Matthew Reilly: Scarecrow Returns

Hartigan shrugged. “Way of the world. A new power rises and an old one falls. America did exactly the same thing to England in the 1800s—outstripped it with industry, land and sheer human capital. Now China is doing it to us. And short of launching an all-out war, you can’t stop this kind of thing.”

“Then what does the average American worker do? How do they pay their mortgage, keep a roof over their family’s head?” Mother asked. She wasn’t trying to make a point. She genuinely wanted to know the answer.

Hartigan said, “There’s nothing they can do. In things like this, some poor bastard has to be the loser. It’s just that the average American has never been the loser before. Now he is. And he’d better get used to it because nothing can stop China now.”

On another occasion, a particularly spirited discussion arose when Zack—a very Jewish New York Jew—raised the classic campfire conundrum, “the Nazi Dilemma.”

“You’re a Jew in Germany during World War II,” he said, “hiding in a ditch beside a country road at night with a group of twenty other Jews. A Nazi regiment marches by. You all duck for cover and lie very still. But in your group is a baby. It starts crying. If the Nazis hear it, they’ll kill all of you. Someone suggests smothering the baby, killing it in order to save the larger group. What do you do? Do you let the baby live and condemn everyone else, including you, to death? Or do you kill one baby so that twenty other people may live?”

“You find a machine gun and kill the Nazis,” Mother said.

“Seriously,” Zack said.

“The choice is easy, kill the baby,” Jeff Hartigan said. “The good of the majority must take precedence over the life of one person, even a child.”

“I disagree,” Emma said. “If you kill the baby, you become as bad as the Nazis.”

The Kid said, “I could never kill an innocent person to save my own skin, least of all a baby. Couldn’t live with myself.”

“What about you, Captain Schofield?” Zack asked.

Schofield looked at them all, before settling his gaze on Hartigan. “For me, the choice is also easy. Either we all survive together or we all die together. I don’t leave any man behind. And I’d never sacrifice anyone in my charge who was slow or tired or just a little weaker than everyone else. A civilization is judged by how it treats the vulnerable.”

“You’d give your life for a crying baby?” Hartigan asked, incredulous. “And you’d give my life as well?”

“Absolutely and absolutely. But I’d also put up one hell of a fight to save you both before it came to that.”

Mother clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. “And that, folks, is why I love serving with the Scarecrow!”

There were also, thankfully, some lighter conversations.

“Well, with one week to go,” Mother said, “I have to say that this trip has really let me down. My horoscope in Cosmo a couple of months ago said that”—she pulled out a tatty page ripped from a magazine—” ‘You will meet your mirror image in the next few months, a member of the opposite sex who is your natural partner. The chemistry will be irresistible. Sparks will fly.’”

“You read Cosmo ?” the Kid asked.

“When I’m in the waiting room at the dentist, yeah.” Mother tossed the page into the air and gazed pointedly at the men in the tent: Schofield, the Kid, Mario and Zack. “I mean, look at you lot. Except for the ever-handsome Scarecrow, who’s like a brother to me and so off-limits in that department, the rest of you are a pretty fucking sorry sample of masculinity. No alpha males here.”

“Hey!” the Kid said. “I’m—”

“You, young man, are a boy. A whole-lotta-woman like me needs a whole-lotta- man ,” Mother said. “Oh, well, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t meet my male mirror. My Ralphy might get jealous.”

Ralph was all tattoos, sleeveless check shirts and Popeye forearms, a real salt-of-the-Earth type. He and Mother had been married for years and as Schofield knew, Mother loved him dearly.

Although one night she’d made an odd comment that had surprised him: “I don’t know, Scarecrow, sometimes I worry about Ralphy and me. We got married young and now we’re both nearly forty and we know each other so well, maybe too well. There’s no mystery anymore. When I’m home, every night it’s the same old routine—eat dinner, feed the dogs, watch some TV and then finish off with The Daily Show . Ralph’s sweet but sometimes . . . I don’t know . . . we’ve even been having stupid fights lately and we never used to do that.”

“Ralph’s a legend,” Schofield said, “and you’re lucky to have him. You two were made for each other.”

And of course there were times when you had to get away from the group and be by yourself.

Often Schofield would retire to his tent to read a book, while some nights he’d sit down with the DARPA wrist guard and correspond with a friend of his at the Defense Intelligence Agency, David Fairfax.

A T-shirt-and-sneakers-wearing cryptanalyst, Fairfax had helped Schofield on a couple of missions and they’d kept in touch.

The night before he got the call from the White House Situation Room, Schofield turned on the wrist guard to find a message from Fairfax waiting for him:

FFAX: GOT AN UPDATE ON YOUR FRENCH PROBLEM.

Soon after, they were corresponding via live encrypted messaging:

SCRW: WHAT’S UP?

FFAX: LATEST TAPS ON DGSE REVEAL THAT LAST MONTH AN AGENT KNOWN AS “RENARD” REQUESTED TO TAKE THE LEAD ON YOUR CASE.

SCRW: REQUESTED?

FFAX: YEAH. I DID SOME CHECKING. FROM WHAT I CAN FIND, RENARD IS AN AGENT FROM “M” UNIT IN THE DGSE’S ACTION DIVISION. “M” UNIT IS FRANCE’S EQUIVALENT OF THE CIA’S SPECIAL ACTIVITIES DIVISION. THEY PERFORM PARAMILITARY OPS, SPECIALIZING IN EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLINGS AND ASSASSINATIONS. RENARD HAS NEVER WORKED WITH THE U.S., SO WE HAVE NO FILE ON HIM. IDENTIFYING MARKS: A TATTOO ON THE INSIDE OF HIS RIGHT WRIST SHOWING A TALLY OF PAST KILLS, CURRENTLY AT THIRTEEN.

SCRW: THANKS FOR THE HEADS-UP.

FFAX: ANYTIME. WATCH YOUR BACK.

Schofield stared at the screen. No matter who you were, living with a price on your head was a constant source of anxiety and stress. And this French business just wasn’t going away.

He gazed at the screen for a long time before signing off.

For her part, Mother had spent the last seven weeks watching Shane Schofield very closely.

More than anyone else, she knew what he had been through during that Majestic-12 bounty hunt and the months after.

She had been there on a rainswept cliff on the French coast when he had put his own gun to his chin and almost pulled the trigger. She’d been the one who stopped him going through with it.

He appeared to be doing okay. He was actually smiling again, not much but a little. That said, he did admit that he still didn’t sleep well, and some days she saw deep bags under his eyes.

Mother knew the Corps had sent him to see a bunch of high-priced shrinks. The psychiatrists had offered him anti-depression drugs, but he’d refused. He’d do any therapy they suggested—CBT, couch sessions, even a few sessions of hypnotherapy—but he wouldn’t take drugs. He hadn’t thought very highly of the shrinks, except for one, a lady in Baltimore he’d found separately; he said she was exceptional. But in any case it seemed like he was now more or less back to normal.

More or less .

For Mother knew he wasn’t completely whole again.

And she knew why he wasn’t sleeping. Her tent was next to his, and on several occasions she’d heard him talking in his sleep, yelling plaintive cries of “Fox . . . no . . . not in the . . . guillotine . . . no . . . NO! ”