Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [88]
When Schofield was gone, she closed her eyes and said softly to herself, ‘Does someone have their eye on you? Oh, Scarecrow. Scarecrow. If only you could see the way she looks at you.’
Schofield stepped out onto the pool deck.
The whole station was deserted. The cavernous shaft was silent. Schofield stared at the pool, at the stationary cable that stretched down into it.
‘Scarecrow, this is Fox,’ Gant’s voice said over his earpiece. ‘Are you still up there?’
‘I’m still here, where are you?’
‘Dive time is fifty-five minutes. We are proceeding up the ice tunnel.’
‘Any sign of trouble?’
‘Nothing yet – whoa, wait a minute, who’s this?’
‘What is it, Fox?’ Schofield said, alarmed.
‘No. It’s nothing,’ Gant’s voice said. ‘It’s all right. Scarecrow, if that little girl’s up there with you, you might want to tell her that her friend is down here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That fur seal, Wendy. She just joined us in the tunnel. Must have followed us down here.’
Schofield pictured Gant and the others swimming up the underwater ice tunnel, covered in their mechanical breathing apparatus, while beside them Wendy swam happily, not needing any such equipment.
‘How far have you got to go?’ Schofield asked.
‘Hard to say. We’ve been going extra slow, just to be careful. I’d say it’ll be another five minutes or so.’
‘Keep me posted,’ Schofield said. ‘Oh, and Fox. Use caution.’
‘You got it, Scarecrow. Fox, out.’
The radio clicked off. Schofield stared at the water in the pool. It was still stained red. At the moment, it was calm, glassy. Schofield took a step forward, toward it.
Something crunched beneath his feet.
He froze, looked down at his boots, bent down.
On the metal deck beneath his feet lay some broken shards of glass. White, frosted glass.
Schofield frowned at the glass.
And then, with frightening suddenness, a voice cut across his helmet intercom: ‘Scarecrow, this is Snake. I’m on B-deck. I just checked Renshaw’s room. There was no answer when I banged on his door, so I busted it open. Sir, there was no one in there. Renshaw is gone. I repeat, Renshaw is gone.’
Schofield felt a chill run down his spine.
Renshaw wasn’t in his room.
He was somewhere inside the station.
Schofield was about to move, about to go and find the others when he heard a soft puncture-like sound, followed by a faint whistling through the air. There came a sudden thwacking noise and Schofield immediately felt a stinging, burning sensation on the back of his neck and then, to his horror, Schofield suddenly realised that the thwacking noise had been the sound of something impacting against his neck at extremely high speed.
Schofield’s knees buckled. He suddenly felt very weak.
He immediately put his hand to his neck and then held it out in front of his face.
His hand was slicked with blood.
Blackness slowly overcame him and Schofield dropped to his knees. The world went black around him and as his cheek thudded down against the ice-cold steel of the deck, Shane Schofield had a single, terrifying thought.
He had just been shot in the throat.
And then suddenly the thought vanished and the world went completely and utterly black.
Shane Schofield’s heart . . .
. . . had stopped.
FOURTH INCURSION
16 June 1510 hours
Libby Gant swam up the steep underwater ice tunnel.
It was quiet here, she thought, peaceful. The whole world was tinted pale blue.
As she swam, Gant could hear nothing but the soft, rhythmic hiss of her low-audibility breathing gear. There were no other sounds – no whistling noises, no whale song, no nothing.
Gant stared out through her full-face diving mask. In the glare of her halogen dive lantern the icy walls of the tunnel glowed ghostly blue-on-white. The other divers – Montana, Santa Cruz and the scientist woman, Sarah Hensleigh – swam alongside her in silence.
All of a sudden the ice tunnel began to widen dramatically and Gant saw several large round holes set into the walls on either side of her.
They were larger than Gant had expected them