Ice Station

'What is it, Private?' Schofield said.

'Sir, I've conducted a search of the station and I've found no sign of any erasing device.'

 'No erasers?' Schofield frowned. 'Nothing at all?'

'Not a thing, sir. My guess is they didn't expect things to happen so fast, so they didn't get a chance to lay any.'

 Schofield thought about that.

Cruz was probably right. The French team's plan had undoubtedly been cut short by Buck Riley's arrival at the station and his accidental discovery of what had really happened to the crashed French hovercraft. The French commandos' plan had been to win the Americans' trust and then shoot them in the back. Since that plan hadn't come to fruition, it was no surprise that they hadn't been able to set any erasers.

'But I did find something, sir,' Santa Cruz said.

'What?'

'I found a radio, sir.'

 'A radio?' Schofield said dryly. It was hardly a mind-blowing discovery.

'Sir, this ain 't no ordinary radio. It looks like a portable VLF transmitter.'

 That got Schofield's attention. A VLF, or very low frequency, transmitter is a rare device. It has a frequency range of between 3 kHz and 30 kHz, which, in real terms; amounts to an unbelievably long wavelength. It is so long?or, in radio terms, so 'heavy'?that the radio signal travels as a ground signal that follows the curvature of the Earth's surface.

Until only very recently, signals traveling at such low frequencies required very high-powered transmitters, which were, of course, very large and cumbersome. Thus they weren't often used by ground forces. Recent developments in technology, however, had resulted in heavy but nonetheless portable, VLF transmitters. They looked and weighed about the same as the average backpack.

The fact that the French had brought such a transmitter to Wilkes bothered Schofield. There was really only one use for VLF radio signals, and that was?

No, that's ridiculous, Schofield thought. They couldn't have done that.

'Cruz, where did you find it?'

'Down in the drilling room,' Santa Cruz's voice said.

'Are you there now?'

'Yes, sir.'

 'Bring it out to the pool deck,' Schofield said. 'I'll come down after I check on Montana outside.'

'Yes, sir.'

 Schofield clicked off his intercom. He and Sarah came to the entrance passageway.

'What are erasers?' Sarah asked.

'What? Oh,' Schofield said. He only just remembered that Sarah wasn't a soldier. He took a deep breath. 'Eraser is the term used to describe an explosive device that is planted in a battlefield by a covert incursionary force for use in the event that their mission fails. Most of the time, an eraser is set off by a delay switch, which is just an ordinary timer.'

'OK, wait a minute. Slow down,' Sarah said.

Schofield sighed, slowed down. 'Small crack units like these French guys we met tonight usually find themselves fighting in places where they're not supposed to be, right? Like there would probably be an international incident if it could be proved that French troops were in a U.S. research station trying to kill everybody, right?'

'Yeah....'

'Well, there's no guarantee that these crack units are gonna succeed in getting what they came for, is there,' Schofield said. 'I mean, hey, they might come up against a team of tough hombres like us and wind up dead.'

Schofield grabbed a parka off a hook on the wall and began to put it on.

He said, 'Anyway, these days, nearly all elite teams?the French Parachute Regiment, the SAS, the Navy SEALs? nearly all of them carry contingency plans just in case they fail in their missions. We call those contingency plans 'erasers' because that's exactly what they're designed to do: erase that whole team's existence. Make it look like that team was never there. Sometimes they're called cyanide pills, because if any of the enemy are caught, the eraser will ultimately act as their suicide pill.'

'So, you're talking about explosives,' Sarah said.

'I'm talking about special explosives,' Schofield said. 'Most of the time erasers are either chlorine-based explosives or high-temperature liquid detonators. They're designed to wipe off faces, vaporize bodies, destroy uniforms and dog tags. They're designed to make it look like you were never there.

'Erasers are actually a relatively recent phenomenon. No one had ever really heard about them until a couple of years ago when a German sabotage team was caught in an underground missile silo in Montana. They were cornered, so they pulled the pin on three liquid-chlorine grenades. After those things went off, there was nothing left. No soldiers. No silo. We think the Germans were there to disable some ballistic nuclear missiles that we said didn't exist.'

'A German sabotage unit. In Montana,' Sarah said in disbelief. 'Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Germany supposed to be our ally?'

'Isn't France supposed to be our ally?' Schofield replied, raising his eyebrows. 'It happens. More often than you think. Attacks from so-called 'friendly' countries. They even have a term for it at the Pentagon; they call them Cassius Ops, after Cassius, the traitor in Julius Caesar.'

'They have a term for it?'

Schofield shrugged into his coat. 'Look at it this way. America used to be one of two superpowers. When there were two superpowers, there was a balance, a check. What one did the other countered. But now the Soviets are history and America is the only real superpower left in the world. We have more weapons than any other nation in the world. We have more money to spend on weapons than any other nation in the world. Other countries would go broke trying to keep up with our defense spending. The Soviets did. There are a lot of countries out there?some of whom we call friends? who think that America is too big, too powerful, countries who would really like to see America take a fall. And some of those countries?France, Germany, and to a lesser extent Great Britain?aren't afraid to give us a little push either.'

'I never knew,' Sarah said.

'Not many people do,' Schofield said. 'But it's one of the main reasons my unit was sent to this station. To defend it against any of our 'allies' who might decide to make a play for it.'

Schofield pulled his parka tight around himself and grabbed the handle to the main door leading outside.

'You said you wanted to ask me about something,' he said. 'Can you talk as you walk?'

'Uh, yeah, I guess so,' Sarah said as she quickly grabbed a parka off one of the hooks.

'Then let's go,' Schofield said.

Down on E-deck, Libby Gant was checking the calibration on a depth gauge.

She and Riley were on the outer perimeter of the deck that surrounded the pool. It had been a good forty-five minutes since they had seen a killer whale, but they weren't taking any chances. They stayed well away from the water's edge.

Gant and Riley were checking the unit's scuba gear, in preparation for the dive that would be made in the station's diving bell.

They were alone on E-deck, and they worked in silence. Every now and then, Riley would wander over to the storeroom in the south tunnel and check on Mother.

Gant put down the depth gauge she was holding and grabbed another. 'What happened to his eyes?' she asked quietly, not looking up from what she was doing.

Riley stopped working for a moment and looked up at her. When he didn't speak immediately, Gant raised her own eyes.

For a while, Riley seemed to evaluate her. Then, abruptly, he looked away.

'Not many people know what happened to his eyes,' he said. 'Hell, until today, not that many people had even