Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

“And only ten of us,” Mario said sadly. “Good fucking luck . . .”

“Hey, I count for ten,” Mother said.

“And I, twenty,” Baba said.

“Ironbark’s team said they encountered a hundred men waiting for them at that submarine dock,” Mario said despairingly. “Look at what happened to them and they were SEALs!”

Schofield checked his watch.

It was 9:35 A.M.

“We still have an hour and twenty-five minutes.”

Mario stood up. “Are you listening ? Even if we had fifty fully-trained men, we couldn’t storm that island in a week! Look at us: stuck in a stinking hole with nowhere to go. If they decide to send anyone in after us, we’re screwed. This has officially become a suicide mission.”

Schofield gave Mario a long hard look but said nothing, because in all honesty, the young Marine was right.

WHILE SCHOFIELD and the others were assessing their situation in the dock, the V-22 Osprey that had attacked them flew south to Dragon Island.

The gunship soared over the three little islets to the north of Dragon before rising swiftly to clear the cliffs of the island’s northern coast, cliffs that formed a U-shaped bay around the closest islet. The winter pack ice had melted substantially here and the bay was unfrozen, dotted here and there with ice floes the size of cars.

The Osprey swept up and over an old cable car terminal that connected the closest islet to Dragon Island. Upon clearing the cable car terminal, an astonishing view met the plane’s pilot, the man known as Hammerhead.

Off to his left were the two colossal vents, belching the shimmering TEB mixture into the sky. At some time during the morning, some wag had spray-painted a huge A-in-a-circle on the flank of one of them—the mark of the Army of Thieves—as a kind of “fuck you” to the various reconnaissance satellites that, no doubt, would now be watching the island.

Directly in front of the Osprey was the main tower, the huge three-story disc-shaped structure mounted atop a single 200-foot-high concrete pillar. The whole structure was nestled in a circular concrete pit, and access to it could be obtained only via one of two crane-operated bridges on either side of the pit. From each crane’s long extended arm hung a bridge that could be lowered to span the gap between the rim and the disc.

On top of the disc itself was a helipad, the two tall spires and the large glass dome that enclosed the complex’s command center.

From the base of the great pillar to the tip of the highest antenna on top of the taller spire, the whole structure was at least 400 feet tall and it dwarfed the approaching Osprey; it also made the many men stationed at the base’s various guardhouses and watchtowers, the members of the Army of Thieves, look like ants.

Hammerhead brought the Osprey into a hover above the helipad, landed softly and with his four-man crew behind him, marched into the command center.

Hammerhead and his crew stood before their leader.

The clear glass dome that covered the command center was easily seventy feet across. Beneath it lay several levels of consoles, computers and communications desks, all surrounding a raised platform from which a commander could look out over Dragon Island in every direction.

Seated in the command chair was the leader of the Army of Thieves.

He no longer wore his gaudy Elvis sunglasses. Instead, his eyes were visible for all to see. They were quite unnerving: pale gray eyes that rarely blinked. The discolored acid-melted skin on his left cheek and throat was also clearly visible, as were the many guns in the many holsters he wore on his thighs, under his shoulders and on his back. A series of small tattoos ran in an ordered line down his neck: among them an image of a Russian cargo ship, a crude USMC and an apartment building with MOSKVA written over it.

To his men, he had no name other than “the Lord of Anarchy, General of the Army of Thieves.” They addressed him as “My Lord,” “Lord” or “sir.”

He was Caucasian but had deeply tanned skin. Where he hailed from, no one knew.

He spoke English with an American accent but then he was also fluent in Russian, Spanish and Farsi.

All anyone in the Army of Thieves knew for sure was that they had all been recruited by him at some time or another. None knew how his inner circle had come together: the Lord of Anarchy and his tight gang of five men who had known each other before they formed the Army—the four senior officers with shark nicknames: Hammerhead, Thresher, White Tip and Mako; and of course Typhon.

Naturally, there were rumors among the men: some said they were ex-Turkish army officers who had tried to join Al Qaeda but had been turned away because they were too aggressive; others claimed they were a mix of ex-Chilean and ex-Egyptian torturers who had performed enhanced interrogation on terrorist suspects on behalf of the United States; others still claimed they were American mercenaries who just loved the sight of blood.

Beside the Lord of Anarchy stood his XO, Colonel Typhon. Named after the most feared creature in Greek mythology—of immense size, it had fiery eyes and even the gods quailed before it—he was an exceedingly tall, blank-eyed killer whom the men feared greatly.

Upon acceptance into the Army’s ranks, every member of the Army of Thieves met Typhon.

It was he who bestowed the insignia of promotion—a red-hot branding iron to the skin of the forearm which was then infused with tattooist’s ink, creating raised chevrons on the skin. Your rank in the Army was not stitched onto your sleeve, it was seared onto your very skin.

It was also Typhon who performed the initiation ceremony—a drug-hazed beating of horrific proportions while you viewed four television screens at once, screens that bombarded you with clips of gore and grotesquery, snuff killings and beheadings, rape and bestiality, drowning and torture.

The men obeyed the Lord of Anarchy because he was their leader. They obeyed Typhon out of pure terror.

“Report,” the Lord of Anarchy said.

“My Lord,” Hammerhead said, “we found the wreckage of Ivanov’s plane. By the time we arrived, the American testing team was there. We engaged them but then a French submarine surfaced nearby.”

The Lord of Anarchy raised an eyebrow. “A French submarine? Go on.”

“The sub did not appear to be acting in concert with the Americans, but we torpedoed it anyway. While we were engaged with the sub, the American team knocked out one of our Cobras and then fled in their assault boats. My second Cobra re-acquired them a short while later not far from the islets near here, but the Americans brought down that chopper as well and by the time I got there, they were gone.”

“Gone?”

“Their boats, they must have been a new type of sub-skimmer, sir.”

“They are a testing team, Captain. I fear, however, that you have neglected something in your report.”

Hammerhead froze, confused. “Wh—what was that, sir?”

“How you failed in your mission. You were ordered to go out and kill the Americans. You did not. Ergo, you failed.”

“They put up a hell of a figh—”

“I cannot tolerate failure, Captain. Not during this mission. This army expects only one thing: that each of its members performs his duties to the letter. You have not done this, thus you endanger us all. Who is your immediate junior officer?”

Hammerhead nodded to the younger man beside him. “Flight Lieutenant Santos, sir. From Chile.”

The Lord of Anarchy turned his gaze upon the younger man, looked him quickly up and down. Then he turned to Typhon and nodded.