Ice Station

passageway. Gunfire began to spew out from within the passageway.

'Hold tight,' he said to Gant.

And then, with both hands holding the launcher behind Gant's back?and with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck?Schofield shifted his weight backward and the two of them tumbled over the railing and fell out into space.

No sooner had Schofield and Gant fallen clear of the railing than it was assaulted by a torrent of bullets. A brilliant cascade of white-orange impact sparks exploded above their heads as they dropped clear of the catwalk.

Schofield and Gant fell.

The Maghook's cable splayed out above them. They whipped past B-deck, past Riley and Hollywood, who spun around at the unexpected sight of a pair of bodies dropping past them.

Then Schofield hit a black button on the forward grip of the launcher and a clamping mechanism inside the muzzle bit into the unspooling cable.

Schofield and Gant jolted to a sudden stop, just below B-deck, and the Maghook's cable began to swing them in toward the catwalk. They swung in fast, over the C-deck catwalk, and dropped down onto the metal gangway.

As soon as his feet hit the catwalk, Schofield pressed down twice on the trigger of the launcher. When he did so, up on A-deck, the grappling hook's claws responded by immediately collapsing inward with a sharp snick, and the hook was sucked back through the hole it had created in the dining room wall. The grappling hook fell down into the central shaft of the ice station, reeled in by the launcher. In a couple of seconds it was back in Schofield's hands, and he and Gant hurried inside the nearest doorway.

'Grenade!'

 Riley and Hollywood ran flat out down the northern tunnel of B-deck and dived around the corner.

Just as they cleared the corner a booming explosion rocked the ice tunnel behind them. Hard on the heels of the explosion came the concussion wave and then?

Riley and Hollywood ducked behind the corner as a swarm of dartlike objects shot past them at phenomenal speed and thudded into the opposite wall of the tunnel.

The two Marines looked at each other in astonishment.

A fragmentation charge.

A fragmentation charge is basically a conventional grenade that has been filled with hundreds of tiny pieces of metal? tiny sharp-edged, skewed pieces of metal designed to be as difficult as possible to extract from the human body. When the charge detonates, it sends a wave of these lethal fragments rocketing out in every direction.

'I've always said it,' Riley said wryly as he popped his clip and jammed a fresh magazine into the receiver of his MP-5. 'Always said it: never trust the fucking French. There's just something about 'em. Maybe it's those beady little eyes they all got. Those assholes are supposed to be our goddamn allies.'

'Fuckin' French,' Hollywood agreed thoughtfully as he peered around the corner with one eye.

His jaw dropped. 'Oh, shit?'

'What?' Riley spun around just in time to see a second grenade bounce around the corner and come to rest five feet away from them.

Five feet.

 Out in the open.

There was nowhere to go. They couldn't get clear. Couldn't run down the corridor and get away in ti?

Riley launched himself forward. Toward the grenade. He slid along the frost-covered floor, feet first, soccer- style. When he was within range he let loose with a powerful kick and sent the grenade skittling back down the north tunnel, back toward the central shaft.

As Riley kicked the grenade, Hollywood lunged forward and grabbed him by the shoulder plates and yanked him back behind the corner.

The grenade detonated.

Another deafening explosion boomed out.

A new wave of metal shards blasted out from the corridor, whipped past Riley and Hollywood, and slammed into the wall opposite them.

Hollywood turned and looked at Riley. 'Fuck my Roman sandals, man, this is some serious fucking catastrophe.'

Riley was already up on his feet. 'Come on; we're not staying here.'

He looked over toward the other side of the north tunnel and saw Rebound appear at the opposite corner. With him were Corporal Georgio 'Legs' Lane and Sergeant Gena 'Mother' Newman. They must have come round from the western side of B-deck.

Riley said, 'All right, everyone, listen up. As far as I'm concerned, this is now a split op. If we cluster and get cornered, we're all gonna be turned into strawberry fuckin' do-nuts. We have to split up. Rebound, Legs, Mother, you head back west, round the outer tunnel. Hollywood and I'll go east. Once we figure out where we are and what we can do with our position, then we can figure out how the hell we're going to regroup with the others and nail these fuckers. You all OK with that?'

There were no objections. Rebound and the others quickly got to their feet and hustled off down the opposite ice tunnel.

Riley and Hollywood began to run east, following the curve of the outer tunnel.

As he ran, Riley said, 'All right, what's this? B-deck, right. OK. What's on B-deck?'

'I don't?' Hollywood cut himself off as they cleared the bend in the tunnel and saw what lay ahead of them.

Both men stopped instantly and immediately felt their blood run cold.

Schofield fired up into the central shaft of Wilkes Ice Station with his Desert Eagle.

He and Gant were down on C-deck, inside a room that opened out onto the central catwalk. Schofield stood in the doorway, gun in hand, looking out across the central shaft and up at A-deck.

Behind him, inside whatever room this was, Gant was down on her haunches, shaking off her dizziness. She had taken off her helmet, revealing a short crop of snow-white blond hair.

Gant looked curiously at her helmet, at the arrow lodged in it. She shook her head and put the helmet back on, arrow and all. She also donned her anti-flash glasses, concealing much of the thin line of dried blood that ran down from her forehead to her chin. Then she grabbed her MP-5 determinedly and joined Schofield at the doorway.

'You OK?' Schofield asked over his shoulder as he aimed his pistol up at A-deck.

'Yeah; did I miss anything?'

'Did you see the part where that bunch of French pricks posing as scientists decided to pull guns on us?' Schofield fired off another round.

'Yeah, I caught that part.'

'What about the part where we found out that our new friends had six more guys stashed away in their hovercraft?'

'No, missed that.'

'Well, that's the'?he fired off another angry round? 'story so far.'

Gant looked at Schofield. Behind those opaque silver glasses was a seriously pissed-off individual.

In fact, Schofield wasn't really angry at the French soldiers per se. Sure, at first he'd been annoyed at himself for not picking that the French 'scientists' were actually soldiers. But then they had got to Wilkes first, and they had brought with them two genuine scientists, a particularly clever ploy that had been enough to throw Schofield and his team off the scent.

What really made him angry, however, was that he'd lost the initiative in this battle.

The French had caught Schofield and his team off guard, taken them by surprise, and now