Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Gant said, "Did Scarecrow know about them? The SEAL teams inside Serb territory?"

Book was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Yes. Officially, Schofield was patrolling the no-fly zone. Unofficially, he was sending grid coordinates of Serb leadership farmhouses to the SEALs on the ground. It didn't make any difference anyway. He never said a word."

Gant watched intently as Riley took a deep breath. He was building up to something.

"In any case," Book said, "the Serbs decided that Schofield had been carrying out reconnaissance for the SEAL teams, that he had been spotting strategic targets from the air and transmitting their coordinates to men on the ground. They decided that since he'd been seeing things that he wasn't supposed to be seeing, they would cut his eyes out."

" What ?" Gant said.

Riley said, "They pulled a razor blade out of a drawer and they held him down. Then one of them stepped forward and slowly cut two vertical lines down across Schofield's eyes. Apparently, as he did it, the man with the razor blade quoted something from the Bible. Something about if your hand sins, cut it off, and if your eyes sin, cut them out."

Gant felt sick. They had blinded Schofield. "What did they do then?" she asked.

"They locked him in a cupboard and they let him bleed."

Gant was still shocked. "So how did he get out?"

"Jack Walsh sent a Recon team to go in and get him," Riley said.

Gant's ears pricked up at the name. Every Marine knew of Captain John T. Walsh. He was the captain of the Wasp , the most revered Marine in the Corps.

Some thought he should have been Commandant, the highest-ranking officer in the United States Marine Corps, but Walsh's history of disdain for any kind of politician had prevented that. The Commandant is required to liaise regularly with members of Congress, and everyone knew?Walsh more than anyone?that Jack Walsh wouldn't be able to stomach that. Besides, Walsh had said he would rather command the Wasp and liaise with soldiers. The Marines loved him for it.

Riley went on. "When Scott O'Grady got lifted out of Bosnia on 8 June 1995, they put him on the cover of Time magazine. He met the President. He did the whole PR thing.

"When Shane Schofield got lifted out of Bosnia five months later, nobody heard a thing. There were no TV cameras waiting on the deck of the Wasp to photograph him as he stepped off that helicopter. There were no newspaper reporters there to take down his story. Do you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because when Shane Schofield landed on the Wasp after being extracted from that farmhouse in Bosnia by a team of United States Marines, he was the worst-looking thing you have ever seen.

"The extraction had been bloody. Fierce as hell. The Serbs hadn't wanted to give up their prized American pilot and they'd fought hard. When that chopper returned and hit the tarmac on the Wasp , it had four seriously wounded Marines on board. It also had Shane Schofield.

"The medics and the doctors and the support crews charged out and got everybody off the chopper as fast as they could. There was blood everywhere, wounded men screaming. Schofield was taken away on a gurney. He had blood pouring out of both of his eyes. The extraction had been so fast?so intense ?that no one had even had a chance to put gauze patches over his eyes."

Riley paused. Gant just stared.

"What happened after that?" she asked.

"Jack Walsh copped shit from the White House and the Pentagon. They hadn't wanted him to send anyone in for Schofield because Schofield wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. The White House didn't want the 'political damage' that would follow from an American search-and-rescue mission for a downed spy plane. Walsh told them where to shove it, said they could fire him if they wanted to."

"What about Scarecrow? What happened to him?"

"He was blinded. His eyes had been ripped to shreds. They took him to Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Maryland. It's got the best eye surgery unit in the country, or so they tell me."

"And?"

"And they fixed his eyes. Don't ask me how, 'cause I don't know how. Apparently, the razor blade cuts were fairly shallow, so there was no damage to his retinas. The real damage, they said, was to the outer extremities of his eyes?the irises and the pupils. Purely physical defects, they said. Defects which could be fixed." Riley shook his head. "I don't know what they did?some fancy new laser-fusing procedure, someone told me?but they did it; they fixed his eyes. Hell, all I know is that if you can afford it?and in Scarecrow's case, the Corps could?you don't need glasses these days.

"Of course, there was still the scarring on his skin, but otherwise, they did it. Schofield could see again. Twenty-twenty." Riley paused. "There was only one hitch."

"What was that?"

"The Corps wouldn't let him fly again," Riley said. "It's standard procedure across all the armed forces: once you've had eye trauma of any kind, you can't fly a military airplane. Hell, if you wear reading glasses, you're not allowed to fly a military kite."

"So what did Scarecrow do?"

Riley smiled. "He decided to become a line animal, a ground Marine. He was already an officer from his flying days, so he kept his commission. But that was all he kept. He had to start all over again. He went from flight status, Lieutenant Commander, to ground force, Lieutenant Second Class, in an instant.

"And he went back to school. Back to the Basic School at Quantico. And he did every course they had. He did tactical weapons training. He did strategic planning. Small arms, scout/sniper. You name it, he did it. He did it all . Apparently, he said he wanted to be like those men who'd come in and got him out of Bosnia. What they'd done for him he wanted to be able to do."

Riley shrugged. "As you can probably imagine, it didn't take long for him to get noticed. He was too clever to stay a Second Lieutenant for long. After a few months, they upped him to Full Lieutenant, and before long, they offered him a Recon Unit. He took it. That was almost two years ago now."

Gant had never known. She had been selected for Schofield's Recon Unit only a year ago, and it had never occurred to her to wonder how Schofield himself had become the team's commander. That sort of thing was officer stuff, and Gant wasn't an officer. She was enlisted, and enlisted troops know only what they are told to know. Things like the choice of team commander are left to the higher-ups.

"I've been in his team ever since," Riley said proudly.

Gant knew what he meant. Riley respected Schofield, trusted his judgment, trusted his appraisal of any given situation. Schofield was Riley's commander and Riley would follow him into hell.

Gant would, too. Ever since she had been in Schofield's Recon team, she had liked him. She respected him as a leader.

He was firm but fair, and he didn't mince words. And he had never treated her any differently from any of the men in the unit.

"You like him, don't you?" Riley said softly.

"I trust him," Gant said.

There was a short silence.

Gant sighed. "I'm twenty-six years old, Book. Did you know that?"

"No."

"Twenty-six years old. God," Gant said, lost in thought. She turned to Book. "Did you know I was married once?"

"No, I didn't."

"Got married at the ripe old age of nineteen, I did. Married the sweetest man you'd ever meet, the catch of the town. He was a new teacher at the local high school, just arrived from New York, taught English. Gentle guy, quiet. I was pregnant by the time I was twenty."

Book just watched Gant silently as she spoke.

"And then one day," Gant said, "when I was two and a half months pregnant I arrived home early to find him doing it doggy-style on the living room floor with a seventeen-year-old cheerleader who'd come round for tutoring."