Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [125]
Gant stayed with the guns.
As she sat there on the cold, icy floor of the cavern, she gazed at the dismembered bodies on the far side of the pool. The amount of damage that had been done to the bodies had stunned her. Heads and limbs missing; whole sections of flesh literally chewed to the bone; the whole scene itself soaked in blood.
What on earth could have done it? Gant thought.
As she thought about the bodies, Gant’s gaze wandered over to the pool. She saw the round holes in the ice walls above it – the enormous, ten-foot holes. They were identical to the ones she had seen in the underwater ice tunnel on the way here.
Gant had a strange feeling about those holes, about the bodies, about the cave itself. It was almost as if the cave were some kind of –
‘This is absolutely incredible,’ Sarah Hensleigh said as she came over and stood beside Gant. Hensleigh hurriedly brushed a strand of long dark hair from her face. She was practically brimming with excitement at the discovery of the spaceship.
‘It has no markings on it whatsoever,’ she said. ‘The whole ship is completely and utterly black.’
Gant didn’t care much for Sarah Hensleigh right now. In fact, she didn’t care much for the spaceship, either.
In fact, the more she thought about it – about the spaceship and the cavern and the half-eaten bodies and the SAS up in the station – Gant couldn’t help but think that there was no way in the world that she would ever be leaving Wilkes Ice Station alive.
The SAS team’s entry into Wilkes Ice Station was fast and fluid – professional.
Black-clad men charged into the station with their guns up. They fanned out quickly, moved in pairs. They opened every door, checked every room.
‘A-deck, clear!’ one voice yelled.
‘B-deck, clear!’ another voice yelled.
Trevor Barnaby strode out onto the A-deck catwalk and surveyed the abandoned station like a newly crowned king looking out over his domain. Barnaby looked down upon the station with a cold, even gaze. A thin smile creased his face.
The SAS troops made their way down to E-deck, where they found Snake and the two French scientists handcuffed to the pole. Two SAS commandos covered them while more black-clad troops poured down the rung-ladders and disappeared inside the tunnels of E-deck.
Four SAS commandos raced into the south tunnel. Two took the doors to the left. Two took the doors to the right.
The two on the right came to the first door, kicked it in, looked inside.
A storeroom. Battered wooden shelves. Some scuba-diving tanks on the floor.
But empty.
They moved down the corridor, guns up. It was then that one of them saw the dumb waiter, saw the two stainless steel doors glistening in the cold white light of the tunnel.
With a short whistle, the lead SAS man caught the attention of the other two commandos in the tunnel. He pointed with two fingers at the dumb waiter. The other two men understood instantly. They positioned themselves on either side of the dumb waiter while the leader and the fourth SAS commando aimed their guns at the stainless steel doors.
The leader nodded quickly and the two men on either side of the dumb waiter instantly yanked it open, and the leader let rip with a sudden burst of gunfire.
The bare walls of the empty dumb waiter were instantly ripped to shreds.
Mother squeezed her eyes shut as the SAS commando’s gunfire roared loudly less than a foot above her head.
She was sitting in complete darkness, at the base of the dumb waiter’s miniature elevator shaft, curled up in a tight ball, in the crawlspace underneath the dumb waiter.
The dumb waiter shuddered and shook under the weight of the SAS commando’s gunfire. Its walls blew out, and jagged, splintered holes appeared all over it. Dust and wood shavings showered down on Mother, but she just kept her eyes firmly shut.
And then at that moment, as the gunfire echoed loudly in her ears, a jarring thought hit Mother.
They could fire their guns safely inside the station again . . .
The amount of flammable