Ice Station, page 44
Damn it, Schofield thought. Whoever this is, he’s operating under stealth.
Schofield said, ‘Blue Leader, this is Lieutenant Shane Schofield, United States Marines Corps. I am flying an unmarked US Air Force prototype fighter-bomber. I mean you no harm.’
Schofield looked out the canopy to his left.
He saw six tiny dots on the horizon.
‘Unidentified Aircraft. You are to follow us under escort back to the US Navy carrier, Enterprise, where you will be debriefed.’
Schofield said, ‘Blue Leader, I do not wish to be taken under escort –’
‘Then you will be fired upon, Unidentified Aircraft.’
Schofield bit his tongue. ‘Blue Leader, identify yourself.’
‘What?’
‘What is your name, Blue Leader?’
‘My name is Captain John F. Yates, United States Air Force, and I want you to surrender to escort formation now!’
Yates, Schofield thought, grabbing another sheet of paper from his own pocket. There it was.
YATES, JOHN F. USAF CPTN
‘What is this, an ICG convention?’ Schofield said to himself.
At that moment, six F-22s swooped into place around Schofield’s plane. Two in front. Two on the sides. Two behind. They all kept their distance, approximately two hundred yards. Their presence never registered on Schofield’s radar even though he could see them.
Suddenly, a shrill buzzing sound droned out from Schofield’s cockpit speakers.
The F-22s had missile lock on him.
Schofield said, ‘What are your intentions, Captain Yates?’
‘Our intention is to get you back to the United States carrier Enterprise and debrief you.’
‘Do you intend to fire on me?’
‘Let’s not make this harder than it’s already going to be.’
‘Do you intend to fire on me!’
‘Goodbye, Scarecrow.’
Oh, fuck!
They were going to fire. Schofield looked frantically around the cockpit for something to –
Schofield’s eyes fell on a button on his display.
‘CLOAK MODE’.
What the hell, you’ve got nothing to lose . . .
Schofield hit the cloak button just as, two hundred yards behind him, the lead F-22 launched one of its missiles.
What happened next was nothing short of incredible.
Captain John Yates – Blue Leader – looked out through the canopy of his F-22. In the dull orange twi-light over the ocean, Yates saw the black aircraft hovering in the air in front of him, saw the luminescent red glow of its tail thrusters.
Then he saw the white vapour-trail of his own missile as it streaked away from his wing and headed in toward the black fighter’s thrusters.
As the missile raced toward its target, a shimmering haze suddenly descended upon the black fighter. The sight was absolutely amazing. It looked like a shimmering, rippling heat haze – like the kind that hangs over a highway on a hot summer’s day – and it just descended over the black fighter as if someone were lowering a curtain over it.
Suddenly, the black plane was gone.
Yates’s missile went berserk.
With its initial target lost, the missile immediately began searching for another target.
It found it in one of the F-22s flying in front of Schofield’s Silhouette. The missile shot into the tailpipe of the forward F-22 and the stealth fighter exploded bright orange in the dark, twilight sky.
Yates was stunned. Voices shouted over his headset.
‘– just disappeared –’
‘ – fucking thing just vanished! –’
Yates checked his scopes. The black fighter didn’t appear on his radar. He searched the sky for the black plane with his eyes. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t see it anywhe –
And then he saw it.
Or at least he thought he saw it.
Overlaid on the orange horizon, Yates saw a shimmering body of air. It looked like a warped glass lens, a lens that had been superimposed on the flat horizon, causing one short section of that horizon to ripple continuously.
Yates couldn’t believe his eyes.
Inside the Silhouette, Schofield was already flicking switches.
The missile had missed him and he could hear the comments of the F-22 pilots over his own radio. The F-22s couldn’t see him. It was time to fight back.
‘Renshaw! Bring Gant up here! Wendy, too!’
Renshaw brought Gant forward, into the back section of the cockpit. Wendy loped into the cockpit behind him.
‘Shut the cockpit door,’ Schofield said.
