Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow

The digitised hundredths of a second whizzed by in such a blur that they looked like 8s.

Schofield pulled his CincLock-VII unit—the one he'd taken from the French—from a waterproof pouch on his vest and once again saw the unit's display.

White and red circles hovered on the touchscreen.

Bing.

A message appeared:

MISSILE LAUNCH SEQUENCE IN PROGRESS. PRESS 'ENTER' TO INITIATE DISARM SEQUENCE. FIRST PROTOCOL (PROXIMITY): SATISFIED. INITIATE SECOND PROTOCOL.

Like before, the white circles on the screen began to blink slowly on and off.

Schofield punched them as they did so. The countdown ticked ever-downward.

00:01:01 00:01:00 00:00:59

Then abruptly the Talbot lurched sharply. The entire supertanker, still hanging off the bow of the Eindhoven, was now slowly slipping off it!

With the unexpected jolt, Schofield missed one of the white circles.

The display beeped:

SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): FAILED DISARM ATTEMPT

RECORDED.

THREE FAILED DISARM ATTEMPTS WILL RESULT IN DEFAULT

DETONATION.

SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): REACTIVATED.

'Shit,' Schofield said.

He started all over again.

The supertanker was still sinking.

He felt water lapping against his boots.

• • •

While Schofield punched at the touchscreen, Aloysius Knight fired at the IG-88 force on the high starboard side of the hold.

He loosed a new burst, before suddenly he saw it.

'Oh, no . . .' he breathed.

'What?' Mother called.

'The starboard-side cargo door,' Knight said. 'It's about to go

under.'

He was right. Owing to the leftward tilt of the ship, the massive starboard-side cargo doorway had until now been well above the

waterline.

But now the rising water was about to hit it. And that was very bad—because once it did, seawater would start entering the Talbot from both sides of the ship.

After that, the Talbot would go down with frightening speed—

'Knight!' Mother yelled. 'Check right!'

'Oh, crap,' Knight said.

Over to their right, six of Demon Larkham's men were climbing out of the water into two motorised lifeboats.

They were coming for them.

'Captain Schofield!' Knight called. 'Are you done yet?'

'Almost. . . !' Schofield yelled, his eyes locked on the screen.

00:00:51 00:00:50 00:00:49

The two IG-88 lifeboats swung over to the starboard side of the water-filled hold, picked up the Demon and the remaining IG-88 force—sixteen men in total.

Then they charged toward Schofield and the missile control

console.

Knight and Mother fired.

The two IG-88 boats blasted across the water, skimming through the forest of slanted missile silos, firing as they sped.

In the meantime, Schofield was still in his own world, punching red and white circles.

00:00:41 00:00:40 00:00:39

Then he hit the final white circle and the screen changed to:

SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): SATISFIED. THIRD PROTOCOL (CODE ENTRY): ACTIVE. PLEASE ENTER AUTHORIZED DISARM CODE.

'All right,' Schofield said. The Universal Disarm Code. The sixth Mersenne prime was still written on his hand: 131071.

He started punching the numerical keypad on the CincLock unit when without warning the lifeboat beneath him moved and—

Beep!

The screen squealed in protest.

FIRST PROTOCOL (PROXIMITY): FAILED. ALL PROTOCOLS REACTIVATED.

'What!' Schofield snapped his eyes up to find Knight gunning their lifeboat away from the missile console, while Mother fired off their stern at two pursuing IG-88 boats.

They weaved in between the missile silos.

'Sorry, Captain!' Knight yelled. 'But we had to go! We were dead if we stayed there!'

'Yeah, well we have to get back within range of that console in about ten seconds! Because I need at least twenty-five seconds to complete the response pattern!'

Bullet geysers raked the water all around their speeding lifeboat.

00:00:35 00:00:34 00:00:33

Knight brought the lifeboat round. 'How close do you have to be!'

'Sixty feet!'

'All right!'

Bullets whizzed past their ears, pinged off the missile silos.

Knight swung their boat around and brought it into a wide circular path around the steel island that was the control console, a circle that included the occasional weaving run in amongst the forest of silos.

00:00:27 \

00:00:26

00:00:25

Schofield's screen beeped to life.

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

The light-response display began—which meant so did Schofield's screen-tapping.

Mother kept firing at the IG-88 boats behind them.

Knight drove with one hand, fired with the other, careful to keep their boat within sixty feet of the control console.

00:00:16 00:00:15 00:00:14

But then the IG-88 boats, now aware of the circular path Knight was taking, split up.

One of them pivoted in the water, and took off in the opposite circular direction: the effect being that the first IG-88 boat was now driving Schofield's boat toward the second one.

Oblivious to the chase, Schofield's hands moved more quickly now.

Red-white-white . . .

Tap-tap-tap . . .

00:00:11 00:00:10 00:00:09

Knight saw IG-88's plan. He fired at the oncoming boat's driver. Blam!-blam!-blam! . . . Miss-miss-miss . . .

00:00:08 00:00:07 00:00:06

Schofield's hands were a blur now, tapping smoothly left and right.

Mother hit one of their pursuers. But then roared as she took a sizzling-hot round to her shoulder.

00:00:05 00:00:04 00:00:03

They came on collision course with the second IG-88 boat, Knight still firing at its driver. Blam'.-blam'.-blam!. . . Miss-miss . . . Hit.

00:00:02

The driver flopped and fell, dead. The IG-88 boat peeled away, and Knight kept his boat within the 60-foot zone of the console.

00:00:01

And Schofield's hand movements changed slightly. Instead of tapping circles, it looked as if he was entering a—

00:00:00

Too late.

None of the Chameleon missiles, however, fired. The countdown timer on the console was frozen at:

00:00:00.05

The seconds may have hit zero, but the very last second—calculated in blurring digital hundredths—had yet to fully expire when Schofield had punched in the Universal Disarm Code and hit 'enter'.

The screen now read:

THIRD PROTOCOL (CODE ENTRY): SATISFIED. AUTHORIZED DISARM CODE ENTERED. MISSILE LAUNCH ABORTED.

Schofield breathed a sigh of relief. No missiles had launched. London, Paris and Berlin were safe.

It was then, however, that the open starboard side door of the MV Talbot went slowly under the waterline.

SHOOOOOOMH!

The roar was absolutely deafening.

It was, literally, like the opening of the floodgates.

Like an invading army overwhelming its enemy's lines, an unimaginable quantity of seawater came gushing in over the threshold of the Talbot's wide starboard-side doorway.

A wall of water—a super tidal wave of unstoppable, ravenous liquid.

The result was instantaneous.

The entire supertanker rolled dramatically, righting itself as the inrushing water from the starboard side began to balance off against the inflow from port.

This righting of the Talbot, however, had one very important side-effect: it served to disengage the Talbot from the bow of the Eindhoven. And with the loss of its grip on the other supertanker, the Talbot lost its only means of staying afloat.

And so it began to sink—at speed—into the depths of the English Channel.