Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

“Dragon Island . . .” Retter said. “Never heard of it.”

“It was built in 1985,” Dave said. “Looks like it was a big Soviet experimental-weapons facility. In its heyday, it was a first-strike target. Just about every branch of our military, from the Air Force to the CIA, kept an eye on it.”

They came to the River Entrance.

Two unmarked Lincolns with flashing police lights mounted on their dashboards were waiting in the turnaround.

“This your first VIP trip to the White House?” Dave asked as he pushed open the door.

“My first with POTUS himself.”

“I got a VIP pick-up during that supertanker thing,” Dave said. “Fast ride. No stopping for traffic lights. Certainly makes you feel important. My Marine escorts told me that whenever you get a VIP pick-up, look for four things about the car, the four things that make it a vehicle that the police will never stop: special DoD license plates that start with a Z , an all-access ID tag affixed to the inside of the windshield, run-flat tires and, lastly, alloy wheels. If you get into a high-speed pursuit, you want some heavy-duty rims on your car.”

“What is it with boys and cars?” Retter said. “When someone’s on their way to brief the President, I don’t think they look too closely at the car they’re traveling in.”

Two burly men in suits waited by the Lincolns. Both were bald, which only seemed to accentuate their sizable frames. As Dave and Marianne approached the cars, one of the men stepped forward. “Marianne Retter? Dwight Thornton, Special Transit.”

He held up his ID.

She held up hers.

Thornton nodded and opened the rear door of the first car for her.

Retter stopped and turned to Dave. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Fairfax. Maybe we can meet again under less urgent circumstances.”

“I hope so—” Dave cut himself off. “Those aren’t alloy wheels,” he said, eyeing the first car’s wheels. It was the same with the second car—it had the right plates and ID tags and even run-flat tires, but inside those tires, it just had standard rims.

Dave turned to see two more big men materialize from the darkness behind them, subtly blocking the way back to the River Entrance.

“These men aren’t here to take you to the White House,” he whispered. “They’re here to kidnap you.”

Retter glanced from Dave to the man who’d said his name was Thornton.

And, just slightly, ever so slightly, his eyes flickered. “Is there a problem, ma’am?”

“You see it now?” Dave asked.

“Yep,” Retter said.

“Run.”

They broke into a run, dashing suddenly right, heading for the entrance to the Metro system twenty yards away.

The two men by the cars took off after them. So did the two blocking the way back into the Pentagon, all four drawing silenced Glock pistols as they did so.

Fairfax and Retter bolted down the stairs to the subway station, hurdling the turnstiles and arriving on the platform just as a train pulled to a halt and opened its doors.

They dived into it, melding in with the bored members of the evening commuter crowd, just as the train’s doors shut and it moved off, a moment before their pursuers arrived on the platform, flushed and out of breath, their pistols now concealed beneath their coats and their faces furious at the fact that their quarry had got away.

DRAGON ISLAND

1042 HOURS

18 MINUTES TO DEADLINE

NO SOONER had the cable car stopped beside the platform of the upper terminal on Dragon Island than Schofield was racing out of it at full speed.

He joined Bertie in the doorway, arriving there in time to see the two enemy trucks skid to simultaneous halts twenty yards away. The main tower soared skyward before him. With its white exterior, it looked futuristic, imposing and impenetrable.

“Bertie, cover us,” he said. “Hold this doorway for as long as you still have bullets.”

“ Yes, Captain Schofield. ”

Army of Thieves troops began pouring out of the two trucks. Bertie started firing at them and they dived for cover.

As the little robot held the main doorway, Schofield led the others westward, toward the garage Ivanov had said was on that side. Schofield threw open a door that revealed a darkened garage with two small trucks parked inside it. The first was a medium-sized fuel truck with a rusty cylindrical aluminum gasoline tank on its back. A steel-rung ladder ran up the back of the tank and along the length of its upper side. The second truck, parked behind the tanker, was a compact cement mixer with a rotatable barrel mounted on its back.

Schofield pointed at the tanker truck as he moved. “Mother, Baba. Onto the tanker. Mother, start her up. Everyone else, when we drive out of here and get their attention, go as fast as you can to your assigned positions.”

The others—Champion, Ivanov, the Kid, Mario, Zack and Emma—all nodded at him in reply.

Schofield gave them a look. “If this doesn’t work, Mother, Baba and I won’t get out of it alive, so you guys’ll have to come up with something yourselves. Good luck. I’ll either see you all later or see you on the other side.”

Behind him, the engine of the tanker truck came alive.

“Captain.” Baba was peering at a gauge on the side of the tanker truck. “This tank still has fuel in it. Given the plan, it might be wise to empty it. It’ll make it lighter.”

“Do it.”

Baba turned a spigot on the back of the truck’s cylindrical tank. Diesel fuel started pouring out of it, splashing to the ground.

Schofield then climbed into the driver’s seat, while Mother and Baba clambered up the steel-rung ladder on top of the truck’s tank, weapons ready.

“Open the door,” Schofield said.

Ivanov hit a switch and the garage’s roller door slid upward. Daylight flooded into the garage.

Schofield gunned the truck and it roared outside, into battle.

As Schofield’s tanker truck sped out of the garage, Zack turned to check on Bertie back in the terminal’s doorway.

He saw the little robot firing out through the open door, saw enemy rounds ping harmlessly off his flanks.

“Come on, Zack.” Emma pulled him away. “We have to get into position. Bertie’ll be okay.”

Just as she said those words, however, a rocket-propelled grenade hit the doorway in which Bertie stood.

A fireball erupted all around the little robot, consuming him, and a split second later Bertie came flying out of it, hurled backward through the air at alarming speed.

Bertie sailed back across the terminal and slammed into the opposite wall—a few feet from the gaping aperture through which the cable car had entered the terminal; a sweeping view of the northern bay and the islets lay beyond that aperture, as well as a 300-foot sheer drop.

Bertie lay on his side, looking dazed and confused, if a robot could look that way. His fat rubber tires spun but got no traction.

Zack shouted, “No!” but then Bertie righted himself, rolling back up onto his tires and seemed okay—

—just as the first Army of Thieves man, moving low and fast, entered the terminal with another RPG on his shoulder, crouched and fired it at Bertie.

This time the robot stood no chance.

The RPG lanced across the space toward him and detonated.

This blast sent Bertie sailing out through the aperture in the northern wall of the terminal into nothing but air.

With a squealing whistle, Bertie disappeared from Zack’s view and fell a full 300 feet down the face of the cliff before disappearing into the freezing waters of the bay with a tiny splash, his part in this battle now well and truly over.

The sudden emergence of Schofield’s tanker truck from the garage attached to the western side of the terminal caught the other Army of Thieves troops assailing the terminal’s main entrance by surprise.