Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [152]
Gant felt a chill as she saw the sex of one of the big seals in front of her.
These were the females of the group.
The two smaller seals that she saw were their pups. Male pups, Gant noticed.
Gant wondered where the bull was. He would almost certainly be larger than these females. But if the females were this big, how big would he be?
More questions flitted through Gant’s mind.
Why did they attack? Elephant seals, Gant knew, could be exceptionally aggressive, especially when their territory was under threat.
And why now? Why had Gant and her team been allowed to pass safely through the ice tunnel only several hours before, while the SAS had been subjected to so violent an attack now?
There came a sudden, final scream from the pool followed by a splash and Gant looked out from behind her boulder.
There was a long, cold silence. The only sound was that of waves lapping against the edge of the pool.
All of the SAS divers were dead. Most of the seals were up inside the cavern now, bent over the spoils of their victory – the bodies of the dead SAS commandos. It was then that Gant heard a nauseating crunch and she turned round to see that the elephant seals had begun to feed en masse.
This battle was well and truly over.
Schofield stood on the pool deck of Wilkes Ice Station with his hands cuffed in front of him. One of the SAS commandos was busy tying the grappling hook of Book’s Maghook around his ankles. Schofield looked off to his left and saw the high black fin of a killer whale slice through the murky red water of the pool.
‘Dive Team, report,’ an SAS radio operator said into his portable unit nearby. ‘I repeat. Dive Team, come in.’
‘Any word?’ Barnaby said.
‘There’s no response, sir. The last thing they said was that they were about to surface inside the cavern.’
Barnaby gave Schofield a look. ‘Keep trying,’ he said to the radio operator. Then he turned to Schofield. ‘Your men down in that cave must have put up quite a fight.’
‘They do that,’ Schofield said.
‘So,’ Barnaby said. ‘Any last requests from the condemned man? A blindfold? Cigarette? Shot of brandy?’
At first, Schofield said nothing, he just looked down at his handcuffed wrists in front of him.
And then he saw it.
Suddenly Schofield looked up.
‘A cigarette,’ he said quickly, swallowing. ‘Please.’
‘Mr Nero. A cigarette for the lieutenant.’
Nero stepped forward, offered a pack of cigarettes to Schofield. Schofield took one with his cuffed hands, raised it to his mouth. Nero lit it. Schofield took a deep draw and hoped to hell that nobody saw his face turn green. Schofield had never smoked in his life.
‘All right,’ Barnaby said. ‘That’s enough. Gentlemen, hoist him up. Scarecrow, it was a pleasure knowing you.’
Schofield swung, upside-down, out over the pool. His dogtags hung loosely off his chin, glistening silver in the white artificial light of the station. The water beneath him was stained an ugly shade of red.
Book’s blood.
Schofield looked up at the diving bell in the centre of the pool, saw Renshaw’s face in one of the portholes – saw a single terrified eye peering out at Schofield.
Schofield just hung there, three feet above the hideous red water. He calmly held the cigarette to his mouth, took another puff.
The SAS soldiers must have thought it a vain act of bravado – but while the cigarette dangled from Schofield’s mouth, they never saw what he was doing with his hands.
Barnaby offered Schofield a salute. ‘Rule Britannia, Scarecrow.’
‘Fuck Britannia,’ Schofield replied.
‘Mr Nero,’ Barnaby said. ‘Lower away.’
Over by the rung-ladder, Nero pressed a button on the Maghook’s launcher. The launcher itself was still wedged in between two rungs of the ladder while its rope was stretched taut over the retractable bridge up on C-deck, creating the same pulley-like mechanism that had been used to lower Book into the water.
The Maghook’s rope began to play out.
Schofield began to descend toward the water.
His hands were