Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [172]
The American pilots saw the bright orange explosion on the night horizon, saw the blip on their scopes disappear.
A couple of them cheered.
The squadron leader smiled as he looked at the orange fireball on the horizon. ‘SEAL team this is Blue Leader. The bogey has been eliminated. I repeat, the bogey has been eliminated. You are free to enter the station. You are free to enter the station.’
Inside the SEAL hovercraft, the squadron leader’s voice echoed through the speaker: ‘You are free to enter the station. You are free to enter the station.’
The SEAL commander said, ‘Thank you, Blue Leader. All units, be aware. SEAL team is switching over to closed-circuit channels for the assault on the station.’
He clicked off his radio, turned to his men.
‘All right, people. Let’s go fuck somebody up.’
Out over the Southern Ocean, the F-22 squadron leader continued to look out through his canopy at the remains of the British E-2000. Thin orange firetrails descended slowly down to earth like cheap fireworks.
Consumed as he was with this sight, the squadron leader didn’t notice a new, smaller blip appear on his radar screen – a blip heading south, toward Antarctica – until almost thirty seconds later.
‘What the hell is that?’ he said.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ someone else said. ‘It must have got a missile off before it was hit!’
The squadron leader tried to raise the SEAL team again, but this time he couldn’t get through. They’d already switched over to closed-circuit channels for their assault on Wilkes Ice Station.
The main doors to the station exploded inwards and the SEAL team stormed inside with their guns blazing.
It was a textbook-perfect entrance. The only problem was, the station was empty.
Schofield looked at his depth gauge: 1470 feet.
He pushed on and a few minutes later, he emerged from the narrow short-cut tunnel and found himself inside a wider, ice-walled tunnel.
Schofield knew where he was instantly, even though he had never been here before.
On the far side of the underwater ice tunnel he saw a series of round, ten-foot holes carved into the tunnel walls. Sarah Hensleigh had told him about them before. And Gant had mentioned them as well, when she had approached the cave. The elephant seals’ caves. He was inside the underwater ice tunnel that led up to the spacecraft’s cavern.
Schofield breathed a sigh of relief. Yes!
Schofield and the others swam out into the underwater ice tunnel. Then they swam quickly upward, watching the holes in the ice walls around them with more than a little trepidation.
Although the sight of the holes in the walls made him uneasy, Schofield felt fairly certain that the elephant seals would not attack them. He had a theory about that. So far, the only group of divers to have approached the underwater ice cave unharmed had been Gant’s group – and they had all been wearing LABA tanks, low-audibility breathing gear. The other groups to have gone down – the scientists from Wilkes and the British – hadn’t. And they had been attacked. The way Schofield figured it, the elephant seals hadn’t been able to hear Gant and her team when they had approached the cavern. And so they hadn’t been attacked.
At that moment, Schofield caught sight of the surface and his thoughts about the elephant seals were forgotten.
He looked at his depth gauge. 1490 feet.
Then he looked at his watch. It had taken them all of eighteen minutes to get here. Very quick time.
And then suddenly, a low whistle cut through the water.
Schofield heard it, tensed. He saw Kirsty holding onto Wendy in the water beside him. Wendy had sensed it, too.
Suddenly, a second whistle answered the first and Schofield felt his heart sink.
The seals knew they were there . . .
‘Go!’ Schofield said to Renshaw and Kirsty. ‘Go!’
Schofield and Renshaw broke out into swift strokes, heading for the surface. Kirsty just slapped Wendy’s flank and Wendy shot forward through the water.
Schofield looked at the surface above him. It looked beautiful, glassy,