Ice Station

It was so huge?so monstrously huge?that the mere sight of it sent his heart into overdrive.

It was just hovering there in the water.

Silent. Huge.

Looming over Schofield as he hovered in the water alongside the iceberg.

It must have been at least a hundred meters long, its hull black and round. Schofield saw the two horizontal stabilizing fins jutting out from either side of the conning tower, saw the cylindrical snub nose of the bow, and suddenly his heart was pumping very loudly inside his head.

Schofield couldn't believe his eyes.

He was looking at a submarine.

Schofield burst up out of the water.

'Are you all right?' Renshaw asked from up on the ledge.

'Not anymore,' Schofield said before he quickly took another breath and submerged again.

The world was silent again.

Schofield swam a little deeper and stared at the massive submarine in awe. It was about thirty yards away from him, but he could see it clearly. The enormous submarine just sat there?completely submerged?hovering in the underwater silence like an enormous, patient leviathan.

Schofield looked it over, looked for the signature features.

He saw the narrow conning tower, saw the four torpedo ports on the bow. One of the torpedo ports, he saw, was in the process of opening. Vmmmmm.

And then he saw the colors painted on the forward left-hand side of the bow?saw the three vertical shafts of color: blue-white-red.

He was looking at the French flag.

Renshaw watched as Schofield burst up out of the water again.

'What are you doing down there?' he asked.

Schofield ignored him. Instead, he thrust his left arm out of the water and examined his watch.

The stopwatch read:

2:57:59

2:58:00

2:58:01

'Oh, Jesus,' he said. 'Oh, Jesus.'

In the bedlam of the hovercraft chase, he had completely forgotten about the French warship hovering off the coast of Antarctica, waiting to fire its missiles at Wilkes, Ice Station. Its code name, he recalled, was Shark.

 It was only now, though, that Schofield realized he had made a mistake. He had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Shark wasn't a warship at all.

It was a submarine.

It was this submarine.

'Quickly,' Schofield said to Renshaw. 'Get me out'

Renshaw thrust his hand down and Schofield clasped it firmly. Renshaw hauled him up as quickly as he could. When he was high enough, Schofield grabbed hold of the ice ledge and hauled himself up onto it.

Renshaw had half-expected Schofield to drop down onto the ice and catch his breath as he himself had done, but Schofield was up on his feet in an instant.

In fact, no sooner was he up on the ledge than he was running?no, sprinting?out across the flat expanse of the iceberg.

Renshaw gave chase. He saw Schofield hurdle an ice mound as he bounded for the edge of the iceberg about thirty meters away. There was a slight incline that Schofield ran up, toward the edge of the iceberg. On the other side of the incline, Renshaw saw, was a sheer ten-meter drop down to the water below.

As he ran, Schofield checked his stopwatch. The seconds continued to tick upward, toward the three-hour mark.

Toward firing time.

2:58:31

2:58:32

2:58:33

Schofield was thinking as he ran.

It's going to destroy the station. Destroy the station.

 Going to kill my Marines. Kill the little girl...

Got to stop it.

 But how? How does a man destroy a submarine?

 And then suddenly he remembered something.

He unshouldered his Maghook as he ran. Then he quickly hit the button marked M and saw the red light on the Maghook's magnetically charged head come to life.

Then he pulled a silver canister from his thigh pocket. It was the foot-long silver canister with the green band painted around it that he had found inside the British hovercraft.

The Tritonal 80/20 high-powered explosive charge.

Schofield looked at the silver-and-green canister as he ran. It had a stainless-steel pneumatic lid on it. He turned the lid and heard a soft hiss! The lid popped open and he saw a familiar digital timing display next to an arm-disarm switch. Since it was a demolition device, a Tritonal charge could be disarmed at any time.

Twenty seconds, he thought. Just enough time to get clear.

He set the timer on the Tritonal charge for twenty seconds and then held the silver canister out above the bulbous magnetic head of his Maghook. Immediately the steel cylinder thunked down hard against the powerful magnet and stuck to it, caught in its vicelike magnetic grip.

Schofield was still running hard, sprinting across the rugged landscape of the iceberg.

Then he came to the edge of the iceberg, and without so much as a second thought, he hit it at full speed and leaped off it, out into the air.

Schofield flew through the air in a long, wide arc?hung there for a full three seconds?before he splashed down hard, feetfirst, into the freezing-cold water of the Southern Ocean one more time.

Bubbles flew up all around him, and for a moment Schofield saw nothing. And then suddenly the bubbles cleared and he found himself hovering in the water right in front of the gargantuan steel nose of the French submarine.

Schofield checked his watch.

2:58:59

2:59:00

2:59:01

One minute to go.

The outer doors of the torpedo tube were fully open now. Schofield swam toward it The torpedo tube opened wide in front of him, ten yards away.

This had better work, Schofield thought as he raised his Maghook, with the Tritonal charge attached to its head. He pressed the arm-disarm switch on the Tritonal charge.

Twenty seconds.

 Schofield fired the Maghook.

The Maghook shot out from its launcher, leaving a thin trail of white bubbles in its wake. It sliced through the water toward the open torpedo port...