Ice Station

No chance of it missing him.

And Shane Schofield shut his eyes as the killer whale's jaws came slamming down around his head.

There came a sudden otherworldly clang!, a noise louder than anything Schofield had ever heard in his life.

He had expected to feel pain?sharp, sudden, burning pain?as the killer whale's teeth chomped down hard on his head. But strangely, he didn't feel any pain.

Bewildered, he opened his eyes...

... and saw two long rows of razor-sharp teeth stretching away from him into darkness. In between the two long rows of teeth sat an obscenely fat, pink tongue.

It took a second for his brain to put it all together.

His head was inside the killer whale's month!

 But for some reason?some unfathomable, incredible reason?he was still alive.

It was then that Schofield looked up and saw that his head was surrounded on three sides by the battered steel headrest of the ejection seat.

The killer whale's ferocious bite had come down hard on the headrest, on either side of Schofield's head. But the steel headrest had been strong enough to withstand the incredible force of the bite?it had halted the big whale's teeth only millimeters short of Schofield's ears. Now, two severe dents in the headrest jutted inward on either side of his head. One of them?sharp and jagged?had drawn a tiny bead of blood from his left ear.

Schofield couldn't see anything else. His entire upper body, from chest to head, was completely covered by the killer whale's mouth.

Suddenly the ejection seat jolted beneath him.

It scraped loudly against the metal deck, and Schofield fell back into the seat as the whole thing lurched forward.

The movement stopped suddenly, almost as soon as it had begun, and Schofield rocked forward and shuddered to a halt. He suddenly realized what was happening.

The whale was dragging him back toward the pool.

 The ejection seat jolted once again, and he felt the seat slide another three feet across the deck.

In his mind's eye, Schofield could picture the whale's movements. It was probably shuffling backward?as the other one had done before with the Frenchman?undulating its massive body back across the deck as it dragged the four-hundred-pound ejection seat toward the edge of the deck.

The ejection seat moved again and Schofield felt a sudden rush of warm air wash over his face.

It had come from within the whale.

Schofield couldn't believe it. The killer whale was huffing and puffing, breathing hard as it held this unusually heavy prize within its jaws and dragged it back toward the water! Schofield wriggled in his seat as another rush of warm air hit his face and the seat jolted once again.

His feet were still sticking out from the base of the ejection seat, out from the side of the whale's propped- open mouth. If he could just wriggle down that way, he thought, he might be able to slip out of the chair?and out of the whale's mouth?before it reached the water.

Schofield moved slowly, gingerly, easing himself down in the ejection seat, not wanting to alert the whale to his plan.

Suddenly the seat lurched sideways. It screeched hideously as it slid across the metal deck. Schofield quickly grabbed hold of the armrests to stop himself from falling forward onto the big animal's teeth.

He lowered himself farther. Now his waist was out of the chair and his eyes were level with the whale's sharp, pointed teeth. The whale grunted as it heaved on the heavy steel chair.

Slowly, Schofield lowered himself an inch farther out of the chair.

And then he encountered a problem.

He was now sitting so low in the ejection seat that he couldn't keep a hold on the armrests anymore. He needed something to hold onto, something from which he could push himself out of the seat. He desperately looked around himself, searching for something to grab onto.

Nothing.

 There was absolutely nothing to hold onto.

And then his gaze fell upon the killer whale's teeth in front of him.

I don't believe this, he thought as he reached up with both hands and took hold of two of the killer whale's enormous white teeth.

Suddenly the ejection seat jolted and slid again and Schofield felt it lift slightly off the deck. He had a sudden horrifying thought.

It's reached the edge of the deck.

 And now it's tipping over it...

Holy shit.

 Schofield gripped the whale's teeth tightly and pushed hard off them, and hurled himself clear of the ejection seat. He slid out from the chair, out from the side of the big whale's mouth, and fell clumsily onto the deck just in time to see the killer whale's rear end drop back into the pool. As its tail entered the water, the big whale's body tipped upward, and its head reared up, lifting the entire ejection seat off the deck. Then the killer whale's enormous black-and-white frame began to slide downward, into the water, and the great predator took its prize to a watery grave.

Schofield was on his feet in seconds, moving quickly across the deck toward Rebound, Gant, and Mother over by the south tunnel.

He spoke into his helmet mike as he ran. 'Montana, this is Scarecrow, report.'

'Still up on A-deck, Scarecrow. Snake and Santa Cruz're up here with me.'

 'How many up there?' Schofield asked.

'I count it as five military and two civilian,' Montana's voice said. 'But two of the military guys just made a break for one of the ladders and went down a level. What? Oh, fuck?'

 The connection cut off. Schofield heard a scuffle.

'Montana?'

Suddenly a French commando stepped out onto the deck in front of Schofield himself.

He was the last of the five French soldiers who had fallen into the pool, the only one of them to come out of it alive. He looked like death warmed up?dripping wet, scowling, and mad as hell. He glared at Schofield, then raised his crossbow.

Without missing a beat, Schofield drew a throwing knife from a sheath strapped to his knee and threw it underhanded. The knife whistled through the air and thudded into the Frenchman's chest. He dropped instantly. The whole thing took two seconds. Schofield never stopped walking. He stepped over the slumped body, retrieved his knife and the dead French commando's crossbow, and kept moving.

He spoke into his helmet mike again: 'Montana, I say again, are you all right?'

'I copy, Scarecrow. I'm OK. Revision on my previous count: make that four military and two civilians. Put me down for one more frog.'

'Put me down for one, too,' Schofield said.

Schofield arrived at the entrance to the south tunnel, where he found Gant and Rebound. They were dragging Mother into the tunnel.

Schofield saw Mother's leg immediately. A bloody, jagged piece of bone protruded from where her left knee should have been.

'Put her somewhere safe, stop the flow, and give her a hit of methadone,' he said quickly.

'Got it?,' Gant said, looking up at him. She cut herself off abruptly.

Schofield's antiflash glasses had been lost in the water in the battle with the killer whales, and Gant saw his eyes for the first time.

Two prominent vertical scars cut down across both of his eyes. They were unmissable, hideous. Each scar stretched downward in a perfectly straight line from eyebrow to cheekbone, scarring the eyelid in between.