Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [124]
The impact with the cliff jarred Renshaw’s grip on Schofield’s waist and he fell for an instant, grabbing Schofield’s right foot at the very last moment.
The two men hung there for a full minute, halfway down the sheer vertical cliff-face, neither one of them daring to move.
‘You still there?’ Schofield asked.
‘Yeah,’ Renshaw said, petrified.
‘All right, I’m going to try and reel us up, now,’ Schofield said, shifting his grip on his launcher slightly so that he could press down on the black button that reeled in the rope without collapsing the grappling hook.
Schofield looked up at the cliff-edge high above them. It must have been at least a hundred and fifty feet away. Schofield figured he must be hanging at the full length of his Maghook’s rope –
It was then that Schofield saw him.
A man. Standing up on the clifftop, peering out over the edge, looking down at Schofield and Renshaw.
Schofield froze.
The man was wearing a black balaclava.
And he was holding a machine-gun in his hand.
‘Well?’ Renshaw said from down near Schofield’s feet. ‘What are you waiting for?’ From his position, Renshaw wasn’t able to see the SAS commando up on the clifftop.
‘We’re not going up anymore,’ Schofield said flatly, his eyes locked on the black-clad figure at the top of the cliff.
‘We’re not?’ Renshaw said. ‘What are you talking about?’
The SAS commando was looking directly down at Schofield now.
Schofield swallowed. Then he glanced down at the smashing waves a hundred and fifty feet below him. When he looked up again, the SAS commando was pulling a long, glistening knife from its sheath. The commando then bent down over the Maghook’s rope at the top of the cliff.
‘Oh, no,’ Schofield said.
‘Oh, no what?’ Renshaw said.
‘Are you ready to go for a ride?’
‘No,’ Renshaw said.
Schofield said, ‘Breathe all the way down, and then at the last second, take a deep breath.’ That was what they told you when you jumped out of a moving helicopter into water. Schofield figured the same principle applied here.
Schofield looked up again at the SAS commando at the top of the cliff. He was about to cut the rope.
‘All right,’ Schofield said. ‘Let’s cut the crap. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna wait for you to cut my rope. Renshaw, are you ready? We’re going.’
And at that moment, Schofield pressed down twice on the trigger of the Maghook.
At the top of the cliff the claws of the grappling hook responded immediately and collapsed inward, and in doing so, they lost their purchase on the snow. The hook slithered out over the edge of the cliff, past the bewildered SAS commando, and Schofield, Renshaw and the Maghook fell – together – down the cliff-face and into the crashing waves of the Southern Ocean below.
In the silence of the ice cavern, Libby Gant just stared at the semi-eaten bodies that lay draped over the rocks in front of her.
Since they had arrived in the cavern about forty minutes ago, the others – Montana, Santa Cruz and Sarah Hensleigh – had barely even looked at the bodies. They were all totally engrossed in the big black spacecraft on the other side of the underground cavern. They walked around it, under it, peered at its black metal wings, tried to look in through the smoked-glass canopy of its cockpit.
After Schofield had informed Gant of the impending arrival of the British troops and his own plan to flee, she had set up two MP-5s on tripods, facing the pool at the end of the cavern. If the SAS tried to enter the cavern, she would pick them off one-by-one as they broke the surface.
That had been half an hour ago.
Even if the SAS had arrived at Wilkes Ice Station by now, it would still take them another hour to lower someone down in the diving bell and a further hour to swim up the underwater ice tunnel to the cavern.
It was a waiting game now.
After Gant had set up the tripods, Montana and Sarah Hensleigh had gone back to examining the spacecraft. Santa Cruz had stayed with Gant a while