Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [128]
As he ran, Schofield checked his stopwatch. The seconds continued to tick upward, toward the three hour mark.
Toward firing time.
2:58:31
2:58:32
2:58:33
Schofield was thinking as he ran.
It’s going to destroy the station. Destroy the station.
Going to kill my Marines. Kill the little girl . . .
Got to stop it.
But how? How does a man destroy a submarine?
And then suddenly he remembered something.
He unshouldered his Maghook as he ran. Then he quickly hit the button marked ‘M’ and saw the red light on the Maghook’s magnetically charged head come to life.
Then he pulled a silver canister from his thigh pocket. It was the foot-long silver canister with the green band painted around it that he had found inside the British hovercraft.
The Tritonal 80/20 high-powered explosive charge.
Schofield looked at the silver-and-green canister as he ran. It had a stainless-steel pneumatic lid on it. He turned the lid and heard a soft hiss! The lid popped open and he saw a familiar digital timing display next to an ‘ARM-DISARM’ switch. Since it was a demolition device, a Tritonal charge could be disarmed at any time.
Twenty seconds, he thought. Just enough time to get clear.
He set the timer on the Tritonal charge for twenty seconds and then held the silver canister out above the bulbous magnetic head of his Maghook. Immediately the steel cylinder thunked down hard against the powerful magnet, and stuck to it, caught in its vice-like magnetic grip.
Schofield was still running hard, sprinting across the rugged landscape of the iceberg.
Then he came to the edge of the iceberg and without so much as a second thought, he hit it at full speed and leapt off it, out into the air.
Schofield flew through the air in a long wide arc – hung there for a full three seconds – before he splashed down hard, feet first, into the freezing-cold water of the Southern Ocean one more time.
Bubbles flew up all around him and for a moment Schofield saw nothing. And then suddenly the bubbles cleared and Schofield found himself hovering in the water right in front of the gargantuan steel nose of the French submarine.
Schofield checked his watch.
2:58:59
2:59:00
2:59:01
One minute to go.
The outer doors of the torpedo tube were fully open now. Schofield swam toward it. The torpedo tube opened wide in front of him, ten yards away.
This had better work, Schofield thought as he raised his Maghook, with the Tritonal charge attached to its head. Schofield pressed the ‘ARM0-DISARM’ switch on the Tritonal charge.
Twenty seconds.
Schofield fired the Maghook.
The Maghook shot out from its launcher, leaving a thin trail of white bubbles in its wake. It sliced through the water toward the open torpedo port . . .
. . . and hit the steel hull of the submarine just below the torpedo port with a loud, metallic clunk! The Maghook – with the live Tritonal charge attached to it – bounced off the thick steel hull of the sub and began to sink limply into the water. Schofield couldn’t believe it.
He’d missed!
Shit! his mind screamed. And then suddenly another thought hit him.
The people inside the sub would have heard it. Must have heard it.
Schofield quickly hit the black button on his grip that reeled the Maghook in, hoped to hell that it got back to him before twenty seconds expired.
Have to get another shot.
Have got to get another shot.
The Maghook began to reel itself in.
And then suddenly Schofield heard another noise.
Vmmmmmm.
Off to Schofield’s left, on the other side of the bow, one of the other torpedo doors was opening!
This door was smaller than the one Schofield had tried to shoot his Maghook into.
Smaller torpedoes, Schofield thought. Ones that are designed to kill other subs, not whole ice stations.
And then with a sudden whoooosh! a compact white torpedo whizzed out from the newly-opened torpedo port and rolled through the water toward Schofield.
Schofield couldn’t believe it.
They had fired