Ice Station

It must have been a reflex of some sort as she slowly regained consciousness.

Schofield saw it instantly and spoke into his helmet mike. 'This is Scarecrow; this is Scarecrow. Fox is still alive. I repeat, Fox is still alive. But she's out in the open. I need cover so I can go out there and get her. Confirm.'

Voices came in like a roll call. 'Hollywood, check that!'

'Rebound, check that!'

 'Montana, check that.'

 'Book, check that,' Buck Riley said. 'You're all clear, Scarecrow. Go!'

'All right, then, now!' Schofield yelled as he broke cover and scampered out onto the catwalk.

All around him, in perfect unison, the Marines whipped out from their cover positions and returned fire at the dining room. The noise was deafening. The ice walls of the dining room exploded into a thousand pockmarks. The combined strength of the assault forced Latissier and Petard to cease firing for a moment and dive for cover.

Out on the catwalk, Schofield fell to his knees next to Gant.

He looked down at her head. The arrow from Cuvier's crossbow had lodged in the forehead guard of her Kevlar helmet, and a narrow stream of blood ran out from her forehead and down the side of her nose.

Seeing the blood, Schofield leaned closer and saw that the force of the crossbow had been so strong that the arrow had penetrated Gant's helmet. Nearly a whole inch of the arrow had passed through the Kevlar so that now its glistening silver tip was poised right in front of Gant's forehead.

The helmet had held the arrow clear of her skull by millimeters.

Not even that. The razor-sharp point of the arrow had actually nicked her skin, drawing blood.

'Come on; let's go,' Schofield said, even though he was sure Gant couldn't hear him. The Marines' cover fire continued all around them as Schofield dragged Gant back along the catwalk, toward the main entrance passageway.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the French commandos popped up from behind a hole in the wall of the dining room, with his rifle raised.

Still dragging Gant, Schofield quickly brought his pistol up, aimed through the sights, and loosed two quick rounds. If the FA-MAS sounded tinny, and the MP-5 sounded like puncture noises, then Schofield's I.M.I. 'Desert Eagle' automatic pistol sounded like a cannon. The French commando's head exploded in a splash of red as both rounds found their mark on the bridge of his nose. His head jolted back sharply?twice?and he dropped instantly out of sight

'Get out of there, Scarecrow! Move!' Riley's voice yelled through Schofield's earpiece.

'I'm almost there!' Schofield yelled above the gunfire.

Suddenly another voice came over the intercom.

It was calm, clinical. There was no gunfire in the background behind it.

'Marine Force, this is Snake, I am still at my post outside. I report that I now have visual on six more hostiles exiting the second French hovercraft. I repeat I am looking at six more armed men disembarking the French hovercraft and approaching the main entrance of the station.'

 A sudden jarring shot rang out over the intercom. Snake Kaplan's sniper rifle.

'Marine Force, this is Snake. Make that five more hostiles approaching the main entrance of the station.'

 Schofield looked back at the tunnel leading to the main entrance behind him. That was where he and Gant were heading. Riley and Hollywood were there right now, firing at the dining room. Beside them, Sergeant Mitch 'Ratman' Healy was doing the same.

And then suddenly, without warning, Healy's chest exploded. Shot from behind by a high-powered weapon.

Healy convulsed violently as a gout of blood spewed out from his rib cage. The force of the impact and the subsequent nervous convulsion bent his back forward at an obscene angle, and Schofield heard a sickening crack as the young soldier's spine broke.

Riley and Hollywood were out of the entrance passageway in a nanosecond. As they fired into the tunnel behind them, at some unseen enemy, they backed quickly toward the nearest rung-ladder that led down to B- deck.

Unfortunately, since they had only just arrived at the station, the six Marines who had gone with Riley to investigate the crashed hovercraft had been gathered around the main entrance passageway when the fighting had broken out. Which meant that now they were caught in between two hostile forces: one in the dining room in front of them and another coming in through the main entrance behind them.

Schofield saw this. 'Book! Go down! Go down! Take your guys down to B-deck!'

'Already on it, Scarecrow.'

 Schofield and Gant were in an even worse position. Caught out on the catwalk between the dining room and the main entrance passageway, they had nowhere to go, no doorways to hide behind, no passageways to duck into. Just a metal catwalk three feet wide, bounded on one side by a sheer ice wall and on the other by a seventy-foot drop.

And any second now the second French team would be bursting in through the main entrance passageway and Schofield and Gant would be the first thing they saw.

A chunk of ice exploded next to Schofield's head, and he spun around. Petard was back on his feet in the dining room. Firing hard with his assault rifle. Schofield leveled his Desert Eagle at the dining room and fired six rapid shots back at Petard.

He looked back at the main entrance.

Ten seconds, at the most.

'Shit,' he said aloud, looking at Gant, limp in his arms. 'Shit.'

He looked down over the railing of the catwalk and saw the pool of water way down at the bottom of the station. It couldn't have been more than sixty or seventy feet. They could survive the fall . . . .

No way.

 Schofield looked at the catwalk on which he stood and then at the ice wall behind him.

Better.

 'Scarecrow, you better get out of there!' It was Montana. He was now out on the catwalk, on the southern side of the station. From where he was standing he could see into the main entrance tunnel on the northern side. Whatever he saw there wasn't good.

'I'm trying, I'm trying,' Schofield said.

Schofield fired off two more shots at Petard in the dining room before holstering his pistol.

Then he quickly reached over his shoulder and pulled his Maghook from its holster on his back. The Armalite MH-12 looks a little like an old-fashioned Tommy gun. It has two pistol grips: one normal grip with a trigger and one forward, support grip below the muzzle. In effect the Maghook is a gun, a compact, two- handed launcher that fires a grappling hook from its muzzle at tremendous speed.

At Schofield's feet, Gant began to groan.

Schofield pointed his launcher at the ice wall and fired. A loud metallic whump rang out as the grappling hook shot out from the muzzle and slammed into the ice wall. The hook exploded right through the wall, into the dining room. Once on the other side, its 'claws' snapped open.

'Scarecrow! Get moving!'

 Schofield turned, just as Gant groggily got to her feet beside him.

'Grab my shoulders,' he said to her.

'Wha?huh?'

'Never mind. Just hold on,' Schofield said as he threw her arms over his shoulders. The two of them stood close, nose to nose. In any other circumstance, it would have looked like an intimate clinch, two lovers about to kiss?but not now. Holding Gant tightly, Schofield spun and leaned his butt up against the railing.

He looked back toward the main entrance tunnel and saw shadows moving quickly over the ice walls of the