Ice Station

The burst of gunfire lasted a full ten seconds and pummelled the rear of the ejection seat. Gant pressed her head up against the headrest, keeping her eyes shielded from the onslaught of ricocheting bullets.

As she did so, however, some movement caught her eye.

It was off to her left. Down to her left.

Down in the pool at the base of the station. Under the surface. A glistening black- and-white shape, unbelievably huge, cruising slowly, ominously, beneath the surface. It must have been deeper than it appeared, because the high dorsal fin wasn't breaking the surface.

The first dark shape was joined by a second shape, then a third, and then a fourth. The lead one must have been at least forty feet long. The others were smaller.

Females, Gant thought. She had read once that for every one male there were usually eight or nine females.

The water was choppy and it served only to make their blurred black-and-white outlines look all the more sinister. The leader rolled on his side and Gant caught a side-on glimpse of the white underbelly and the wide open mouth and the two terrifying rows of teeth and suddenly the picture was complete.

It was then that Gant saw the two juveniles, swimming behind the enormous lead male. They were the two killers she had seen earlier, before the battle with the French had erupted, the two killers who had been searching for Wendy.

Now they were back... and they had brought the rest of the pack with them.

The full pod of killer whales began to circle the pool at the base of Wilkes Ice Station, and as she huddled behind the headrest of the ejection seat Gant felt a new sense of dread begin to crawl up the back of her spine.

Hollywood had never stood a chance.

The shards from the three fragmentation grenades had rained down on him with terrifying intensity?from in front and behind.

Book could only watch helplessly as his young partner? on the floor, on his knees?put a feeble hand over his face and then fell under the weight of the hailstorm of metal fragments.

The scientist who had been trying to push his colleague into the nearby doorway hadn't been fast enough, either. Like Hollywood, he was now unrecognizable. The wave of metal shards had cut him down where he stood. And while Hollywood's body armor had been effective in protecting his chest and shoulders from the blast, the scientist hadn't been so lucky. His whole body?unprotected by any kind of armor? was a hideous bloodstained mess.

No exposed tissue could have survived such a bombardment. None had. The storm of shards had ripped every inch of exposed skin from the two men's bodies.

And for a moment, a brief moment, Buck Riley could do nothing but stare at the broken body of his fallen friend.

On the other side of B-deck, Rebound was charging around the curved outer tunnel, gun up.

Legs Lane and Mother Newman ran behind him, firing desperately back at the three shadows coming down the tunnel after them.

Legs Lane was a thirty-one-year-old Corporal, olive-skinned, square-jawed, Italian in both looks and manner. For her part, Mother Newman was the second of the two women in Schofield's unit?and she couldn't have been more different from Libby Gant.

Whereas Gant was twenty-six, compact and had a short crop of straight blond hair, Mother was thirty-four, six-foot-two, and had a fully shaven head. She weighed in at nearly two hundred pounds. Her call sign, Mother, wasn't supposed to mean 'maternal figure.' It was short for motherfucker.

Mother spoke into her helmet mike: 'Scarecrow. This is your Mother speaking. We are experiencing heavy fire on B-deck. I repeat. We are experiencing heavy fire on B-deck. We have enemy troops behind us and frag grenades bouncing all over the fucking place. We are approaching the west tunnel and are going to head for the central shaft. If you or anyone out there has a visual on the shaft, we'd really love to hear about it.'

Schofield's voice came over their helmet intercoms: 'Mother. This is Scarecrow. I have a visual on the central shaft. There are no hostile objects out on the catwalk. We spotted five on your level before, but they're all in the tunnels now.

'I can also confirm five more hostiles up on A-deck, and at least one of those has a forty-mil grenade launcher. If you have to break out onto the catwalks, we'll cover you from below. Montana, Santa Cruz? You out there?'

 'We're here,' came Montana's voice.

'You still on A-deck?'

 'Affirmative that.'

 'You still pinned down?'

 'We're working on it.'

 'Just keep doing what you're doing. Draw their fire. We 're gonna have three of our people stepping out into the open on B-deck in about ten seconds.'

 'No problem, Scarecrow.'

 Mother said, 'Thanks, Scarecrow. We're moving into the western tunnel now. Coming to the central shaft.'

In the alcove on C-deck, Schofield keyed his helmet mike again. 'Book! Book! Come in!'

There was no reply.

'Jesus, Book. Where are you?'

Inside the women's shower room on B-deck, Sarah Hensleigh snapped around at the sound of a door being kicked in.

For one terrifying instant, she thought the French soldiers were storming the women's shower room. But they weren't. The sound had come from the next room, the men's shower room.

The French were in the next room!

 With Sarah inside the women's shower block were Kirsty, Abby Sinclair, and a geologist named Warren Conlon. When Buck Riley had ordered them back to their rooms, the four of them had immediately scrambled in here. They had only just made it, with Conlon just managing to squeeze in through the door frame and jam the door shut a split second before the fragmentation grenades had gone off in the tunnel outside.

The women's shower block was situated in between the outer tunnel and the central shaft, in the northeastern corner of B-deck. It had three doors: one leading to the north tunnel, one leading to the outer tunnel, and one leading to the men's shower room next door.

More sounds echoed out from the men's shower room.

The sounds of French soldiers kicking open cubicle doors, looking for anyone who had attempted to hide in the cubicles.

Sarah pulled Kirsty toward the door that led to the north tunnel. 'Come on, honey, keep moving.'

Sarah looked back over her shoulder.

Beyond the row of six shower recesses she could see the top quarter of the door that led to the men's shower room.

It was still closed.

The French soldiers would be coming through that door any second now.

Sarah reached the door leading out to the north tunnel and grabbed the handle.

She hesitated. There was no way of knowing what lay on the other side.

'Sarah! What are you doing? Come on,' Warren Conlon said in a desperate, hissing whisper. Tall and thin, he was a timid man, nervous at the best of times. Now he was positively terrified.

'OK, OK,' Sarah said. She began to turn the handle.

There was a loud bang as the door to the men's shower room suddenly burst open behind them.