Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [38]
Almost immediately, a towering black dorsal fin appeared alongside the desperate swimmer. After a second, it slowed, and then it ominously sank below the surface behind him.
The result was as violent as it was sudden.
With a hideous crack, the French commando’s body suddenly snapped backwards in the water. He turned in the water and opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out. His eyes just went wide. He must have seen that the whale had crushed the whole of his lower body with its bite and was now holding him firmly within its mighty jaws.
The whale’s second yank was even more powerful than the first. It pulled the Frenchman under with such force that the man’s head jolted backwards and slapped down hard against the water as he went under and disappeared forever.
Sarah Hensleigh gasped. ‘Oh, Jesus . . .’
Buck Riley’s section of catwalk was still attached to the ice wall. Just. It hung downward at a steep angle, out over the central shaft.
The three scientists – Riley didn’t know their names – had all been too slow. The sudden collapse of the catwalk had caught all three of them by surprise. Too slow to get a handhold, they had all fallen down into the shaft.
Riley’s reflexes had been quicker. When the catwalk had fallen away beneath him, he had hit the deck and immediately garnered a fingerhold in the grating of the catwalk itself.
The little girl had also been fast.
As soon as the floor had dropped away beneath her, she had fallen to the catwalk and immediately started to slide toward the edge.
Her feet had gone over the edge first, followed quickly by her waist, and then her chest. Just as her head fell clear of the railing, she threw out a desperate hand and miraculously caught hold of the hand railing.
The railing held for a second but, weakened by the force of the gas explosion, it suddenly buckled and snapped and swung out over the edge of the catwalk, so that it now hung upside-down out over the shaft.
And so the little girl hung there, one-handed and screaming, from the upside-down railing of the catwalk, fifty feet above the killer-whale-infested pool.
‘Don’t look down!’ Riley yelled, as he reached for her hand. He had already seen the killer whales down in the pool, had just seen one of them take the French commando. He didn’t want the little girl seeing them.
The little girl was crying, sobbing, ‘Don’t let me fall!’
‘I won’t let you fall,’ Riley said as he lay on his stomach and stretched out as far as he could, trying to grab her wrist. Small, isolated spot fires burned on the remnants of the catwalk all around him.
His hand was about a foot away from the girl’s when he saw her frightened eyes begin to dart around.
‘What’s your name?’ Riley said suddenly, trying to distract her.
‘My hand is hot,’ she whimpered.
Riley looked back along the railing. About five yards to his left, a small spot fire licked at the point where the down-turned railing met the catwalk.
‘I know it’s hot, honey. I know it is. Just keep holding on. What did you say your name was?’
‘Kirsty.’
‘Hi, Kirsty. My name’s Buck, but you can just call me Book like everybody else does.’
‘Why do they call you that?’
Riley cast a sideways glance at the spot fire licking against the railing.
Not good.
Under the intense heat of the explosion, the black paint on the railing had broken out into dry, paper-like flakes. If the fire came into contact with those flakes, the whole railing would go up in flames.
Riley kept reaching out for Kirsty’s hand, stretched harder. Half a foot away. He almost had her.
‘Do you always,’ Riley breathed a weak half-laugh, ‘ask this many questions?’ He grimaced as he stretched. ‘If you’ – breath – ‘really wanna know’ – breath – ‘it’s because, once’ – breath – ‘one of my friends found out I was writing a book.’
‘Uh-huh . . .’ Kirsty’s eyes began to wander again.
‘Kirsty. Now listen to me, honey. I want you keep your eyes looking right at me now, okay. Right at me.’
‘O-kay,’ she said.
Then she looked down.
Riley swore.
Rebound had been less than