Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [132]
Barnaby turned to face him. ‘Are you French, too?’
Rae began to sob.
Barnaby said, ‘Mr Nero.’
Rae saw it coming and he screamed, ‘No!’ just as Nero raised his gun again and a moment later the other side of Snake’s face was splattered all over with blood.
In the pitch-darkness of the crawlspace at the base of the elevator shaft, Mother snapped up at the sound of the gunshots.
Damn it, she thought. She must have blacked out again.
Got to stay awake, she thought.
Got to stay awake . . .
Mother stared at the clear plastic fluid bag she had brought with her. It was connected by a tube to an intravenous drip that was stuck into her arm.
The fluid bag was now empty.
Had been for the last twenty minutes.
Mother began to shiver. She felt cold, weak. Her eyelids began to close.
She bit her tongue, trying to force her eyes open with the jolt of pain.
It worked for the first few times. And then it didn’t.
Alone at the base of the elevator shaft, Mother lapsed into unconsciousness.
Out on E-deck, Trevor Barnaby stepped forward, his eyes narrowing. ‘Sergeant Kaplan. Snake. You’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you?’
Snake said nothing.
‘Are you ICG, Snake? A turncoat? A traitor to your own unit? What did you do, did you blow your cover too soon, did you start killing your own men before you knew for sure that this station was secure? I bet the Scarecrow wasn’t too pleased when he found out. Is that why he chained you to a pole and left you here for me?’
Snake swallowed.
Barnaby stared at him coldly. ‘It’s what I would have done.’
At that moment, a young SAS corporal came up behind Barnaby. ‘Sir.’
‘Yes, Corporal.’
‘Sir, the charges are being set around the perimeter.’
‘At what range?’
‘Five hundred yards, sir. In an arc, like you ordered.’
‘Good,’ Barnaby said. Soon after he had arrived at Wilkes, Barnaby had ordered that eighteen Tritonal charges be placed in a semi-circular arc on the landward side of the station. They were to have a special purpose. A very special purpose.
Barnaby said, ‘Corporal, how long do you expect the laying of the charges to take?’
‘Allowing for the drilling, sir, I’d say another hour.’
‘Fine,’ Barnaby said. ‘When they’re all set, bring me the detonation unit.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the corporal said. ‘Oh, and sir, there’s one other thing.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sir, the prisoners who fell from the American hovercraft have just arrived. What should we do with them?’
Barnaby had already been told via radio of the soldier and the little girl who had fallen from one of the escaping hovercrafts and been picked up by his men.
‘Take the girl to her quarters. Keep her there,’ Barnaby said. ‘Bring the Marine to me.’
Libby Gant was standing in a dark corner of the underground cavern, alone. The beam of her flashlight illuminated a small horizontal fissure in the ice wall.
The fissure was at ground level, at the point where the ice wall met the floor. It was about two feet high and stretched horizontally for about six feet.
Gant crouched on her hands and knees and peered down into the horizontal fissure. She saw nothing but darkness. There did, however, appear to be empty space in there –
‘Hey!’
Gant turned.
She saw Sarah Hensleigh standing underneath the spacecraft at the other end of the cavern, over by the pool, waving her arms.
‘Hey!’ Hensleigh called excitedly. ‘Come and have a look at this.’
Gant walked over to the big black spaceship. Montana was already there when she arrived. Santa Cruz was standing guard over by the pool.
‘What do you think of that?’ Hensleigh pointed at something on the underbelly of the ship.
Gant saw it, frowned. It looked like a keypad of some sort.
Twelve buttons, arranged in three columns, four buttons per column, with what looked like a rectangular screen at the top of it.
But there was something very odd about this ‘keypad’.
There were no symbols on any of the keys.
Like the rest of the ship, the keypad was completely and utterly black – black buttons on a black background.
And then Gant saw that there was one button