Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow

But Trent's men saw it coming.

Their own crack shooter nailed both of the enemy snipers with two shots from the open door of their Super Stallion.

The Marines stormed the ship, landing on the roof of the supertanker's control tower—with Dave Fairfax running in their midst.

They found the snipers' nest on the bridge: two snipers had been firing out through the supertanker's high-visibility bridge windows.

The two snipers had deep black skin, and wore khaki African military fatigues.

'What the hell?' Andrew Trent said when he saw their shoulder insignia.

Both snipers wore the badge of the Eritrean Army.

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Lightning lit up the sky—waves crashed against the side of the supertanker—thunder roared—bullets banged down against the foredeck.

Knight and Mother nailed the two snipers up on the bridge of the Talbot with a blitzkrieg of fire.

'I should have known!' Schofield shouted as they charged across the foredeck toward a door at the base of the control tower. 'Killian wouldn't leave the ships unguarded!'

'So who are they? Who did he get to do the guarding?' Mother yelled.

On the way to the tower, they found a large access hatch sunk into the deck. Knight and Schofield opened it . . .

... to be met by the deafening brack-a-brack! of automatic gunfire and the sight of a long vertical ladder disappearing down into the ship's vast missile hold.

Of more immediate interest to Schofield and Knight, however, was what they saw at the base of the ladder.

The source of the gunfire.

To their utter amazement, they saw a team of black-clad commandos—brandishing Uzis and M-16s with clinical precision, and firing them ferociously at an unseen enemy.

Schofield jammed the hatch shut again.

'I think we interrupted someone's battle,' he said.

Mother yelled, 'What did you see down there?'

'We're not the first people to arrive at this tanker,' Schofield said.

'What! Who's down there?'

Schofield exchanged a look with Knight.

'Not many elite units use Uzis these days,' Knight said. 'Zemir. I'd say it's the Sayaret Tzanhim.'

'I agree,' Schofield said.

'Would someone please tell me what's going on!' Mother yelled in the rain.

'My guess,' Schofield called, 'is that we've been beaten to this ship by the only other man in the world who can disarm the CincLock security system. It's that Israeli Air Force guy from the list—Zemir—with a crack team of Israel's best troops, the Sayaret Tzanhim, protecting him.'

'Hey, this day has been so weird, I'd believe fucking anything,' Mother said. 'So where now?'

Schofield checked his watch.

1735 hours.

1135 in New York.

Ten minutes to launch.

He said, 'We let the Israelis do the dirty work downstairs. Hell, I'm happy to let Zemir be the hero and disarm those missiles. As for us: into the tower. I want to check those snipers. See who we're up against before we go running into that mess downstairs to help Zemir.'

They came to the door at the base of the tower, flung it open just as—

Bam!

—they were assaulted by the blinding white beam of a helicopter searchlight.

Schofield spun in the doorway, rain in his face.

'Oh, you have got to be joking . . .' he said.

There, landing on the long flat foredeck of the supertanker—a hundred yards away, its searchlight panning the area—was an obviously stolen Alouette helicopter.

It touched down on the deck.

And out of it stepped three men in Russian battle-dress uniforms and carrying Skorpion machine pistols . . .

Dmitri Zamanov and the last two remaining members of the Skorpions.

'Damn. I forgot,' Knight said, 'you've still got a price on your head. It's Zamanov. Run.'

Into the control tower. Up some ladder-stairs. Emerging onto the bridge.

1736.

Fairfax's voice in Schofield's ear: 'Scarecrow. We've taken the bridge of the San Francisco tanker. Found enemy snipers wearing the uniforms of the Eritrean Army . . .'

Schofield went straight over to the bodies of his snipers.

African soldiers.

Commandos. Khaki fatigues. Black helmets.

And on their shoulders, a crest—but not the crest of Eritrea.

Rather, it was the badge of the Nigerian Army's elite commando unit: the Presidential Guard.

As veterans of Africa's many civil wars, the Nigerian Presidential Guard were CIA-trained killers who in the past had been used against their own citizens as much as against their nation's enemies. In the streets of Lagos and Abuja, the Presidential Guards were known by another name: the Death Squads.

Killian's protection team.

Two snipers up here. And more men downstairs, guarding the missile silos—the unseen enemy that the Israelis were fighting right now in the hold.

'Mr Fairfax. Did you say yours were Eritrean?'

'That's right:

'Not Nigerian?'

'Nope. My Marines confirm it. Definitely Eritrean insignia.'

Eritrea? Schofield thought—

'Scarecrow,' Mother said, opening a storeroom door wide. Four

body bags lay on the floor of the storeroom. Mother quickly unzipped one—to reveal the stinking corpse of a Global Jihad terrorist.

'Ah, now I get it,' Schofield said. 'The whipping boys.'

He keyed his sat-mike: 'Mr Fairfax. Tell your Marines to stay sharp. There'll be more African troops down in the main hold, guarding the silos. Sorry, David. It's not over for you yet. You have to get past those troops and get your satellite uplink unit within sixty feet of the missiles' control console for me to disarm them.'

'Ten-four,' Fairfax's voice signed off. 'We're on the case.'

Mother joined Knight at the windows of the bridge, searching the area outside for Zamanov.

'Do you see him?' Mother said.

'No, the little Russian ratbastard's disappeared,' Knight said. 'Probably gone after Zemir.'

Suddenly Rufus's voice exploded in their earpieces:

'Boss. Scarecrow. I got a new contact closing in on your tanker. A large cutter of some kind. Looks like the French Coast Guard.'

'Christ,' Schofield said, moving to the windows, seeing a large white boat approaching them on their starboard side.

Schofield couldn't believe it.

In addition to the Nigerian Death Squad, the Israeli shock troops and the Russian bounty hunters already on this supertanker, they now had a group of French maritime police on the way!

'That ain't the Coast Guard,' Knight said, peering through some night-vision binoculars.

Through them he could see a big white cutter, charging through the chop—could see its knife-like bow, its big foredeck gun, its glassed-in wheelhouse, and bloodbursts all over the wheelhouse's windows.

Armed men stood at its wheel.

'It's Demon Larkham and IG-88,' Knight said.

1738.

Seven minutes to launch.

'Damn it, more bounty hunters,' Schofield said. 'Rufus! Can you take them out?'

'Sorry, Captain, I'm outta missiles. Used them all against that French carrier.'

'Okay, okay . . .' Schofield said, thinking. 'All right, Rufus, you keep to your instructions, okay. If we can't disarm those missiles in time, we'll be needing your special help later.'

'Got it:

Schofield spun, still thinking, thinking, thinking.

Everything was happening too fast. The situation was spiralling out of control. Missiles to disarm, the Israelis already on board, Nigerian troops, more bounty hunters . . .

'Focus!' he shouted aloud. 'Think, Scarecrow. What do you ultimately have to achieve?'

Disarm the missiles. I have to disarm the missiles by 1745 hours. Everything else is secondary.

His eyes flashed to an elevator at the back of the bridge.