the circle and headed for the nearest rung-ladder.

"Snake..."

"Sir."

"The winch that lowers the diving bell. Its control panel is up on C-deck, in the alcove. That control panel was damaged by a grenade blast during the fight. I need those winch controls working again. Can you handle it?"

"Yes, sir," Snake said. He, too, left the circle.

When Snake had gone, Riley and Gant were the only ones left on the deck.

Schofield turned to face them. "Book. Fox. I want vou two to do a full prep of our dive gear. Three divers, four-hour dive compression, low-audibility gear, plus some auxiliaries for later."

"Air mix?" Riley asked.

"Saturated helium-oxygen. Ninety-eight to two," Schofield said.

Riley and Gant were momentarily silent. A compressed air mix of 98% helium and 2% oxygen was very rare. The almost negligible amount of oxygen indicated a dive to a very high-pressure environment.

Schofield handed Gant a handful of blue capsules. They were N-67D antinitrogen blood-pressure capsules, developed by the Navy for use during deep-dive missions. They were affectionately known to military divers as "the pills."

By retarding the dissolution of nitrogen in the bloodstream during a deep dive, the pills prevented decompression sickness?better known as the bends?among divers. Since the pills neutralized nitrogen activity in the bloodstream, Navy and Marine Corps divers could descend as quickly as they liked without fear of nitrogen narcosis and ascend without the need for making time-consuming decompression stops. The pills had revolutionized military deep-diving.

"Planning a deep dive, sir?" Gant said, looking up from the blue pills in her hand.