Renshaw shut the door. They were now cut off from the missile bay in the belly of the Silhouette.
Schofield flicked a final switch and saw a red warning light appear on his computer screen.
‘MISSILES ARMED. TARGETING . . .’
The screen began to flash.
‘5 TARGETS ACQUIRED. READY TO FIRE.’
Schofield jammed down on his thumb trigger.
At that moment, the missile bay door of the Silhouette opened and the two racks in the missile bay began to rotate.
One after the other, five missiles dropped through the missile bay doors and out into the sky. Schofield watched as the missiles streaked away from him and began searching for their targets like bloodhounds.
The first F-22 exploded in a giant fireball. When it went up in flames, the other F-22 pilots shouted as one.
‘– missile just came out of the fucking sky! –’
‘– can’t see him anywhere –’
‘– bastard’s using some sort of cloaking device –’
A couple of the F-22 pilots hit their afterburners, but it was no use.
More missiles shot out from the shimmering body of air that was the Silhouette. Three hit their targets right away, blasted them to smithereens.
The sixth and final F-22 tried to make a run for it. It managed to get a mile away before the missile that had acquired it – the last missile to drop from the rotating missile racks inside the Silhouette – slammed into its tailpipe and blew it to hell.
Inside the Silhouette, Schofield breathed a sigh of relief.
As he turned north, he keyed his radio again.
‘USS Wasp. Come in. USS Wasp. Please. Come in.’
After several tries, there finally came a reply.
‘Unidentified Aircraft, this is Wasp. Identify yourself.’
Schofield gave his name and service number.
The person at the other end checked it and then said, ‘Lieutenant Schofield, it’s good to hear from you. The flight deck has been cleared. You have clearance to land. I am sending you our co-ordinates now.’
The Silhouette flew into the night.
The USS Wasp, the Marine Corps’ aircraft carrier-like vessel, was about eighty nautical miles from Schofield. It would take about fifteen minutes to cruise there.
In the luminescent green glow of his indicator dials, Schofield stared out at the orange horizon. He had lifted the cloaking device and was allowing the plane to go on autopilot for a while.
The previous twenty-four hours flitted through his mind.
The French. The British. The ICG. His own men who had died on a mission that was never meant to succeed. Faces flashed across his mind. Hollywood. Samurai. Book. Mother. Soldiers who had died so that their country could lay its greedy hands on some extra-terrestrial technology that never was.
A deep sadness fell over Schofield.
He leaned forward and began flicking some switches. The screen in front of him flashed:
‘MISSILE ARMED. TARGETING . . .’
Schofield quickly hit another switch.
‘MANUAL TARGETING SELECTED.’
Schofield manoeuvred the target selector on the screen until he found the target he was looking for. He pressed the ‘SELECT’ button on his stick.
Several other option screens appeared and Schofield calmly chose the options he wanted.
Then he hit his thumb trigger.
At that moment, the sixth and final missile inside his missile bay rotated on its rack and dropped down into the sky. Its thrusters kicked in and the missile shot off into the distance, climbing high into the deep, black sky.
The USS Wasp lay at rest in the middle of the Southern Ocean.
It was a big ship. With a length of 844 feet, it was as long as two-and-a-half football fields. The enormous five-storey superstructure in the middle of the ship – the operations centre of the ship known as ‘the island’ – looked down on the flight deck. On a normal day, the flight deck would have been dotted with choppers, Harriers, gunships and people, but not today.
Today the flight deck was deserted. There was no movement on it at all, no aircraft, no people.
It looked like a ghost town.
The Silhouette slowed perfectly in the air above the non-skid deck of the Wasp, its retros firing thin streams of gas down onto the deck beneath it. The ominous black fighter plane landed softly on the flight deck, near the stern of the ship.
Schofield peered out through the canopy of the Silhouette.
The flight deck in front of him was eerily empty, Schofield sighed. He had expected that.
‘All right, everyone, let’s get out of here,’ he said.
Renshaw and Kirsty left the cockpit. Wendy went with them. Schofield said he would take care of Gant.
