Ice Station

looked back at her he found that she was staring at him. Her eyes were hard and sharp, not glazed or drugged out. They bored right through his reflective silver glasses.

'Any woman who won't have you 'cause of your eyes doesn't deserve you, Scarecrow.'

Schofield said nothing. Mother let it go.

'All right, then,' she said. 'Now that we got all these pleasantries out of the way'?she raised her eyebrows suggestively?'what brings you down to my neck of these woods? I'm hoping it wasn't just to check up on my health.'

'It wasn't.'

'Well... ?'

'Samurai's dead.'

'What?' Mother said seriously. 'They told me he was stable.'

'He was murdered.'

'By the French?'

'No, later. Much later. The French were all dead when he was killed.'

'It wasn't one of their scientists?'

'Accounted for.'

Mother spoke evenly. 'One of our scientists?'

'If it was, I can't figure out why,' Schofield said.

There was a short silence.

Then Mother said, 'What about the one that was shut up in his room when we got here? You know, what's- his-name. Renshaw.'

Schofield's head snapped up.

He had completely forgotten about James Renshaw. Renshaw was the scientist Sarah Hensleigh had said had killed one of his fellow scientists only days before the Marines had arrived at Wilkes. He was the man the residents of Wilkes had locked inside his room on B-deck. After Samurai's death, Schoneld hadn't even checked to see if Renshaw was still in his room. If Renshaw had escaped, then maybe he had ...

'Shit, I forgot all about him,' Schofield said. He quickly eyed his helmet mike. 'Book, Rebound, Snake, you out there?'

'Copy, Scarecrow,' Snake's voice replied.

'Snake, I need someone up there to go down to B-deck right away and make sure that that guy who was shut up in his room is still there, OK?'

'I'm on it,' Snake said.

Schofield clicked off his intercom.

Mother smiled, spread her arms wide. 'Honestly, where would you be without your Mother, Scarecrow?'

'Lost,' Schofield said.

'Don't you know it,' Mother said. 'Don't you know it.' She eyed Schofield carefully; he was staring at the floor. What's wrong?' she said softly.

Schofield kept his head down. He shook his head slowly.

'I should have known they were soldiers, Mother. I should have anticipated it.'

'What are you talking about?'

'I should have locked them up as soon as I saw them?'

'You couldn't do that.'

'We lost three men.'

'Honey, we won.'

'We got lucky,' Schofield said seriously. 'We got very, very lucky. They'd flushed four of my men out onto that catwalk and were about to slaughter them when they dropped into that pool. Christ, look at what happened down in the drilling room. They had a plan right up to the end. If Rebound hadn't caught wind of it beforehand, they would have got us, Mother, even at the very end. We were on the back foot the whole damn time. We didn't even have a plan at all.'

'Scarecrow. Listen to me,' Mother said firmly. 'You wanna know something?'

'What?'

Mother said, 'Did you know that about six months ago I was offered a place in an Atlantic Recon unit?'

Schofield looked up at that. No. He hadn't known.

'I still have the letter back home if you want to see it,' Mother said. 'It's signed by the Commandant himself. You know what I did after I got that letter, Scarecrow?'

'What?'

'I wrote back to the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps and said thank you very much, but I would like to stay with my current unit, under my commanding officer, Lieutenant First Class Shane M. Schofield, USMC. I said that I could find no better unit, under no better commander, than the one I was currently in.'

Schofield was momentarily stunned. That Mother would do such a thing was quite incredible. To reject an offer to join an Atlantic Recon Unit was one thing, but to politely decline the personal invitation of the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps to join such a unit was something else.

Mother looked Schofield squarely in the eye. 'You are a great officer, Scarecrow, a great officer. You are smart and you are brave and you are something that is very, very rare in this world: you are a good man.

'That's why I stayed with you. You've got a heart, Scarecrow. You care about your men. And I'll tell you right now, that puts you above every other commander I have ever known. I am prepared to risk my life at your judgment because I know that whatever the plan is, you're still worried about me.

'A lot of commanders, they're just looking for glory, looking for a promotion. They ain't gonna care if that dumb ol' bitch Mother gets herself killed. But you do care and I like that. Shit, look at you now. You're beating up on yourself because we almost got our asses capped. You are smart, Scarecrow, and you are good, and don't you ever doubt that. Ever. You just have to believe in yourself.'

Schofield was taken aback by the force of Mother's words. He nodded. 'I'll try.'

'Good,' Mother said, her tone now a little more upbeat. 'Now. Was there anything else you wanted to hear from 'Dear Abby' while you were down here?'

Schofield snuffed a laugh. 'No. That's it. I better get going, check on this Renshaw guy.' He stood up and headed for the doorway. When he reached the doorway, however, he stopped suddenly and turned.

'Mother,' he said, 'do you know anything about men being planted in units?'

'What do you mean?'

Schofield hesitated. 'When I found out Samurai had been murdered, I remembered something that happened a couple of years ago to a friend of mine. At the time, this friend had said something about people planting men inside his unit.'

Mother looked hard at Schofield. She licked her lips, didn't speak for a very long time.

'It's not something I like to talk about,' she said quietly. 'But, yes, I have heard about it.'

'What have you heard?' Schofield stepped back into the storeroom.

'Only rumors. Rumors that get bigger and bigger each time you hear 'em. As an officer, you probably don't hear this shit, but I'll tell you, if there's one thing about enlisted men, it's that they gossip like a bunch of old women.'

'What do they say?'

'Enlisted grunts like to talk about infiltrators. It's their favorite myth. A campfire story designed by senior line animals to scare the booties off the junior troops and make them trust one another. You know, if we can't trust each other, who can we trust, or something like that.

'You hear all kinds of theories about where these infiltrators come from. Some folks reckon they're inserted by the CIA. Deep-cover agents enlist with the armed forces with the sole purpose of infiltrating elite units?so that they can keep tabs on us, make sure we're doin' what we're supposed to be doin.'

'Others say it's the Pentagon that does it. Others still say it's the CIA and the Pentagon. I heard one guy?a real fruit-loop named Hugo Boddington?say once that he'd heard that the National Reconnaissance Office and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had a joint subcommittee that they called the Intelligence