Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow

Damn.

He kept falling—not vertically, but at a slanting angle thanks to the inertia of the truck—the cliff-face streaking past him at phenomenal speed. He saw the ocean waves below him, rushing upwards. If he hit the water from this height, his body would explode against the surface and burst like a tomato.

Do something! his mind screamed.

Like what!

And then he remembered—

—and quickly yanked the ripcord on his chest webbing. The rip-cord that was attached to the attack parachute still on his back. He'd been wearing it ever since the battle on board the Hercules. It had been so compact that he'd almost forgotten it was there.

The attack parachute blossomed above him, a bare 80 feet above the water.

It didn't slow his fall completely, but it did enough.

He lurched in the air about 20 feet above the waves, his downward speed significantly reduced, before— shoom —he entered the water feet-first and disengaged the parachute, allowing himself to shoot into the ocean trailing a finger of bubbles above him.

And not a second too soon.

For a moment later, the Mack rig and the Mirage fighter crashed down in a flaming metal heap into the waves nearby.

Schofield surfaced a short distance out from the cliffs, amid some of the burning remains of the fighter jet.

Careful to stay out of sight, he trod water amid the floating debris and sure enough, a minute later, he saw the Axon chopper swing around a nearby cliff-bend and zoom back toward the castle.

Had Gant and Knight got away? Or were they in that chopper?

'Fox! Fox! Come in! This is Scarecrow,' he whispered into his throat-mike. 'For what it's worth, I'm still alive. Are you okay?'

A single laboured cough answered him. It was an old technique—she was up there but she obviously couldn't talk. They'd caught her.

'One for yes, two for no. Are you in that Axon chopper I just saw?'

Single cough.

'Are you wounded badly?'

Single cough.

'Really badly?'

Single cough.

Shit, Schofield thought.

'Is Knight with you?'

Single cough.

'Are they taking you back to the castle?'

Single cough.

'Hang in there, Libby. I'm coming for you.'

Schofield looked around himself and was about to start swimming for the shore when abruptly he saw the French destroyer surging to a halt 200 yards away from him off the coast.

On the side of the great ship, he saw a small patrol boat being lowered into the water, with at least a dozen men on board it.

The patrol boat dropped into the ocean and immediately zipped away from the destroyer, heading directly for him.

Schofield could do nothing except watch the French patrol boat approach him.

'I'm sure the French have forgotten about that thing in Antarctica,' he muttered to himself.

Then his earpiece burst to life.

'Scarecrow! It's Book! Come in! I've got some big news for you.'

'Hey, Book, I'm here.'

'Can you talk?'

Schofield rose and fell with the waves of the Atlantic. 'Yeah, sure, why not.' He eyed the patrol boat, now only 150 yards away. 'Although I have to warn you, I think I'm about to die.'

'Yes, but I know why,' Book II said.

'Book, patch Gant and Knight in on this transmission,' Schofield said. 'They can't talk, but I want them to hear this, too.'

Book did so.

Then he told them all about the Kormoran 'supertankers' and the Chameleon clone missiles, and Majestic-12's plan to start a new Cold War—on Terror—by firing those missiles on the major cities of the world. He also told them about the CincLock VII security system which only Schofield and those on the list could disarm, and the incorporation by Ronson Weitzman of the US Universal Disarm Code into it, a code which Rosenthal had described as 'a yet-to-be-determined Mersenne Prime'.

Schofield frowned.

'A Mersenne Prime . . .' he said. 'A Mersenne prime number. It's a number . . .'

The image of General Ronson Weitzman in the Hercules flashed across his mind, babbling incoherently under the influence of the British truth drug: it wasn't just Kormoran. It was Chameleon, too . . . oh God, Kormoran and Chameleon together. Boats and missiles. All disguised. Christ. . . But the Universal Disarm Code, it changes every week. At the moment, it's . . . the sixth ... oh my God, the sixth m . . . m . . . mercen . . . mercen—'

Mercen . . .

Mersenne.

At the time, Schofield had thought Weitzman was just mixing up his sentences, trying to say the word 'mercenary'.

But he wasn't.

Under the influence of the drug, Weitzman had been telling the truth. He had been naming the code.

The Universal Disarm Code was the sixth Mersenne prime number.

As Book relayed his tale to Schofield and the others, behind him Scott Moseley was busy inserting the GPS co-ordinates from the launch list into the plotting program.

'I've got the first three boats,' Moseley said. 'The first co-ordinate

must be the location of the Kormoran launch boat, the second is the target.'

He handed Book the document: now with place names added to

it and highlighted:

Book relayed this to Schofield, 'The first boat is in the English Channel, near Cherbourg, off the Normandy beaches. It'll fire on London, Paris and Berlin. The next two boats are in New York and San Francisco, each set to take out multiple cities.'

'Christ,' Schofield said as he hovered in the water.

The patrol boat was 50 yards away, almost on him now.

'Okay, Book. Listen,' he said, just as a low wave smacked him in the face. He spat out a mouthful of salt water. 'Submarine interdiction. Those missile boats can't launch if they're on the bottom of the ocean. Decode the GPS locations of all the Kormoran supertankers and contact any attack subs we have nearby. 6881s, boomers, I don't care. Anything with a torpedo on board. Then send them to take out those Kormoran launch boats.'

'That might work for some of the tankers, Scarecrow, but it won't work for all of them.'

'I know,' Schofield said. 'I know. If we can't destroy a launch vessel, then we'll have to board it and disarm the missiles in their silos.

'The thing is, a light-signal response unit would require the dis-armer—me—to be reacting to a disarm program on the unit's screen. Which means I'd have to be sitting within sixty feet of each missile's control console to disarm them, but I can't be everywhere around the world at the same time. Which means I'll need people on each launch boat connecting me via satellite to that boat's missiles.'

'You need people on each boat?'

'That's right, Book. If there are no subs in the area, someone's going to have get on board each Kormoran boat, get within sixty feet of its missile console, attach a satellite uplink to that console and then patch me in via satellite. Only then can I use a CincLock unit to personally stop all the missile launches.'

'Holy shit,' Book said. 'So what do you want me to do?'

Another wave splashed over Schofield's head. 'Let's tackle the first three boats first. Get yourself to New York, Book. And call

Moseley plotted the points on a map. 'The first boat is in the English Channel—off Cherbourg, France, up near the Normandy beaches.'

David Fairfax. Send him to San Francisco. I want people I know on those tankers. If I get out of this alive, I'll try for the tanker in the English Channel. Oh, and ask Fairfax what the sixth Mersenne prime number is. If he doesn't know, tell him to find out.

'And last, send that Department of Defense inspection team in early—the one that was going to visit Axon's missile-construction plant in Norfolk, Virginia, at 12 noon. I want to know what's happened at that plant.'