Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow

But then the Peugeot arrived at the gatehouse and disgorged one of its occupants who ran inside—and suddenly, before Knight's eyes, the drawbridge slowly began to rise.

'No . . .' he said aloud. 'No!'

He floored it.

The Kenworth rig roared toward the medieval gatehouse, picking up speed.

The drawbridge rose slowly on its iron chains.

It was going to be close.

The big rig rushed forward.

The bridge rose slowly: one foot, two feet, three feet . . .

The men in the Peugeot opened fire as Knight's rig thundered over the last fifty yards.

Knight ducked. His windshield shattered.

The drawbridge kept rising . . .

. . . and then the rig roared in through the gatehouse's archway, whipping past the Executive Solutions men . . .

. . . and raced up the ramp-like drawbridge, easily doing a hundred, before— vooml —it launched itself off the leading edge of the bridge, shooting high into the sky, soaring over the vertiginous gap in the road beneath it and . . .

Whump!

. . . the big rig hit solid ground again, banging down on the roadway, bouncing once, twice, three times, before Knight regained control.

'Phwoar,' he sighed, relieved. 'That was—'

SLAM!

The road in front of the rig erupted in a mushroom cloud of dirt.

A shellburst from the destroyer.

Knight hit the brakes and his rig skidded sharply, lurching to a halt inches away from a newly-created hole in the road.

Knight groaned.

The entire road in front of him had simply vanished—the whole

width of it vaporised—the distance across the chasm to the other side at least thirty feet.

He and Gant were trapped—perfectly—on the vertical cliff-face, bounded both in front and behind by sheer voids in the roadway.

And at that moment, as if right on cue, the Axon corporate helicopter—which had watched the entire chase from a safe distance high above the road—hovered into view beside them, its pilot speaking into his helmet radio.

'Fuck,' Knight said.

UNITED STATES EMBASSY LONDON, ENGLAND 1400 HOURS LOCAL TIME (0900 HOURS E.S.T USA)

lIn their opinion, the war on terror isn't going far enough. While the members of Majestic-12 didn't plan the September 11 attacks, make no mistake, they are taking full advantage of them . . .'

The man talking on the television screen was Benjamin Y. Rosenthal, the Mossad agent who had been killed on the roof of the King's Tower an hour ago.

Book II watched the TV intently. Behind him stood the State Department guy, Scott Moseley.

Arrayed on the desks around them were documents—hundreds of documents. Everything Benjamin Rosenthal knew about Majestic-12 and this world-wide bounty hunt.

Book scanned the pile of documents again:

Surveillance photos of men in limousines arriving at economic summits.

Secretly-taped phone transcripts.

Stolen US Department of Defense files.

Even two documents taken from the French central intelligence agency—the notorious DGSE. One was a DGSE dossier on several of the world's leading businessmen who had been invited to a private dinner with the French President six months ago.

The second document was far more explosive. It outlined the recent capture by the DGSE of 24 members of the terrorist organisation Global Jihad, who had been planning to fly a tanker plane into the Eiffel Tower. Like Al-Qaeda, Global Jihad was a truly world-wide terrorist group, made up of fanatical Islamists who wanted to take the concept of holy war to a whole new global level.

The document that Book now saw was especially notable because one of Global Jihad's leading figures, Shoab Riis, had been among those caught. Normally the capture of such a high-profile terrorist would have been publicised worldwide. But the French had kept Riis's arrest to themselves.

Rosenthal had added a comment in the margin: 'All were taken to DGSE headquarters in Brest. No trial. No newspaper reports. None of the 24 was ever seen again. Possible connection to Kormoran/ Chameleon. Is France working with M-12? Check further.'

But the most revealing evidence of all was in the Mossad videotapes of Rosenthal's interrogation.

Put simply, Rosenthal had been sitting on dynamite.

First, he had known the composition of Majestic-12:

The Chairman: Randolph Loch, military industrialist, 70 years old, head of Loch-Mann Industries, the defence contractor. L-M Industries manufactured spare parts for military aircraft like the Huey and Black Hawk helicopters. It had made a fortune out of Vietnam and Desert Storm.

The Vice-Chair: Cornelius Kopassus, the legendary Greek container-shipping magnate.

Arthur Quandt, patriarch of the Quandt family steel empire.

Warren Shusett, the world's most successful investor.

J. D. Cairnton, chairman of the colossal Astronox Pharmaceutical Company.

Jonathan Killian, chairman and CEO of Axon Corp, the vast missile and warship-building conglomerate.

The list went on.

Apart from, the absence of a few retail fortunes—like the Walton family in America, the Albrechts in Germany or the Mattencourts

in France—it could have been a list of the Top Ten Richest People on Earth.

And as Major Benjamin Rosenthal had discovered, they were all men whose fortunes would be considerably enlarged by one thing.

Rosenthal on the screen: ''Their fortunes are based on military action. War. World War II was the foundation of the Quandt steel empire. In the '60s, Randolph Loch was one of the most vocal supporters of the US going to Vietnam. Warfare consumes oil. Warfare consumes steel. Warfare calls for the construction of thousands of new ships, helicopters, guns, bombs, pharmaceutical kits. In a world of big business, global warfare is the biggest business of them all.''

And at another time:

'Look at the "War on Terror". The United States dropped over four thousand bombs on the mountains of Afghanistan, and for what result? They didn 't destroy bridges or supply routes, or military nerve centres. But when four thousand bombs are used, four thousand bombs must be replenished. And that means buying them. And what happened after Afghanistan? Surprise, surprise: another fight was found, this time with Iraq.''

Another cut:

'Do not underestimate the influence these men wield. They make Presidents, and they break them. From Bill Clinton's impeachment to the rise of a former KGB agent named Vladimir Putin to the Presidency of Russia, Majestic-12 always has a say in who sits in the seats of world power and for how long. Even if it doesn't directly bankroll a given President's campaign, it always maintains the ability to bring him down at any given moment.

'To this end Majestic-12 has forged strong links with leading figures in the world's major intelligence agencies. The Director of the CIA: a former business partner of Randolph Loch. The head of MI-6: Cornelius Kopassus's brother-in-law. That Killian fellow has been a regular visitor to the Paris home of the Director of the DGSE.

'After all,' the Mossad agent smiled, 'who knows more about a country's leaders than that country's own intelligence service?'

On the TV screen, Rosenthal became serious:

'More than anything else, though, the war that M-12 loved the most, the war that garnered them more wealth than they ever dreamed of, was the one war that was never actually fought: the US-Soviet Cold War.

'Desert Storm. Bosnia. Somalia. Afghanistan. Iraqi Freedom. They pale in comparison to the absolute goldmine that was the Cold War. For as the US-Soviet arms race continued apace and indirect Cold War clashes occurred in Korea and Vietnam, the members of M-12 amassed fortunes of monstrous proportions.