Matthew Reilly: Scarecrow

'What are we going to do?' Clark asked desperately.

'I'm working on it,' Schofield said, gazing up at the thick steel hull above them, looking for escape options.

With his back pressed against a concrete block, he poked his head around one of the outer corners and looked all the way down the dry-dock pit—and saw the high steel sea gate that separated the pit from the ice-covered pool of water at the eastern end of the hall.

The mechanics of the dry-dock leapt into his mind.

To get an enormous Typhoon into the dock, you lowered the sea gate, flooded the dry-dock, and sailed your sub into it. Then you raised the sea gate again and drained the dry-dock, lowering the sub onto the concrete blocks in the process and giving yourself a clean and dry environment to work on the submarine.

The sea gate . . .

Schofield eyed it closely, thought of all the water being held back behind it. Looked the other way: toward the bow of the sub, and saw it.

It was their only shot.

He turned to the others. 'You guys got Maghooks on you?'

'Er, yeah.'

'Yes.'

'Get ready to use 'em,' Schofield said, looking down at the great steel sea gate, three storeys high and 90 feet wide. He drew his own Maghook from his back-mounted holster.

'We going that way, sir?' Clark asked.

'Nope. We're going in the other direction, but to do that we need to blow open that sea gate.'

'Blow open the sea gate?' Clark gasped, looking at Book.

Book II shrugged. 'This is standard. He destroys things—'

Just then, an unexpected volley of bullets raked the concrete blocks all around them. It had come from the direction of the sea gate.

Schofield ducked for cover, peered out, and saw that ten more mercenary soldiers had dropped into the pit at that end.

Christ, he thought, now they were stuck in the pit between two sets of bad guys.

The new group of mercenaries began to advance. 'Screw this,' he said.

Cedric Wexley watched the dry-dock pit from high above.

He saw his two squads of mercenaries closing in on Schofield and his men from both sides.

A cold smile cracked his face.

This was too easy.

Schofield grabbed two Thermite-Amatol demolition charges from his combat webbing. 'Gentlemen. Maghooks.'

They all pulled out their Maghooks.

'Now do this,' Schofield moved to the port-side edge of the Typhoon, raised his Maghook and fired it at close range up into the hull of the sub.

Clangggggg!

Clark and Book II did the same.

Clangggggg! Clangggggg!

Schofield peered down the length of the submarine. 'When the wave hits, let your Maghook ropes play out, so we can move along the outside of the sub.'

'Wave?' Clark said. 'What wave . . . ?'

But Schofield didn't answer him.

He simply took the two demolition charges in his hands and selected the timer switch he wanted.

Timer switches on Thermite-Amatol charges come in three colours: red, green and blue. Depressing the red switch gives you five seconds. Green gives you thirty seconds. Blue: one minute.

Schofield chose red.

Then he hurled the two charges down the length of the dry-dock pit, over the heads of the advancing mercenary team, sending the two high-powered explosives bouncing into the plate-steel sea gate like a pair of tennis balls. They came to rest at the

gate's weakest point, at the spot where it met the pit's concrete right-side wall.

Five seconds. Four . . .

'This is going to hurt. . .' Book II said, wrapping the rope of his Maghook around his forearm. Clark did the same.

Three . . . two . . .

'One,' Schofield whispered, eyeing the dam. 'Now.'

Boom.

The twin blasts of the Thermite-Amatol demolition charges shook the walls of the entire dry-dock building.

A blinding-white flash of light lit up the sea gate. Smoke rushed up the length of the pit, filling the alleyways between the giant concrete blocks as it roared forward, consuming the nearest group of assassins, enveloping everything in its path, including Schofield's

team.

There was a moment of eerie silence . . .

And then came the crack—an almighty, ear-splitting craaaack — as the wounded sea gate broke under the weight of the water pressing against it, and 100 million litres of water rushed into the pit, bursting through the smoke.

A wall of water.

The immense body of liquid created an incredible sound—it roared down the length of the dry-dock pit: foaming, roiling,

bounding forward.

The nearest group of mercenaries were simply blasted off their feet by the wall of water, and hurled westward.

Schofield, Book II and Clark were next in line.

The wall of water just collected them where they stood—one second they were there, the next they were gone. It lifted them instantly off their feet, flinging them like rag dolls toward the bow-end of the Typhoon, bouncing them along the side of its

hull.

The other team of mercenaries was also taken by the rushing wall of water. They were smashed into the solid concrete wall at the far end of the dry-dock, many of them going under as the

waves of roiling water crashed against the edge of the 200-metre-long pit.

Schofield and his men, however, didn't hit the end of the pit.

As the roaring body of water had collected them, they'd held grimly onto their Maghook launchers as the ropes connected to their magnetic hooks unspooled at a phenomenal rate.

When they came alongside the bow of the Typhoon, Schofield had yelled, 'Clamp now!'

He had then jammed his finger down on a button on his Maghook's grip, initiating a clamping mechanism inside it that stopped the unspooling of its rope.

Book II and Clark did the same . . . and the three of them jolted to simultaneous halts right next to the bow of the Typhoon, the rushing water kicking up blast-sprays all around their bodies.

Next to them, exactly where Schofield had seen it before, was the yawning opening of the Typhoon's port-side torpedo tubes—the tubes which had evidently been undergoing repairs when Krask-8 had been abandoned.

At the moment, the torpedo tubes lay a foot above the surface of the inrushing water.

'Get into the tubes!' Schofield yelled into his mike. 'Into the sub!' Book and Clark did as they were told, and squirming and struggling against the rushing water, entered the submarine.

Sudden silence.

Schofield wriggled out of the torpedo tube last of all and found himself standing inside a Soviet Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine.

It was a world of cold steel. Racks that had once contained torpedoes occupied the centre of the room. Rows of pipes lined the ceiling. The stench of body odour—the smell of fear, the smell of submariners—filled the air.

Two fat waterfalls of seawater now gushed in through the sub's open torpedo tubes, rapidly filling the cramped room.

It was largely dark in here: the only light, the grey daylight that crept in through the now-flooding torpedo tubes. Schofield and the others flicked on their barrel-mounted flashlights.

'This way,' Schofield said, charging out of the torpedo room, his legs sloshing through the rising water.

The three Marines bolted through the Typhoon's imposing silo hall next—a long high-ceilinged chamber that contained twenty gigantic missile silos; tall tubular structures that rose from floor to ceiling, dwarfing them.

As he ran past the silos, Schofield saw that the access hatches on some of them were open, revealing hollow emptiness inside. The hatches on at least six of the silos, however, remained closed— indicating that they still contained missiles.

'Where to now?' Book II called forward.

Schofield said, 'The control room! I need information on these assholes!'