Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

Schofield said, “We’re United States Marines, Dr. Ivanov. Our people picked up your distress signal and we’re here to—”

Gunfire.

Schofield spun. Mother did, too.

But it wasn’t here . It was in their ears, in their earpieces.

Then Schofield heard Ironbark’s voice again and it was shouting desperately.

Cut into the cliffs on the north-eastern flank of Dragon Island was a Soviet-era submarine dock. It was essentially a rectangular concrete cave that had been carved into the rocky cliff-face, and like all such edifices of the once-mighty Soviet Union, it was enormous.

It featured two berths that could hold—at the same time, completely sheltered from the elements—a nuclear ballistic missile submarine and a 30,000-ton bulk carrier. The tracks of an oversized railway system ended at the edge of the two docks. In the old days, Soviet freighters had unloaded their cargoes—weapons, weapons-grade nuclear material or just steel and concrete—directly onto the carriages of a waiting megasized train.

Today, one of those berths was occupied by a most unusual sight: a huge red-hulled Russian freighter lay half sunk beside the dock, deliberately scuttled. It was tilted dramatically forward, its bow fully under the surface while its stern remained afloat. The stricken vessel’s name blared out from that stern in massive white letters:

OKHOTSK

It was the mysterious Russian freighter that had gone missing with an army’s worth of weapons and ordnance on board: AK-47s, RPGs, Strela anti-aircraft vehicles, ZALA aerial drones, APR torpedoes and even two MIR mini-submarines. One of those compact glass-domed submersibles could be seen tilted on its side on the half-submerged foredeck of the freighter.

Apart from the Okhotsk lying alongside the dock, the rest of the vast concrete cavern lay empty, long-unused, its many ladders, catwalks and chains doing nothing but gathering dust and frost.

The first of Ironbark’s Navy SEALs emerged silently from the ice-strewn water, leading with a silenced MP-5N. He was quickly followed by a second man, then Ironbark himself.

It was a textbook entry. They never made a sound.

There was only one problem.

The force of a hundred armed men stationed at various positions around the dock, using the aging debris and the half-sunk wreck of the Okhotsk as firing positions. They formed a perfect ring around the water containing the SEALs.

And as soon as all twelve of the SEALs had breached the surface, they opened fire.

What followed was nothing less than a shooting gallery. The SEALs were annihilated in perfectly executed interlocking patterns of fire.

Schofield heard Ironbark’s voice shouting above the rain of gunfire: “ Fuck! Go under! Go under!—Jesus, there must be a hundred of them!—Base, this is Ironbark! SEAL assault is negative! I repeat, SEAL assault is fucked! They were waiting in the submarine dock! We’re being slaughtered! Miami, we have to get back to you. Miami, come in— ”

Ten miles away, the Los Angeles –class attack submarine, the USS Miami, hovered in the blue void beneath the Arctic sea ice.

Inside its communications center, a radio operator keyed his mike: “Ironbark, this is Miami . We read you—”

“What the hell . . .” the sonar operator beside him said suddenly before shouting: “Torpedo in the water! Torpedo in the water! Signature is of an APR-3E Russian-made torpedo. Bearing 235! It’s coming from Dragon and it’s coming in fast!”

“Launch countermeasures!”

“ It’s locked onto us —”

Schofield listened in horror to the frantic commands being given on the Miami .

“— Take evasive action —”

“ —can’t, it’s too close!”

“ —too late! Brace for impact! Fuck! No!— ”

The signal from the Miami cut to hash.

Schofield heard Ironbark yell: “ Miami? Come in. USS Miami, respond! ”

There was no reply from the Miami .

Mother looked at Schofield in utter shock.

Schofield kept listening.

“ Ah! Fuck! ” Ironbark shouted in pain before, in a hail of louder gunfire, his signal also went dead and the airwaves went completely silent.

Schofield and Mother listened for more, but nothing came.

“Holy shit . . .” Mother whispered. “A hundred men waiting? A force that can take out a SEAL team and a fucking Los Angeles –class attack sub? Who in God’s name is this Army of Thieves?”

Schofield was thinking exactly the same thing.

“Whoever they are,” he said, staring out the cockpit’s shattered windshield at Dragon Island on the southern horizon, “our little team just became the last people on Earth capable of stopping them.”

BACK IN the assault boats, the rest of Schofield’s team waited tensely.

The Kid and Mario manned the controls of the boats, in case a swift departure was required.

Emma and Chad stared up at the ladder rising out of the lead, waiting for Schofield and Mother to return.

Zack, however, was busying himself with the wrist guard. The high-tech device was one of his pet projects at DARPA and its failure frustrated him. There was no reason it shouldn’t be working fine. Also, tinkering with it took his mind off the mission at hand.

He had the wrist guard’s upper panel flipped open and was peering at its internal workings.

He flicked it on—and suddenly the wrist guard started pinging urgently, a red light blinking.

Zack frowned. “It’s saying there’s a three-hundred-foot-long object alongside us again.”

“The sea ice?” the Kid said, glancing at the ice walls around them.

“No, it’s a metallic signature. The wrist guard’s sensors can distinguish between ice and steel.” Zack shook his head. “ Why? Why is it doing that—ah-ha . . .”

He spotted something deep inside the wrist guard’s internal wiring. “The emitter mirror’s been bent sideways. It must’ve got bumped somewhere. The emitter’s been pointing down the whole time.”

Now it was the Kid who frowned.

“Wait a second. Are you saying that, right now, your wrist-gizmo is picking up a three-hundred-foot-long metal object underneath us?”

Zack said, “Well, yes, I suppose so . . .”

“How far away is it?” the Kid asked.

“Two hundred yards . . . no wait, one ninety . . . one eighty. Whatever it is, it’s getting closer.”

The Kid’s face fell. He looked up in the direction of the Beriev. “This is not good.”

A beep from just outside the Beriev’s smashed windshield made Schofield turn.

“ Captain Schofield ,” Bertie said. “ Object identified .”

“Let me see.” Schofield was still inside the Beriev’s cockpit with Ivanov. Bertie came over, stopping next to the side-turned windows of the cockpit. Schofield looked at the display screen on the little robot’s back.

When he saw what was on the screen, he said, “Oh, shit . . .”

Bertie narrated: “ Object is a Russian-made ZALA-421-08 unmanned aerial vehicle. Vehicle is designed for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes. It carries no weapons payload. Electric engine, wingspan of eighty centimeters, maximum flight duration, ninety minutes. Standard payload: one 550 TVL infra-red-capable video camera, one 12-megapixel digital still camera .”

Schofield was moving quickly now. He scrambled out of the Beriev, got to his feet and scanned the sky.

And found it: the high-flying, bird-like object he’d seen earlier.

Only it wasn’t a bird.

It was a drone.