Ice Station

A scream echoed down through the central shaft of the station.

A shrill, high-pitched squeal.

The scream of a little girl.

Sarah's head snapped to look upward. There, high above her, hanging by one hand from the downturned railing of the B-deck catwalk, was Kirsty. The Marine who had been with them when the catwalk had collapsed was lying facedown on the broken metal platform, reaching down desperately, trying to grab Kirsty's hand.

Just then, as she was looking up at Kirsty, Sarah felt the immense weight of one of the killers rush through the water between her and Conlon. The massive animal brushed against the side of her leg.

And then suddenly Sarah heard a shout.

It had come from the other side of the pool, and Sarah spun around just in time to see one of the French commandos?his face blistered and scorched from the fireball? swimming frantically for the edge of the pool, his terrified, panicked whimpers interrupted only by short, desperate breaths.

It was the only movement in the whole pool. Nobody else had even dared to move.

Almost immediately, a towering black dorsal fin appeared alongside the desperate swimmer. After a second, it slowed, and then it ominously sank below the surface behind him.

The result was as violent as it was sudden.

With a hideous crack, the French commando's body suddenly snapped backwards in the water. He turned in the water and opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. His eyes just went wide. He must have seen that the whale had crushed the whole of his lower body with its bite and was now holding him firmly within its mighty jaws.

The whale's second yank was even more powerful than the first. It pulled the Frenchman under with such force that the man's head jolted backward and slapped down hard against the water as he went under and disappeared forever.

Sarah Hensleigh gasped. 'Oh, Jesus....'

Buck Riley's section of catwalk was still attached to the ice wall. Just. It hung downward at a steep angle, out over the central shaft.

The three scientists?Riley didn't know their names?had all been too slow. The sudden collapse of the catwalk had caught all three of them by surprise. Too slow to get a handhold, they had all fallen down into the shaft.

Riley's reflexes had been quicker. When the catwalk had fallen away beneath him, he had hit the deck and immediately garnered a fingerhold in the grating of the catwalk itself.

The little girl had also been fast.

As soon as the floor had dropped away beneath her, she had fallen to the catwalk and immediately started to slide toward the edge.

Her feet had gone over the edge first, followed quickly by her waist and then her chest. Just as her head fell clear of the railing, she threw out a desperate hand and miraculously caught hold of the hand railing.

The railing held for a second, but, weakened by the force of the gas explosion, it suddenly buckled and snapped and swung out over the edge of the catwalk, so that it now hung upside down out over the shaft.

And so the little girl hung there, one-handed and screaming, from the upside-down railing of the catwalk, fifty feet above the killer-whale-infested pool.

'Don't look down!' Riley yelled, as he reached for her hand. He had already seen the killer whales down in the pool, had just seen one of them take the French commando. He didn't want the little girl seeing them.

The little girl was crying, sobbing, 'Don't let me fall!'

'I won't let you fall,' Riley said as he lay on his stomach stretched out as far as he could, trying to grab her wrist. Small, isolated spot fires burned on the remnants of the catwalk all around him.

His hand was about a foot away from the girl's when he saw her frightened eyes begin to dart around.

'What's your name?' Riley said suddenly, trying to distract her.

''My hand is hot,' she whimpered.

Riley looked back along the railing. About five yards to his left, a small spot fire licked at the point where the downed railing met the catwalk.

'1 know it's hot, honey. I know it is. Just keep holding on. What did you say your name was?'

'Kirsty.'

'Hi, Kirsty. My name's Buck, but you can just call me Book like everybody else does.'

'Why do they call you that?'

Riley cast a sideways glance at the spot fire licking against the railing.

Not good.

Under the intense heat of the explosion, the black paint on the railing had broken out into dry, paperlike flakes. If the fire came into contact with those flakes, the whole railing would go up in flames.

Riley kept reaching out for Kirsty's hand, stretched harder. Half a foot away. He almost had her.

'Do you always'?Riley breathed a weak half-laugh? 'ask this many questions?' He grimaced as he stretched. 'If you'?breath?'really wanna know'?breath?'it's because, once'?breath?'one of my friends found out I was writing a book.'

'Uh-huh....' Kirsty's eyes began to wander again.

'Kirsty. Now listen to me, honey. I want you keep your eyes looking right at me now, OK. Right at me.'

'OK,' she said.

Then she looked down.

Riley swore.

Rebound had been less than three yards away from the French commando when he had been taken under. The sheer violence of the Frenchman's death had scared the living shit out of him.

Now, the whole pool was silent.

Rebound hovered in the pool, looking desperately about himself. The water was cold and the bullet wound in his shoulder stung, but he barely even noticed them now.

Mother was treading water next to him, her face watchful. Waiting, with tense anticipation. Legs's body floated facedown in the water next to her, a halo of blood slowly fanning out from its head, seeping into the clear, blue water around it.

The four remaining French commandos were also still in the pool. They completely ignored Rebound and Mother, their battle forgotten, at least for the moment.

Last of all, Rebound saw the scientists?two women and one man.

Ten people in all were in the pool, and not one of them moved.

Not one of them dared to move.

They had all had seen the French commando go under moments before.

The lesson: if you don't move, they might not take you.

Rebound held his breath as three massive shadows glided slowly through the water beneath him.

He heard a sudden click and turned to see Mother holding her MP-5 poised above the surface.

Jesus, Rebound thought. If there was anyone in the world who had the balls to take down a killer whale with a gun, it had to be Mother.

More silence.

Don't move....

And then suddenly there came an incredible roar as one of the whales exploded out from beneath the surface, right next to Mother.

It lifted half of its enormous body out of the water, turned onto its side in mid-air, and then plowed into Legs's motionless body. There was a series of sickening crunches as it caught the dead body in its mouth and clamped down hard with its teeth, breaking nearly every bone in it. And then the whale's head went under and its tail appeared, and then the tail disappeared and only frothing water remained.

And Legs's body was gone.

Rebound just stayed where he was, hovering in the water, his mouth agape. And then, slowly, it dawned on him.