Ice Station

Gant winced when she saw them and regretted it as soon as she did so. She hoped Schofield didn't notice.

'How are you feeling, Mother?' Schofield asked as they dragged Mother into the tunnel.

'Nothing one good kiss from a fine-lookin' man like you wouldn't fix,' Mother growled through clenched teeth. Despite her pain, she, too, saw Schofield's scarred eyes.

'Maybe later,' Schofield said as he saw a door set into the tunnel wall ahead of them. 'In there,' he said to Gant and Rebound.

They opened the door and dragged Mother inside, all four of them dripping wet. They were in a storeroom of some sort. Rebound immediately set to work on Mother's leg.

Schofield spoke into his helmet mike: 'Marines, call in.'

Names came in over the intercom as each Marine identified him- or herself.Montana, Snake, and Santa Cruz. All up on A-deck.

Rebound and Gant, E-deck. They called in formally over their helmet intercoms even though they were standing right next to Schofield, so that the others would hear their voices and know for a fact that they were still alive. Even Mother said her name, just for the record.

There was no word from Book, Hollywood, Legs, Samurai, or Ratman.

'OK, everyone, listen up,' Schofield said. 'By my count these bastards are down to four now, plus the two civilians they brought along with them to jerk my chain.

'This has gone far enough. It's time to end it. We have a numerical advantage, seven against four. Let's use it. I want a flush of this entire facility from the top down. I want these assholes pushed into a corner so we can finish them off without losing any more of our people. All right, this is how it's gonna happen. I want?'

There came a sudden thunking noise from above him and Schofield immediately looked upward.

There was a long silence.

Schofield saw a line of fluorescent lights bolted to the ceiling above him. They stretched away at regular intervals down the southern tunnel to his right.

And then, at that moment, as Schofield watched them, every single fluorescent light in the tunnel went out.

The world glowed incandescent green.

Night vision.

With his scarred eyes masked by his night-vision goggles, Shane Schofield climbed up one of the rung-ladders between E-deck and D-deck. He moved slowly and carefully, deliberately. He remembered Book saying once that wearing night-vision goggles is like wearing a pair of low-powered binoculars strapped to your head? you see something and you reach out to grab it, only to find that it's actually a lot closer than you think, and you knock it over.

The whole station was cloaked in darkness.

And silence.

Cold, eerie silence.

With the entire station filled with the flammable propellant from the air conditioners, all gunfire had ceased. The occasional shuffle of movement and the odd low whisper of someone speaking into a helmet microphone were all that could be heard in the pitch-darkness.

Schofield surveyed the green-lit station through his night-vision goggles.

The battle had entered a new phase.

Somehow, one of the French commandos must have managed to find the station's fuse box and turn off all the lights. It was a desperate ploy, but a good one nonetheless.

Darkness has long been the ally of numerically inferior forces. Even the advent of ambient-light technology? night-vision goggles and gun sights?hasn't diminished the average military tactician's opinion of the advantages of a small operation carried out under cover of darkness. It's a simple maxim of warfare?landed, naval, or airborne? nobody likes to fight in the dark.

'Marines, stay alert. Watch for flashers,' Schofield whispered into his helmet mike. One of the great dangers of night-vision fighting is the use of stun grenades, or 'flashers'? grenades that emit a sudden blinding flare of light that is designed to temporarily disorient an enemy. Since night-vision goggles magnify any given light source, if one sees a flasher go off through a pair of night-vision goggles blindness won't be temporary. It will be permanent.

Schofield peered up into the station's central shaft. No light entered the station from outside the enormous frosted-glass dome that topped the wide central shaft. It was June? early winter in the Antarctic. Outside, it would be twilight for the next three months.

Blackness. Total blackness.

Schofield felt Gant's weight on the ladder behind him. They were heading up the shaft.

As soon as the lights had gone out, Schofield had immediately ordered his team to 'go to green.' Then he had outlined his plan.

It was no use playing defense in a darkened environment They had to stay on the attack. Had to. The team that would win this battle would be the one that used the darkness to its advantage, and the best way to do that was to stay on the offensive. As such, Schofield's plan was simple.

Keep the French on the run.

 They were down on numbers. Only four of the original twelve French commandos were still alive. And Montana had just said that two of those four had just evacuated A-deck. So they were also split into two groups of two.

But most important of all, they were running.

Schofield's team, on the other hand, was also split, but in a much more advantageous way.

Schofield had three Marines up on A-deck?Montana, Snake, and Santa Cruz?and another three down on E- deck: Gant, Rebound, and himself.

If the Marines up on A-deck could flush the remaining French commandos down through the station, soon those French soldiers would run right into the Marines from the lower decks. And then the Marines?a force of superior numbers, attacking from two flanks?would finish them.

But Schofield didn't want to get carried away, didn't want to get ahead of himself, because this would be no ordinary battle.

The fighting would be different.

For in the highly flammable gaseous atmosphere of the station, neither side could use guns.

This would be old-fashioned, close-quarter fighting.

Hand-to-hand combat.

In near total darkness.

In other words, it would be knives in the dark.

But as he'd thought about it more closely, Schofield had suddenly seen a problem with his plan.

The French had crossbows.

 Schofield had looked at the crossbow he had taken from the dead French commando on E-deck. Since it didn't create a spark of any kind, a crossbow could be fired safely inside the gaseous atmosphere of the station. Schofield tried to think back to his early weapons training at the Basic School at Quantico, tried to remember the vital stats for a hand-held crossbow. He remembered that the standard range of accuracy for a small-size crossbow was not great, about the same as that for a conventional six-shooter, roughly twenty feet.

Twenty feet.

Damn it, Schofield thought. Knives would be useless if the French had a twenty- foot safety zone around themselves. With no corresponding projectile-firing weapon, the Marines wouldn't stand a chance. The thing was, they didn't have such a weapon. At least, nothing that they could use safely in the station's flammable gaseous environment.

And then it occurred to Schofield.

Maybe they did....

Schofield stepped up onto D-deck with his Maghook held out in front of him at shoulder height, ready to fire.