Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

From somewhere in those passageways, Zack heard a low growl.

“I don’t think these trenches are empty . . .” he said.

In the walkway, Schofield was still firing back at the pursuing force with Dubois hanging from his shoulder.

He jerked his chin southward. “Mother! I want that watchtower! Get to it via the trenches! Kid, Mario, protect Dr. Ivanov and Chad, and catch up with Zack and Emma!”

“Whatever you say, Scarecrow!” Mother hurried up and out of the walkway, firing in every direction as she went. Mario and Chad went next, followed by the Kid who reached back down to grab Ivanov.

Veronique Champion came alongside Schofield, still firing nonstop.

“Captain!” she shouted. “We can’t continue like this! We need to change the conditions of this battle or we won’t last much longer!”

“I know! I know!”

“Do you have a plan?”

“Yeah! We get into the trenches and work our way over to that watchtower!”

“And then?”

“From there, I’m going to—” Gunfire cut him off.

“Never mind! That is good enough for me for now!” Veronique threw an arm underneath Dubois and, covered by Baba, helped Schofield drag the wounded French soldier up the snow-mound.

They had almost made it up the mound when suddenly Schofield realized that the gunfire from behind them had stopped.

He frowned, peered back down the walkway.

There was now no one at the base of the stairs at that end. No shadowy figures, nobody.

That wasn’t good. It meant they were up to somethi—

Clink, clink, clink .

A small metal cylinder bounced down the stairs and rolled to a halt at that end of the walkway.

It looked to Schofield like a smoke grenade, only smaller. At first he thought it might be another acid grenade, but this cylinder wasn’t painted silver. Rather, it was painted bright red with yellow bands at either end.

Up above Schofield, Ivanov had stopped and turned, too, and he saw the grenade.

His eyes went wide. “Captain! Get out of the trench now! It’s a reduranium grenade!”

Baba and Champion were already out of the trench. Champion was reaching back down, pulling Schofield—with Dubois on his shoulder—up the snow-mound, when suddenly Dubois’s boots slipped and as he scrabbled for a purchase, Dubois—almost unconscious from loss of blood—lost his grip on Schofield’s hand and fell back down the mound, tumbling back into the walkway.

Schofield made to dive after him but before he could, he heard Ivanov yell to Champion: “No! It’s too late! Get the captain out!” and Schofield felt Champion yank him up and out of the walkway and he fell face-first onto cold hard-packed mud a split second before the red-and-yellow grenade spectacularly went off.

AFIVE-FOOT-HIGH HORIZONTAL finger of yellow-red fire whooshed past Schofield, completely filling the walkway as it rushed by him: a blasting, rushing, rampaging stream of liquid fire.

Dubois never stood a chance.

The fire lanced right through him, liquefying his body in an instant. An entire human being just melted in the blink of an eye.

Schofield’s eyes boggled.

It looked like the elongated tongue of fire sent forth by a flamethrower, only bigger, much bigger: this was a tongue of fire eight feet wide by five feet high, contained only by the walls of the walkway. It was as if the walkway had suddenly been flooded not with water but with fire : blazing yellow liquid fire.

Before it destroyed Dubois, the finger of flame had rocketed down the roofed section of the sunken passageway, its intense heat shattering the reinforced glass awning, sending successive sections of the awning exploding skyward.

Then, after liquefying the Frenchman, the river of fire slammed into the snow-mound and obliterated it, too, slicing through it like a hot knife through butter and sending an explosion of steam shooting a hundred feet into the air, engulfing the area around the walkway in a dense cloud of fog.

Schofield fell back from the blazing, glowing walkway.

When he re-gathered himself—wild bullets were still impacting all around him—he saw that the finger of fire had burned itself out, the snow-mound was simply gone, and the gray concrete walls and floor of the half-buried walkway glowed incandescent orange, like embers in a fireplace, the outer layer of the concrete having been melted by the intense heat.

Covered by the newly created fog, Schofield rolled backward with Champion and dropped into the nearest trench, landing next to Mother, the Kid, Baba and Ivanov. Mario and Chad hovered nearby, both looking very anxious. Zack and Emma were nowhere to be seen.

“What the hell was that!” Schofield gasped.

“That,” Ivanov said, “was a grenade with a thermobaric core.”

“But it was tiny . . .” Mario said.

“Its red-uranium core would have been the size of a pinhead,” Ivanov said, “and its explosion was small because it only fed off the ambient oxygen in the air. An explosion that uses an incendiary gas cloud is far more potent.”

“That was a small explosion?” Mother said.

“Doesn’t matter now.” Schofield stood, gazing up at the watchtower looming above the mist-enshrouded trench system. “Unless we get out of this Stadium fast, we’re not going to be any use to anyone. We’re heading for that tower, people.”

As they hurried off, the Kid came alongside Schofield. “Sir, I can’t find Zack and Emma, and neither of them are wearing headsets.”

Schofield frowned for a second in thought, before he touched his throat-mike and said, “Bertie? Do you read me?”

“ I read you, Captain Schofield ,” Bertie’s voice replied.

“Put me on speaker, please.”

“ You are on speaker. ”

“Zack? You hear me?”

Zack’s voice came in. It sounded distant, like someone on a speakerphone. “ I hear you, Captain. ”

“Where are you? Is Emma with you?”

Zack was hurrying through a misty trench with Bertie whizzing along beside him and Emma draped over his shoulder, limping.

“We’re in the trench system, but we must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. We’re lost.”

“ Can you see the watchtower in the middle of the Stadium? ” Schofield’s voice said through Bertie’s speaker.

Zack peered out over the rim of the trench he was standing in. At first he saw nothing but the rocky inner wall of the crater and the office building that they had come through.

“No . . .” He turned and jumped. “Oh, wait, I see it. Damn, we went the wrong way. I took us back toward the northern end of the crater.”

“ Never mind. You did good. You stayed alive. Just head for that watchtower. We’ll meet you there. ”

“Got it.”

Zack and Emma hurried off, unaware of the distinctive footprints Zack’s cold-weather Nike boots left in the mud behind them.

Schofield strode quickly through the trench-maze, moving fast and low, taking every turn decisively. Ahead of him, rising above the fog layer, was the watchtower, coming closer with every step.

“So what’s your brilliant plan, Captain?” Champion said.

“Down here, we’re rats in a maze.” He never stopped moving. “They have men all around us—three sniper positions to the south, east and west, plus the flushing team behind us to the north. If we stay here, it’s only a matter of time till they take us out. We need to turn the tables. We need to take some higher ground, take them out, and then roll on to Dragon Island without losing any more time. That watchtower is the key to it all.”