Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow

Then suddenly, Mother burst out of the cloud haze right next to Schofield on his forklift.

'Hey, Scarecrow. How's it hanging?' she said.

'Feeling much better now that you're here,' Schofield said.

Two of Knight's pitons made short work of his handcuffs. In seconds he was on solid ground again, free.

But before Mother could hand him some guns, Schofield dashed over to Lefevre's body lying on the ground nearby.

He picked up something from the ground beside the dying Frenchman, returned to Mother's side. She handed him an MP-7 and a Desert Eagle.

'Ready to do some damage?' she asked.

Schofield turned to her, his eyes catching the RPG pack on her back.

'I'm ready to do some serious damage,' he said.

They ran towards a jeep parked nearby.

In rapid two-by-two catapult launches, four state-of-the-art Rafale fighters shot down the runway of the Richelieu and took off.

They wheeled around in the sky above the carrier, turning back in deadly formation, heading for the hovering Black Raven.

'They're coming!' Rufus yelled.

'I see them!' Knight called.

He whirled around in his revolving seat, hammering on his triggers like a kid playing a video game.

Two Rafales shot toward them, cannons blazing.

A phalanx of orange tracer bullets sizzled through the air all around the Raven. The Raven banked and rolled in the sky, dodging the tracers, at the same time returning fire from its own revolving belly-mounted gun.

Then the first two planes overshot them—twin sonic booms. But that was only the first act, a distraction to hide the main show.

For the other two French fighters had swung around low, skimming over the ocean waves from the other direction, coming at the Sukhoi from below and behind.

Still hovering above the carrier's starboard elevator, the Sukhoi swivelled in mid-air, faced these two new planes head-on.

'Damn it,' Rufus said, eyeing his countermeasures screen. 'The bastards are screwing with our jamming frequency . . . it's flicking on and off. We're losing missile jam.'

The two new Rafales fired two missiles each.

Knight blasted away with his cannons at the missiles, hit two of them, but the other two missiles ducked and rose and swerved too well.

'Rufus . . . !'

The missiles roared toward them.

Rufus saw them coming, and a moment before it was too late, saw the answer.

The missiles rushed forward, zooming in for the kill . . .

. . . just as Rufus swung the Black Raven inside the massive doorway that opened off the aircraft carrier's starboard elevator, manoeuvring his airborne fighter inside the ship's main hangar!

The missiles—unlike the shots from the destroyer, he Triomphe — were fitted with electronic detection systems that didn't allow them to strike their own carrier. As such, they ditched into the ocean, detonating in twin hundred-foot geysers.

Inside the carrier's tower, radar operators stared at their screens in confusion, shouted into their radio-mikes:

'—Where the fuck did it go?—'

'— What? Say again—'

'What happened?' the captain asked. 'Where are they?'

'Sir. They're inside us!'

The Black Raven now hovered inside the cavernous hangar of the French aircraft carrier.

'I like your style, Rufus,' Knight said as he started firing indiscriminately at the array of parked planes, helicopters and trucks.

Like a giant bird trapped inside a living room, the Black Raven powered over the interior of the hangar, overturning entire planes with its backwash, flinging fuel trucks into the walls.

It shoomed across the hangar causing untold mayhem and destruction, its two high tail fins even scraping against the ceiling once.

Knight called into his radio: 'Mother! Where are you?'

A lone jeep shot towards the aft end of the elongated hangar bay, driving at full speed, zooming under tilting planes and bouncing fuel trucks, with Mother at the wheel and Schofield crouched in the back.

Mother yelled. 'I'm at the other end of the hangar bay, trying to avoid your mess!'

lDo you have Schofield?'

'I've got him.'

' Want us to pick you up while we're in here?'

Mother turned to Schofield, bent over in the back with her—or rather, Knight's—RPG pack. 'You wanna be picked up in here?'

'No! Not yet!' he yelled. 'Tell Knight to get outside. He doesn't want to be in here in the next two minutes! In fact, he doesn't want to be anywhere near this ship! Tell him we'll meet him outside!'

'Copy that,' Knight said, moments later.

He turned. 'Rufus! Time to bail!'

'You got it, Boss!' Rufus said. 'Now, where is that other . . . ah,' Rufus said, spotting a second open-air elevator on the opposite side of the hangar bay.

He powered up the Sukhoi, brought her swooping across the interior of the hangar bay, the roar of her engines drowning out all other sound, before— shoom —the Raven blasted out through the port-side elevator and into blazing sunlight.

Meanwhile, in the back of his speeding jeep, Schofield rummaged through the RPG pack that Mother had brought.

It was indeed Knight's Russian-made RPG pack—which meant it contained a disposable rocket launcher and various explosive-tipped rocket charges.

He found the one he was looking for.

The notorious Soviet P-61 Palladium charge.

A Palladium charge—comprising a palladium outer shell around a liquid core of enhanced hydrofluoric acid—has only one purpose: to take out civilian nuclear power plants in a terrible, terrible way.

Nuclear weapons require a core consistency of 90% enhanced uranium. The nuclear reactors in civilian power plants, on the other hand, have a core consistency of around 5%; while reactors on nuclear-powered aircraft carriers hover at around 50%—as such, neither of these reactors can ever create a nuclear explosion. They can leak radiation—as happened at Chernobyl—but they will never create a mushroom cloud.

What they do release every single second, however, are massive quantities of hydrogen—highly flammable hydrogen—an action which is nullified by the use of 'recombiners' which turn the dangerous hydrogen (H) into very safe water (H 20).

Mixing palladium with hydrogen, however, has the opposite effect. It multiplies the deadly hydrogen, producing vast quantities of the flammable gas which can then be triggered by the addition .of a catalyst like hydrofluoric acid.

As such, the P-61 charge operates as a two-stage detonator.

The first stage—the initial blast—mixes Palladium with hydrogen, multiplying the gas at a phenomenal rate. The second stage of the weapon ignites that gas with the acid.

The result is a colossal explosion—not quite as big as a nuclear blast, but perhaps the only explosion in the world big enough to crack the reinforced hull of an aircraft carrier.

'There!' Schofield yelled, pointing at two gigantic cylindrical vents at the aft end of the hangar bay, fan-covered vents which expelled excess hydrogen out the rear port flank of the carrier. 'The reactor's exhaust vents!'

The jeep whipped through the hangar bay, weaving past flaming fighter jets.

Schofield stood up in the rear section of the jeep, hoisted the

RPG launcher onto his shoulder, aimed it at a gigantic fan set into the side of the exhaust stacks.

'As soon as I fire, Mother, hit the gas and head for the ascending ramp! We're gonna have about thirty seconds between the first stage and the second stage. That means thirty seconds to get off this boat!'

'Okay!'

Schofield peered down the sights of the launcher. 'Au revoir to