Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [169]
In the lead F-22, the squadron leader was listening to his helmet radio. When the voice at the other end finished speaking, the squadron leader said, ‘Thanks, Bigbird, I see him.’
On his computerised display screen, the squadron leader saw a small blip heading west. A readout on the screen read:
TARGET ACQUIRED: 103 NM WNW
AIRCRAFT DESIGNATED: E-2000.
An E-2000, the squadron leader noted. The Euro-fighter 2000. A twin-engined, highly-manoeuvrable pocket fighter, the E-2000 was a joint project of the British, German, Spanish and Italian Air Forces.
On the squadron leader’s screen, the blip appeared to be flying casually, completely unaware of the stealthy American fighters a hundred miles behind it.
‘All right, people, target has been acquired,’ the F-22 pilot said. ‘I repeat, target has been acquired. It’s time to rock and roll.’
Inside Wilkes Ice Station, Shane Schofield didn’t know what the hell to do.
He knew he couldn’t surrender to the SEALs. The SEALs were almost certainly ICG. If they got him, they would kill him.
He considered going down to the cave and hiding down there – and if necessary holding the spaceship for ransom – but then he realised that it was no longer possible to get down to the cave since the diving bell had been destroyed.
Schofield led Kirsty and Renshaw out of the radio room on A-deck and down the rung-ladder to the lower decks.
‘What’s going on?’ Renshaw said.
‘We just got screwed,’ Schofield said. His mind was racing. Their only option now, he figured, was to hide somewhere inside the station and hold out until the SEALs and everyone else were gone . . .
And then what are you gonna do, Schofield asked himself. Walk home?
If you stay alive, you still have a chance.
Schofield slid down the rung-ladder, looked down at the pool on E-deck.
And then he saw something.
He saw Wendy, lying on the deck, happily dozing off to sleep.
Wendy, he thought.
Something about Wendy . . .
The F-22 squadron leader spoke into his helmet mike, ‘Bigbird, this is Blue Leader. Maintaining stealth mode. Estimate target will be in missile range in . . . twenty minutes.’
Suddenly it hit Schofield.
He spun to face Kirsty. ‘Kirsty, how long can Wendy hold her breath for?’
Kirsty shrugged. ‘Most male fur seals can hold their breath for about an hour. But Wendy’s a girl, and a lot smaller, so she can only hold her breath for about forty minutes.’
‘Forty minutes . . .’ Schofield said, doing the calculations in his head.
‘What are you thinking?’ Renshaw asked.
Schofield said, ‘It takes us roughly two hours to get from the station to the cave, right. One hour to go down three thousand feet in the diving bell and then another hour or so to go up through the ice tunnel.’
‘Yeah, so . . .’ Renshaw said.
Schofield turned to face Renshaw. ‘When Gant and the others were approaching the ice cavern, Gant said the strangest thing. She said that they had a visitor. Wendy. Gant said that Wendy was swimming with them as they made their way up the ice tunnel.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Schofield said, ‘So, even if Wendy could swim twice as fast as we can, if she swam all the way down and then all the way back up the ice tunnel, she’d run out of breath before she got to the cavern.’
Renshaw was silent.
Schofield said, ‘I mean, it’d be suicide for her not to turn back after she’d swum for twenty minutes because she’d have to know she could get back to an air source –’
Schofield looked from Renshaw to Kirsty.
‘There’s another way into that ice tunnel,’ he said. ‘A short cut.’
‘SEAL team, this is Blue Leader. We are closing in on the target. Estimate target will be in missile range in fifteen minutes,’ the voice of the squadron leader said over the radio of the SEAL team’s hovercraft.
The SEALs sat rigidly in their places in the cabin of their hovercraft. Not a trace of emotion crossed any of their faces.
Down on E-deck now, Schofield tossed the low-audibility breathing tanks onto the deck. Kirsty was already putting on a thermal-electric wetsuit. It was so hopelessly big for her