Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [29]
Schofield thought about that. I’d probably try to flush us all into the one place. That’d be much more efficient than attempting to search the whole station for us and pick us off one by –
‘Grenade!’ Gant yelled.
Schofield was jolted back to the present as he saw a small black grenade sail out over the A-deck railing and arc down toward him. Six similar grenades went flying down from A-deck and into the three ice tunnels that branched off into B-deck.
‘Move!’ Schofield said quickly to Gant as he ducked back inside the doorway and slammed the door shut.
He and Gant moved to the far side of the room just in time to hear the grenade bounce up against the outside of the thick, wooden door.
Clunk, clunk.
And then the grenade exploded. White splinters shot out from the inside of the door as the pointed tips of a hundred jagged metal shards instantly appeared in their place.
Schofield looked at the door, stunned.
The whole door, from floor to ceiling, was littered with tiny protrusions. What had once been a smooth wooden surface now looked like some kind of sinister medieval torture device. The whole thing was covered with sharp, spiked pieces of metal that had almost managed to rip right through the thick wooden door.
Other, similar explosions rang out from the level above Schofield and Gant. They both looked up.
B-deck, Schofield thought.
I’d probably try to flush us all into the one place.
‘Oh no,’ Schofield said aloud.
‘What?’ Gant asked.
But Schofield didn’t answer. Instead, he quickly yanked opened the destroyed door and looked out into the central shaft of the ice station.
A bullet immediately rammed into the frost-covered doorframe next to his head. But it didn’t stop him seeing them.
Up on A-deck, five of the French commandos were on their feet, laying down a suppressing fire over the whole of the station.
It was cover fire.
Cover fire for the other five commandos who were at that moment abseiling down from A-deck to B-deck. It was a short, controlled ride, and in a second the five commandos were on the B-deck catwalk, guns up and heading for the tunnels.
As he saw them, Schofield had a sickening realisation. Most of his Marines were on B-deck, having retreated there after the second French team had charged in through the main entrance of the station.
And there was another thing.
B-deck was the main living area of Wilkes Ice Station. And Schofield himself had sent the American scientists back to their quarters while he and his team had gone to meet the newly arrived French hovercraft.
Schofield stared up at B-deck in horror.
The French had flushed them all into one place.
On B-deck, the world suddenly went crazy.
No sooner had Riley and Hollywood rounded the bend in the ice tunnel than they were confronted by the frightened faces of the residents of Wilkes Ice Station.
The instant he saw them, Riley suddenly remembered what B-deck was.
The living area.
Suddenly, a stream of submachine-gun fire raked the ice wall behind him.
At the same time, Schofield’s voice came over Riley’s helmet intercom: ‘All units, this is Scarecrow. I have a visual on five hostile objects landing right now on the B-deck catwalk. I repeat, five hostile objects. Marines, if you’re on B-deck, look sharp.’
Riley’s mind went into overdrive. He quickly tried to remember the floor-plan of B-deck.
The first thing he recalled was that the layout of B-deck differed slightly from that of the other floors of Wilkes. All of the other floors were made up of four straight tunnels that branched out from the central well of the ice station to meet the circular outer tunnel. But because of an anomalous rock formation buried in the ice around it, B-deck didn’t have a south tunnel.
It only had three straight tunnels, meaning that the outer, circular tunnel didn’t form a complete circle as it did on every other floor. The result was a dead end at the southernmost point of the outer circle. Riley remembered seeing the dead end before: it housed the room in which James Renshaw was being held.
Right now, though, Riley and Hollywood found