Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [65]
Until only very recently, signals travelling at such low frequencies required very high-powered transmitters, which were, of course, very large and cumbersome. As such, they weren’t often used by ground forces. Recent developments in technology, however, had resulted in heavy, but nonetheless man-portable, VLF transmitters. They looked and weighed about the same as the average backpack.
The fact that the French had brought such a transmitter to Wilkes bothered Schofield. There was really only one use for VLF radio signals and that was –
No, that’s ridiculous, Schofield thought. They couldn’t have done that.
‘Cruz, where did you find it?’
‘Down in the drilling room,’ Santa Cruz’s voice said.
‘Are you there now?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Bring it out to the pool deck,’ Schofield said. ‘I’ll come down after I check on Montana outside.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Schofield clicked off his intercom. He and Sarah came to the entrance passageway.
‘What are erasers?’ Sarah asked.
‘What? Oh,’ Schofield said. He only just remembered that Sarah wasn’t a soldier. Schofield took a deep breath. ‘“Eraser” is the term used to describe an explosive device that is planted in a battlefield by a covert incursionary force for use in the event that their mission fails. Most of the time, an eraser is set off by a delay switch, which is just an ordinary timer.’
‘Okay, wait a minute. Slow down,’ Sarah said.
Schofield sighed, slowed down. ‘Small crack units like these French guys we met tonight usually find themselves fighting in places where they’re not supposed to be, right. Like, there would probably be an international incident if it could be proved that French troops were in a US research station trying to kill everybody, right?’
‘Yeah . . .’
‘Well, there’s no guarantee that these crack units are gonna succeed in getting what they came for, is there,’ Schofield said. ‘I mean, hey, they might come up against a team of tough hombres like us and wind up dead.’
Schofield grabbed a parka off a hook on the wall, and began to put it on.
He said, ‘Anyway, these days, nearly all elite teams – the French parachute regiment, the SAS, the Navy SEALs – nearly all of them carry contingency plans just in case they fail in their missions. We call those contingency plans “erasers” because that’s exactly what they’re designed to do: erase that whole team’s existence. Make it look like that team was never there. Sometimes they’re called cyanide pills, because if any of the enemy are caught, the eraser will ultimately act as their suicide pill.’
‘So, you’re talking about explosives,’ Sarah said.
‘I’m talking about special explosives,’ Schofield said. ‘Most of the time erasers are either chlorine-based explosives, or high-temperature liquid detonators. They’re designed to wipe off faces, vaporise bodies, destroy uniforms and dogtags. They’re designed to make it look like you were never there.
‘Erasers are actually a relatively recent phenomenon. No one had ever really heard about them until a couple of years ago when a German sabotage team was caught in an underground missile silo in Montana. They were cornered so they pulled the pin on three liquid-chlorine grenades. After those things went off, there was nothing left. No soldiers. No silo. We think the Germans were there to disable some ballistic nuclear missiles that we said didn’t exist.’
‘A German sabotage unit. In Montana,’ Sarah said in disbelief. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Germany supposed to be our ally?’
‘Isn’t France supposed to be our ally,’ Schofield replied, raising his eyebrows. ‘It happens. More often than you think. Attacks from so-called “friendly” countries. They even have a term for it at the Pentagon, they call them “Cassius Ops”, after Cassius, the traitor in “Julius Caesar”.’
‘They have a term for it?’
Schofield shrugged into his coat. ‘Look at it this way. America used to be one of two superpowers. When there were two superpowers, there was a balance, a check. What one did, the other countered. But now the Soviets are