Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow

Drake frowned.

And looked down—to see one of the tiger sharks in the water right next to his boots, drawn to the edge of the platform by Knight's blood-laced saliva.

Just as Knight had hoped.

'Ah—' Drake took an involuntary step back from the big ten-foot shark at his feet. . .

. . . and walked into the strike zone of a far more dangerous predator.

What Knight did next, he did very very fast.

First, he whip-snapped his body upwards, lashing out with his legs, and grabbed Drake hard around the ribs from behind. Knight squeezed and there came a hideous snap-snap-snap, the sound of Drake's ribs breaking.

Drake roared with pain.

Then Knight yanked the mercenary closer so that he could reach

something hanging from the utility vest— his utility vest—that Drake was wearing.

Knight pulled a mountaineering piton from the vest and one-handed, jammed the piton into his left-hand manacle and pressed its release.

With a powerful spring-loaded thwack, the piton expanded in an instant—

—and the old iron manacle around Knight's wrist cracked open and suddenly his left hand was free.

Up on the viewing balcony, Cedric Wexley saw what was happening and immediately whipped up his gun, but Knight was holding Drake in the way with his legs.

And he wasn't finished with Drake either.

He used his now-free left hand to grab a second item from the vest: the miniature blowtorch.

Knight yanked the blowtorch from its pouch and immediately pulled the trigger, firing it at point-blank range into Drake's back.

The mini-blowtorch burst to life, emitting a superheated blue flame.

Drake roared.

The spike-like blue flame lanced right through his body, emerging from the other side—the front side—like the blade of a luminescent sword.

Drake's face, shocked and dying, fell back against Knight's chest.

'You got off lightly,' Knight growled, applying more power, blasting the insides of Drake's body to nothing.

Then the body went limp, and fell, and as it did so, Knight unclasped his utility vest from it, at the same time using his piton to break open his other manacle.

As Drake fell, however, Knight became exposed to Cedric Wexley up in the viewing balcony, who started firing.

But now Knight was completely free.

He dived behind Drake's corpse, let bullet after bullet hit it before, without warning, he rolled Drake's body into the blood-stained

water, right in front of the nearest tiger shark, and then, to everyone's surprise . . .

. . . leapt into the water after it himself.

The shark lunged at Drake's corpse, bit into it with an almighty crunch, started tearing it to shreds. The second shark came over quickly and joined in the frenzy.

A churning bloody foam spilled out across the pool. Waves sloshed every which way.

After a few minutes, however, the frenzy died down and the water was calm once more.

But there was no sign of Knight.

Indeed, Aloysius Knight never surfaced again inside the deadly pool.

He did surface, however, outside the Forteresse de Valois, amid the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

Exactly six minutes after he'd dived underneath the sharks feeding on Drake's body, he breached the surface of the ocean, still holding his Pony Bottle to his lips.

The mini-scuba bottle had only just had enough air in it to get him through the long underwater passage that connected the Shark Pit to the open sea.

Knight didn't bob in the water for long. A homing transponder on his vest took care of that.

In a matter of minutes, the hawk-shaped shadow of his Sukhoi S-37 swung into place above him, blasting the water around him with its thrusters.

Then a harness fell out of the plane's bomb bay and slapped into the water beside him, and within moments, Aloysius Knight was sitting inside the Black Raven, back with Mother and Rufus.

'You all right, Boss?' Rufus said, throwing him a new pair of yellow-lensed glasses.

Knight caught them as he slumped to the floor of the Raven's rear holding cell, put them on. He didn't answer Rufus's question. Just nodded. He was still shell-shocked by the horrific execution he had just witnessed in the Shark Pit.

Mother said, 'What about the Scarecrow? And my little Chickadee?'

Knight looked up at her sharply.

Behind his yellow glasses, his eyes were the picture of horror. He gazed at Mother, wondering what to say.

Then abruptly he stood. 'Rufus. Do you have a fix on Schofield? Those MicroDots I put on his Palm Pilot should have rubbed off on his hand.'

'I've got him, Boss. And he's still moving. Looks like someone took him to that French carrier off the coast.'

Knight turned to Mother, took a deep, deep breath. 'Schofield's alive, but'—he swallowed—'there could be a problem with the girl.'

'Oh dear God, no . . .' Mother said.

'I can't talk about it now,' Knight said. 'We have to rescue Schofield.'

THE FRENCH AIRCRAFT CARRIER RICHELIEU, ATLANTIC OCEAN, OFF THE FRENCH COAST

Shane Schofield was thrown into a small steel-walled room adjoining the below-decks hangar. The door slammed shut behind him.

There was nothing in the room but a table and a chair.

On the table sat Lefevre's CincLock-VII disarming unit. Next to the unit, with a little red pilot light burning brightly on its top, was:

A phosphorus grenade.

High in the corner of the room, hidden behind a dark glass plate, Schofield heard a camera whirring.

'Captain Schofield,' the DGSE agent's voice came over some speakers. 'A simple test. The phosphorus grenade you see before you is connected by shortwave radio to the CincLock unit on the table. The only way to disarm the grenade is through the CincLock unit. For the purposes of this exercise, the final disarm code is 123. The grenade will go off in one minute. Your time starts . . . now.'

'Holy shit,' Schofield said, sitting down quickly.

He examined the CincLock unit up close.

White and red circles filled the main screen—red on the left, white on the right. Bing. A message appeared on the lower screen:

FIRST PROTOCOL (PROXIMITY): SATISFIED. INITIATE SECOND PROTOCOL.

Immediately, the white circles on the main screen began to flash—each one blinking for a brief instant, one at a time, in a slow random sequence.

The screen squealed in protest.

SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): FAILED DISARM ATTEMPT

RECORDED.

THREE FAILED DISARM ATTEMPTS WILL RESULT IN DEFAULT

DETONATION.

SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): RE-ACTIVATED.

'What?' Schofield said to the screen.

'Fifty seconds, Captain,'' Lefevre's voice said. 'You have to touch the illuminated circles in the prescribed order.'' 'Oh. Right.' The white circles began to flash again, one after the other.

And now Schofield began pressing them—just after they flashed.

'Forty seconds . . .'

The white circles' sequence became faster. Schofield's hands began to move faster with them, touching the circles on the screen.

Then, abruptly, one of the red circles on the left side of the display illuminated.

Schofield wasn't ready for it. But hit it anyway, and got it in time. The white circles resumed their sequence, now blinking very quickly. Schofield's fingers increased their pace, too.

'Thirty seconds . . . you're doing well . . .'

Then another red circle flashed.

And this time Schofield was too slow.

The screen beeped angrily.

SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): FAILED DISARM ATTEMPT

RECORDED.

THREE FAILED DISARM ATTEMPTS WILL RESULT IN DEFAULT

DETONATION.