Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Schofield pulled out his printed copy of Andrew Trent's e-mail, the list of ICG informers. His eyes fell on one entry:

BROOKES, ARMN F. A. RNGRS CPTN

Son of a bitch , Schofield thought. It was the same guy he had run into outside the temple in Peru. Arlin F. Brookes. ICG cocksucker.

Romeo said, " OK, Scarecrow. Listen up. I may not be able to come in, but I'll tell you something I heard about thirty minutes ago. The Wasp is sailing about three hundred nautical miles off the coast, out in the open sea. After we got here, I got a call from Jack Walsh on the Wasp. About thirty minutes ago, a patrol of four Marine Harriers shot down a British VC-10 tanker plane about 250 nautical miles off the coast after the tanker tried to make a run for it ."

Schofield was silent.

He knew what Romeo was getting at.

Tanker airplanes exist for one reason and one reason only: to top up the fuel on attack planes on long-distance missions.

If a British tanker airplane had been shot down 250 miles off the coast, then it was a good bet that somewhere out there, there was another British plane, an attack plane ?a bomber or a fighter?that had been getting its fuel from the tanker. And it probably had orders to?

Oh, no , Schofield thought, realizing. It was Barnaby's eraser .

Like the French team's eraser, that British fighter probably had orders to fire upon Wilkes Ice Station if Trevor Barnaby didn't call in within a certain time.

Romeo said, " The Air Force has been called in. They're sweeping the air over the ocean with AWACS birds and F-22 fighters. They're looking for a rogue British fighter and they have orders to shoot on sight ."

Schofield fell back into his chair.

He frowned, rubbed his forehead. The world was closing in around him.

He was trapped. Totally and utterly trapped. The SEALs would be coming in soon?whether or not they realized there was nothing to be gained from this station. And even if Scho-field managed to evade them after they stormed the station, there remained the possibility that Wilkes would be destroyed by an air-to-ground missile from a rogue British fighter off the coast.

There was one option, though, he thought.

Go outside and surrender to Romeo before the SEALs arrived. At least that way, they would stay alive. And if Schofield had learned nothing from this whole day, it was that if you stayed alive, you still had a chance.

Schofield keyed his helmet mike. "Romeo, listen?"

"Oh, shit, Scarecrow. They're here."

"What?"

"The SEALs. They're here. They just let them through the outer perimeter. Four hovercrqfts. They're coming toward the station complex now."

One mile out from Wilkes Ice Station an armada of hovercrafts formed a long, unbroken line. They were arrayed in a semicircle on the landward side of the station and they were all pointed inward?pointing in toward the station.

At that moment, however, four navy blue hovercrafts broke through the line and glided across the ice plain toward the station. They wended their way through the outer buildings of the station complex, in no apparent hurry.

They were the SEAL hovercrafts.

Inside the lead hovercraft, the SEAL commander keyed his radio. "Air Control, this is SEAL team, report," he said. "I confirm previous instructions. We will not enter the station until we are sure you have the bogey."

" SEAL team, this is Air Control. Stand by ," a voice on the radio said. " We are standing by for a report from our birds right now ."

At that very same moment, at a point 242 nautical miles out from Wilkes Ice Station, six F-22 USAF fighters rocketed over the Southern Ocean.

The F-22 is the most advanced air superiority fighter in the world, the heir to the throne of the old F-15 Eagle. But while the F-22 looks a little like the old F-15 Eagle, the F-22 has one thing the F-15 never had?stealth.

In the lead F-22, the squadron leader was listening to his helmet radio. When the voice at the other end finished speaking, the squadron leader said, "Thanks, Bigbird; I see him."

On his computerized display screen the squadron leader saw a small blip heading west. A readout on the screen read:

TARGET ACQUIRED: 103 NM WNW AIRCRAFT DESIGNATED: E-2000

An E-2000, the squadron leader noted. The Eurofighter 2000. A twin-engine, highly maneuverable pocket fighter, the E-2000 was a joint project of the British, German, Spanish, and Italian Air Forces.

On the squadron leader's screen the blip appeared to be flying casually, completely unaware of the stealthy American fighters a hundred miles behind it.

"All right, people, target has been acquired," the F-22 pilot said. "I repeat, target has been acquired. It's time to rock and roll."

Inside Wilkes Ice Station, Shane Schofield didn't know what the hell to do.

He knew he couldn't surrender to the SEALs. They were almost certainly ICG. If they got him, they would kill him.

He considered going down to the cave and hiding down there?and if necessary holding the spaceship for ransom? but then he realized that it was no longer possible to get down to the cave since the diving bell had been destroyed.

Schofield led Kirsty and Renshaw out of the radio room on A-deck and down the rung-ladder to the lower decks.

"What's going on?" Renshaw said.

"We just got screwed," Schofield said. His mind was racing. Their only option now, he figured, was to hide somewhere inside the station and hold out until the SEALs and everyone else were gone....

And then what are you gonna do ? Schofield asked himself. Walk home ?

If you stay alive, you still have a chance.

Schofield slid down the rung-ladder, looked down at the pool on E-deck.

And then he saw something.

He saw Wendy, lying on the deck, happily dozing off to sleep.

Wendy , he thought.

Something about Wendy ....

The F-22 squadron leader spoke into his helmet mike, "Bigbird, this is Blue Leader. Maintaining stealth mode. Estimate target will be in missile range in... twenty minutes."

Suddenly it hit Schofield.

He spun to face Kirsty. "Kirsty, how long can Wendy hold her breath for?"

Kirsty shrugged. "Most male far seals can hold their breath for about an hour. But Wendy's a girl, and a lot smaller, so she can only hold her breath for about forty minutes."

"Forty minutes...," Schofield said, doing the calculations in his head.

"What are you thinking?" Renshaw asked.

Schofield said, "It takes us roughly two hours to get from the station to the cave, right. One hour to go down three thousand feet in the diving bell and then another hour or so to go up through the ice tunnel."

"Yeah, so ...," Renshaw said.

Schofield turned to face Renshaw. "When Gant and the others were approaching the ice cavern, Gant said the strangest thing. She said that they had a visitor. Wendy. Gant said that Wendy was swimming with them as they made their way up the ice tunnel."

"Uh-huh."

Schofield said, "So, even if Wendy could swim twice as fast as we can, if she swam all the way down and then all the way back up the ice tunnel, she'd run out of breath before she got to the cavern ."

Renshaw was silent.

Schofield said, "I mean, it'd be suicide for her not to turn back after she'd swum for twenty minutes because she'd have to know she could get back to an air source?"

Schofield looked from Renshaw to Kirsty.

"There's another way into that ice tunnel," he said. "A shortcut."

" SEAL team, this is Blue Leader. We are closing in on the target. Estimate target will be in missile range in fifteen minutes ," the voice of the squadron leader said over the radio of the SEAL team's hovercraft.