Matthew Reilly: Ice Station

And then suddenly movement caught his eye: a thin white object racing over the ocean, heading toward the newly formed iceberg.

The missile.

And as the Silhouette roared into the sky, Schofield watched in silent awe as the nuclear-tipped missile slammed into the iceberg and burrowed into it. There was about a three-second delay ...

And then the nuclear device detonated.

Armageddon.

The white-hot flash of the nuclear explosion?directly beneath the Silhouette as it shot up into the sky?was absolutely blinding.

Solid cliffs of ice were turned instantly to powder as every side of the iceberg containing Wilkes Ice Station and the underground cavern blew out with the blast wave.

The blast wave shot underwater, vaporizing everything in its path, creating huge waves of water that expanded out from the coast, rocking the massive icebergs that lined the cliffs as if they were a child's bath toys. Truth be told, it wasn't a large nuclear blast?three kilotons, with a blast radius of half a kilometer. But then again, there really was no such thing as a small nuclear explosion.

But it wasn't over yet.

Suddenly a monstrous black mushroom cloud began to form, shooting up into the air at incredible speed, chasing the Silhouette as it shot skyward.

Schofield went vertical, tried to outrun the burgeoning mushroom cloud. The mushroom cloud rushed upward. The Silhouette screamed into the sky, its engines roaring, and just as the mushroom cloud began to engulf it the cloud peaked and the Silhouette shot up and away to safety.

Schofield banked the plane sharply and headed out to sea.

The Silhouette shot across the ocean, heading north. It was dark, eternal twilight. The gargantuan mushroom cloud had just dipped below the horizon to the south of the big black plane.

Schofield found the autopilot, engaged it, then went back into the missile bay to check on Gant.

"How is she?" he asked Renshaw. Gant was lying on the floor of the missile bay, looking seriously pale. Her skin was clammy, her eyes were closed.

"She's lost a lot of blood," Renshaw said. "We have to get her to a hospital fast."

At that moment, Gant's eyes popped open. "Did we win?" she asked.

Schofield and Renshaw both looked down at her. Schofield smiled. "Yes, Libby, we won. How are you feeling?"

"Terrible." She lay back, shut her eyes again.

Schofield sighed. Where could he take her? A ship would be the best option, but which?

The Wasp . Romeo had said that the USS Wasp was out here somewhere. It was Jack Walsh's ship. A Marine ship. It would be safe.

Schofield was about to hurry back to the cockpit when suddenly he saw the diary sticking out of Gant's breast pocket.

He grabbed it and headed forward into the cockpit.

Once he was seated in the pilot's chair, he keyed the Silhouette's radio. "USS Wasp . USS Wasp . This is Scarecrow. I repeat, this is Scarecrow. Do you copy?"

There was no reply.

He tried again. No reply. He looked down at the diary in his hands. It had some looseleaf sheets of paper folded inside it. Gant must have found some documents and put them in the diary.

Schofield grabbed one of the loose sheets. It read:

Design Parameters for the B-7A Silhouette

The Principal desires an attack aircraft with total electronic and conventional invisibility, STOVL capabilities through a retrograde thruster system, and multiple-launch BVR medium-to-long-range (200 nm) air-to-air/ air-to-ground missile launch capabilities as expressed in the tender lodged by General Aeronautics, Inc., and Entertech Ltd. in response to the Principal's Invitation to Tender No, 456-771-7A, dated 2 January 1977.

Schofield translated the jargon: STOVL was Short-Take-Off/Vertical-Landing; BVR stood for Beyond Visual Range, which meant missiles that could be fired at targets?and be expected to hit those targets?at extremely long range. "Electronic invisibility" meant invisibility to radar, or stealth. But what the hell was " conventional invisibility?"

Schofield flicked to the next sheet. It looked like a page out of Entertech Ltd.'s tender. It read:

The Entertech Edge

The B-7A Silhouette benefits from Entertech Ltd.'s experience in the field of electronic countermeasures. Invisibility to radar?or "stealth"?is accomplished in many ways: with radar absorbent paint, minimal radar cross-sections, or with a sharply angled fuselage design as was done with the F-117A stealth fighter. But conventional invisibility is more difficult to accomplish, and so far, it has remained unattainable. Until now.

Entertech Ltd. has developed a system whereby an electromagnetic field is created around a given aircraft creating conventional invisibility. The electromagnetic field distorts the molecular structure of the air around the aircraft, creating an artificial refraction of light that renders that aircraft totally invisible to radar and even?

Schofield's jaw dropped. His eyes scanned the lines ahead and he found the word he was looking for:

We call it a cloaking device ...

Jesus , he thought.

A cloaking device.

A system that rendered an aircraft invisible not only to radar but to the naked eye as well. Every aviator knew that even if you were invisible to your enemy's radar, you could never escape someone seeing you directly. A billion-dollar stealth bomber can be seen by a spotter out the window of an AWACS plane forty miles away.

Schofield's mind buzzed. This was revolutionary. A cloaking device that distorted the air around an airplane, thus creating an artificial refraction of the light around the plane, making it invisible to the naked eye. The crazy thing was, it just might work.

Schofield knew about refraction. It was most commonly observed when one looked into a fishbowl. Light outside the fishbowl strikes the water?which has a greater density than the air above it. The greater density of the water causes the light to refract at an angle, distorting the size and position of the fish inside the bowl.

But this was refraction of air , Schofield thought. This is artificially altering the density of air with electricity .

There had to be a catch. And there was.

The plutonium.

This revolutionary new system?this system that could alter the refractive density of air?was nuclear .

Schofield searched for the relevant paragraph, found it. As one would expect from someone trying to win a government tender, it was carefully worded:

It must be appreciated that to effect the Silhouette's cloaking system requires an enormous amount of self-generated power. According to tests run by Entertech Ltd. and General Aeronautics, Inc., to disrupt the molecular and electromagnetic structure of the ambient air around a moving aircraft requires a total of 2.71 gigawatts of electromagnetic energy. The only known source of such a quantity of energy is a controlled nuclear reaction?

Schofield whistled softly to himself. General Aeronautics and Entertech had offered the U.S. Air Force a plane with a nuclear reactor on board. No wonder they built it in Antarctica.

He put the documentation down, tried the radio again.

"USS Wasp . USS Wasp . This is Scarecrow. I repeat, USS Wasp , this is Scarecrow. Please re?"

" Unidentified aircraft using the name Scarecrow, this is U.S. Air Force fighter Blue Leader. Identify yourself ," a voice said suddenly over Schofield's cockpit radio.

Schofield looked at his radar screen. He was now almost two hundred nautical miles from the coast of Antarctica, safely out over the sea. On his radar screen he saw nothing.