Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Elephant seals.

Gant noticed that there were two smaller seals in the group. These two smaller animals had peculiar teeth?strange elongated lower canines that rose up from their lower jaws and over their upper lips, like a pair of inverted tusks. The larger seals, she saw, did not have these tusks.

Gant tried to recall everything she knew about elephant seals. Like killer whales, elephant seals lived in large groups made up of one dominant male, known as the bull or beach-master, and a harem of eight or nine females, or cows, which were all smaller than the bull.

Gant felt a chill as she saw the sex of one of the big seals in front of her.

These were the females of the group.

The two smaller seals that she saw were their pups. Male pups, Gant noticed.

Gant wondered where the bull was. He would almost certainly be larger than these females. But if the females were this big, how big would he be?

More questions flitted through her mind.

Why did they attack ? Elephant seals, Gant knew, could be exceptionally aggressive, especially when their territory was under threat.

And why now ? Why had Gant and her team been allowed to pass safely through the ice tunnel only several hours before, while the SAS had been subjected to so violent an attack now?

There came a sudden final scream from the pool followed by a splash and Gant looked out from behind her boulder.

There was a long, cold silence. The only sound was that of waves lapping against the edge of the pool.

All of the SAS divers were dead. Most of the seals were up inside the cavern now, bent over the spoils of their victory?the bodies of the dead SAS commandos. It was then that Gant heard a nauseating crunch and she turned round to see that the elephant seals had begun to feed en masse.

This battle was well and truly over.

Schofield stood on the pool deck of Wilkes Ice Station with his hands cuffed in front of him. One of the SAS commandos was busy tying the grappling hook of Book's Maghook around his ankles. Schofield looked off to his left and saw the high black fin of a killer whale slice through the murky red water of the pool.

"Dive Team, report," an SAS radio operator said into his portable unit nearby. "I repeat. Dive Team, come in."

"Any word?" Barnaby said.

"There's no response, sir. The last thing they said was that they were about to surface inside the cavern."

Barnaby gave Schofield a look. "Keep trying," he said to the radio operator. Then he turned to Schofield. "Your men down in that cave must have put up quite a fight."

"They do that," Schofield said.

"So," Barnaby said. "Any last requests from the condemned man? A blindfold? Cigarette? Shot of brandy?"

At first, Schofield said nothing; he just looked down at his handcuffed wrists in front of him.

And then he saw it.

Suddenly he looked up.

"A cigarette," he said quickly, swallowing. "Please."

"Mr. Nero. A cigarette for the Lieutenant."

Nero stepped forward, offered a pack of cigarettes to Schofield. Schofield took one with his cuffed hands, raised it to his mouth. Nero lit it. Schofield took a deep draw and hoped to hell that nobody saw his face turn green. He had never smoked in his life.

"All right," Barnaby said. 'That's enough. Gentlemen, hoist him up. Scarecrow, it was a pleasure knowing you."

Schofield swung, upside-down, out over the pool. His dog tags hung loosely off his chin, glistening silver in the white artificial light of the station. The water beneath him was stained an ugly shade of red.

Book's blood.

Schofield looked up at the diving bell in the center of the pool, saw Renshaw's face in one of the portholes?saw a single terrified eye peering out at him.

Schofield just hung there, three feet above the hideous red water. He calmly held the cigarette to his mouth, took another puff.

The SAS soldiers must have thought it a vain act of bravado?but while the cigarette dangled from Schofield's mouth they never saw what he was doing with his hands.

Barnaby offered Schofield a salute. "Rule Britannia, Scarecrow."

"Fuck Britannia," Schofield replied.

"Mr. Nero," Barnaby said. "Lower away."

Over by the rung-ladder, Nero pressed a button on the Maghook's launcher. The launcher itself was still wedged in between two rungs of the ladder while its rope was stretched taut over the retractable bridge up on C-deck, creating the same pulleylike mechanism that had been used to lower Book into the water.

The Maghook's rope began to play out.

Schofield began to descend toward the water.

His hands were still cuffed in front of him. He held the cigarette between the fingers of his right hand.

His head entered the murky red water first. Then his shoulders. Then his chest, his stomach, his elbows ...

But then, just as Schofield's wrists were about to go under, Schofield quickly twisted the cigarette in his fingers and pointed it toward the loop of magnesium detonator cord that he had now looped around the chain link of his handcuffs.

Schofield had seen the detonator cord when he had been standing on the deck only moments before. He had forgotten that he'd tied a loop of it around his wrist back in Little America IV. The SAS, when they had frisked him and relieved him of all his weapons earlier, must have missed it, too.

The burning tip of the cigarette touched the detonator cord a split second before Schofield's wrists disappeared below the surface.

The detonator cord ignited instantly, just as Schofield's wrists disappeared into the inky red water.

It burned bright white, even under the water, and cut through the chain link of Schofield's handcuffs like a knife through butter. Suddenly his hands broke apart, free.

At that moment, a pair of jaws burst through the red haze around his head and Schofield saw the enormous eye of a killer whale looking right at him. And then suddenly it disappeared back into the haze and was gone.

Schofield's heart was racing. He couldn't see a thing. The water around him was impenetrable. Just a murky cloud of red.

And then suddenly a series of bizarre-sounding clicks began to echo through the water around him.

Click-click.

Click-click.

Schofield frowned. What was it? The killers?

And then it hit him.

Sonar.

Shit!

The killer whales were using sonar clicks to find him in the murky water. Many whales were known to use sonar? sperm whales, blue whales, killers. The principle was simple: the whale made a loud click with its tongue, the click traveled through the water, bounced off any object in the water, and returned to the whale?revealing to it the object's location. Sonar units on man-made submarines operated on the same principle.

Schofield was desperately searching the cloudy red haze around him?searching for the whales?when suddenly one of them exploded out of the haze and rushed toward him.

Schofield screamed underwater, but the whale slid past him,brushing roughly against the side of his body.

It was then that Schofield remembered what Renshaw had told him earlier about the killer whales' hunting behavior.

They brush past you to establish ownership.

Then they eat you.

Schofield did a vertical sit-up, broke the surface. He heard the SAS commandos on E-deck cheer. He ignored them, gulped in air, went under again.

He didn't have much time. The killer whale that had just staked its claim on him would be coming back any second now.

Loud clicks echoed through the red water around him.

And then suddenly a thought struck Schofield.

Sonar ....

Shit , he thought, patting his pockets. Do I still have it ?