Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [78]
Sarah stopped, took a deep breath.
Schofield just stood there, silent.
Sarah spoke softly. ‘Lieutenant, this is my life. This is my whole life. Whatever’s down there is perhaps the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. I’ve been studying my whole life for this –’
Schofield looked curiously at her and she cut herself off, sensing that he was about to speak.
‘What about your daughter?’ he said.
Sarah cocked her head. She hadn’t expected him to ask that.
Schofield said, ‘You’re willing to leave her up here alone?’
‘She’ll be safe,’ Sarah said evenly. Then she smiled. ‘She’ll be up here with you.’
Schofield hadn’t seen Sarah Hensleigh smile before. It illuminated her face, lit up the whole room.
Sarah said, ‘I’ll also be able to identify our divers who went down to that cave before, which might be –’
Schofield held up his hand. ‘It’s all right, you convinced me. You can go. But you use our scuba gear. I don’t know what happened to your people down there before, but I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever’s down there heard the noise of their breathing gear and I don’t want the same thing to happen to us.’
‘Thank you, Lieutenant,’ Sarah said seriously. ‘Thank you.’ Then she took off the glistening silver locket that she wore around her neck and offered it to Schofield. ‘I’d better not dive with this on. Can you keep it for me until I get back?’
Schofield took the locket, put it in his pocket. ‘Sure.’
Just then, there came a sudden groaning sound from the pool to Schofield’s left.
Schofield spun, just in time to see an enormous black shadow rise to the surface of the pool amid a cloud of frothing white bubbles.
At first Schofield thought the black shadow was one of the killer whales, returning to the pool in search of more food. But whatever it was, it wasn’t swimming. It was just floating, rising up and up toward the surface.
And then the enormous black object breached the surface with a loud shooshing sound. Waves and bubbles shot out from every side of it. White froth expanded all around it. Narrow rivulets of blood snaked their way through the froth. The massive black object bobbed on the surface. Everyone on the deck took a step forward.
Schofield stared at the black object in awe.
It was a killer whale.
But it was dead. Well and truly dead. The huge black-and-white carcass just floated limply in the water, alongside the deck. It was one of the larger ones, too, possibly even the male of the pack. It must have been at least thirty feet long. Seven tons in weight.
At first Schofield thought it must have been the killer whale that Mother had shot in the head during the battle – since that was the only whale that he knew for sure was dead. He quickly changed his mind.
This dead whale had no visible wound in its head. The one Mother had shot would have had a hole the size of a basketball in its skull. This one’s forehead was unmarked.
And there was another thing.
This one had floated to the surface.
An animal killed in water will initially float, until its body fills with water. Only then will it sink. The killer whale that Mother had killed would have long since sunk to the bottom. This whale, on the other hand, had been killed recently.
The dead carcass rolled slowly in the water. Schofield and the other Marines on the deck just stared at it, entranced.
And then, slowly, it rolled belly-up and Schofield saw the great whale’s white underbelly and his jaw dropped.
Two long bloody gashes ran down the length of the big whale’s underbelly.
They ran in parallel. Two jagged, uneven slashes that ran all the way up the centre of the whale’s body, from its mid-section to its throat. Sections of the big whale’s intestines had fallen out through the gashes – long, ugly, cream-coloured coils that were as thick as a man’s arm.
They weren’t clean cuts either, Schofield saw. Each gash was