Before he left the cockpit, however, Schofield pulled a long, thin silver canister from the satchel that he had stretched over his shoulder.
Schofield set the timer on the Tritonal charge for ten minutes and then left it on the pilot’s chair. Then he picked up Gant and carried her out of the cockpit and into the missile bay. Then he carried her down the steps and out of the Silhouette.
The flight deck was deserted.
In the orange twilight, Schofield and his motley collection of survivors stood in front of the ominous black plane. The big black Silhouette, with its sharply-pointed, down-turned nose and its sleek, low-swept wings, looked like a gigantic bird of prey as it sat there on the deserted flight deck of the Wasp in the cold Antarctic twilight.
Schofield led the others across the empty flight deck, toward ‘the island’. It was a strange sight – Schofield with Gant in his arms, Renshaw and Kirsty, and last of all, loping across the flight deck behind them, staring in awe at the massive metal vessel all around her, Wendy.
As they approached the island, a door opened at the base of the massive structure and a white light glowed from inside it.
Suddenly, a man’s shadow appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the light behind him. Schofield came closer and recognised the owner of the shadow, recognised the weathered features of a man he knew well.
It was Jack Walsh.
The captain of the Wasp. The man who, three years ago, had defied the White House and sent a team of his Marines into Bosnia to get Shane Schofield out.
Walsh smiled at Schofield, his blue eyes shining.
‘You’ve been getting a lot of noses out of joint today, Scarecrow,’ Walsh said evenly. ‘Lot of people talking about you.’
Schofield frowned. He had kind of expected a warmer reception from Jack Walsh.
‘Why have you cleared the deck, sir?’ Schofield said.
‘I didn’t –’ Walsh began, cutting himself off as suddenly, another man brushed rudely past Walsh and stepped out onto the flight deck and just stood there in front of Schofield.
Schofield had never seen this man before. He had carefully groomed white hair, a white moustache, and a barrel-like torso. And he wore a blue uniform. Navy. The number of medals on his breast pocket was staggering. Schofield guessed he must have been about sixty.
‘So this is the Scarecrow,’ the man said, looking Schofield up and down. Schofield just stood there on the flight deck, holding Gant in his arms.
‘Scarecrow,’ Jack Walsh said tightly, ‘this is Admiral Thomas Clayton, the Navy’s representative to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He assumed command of the Wasp about four hours ago.’
Schofield sighed inwardly.
An Admiral from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jesus.
If what he had heard about the ICG was correct, the Joint Chiefs was its head, its brain. Schofield was looking at one of the heads of the ICG.
‘All right!’ Admiral Clayton yelled loudly to someone standing in the doorway behind Walsh. ‘Get out there!’
At that moment, a stream of men – all of them dressed in blue coveralls – poured out of the doorway in front of Schofield and headed across the deck toward the Silhouette.
Admiral Clayton turned to Schofield. ‘Seems this mission is not going to be a complete waste of time after all. We heard the commentary of your dogfight with the F-22s. A cloaking device, huh? Who would have thought it.’
Schofield looked back out at the deck, saw the men in blue coveralls reach the stern end of the flight deck, saw them begin to swarm all over the Silhouette. A couple of them went up the steps and inside the big black plane.
‘Captain Walsh,’ Schofield said, indicating Gant. ‘This Marine needs medical attention.’
Walsh nodded. ‘Let’s get her to the infirmary. Deckhand!’
A deckhand appeared, took Gant from Schofield, carried her inside.
Schofield turned to Kirsty and Renshaw, ‘Go with her. Take Wendy, too.’ Kirsty and Renshaw obeyed, went inside the island. Wendy hopped in through the doorway after them. Schofield made to follow them, but as he did, there came a shout from over by the Silhouette.
‘Admiral!’ One of the men in blue coveralls called out from underneath the pointed nose of the Silhouette.
‘What is it?’ Admiral Clayton said, walking over to the plane.
The man held up the Tritonal 80/20 charge that Schofield had left inside the cockpit. Clayton saw it. He didn’t seem at all perturbed by its presence.
