Ice Station (13 page)

“Go under!” Schofield yelled as he saw the two rows of
jagged white teeth open wide in front of him.

He held his breath and ducked underwater, pulling Kirsty down with
him.

The world suddenly went silent as the killer whale's immense white
underbelly thundered over the top of them at incredible speed. It
brushed roughly against the top of Schofield's helmet as it
pounded back into the water right above their heads.

Schofield and Kirsty burst back up above the surface, gasped for air.

Schofield quickly looked left: saw Rebound and Mother on the deck.
Looked right: saw Sarah and Abby, also safely up on the deck, quickly
moving away from the edge.

He spun around: saw another Frenchman get yanked under. The two
remaining French commandos were just reaching the edge of the pool.
They'd had to swim farther than everyone else, having landed
closest to the middle of the pool.

Serves them right, Schofield thought.

He looked up: and immediately saw the retractable bridge that spanned
the width of the station from either side of C-deck.

Just then, a deafening explosion boomed out from the alcove on the
C-deck catwalk and an unbelievably huge tongue of fire shot out over
the whole of the central shaft of the station.

Schofield knew what had happened immediately—the French soldiers
up on A-deck, deprived of the use of their guns, were now tossing
grenades down into the shaft. Sharp thinking. A grenade detonating in
this flammable atmosphere would do twice as much damage as it would
normally. Their first target, Schofield noticed, had been the alcove
he and Gant had been hiding in before.

Suddenly something emerged from the fireball that had consumed the
alcove.

It was large and gray, square-shaped, and it tumbled end-over-end out
into the central shaft of the station. It fell fast, cutting through
the air, its immense weight driving it downward. With a thunderous
crash, the four-hundred-pound ejection seat that had been sitting in
front of the console in the C-deck alcove came smashing down onto the
deck that surrounded the pool at the bottom of the station. It weighed
so much and landed so hard that it dented the thick metal deck when it
hit.

Despite the chaos all around him, Shane Schofield kept his eyes locked
on the retractable bridge three stories above him. He took in the
distance.

Thirty feet. Maybe thirty-five.

He wasted no time, raised his Maghook, flicked a switch marked M with
his thumb—and saw a red light on the head of the grappling hook
activate—aimed, and fired.

The grappling hook shot up into the air. However, this time the claws
of the hook didn't spring outward. This time it was set on magnet.

The bulbous magnetic head of the Maghook thunked into the underside of
the retractable steel bridge and stuck there.

Schofield did some quick calculations in his head. “Shit,”
was all he said when he finished.

Then he handed the launcher to Kirsty and said, “Three words,
honey: don't let go.”

She took the launcher in both hands and looked at Schofield, puzzled.

He smiled at her reassuringly. “Just hold on.”

Then he pressed down firmly on a small black button on the grip of the
Maghook.

Suddenly Kirsty flew up out of the water as the Maghook reeled her
upward like some bizarre kind of fishing rod.

She was light, so the Maghook had little difficulty whisking her up to
the bridge. Schofield knew it would have been considerably slower if
his weight were also being—

A killer whale shot up out of the water after Kirsty.

Schofield's jaw dropped as he saw the massive whale lift its
entire body out of the water in a magnificent vertical leap.

Kirsty was still moving rapidly upward, pulled up by the Maghook. She
looked down and saw the whale emerge from the water beneath her like
the Devil coming out of Hell itself. Saw it come roaring up toward
her, its body rotating as it rose into the air.

And then all of a sudden Kirsty came to a jarring halt.

The whale kept coming upward.

Kirsty squealed in surprise, looked up, and saw that she had hit the
underside of the bridge.

She couldn 't go any farther up!

The whale opened its jaws wide as it reached the zenith uf its leap .
. .

Kirsty gripped the Maghook as hard as she could and quiickly brought
her legs up tightly against her chest just as the killer's teeth
jammed shut with a loud crunch, coming together barely a foot
below her butt, the lowest part of her body.

