Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

The dead-eyed XO pulled a gleaming meat cleaver from behind his back and placed it on a table in front of Hammerhead and the young lieutenant.

The Lord of Anarchy said, “Lieutenant Santos, I need to teach your captain a lesson, one that he will not soon forget. Now, I could punish him , but in my experience I have found that the only truly effective way to motivate someone—or, for that matter, to extract information from an enemy—is to hurt someone close to them or in their charge. So, if you would be so kind, Lieutenant Santos, would you cut off your own left hand, please.”

A few of the communications operators who had been surreptitiously watching this exchange looked up suddenly.

Santos’s eyes went wide. He threw a look at Hammerhead, but his captain just stared resolutely forward, not meeting his eye.

The Lord of Anarchy waited patiently. He said nothing.

Then, to all the spectators’ surprise, the young lieutenant stepped forward and picked up the steel-bladed cleaver.

Many of them had heard about this sort of thing before, but none of them had ever seen it: tales of the Lord of Anarchy ordering disobedient or disgraced members of the Army to hack off parts of their own body. Fingers, toes, and in one famous case—according to rumor—the Lord had ordered a man who had raped an African nun to sever his own penis . . . and the man had done it.

How he could make this happen, no one knew. Those members from African and South American countries called it black magic or voodoo, while those from Western nations suspected it was some kind of subliminal process that had been implanted into their minds during the sadistic initiation ceremony. Whatever it was, it made an impact. It ensured total obedience.

As the audience watched, Santos tested the weight of the cleaver in his right hand. Then he placed his left wrist flat on the wooden table.

And raised the cleaver.

The communications men held their breath . . .

The Osprey crew watched in horror . . .

Hammerhead kept staring forward . . .

The Lord of Anarchy gave away nothing . . .

Typhon smiled . . .

The meat cleaver came down hard and the lieutenant’s scream cut through the air. The Lord of Anarchy turned to Hammerhead.

“Do not fail me again, Captain. This Army is depending on you. Dismissed.”

As Hammerhead left with his remaining crew members, the Lord of Anarchy directed his personal guards to the now-kneeling figure of Santos. The young lieutenant clutched the bloody stump of his left arm to his body.

“Put him to work in the gasworks beneath the main vents,” the Lord of Anarchy said, “in a place where he can be seen by all the men. Let word of this spread.”

Santos was dragged away.

When he was gone, the Lord of Anarchy turned to his XO.

“Colonel Typhon, how long till the uranium spheres are ready?”

“One hour and twenty minutes, sir.”

“This American testing team bothers me. While small, its members are worryingly determined. They might be more trouble than they appear.”

“Mako is on his way back from their camp now. He found one person still there, a military contractor named Hartigan. Mako’s bringing him back now in the second Osprey.”

“Take Mr. Hartigan to the gasworks, too, and torture him. I want to know everything he knows about that test team. He may also provide some entertainment for the men later.” The Lord of Anarchy nodded at his surveillance screens. “Where are they now?”

“They’re on Bear Islet.”

“Do we have visuals?”

“Yes, sir. CCTV feed.”

“Get stills of all of them and run the images through the military databases. In the meantime, send in Bad Willy and his boys, plus a few berserkers, from behind, and Thresher’s Team from in front. We’ve come too far for some rogue group of wannabe heroes to stop us now. Squeeze them and kill them.”

BEAR ISLET LOADING DOCK

4 APRIL, 0940 HOURS

1 HOUR 20 MINUTES TO DEADLINE

IN THE dark concrete loading dock on Bear Islet, Zack Weinberg and Emma Dawson were checking the corpse of the polar bear that had come bursting out of the shadows upon their arrival. As always, Bertie trailed along behind Zack.

“I’ve never seen a polar bear like this,” Emma said. “Look at its coat: it’s shaggy and matted and filthy. Polar bears usually have short coats which they keep fastidiously clean.”

Zack winced at the sight of the dead bear. It was indeed filthy. It was also stained all over with its own blood from the gunshot wounds.

“It’s smaller than other polar bears I’ve seen,” he said.

“Yes, it is.” Emma stepped around the corpse, eyeing it analytically, scientifically. “I’d say it’s an adolescent, the bear equivalent of a teenager; moody, aggressive and presumptuous.”

She gazed through the reinforced-glass door that led into the islet’s laboratory structure. In there she saw a wide octagonal space with a sunken section in the middle. On the elevated walkways ringing that sunken section, four larger polar bears padded around, pacing. One of them came over to the glass door and peered through it at her and Zack.

“Do you think this bear was living in this dock?” Zack asked.

Emma shrugged. “It’s a good home for a polar bear. A fully enclosed cave with a single underwater entrance.”

“But why would it be living apart from the others?”

“Adolescent bears of all species—grizzlies, Kodiaks, polars—often overstep their bounds and fall foul of the older bears. I’d guess this bad boy crossed one of the older males and got chased out. He was living here in exile—”

Smack!

The large bear on the other side of the door punched the glass.

The door shuddered, but held.

Schofield turned at the noise, took in the bear on the other side of the door. “You guys okay over there?”

Zack and Emma nodded.

“How about you, Chad?” Schofield said.

The young executive was sitting with his back up against the wall and his head bowed. He looked up, clearly shaken by their recent experiences, but nodded gamely.

Schofield glanced at the stalking bear. “I think it’s time we learned more about this place from Dr. Ivanov.”

The group gathered around the Russian scientist.

“All right, doc,” Schofield said, “we know the big-picture stuff about Dragon Island. Now I want the details from someone who knows them: I want to know everything about that island, from the layout to the atmospheric weapon and what we can do in the next eighty minutes to stop it going off.”

Ivanov shook his head. “Ostrov Zmey is a rock, a fortress. With enough men stationed at its watchtowers, it is very difficult to take by force.”

“If it’s so impregnable, how could this group take it so easily?” Mother asked.

Ivanov sighed. “I suspect they bribed one of the members of the skeleton team I was coming to replace. Specifically, a man named Dr. Igor Kotsky. In the new Russia we men of science are not well paid and I know Kotsky was in considerable debt. He could have been easily bought. We all could have been bought. When my relief plane arrived at Dragon, Kotsky was there at the hangar, waving us in, calling us over . . . into a waiting field of fire.”

“Okay, then,” Schofield said, “tell us about the weapon. We’ve been told we can disrupt its use by stealing or destroying some red-uranium spheres or destroying the missiles that will fire them into the gas cloud. Is that correct?”

“That is right,” Ivanov said. “In theory, you could also disrupt the creation of the gas cloud itself, but it is far too late for that. If you destroyed the vents now, you might create a gap in the gas cloud, but any gap you created would not be wide enough. The atmospheric flame, once ignited, is incredibly potent. It would be able to leap any such void. You would need a gap created by at least ninety minutes of zero gas production to create a large enough gap, and that is not possible anymore.”