Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow

Lefevre nodded to the driver of Christie's forklift.

The driver fired up the engine and drove the vehicle a few yards to the left, so that Christie—raised up on the forklift's prongs—was positioned right behind the thrusters of a nearby Rafale fighter jet. The driver then quickly jumped out of his seat and ran away.

A moment later, Schofield saw why.

ROOOOAAAARRRRR!

The fighter's engines rumbled to life. Schofield saw another French soldier standing in its cockpit.

The battered and ragged Alec Christie looked up at the sound of the colossal noise, and found himself staring into the yawning rear thruster of the Rafale fighter. He didn't seem to care. He was too beaten, too weary to bother straining at his bonds.

Lefevre nodded to the man in the cockpit.

The man hit the plane's thrust controls.

Instantly, a shocking tongue of white-hot fire blasted out from the rear thruster of the Rafale, engulfing the immobile Christie.

The heat-blast battered the British agent's body like a wind-fan—the piping-hot air blasted his hair backwards, ripped the skin off his face, burned his clothes in a nanosecond—until ultimately it tore his body to pieces.

Then, abruptly, the burst stopped and the hangar was silent again.

All that remained of Alec Christie were four grisly quarters, charred and disgusting, dangling from the forklift's prongs.

'This is very bad,' Schofield swallowed.

Lefevre turned to him. 'Does that refresh your memory at all?'

'I'm telling you, I don't know,' Schofield said. 'I don't know about Killian or the African countries, or if they have anything in common. This is the first I've heard of them.'

'Then I am afraid we have no further need for you,' Lefevre said. 'It is now time for the Admiral and the General to have their wish and watch you die.'

And with that, Lefevre nodded to Schofield's forklift driver. Schofield's vehicle moved forward, stopping alongside Christie's charred forklift, in front of the Rafale's second rear thruster.

Schofield gazed into the dark depths of the thruster.

'General?' Lefevre said to the old Army officer, the man who had lost an entire paratrooper unit to Schofield in Antarctica. 'Would you like to do the honours?'

'With pleasure.'

The General stood up from his chair, and climbed up into the Rafale's cockpit, glaring at Schofield all the way.

He leaned into the cockpit, reached for the flight stick, his thumb hovering over the 'afterburn' switch.

'Good-bye, Captain Schofield,' Lefevre said matter-of-factly. 'World history will have to continue without you. Au revoir.'

The General's thumb came down on the 'BURN' switch.

Just as a gigantic explosion boomed out from somewhere above the main hangar.

Klaxons sounded.

Warning lights flashed to life.

And the entire aircraft carrier was suddenly awash with the red lighting of an emergency.

The General's thumb had frozen a millimetre above the burn

switch.

An ensign ran up to the Navy Admiral. 'Sir! We're under attack!'

'What?' the Admiral yelled. 'By whom!'

'It looks like a Russian fighter, sir.'

'A Russian fighter? One Russian fighter! This is an aircraft carrier, for God's sake! Who in their right mind would attack an aircraft carrier with a single plane?'

The Black Raven hovered level with the flight deck of the Richelieu, raining gunfire and missiles down on the fighter planes parked there.

Four missile smoke-trails extended out from the Sukhoi's wings and then separated to pursue different targets.

One Rafale fighter on the deck was instantly blasted to pieces, while two anti-aircraft missile stations were obliterated. The fourth missile whizzed into the main hangar bay and rammed into an AWACS plane, destroying it in a billowing explosion.

Inside the Raven, Rufus flew brilliantly.

In the gunner's seat behind him sat Knight, swivelling around in the plane's 360-degree revolving rear chair, lining up targets and then blazing away with the Raven's guns.

'Mother! You ready?' Knight called.

Mother stood in the converted bomb bay behind the cockpit—armed to the teeth: MP-7, M-16, Desert Eagle pistols; she even had one of Knight's rocket launcher packs strapped to her back.

'Fuckin'-A.'

'Then go!' Knight hit a button.

Whack!

The floor of the bomb bay/holding cell snapped open and Mother dropped down through it, whizzing down on her Maghook's rope.

Inside the French aircraft carrier's control tower, chaos reigned.

Comm-techs were shouting into their radio-mikes, relaying information to the captain.

'—damn thing got under our radars! Must have some sort of stealth mechanism—'

'—They've hit the anti-aircraft stations on the flight deck—'

'—Get those fighters to the catapults nowV

'Sir! The Triomphe says it has a clear shot. . .'

'Tell it to fire!'

In response to the order, an anti-aircraft missile streaked out from one of the destroyers in the carrier group—heading straight for the Black Raven.

'Rufus! I hope you fixed our electronic countermeasures when we were in Archangel!'

'Taken care of, Boss.'

The missile zoomed towards them at phenomenal speed.

But at the last possible moment, it hit the Raven's electronic jamming shield and veered wildly away . . .

. . . and slammed into the outer hull of the aircraft carrier!

'Escorts! Cease fire! Cease fire!' the captain yelled. 'That plane is too close to us! You're hitting us! Electronics Department—find out what its jamming frequency is and neutralise it! We'll have to destroy it with fighters.'

Inside the main hangar bay of the carrier, Schofield was still quasi-crucified in front of the thrusters of the parked Rafale fighter.

Abruptly, the deck around him banked steeply as the immense carrier wheeled around in the face of the Black Raven's surprise assault.

Lefevre and the French generals were now all on radios, looking for answers.

All, that is, except for the Army General in the cockpit of the Rafale.

After the initial distraction, he now glared back at Schofield. He wasn't going to miss this opportunity.

He reached for the 'afterburn' switch again, gripped the control stick just as— sprack! —a bullet entered his ear and the cockpit around him was sprayed with his brains.

In all the confusion, no-one had noticed the shadowy figure that had landed on the open-air starboard elevator adjoining the main hangar, a figure that had whizzed to the bottom of a vertical rope like a spider on a thread, a figure bearing arms.

Mother.

Carrying an MP-7 in one hand and an M-16 in the other, Mother stormed through the hangar bay towards Schofield. She was like an unstoppable force of nature.

The squad of French paratroopers that had been guarding Schofield came at her from all sides—from behind vehicles, from around parked fighter jets.

But Mother just strode forward, nailing them left, right and centre, never once losing her stride.

She loosed two shots to the left—hit two paratroopers in their faces. Swung right—firing her M-16 pistol-style—and another three bad guys went down.

A paratrooper rose from the wing of a Rafale above her and Mother just somersaulted, firing as she rolled, peppering him with bloody holes.

She threw two smoke grenades next, and in the haze that followed, she moved and hunted like a vengeful ghost.

Four French paratroopers went down, sucked into the smoke-haze—so, too, the French Admiral. Not even the spy, Lefevre, could escape her. A four-bladed shuriken throwing knife whistled out of the smoke near him and entered his Adam's apple. He would die slowly.