Matthew Reilly - Scarecrow

He shoved Schofield into the mini-sub, and Schofield landed inside it—

—only to discover that someone else was already there.

Schofield's feet hit the floor of the mini-sub, and he looked up to see a sword blade rushing directly at his face.

Reflex action.

He whipped up his empty H&cK pistol and— clang! —the blade rushing at his throat hit the pistol's trigger-guard and stopped: one inch from Schofield's neck.

Dmitri Zamanov stood before him.

He held a short-bladed Cossack sword in his hands, and his eyes blazed with hatred.

'You chose the wrong hiding place,' the Russian bounty hunter

growled.

Then before Schofield could move, he punched two buttons.

First, the internal 'hatch' button.

The hatch whizzed shut, its steel door irising closed.

And second, the 'asds release' button, and suddenly Schofield felt his stomach turn as the entire mini-submarine dropped from its chains and fell sixteen feet straight down, landing with a massive splash in the rising body of seawater.

'Goddamn it!' Aloysius Knight couldn't believe it. 'What is this

shit!'

One moment, he'd been shoving Schofield into the yellow ASDS and was about to climb in after him—the next, the sub's hatch closed right in front of him and then the whole fucking thing dropped down into the water below!

Hypercharged bullets hit the girders all around him as the IG-88

teams rushed past the destroyed maintenance shack and onto the submarine catwalk.

So Knight did the only thing he could do. He dived into the second mini-submarine, bullet-marks sizzling across the soles of his boots as he did so.

Schofield and Zamanov fought.

No style here. No graceful technique.

It was pure street-fight.

In the tight confines of the mini-sub, they rolled and punched— and punched and punched.

Schofield's empty gun was useless, but Zamanov's Cossack sword was the key.

Which was why the first thing Schofield had done after their sub had bounced with a splash into the water was hit Zamanov's wrist, causing him to drop the sword.

And then they wrestled—ferociously—Schofield because he was fuelled by Mother's recent sacrifice, Zamanov because he was a psychopath.

They hurled each other into the sub's walls, fighting with venom, drawing blood with every blow.

Schofield broke Zamanov's cheekbone.

Zamanov broke Schofield's nose, while another of his blows dislodged Schofield's earpiece.

Then Zamanov tackled Schofield, throwing him against the sub's control panel, and all of a sudden— shoosb —the mini-sub began to . . .

. . . submerge.

Schofield peeled himself off the instrument panel, saw that he'd knocked the 'BALLAST' switch. The ASDS was going under.

And suddenly they were underwater. Out through the sub's two hemispherical domes, Schofield saw the now-submerged world of the missile hold.

Everything was silent, tinged with blue—the floor, the missile

silos, the dead bodies—an amazing man-made underwater

seascape.

The Talbot was now leaning slightly to starboard, the hold's

floor tilted at least 20 degrees to that side. Zamanov scooped up his sword. The yellow mini-sub continued its slow-motion freefall through

the watery hold.

And Zamanov and Schofield engaged—Zamanov swinging lustily, Schofield grabbing the bounty hunter's sword-hand as it

came down.

But then, with a muffled crash, their ASDS hit the floor of the

missile hold . . .

. . . and started to slide on its side toward the open starboard

cargo door\

Schofield's world tilted crazily.

Both men were thrown sideways.

The sub slid down the sloping floor before, to Schofield's utter horror, it tipped off the edge of the doorway and fell out through it, into the open sea.

The little yellow sub fell quickly through the darkened water of the English Channel—beneath the gigantic hull of the MV Talbot.

The sheer size of the foundering supertanker above it dwarfed the ASDS. The mini-sub looked like an insect underneath a sinking blue whale.

But while the supertanker was sinking slowly and gradually, the mini-sub—its ballast tanks full—was descending at speed.

More than that.

It shot vertically down through the water, free-falling like an

express elevator.

The average depth of the English Channel is about 120 metres. Here, off Cherbourg, it was 100 metres deep, and the ASDS was covering that depth quickly.

Inside it, Schofield and Zamanov fought in near darkness,

struggling in the ghostly blue glow of the mini-sub's instrument lights.

'After I kill you, I am going to cut your fucking American heart out!' Zamanov roared as he struggled to extract his sword-hand from Schofield's grasp.

Up until then, the fight had used more or less standard moves. But then Zamanov went for what Marines call 'the Lecter move'— a very uncivilised tactic.

He bared his teeth and tried to bite Schofield's face.

Schofield recoiled instantly, stretched his face out of range, and Zamanov got what he really wanted—his sword-hand back.

He made to swing, just as with a jarring thud, their sub hit the bottom of the Channel and both men fell to the floor.

They rose together, moving like lightning.

Zamanov leapt up and swung—just as Schofield lunged forward, ducking inside Zamanov's swing arc, at the same time whipping something metallic from his borrowed utility vest and jamming it into the Russian's mouth!

Zamanov didn't have time for shock, because Schofield didn't hesitate.

He activated the mountaineering piton—and turned his head away, not wanting to see this.

With a powerful snap! the piton's pincer-like arms expanded, shooting instantaneously outward, searching for something to wedge themselves against.

What they found were Zamanov's upper and lower jaws.

Schofield never saw the actual event, but he heard it.

Heard the foul crack of Zamanov's lower jaw being stretched far further than it ever was designed to go.

Schofield turned back to see the Russian's jaw hanging grotesquely from his face, dislocated and broken. The upper arm of the piton, however, had done more damage: it had bruised Zamanov's brain, leaving Zamanov frozen bolt upright in mid-stance, the shock having shut down his entire body.

The Russian fell to his knees.

Schofield seized his sword, stood over the fallen bounty hunter.

Zamanov's eyes blinked reflexively. The only sign that he was still conscious.

Schofield wanted to run him through, or even cut his head off, to do to Zamanov what he had done to others . . .

But he didn't.

He couldn't.

And so he just let the Russian waver where he knelt, and then he watched as a moment later Zamanov fell flat on his face with a final bloody splat.

The fight over, Schofield grabbed his dislodged earpiece, put it back in his ear—

'Schofield! Schofield! Come inV Knight's voice blared in his ear. 'Are you alive out there!'

'I'm here,' Schofield said. 'I'm on the bottom. Where are you?'

'I'm in the other sub. Put your exterior lights on so I can see where you are.'

Schofield did so.

At which moment Knight's voice said, 'Oh, fuck me . . .'

'What?'

'Do you have power?' Knight said quickly.

Schofield tried his instrument panel. No response. 'I have air, but no propulsion. Why? What is it? Can't you just come and get me?'

'There's no way I can make it in time.'

'In time? In time for what? What's the problem?'

'It's a . . . uh . . . very big one . . .'

'What?'