Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

The jeep vanished out the back of the floating plane, dropping into the water rear-first with a great splash and Baba was facing one less enemy.

While all this was happening in the hold, Schofield peered out through the cockpit’s starboard-side windows. Beside him, Champion and Ivanov were still coming to grips with their unusual predicament.

Schofield saw the two amphibious Strelas enter the water to his right, saw them powering alongside the floating Antonov. Disturbingly, he saw one man on each Strela heft an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher onto his shoulder . . .

“This is about to get very bad. Here, take this.” He handed Champion one of the three small Samsonite cases containing the spheres. “When we get to the cliffs, throw it as far as you can out to sea.”

“If we get that far—” she began to say just as all the forward cockpit windows shattered under heavy gunfire from an unknown direction.

Champion ducked instinctively but then— whump! whump! —the boots of the last two berserkers who had boarded the Antonov thumped down onto the nose of the plane.

Schofield quickly realized what had happened: after somehow boarding the plane, these two had climbed up and over the top of it to take the cockpit.

“Out! Now!” he yelled, pushing Champion back through the cockpit door and pulling Ivanov from his flight seat a nanosecond before the whole cockpit was raked with gunfire.

The cockpit’s walls and seats were ripped to shreds.

Unfortunately, so, too, was Dr. Vasily Ivanov.

The Russian scientist had moved a second too late and, still being pulled by Schofield, he was torn apart by the vicious storm of bullets. He exploded all over with bloody wounds and Schofield dived out the door an instant before the storm could sweep over him, too. In a distant corner of his mind, Scarecrow felt a pang of sadness for the Russian scientist: his help had been invaluable but he wouldn’t be seeing his children and grandchildren in Odessa again.

With bullets sizzling all around them, Schofield and Champion came tumbling out of the cockpit into the rear hold.

One round took a chunk out of Schofield’s left shoulder, while another plunged into Champion’s lower back, emerging from her stomach in a gout of blood.

She yelled in pain, doubled over and stumbled.

Schofield caught her as he quickly took in the scene in the hold: the cement mixer; Baba beside it, near the open port-side door, firing at the last nimble berserker, who was peeking around the mixer’s tub; various cables, folded seats and netting, the open rear ramp with daylight and the river beyond it and lastly, Mother, crouched by the starboard-side door—

—through which an RPG suddenly rocketed in from outside, shooming low over her head before slamming into the cement mixer and exploding!

The cement mixer was thrown through the air . . . straight at Baba.

Baba had nowhere to go—and no time at all to get out of the way. The flying cement mixer cut across Schofield’s view of the big Frenchman and with a deafening crash smashed into the steel wall where moments before, he had been standing.

“Jesus Christ . . .” Schofield breathed.

He and Champion struggled to stay on their feet as the plane rocked with the explosion, when a second RPG fired from the other Strela hit one of the turboprop engines on the Antonov’s right wing and that engine burst apart.

The plane lurched dramatically.

Having lost the weight of one engine on its right side, it tilted sharply to the left, and now with its balance seriously disturbed, water started rushing in through the open rear ramp. It quickly rose to a foot in depth.

“They’re trying to sink us before we reach the waterfall!” Schofield called, catching hold of a handrail as the whole hold lurched wildly.

The wounded Champion, however, had not been able to find a handhold.

The plane’s dramatic tilt threw her completely off the steps at the fore end of the hold and she landed awkwardly and lost her grip on the Samsonite case in her hand. It went tumbling away into the foot-deep water . . .

. . . where it splashed to a halt right in front of the nimble berserker who had been harrying Baba.

The berserker saw it, immediately recognized its importance, and scooped it up.

Then, right on cue, as if this whole situation wasn’t already outrageous enough, an amphibious Strela came roaring in through the rear opening, kicking up a bow wave as it deliberately ran aground in the shallow water now covering the floor of the hold.

With Mother cut off by the Strela, Baba gone and Schofield too far away, the nimble berserker hopped, skipped and jumped his way down the semi-flooded hold and leapt onto the Strela’s bow-deck, yelling to its driver words to the effect of “We have them! Go!”

The driver didn’t waste any time. The Strela’s engines whined as it reversed out of the hold, dropping back into the swirling waters of the river, about to get away when—

Roooaaaar!

Schofield heard it before he saw it.

Heard the roar of the cement mixer’s engine firing up before he saw the big truck, with its heavy mixing tub on its back, reverse—at speed—toward the rear of the semi-flooded hold.

The truck, driven by Zack, carved through the knee-deep water and went flying out the rear opening, where it crunched down onto the bow of the retreating Strela. Such was the weight of the cement mixer that its rear bumper drove right into the Strela’s driver’s compartment, horrifically denting it, crushing the hapless driver and gunner inside.

It had been a last-ditch ploy by Zack: he’d seen the berserker grab the case and had done all he could do to stop his escape.

But it wasn’t over yet.

For it was then that the bizarre cement-mixer-embedded-in-the-Strela hybrid began to float away from the plane!

It separated from the plane quickly—a few feet suddenly became twenty, and it drifted southward across the river’s surface, heading for the bank opposite the runway.

But it still had a bad guy aboard it: the berserker who had leapt onto the Strela with the sphere-case. He started firing crazily at the cab of the cement mixer that had thwarted his triumphant escape.

The cement mixing tub prevented him from getting a clear shot but his angry rounds still managed to impact all around Zack and Emma in the cab. They ducked their heads as glass showered over them.

Zack risked a glance in the rear-view mirror and saw their nimble attacker coming toward the cab, gun raised, a second before the mirror itself exploded under the crazed man’s gunfire.

Zack and Emma ducked away from the mirror’s exploding shards but when they looked up again, it was to see the berserker standing in the cab’s doorway, the sphere case in one hand, his AK-47 in the other, leveled at their faces.

He cackled crazily. “Bye-bye, birdies!” he squealed with glee as he pulled the trigger.

THE BERSERKER’S head snapped grotesquely backward, hit in the nose by a single bullet from Mother, appearing from the other side of the cement mixer, her M9 pistol aimed across the cabin.

Unseen by anyone, after Zack had reversed his cement mixer into the Strela, she’d dived after it and caught hold of the cement mixer’s side-rail.

The berserker swayed for a moment, just long enough for Emma to reach out and grab his Samsonite case before he fell off the running board and disappeared into the fast-flowing river.

“Thanks, Mother—!” Zack called, but he was cut off by a jarring jolt as their cement-mixer-Strela hybrid ran aground against an outcropping of boulders on the south bank of the river.

They were ashore.

Mother looked westward, in the direction of the waterfall: it was barely a hundred yards away—