Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [24]
Out on the catwalk, Schofield fell to his knees next to Gant.
He looked down at her head. The arrow from Cuvier’s crossbow had lodged in the forehead guard of her kevlar helmet and a narrow stream of blood ran out from her forehead and down the side of her nose.
Seeing the blood, Schofield leaned closer and saw that the force of the crossbow had been so strong that the arrow had penetrated Gant’s helmet. Nearly a whole inch of the arrow had passed through the kevlar, so that now its glistening silver tip was poised right in front of Gant’s forehead.
The helmet had held the arrow clear of her skull by millimetres.
Not even that. The razor-sharp point of the arrow had actually nicked her skin, drawing blood.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ Schofield said, even though he was sure Gant couldn’t hear him. The Marines’ cover fire continued all around them as Schofield dragged Gant back along the catwalk, toward the main entrance passageway.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the French commandos popped up from behind a hole in the wall of the dining room, with his rifle raised.
Still dragging Gant, Schofield quickly brought his pistol up, aimed through the sights and loosed two quick rounds. If the FA-MAS sounded tinny, and the MP-5 sounded like puncture noises, then Schofield’s I.M.I. ‘Desert Eagle’ automatic pistol sounded like a cannon. The French commando’s head exploded in a splash of red as both rounds found their mark on the bridge of his nose. His head jolted back sharply – twice – and he dropped instantly out of sight.
‘Get out of there, Scarecrow! Move!’ Riley’s voice yelled through Schofield’s earpiece.
‘I’m almost there!’ Schofield yelled above the gunfire.
Suddenly another voice came over the intercom.
It was calm, clinical. There was no gunfire in the background behind it.
‘Marine Force, this is Snake. I am still at my post outside. I report that I now have visual on six more hostiles exiting the second French hovercraft. I repeat I am looking at six more armed men disembarking the French hovercraft and approaching the main entrance of the station.’
A sudden, jarring shot rang out over the intercom. Snake Kaplan’s sniper rifle.
‘Marine Force, this is Snake. Make that five more hostiles approaching the main entrance of the station.’
Schofield looked back at the tunnel leading to the main entrance behind him. That was where he and Gant were heading. Riley and Hollywood were there right now, firing at the dining room. Beside them, Sergeant Mitch ‘Ratman’ Healy was doing the same.
And then suddenly, without warning, Healy’s chest exploded. Shot from behind by a high-powered weapon.
Healy convulsed violently as a gout of blood spewed out from his ribcage. The force of the impact and the subsequent nervous convulsion bent his back forward at an obscene angle and Schofield heard a sickening crack as the young soldier’s spine broke.
Riley and Hollywood were out of the entrance passageway in a nanosecond. As they fired into the tunnel behind them, at some unseen enemy, they backed quickly toward the nearest rung-ladder that led down to B-deck.
Unfortunately, since they had only just arrived at the station, the six Marines who had gone with Riley to investigate the crashed hovercraft had been gathered around the main entrance passageway when the fighting had broken out. Which meant that now they were caught in between two hostile forces: one in the dining room in front of them, and another coming in through the main entrance behind them.
Schofield saw this. ‘Book! Go down! Go down! Take your guys down to B-deck!’
‘Already on it, Scarecrow.’
Schofield and Gant were in an even worse position.
Caught out on the catwalk between the dining room and the main entrance passageway, they had nowhere to go, no doorways to hide behind, no passageways to duck into. Just a metal catwalk three feet wide, bounded on one side by a sheer ice wall and on the other by a seventy foot drop.
And any second now, the second French team would be bursting in through the main entrance passageway and Schofield