Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

But she had given him one more instruction: follow the fresh tire-tracks of the jeep that had taken Schofield away from the roadblock. By following them diligently, Bertie had come to the gasworks.

There he scurried in through a side door and arrived underneath the ramp just in time to see Schofield’s body land with a thud on the conveyor belt right in front of him.

Recognizing his secondary buddy, Bertie had whizzed forward and using his little robotic arms, pulled Schofield and the bed frame off the belt. A quick scan had revealed that Schofield had no pulse, so Bertie had unfolded his defibrillator and applied it according to his CPR programming.

Whack. Whack.

Schofield’s body jolted twice . . .

. . . before his eyes flew open and he gasped, sucking in deep rasping breaths to fill his lungs.

As Schofield recovered his breath, Bertie used his blowtorch to cut through his handcuffs and leg rope.

Thanks to the tough little robot, Schofield was alive and free again. Indeed, the only way for him to escape from Marius Calderon and the Army of Thieves had been to die.

He snatched Bertie’s first-aid pack, grabbed an AP-6 needle from it and jabbed himself with the painkiller/stimulant. His breathing evened out; he began to feel stronger.

It was then that he saw the three items sitting on Bertie’s back: Champion’s Steyr TMP, her SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol and a Magneteux.

He stood and nodded at Bertie. “Thanks, little buddy. You’re good to have around. Before we go, access your friend and foe memory bank, please.”

“ Memory bank accessed ,” Bertie said.

“Delete Lance Corporal Vittorio Puzo from friend list.”

“ Entry deleted .”

“Good. Now, come with me. It’s time to do some fucking damage.”

FACING OFF against Marius Calderon and his Army of Thieves in the gasworks—two against forty—Schofield and Bertie opened fire together.

Bertie blazed away with his cannon on full auto, sending forth a three-foot-long tongue of fire from the muzzle of his gun-barrel. His wave of heavy-caliber bullets cut into the crowd of Thieves, scything across them, and in the first burst alone, sixteen men fell, practically cut in half, bloody fountains spurting everywhere.

Schofield was more precise with his fire, but no less deadly.

The first man he took aim at was Calderon, but the Lord of Anarchy was quick. As Schofield fired, Calderon yanked Mobutu in front of him and Mobutu was hit twice in the chest while Calderon dived through the nearby exit door, disappearing outside, followed by Mario.

Next, Schofield took down the two men holding Zack, dropping them with one shot each before yelling, “Zack, lie down and stay down!” Zack immediately dropped to his belly and covered his head with his hands.

Schofield then took rapid aim at the Thief holding Emma—a wiry bald man with a silver chain stretched between two facial piercings—but as Schofield fired, the man dropped down a ladder behind him, yanking Emma with him. Schofield wasn’t sure if he hit the man or not, but he didn’t have time to check, because right then a horizontal finger of fire rushed past him at very close range and he had to dive away.

It had actually been aimed at Bertie. The little robot had been doing so much damage that a Thief with a flamethrowing unit slung from a harness over his shoulders had unleashed a lance of fire at him. The flames washed over Bertie, engulfing him completely, but the little robot just rolled out of them, his rubber tires alight, and shot the flamethrowing Thief right between the eyes.

But then a far more dangerous attack came: the Caucasian officer known as Mako snatched up an RPG from the floor and fired it at Bertie.

The grenade shot across the wide space and hit Bertie square in the lower body.

Bertie blew apart.

His already-flaming tires went flying out in four different directions while shards of steel sprayed wildly outward. The little robot disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

Schofield saw it happen and his heart sank, but he couldn’t stop shooting. He was now alone in this fight, which meant he had to finish it quickly.

And so, in the single minute that followed, Shane Schofield, the Scarecrow, unleashed all of his fearsome skills as a warrior on the remaining twenty members of the crowd of Thieves.

He killed like a force of nature.

His face was blank, devoid of emotion. He just marched forward, firing coolly and calmly, without a single wasted bullet, an unstoppable, relentless, merciless Marine rifleman.

He nailed every man in sight.

The few members of the crowd who managed to raise a weapon in defense went down in sprays of blood, thrown off their feet by Schofield’s powerful fire. After firing the RPG, Mako used one of his own men as a human shield and took aim at Schofield but Schofield dropped them both with the same volley from his Steyr, firing it through the first man’s chest so that the same bullets punctured Mako’s heart, too.

Schofield then saw Big Jesus trying to unsling the unwieldy Kord from his back and took aim at him, but the big Chilean lieutenant was smart and he dived out the exit door, shutting it behind him—and those who fled for the door after him found that he had locked it behind him, sealing them in with Schofield.

They looked back in horror at the grim face of the man whose torture they had cheered only a short while ago.

Schofield shot them where they stood until there was no member of the Army of Thieves left alive on the balcony.

His enemies dead, Schofield raced to Mother’s side.

As he arrived at her body, hanging motionless from the forklift, to his great surprise, he saw her head move slightly, as if cocking to one side.

“Mother?” he said, unsure. It could have been a post-death reflex.

“Scarecrow?” Her voice was muffled by the wooden box over it. “No way. Was all that gunfire yours?”

Schofield hurriedly lowered the forklift, bringing Mother and Baba down to the floor, where he quickly shot open their handcuffs and hastily removed the boxes from their heads.

Mother’s box came off first.

Two dead rats tumbled out of it . . . headless . Their necks ended in ragged bloody stumps. Their heads had been wrenched off.

Mother’s teeth, Schofield saw, were bloody.

“Oh, Mother . . .” he said, clutching her in a firm embrace.

“Ozzy fucking Osbourne’s got nothing on me,” she said, hugging him back. “Anyone can bite the head off a bat onstage. Try biting the heads off of two wild fucking rats while they’re trying to get at you! Now that takes balls.”

Zack came over and removed Baba’s box and, just like Mother’s, out of it dropped two headless rats.

The Frenchman spat out some tiny rat bones. “Eugh! The fur gets between your teeth!”

“That was your plan?” Schofield said to Mother. “Fake your death and maybe make a move when they dumped your body?”

Mother shrugged. “Hey. Last I saw, you’d been crispy-fried and told me to fight on after your death. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

“Nice plan, actually.”

Mother shrugged. “When they put those boxes on our heads, I said to Baba, ‘Do what Ozzy Osbourne would do and then play dead.’ Luckily, Baba is a man of fine musical taste and understood what that meant.”

Schofield smiled. “I love you to death, Mother. And you’re growing on me, too, Baba.”

Baba nodded at Schofield’s weapons. “And I know those guns, monsieur. A fine woman owns them. Is she alive?”

“For now, yes, but we can talk about that later. This resurrection isn’t over yet. We gotta stop those bastards from firing another missile.”