Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Schofield and Renshaw were in a world of white. Ghostly-white ice formations?like mountain peaks turned upside-down?stretched downward for nearly four hundred feet.

Schofield frowned inside his diving mask. They would have to go quite a way down before they could come up again inside the station.

The two of them swam down the side of one of the enormous ice formations. Through his mask, the only thing Schofield could see was a wall of solid white ice.

After a while, they came to the bottom of the ice formation?the pointed "peak" of the inverted mountain. Schofield slowly swam underneath the peak, and the wall of white glided out of his view?

?and he saw it

His heart nearly skipped a beat.

It was just hanging there in the water in front of him, suspended from its winch cable, making its slow journey back up toward the station.

The diving bell.

Heading back up toward the station.

And then Schofield realized what that meant.

The British had already sent a team down to investigate the cavern.

Schofield hoped to hell that his Marines down in the cavern were ready.

As for him and Renshaw, they had to get to that diving bell. It was a free ride up to Wilkes Ice Station that Schofield did not want to miss.

Schofield spun in the water to signal Renshaw. He saw the short scientist behind him, swimming underneath the inverted mountain peak. He signaled for Renshaw to pick up the pace and the two men hurried through the water toward the diving bell.

"How many are down there?" Barnaby asked softly.

Book Riley didn't say a word.

Book was on his knees, with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was down on E-deck, by the pool. Blood poured out from his mouth. His left eye was half-closed, puffed and swollen. After falling from the speeding hovercraft with Kirsty, Book had been brought back to Wilkes. As soon as he had arrived at the station, he had been taken down to E-deck to face Barnaby.

"Mr. Nero," Barnaby said.

The big SAS man named Nero punched Book hard in the face. Book fell to the deck.

"How many?" Barnaby said. He was holding Book's Maghook in his hand.

" None !" Book yelled through bloody teeth. "There's no one down there. We never got a chance to send anyone down there."

"Oh, really," Barnaby said. He looked at the Maghook in his hands thoughtfully. "Mr. Riley, I find it very difficult to believe that a commander of the caliber of the Scarecrow would neglect to make the task of sending a squad down to that cave the very first thing that he did once he got here ."

"Then why don't you ask him ?"

"Tell me the truth, Mr. Riley, or very soon I am going to lose my temper and feed you to the lions."

"There's no one down there," Book said.

"OK," Barnaby said, turning abruptly to face Snake. "Mr. Kaplan," he said. "Is Mr. Riley telling me the truth?"

Book looked up sharply at Snake.

Barnaby said to Snake, "Mr. Kaplan, if Mr. Riley is lying to me, I will kill him. If you lie to me, I will kill you ."

Book looked up at Snake with wide, pleading eyes.

Snake spoke. "He's lying. There are four people down there. Three Marines, one civilian."

"You son of a bitch!" Book said to Snake.

"Mr. Nero," Barnaby said, tossing Book's Maghook to Nero. "String him up."

Schofield and Renshaw surfaced together inside the slow-moving diving bell.

They climbed up out of the water and stood on the metal deck that surrounded the small pool of water at the base of the spherical diving bell.

Renshaw removed his mouthpiece, gasped for breath. Schofield scanned the interior of the empty diving bell, looking for weapons, looking for anything.

He saw a digital depth counter on the far wall. It was ticking downward as the diving bell ascended: 360 feet. 359 feet. 358 feet.

"A-ha," Renshaw said from the other side of the bell.

Schofield turned. Renshaw was standing in front of a small TV monitor that was attached to the wall high up near the ceiling. Renshaw clicked it on. "I forgot about this," he said.

"What is it?" Schofield asked.

"It's another of old Carmine Yaeger's toys. You remember the old guy I told you about before, the guy who used to watch the whales all the time. Do you remember I told you he used to watch them sometimes from inside the diving bell? Well, this monitor is another one of his video feeds of the station's pool. Yaeger had it installed so he could watch the surface of the pool while he was underwater in the bell."

Schofield looked up at the small black-and-white monitor.

On the screen he saw the same view of E-deck that he had seen when he was in Renshaw's room earlier. The view from the camera on the underside of the retractable bridge on C-deck, looking straight down on E-deck.

Schofield froze.

He saw people on the screen.

SAS troops with guns. Snake still cuffed to the pole. And Trevor Barnaby, pacing slowly around E-deck.

And there was one other person.

There on the deck, down at Barnaby's feet, having his feet tied up, was Book Riley.

"All right, hoist him up," Barnaby said, once Nero had finished tying the Maghook's cable around Book's ankles.

Somebody else had already splayed out the Maghook's rope and tossed its launcher over the retractable bridge on C-deck, creating a pulley-like mechanism.

Nero took the launcher from one of the other British commandos and wedged its grip between two rungs of the rung-ladder between E-deck and D-deck. Then he pressed the black button on the launcher that reeled in the rope.

As a result of the pulley mechanism?the rope being stretched taut over the bridge on C-deck?Book was suddenly lifted off the deck by his ankles. His hands were still cuffed behind his back. He swung out over the pool and dangled helplessly?head-down?in the air above the water.

"What the hell are they doing?" Renshaw asked as he and Schofield stared at the black-and-white monitor.

On the monitor they could see Book dangling directly beneath them, hanging from his own Maghook out over the water.

At that moment, the diving bell rocked slightly, and Schofield grabbed the wall to steady himself.

"What was that?" Renshaw said quickly.

Schofield didn't have to answer him.

The answer lay right outside the windows of the slow-moving bell.

Several large dark shapes rose through the water all around the diving bell, their distinctive black-and-white outlines all too familiar.

The pod of killer whales.

They were heading up toward the station.

The first dorsal fin pierced the surface of the water, and a murmur went up among the twenty or so SAS troops gathered around the pool on E-deck.

Book was still dangling upside-down above the pool. He saw it, too: the enormous black outline of a killer whale gliding slowly through the water beneath him. He began to wriggle, but it was no use?his hands were firmly cuffed, his feet firmly bound.

His dog tags began to slip over his head. A couple of seconds later they dropped off his chin and plonked down into the water and sank fast.

Barnaby watched the killer whales from the poolside deck. "This should make things very interesting."

At that moment, one of his corporals came up to him. It was the same corporal who had reported to him before. "Sir, the Tritonal charges are all set."

The corporal offered Barnaby a small black unit the size of a thick calculator. It had a numbered keypad on it. "The detonation unit, sir."

Barnaby took it. "How are the outer markers looking?"

"We have five men stationed along the outer perimeter monitoring the horizon with laser range finders, sir. Last check, there was no one within fifty miles of this place, sir."

"Good," Barnaby said. "Good."