Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow Returns

“That cable car is too slow. It won’t get us down fast enough,” Emma said.

“You’re right, it won’t.” Schofield was still looking up at the cable. It stretched steeply away from them, sweeping down to the station on Acid Islet 1,000 feet away.

He turned.

“Everybody up onto the roof of the cable car. We’re gonna zip-line down that cable.”

4:20 . . . 4:19 . . . 4:18 . . .

They all clambered up onto the roof of the bullet-battered cable car.

The cable stretched away from them, impossibly long and dizzyingly steep, ending at the islet far, far away.

Once they were all up there, Schofield said, “Okay, Zack and Emma: use your belts. Loop them over the cable like this.”

He looped Zack’s belt over the cable, then crossed its two ends so they formed an X. “We dislodged most of the ice on the cable when we came up earlier, so the cable shouldn’t be too icy. To slow yourself as you slide, pull your hands outward; that’ll cause your belt to squeeze on the cable and arrest your slide. Got it? Good. Go.”

Zack went. He leapt off the cable car and with a scream of terror shot down the superlong cable. He became very tiny very quickly as he slid away.

Emma was next. She stepped tentatively to the edge of the cable car’s roof.

“We’re seriously out of time, Emma,” Schofield urged. “You gotta go now.”

“Right,” she said, and with a final deep breath, she slid away down the outrageously long zip-line.

That left Schofield and Champion. Schofield lashed his own belt over the cable—

3:31 . . . 3:30 . . . 3:29 . . .

—and pulled Champion into a tight embrace.

Their faces were inches apart. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his neck while his hands were stretched upward, holding his belt looped over the cable.

“Hang on tight,” he said.

And for the briefest of moments, Veronique Champion looked deep into his scarred eyes.

And to Schofield’s complete surprise, she suddenly gave him a quick but passionate kiss on the lips. “I’ve never met a man like you. You are special.” She pulled back from him. “Now fly, Scarecrow! Fly!”

As she said it, five members of the Army of Thieves burst through the terminal’s door, machine guns blazing.

But their bullets hit nothing, for the moment they entered the terminal, Schofield—with Champion gripping him tightly and Bertie still on his back—leapt off the cable car’s roof.

THE TINY figures of Schofield and Champion shot down the superlong cable that connected Dragon Island’s cliff-top terminal with Acid Islet’s sea-level station.

They looked infinitesimally small in front of the towering cliffs behind them and the vast horseshoe-shaped bay around them—but they didn’t care for the view now.

They slid fast, very fast, shooting down the long swooping cable, their enormous slide lasting a full twenty seconds.

Schofield gripped his belt tightly, and as he saw the yawning square doors of the station on the islet getting closer, he pulled outward on his belt, causing it to tighten around the cable.

They slowed immediately and at first he thought he had left his braking move too late, and he pulled with all his strength on the belt and it bit against the cable, trying to slow, and they entered the lower station fast and—

—swung to a lurching halt.

Zack and Emma were already on the platform and they helped Champion down.

When she was safely down, Schofield dropped to the platform and checked his watch:

3:01 . . . 3:00 . . . 2:59 . . .

“Three minutes, folks,” he said. “Run. Run as fast you can.”

They bolted out of the cable car station, down the short road and into the huge hall-sized building filled with vats and tanks.

2:00 . . . 1:59 . . . 1:58 . . .

Zack and Emma ran in front, while Schofield ran with Champion draped over his shoulder, limping along as fast as she could.

1:30 . . . 1:29 . . . 1:28 . . .

Across some catwalks, zigzagging.

1:00 . . . 0:59 . . .

“One minute!” Schofield called.

Down some ladders. Champion made it awkward, slowing them down.

0:40 . . . 0:39 . . .

Schofield landed on the bottom level and saw the door he’d seen before: the superthick metal door with the nuclear symbol on it. “There it is!”

0:30 . . . 0:29 . . .

They rushed across the floor of the hall.

0:18 . . . 0:17 . . .

Zack and Emma dashed inside the thick reinforced doorway.

0:16 . . . 0:15 . . .

Schofield, Bertie and Champion ducked in after them.

0:14 . . . 0:13 . . .

Zack and Emma swung the heavy door shut behind them. It closed with a resounding boom .

0:10 . . . 0:09 . . .

They all scampered down a concrete stairwell, down several levels.

0:05 . . . 0:04 . . .

Through two more thick doors.

0:03 . . . 0:02 . . .

Through a final door, which Schofield slammed shut behind them as they all dropped to the floor, backs pressed against the solid concrete wall.

0:01 . . . 0:00.

There was a moment of silence.

Then it came.

Impact.

THE RUSSIAN ICBM came rocketing out of the sky like a thunderbolt, lancing down toward Dragon Island at over 700 miles per hour.

The remaining members of the Army of Thieves had perhaps five seconds to admire its dazzling tail-flame and smoke-trail—enough time to realize with horror exactly what it was and that it brought with it their deaths.

The missile detonated.

A flash of light and an almighty boom were followed by a shockingly powerful outward-moving blast-wave that consumed Dragon Island.

The base’s two gas vents—previously so huge and gigantic—were instantly ripped apart by the shock wave. They simply disintegrated to dust. The disc-shaped tower tilted and fell before also being obliterated completely by the thermonuclear flame. Some of Dragon’s coastal cliffs trembled under the weight of the colossal explosion and spilled giant chunks of rock into the sea. The cable car terminal toppled off its perch, falling into the bay.

Everything was incinerated; every structure and person on the island was vaporized.

A towering mushroom cloud rose into the sky.

Dragon Island was no more.

So was the Army of Thieves.

DEEP WITHIN the earth, in their nuclear bunker on Acid Islet, Schofield and the others all looked up at the deafening roar of the blast.

The concrete walls around them shook, but held. The lights flickered, but the generators worked.

When it was over, they all looked at each other.

“What do we do now?” Zack asked.

Schofield saw an old communications console on the wall. He walked over to it. It was connected to a generator and appeared to be in working order.

“We radio home. Then we settle in and wait for someone to come and pick us up.”

That wait, it turned out, wasn’t long, only a few days.

After contacting the listening post at Eareckson Air Station again, Schofield was once again put through to the Situation Room.

An attack submarine with nuclear shielding—the USS Seawolf —was dispatched to pick them up. It would arrive, he was told, in three days. Until then, all they could do was wait.

During that wait, they drank what water they had sparingly and shared the few MREs that Bertie carried.

Schofield thought of Mother and Baba—especially Mother. They had apparently succeeded in stopping the launch of the megatrain’s missile, but at what cost: Had they been shot? Wounded? Killed? They hadn’t replied to his radio calls earlier. Schofield wondered what had happened to Mother. If she had even been alive when the Russian nuke had hit, he couldn’t see how she could have survived its blast. And if she had been killed, he hoped she had gone out the way she had lived—all guns fucking blazing.