Ice Station

them at incredible speed. It brushed roughly against the top of Schofield's helmet as it pounded back into the water right above their heads.

Schofield and Kirsty burst back up above the surface, gasped for air.

Schofield quickly looked left: saw Rebound and Mother on the deck. Looked right: saw Sarah and Abby, also safely up on the deck, quickly moving away from the edge.

He spun around: saw another Frenchman get yanked under. The two remaining French commandos were just reaching the edge of the pool. They'd had to swim farther than everyone else, having landed closest to the middle of the pool.

Serves them right, Schofield thought.

He looked up: and immediately saw the retractable bridge that spanned the width of the station from either side of C-deck.

Just then, a deafening explosion boomed out from the alcove on the C-deck catwalk and an unbelievably huge tongue of fire shot out over the whole of the central shaft of the station.

Schofield knew what had happened immediately?the French soldiers up on A-deck, deprived of the use of their guns, were now tossing grenades down into the shaft. Sharp thinking. A grenade detonating in this flammable atmosphere would do twice as much damage as it would normally. Their first target, Schofield noticed, had been the alcove he and Gant had been hiding in before.

Suddenly something emerged from the fireball that had consumed the alcove.

It was large and gray, square-shaped, and it tumbled end-over-end out into the central shaft of the station. It fell fast, cutting through the air, its immense weight driving it downward. With a thunderous crash, the four- hundred-pound ejection seat that had been sitting in front of the console in the C-deck alcove came smashing down onto the deck that surrounded the pool at the bottom of the station. It weighed so much and landed so hard that it dented the thick metal deck when it hit.

Despite the chaos all around him, Shane Schofield kept his eyes locked on the retractable bridge three stories above him. He took in the distance.

Thirty feet. Maybe thirty-five.

 He wasted no time, raised his Maghook, flicked a switch marked M with his thumb?and saw a red light on the head of the grappling hook activate?aimed, and fired.

The grappling hook shot up into the air. However, this time the claws of the hook didn't spring outward. This time it was set on magnet.

The bulbous magnetic head of the Maghook thunked into the underside of the retractable steel bridge and stuck there.

Schofield did some quick calculations in his head. 'Shit,' was all he said when he finished.

Then he handed the launcher to Kirsty and said, 'Three words, honey: don't let go.'

She took the launcher in both hands and looked at Schofield, puzzled.

He smiled at her reassuringly. 'Just hold on.'

Then he pressed down firmly on a small black button on the grip of the Maghook.

Suddenly Kirsty flew up out of the water as the Maghook reeled her upward like some bizarre kind of fishing rod.

She was light, so the Maghook had little difficulty whisking her up to the bridge. Schofield knew it would have been considerably slower if his weight were also being?

A killer whale shot up out of the water after Kirsty.

Schofield's jaw dropped as he saw the massive whale lift its entire body out of the water in a magnificent vertical leap.

Kirsty was still moving rapidly upward, pulled up by the Maghook. She looked down and saw the whale emerge from the water beneath her like the Devil coming out of Hell itself. Saw it come roaring up toward her, its body rotating as it rose into the air.

And then all of a sudden Kirsty came to a jarring halt.

The whale kept coming upward.

Kirsty squealed in surprise, looked up, and saw that she had hit the underside of the bridge.

She couldn 't go any farther up!

 The whale opened its jaws wide as it reached the zenith uf its leap . . .

Kirsty gripped the Maghook as hard as she could and quiickly brought her legs up tightly against her chest just as the killer's teeth jammed shut with a loud crunch, coming together barely a foot below her butt, the lowest part of her body.

Kirsty watched as the huge black-and-white whale fell away beneath her, diminishing in size until it disappeared back into the pool below. The animal must have been at least thirty feet long, and it had lifted its entire body vertically out of the wat?

Suddenly a hand appeared in front of Kirsty's face and she almost had a heart attack, almost let go of the Maghook.

'It's OK,' a voice said. 'It's me.'

Kirsty looked up and found herself looking into the friendly eyes of the Marine she knew as Mr. Book. She took his hand, and he hauled her up onto the retractable bridge.

She was breathing heavily, almost crying. Buck Riley hearing her, looked at her in amazement. After a second, Kirsty reached into her pocket and pulled out a plastic puffer for her asthma.

She drew in two long puffs and caught her breath. When, finally, she was able to speak she looked at Riley, shook her head, and said, 'They definitely don't have that at Sea World.'

Schofield was still down in the pool. Two of the killer whales circled him ominously. He noticed that these two appeared to be smaller than the other killers. Juveniles, maybe.

He tilted his head upward and yelled, 'Book! I need my Maghook!'

Up on the bridge, Riley immediately dropped to his belly and leaned out over the edge of the narrow metal platform. He reached out underneath the platform and tried to deactivate the magnet on Schofield's grappling hook.

'I need it now, Book!' Schofield's voice sailed up through the shaft of the ice station.

'I'm trying! I'm trying!' Riley said.

'Try faster!'

Riley stretched his arm out under the platform, tried to reach the switch marked M on the grip that activated and deactivated the Maghook's powerful magnet.

As he did so, however, a strange thing happened.

For a brief second, Riley could have sworn that he heard Kirsty speaking to someone on the bridge above him.

'Help the diver, Wendy. Help the diver.'

Riley blinked to himself. Must be hearing things.

Down in the pool, Schofield thought it was all over. The two killers on either side of him were closing in as they circled, shutting off any possible escape route.

Suddenly one of them seemed to break out of his circle and swing around. Schofield swallowed. He was coming round for the kill.

The killer turned in a slow, wide arc until he was pointing right at Schofield. His body was only a foot or so beneath the surface, and his high dorsal fin sliced easily through the waves in the pool. He was moving at such powerful speed that he created a rolling bow wave in front of his submerged black-and-white head.

The bow wave raced across the water, on a collision course with Shane Schofield.

Schofield looked around himself. There was nowhere to go this time, no weapon to use.

Out of sheer desperation he pulled out his Desert Eagle pistol, raised it above the water.

If it had to come to this, he thought, then it had to come to this.