Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

Schofield nodded at the reinforced-glass door, at the shaggy polar bears on the other side.

“What about them? What’s the story with the bears?”

“They were another experiment,” Ivanov said. “An experiment gone wrong.”

“Oh, come on. What did you do to the bears?” the Kid asked.

“It was not one of my projects,” Ivanov said, “and not one I agreed with. The idea was not unlike the infamous U.S. tests with dolphins: we tried to train the bears to carry out certain military tasks. Laying mines, attaching explosives to submarines. One group, however, was given advanced mood-altering drugs, to heighten their aggressive instincts, the goal being to turn them into hyper-aggressive frontline troops that would strike fear into the hearts of an enemy force as they rampaged toward them.”

Emma Dawson was shocked. “You tried to make polar bears more aggressive? And obedient ? Were you out of your minds?”

Ivanov shrugged. “There was a similar American project only recently, involving gorillas, based on an island in the Pacific Ocean known as Hell Island.”

At his words, Mother glanced at Schofield, but he just shook his head imperceptibly.

“But it didn’t work, did it?” he said.

“No. The drugs wreaked havoc with the bears’ primitive brains, and they became demented, enraged, deranged with fury. They started attacking their handlers and the other bears. They also became very resourceful and continually broke out of their cages.”

“They attacked the other bears.” Schofield recalled the dead polar bear they’d seen on the ice floe earlier that morning, the one that had been torn to pieces by something. “And they’re cage-breakers. Wait, are you saying that those bears in that lab are not trapped in there?”

“Oh, no,” Ivanov said. “There are other exits to that laboratory: cracks in the roof dome, fire exits. When Dragon Island was decommissioned in 1991 and reduced to a skeleton staff, we just left the bears to their fate. They come and go as they please. These ones choose to stay here.”

Emma shook her head. “You just left them. You guys are something else.”

Schofield gazed through the reinforced-glass door at the pacing bears. “Deranged polar bears. Just what I need—”

“Er, Captain . . .” Zack said, looking the other way, down into the pool of water behind them. He was crouched at its edge with Bertie beside him. “What is that?”

Schofield turned . . .

. . . and saw it.

An eerie green glow coming from deep within the pool.

It was moving, growing, coming closer.

Schofield hurried to the edge of the pool, where he grabbed Bertie, flipped him upside down, and plunged the little robot’s stalk-mounted lens under the surface while keeping his display screen above the waterline.

“Shit!”

On the display Schofield saw six small sea-sleds rising quickly through the haze—each sled bearing two armed men wearing scuba gear. They were zooming quickly through the tunnel toward the dock, their forward lights emitting sharp green beams.

“They sent a dive team in behind us . . .”

He yanked Bertie out of the water and spun, taking in all the available options. The enclosed concrete dock had only two possible escapes: the pool of water and the reinforced-glass door that led into the lab containing the polar bears.

“Between a rock and a hard place.” Schofield quickly put his battle glasses back on and drew his Desert Eagle pistol . . .

. . . and aimed it at the reinforced-glass door. “Only one option. Marines, ready your weapons!”

Then he fired repeatedly into the door and eventually its glass shattered and the world went completely mad.

SECOND PHASE

ENTRY INTO HELL

BEAR ISLET

4 APRIL, 1000 HOURS

T MINUS 1:00 HOUR TO DEADLINE

A dove house filled with doves and Pigeons Shudders Hell thro all its regions A dog starved at his Masters Gate Predicts the ruin of the State

—WILLIAM BLAKE, AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE

SIDE VIEW

OVERHEAD VIEW

THE BEAR LAB

BEAR ISLET

4 APRIL, 1000 HOURS

ONE HOUR TO DEADLINE

GUN UP and moving fast, Schofield led his people into the realm of the polar bears.

It was a huge laboratory, easily 70 yards across, with a circular upper level that ringed a 20-foot-deep pit. Schofield and his team were now on that upper level, and, looking down into the pit, Schofield saw ten large (and open) cages embedded in its outer walls: cages, he presumed, that had once held the polar bears. The whole lab was covered by a translucent geodesic dome—made of many triangular panels and girders—that sprang across the wide space without the aid of a single support pillar.

Two narrow and rail-less retractable bridges extended from opposite rims of the wide pit to an elevated platform in its middle. The platform had a waist-high console on it and a hatch in its floor. Schofield noticed that the platform’s curved cylindrical wall was made of thick reinforced glass and that it encased a ladder within it; where the ladder met the floor of the pit, a curved glass door gave access to the pit itself. That was how the Soviet scientists had once entered the pit safely: via the platform and its internal ladder.

And the whole place was absolutely filthy.

It stank of bear shit, urine and rotting flesh—the smell of a carnivore’s lair. Some of the panels of the geodesic dome had been shattered, allowing snow to penetrate the lab and form high mounds all around the pit. Through some of the holes in the roof, Schofield could see the sky.

What had once been a shining state-of-the-art laboratory was now the picture of neglect; a frost-covered, rusting, stinking, freezing dump.

The only apparent exit, Schofield saw, was a door on the far southern side of the lab, but thanks to high mounds of snow on both the eastern and western rims of the pit, the only way to get to that door was via the two retractable bridges that extended across the pit.

The four mangy polar bears all turned as one as Schofield’s gunfire shattered the glass door. Gathered by the snow-mound on the western side of the pit, they watched with great interest as eleven human beings stepped out into the foul lab.

The alpha male rose onto its hind legs and bellowed loudly, issuing a challenge. A younger adolescent bounded toward them, teeth bared.

“Go! Onto the bridges! Get to that door on the other side!” Schofield pushed everyone past him as he eyed the approaching bear. He raised his Desert Eagle and fired it twice above the bear’s head.

The big pistol’s booming shots rang out in a wide space. The bear slowed a little but kept advancing.

As he took off after the others, Schofield glanced back inside the dock behind them—

—in time to see a small cylindrical object pop up out of the rectangular pool, tossed up by someone underneath the surface. It hovered in the air for the briefest of moments and at the zenith of its arc, Schofield saw it clearly.