Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [30]
Jesus.
‘Take the rear,’ Riley said to Hollywood, meaning that part of the outer tunnel which led back to the north tunnel.
Riley himself began to move past the group of scientists, so that he could take up a position in view of the east tunnel.
‘Ladies and gentlemen! Could you please move back into your rooms!’
‘What’s going on?’ one of the men asked angrily.
‘Your friends upstairs weren’t really your friends,’ Riley said. ‘There’s now a team of French paratroopers inside your station and they will kill you if they see you. Now could you please get back in your room.’
‘Book! Grenade!’ Hollywood’s voice echoed down the corridor.
Riley spun to see Hollywood come charging around the bend toward him. He also caught a glimpse of a fragmentation grenade bouncing into the tunnel twenty feet behind him.
‘Oh, fuck.’ Riley turned instantly, looking for cover in the opposite direction – in the east tunnel, ten yards away.
It was then that he saw two more grenades tumble out of the east tunnel, and come to rest against the wall of the outer tunnel.
‘Oh, really fuck.’ Riley’s eyes went wide. There were now fragmentation grenades at both ends of the tunnel.
‘Get inside! Now!’ Riley screamed at the scientists as he began to throw open the nearest door. ‘Get back in your rooms now!’
It took the scientists a second to grasp what Riley meant, but when they did get it, they immediately dived for their doorways.
Riley hurled himself inside the nearest doorway and peered back out to see what Hollywood was doing. The young corporal was running for all he was worth down the curved tunnel toward Riley.
And then suddenly he slipped. And fell.
Hollywood went sprawling – clumsily, head first – onto the frost-covered floor of the tunnel.
Riley watched helplessly as Hollywood frantically began to pick himself up off the floor, looking anxiously back at the fragmentation grenade in the tunnel behind him as he did so.
Maybe two seconds left.
And in an instant, Riley felt his stomach knot.
Hollywood wasn’t going to make it.
Right in front of Hollywood – in the only doorway he could possibly get to in time – two of the scientists were desperately trying to get into the same room. One was pushing the other in the back, trying to get him to move inside.
Buck Riley watched in horror as Hollywood looked up at the two scientists and saw that he had no chance of getting into that room. Hollywood then swung back round to look at the fragmentation grenade thirty feet down the curved corridor behind him.
A final, desperate turn, and Hollywood’s eyes met Riley’s. Eyes white with fear. The eyes of a man who knows he is about to die.
He had nowhere to go. Nowhere at all.
And then, with thunderous intensity, the three grenades – one from the north tunnel, two from the east – unleashed their anger and Riley ducked back behind his doorway and saw a thousand glistening metal shards whip past him in both directions.
Another explosion rocked the outside of the thick wooden door and a new wave of metal shards slammed into it.
Schofield and Gant were at the back of the room on C-deck, taking cover behind an upturned aluminium table.
‘Marines, call in,’ Schofield said.
Voices came in over his intercom, gunfire rang out in the background.
‘This is Rebound! I’m with Legs and Mother! We are under heavy fire in the north-west quadrant of B-deck!’
A burst of static suddenly cut across Schofield’s earpiece. ‘– is Book – wood is down. I’m in – quadrant –’ Book’s voice cut off abruptly, the signal gone.
‘This is Montana. Santa Cruz is with me. We’re still on A-deck, but we’re pinned down.’
‘Lieutenant, this is Snake. I’m outside, approaching the main entrance right now.’
There was no word from Hollywood. And Mitch