Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Schofield looked it over, looked for the signature features.

He saw the narrow conning tower, saw the four torpedo ports on the bow. One of the torpedo ports, he saw, was in the process of opening. Vmmmmm .

And then he saw the colors painted on the forward left-hand side of the bow?saw the three vertical shafts of color: blue-white-red.

He was looking at the French flag.

Renshaw watched as Schofield burst up out of the water again.

"What are you doing down there?" he asked.

Schofield ignored him. Instead, he thrust his left arm out of the water and examined his watch.

The stopwatch read:

2:57:59

2:58:00

2:58:01

"Oh, Jesus," he said. "Oh, Jesus ."

In the bedlam of the hovercraft chase, he had completely forgotten about the French warship hovering off the coast of Antarctica, waiting to fire its missiles at Wilkes, Ice Station. Its code name, he recalled, was Shark.

It was only now, though, that Schofield realized he had made a mistake. He had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Shark wasn't a warship at all.

It was a submarine.

It was this submarine.

"Quickly," Schofield said to Renshaw. "Get me out"

Renshaw thrust his hand down and Schofield clasped it firmly. Renshaw hauled him up as quickly as he could. When he was high enough, Schofield grabbed hold of the ice ledge and hauled himself up onto it.

Renshaw had half-expected Schofield to drop down onto the ice and catch his breath as he himself had done, but Schofield was up on his feet in an instant.

In fact, no sooner was he up on the ledge than he was running?no, sprinting ?out across the flat expanse of the iceberg.

Renshaw gave chase. He saw Schofield hurdle an ice mound as he bounded for the edge of the iceberg about thirty meters away. There was a slight incline that Schofield ran up, toward the edge of the iceberg. On the other side of the incline, Renshaw saw, was a sheer ten-meter drop down to the water below.

As he ran, Schofield checked his stopwatch. The seconds continued to tick upward, toward the three-hour mark.

Toward firing time.

2:58:31

2:58:32

2:58:33

Schofield was thinking as he ran.

It's going to destroy the station. Destroy the station.

Going to kill my Marines. Kill the little girl ...

Got to stop it.

But how? How does a man destroy a submarine?

And then suddenly he remembered something.

He unshouldered his Maghook as he ran. Then he quickly hit the button marked M and saw the red light on the Maghook's magnetically charged head come to life.

Then he pulled a silver canister from his thigh pocket. It was the foot-long silver canister with the green band painted around it that he had found inside the British hovercraft.

The Tritonal 80/20 high-powered explosive charge.

Schofield looked at the silver-and-green canister as he ran. It had a stainless-steel pneumatic lid on it. He turned the lid and heard a soft hiss ! The lid popped open and he saw a familiar digital timing display next to an arm-disarm switch. Since it was a demolition device, a Tritonal charge could be disarmed at any time.

Twenty seconds , he thought. Just enough time to get clear .

He set the timer on the Tritonal charge for twenty seconds and then held the silver canister out above the bulbous magnetic head of his Maghook. Immediately the steel cylinder thunked down hard against the powerful magnet and stuck to it, caught in its vicelike magnetic grip.

Schofield was still running hard, sprinting across the rugged landscape of the iceberg.

Then he came to the edge of the iceberg, and without so much as a second thought, he hit it at full speed and leaped off it, out into the air.

Schofield flew through the air in a long, wide arc?hung there for a full three seconds?before he splashed down hard, feetfirst, into the freezing-cold water of the Southern Ocean one more time.

Bubbles flew up all around him, and for a moment Schofield saw nothing. And then suddenly the bubbles cleared and he found himself hovering in the water right in front of the gargantuan steel nose of the French submarine.

Schofield checked his watch.

2:58:59

2:59:00

2:59:01

One minute to go.

The outer doors of the torpedo tube were fully open now. Schofield swam toward it The torpedo tube opened wide in front of him, ten yards away.

This had better work , Schofield thought as he raised his Maghook, with the Tritonal charge attached to its head. He pressed the arm-disarm switch on the Tritonal charge.

Twenty seconds.

Schofield fired the Maghook.

The Maghook shot out from its launcher, leaving a thin trail of white bubbles in its wake. It sliced through the water toward the open torpedo port...

... and hit the steel hull of the submarine just below the torpedo port with a loud metallic clunk ! The Maghook?with the live Tritonal charge attached to it?bounced off the thick steel hull of the sub and began to sink limply into the water.

Schofield couldn't believe it.

He'd missed!

Shit ! his mind screamed. And then suddenly another thought hit him.

The people inside the sub would have heard it . Must have heard it .

Schofield quickly hit the black button on his grip that reeled the Maghook in, hoped to hell that it got back to him before twenty seconds expired.

Have to get another shot.

Have got to get another shot.

The Maghook began to reel itself in.

And then suddenly Schofield heard another noise.

Vmmmmmm.

Off to his left, on the other side of the bow, one of the other torpedo doors was opening!

This door was smaller than the one Schofield had tried to shoot his Maghook into.

Smaller torpedoes , Schofield thought. Ones that are designed to kill other subs, not whole ice stations .

And then with a sudden whoooosh ! a compact white torpedo whizzed out from the newly-opened torpedo port and rolled through the water toward Schofield.

Schofield couldn't believe it.

They had fired a torpedo at him!

The Maghook returned to its launcher and Schofield quickly pressed the arm-disarm switch on the Tritonal charge?with four seconds to spare?just as the torpedo shot past his waist, its wash knocking him over in the water.

Schofield breathed with relief. He was too close. The torpedo hadn't had time to get a lock on him.

It was then that the torpedo slammed into the iceberg behind him and detonated hard.

Renshaw was standing on the edge of the iceberg, looking down into the water, when the torpedo hit, about twenty yards away.

In an instant, a whole segment of the iceberg exploded in a cloud of white and just fell away into the ocean like a landslide, cut clean from the rest of the massive berg.

"Yikes," Renshaw breathed in awe.

And then suddenly he saw Schofield surface about twenty yards out, saw him gulp in a lungful of air, and then he saw the lieutenant go under again.

With the sound of the torpedo's explosion still reverberating through the water all around him, and a large slice of the iceberg plunging into the water behind him, Schofield aimed his Maghook at the torpedo port a second time.

2:59:37

2:59:38

2:59:39

Once again, he pressed the arm switch on the Tritonal charge? twenty seconds ?and fired.

The Maghook shot through the water ...

... hung there for a long time ...

... and then disappeared inside the torpedo port.

Yes!

Schofield quickly pressed the button marked "m" on his grip, and inside the torpedo tube the magnetic head of the Maghook responded immediately by releasing its grip on the silver-and-green Tritonal charge.