Ice Station (41 page)

“One never leaves any flank unguarded,” Barnaby
said. “You of all people should know that.”

Schofield said nothing.

Barnaby began to pace. “You know, when I was told that you were
leading the American protective force on this mission, I'd hoped
that we might get a chance to meet. But then, when I arrived,
you flew the coop.” Barnaby stopped his pacing.
“And then I heard that you were last seen flying off a cliff in a
hovercraft and suddenly I was sure we wouldn't be meeting.”

Schofield said nothing.

“But now, well”—Barnaby shook his
head—“I'm so glad I was wrong. What a pleasure it is to
see you again. It's really quite a shame that we have to meet in
these circumstances.”

“Why is that?” Schofield said, speaking for the first time.

“Because it means that one of us has to die.”

“My sympathies to your family,” Schofield said.

“Aha!” Barnaby said. “Some fight. I like that.
That's what I always liked about you, Scarecrow. You've got
fight in you. You may not be the greatest strategic commander
in the world, but you're a damned determined son of a bitch. If
you don't pick up something right away, you knuckle down and learn
it. And if you find yourself on the back foot, you never give up. You
can't buy that sort of courage these days.”

Schofield said nothing.

“Take heart, Scarecrow. Truth be told, you never could
have won this crusade. You were hobbled from the start. Your own men
weren't even loyal to you.”

Barnaby turned to look at Snake Kaplan on the far side of the pool.
Schofield turned to look, too.

“You'd like to kill him, wouldn't you,” Barnaby
said, staring at Snake.

Schofield said nothing.

Barnaby turned, his eyes narrowing. “You would,
wouldn't you?”

Schofield remained silent.

Barnaby seemed to think about something for a moment. When he turned
back to face Schofield, he had a glint in his eye.

“You know what?” he said. “I'm going to give you
the chance to do exactly that. A sporting chance, of course, but a
chance nonetheless.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, since I'm going to kill you both anyway, I figure I
might as well leave it up to the two of you to decide who gets fed to
the lions and who dies on his feet.”

Schofield frowned for a second, not understanding, and then he looked
back at the pool. He saw the high black dorsal fin of one of the
killer whales cut through the water toward him.

The killers were back.

“Unlock him,” Barnaby called to the SAS soldiers guarding
Snake. “Gentlemen, to the drilling room.”

With his hands cuffed firmly behind his back, Schofield was led down
the southern tunnel of E-deck. As he walked past the storeroom, he
stole a quick glance inside it.

The storeroom was empty.

Mother was gone.

But Barnaby hadn't said anything about Mother before....

They hadn't found her.

The SAS men marched Schofield down the long, narrow corridor and
shoved him into the drilling room. Schofield stumbled inside and spun
around.

Snake was shoved into the drilling room a couple of seconds later. His
handcuffs had been removed.

Schofield looked at the drilling room around him. In the center of the
room stood the large black core-drilling apparatus. It looked like a
miniature oil well, with a long, cylindrical plunger suspended in the
middle of a black skeletal rig. The plunger, Schofield guessed, was
the part of the machine that drilled down into the ice and obtained
the ice cores.

On the far side of the core-drilling machine, however, Schofield saw
something else.

A body.

Lying on the floor.

It was the crumpled, blood-smeared body of Jean Petard, untouched
since Petard had been shredded by the hailstorm of shrapnel from his
own Claymore mines several hours earli—

“Gentlemen,” Barnaby said suddenly from the doorway. It was
the only way in or out of the room. “You are about to fight for
the privilege of living. I will return in five minutes. When I return,
I expect one of you to be dead. If, after that time, both of
you are still alive, I will shoot you both myself. If, on the other
hand, one of you is dead, the winner will get to live for a short while
and die in a more noble fashion. Any questions?”

Schofield said, “What about these cuffs?” His hands were
still handcuffed behind his back. Snake's were free.

“What about them?” Barnaby said. “Any more
questions?”

There were none.

“Then, do as you will,” Barnaby said before he left
the room and
closed the door behind him, locking it.

