Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

Another voice: “ Sir! We just caught an intruder in the gasworks under the main vents! He cut the TEB pipes feeding the vents! By the look of the oxidation around the valves, he must’ve cut them two hours ago! We’ve been pumping useless gas up into the sky for the last two hours! ”

“ What? Who is he? ” the Lord of Anarchy demanded.

“ Says his name is Barker. Navy SEAL. Musta slipped past us when we killed the others in the submarine dock. ”

Schofield’s mind raced.

It was Ira Barker.

Ironbark.

Somehow, Ironbark had survived the clusterfuck in the submarine dock, and while Schofield and his people had been islet-hopping to Dragon Island and stealing the spheres, Ironbark had penetrated Dragon, got to the gas vents and, unknown to anyone, sabotaged them.

The SS-23 missile had detonated its quasi-nuclear payload but thanks to Ironbark, the gas cloud close to Dragon was not combustible, so the missile had ignited nothing—or perhaps it had just ignited some leftover trace particles of the gas, causing the “smaller” incandescent flash in the sky that he had just seen.

At that exact moment something else became clear to Schofield . . . at exactly the same time as it appeared to dawn on the Lord of Anarchy.

“Thanks to Ironbark’s sabotage,” Schofield said, “the sky for a few hundred miles is safe, but the atmosphere over the rest of the northern hemisphere is still contaminated with combustible gas. This isn’t over. If the Army of Thieves gets another sphere, they’ll fire the next missile past the safe zone and detonate it inside the infused atmosphere. Which means . . .”

He snapped to look outside.

“. . . they need our spheres again. They’re not going to toy with us anymore. They’re going to attack this plane with overwhelming force right now .”

No sooner had he said it than twelve berserkers burst forth from the ring of vehicles surrounding the plane, AK-47s blazing, followed by the rest of the Army force on the runway.

The Army of Thieves had just declared war on Shane Schofield and his plane.

MOTHER AND Baba started firing straightaway and managed to take down the first rank of berserkers, but this attack was far larger than any of the previous ones. It was simply too big to repel.

“We have ten seconds to do something!” Champion said urgently to Schofield.

Beside them, Ivanov said, “But we have nowhere to go—”

“There’s always somewhere to go . . .” Schofield said, his eyes searching as the sound of gunfire increased.

His gaze landed on the broad river right in front of their plane, the one that flowed parallel to the runway, ending at the high western cliffs of Dragon Island in a mighty waterfall.

“Why not?” he said as he reached past Ivanov and jammed forward on all four of the Antonov’s throttles and—just as the next rank of berserkers reached it—the big cargo plane suddenly lunged forward, engines surging, tires squealing, its destroyed forward landing gear shrieking as it scraped across the runway.

The plane shot forward and charged straight off the side of the runway and down a short embankment, rumbling toward the river.

Back in the hold, both Mother and Baba were thrown off their feet by the abrupt surge of power and the ensuing plunge down the embankment.

As she scrabbled for a handhold, Mother called, “Scarecrow! What are you doing!”

“Keeping us alive!”

The Antonov picked up speed, bouncing wildly as it rumbled down the embankment and then—suddenly, crazily—shot off the edge of the riverbank and plunged nose-first into the fast-flowing waters of the river!

The Antonov sent up a massive splash as its belly hit the water. Like most planes, it was designed for a water landing, and even with its rear ramp open, it immediately began to float, bobbing like a child’s bath toy.

Then, a few seconds after the great splash settled, the plane began to move, slowly at first, then more quickly. It pivoted on the surface of the river so that now it traveled forward, nose-first, carried downstream by the steady current toward the powerful waterfall that tumbled over the cliffs only 600 yards away.

In the right-side doorway of the plane, Mother keyed her radio: “Remind me how this course of action helps us, Boss?”

“ They need our spheres ,” Schofield’s voice replied in her earpiece. “ We get to the waterfall and hurl them into the ocean. ”

“And what’re the bad guys gonna do about that?”

The answer to her question came a second later: the two Strela amphibious anti-aircraft vehicles came speeding along the airstrip, racing parallel to the floating Antonov before they veered off the runway, sped down the embankment, and without any loss of speed, leapt off the riverbank and plunged into the water alongside the free-floating plane. Their propellers kicked in and the two amphibious cars started moving in toward the Antonov!

“Oh, this is just a new level of crazy,” Mother breathed as she turned and found herself looking into the bloodshot eyes of a berserker rushing at her from the rear of the hold, brandishing a knife!

The crazy bastard was gunless—as the Antonov had accelerated off the runway, he and four other berserkers had been close enough to dive onto its rear ramp, some with their AK-47s, some without. This guy had discarded his AK as he’d leapt for the ramp, which was why he now rushed at Mother with a serrated knife and a cry of rage.

Mother parried his knife-hand away, but the madman tumbled into her, throwing her off balance, and he head-butted her hard and she fell backward, toppling out through the open side doorway—she had to release her G36 to clutch the doorframe and suddenly she was dangling out the door of the Antonov, dazed and reeling, just above the waves of the river, holding on with one hand.

Her attacker lunged forward, intent on pushing her out, just as Mother swung herself up, drawing her thigh-holstered Beretta M9, and jammed it into the berserker’s mouth and fired.

The man’s head exploded, spraying blood and brains, and he dropped, headless, to the floor while Mother hauled herself back inside.

On the other side of the hold, Baba spun to see Mother get attacked by her berserker—a split second before the walls all around him were hammered with impact sparks: two more berserkers were rushing down his side of the hold, firing their AK-47s as they skirted the jeep and the cement mixer to get to him. Baba fired back with his Kord.

Beside him, Zack and Emma cowered behind the cab of the cement mixer. Bullets whizzed past their faces, impacted against the walls above their heads.

Baba pushed Zack and Emma up onto the cement mixer’s running board. “Get inside!” he yelled.

Zack and Emma didn’t argue. As Baba covered them, they clambered into the cement mixer’s cab, disappearing inside it just as its tub was hit all over by a burst of machine-gun fire, but the tub’s thick walls held and saved their lives.

As for Baba, he kept firing at the two berserkers, his Kord booming loudly. And while clearly crazy, these berserkers weren’t totally mindless: in fact, they were cunning little bastards. They mocked him, popping up and firing from behind the jeep, while cackling with high-pitched laughter. It was like doing battle with a pair of demented jesters.

“ Merde! ” Baba growled as one of the berserkers leapt onto the rear seat of the jeep and leveled his AK-47 at him, but Baba adjusted his aim and fired his Kord at one of the rear wheels of the jeep, blasting the handbrake clamp to pieces and the car lurched suddenly, released, and rolled quickly backward out the open rear ramp of the Antonov, with the berserker on it !