Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [136]
‘Detonator cord,’ Schofield said, as he tied the white powdery cord in a loop around his wrist. ‘It’s used as a fuse for close-quarter explosives. That powdery stuff you see on it, that’s magnesium-sulfide. Magnesium-based detonator cords burn hot and fast – in fact, they burn so hot that they can cut clean through metal. It’s good stuff, we sometimes use it today.
‘And see this,’ Schofield held up a rusted, pressurised canister. ‘VX poison gas. And this’ – he held up another tube – ‘sarin.’
‘Sarin gas?’ Renshaw said. Even he knew what that was. Sarin gas was a chemical weapon. Renshaw recalled an incident in Japan in 1995, when a terrorist group had detonated a canister of sarin gas inside the Tokyo subway. Panic ensued. Several people were killed. ‘They had that stuff in the sixties?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘So you think this station was a chemical weapons facility?’ Renshaw asked.
‘I think so, yes.’
‘But why? Why test chemical weapons in Antarctica?’
‘Two reasons,’ Schofield said. ‘One: back home, we keep nearly all of our poison gas weapons in freezer storage, because most poison gases lose their toxicity at higher temperatures. So it makes sense to do your testing in a place that’s cold all year round.’
‘And the second reason?’
‘The second reason is a lot simpler,’ Schofield said, smiling at Renshaw. ‘Nobody’s looking.’
Schofield headed back into the next room. ‘In any case,’ he said as he disappeared behind the doorway, ‘none of that’s really much use to us right now. But they do have something else back here that might be helpful. In fact, I think it might just get us back in the game.’
‘What is it?’
‘This,’ Schofield said, as he reappeared in the doorway and pulled a dusty scuba tank out into view.
Schofield set to work calibrating the thirty-year-old scuba gear. Renshaw was tasked with cleaning out the breathing apparatus – the mouthpieces, the valves, the air hoses.
The compressed air was the main risk. After thirty years of storage, there was a risk that it had gone toxic.
There was only one way to find out.
Schofield tested it – he took a deep inhalation and looked at Renshaw. When he didn’t drop dead, he declared the air okay.
The two men worked on the scuba gear for about twenty minutes. Then, as they were nearing readiness, Renshaw said quietly, ‘Did you ever get to see Bernie Olson’s body?’
Schofield looked over at Renshaw. The little scientist was bent over a pair of mouthpieces, washing them out with seawater.
‘As a matter of fact, I did,’ Schofield said softly.
‘What did you see?’ Renshaw said, interested.
Schofield hesitated. ‘Mr Olson had bitten his own tongue off.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘His jaw was also locked rigidly in place and his eyes were heavily inflamed – red-rimmed, bloodshot.’
Renshaw nodded. ‘And what were you told happened to him?’
‘Sarah Hensleigh told me you stabbed him in the neck with a hypodermic needle and injected liquid drain cleaner into his bloodstream.’
Renshaw nodded sagely. ‘I see. Lieutenant, could you have a look at this please?’ Renshaw pulled a waterlogged book from the breast pocket of his parka. It was the thick book that he had taken from his room when they had evacuated the station.
Renshaw handed it to Schofield. Biotoxicology and Toxin-Related Illnesses.
Renshaw said, ‘Lieutenant, when someone poisons you with drain cleaner, the poison stops your heart, just like that. There’s no struggle. There’s no fight. You just die. Chapter 2.’
Schofield flipped the watersoaked pages to Chapter 2. He saw the heading: Toxin-Related Instantaneous Physiological Death.
He saw a list of what the author had called ‘Known Poisons’. In the middle of the list, Schofield saw ‘industrial cleaning fluids, insecticides’.
‘The point is,’ Renshaw said, ‘there are no outward signs of death by such a poison. Your heart stops, your body just stops.’ Renshaw held up his finger. ‘But not so, certain other toxins,’ he said. ‘Like, for instance, sea snake venom.’
‘Sea snake venom?’ Schofield said.
‘Chapter 9,’