Ice Station

Schofield himself.

It was then that their eyes met.

It was only for an instant, but that was all either man needed. In that moment, there was a flash of understanding.

Gant cut across Schofield's line of sight with Petard. She had opened the can now and was pulling something out of it. The object she extracted from the can was small and black, and it looked a little like a small crucifix, the only difference being that the shorter, horizontal beam of the object was bent in a semicircle.

Schofield's eyes widened when he saw it and he opened his mouth to shout, but it was too late.

In the dining room, Petard dived for the two white containers, just as Latissier?who hadn't been patted down since he had been at the station when the Marines had arrived? threw open his parka, revealing a short-barreled French-made FA-MAS assault rifle. At the same time, the one named Cuvier pulled both of his hands free of his pockets, revealing two models of the same weapon that Gant now had in her hand. Cuvier immediately fired one of them at Gant just as she turned to face him and Schofield saw her head snap backwards with the impact as she fell to the floor.

Deafening gunfire exploded through the silence as Latissier jammed his finger down on the trigger of his assault rifle and sprayed the dining room with a blanket of suppressing fire. His arc of gunfire cut through the air like a scythe, and it practically ripped Augustine Lau in two.

Latissier didn't let go for a full ten seconds and the sustained burst of machine-gun fire caused everybody else to hit the deck.

Wilkes Ice Station had become a battlefield.

And everything went to hell.

SECOND INCURSION

16 June 0930 hours

'This is Scarecrow! This is Scarecrow!' Schofield yelled into his helmet mike as he ducked into a doorway amid the cacophony of gunfire. 'I count eight hostiles! I repeat, eight hostile objects! I call it as six military, two civilians. Civilians are probably concealing weapons for use by the commandos. Marines, do not show prejudice!'

Chunks of ice rained down all around him as Latissier's stream of bullets impacted against the ice wall above him.

It was the sight of the crossbow that did it.

Each of the elite military units of the world has its own characteristic weapon. For the United States Navy SEALs, experts in close-quarter combat, it is the Ruger pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun. For the British Special Air Service? the famous SAS?nitrogen charges are the signature weapon. For U.S. Marine Force Reconnaissance Units it is the Armalite MH-12 Maghook, a grappling hook that also contains a high-powered magnet for adhesion to sheer metallic surfaces.

Only one elite force, however, is known for carrying crossbows.

The Premier Regiment Parachutiste d'Infanterie de Marine, the crack French commando unit?known in English as the First Marine Parachute Regiment. It is the French equivalent of the SAS or the SEALs.

Which is to say that it is not a regular force like, for example, the Marines. It is one step higher. It is an offensive unit, an attack team, an elite covert force that exists for one reason and one reason only: to go in first, and to go in fast, and to kill everything in sight.

Which was why, when Schofield saw Gant lift the small hand-held crossbow?it was about the size of a .44 Magnum?from inside the food can, he knew that these men were not scientists from d'Urville. They were soldiers. Elite soldiers.

Cleverly, they had anticipated that he would know the names of all the scientists at d'Urville, so they had appropriated their names. To add to the illusion, they had also brought with them two actual scientists from the French research station?Luc Champion and Henri Rae?people whom the residents of Wilkes would know personally.

The final touch was probably the best touch of all: they had allowed Luc Champion, one of the civilians, to take the lead when the Marines had arrived at Wilkes Ice Station, bolstering the illusion that they were all merely scientists, following the lead of their superior.

That the French had taken five of the residents of Wilkes Ice Station?innocent civilians?out on a hovercraft under the pretense that they were being taken back to safety and then executed them in the middle of the snow plains made Schofield furious. In a detached corner of his mind, he conjured up a picture of what the scene must have looked like? the American scientists, men and women, crying, pleading, begging for their lives as the French soldiers moved among them, leveling their pistols at their heads and blasting their brains all over the inside of the hovercraft.

That at least two French scientists?Champion and Rae? had gone along with the French commandos made Schofield even angrier. What could they have been promised that would make them party to the murder of innocent academics?

The answer, unfortunately, was simple.

They would be given the first opportunity to study the spacecraft when the French got their hands on it.

Frantic voices shouted over Schofield's helmet intercom. '?return fire!'

 '?clear!'

'?Samurai is down! Fox is down!'

'?can't get a fucking shot?'

Schofield looked out from behind the doorway and saw Gant lying flat on her back on the catwalk halfway between the dining room and the main entrance passageway. She wasn't moving.

His gaze shifted to Augustine Lau, lying sprawled out on the catwalk in the dining room doorway. Lau's eyes were wide open, his face covered in blood, blood that had sprayed up from his own stomach as Latissier's barrage of gunfire had assailed him from practically point-blank range.

Not far from Schofield, in the tunnel leading to the main entrance to the station, Buck Riley leaned out and returned fire with his MP-5, drowning out the tinny rat-a-tat sound of the French-made FA-MAS with the deep, puncturelike firing sound of the German-made MP-5. Next to him, Hollywood did the same.

Schofield snapped around to look over at Montana, huddled in the entrance to the western tunnel. 'Montana. You OK?'

When Latissier had opened fire a few moments earlier, Montana and Lau had been the closest men to him, standing in the doorway to the dining room. When Latissier's gun came up firing, Montana had been quick enough to duck back behind the doorway. Lau hadn't.

And while Lau had performed what infantry soldiers call the danse macabre under the brutal weight of Latissier's fire, Montana had scrambled back along the catwalk to the nearest point of safety, the west tunnel.

Schofield saw Montana speak into his helmet mike fifty feet away. His gravelly voice came over Schofield's headset 'Check that, Scarecrow. I'm a little shook up, but I'm OK.'

'Good.'

More bullets slammed into the ice above Schofield's head. Schofield ducked back behind the doorway. Then, quickly, he peered out around the door frame. But this time as he did so he heard a strange whistling sound.

With a sharp thwump, a four-inch-long arrow lodged into the ice barely five centimeters from Schofield's right eye.

Schofield looked up and saw Petard in the dining room, with his crossbow raised. No sooner had Petard fired his crossbow than Luc Champion hurled a short-barreled submachine gun over to him and Petard rejoined the battle with a sharp volley of gunfire.

Peering around the door frame, Schofield looked quickly over at Gant again. She was still lying motionless on the catwalk, halfway between the dining room and the main entrance tunnel.

And then suddenly her arm moved.