Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [91]
And he was holding something.
A long-bladed scalpel.
Schofield stared at it.
The scalpel had blood on it.
The man spoke in a flat nasal voice, ‘Hey. You’re awake.’
Schofield squinted in the light, tried to lift himself up off the bed. He couldn’t do it. Something stopped him. He saw what it was.
Two leather straps bound his arms to the sides of the bed. Two more straps bound his legs. When Schofield tried to raise his head to further examine his situation, he found that he couldn’t even do that. It, too, was strapped tightly down against the bed.
Schofield’s blood went instantly cold.
He was completely tied down.
‘Just hold on a minute,’ the short man said in his irritating nasal voice. ‘This will only take one . . . more . . . second.’
He raised his bloody scalpel and ducked out of Schofield’s field of vision.
‘Wait!’ Schofield said quickly.
The short man returned instantly to Schofield’s field of vision. He raised his eyebrows questioningly. ‘Yes?’
‘Where – where am I?’ Schofield said. It hurt to speak. His throat was parched, dry.
The man smiled, revealing his crooked front teeth. ‘It’s okay, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘You’re still at Wilkes Ice Station.’
Schofield swallowed. ‘Who are you?’
‘Why, Lieutenant Schofield,’ the man said, ‘I’m James Renshaw.’
‘Welcome back from the grave, Lieutenant,’ Renshaw said as he unbound the leather strap around Schofield’s head. Renshaw had just finished removing the last three bullet fragments from Schofield’s neck with his scalpel.
Renshaw said, ‘You know, you were very lucky you were wearing this kevlar plate inside your collar. It didn’t stop the bullet entirely, but it took most of the speed off it.’
Renshaw held up the circular kevlar insert that had previously been fitted inside Schofield’s grey turtle-neck collar. Schofield had forgotten all about his neck protector. To him, it was just another part of his uniform. Kevlar neck protectors were issued exclusively to Marine officers, as an extra defence against snipers. Enlisted men received no such protection, since enemy snipers rarely cared for corporals and sergeants.
With the leather strap around his forehead now removed, Schofield raised his head and looked at the kevlar insert that Renshaw held in his hand.
It looked like a priest’s white collar – curved and flat, designed to encircle its wearer’s neck while remaining hidden inside his turtle-neck collar. On one side of the circular kevlar insert, Schofield could see a jagged, gaping hole.
The bullet hole.
‘That bullet would have killed you for sure if it weren’t for your insert,’ Renshaw said. ‘Would’ve cut right through your carotid. After that there would have been nothing anyone could have done for you. As it happened, the bullet shattered as it passed through your kevlar insert, so only a few small fragments of it lodged in your neck. Still, that would have been enough to kill you, and as a matter of fact, I actually think it did, at least for a short time.’
Schofield had stopped listening. He was taking in the room around him. It looked like someone’s living quarters. Schofield saw a bed, a desk, a computer, and, strangely, a pair of black-and-white TV monitors mounted on top of two video recorders.
He turned to face Renshaw. ‘Huh?’
‘Several fragments of the bullet lodged in your neck, Lieutenant. I’m pretty sure – in fact, I’m absolutely certain – that for at least thirty seconds, you lost your pulse. You were clinically dead.’
‘What do you mean?’ Schofield said. He instinctively tried to raise his hand to feel his neck. But he couldn’t move his arm. His arms and legs were still firmly tied down to the bed.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I fixed it up,’ Renshaw said. ‘I took the bullet fragments out and I cleaned the wound. You actually got a couple of kevlar fragments in there, too, but they weren’t a problem. In