Kirsty watched as the huge black-and-white whale fell away beneath
her, diminishing in size until it disappeared back into the pool
below. The animal must have been at least thirty feet long, and it had
lifted its entire body vertically out of the wat—

Suddenly a hand appeared in front of Kirsty's face and she almost
had a heart attack, almost let go of the Maghook.

“It's OK,” a voice said. “It's me.”

Kirsty looked up and found herself looking into the friendly eyes of
the Marine she knew as Mr. Book. She took his hand, and he hauled her
up onto the retractable bridge.

She was breathing heavily, almost crying. Buck Riley hearing her,
looked at her in amazement. After a second, Kirsty reached into her
pocket and pulled out a plastic puffer for her asthma.

She drew in two long puffs and caught her breath. When, finally, she
was able to speak she looked at Riley, shook her head, and said,
“They definitely don't have that at Sea World.”

Schofield was still down in the pool. Two of the killer whales circled
him ominously. He noticed that these two appeared to be smaller than
the other killers. Juveniles, maybe.

He tilted his head upward and yelled, “Book! I need my
Maghook!”

Up on the bridge, Riley immediately dropped to his belly and leaned
out over the edge of the narrow metal platform. He reached out
underneath the platform and tried to deactivate the magnet on
Schofield's grappling hook.

“I need it now, Book!” Schofield's voice sailed
up through the shaft of the ice station.

“I'm trying! I'm trying!” Riley said.

“Try faster!”

Riley stretched his arm out under the platform, tried to reach the
switch marked M on the grip that activated and deactivated the
Maghook's powerful magnet.

As he did so, however, a strange thing happened.

For a brief second, Riley could have sworn that he heard Kirsty
speaking to someone on the bridge above him.

“Help the diver, Wendy. Help the diver.”

Riley blinked to himself. Must be hearing things.

Down in the pool, Schofield thought it was all over. The two killers
on either side of him were closing in as they circled, shutting off
any possible escape route.

Suddenly one of them seemed to break out of his circle and swing
around. Schofield swallowed. He was coming round for the
kill.

The killer turned in a slow, wide arc until he was pointing right at
Schofield. His body was only a foot or so beneath the surface, and his
high dorsal fin sliced easily through the waves in the pool. He was
moving at such powerful speed that he created a rolling bow wave in
front of his submerged black-and-white head.

The bow wave raced across the water, on a collision course with Shane
Schofield.

Schofield looked around himself. There was nowhere to go this time, no
weapon to use.

Out of sheer desperation he pulled out his Desert Eagle pistol, raised
it above the water.

If it had to come to this, he thought, then it had to
come to this.

The killer charged toward him.

And then suddenly a black missilelike object plunged into the water
right in front of Schofield's face, right in between him
and the killer whale.

Whatever it was, it was so sleek that it entered the water with barely
even a splash, and once in, it zoomed away from him at phenomenal
speed.

Both killers saw it instantly and immediately lost interest in
Schofield. Even the one that had been charging at him only seconds
before abruptly altered its path and raced off in pursuit of this new
quarry.

Schofield was stunned. What had it been? It had looked almost like
a... a seal of some sort.

And then, miraculously, a Maghook dropped into the water right in
front of him.

Schofield grabbed it before it sank and immediately looked upward. Up
on the bridge he saw Book Riley lying on his belly, with one arm
stretched out underneath the bridge.

Schofield looked at the Maghook and suddenly felt a new lease on life
come over him.

Just then, a small pointed black head popped up out of the water right
in front of him and he fell backward in surprise.

It was Wendy. Kirsty's little Antarctic fur seal.

Her cute red collar glistened with wetness, and her soft black eyes
looked right into his. If it was possible, Schofield could have sworn
that the little seal was smiling—having a ball of a
time swimming around in the pool, evading the less agile killer
whales.

Then he realized. Wendy must have been the object that had dived into
the pool in between him and the charging killer whale.

Suddenly Wendy's head snapped left.

She'd heard something, sensed something.

