Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [98]
He spun to face Renshaw. ‘Okay, Harry Houdini, you’ve got exactly five seconds to show me how you got out of this room.’
Renshaw immediately ran towards the door. ‘Why? What’s going on?’ he said.
Schofield hurried alongside him. ‘Somebody’s about to get killed.’
Down in the storeroom, Snake lifted his foot off what was left of Mother’s helmet.
The small microphone at the jawline of her helmet lay crumpled and bent, broken beyond repair.
‘Come on, Mother,’ Snake said in an admonishing tone. ‘I expected more from you. Or did you just forget that I receive your transmissions, too.’
Mother scowled at him. ‘Did you kill Samurai?’
‘Yes.’
‘You fuck.’
Snake was almost on top of her now. Mother shifted against the wall.
‘Time to die, Mother,’ Snake said.
Mother snorted at him. ‘Snake. I’ve just got to know. What sort of sick, twisted, two-faced son of a bitch are you?’
Snake smiled. ‘The only kind, Mother. I’m ICG.’
Schofield watched tensely as Renshaw stepped up to the thick wooden door of his room.
Up until that time, Schofield hadn’t noticed that the door was made up of about ten vertical wooden planks. Renshaw immediately placed his fingers up against one of these vertical planks.
‘The horizontal beams are on the outside,’ Renshaw said. ‘Which meant that no one outside this room saw the cuts I made on the inside of these vertical planks.’
Schofield’s eyes widened when he saw them.
Two thin horizontal lines stretched across the width of the heavy wooden door – like two scars in the wood – cutting across the wide vertical planks. The two horizontal lines ran in parallel, approximately three feet away from each other – at precisely those points where the horizontal beams on the other side of the door would have been.
Schofield marvelled at Renshaw’s ingenuity.
Anyone standing on the other side of the door would never have known that Renshaw had managed to saw right through the vertical wooden planks.
‘I used a steak knife to saw through the planks,’ Renshaw said. ‘Three actually. The wood wears them down pretty fast.’ He reached off to his right and grabbed a worn-down steak knife. Renshaw inserted the blade of the knife into the narrow gap between two of the vertical planks. Then he worked the knife like a crowbar until suddenly one of the planks popped clear of the rest of the door.
Renshaw pulled the plank clear of the door and a long, rectangular hole appeared in the door where the plank had been. Through that rectangular hole, Schofield could see the curved outer tunnel of B-deck stretching away from him.
Renshaw worked quickly. He grabbed the next plank with his bare hands and hurriedly pulled it away.
The hole on the door got wider.
Renshaw had manufactured a square-shaped ‘hole’ in middle of the door. Schofield started removing the vertical planks with him and soon the hole was wide enough for a man to fit through.
‘Stand back,’ Schofield said.
Renshaw took a step back as Schofield dived, head-first, through the hole in the door. He rolled to his feet on the other side and immediately ran off down the tunnel.
‘Wait!’ Renshaw yelled. ‘Where are you going!’
‘E-deck!’ Schofield’s voice echoed back.
And then suddenly Schofield was gone and Renshaw was alone in his room, staring at the empty, square-shaped hole he had made in the door.
He peered out through it after Schofield.
‘I never dived through it like that,’ he said.
Schofield ran.
The walls of the curved outer tunnel streaked past him. He was breathing hard. His heart pounded loudly inside his head. He turned left, headed towards the central shaft.
A thousand thoughts ran through his mind as he raced through the tunnels of B-deck.
He thought of the tattoo on the shoulderplate of the man who had shot him. A cobra. A snake.
Snake.
The mere concept was too bizarre for Schofield to comprehend. Snake was a highly decorated Marine. One of the longest serving members in the Corps, let alone Schofield’s unit. Why would he throw it all away by doing something like this? Why would he kill his own men?
And then Schofield