Matthew Reilly: Ice Station

His call sign added to the mystery, since it was common knowledge that it had been Brigadier General Norman W. McLean himself who had given Schofield his operational nickname?a nickname that many assumed had something to do with the young Lieutenant's hidden eyes.

"Whistler One, do you copy?"

Schofield picked up his radio. "Whistler Two, this is Whistler One. What is it?"

" Sir?" The deep voice of Staff Sergeant Buck "Book" Riley was suddenly cut off by a wash of static. Over the past twenty-four hours, ionospheric conditions over continental Antarctica had rapidly deteriorated. The full force of a solar flare had kicked in, disrupting the entire electromagnetic spectrum and limiting radio contact to short-range UHF transmissions. Contact between hovercrafts one hundred yards apart was difficult. Contact with Wilkes Ice Station?their destination?was impossible.

The static faded and Riley's voice came over the speaker again. " Sir, do you remember that moving contact we picked up about an hour ago ?"

"Uh-huh," Schofield said.

For the past hour, Whistler Two had been picking up emissions from the electronic equipment on board a moving vehicle heading in the opposite direction, back down the coast toward the French research station, Dumont d'Urville.

"What about it?"

"Sir, I can't find it anymore."

Schofield looked down at the radio. "Are you sure?"

"We have no reading on our scopes. Either they shut down or they just disappeared."

Schofield frowned in thought; then he looked back at the cramped personnel compartment behind him. Seated there, two to each side, were four Marines, all dressed in snow fatigues. White-gray Kevlar helmets sat in their laps. White-gray body armor covered their chests. White-gray automatic rifles sat by their sides.

It had been two days since the distress signal from Wilkes Ice Station had been picked up by the U.S. Navy landing ship, Shreveport , while it had been in port in Sydney. As luck would have it, only a week earlier it had been decided that the Shreveport ?a rapid deployment vessel used to transport Marine Force Reconnaissance Units?would stay in Sydney for some urgent repairs while the rest of her group returned to Pearl Harbor. That being the case, within an hour of the receipt of Abby Sinclair's distress signal, the Shreveport ? now up and ready to go?was at sea, carrying a squad of Marines due south, heading toward the Ross Sea.

Now Schofield and his unit were approaching Wilkes Ice Station from McMurdo Station, another, larger, U.S. research facility about nine hundred miles from Wilkes. McMurdo was situated on the edge of the Ross Sea and was manned by a standing staff of 104 all year round. Despite the lasting stigma associated with the U.S. Navy's disastrous nuclear power experiment there in 1972, it remained the U.S. gateway to the South Pole.

Wilkes, on the other hand, was as remote a station as one would find in Antarctica. Six hundred miles from its nearest neighbor, it was a small American outpost, situated right on top of the coastal ice shelf not far from the Dalton Iceberg Tongue. It was bounded on the landward side by a hundred miles of barren, windswept ice plains and to seaward by towering three-hundred-foot cliffs that were pounded all year round by mountainous sixty-foot waves.

Access by air had been out of the question. It was early winter, and a minus-thirty-degree blizzard had been assailing the camp for three weeks now. It was expected to last another four. In such weather, exposed helicopter rotors and jet engines were known to freeze in midair.

And access by sea meant taking on the cliffs. The U.S. Navy had a word for such a mission: suicide .

Which left access by land. By hovercraft. The twelve-man Marine Recon Unit would make the eleven-hour trip from McMurdo to Wilkes in two enclosed-fan military hovercrafts.

Schofield thought about the moving signal again. On a map, McMurdo, d'Urville, and Wilkes stations formed something like an isosceles triangle. D'Urville and Wilkes on the coast, forming the base of the triangle. McMurdo?farther inland, on the edge of the enormous bay formed by the Ross Sea?the point.

The signal that Whistler Two had picked up heading back along the coast toward Dumont d'Urville had been maintaining a steady speed of about forty miles an hour. At that speed, it was probably a conventional hovercraft. Maybe the French had had people at d'Urville who'd picked up the distress signal from Wilkes, sent help, and were now on their way back....

Schofield keyed his radio again. "Book, when was the last time you held that signal?"

The radio crackled. " Signal last held eight minutes ago. Range finder contact. Identical to previously held electronic signature. Heading consistent with previous vector. It was the same signal, sir, and as of eight minutes ago it was right where it should have been ."

In this weather?howling eighty-knot winds that hurled snow so fast that it fell horizontally?regular radar scanning was hopeless. Just as the solar flare in the ionosphere put paid to radio communications, the low-pressure system on the ground caused havoc with their radar.

Prepared for such an eventuality, each hovercraft was equipped with roof-mounted units called range finders. Mounted on a revolving turret, each range finder swung back and forth in a slow 180-degree arc, emitting a constant high-powered focal beam known as a "needle." Unlike radar, whose straight-line reach has always been limited by the curvature of the Earth, needles can hug the Earth's surface and bend over the horizon for at least another fifty miles. As soon as any "live" object?any object with chemical, animal, or electronic properties?crosses the path of a needle, it is recorded. Or, as the unit's range finder operator, Private José "Santa" Cruz, liked to put it, "if it boils, breathes, or beeps, the range finder'll nail the fucker."

Schofield keyed his radio. "Book, the point where the signal disappeared. How far away is it?"

" About ninety miles from here, sir ," Riley's voice answered.

Schofield stared out over the seamless expanse of white that stretched all the way to the horizon.

At last he said, "All right. Check it out."

" Roger that ," Riley responded immediately. Schofield had a lot of time for Book Riley. The two men had been friends for several years. Solid and fit, Riley had a boxer's face?a flat nose that had been broken too many times, sunken eyes, and thick black eyebrows. He was popular in the unit?serious when he had to be, but relaxed and funny when the pressure was off. He had been the Staff Sergeant responsible for Schofield when Schofield had been a young and stupid Second Lieutenant. Then, when Schofield had been given command of a Recon Unit, Book?then a forty-year-old, highly respected Staff Sergeant who could have had his choice of assignment within the Marine Corps establishment? had stayed with him.

"We'll continue on to Wilkes," Schofield said. "You find out what happened to that signal, and then you meet us at the station."

"Got it."

"Follow-up time is two hours. Don't be late. And set your range finder arc from your tail. If there's anybody out there behind us, I want to know."

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, and, Book, one more thing," Schofield said.

"What?"

"You play nice with the other kids, you hear."

"Yes, sir."

"One, out," Schofield said.

"Whistler Two, out."

And with that, the second hovercraft peeled away to the right and sped off into the snowstorm.

An hour later, the coastline came into view, and through a set of high-powered field glasses Schofield saw Wilkes Ice Station for the first time.