Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [44]
Abruptly, Mother shot forward in the water, raising a wash of white waves in front of her. The whale was pushing her forward, toward Rebound and the deck.
And then – clang! – Mother slammed down hard against the edge of the deck and, amazingly, managed to get a handhold on the metal grating.
‘Fucking kill you! You son of a bitch!’ Mother yelled through clenched teeth.
Rebound dived forward and grabbed Mother’s hand as she grimly held the deck and struggled with the killer whale in a tug-of-war over her own body.
Then Rebound saw Mother draw her powerful Colt automatic pistol from its holster and level it at the killer whale’s head.
‘Oh, fuck me . . .’ Rebound said.
‘You want to eat something, baby?’ Mother said to the whale. ‘Eat this.’
She fired.
A small blast of yellow light flared out from the muzzle of Mother’s gun as the flash of her pistol ignited the gaseous air around her. Both she and Rebound were hurled a full five yards backwards onto the deck by the concussion wave.
The whale wasn’t so lucky. As soon as the bullet entered its brain, the killer convulsed violently backwards, snapping upward. Then it just fell limply back into the water amid a cloud of its own blood, its final prize – garnered in the split second before it died – a portion of Mother’s left leg. Everything from the left knee down.
Schofield and Kirsty were still out in the middle of the pool, caught halfway between the diving bell in the centre and the deck twenty-five feet away.
With their backs pressed against each other, they both looked fearfully about themselves. The water around them was ominously still. Quiet. Calm.
‘Mister,’ Kirsty said, her voice barely a whisper. Her jaw was quivering, a combination of fear and cold.
‘What?’ Schofield kept his eyes trained on the water around him.
‘I’m scared.’
‘Scared?’ Schofield said, not exactly hiding his own fear very well. ‘I didn’t think kids these days were afraid of anything. Don’t they have this kind of stuff at Sea World –’
At that moment, one of the killer whales shot up out of the water right in front of Schofield. It rose out of the water and arced down fast, heading right for him and Kirsty!
‘Go under!’ Schofield yelled as he saw the two rows of jagged white teeth open wide in front of him.
Schofield held his breath and ducked underwater, pulling Kirsty down with him.
The world suddenly went silent as the killer whale’s immense white underbelly thundered over the top of them at incredible speed. It brushed roughly against the top of Schofield’s helmet as it pounded back into the water right above their heads.
Schofield and Kirsty burst back up above the surface, gasped for air.
Schofield quickly looked left: saw Rebound and Mother on the deck. Looked right: saw Sarah and Abby, also safely up on the deck, quickly moving away from the edge.
He spun around: saw another Frenchman get yanked under. The two remaining French commandos were just reaching the edge of the pool. They’d had to swim further than everyone else, having landed closest to the middle of the pool.
Serves them right, Schofield thought.
He looked up: and immediately saw the retractable bridge that spanned the width of the station from either side of C-deck.
Just then, a deafening explosion boomed out from the alcove on the C-deck catwalk, and an unbelievably huge tongue of fire shot out over the whole of the central shaft of the station.
Schofield knew what had happened immediately – the French soldiers up on A-deck, deprived of the use of their guns, were now tossing grenades down into the shaft. Sharp thinking. A grenade detonating in this flammable atmosphere would do twice as much damage as it would normally. Their first target, Schofield noticed, had been the alcove he and Gant had been hiding in before.
Suddenly something emerged from the fireball that had consumed the alcove.
It was large and grey, square-shaped, and it tumbled end-over-end out into the central shaft of the station. It fell fast, cutting through the air, its immense weight driving