Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [36]
They looked like twin comets. Two seven-foot-tall balls of fire that rocketed around the circumference of the B-deck catwalk, leaving in their wake a wall of blazing flames.
The whole of the B-deck catwalk disappeared in an instant as the spectacular curtain of flames shot up from every point on the circular metal catwalk, concealing from view everybody who had been standing on the deck.
For a full second, Schofield could do nothing but stare. It had happened so fast. It was as if somebody had laid down a trail of gasoline on the B-deck catwalk and then lit a match.
Then the penny dropped and Schofield immediately spun around to face –
– the air-conditioning room.
And in that instant, it all suddenly made sense.
The air-conditioning cylinders had no doubt been substantially damaged by the detonation of the rocket-grenade minutes earlier. Thus punctured, they had immediately started spewing out their store of chloro-fluorocarbons.
Highly flammable chlorofluorocarbons.
That was what had happened when Schofield had seen the two-metre length of fire spew forward from the muzzle of Gant’s machine pistol only moments earlier. It had been a warning of things to come. But at that time, the CFCs hadn’t yet filled the station. Hence, the small, two-metre flame.
But now . . . now the amount of flammable gas in the station’s atmosphere had multiplied considerably. So much so that when the French had opened fire on the Marines on B-deck, the whole deck had gone up in flames.
Schofield’s eyes widened.
The air-conditioning cylinders were still spewing out CFCs. Soon the whole station would be contaminated with flammable . . .
The horror of the realisation hit Schofield hard.
Wilkes Ice Station had become a gas oven.
All it needed was one spark, one flame – or one gunshot – and the whole station would spontaneously combust.
Rivets began to pop out of their sockets on B-deck.
Spot fires burned all over the B-deck catwalk. Agonised screams echoed out across the open space of the ice station as soldiers and civilians alike lay writhing on the catwalk, their bodies alight.
It looked like a scene from Hell itself.
The three French soldiers on the western side of the station – the ones who had opened fire on Mother, Rebound and Legs – had been the first to go up in flames, the gaseous air around them having been ignited by the white-hot tongues of fire that had burst forth from the muzzles of their guns.
The twin fireballs had immediately shot out from the barrels of their guns. One had surged forward while the other had turned on them and rushed with all its fury back at their faces.
Now two of those French soldiers lay on the deck, screaming. The third was frantically banging himself against the ice wall nearby in a desperate attempt to put out the flames on his fatigues.
Mother and Rebound were also alight. Beside them, Legs was already dead. His motionless body lay flat on the catwalk as it was slowly devoured by crackling, orange flames.
Over by the north tunnel, Buck Riley was trying to smother the flames on Abby Sinclair’s pants by rolling her over on the metal catwalk. Beside them, Sarah Hensleigh slapped frantically at a cluster of flames that had ignited on the back of Kirsty’s bulky pink parka. Warren Conlon just screamed. His hair was on fire.
And then, suddenly, there came a sickening sound. The lurching, wrenching sound of bending steel.
Riley looked up from what he was doing.
‘Oh, no,’ he moaned.
Schofield also looked up at the sound.
He scanned the catwalk above him, and saw a series of triangular steel supports that fastened the underside of the B-deck catwalk to the ice wall.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, those supports began to slide out from the wall.
Under the intense heat from the fire on B-deck, the long rivets that fastened the supports to the wall were starting to heat up. They were melting the ice around them, and were now starting