Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [61]
‘Concur,’ Buck Riley said.
‘Same,’ Snake said. Book Riley and Snake Kaplan were the two most senior enlisted men in the unit. It meant something that they both agreed with Schofield’s assessment of the situation.
Schofield said. ‘All right, then. What I want to happen now is this. Montana . . .’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I want you to go topside and position our two hovercrafts so that their rangefinders are pointed outward, so that they cover the entire landward approach to this station. I want maximum coverage, no gaps. Trip-wires aren’t going to cut it anymore with this place, we use the rangefinders from here. As soon as anyone comes within fifty miles of this station, I want to know about it.’
‘Got it,’ Montana said.
‘And while you’re up there,’ Schofield said, ‘see if you can get on the radio and raise McMurdo. Find out when our reinforcements are coming. They should’ve been here by now.’
‘You got it,’ Montana said. He hurried away.
‘Santa Cruz . . .’ Schofield said, turning.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Eraser check. I want this whole facility swept from top to bottom for any kind of eraser or delay switch, okay. There’s no knowing what kinds of little surprises our French friends left behind for us. Got it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Santa Cruz said. He broke out of the circle and headed for the nearest rung-ladder.
‘Snake . . .’
‘Sir.’
‘The winch that lowers the diving bell. Its control panel is up on C-deck, in the alcove. That control panel was damaged by a grenade blast during the fight. I need those winch controls working again. Can you handle it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Snake said. He, too, left the circle.
When Snake had gone, Riley and Gant were the only ones left on the deck.
Schofield turned to face them. ‘Book. Fox. I want you two to do a full prep of our dive gear. Three divers, four-hour dive compression, low-audibility gear, plus some auxiliaries for later.’
‘Air mix?’ Riley asked.
‘Saturated helium-oxygen. Ninety-eight to two,’ Schofield said.
Riley and Gant were momentarily silent. A compressed air mix of 98% helium and 2% oxygen was very rare. The almost negligible amount of oxygen indicated a dive to a very high pressure environment.
Schofield handed Gant a handful of blue capsules. They were N-67D anti-nitrogen blood-pressure capsules, developed by the Navy for use during deep-dive missions. They were affectionately known to military divers as ‘the pills’.
By retarding the dissolution of nitrogen in the bloodstream during a deep dive, the pills prevented decompression sickness – better known as the bends – among divers. Since the pills neutralised nitrogen activity in the bloodstream, Navy and Marine Corps divers could descend as quickly as they liked without fear of nitrogen narcosis, and ascend without the need for making time-consuming decompression stops. The pills had revolutionised military deep-diving.
‘Planning a deep dive, sir?’ Gant said, looking up from the blue pills in her hand.
Schofield looked at her seriously, ‘I want to find out what’s down in that cave.’
Schofield walked quickly around the curved outer tunnel of B-deck, deep in thought.
Things were moving fast now.
The French attack on Wilkes had taught him a lot. Wilkes Ice Station – or more precisely, whatever lay buried in the ice beneath Wilkes Ice Station – was now officially worth killing for.
But it was the implications of that lesson that gave Schofield a chill. If France had been willing to launch an impromptu snatch-and-grab for whatever was down in that cave, it was highly probable that other countries would be willing to do the same.
There was one additional factor, though, about possible further attacks on Wilkes that caused Schofield particular concern: if someone was going to launch an attack on Wilkes, they would have to do it soon – before a full-strength US force arrived at the station.
The next few hours would be very tense.
It would be a race to see who would arrive first.
American reinforcements, or a fully-equipped enemy force.
Schofield tried not to think about it. There