Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

Schofield touched his earpiece softly, enabling its microphone. “You motherfucker,” he said softly.

“ Ah-ha, he speaks, ” the Lord of Anarchy said. “ A word of advice, Captain: be careful with your new French friends. Ms. Champion is a most efficient killer. I can’t imagine she will forget her orders, even in the unlikely event that you manage to overcome me. But then, Ms. Champion—you can hear me, too, can’t you?—are you still haunted by the face of your dead husband and those of your former colleagues? The ones Hannah Fatah killed after you brought her in? Captain Schofield, look closely at your new friend: she was once a hero like you, and she is now an example of what heroes become after they lose everything.

“ The clock is ticking, Captain, and in less than a minute, the real battle will begin. A battle between you and me. Me, with my army of brigands and bandits. You, with your team of damaged souls. Like your loyal Gunnery Sergeant, Ms. Newman, the famous Mother. Did you know that her marriage is in tatters because of you? That her husband has threatened to leave her because of her concern for you? That she herself has been seeing a Marine Corps therapist? ”

Schofield didn’t know that.

He looked to Mother—and she turned away.

“ Or that Corporal Puzo is not to be trusted. That the Marine Corps knows that he is more loyal to a criminal family in New Jersey than he is to the Corps? That he has been slipping sidearms and assault weapons to that Mob family for over a year? And yet still the Corps was happy to assign him to you. ”

Schofield glanced at Mario. The Italian-American lance corporal was peering up at the terminal, blank-faced, oblivious to the fact that he was being talked about.

“ Ask yourself, is he a man you can trust in the battle to come? Or what about young Corporal Billy Thompson? Were you aware that he was dropped from active service not because of some minor deafness in the left ear but because of a diagnosed mental disorder? A disorder found at the extreme end of the attention-deficit spectrum, a disorder that makes him highly susceptible to suggestion, peer pressure, that makes him easily led. ”

The cable car rose ever higher.

Twenty seconds to go.

The two troop trucks kept coming.

Schofield checked his wrist guard. On it, Bertie’s view panned back to the main tower, to the helipad with the Ospreys on it—

The Ospreys were no longer there.

Schofield’s heart stopped. The Ospreys must be in the air.

His eyes darted upward, searching the sky. His slow-moving cable car that would be an easy target for a pair of gunships—

A savage hail of bullets slammed into the cable car, hitting it all over, shattering its windows and an Osprey shoom ed by overhead.

Everyone ducked below the window-line, except for Baba, who hefted his Kord and loosed a violent burst in reply. The big gun’s supersized rounds razed the entire left side of the Osprey, sending one of its gunners sailing down into the water far below. The Osprey’s left-side engine was also hit and it flared with flames and started belching thick black smoke and peeled away as the second V-22 took its place and unleashed its own rain of gunfire, but at that moment the bullet-riddled and now-windowless cable car entered the upper terminal, mercifully moving out of the line of fire.

Crouched below the window-line, Schofield’s face was now set, his jaw clenched. The Lord of Anarchy had got inside his head but he wasn’t going to let it show.

“You talk a good game, asshole,” he said softly into his Army of Thieves mike, “and you’re obviously connected to be able to get all this information. But now I know something about you: you wouldn’t be saying all this if you weren’t worried about me. And guess what?”

The cable car lurched to a halt beside the terminal’s platform.

“I just landed on your island.”

Schofield clicked off the earpiece mic and raced out of the cable car, guns up, setting foot for the first time that day on Dragon Island.

THIRD PHASE

INSIDE HELL

DRAGON ISLAND

4 APRIL, 1042 HOURS

T MINUS 18 MINUTES TO DEADLINE

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred.

—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

THE PENTAGON

3 APRIL, 2142 HOURS

1042 HOURS (4 APRIL) AT DRAGON

AT THE same time as Shane Schofield was arriving at Dragon Island under fire and under pressure, David Fairfax was walking quickly down a deserted corridor in the Pentagon’s B-Ring.

In the Pentagon, status radiates outward: if you’re in A-Ring, the centermost ring, you’re somebody. D-Ring, on the other hand, is a backwater. If you’re in D-Ring, you’re nobody, an oompa-loompa in the vast military system. A mathematician by training, Dave worked in the DIA’s Cipher and Cryptanalysis Department in a basement office buried deep beneath C-Ring, so he existed somewhere in the middle of it all.

Today, Fairfax wore his standard work attire: jeans, Converse sneakers, Zanerobe T-shirt plus a new red WristStrong rubber bracelet of which he was immensely proud.

Even by the standards of the computer geeks who worked at the Pentagon, it was casual attire, but for Dave Fairfax it was tolerated, especially by the Marine Corps colonels who always nodded respectfully as they passed him.

They knew that in his service file there was a most unusual notation: a classified Navy Cross that Fairfax had been awarded for acts of extraordinary bravery while engaged in action against an enemy of the United States. During the “Majestic-12 Incident”—which Schofield had roped Fairfax into—Fairfax had found himself, shaking with nerves and wearing a helmet two sizes too big for him, leading a team of twelve United States Marines into battle on a heavily guarded ballistic missile-equipped supertanker anchored off the west coast of America.

His actions had saved three U.S. cities from annihilation but only a few very high-ranking people knew it. Fairfax was just pleased he could still wear jeans and sneakers to work.

It was going on 9:45 P.M. as he walked down the curving corridor of B-Ring. It was late and nearly all of the workers in this wing, mainly analysts working for the DIA, had gone home for the day.

After Schofield had asked him to look into Dragon Island and the Army of Thieves, Fairfax had discovered a few things about Dragon and not much about the Army. It had taken time; it had also required him to peek into some databases that he was technically not authorized to enter.

As far as Dragon Island was concerned, he’d found that it was mentioned several times on the JCIDD, the ultra-high-security-document database accessible only to the highest-ranking military and intelligence officers . . . and computer jockeys like him.

Dave had a list of those documents in his hand now:

AGENCY

DOC TYPE

SUMMARY

AUTHOR

YEAR

USN

SOVIET SUB REPAIR BASES