Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [146]
We just kept going down. Down and down. Shaking and falling. One of the big robot arms fell on Doug Myers, crushed him to death . . .
Gant was stunned.
This ‘hangar’ had been an ice station.
An ice station that had been set up in the utmost secrecy to build a plane of some sort – a plane, Gant noticed, that used plutonium. But this station, it seemed, had originally been up on the surface – or rather, buried just underneath the surface like Wilkes Ice Station – until an earthquake had hit it and sucked it underground.
Gant flicked to the very last page of the diary.
17 March, 1980
I am the last one alive. All of my colleagues are dead. It has been almost three months now since the quake hit and I know no one is coming. My left hand is frost-bitten and gangrenous. I cannot feel my feet anymore.
I cannot go on. I am going to strip myself naked and lie down in the ice. It should only take a few minutes. If anyone should read this in the future, know that my name was Simon Wayne Daniels. I was an aviation electronics specialist for Entertech Ltd. My wife, Lily, lives in Palmdale, although I don’t know if she’ll be there when you read this. Please find her and tell her that I loved her and tell her that I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell her where I went.
It is so very cold.
Gant looked at the naked body on the floor at her feet.
Simon Wayne Daniels.
Gant felt a pang of sadness for him. He had died here, alone. Buried alive in this cold, icy tomb.
And then all of a sudden, Santa Cruz’s voice exploded across her helmet intercom, shattering her thoughts: ‘Montana! Fox! Get out here! Get out here now! I have a visual on enemy divers! I repeat! Enemy divers are about to come up inside the cavern!’
The team of SAS divers made their way up the underwater ice tunnel with the aid of sea sleds. There were eight of them, and by virtue of their twin-propeller sea sleds, they moved quickly through the water. All of them wore black.
‘Base. This is Dive Team. Come in,’ the lead diver said into his helmet communicator.
‘Dive Team, this is Base,’ Barnaby’s voice came in over the intercom. ‘Report.’
‘Base, time is now 1956 hours. Dive time since leaving the diving bell is fifty-four minutes. We have a visual on the surface. We are coming up to the cavern.’
‘Dive Team, be aware. We have intel that there are four hostile agents inside that cavern waiting for you. I repeat, there are four hostile agents inside the cavern waiting for you. Use appropriate action.’
‘Copy Base. We will. Dive Team out.’
Gant and Montana came sprinting back into the main cavern.
They came up alongside Santa Cruz, who was manning the tripod-mounted MP-5s. He pointed down into the pool.
Several ominous black shadows could be seen rising up through the clear, aqua-coloured water.
The three Marines took up positions behind various boulders, MP-5s in their hands. Montana told Sarah Hensleigh to stay behind him and stay down.
‘Don’t be impatient,’ Montana’s voice said over their helmet intercoms. ‘Wait for them to breach the surface. It’s no use firing into the water.’
‘Got it,’ Gant said as she saw the first shadow rise steadily through the water toward the surface.
A diver. On a sea sled.
He came closer and closer, up and up, until strangely, just below the surface, he stopped.
Gant frowned.
The diver had just stopped there, about a foot below the surface.
What was he doing –
And then suddenly the diver’s hand shot up out of the water and Gant saw the object in his hand instantly.
‘Nitrogen charge!’ Gant yelled. ‘Take cover!’
The diver tossed the nitrogen charge and it bounced onto the hard, icy floor of the cavern. Gant and the other Marines all ducked behind their boulders.