Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

“Fuck me,” he gasped.

He recovered quickly: losing Typhon was a shame but not a disaster. Typhon was an excellent second-in-command, but since he knew Calderon’s real identity as a senior CIA agent, Typhon had always faced liquidation when this was all over. This had saved Calderon the effort.

As for Schofield: thank Christ—the fucking Energizer Bunny was finally gone.

Calderon kept moving. He still had a getaway to make.

The plane had just entered the gas cloud and, now flying on autopilot, it was programmed to penetrate deeper into the cloud. In less than two minutes, the warhead in the cockpit would go off.

Calderon hurried over to the tarp-covered object and threw off the tarpaulin . . .

. . . to reveal a compact mini-submarine.

It was a Russian Mir-4 Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle, a variant of the Mir-2. Only fifteen feet long with a curved glass bubble for its bow, it was capable of holding six crew, and while it was claimed by the Russians to be used only for scientific research, the Mir-4 was actually used for submarine transfers and clandestine insertions into hostile waters. This Mir-4 had been one of two submersibles that had been on the Russian freighter the Okhotsk when it had been taken six months ago.

With the jeep now out of the way, Calderon flicked a switch and jumped aboard the sub as it was shunted by an under-floor cable to the back of the hold, ready for release. Once it reached the end of the rear ramp, it simply tipped over the edge and like the jeep before it, dropped away into the gray Arctic sky.

Unlike the jeep, however, the Mir was fitted with four parachutes, which all blossomed above it as it fell, guiding the sub and Calderon to a gentle landing in the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean.

The mini-sub landed in the ocean with a soft splash and Calderon quickly drove it under the surface, heading away to a designated retrieval location where he would be met by a CIA Sturgeon -class submarine, his years-long mission now over save for the big bang.

Calderon had taken care of everything: the gas cloud, the warhead, the destruction of Dragon Island, his own escape.

He’d only missed one thing:

The figure dangling from the underbelly of the Antonov at the end of a Maghook: Captain Shane Michael Schofield.

AS SCHOFIELD’S jeep had tipped out the back of the Antonov, it had dropped away toward the ocean with Typhon still on it, screaming. He had screamed all the way down.

But Schofield hadn’t.

As the jeep had dropped out the back of the plane, he had called upon his trusty Maghook—small compared to the Magneteux and not nearly as sexy or strong—but it was all he had.

Leaping off the falling jeep, he’d fired the Maghook back up at the plane before he fell too far and the Maghook’s bulbous magnetic head thunked against the underside of the rear ramp and held. The jeep had fallen away beneath him, but he hadn’t. He was still in the game.

Schofield then reeled himself up using the Maghook’s internal spooler, arriving under the ramp just as a submersible of some kind came rumbling out of the hold and dropped into the sky, issuing some parachutes.

“That son of a bitch,” Schofield said as he climbed back up into the blustery hold, now the doomed Antonov’s only occupant. “But this isn’t over yet.”

Schofield hurried through the windblown hold and up into the empty cockpit.

He took it all in quickly: the autopilot, the spectroscope’s screen showing that the plane was now inside the flammable gas cloud, the fearsome warhead, and on the warhead, a timer that currently read:

00:34 . . . 00:33 . . . 00:32 . . .

“Thirty-two seconds to the end of the world . . .” Schofield breathed. “How do I get myself into these situations?”

He looked about himself for options, ideas, solutions.

He was basically on a flying bomb, one that would ignite a global atmospheric firestorm.

00:30 . . . 00:29 . . . 00:28 . . .

He stared at the warhead. Calderon had replaced all its exterior panels and they were all screwed shut. He’d never be able to extract the uranium sphere from it in time.

How do I stop this? How can I?

I can’t.

It’s too late . . .

And for the first time in his career, Schofield knew that it was true: he had finally run out of time.

Twenty-eight seconds later, the warhead detonated with all its mighty force.

THE DETONATION of the warhead containing the red-uranium sphere was devastating in its intensity. It sent out a blinding white-hot blast that expanded laterally in every direction.

Inside his Mir submersible, under the surface of the Arctic Ocean, Marius Calderon felt it. It shook his sub, even from this distance.

And then he frowned.

Deep underwater, he shouldn’t have felt the detonation. Water was an excellent buffer against concussion waves. But he had still felt it. The only way he would feel it underwater was if . . .

“No!” Calderon shouted in the solitude of his mini-sub. “ No! ”

For the warhead had most assuredly detonated, with the red-uranium sphere inside it. The only problem was, it had not detonated in the gas-infused sky.

As Calderon had just realized, it had detonated underwater.

It was the only thing Schofield could think to do.

Roll the warhead out of the cockpit into the hold—

00:20 . . . 00:19 . . . 00:18 . . .

Then pushing it off the back of the ramp—

00:11 . . . 00:10 . . . 00:09 . . .

The warhead tumbled end over end as it fell through the sky, its timer ticking all the way down—

00:08 . . . 00:07 . . . 00:06 . . .

Before it hit the ocean’s surface with a great splash and immediately went under, sinking fast—

00:05 . . . 00:04 . . . 00:03 . . .

Where it sank and sank into the blue haze—

00:02 . . . 00:01 . . . 00:00.

Beeeeeeep!

Boom.

The explosion of the warhead under the surface of the ocean looked like the standard undersea detonation of a thermonuclear device.

After the initial white-hot blast, a great circular cloud of superheated water—packed with billions of swirling micro-bubbles—materialized and expanded, shooting out laterally before it hit the surface, sending an absolutely gargantuan geyser of water spraying up into the sky, the greatest fountain in history.

Thankfully, the warhead had sunk deep enough before it blew. The heavy weight of ocean water above it had defused its potent catalytic power and so it did not ignite the sky.

Indeed, the only person it shook was Marius Calderon.

As he climbed back into the cockpit of the Antonov and saw the great circular explosion down on the ocean’s surface, Schofield breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Battered, bloody, tortured, almost overcome with exhaustion and having lost many brave people in the process, he and his team had beaten impossible odds and stopped the Army of Thieves from setting fire to the world.

It was only then that he saw the uplink dish, sitting on the cockpit’s floor in front of him with all its lights extinguished.

It had been switched off.

“Oh, shit . . .” he said. “The Russians.”

If the Russians had detected this and launched a nuke, Dragon Island and everyone on it had less than twenty minutes to live.

Schofield turned off the autopilot and swung the plane around, banking hard and fast, heading back toward Dragon Island.

FINAL PHASE

SCARECROW VS THE ARMY OF THIEVES