Schofield immediately turned to Snake. “All right, listen, we
have to figure out a way to—”

Snake slammed into Schofield hard.

Schofield was lifted clean off the floor and rammed with stunning
force into the wall behind him. He doubled over, gasped for breath,
and looked up just in time to see Snake's open palm rushing at his
face. He ducked quickly and Snake's hand hit the wall.

Schofield's mind went into overdrive. Snake had just come at him
with a standard hand-to-hand combat move—an open-palmed punch
that was designed to send the other guy's nose back into his
brain, killing him with one hit.

Snake was out to kill him.

In five minutes.

The two men were still close, so Schofield thrust up hard with his
knee and caught Snake in the groin. Schofield leaped clear of the
wall. Once he was clear of Snake and the wall, he jumped up quickly
and brought his cuffed hands forward— under his feet—so
that they were now in front of his body.

Snake came at him with a flurry of kicks and punches. Schofield
parried each blow with his cuffed hands and the two men parted and
began to circle each other like a pair of big cats.

Schofield's mind raced. Snake would want to get him onto the
floor. While he remained on his feet, he would be OK— because
even with his hands cuffed, he could still parry any blow Snake threw
at him. But if they both went to the ground, it would be all over.
Snake would have him in no time.

Got to stay off the ground....

Got to stay off the ground....

The two Marines circled each other—on either side of the black
drilling apparatus in the center of the room.

Suddenly Snake grabbed a length of steel from the floor and swung it
hard at Schofield. Schofield ducked, too late, and took a glancing
blow to the left side of his head. He saw stars for a second and lost
his balance.

Snake was on him in an instant, launching himself across the room,
tackling Schofield hard, driving him back against the wall.

Schofield's back slammed into a power switch on the wall and
instantly, across the room, the vertical plunger on the drilling
machine suddenly whirred to life and began to spin rapidly. It emitted
a shrill, roaring sound like that of a buzz-saw.

Snake threw Schofield to the ground.

No!

Schofield hit the ground hard and rolled immediately—

—only to find himself lying face-to-face with Jean Petard.

Or, at least, what was left of Petard's face after it had been
ripped to shreds by the blast of the Claymore mines.

And then at that moment—in that fleeting moment—Schofield
caught a glimpse of something inside Petard's jacket.

A crossbow.

Schofield reached desperately for the crossbow with his cuffed hands.
He got his hands around the grip, got ahold of it, and—

—then Snake crash-tackled him, and both men slid across the
floor and slammed into the drilling machine in the center of the room.
The sound of the spinning plunger roared in their ears.

Schofield lay on his back, on the floor. Snake knelt astride him.

And in a sudden instant, Schofield saw that he still had the crossbow in his hands.
He blinked. He must have kept hold of it when Snake had
crash-tackled him.

It was then that Snake hit Schofield with a pulverizing blow.

Schofield heard his nose crack and saw the blood explode outward from
his face. His head slammed back against the floor. Hard.

The world spun and for a fleeting instant Schofield blacked out.
Suddenly he felt a wave of panic—if he blacked out completely, that would
be the end of it. Snake would kill him where he lay.

Schofield opened his eyes again, and the first thing he saw was the
spinning plunger of the drilling machine hovering
three feet above his head!

It was right over the top of him!

He saw the leading edge of the spinning cylinder—the sharply serrated
leading edge, the edge that was designed to cut down through solid
ice.

And then suddenly he saw Snake move in front of the plunger, his face contorted
with anger, and then he saw Snake's fist come rushing down at his
face.

Schofield tried to raise his hands in his defense but they were still
cuffed together, pinned underneath Snake's body. He couldn't
get them up—

The blow hit home.

The world became a blur. Schofield struggled desperately to see
through the haze.

He saw Snake draw his hand back again, preparing for what would no doubt be the
final blow.

And then Schofield saw something off to the right.

The switch on the wall that had started the drilling machine. He saw
three big round buttons on the switch panel.

Black, red and green.

And then, with startling clarity, the words on the black button
suddenly came into focus.

LOWER DRILL.

