Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

“Aw, fuck it,” he said as he floored the gas pedal and yanked left on the steering wheel.

The little Prius squealed as it swung off the road, jumped the curb and sped toward the West Wing Entrance.

As Dave had expected, uniformed Secret Service guardsmen in the gatehouse opened fire on the little car immediately—although he didn’t think many terrorists charged toward the White House in hybrids. He and Retter ducked as their windshield shattered.

The Prius veered wildly and smashed into a reinforced gatepost, coming to a crunching halt. Its hood crumpled and Dave and Retter were flung forward in their seats as the car’s air bags inflated with a sudden whoosh!

Hissing steam, the little car was quickly surrounded by no fewer than six Secret Service guards, all with their pistols raised.

The CIA men in the park who had briefly given chase on foot hung back now—Dave and Retter were now in the Secret Service’s jurisdiction and when it came to the security of the White House, the Service guarded their turf jealously. They didn’t hand over anyone to anyone until they had done their own investigation.

“Get out of the vehicle with your hands up!” the lead Secret Service agent yelled furiously.

Dave and Retter exited the vehicle as instructed, and were promptly shoved to the ground, faces rammed into the dirt. They were then handcuffed while the car was searched.

“No devices in or under the car,” a guard reported.

The lead guard shook his head. “Check their IDs.” He lifted Dave to his feet. “You just landed yourself in big trouble, buddy.”

As he came to his feet, Dave said in a loud voice that every guard could hear, “Sir, my name is David Fairfax, Defense Intelligence Agency. This is Marianne Retter, also DIA. Please check your visitor’s log. You’ll find that Ms. Retter has an urgent appointment with the President.”

It took twenty minutes—time which Dave and Marianne spent in the back of a prison van parked just inside the West Wing Entrance—but eventually word came through.

The senior Secret Service guard opened the van himself. With him was a presidential aide in a suit.

“Turns out the lady does have an appointment,” the senior guard said. “And you, Mr. Fairfax, have a distinguished record. I’ve been told that if the lady wants you with her, you may accompany her inside.”

Retter said, “You bet I do.”

“Next time,” the guard said, “just stop at the gate and wait your turn.”

“Sorry,” Dave said. “Couldn’t do that. This place was surrounded by people who wanted to prevent us getting in. If we’d stopped, we’d have been dead.” He gave the guard a weak smile. “Sorry about your gate.”

And with those words, Dave Fairfax and Marianne Retter hurried inside the White House.

DRAGON ISLAND GASWORKS 1255 HOURS

LIKE IRONBARK and Hartigan before him, Schofield’s body—still attached to the metal bed frame—was immediately and unceremoniously disposed of: it was tossed off the balcony.

The whole cruel contraption, bed frame and corpse, landed on the long industrial conveyor belt on the level below and commenced its journey toward the furnace fifty yards away. Before it reached the furnace, Schofield’s body would pass underneath the broad ramp that stretched out from the railway platform into the gasworks.

Because of this, Schofield’s corpse would be out of sight from the Army of Thieves men on the balcony for perhaps ten seconds.

Schofield’s immobile body passed under the ramp, disappearing from view.

“ Fire! Fire! ” the crowd chanted furiously, eager to see their enemy’s leader fall into the furnace.

Their eyes were glued to the conveyor belt on the other side of the ramp, waiting for Schofield’s body to reappear.

Marius Calderon also watched, keen to see Schofield destroyed forever.

It was he who frowned first when Schofield’s body didn’t reappear as it should have.

The conveyor belt kept rolling by, but in the spot where Schofield’s body and the bed frame should have been, it was bare, empty.

Calderon blinked, confused. Had something happened to Schofield’s body under the ramp? He sent two men down to check on it—only to hear a brief spray of gunfire from down there shortly after. When the two men didn’t return, Calderon started toward some steel stairs leading down to the lower level—

At which moment Schofield reappeared.

Only he wasn’t cuffed to the bed frame . . .

. . . and he wasn’t dead anymore either.

SHANE SCHOFIELD stepped up onto the balcony, having climbed the steel stairs from the level below.

Calderon couldn’t believe it. And for the first few moments, neither could anyone else in the gathered group of Thieves.

Schofield stood there, stock-still, looking like something out of a horror movie: bare-chested and barefoot, he was covered in sweat and water and foul scorch-marks, bloody scratches and open wounds. His jaw was clenched tight and his bloodshot, scarred eyes glared at Calderon with murderous rage.

Not only had he returned from the grave, he had returned from it armed: he held a Steyr TMP machine pistol in one hand and a SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol in the other.

As he’d stepped up from the stairs, he had placed something on the floor beside him, before taking the SIG-Sauer from its back. It now stood there next to him like a loyal dog.

A little silver robot.

IF ANYTHING could be said about Bertie, it was that he was a damned determined little robot.

After being blasted out of the cable car terminal earlier, he had plummeted 300 feet before landing in the freezing waters of the bay.

Of course, the landing hadn’t harmed him and he automatically inflated his buoyancy balloons and floated to the surface, bobbing there like a funny-looking mechanical duck.

Then his acquisition program kicked in: he searched for a buddy to follow.

His wheels spinning in the water, he made his way slowly but determinedly to the outer edge of the bay, where he saw to the west a point of access to Dragon Island: the abandoned whaling village.

It took him almost an hour to get there, but get there he did, and sure enough, shortly after he arrived, he saw his secondary buddy, Captain Shane M. Schofield, turn up with Veronique Champion.

When Schofield and Champion had been observed entering the whaling village, it had been Bertie doing the observing.

The little robot had hurried to catch up with Schofield, but Schofield had dashed away too quickly, to be outsmarted by Typhon at the roadblock and taken away.

Bertie could only watch in robotic dismay as this had happened.

But then, from out of nowhere, a woman’s voice had said to him, “ Bonjour , little one.”

“ Bertie must reacquire his secondary buddy, Captain Shane M. Schofield, ” Bertie had said earnestly.

“ Oui, he must. And when you find him, I want you to give him a few things from me,” Champion had said.

Getting past the roadblock had been a team effort: Champion had shot Schofield’s two smoke grenades—still lying near the roadblock, having been thrown to the ground by Typhon—and in the smoky haze that followed, Bertie had been brutal.

Guided by a thermal imager that could see through the smoke as if it wasn’t even there, his cannon had annihilated the roadblock team, ripped them to shreds, and within a minute, Bertie was whizzing up the steep road on his chunky little tires, heading doggedly into Dragon Island in search of his secondary buddy.

Champion, wounded and unable to be of any more help, watched him go.