Admiral Clayton turned to Schofield from fifty yards away. ‘Attempting to destroy the evidence, Lieutenant?’
The Admiral took the charge from the man, turned the pressurised lid and calmly flicked the ‘DISARM’ switch.
Clayton smiled at Schofield. ‘Really, Scarecrow,’ he called. ‘You’ll have to do better than that to beat me.’
Schofield just stared at Clayton, standing over by the Silhouette. ‘I’m sorry about the deck, sir,’ Schofield said quietly.
Behind him, Jack Walsh said, ‘What?’
‘I said, I’m sorry about the deck, sir,’ Schofield repeated.
At that moment, there came a sudden, high-pitched whining sound. And then before anyone knew what was happening, the whine became a scream and then, like a thunderbolt sent from God himself, the sixth and final missile from the Silhouette came shooting down out of the sky and slammed into the Silhouette at nearly three hundred miles per hour.
The big black fighter plane shattered in an instant, exploded into a thousand pieces. Every man inside or near it was killed instantly. The fuel tanks of the big black plane exploded next, causing a red-hot fireball of liquid fire to flare out from the destroyed plane. The fireball billowed out across the deck and engulfed Admiral Clayton. It was so hot, it wiped the skin from his face.
Admiral Thomas Clayton was dead before he hit the ground.
Shane Schofield stood on the bridge of the Wasp as it sailed east across the Southern Ocean, into the morning sun. He took a sip from a coffee mug with the words ‘CAPTAIN’S MUG’ written on it. The coffee was hot.
Jack Walsh came out onto the bridge and offered him a new pair of silver anti-flash glasses. Schofield took them, put them on.
It had been three hours now since the Silhouette had been destroyed by one of its own missiles.
Gant had been taken to the infirmary, where her condition had worsened. Her blood loss had been severe. She had lapsed into a coma about half an hour ago.
Renshaw and Kirsty were in Walsh’s stateroom, sleeping soundly. Wendy was playing in a dive preparation pool belowdecks.
Schofield himself had had a hot shower and changed into a tracksuit. A corpsman had attended to his wounds, reset his broken rib. He had said that Schofield would need further treatment when he got back home, but with a few painkillers, he would be okay for now. When the corpsman had finished, Schofield had returned to Gant’s bedside. He had only come up to the bridge when Walsh had called for him.
When he’d got there, Walsh had told him that the Wasp had just received a call from McMurdo Station. Apparently, a battered Marine hovercraft had just arrived at McMurdo. In it were five people – one Marine and four scientists – claiming that they had come from Wilkes Ice Station.
Schofield shook his head and smiled. Rebound had made it to McMurdo.
It was then that Walsh demanded a rundown of the events of the preceding twenty-four hours. Schofield told him everything – about the French and the British, the ICG and the Silhouette. He even told Walsh about the help he had received from a dead Marine named Andrew Trent.
When Schofield had finished recounting his story, Walsh just stood there for a moment in stunned silence. Schofield took another sip from his mug and looked aft, through the slanted panoramic windows of the bridge. He saw the gaping hole at the stern end of the flight deck where the missile had hit the Silhouette. Jagged lengths of metal stuck out into the hole, wires and cables hung loosely from it.
Of course, Walsh had accepted Schofield’s apology for the damage to the deck. He hadn’t much liked Admiral Clayton anyway, the asshole had assumed command of Walsh’s ship and no skipper appreciated that. And then when Walsh heard about Schofield’s experiences with the ICG down at Wilkes Ice Station, he had no pity for Clayton and his ICG men at all.
As he stood there gazing down at the hole in the flight deck, Schofield began to think about the mission again, in particular, about the Marines he had lost, the friends he had lost on this foolish crusade.
‘Uh, Captain,’ a young ensign said. Walsh and Schofield turned together. The young ensign was sitting at an illuminated table inside the communications room which adjoined the bridge. ‘I’m picking up something very peculiar here . . .’