Schofield looked up at Snake, saw the rapidly spinning plunger right
above his head.

There was no way Schofield could shoot Snake with the crossbow, but if
he could just angle his hands slightly, he might be able to...

“Snake, you know what?”

“What?”

“I never liked you.”

And with that Schofield raised his cuffed hands slightly, aimed his
crossbow at the big black button on the wall, and fired.

The arrow covered the distance in a millisecond and... ... hit the big
black button right in its center—pinning it to the wall
behind it—just as Schofield thrust his head clear of the
drilling machine and the plunger, spinning at phenomenal speed, came
rushing down into the back of Snake's head.

Schofield heard the sickening crunch of breaking bone as Snake's
whole body was yanked violently downward—headfirst—by the
weight of the plunger and then suddenly, grotesquely, the plunger, its
shrill buzzing filling the room, carved right through
Snake's head and a flood of thick red-and-gray ooze poured out
from his skull and then with a final sprack! the plunger
popped out through the other side of Snake's head and continued on
its way down into the ice hole beneath it.

Still somewhat dazed from the fight, Schofield rose to his knees. He
turned away from the hideous sight of Snake's body pinned
underneath the blood-spattered drilling machine and quickly put the
crossbow in his thigh pocket. Then he spun and began looking about
himself for any kind of weapon he could use—

His eyes fell instantly on the body of Jean Petard, lying on the floor
nearby.

Still breathing hard, Schofield crawled over to it, knelt beside it.
He began rifling through the dead Frenchman's pockets.

After a few seconds, he pulled a grenade out from one of Petard's
pockets. It had writing on it: M8A3-STN.

Schofield knew what it was instantly.

A stun grenade. A flasher.

Like the one the French commandos had used earlier that morning.
Schofield put the stun grenade into his breast pocket

The door to the drilling room burst open. Schofield instantly fell
back to the floor, tried to look tired, wounded.

Two SAS commandos stormed into the drilling room with their guns up.
Trevor Barnaby strode in behind them.

Barnaby winced when he saw Snake's body lying flat on the floor,
face-down, with its head positioned underneath the large black
drilling apparatus—complete with a gaping red hole right through
the middle of it

“Oh, Scarecrow,” Barnaby said. “Did you have to do
that to him?”

Schofield was still breathing hard, and he had tiny flecks of blood
splattered all over his face. He didn't say anything.

Barnaby shook his head. He almost seemed disappointed that Schofield
hadn't been killed by Snake.

“Get him out of here,” Barnaby said quietly to the two SAS
men behind him. “Mr. Nero.”

“Yes, sir.”

“String him up.”

Down in the cave, another battle was under way.

No sooner had the first SAS diver stepped out of the water than a
second SAS man was up and standing in the shallows behind him.

The first SAS commando stormed out of the water, firing hard. The
second man followed him up, sloshing through the knee-deep water with
his gun up when suddenly—whump!— he was violently
yanked beneath the surface of the water.

The first commando—up on dry land and oblivious to the fate that
had befallen his partner—snapped to his right and drew a bead on
Montana, just as Gant bobbed up from behind her boulder and took him
out from the left.

Gant turned, saw more SAS commandos surfacing in the pool with their
sea sleds.

Then suddenly something else caught her eye.

Movement.

A large black object just slid out from one of the wide ten-foot holes
in the ice wall above the pool and dropped smoothly into the water.

Gant's jaw dropped.

It was an animal of some sort.

But it was so huge. It looked like ... like a seal.
A great, big, enormous seal.

At that moment, another massive seal emerged from a second hole in the
ice wall. And then another. And another. They just slid out from their
holes and splashed down into the pool, raining down on the team of SAS
divers from every side.

Gant just watched them with her mouth wide open.

The pool was a broiling froth now, choppy and frothy. Suddenly another
SAS diver went under, replaced by a slick of his own blood. And then
abruptly the man next to him fell forward in the water as one of the
enormous seals plowed into him from behind and drove him under. Gant
saw the animal's glistening wet back rise above the water for an
instant before it submerged on top of the British soldier.