Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Nine minutes.

He would have to make this quick. Gant and the others were still down in the cavern, and he wanted to contact them and find out exactly what was down there before he called McMurdo.

Schofield pressed a button on the side of his watch and the display changed. The stopwatch screen appeared. It displayed numbers ticking upward:

1:52:58

1:52:59

1:53:00

Damn , Schofield thought.

It was going to be close. After he spoke with the people at McMurdo at 3:51, they would have less than an hour to figure out a way to seek out and destroy the French warship hovering off the coast waiting to fire its missiles at Wilkes Ice Station.

"All right," he said, turning to the group assembled around him. "Book. Rebound. You first."

Book and Rebound told their story.

They had both been outside, working on the station's antenna, out by one of the outer buildings.

"And then you called and asked for one of us to go and check on Mr. Renshaw," Book said. "Snake took the call, so he went to do it. He came back after about fifteen minutes and said that everything was fine, said that Mr. Renshaw was still in his room and that it had just been a false alarm."

Schofield nodded?that was when he had been shot.

Book said, "A little later, I got up to go and check on Mother, but Snake stopped me and said that he'd do it. I didn't think anything of it at the time, so I said sure, if he wanted to."

Schofield nodded again?that was when the attack on Mother had happened.

He stepped forward so that he stood right in front of Snake. "Sergeant," he said. "Would you care to explain yourself?"

Snake said nothing.

Schofield said, "Sergeant, I said, would you like to tell me what in fucking hell is going on here."

Snake didn't flinch. He just sneered coldly at Schofield.

Schofield hated him, hated the very sight of him.

This was the man who had shot him?killed him?and then checked to make sure that he was dead.

Schofield had thought about his own shooting.

In the end, it was the frosted glass on the deck that explained it. The white frosted glass that Schofield had stepped in only moments before he had been shot.

It explained two things: why Snake was able to fire a gun safely in the gaseous atmosphere of Wilkes Ice Station and where he had fired it from.

The answer, in the end, was simple.

Snake hadn't fired his sniper rifle from inside the station at all. He had fired it from outside the station. He had broken a tiny round hole in the white frosted glass dome that towered above the central shaft of the station and he had then shot down through that hole at Schofield. The glass that he had dislodged from the dome to make the hole in it had fallen all the way down through the shaft to E-deck. The same glass that Schofield had stepped on only moments before he had been shot.

Schofield just stared at Snake.

Mother said softly, "He said he was ICG."

Book and Rebound turned instantly at Mother's words.

"Well, Sergeant?" Schofield said.

Snake said nothing.

Schofield said, "Not very talkative, huh?"

"He was pretty fucking talkative when he was getting ready to fillet me," Mother said. "I say we cut his balls off and make him watch as we feed 'em to the fucking whales."

"Good idea," Schofield said as he glared at Snake. Snake just sneered smugly back at him.

Schofield felt the anger well up inside him. He was furious. Right now he just wanted to slam Snake up against the wall and wipe that smug look off his fucking face?

" As a leader, you simply cannot afford to get angry or upset ."

Once again, Trevor Barnaby's words rang through Schofield's head.

Schofield wondered whether Barnaby had ever had an infiltrator in his unit. He wondered what the famous SAS commander would have done in these circumstances.

"Book," Schofield said. "Opinions?"

Buck Riley just stared sadly at Snake and shook his head. He seemed to be the most deeply affected by the revelation that Snake was an ICG plant.

"I didn't think you were a traitor, Snake," Book said. Then he turned to Schofietd. "It's not for you to kill him. Not here. Not now. Take him home. Send him to jail."

As Book spoke, Schofield just glared at Snake. Snake stared defiantly back at him.

There was a long silence.

Schofield broke it. "Tell me about the Intelligence Convergence Group, Snake."

"That's a nice wound," Snake said softly, slowly, looking at the adhesive gauze patch on Schofield's neck. The wound Snake himself had inflicted. "You ought to be dead."

"It didn't suit me," Schofield said. "Tell me about the ICG."

Snake smiled a cold, thin smile. Then he began to laugh softly.

"You're a dead man," he said quietly. Then he turned to face the others. "You're all going to die."

"What do you mean?" Schofield said.

"You wanted to know about the ICG," Snake said. "I just told you about the ICG."

"The ICG is going to kill us?"

"The ICG will never let you live," Snake said. "It's not possible. Not after what you've seen here. When the United States Government gets their hands on that spaceship?or whatever it is that's down there?it can't possibly allow a handful of grunts like you to know about it. You're all going to die. Count on it."

Snake's words hung in the air. Everyone on the deck was silent.

Their reward for arriving at Wilkes Ice Station so quickly and defending it against the French was to be a death sentence.

"Wonderful," Schofield said. "That's just wonderful. I bet you're pretty fucking proud of yourself," he said to Snake.

"My loyalty to my country is greater than my loyalty to you, Scarecrow," Snake said defiantly.

Schofield's teeth began to grind. He stepped forward. Book held him back.

"Not now," Book said quietly. "Not here."

" Lieutenant !" a woman's voice yelled from somewhere high up in the station. Schofield looked up.

Abby Sinclair was leaning out over the railing of A-deck. "Lieutenant!" she yelled. "It's time!"

Schofield strode into the radio room on A-deck. Book and James Renshaw came in behind him. Rebound had stayed down on E-deck to keep an eye on Snake.

Abby was already seated at the radio console. She did a double take when she saw Renshaw enter the room.

"Hello, Abby," Renshaw said.

"Hello, James," Abby said, cautiously.

She turned to Schofield. "The break should be over us any second now." She flicked a switch on the console. The sound of static began to wash out from two wall-mounted speakers.

Shhhhhhhhhh.

"That's the sound of the solar flare," Abby said. "But if you wait just... a... few... seconds ..."

Abruptly the shooshing sound cut off and there was silence.

"And there it is," Abby said. "There's your break, Lieutenant. Go for it."

Schofield sat down at the console and grabbed the microphone.

He hit the talk button, but just as he was about to speak, a strange high-pitched whistling sound suddenly blared out from the wall-mounted speakers. It sounded like feedback, interference.

Schofield released the microphone instantly, looked at Abby. "What did I do? Did I press something?"

Abby frowned, flicked a couple of switches. "No. You didn't do anything."

"Is it the solar flare? Could you have got the timing wrong?"

"No," Abby said firmly.

She flicked some more switches.

Nothing happened.

The system didn't seem to be responding to what she was doing. The high-pitched whistling sound filled the radio room. Abby said, "There's something wrong; this isn't interference from the flare. This is something else. This is different. It's almost as if it's electronic . As though someone was jamming us...."