Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

"Hold on," he said. "We'll get you outta here?"

He began to move Gant, but as he did so, Gant brushed roughly against his leg and dislodged something from his ankle pocket.

It was a silver locket.

Sarah Hensleigh's silver locket. The locket that she had given to Schofield before she had gone down to the cave.

The locket landed face down on the icy ground, and in a fleeting instant, Schofield saw the writing engraved on the back of it:

To Our Daughter,

Sarah Therese Parkes

On Your Twenty-first Birthday.

Schofield froze when he saw the engraving. He quickly pulled out his printed copy of Andrew Trent's e-mail. He scanned the list of ICG informers. And he found it.

PARKES. SARAH T. USD PLNTLGST

Schofield snapped up to look at Sarah Hensleigh. "What's your maiden name, Sarah?" he asked.

Snick-snick .

Schofield heard the sound of the gun cocking before he saw it emerge from behind Sarah Hensleigh's back.

Sarah Hensleigh held the pistol out at arm's length, pointed it at Schofield's head. With her spare hand, she pulled Santa Cruz's helmet headset out from behind her and adjusted the channel dial on the belt clip. She spoke into the headset.

"SEAL team, this is Hensleigh. Come in."

There was no reply. Hensleigh frowned.

"SEAL team, this is Hensleigh. Come in."

"There's no one up there, Sarah," Schofield said, cradling Gant in his arms. "They've evacuated the station. They're gone. There's a cruise missile on its way here right now and it's nuclear, Sarah. Those SEALs are long gone. We have to get out of here, too."

Suddenly Schofield heard a voice come over Sarah's headset. " Hensleigh, this is SEAL Commander Riggs. Report ."

Schofield cringed, looked at his watch.

10:35 p.m. Twenty-five minutes to go.

He wasn't to know that the SEALs up in the station had switched over to a closed-circuit channel to launch their attack on Wilkes. He wasn't to know that they didn't know about the nuclear missile coming toward the station.

Hensleigh said, "SEAL Commander. I have the Marine leader down here with me in the cavern. I have him under forced arrest."

"We'll be down there soon, Hensleigh. You have authority to kill him if you have to. SEAL team out."

"Sarah, what are you doing?" Renshaw said.

"Shut up," Hensleigh said, swinging the gun round so that its cold barrel touched Renshaw's nose. "Get over there," she said, waving Renshaw and Kirsty to Schofield's side of the tunnel. Schofield noticed that Sarah Hensleigh held the gun with confidence and authority. She had used guns before.

Schofield said, "Where are you from, Sarah? Army or Navy?"

Sarah looked at him for a moment. Then she said, "Army."

"What section?"

"I was at the CDC in Atlanta for a while. Then I did some work for the Chem Weapons Division. And then, wouldn't you know it, I suddenly felt the urge to teach."

"Were you ICG before or after you went to teach at the university?"

"Before," Hensleigh said. "Long before. Hell, Lieutenant, the ICG sent me to teach at USC. They asked me to retire from the Army, gave me a lifetime pension, and sent me off to the university."

"Why?"

"They wanted to know what was going on there. In particular, they wanted to know about ice core research?they wanted to know about the chemical gases people like Brian Hensleigh were finding buried in the ice. Gases from highly toxic environments that disappeared hundreds of millions of years ago. Carbon monoxide variants, pure chlorine gas molecules. The ICG wanted to know about it?they can find uses for that sort of thing. So I got into the field, and I got to know Brian Hensleigh."

Renshaw said, "You married him to get information out of him?"

Over in the corner of the tunnel, Kirsty watched this conversation with almost stunned interest.

"I got what I wanted," Sarah Hensleigh said. "So did Brian."

"Did you kill him?" Renshaw asked. "The car accident?"

"No," Hensleigh said. "I didn't. ICG wasn't involved in that at all. It was exactly that, an accident. Call it whatever you want, destiny, fate. It just happened."

"Did you kill Bernie Olson?" Schofield asked quickly.

Sarah paused before she answered that

"Yes," she said. "I did."

"Oh, you fucking bitch," Renshaw said.

"Bernie Olson was a liar and a thief," Hensleigh said. "He was going to publish Renshaw's findings before Renshaw did. I didn't really care about that. But then when Renshaw struck metal fifteen hundred feet down, Olson told me he was going to publish that , too. And I just couldn't allow that to happen. Not without the ICG knowing about it first"

"Not without the ICG knowing about it first," Schofield repeated bitterly.

"It's our job to know everything first."

"So you killed him," Schofield said. "With sea snake venom. And you made it look like Renshaw did it."

Sarah Hensleigh looked at Renshaw. "I'm sorry, James, but you were far too easy a target. You and Bernie fought all the time. And when you fought that night, it was just too good an opportunity to miss."

Schofield looked at his watch. "Sarah, listen. I know you don't believe me, but we have to get out of here. There is a nuclear missile?"

"There is no missile," Hensleigh snapped. "If there were, the SEALs wouldn't be here."

Schofield glanced at his watch again.

10:36 p.m.

Shit , he thought. It was so frustrating. They were stuck here, at the mercy of Sarah Hensleigh. And she was just going to wait here until the nuke arrived and killed them all.

It was at that moment that Schofield's watch flicked over to 10:37 p.m.

Schofield hadn't known about the eighteen Tritonal 80/20 charges that Trevor Barnaby had laid in a semicircle around Wilkes Ice Station with the intention of creating an iceberg.

Hadn't known that exactly two hours ago?at 8:37 p.m.? when Barnaby had been inside the diving bell alone, Barnaby had set a timer to detonate the Tritonal charges in two hours' time.

The eighteen Tritonal charges exploded as one and the blast was absolutely devastating.

Three-hundred-foot geysers of snow shot up into the air. A deafeningly loud groan echoed out across the landscape as a deep semicircular chasm formed in the ice shelf. And then suddenly, with a loud, ominous crack , that part of the ice shelf containing Wilkes Ice Station and everything below it? a whole three cubic kilometers of ice?suddenly dropped away and began to fall into the sea.

Down in the ice tunnel in the cavern, the world tilted crazily. Chunks of ice rained down on everyone inside the tunnel. The collective boom of the eighteen Tritonal charges going off sounded like an enormous thunderclap.

At first, Schofield thought it was the nuclear missile Thought that Romeo had made a terrible mistake and that the nuke had arrived half an hour earlier than expected. But then he realized that it had to be something else?if it had been the nuke, they would all have been dead by now. The tunnel lurched suddenly and Sarah Hensleigh was thrown off balance. Renshaw seized the opportunity and dived forward, tackling her. The two of them hit the ice wall hard, but Hensleigh threw Renshaw clear of her.

Schofield was still holding Gant. He put her down and made to stand up, but Sarah Hensleigh whirled around and pointed her gun right at his face.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant. I kind of liked you," she said.

Despite the cacophony of sound all around them, the sound of the gun going off inside the small ice tunnel was deafening.

Schofield saw Sarah Hensleigh's chest explode with blood.

Then he saw her eyes bulge and her knees buckle as she dropped to the floor, dead.