Then she gave what looked like a final happy nod to Schofield before
she ducked back under the water and sped off down the length of the
pool.

She swam fast. Speeding just underneath the surface of the water like
a tiny black torpedo. Cutting left, ducking right, and then
disappearing suddenly as she dropped into a steep vertical dive. No
sooner had she moved than three black dorsal fins appeared behind her
and immediately gave chase, before they themselves vanished beneath
the surface in hot pursuit.

Schofield took the opportunity and swam for the nearest edge. He was
three feet from the deck when a sudden surge of water rocked him and
he rolled in the water as the giant body of one of the killers swept
past him at a frightening speed. Schofield immediately tensed for
another fight, but the whale just barreled past him, in search of the
elusive Wendy.

Schofield breathed again, swam forward, and grabbed hold of the deck.
He climbed up out of the water and saw the. battered ejection seat
lying crumpled on its side on the deck in front of him. Then he turned
around, surveyed the chaos around him.

Sarah and Abby were long out of the water and were now hurrying into
the tunnels of E-deck. Not far from them were Rebound and Mother.
Rebound was kneeling over Mother. He appeared to be applying pressure
to a wound of some kind on Mother's leg.

On the other side of the pool Schofield saw the two surviving French
commandos, also safely out of the water. Soaking wet, they were just
getting to their feet on the deck. One of them saw Schofield and began
to reach for his crossbow.

Just then, a sudden movement caught Schofield's eye and he turned
and saw a familiar black shadow whipping down the length of the pool.

Wendy.

Three larger black-and-white shapes raced through the water behind
her. The killers in pursuit.

Wendy was travelling at tremendous speed, just below the surface. Her
flippers would occasionally sweep backward with a powerful stroke and
then fall in by her sides so that her body remained as streamlined as
possible. She looked like a bullet shooting through the pool,
alternately appearing and disappearing in the murky red clouds that
stained the icy water.

She was heading for the deck, for that part of the deck on which the
two French commandos stood. And she wasn't slowing down.

In fact, it looked to Schofield like she was picking up speed
as she sped toward the deck with the three black-and-white specters
racing through the water behind her.

Schofield then watched in amazement as, within a meter of the deck,
Wendy suddenly launched herself out of the water. It was a flat,
graceful leap, and she landed smoothly on her belly on the deck and
slid forward a full three meters.

She slid right past the two bewildered Frenchmen standing next to her.

But she didn't stop there. No sooner had she stopped sliding than
she was up on her foreflippers and galloping as fast as she could,
away from the water's edge.

For a fleeting instant Schofield wondered why she would do that.
Surely once you were out of the water you were safe from the killers.

And then Schofield discovered why Wendy did what she did.

Like a demon rising from the depths, one of the pursuing killer whales
roared out of the water and hurled its massive body up onto the deck,
landing on the thick metal grating with an enormous crash. The huge
whale slid fast across the deck, carried forward by the weight of its
own inertia. It rolled smoothly onto its side as it moved, so that its
jaws opened vertically, and then, with almost effortless grace, it
caught one of the Frenchmen in its mouth and bit down hard.

The big animal's sliding movement stopped and it ground to a halt,
with the French soldier—screaming madly, blood pouring from his
mouth—held tightly within its jaws. The whale then began to
shuffle its enormous frame awkwardly backward along the deck. After a
few moments, it reached the edge and fell back into the water, taking
the screaming Frenchman down with it.

Wendy had known. You weren't truly safe from the killers until you
were well clear of the water's edge.

The six people remaining on the deck understood at once.

Get away from the edge.

Schofield saw Gant join Rebound on the other side of the pool. Saw
them both hurriedly pick up Mother by the shoulders and start to drag
her away from the edge. As they did so, Schofield caught a fleeting
glimpse of Mother's lower body. The bottom half of one of her legs
was missing.

At that moment there came a sudden resounding whump! from
behind Schofield and he felt the deck beneath him shudder violently.
He spun instantly, faced the pool, and saw the smiling face of one of
the killer whales sliding across the deck toward him!