The two rigs rushed through the curving tunnel side-by-side, whipping past its ocean-side columns.
Schofield drove, glancing at the wounded Gant beside him. She was hit badly this time.
There came a loud aerial boom from somewhere nearby, and Schofield snapped round to see the second Mirage fighter whip past the blurring columns on his left, shooting ahead of the chase.
Not a good sign, he thought.
And then the snub-nosed rig came fully alongside his own on the right. He saw two ExSol men inside its cabin, and as it drew level with the Mack, he saw the gunner climb quickly across the driver and throw open the door closest to the Mack.
He was going to come across.
Schofield raised his Desert Eagle pistol in response—click.
No ammo left.
‘Crap!’
The Executive Solutions man leapt across the gap between the two speeding semi-trailer rigs, landing on the passenger step of Schofield’s Mack. He raised his machine-gun, pointing it in through the window, an unmissable shot—
—at the same time as Schofield drew his Maghook from his thigh holster, aimed it at the thug and pulled the trigger—
Ppp-fzzz . . .
The Maghook didn’t fire. It just emitted a weak fizzing sound. It was out of propulsion gas.
‘Goddamn it!’ Schofield yelled. ‘That never happens!’
But now he was out of options: he and Gant were sitting ducks.
The ExSol man in the window saw this, and he leered, his finger squeezing on his trigger.
At which moment he was squashed like a pancake as the Kenworth rig—his rig—rammed viciously into the Mack, hitting it so hard that both trucks were lifted momentarily off the road!
The hapless mercenary simply exploded, his body popping in a burst of red, his eyes bugging before he dropped out of Schofield’s view and fell to the rushing roadway beneath the two rigs.
And as the man dropped from sight, he revealed the new driver of the snub-nosed Kenworth rig—Aloysius Knight.
For when the ExSol mercenary had jumped over from the doorway of the Kenworth to the doorway of the Mack, another figure had crossed over in the other direction, from the rear section of the Mack to the rear section of the Kenworth rig.
Knight.
Now the two rigs raced side-by-side through the long curving tunnel, pursued only by the last yellow Peugeot.
But with its blown-open rear tyres, Schofield’s Mack was dangerously unstable. It slipped and slid wildly, trying to get traction.
Schofield keyed his radio. ‘Knight! I can’t hold this truck! We have to come over to you!’
‘All right, I’ll come in closer. Send your lady over.’
The Kenworth swung in next to the Mack, rubbing up against its side.
Schofield quickly secured the Mack’s steering wheel in place with his seatbelt. Then he shuffled over, kicked open the passenger door, and started to help Gant move.
At the same time, Knight opened his driver’s side door and extended his spare hand.
Abruptly, gunfire.
Smacking into both trucks’ frames. But it was just wild fire from the trailing Peugeot.
Schofield made the transfer, handed Gant over to Knight—who pulled her across the gap into the Kenworth’s cab, before laying her gently on the passenger seat.
With Gant safely across, Schofield started to step across the gap—
—just as a shocking burst of a zillion tracer bullets ripped horizontally through the air in front of him, creating a lethal laser-like barrier, cutting him off from Knight and Gant’s rig.
Schofield snapped to look forward and saw the source of this new wave of gunfire.
He saw the end of the curving tunnel, saw the road bend away to the right beyond it, and saw, rising ominously into the air just out from the turn, the second Mirage 2000N-II fighter, its six-barrelled mini-gun blazing away.
And then, to Schofield’s horror, the line of sizzling tracer rounds swung in toward his rig and—bam!-bam!-bam!-bam!-bam!-bam!-bam!-bam!-bam!-bam!-bam!—an unimaginable barrage of bullets slammed into the metal grille of the Mack, hammering it with a million pock-marks.
The Mack’s engine caught fire, hydraulic fluid sprayed everywhere, and suddenly Schofield could see nothing through his windshield. He pumped the brakes—no good; they were history. Tried the steering wheel—it worked only slightly, enough for him to say to the fighter plane:
‘If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.’
The Mack careered down the length of the tunnel, together with the Kenworth.
And still the Mirage’s withering fire didn’t stop.
The two rigs hit the end of the tunnel—separated now—and Aloysius Knight had no choice but to take the bend to the right, while Schofield’s Mack—its bonnet blazing, its rear tyres sliding—could do nothing but rush straight ahead, ignoring the corner.
Schofield saw it all before it happened.
And he knew he could do nothing.
‘Good God . . .’ he breathed.
A second later, the speeding Mack truck missed the corner completely and blasted right through the guardrail fence and shot out into the clear afternoon sky, heading straight for the hovering Mirage fighter.
The Mack truck soared through the air in a glorious arc, nose high, wheels spinning, its path through the sky traced by the line of black smoke issuing out from its flaming bonnet.
But its arc stopped abruptly as the massive trailer rig slammed at tremendous speed into the Mirage fighter hovering just out from the cliff-side roadway.
The truck and the plane collided with astonishing force, the Mirage lurching backwards in mid-air under the weight of the mighty impact.
Already on fire, the Mack completely blew up now, its flaming bonnet driving into the nose of the hovering French fighter. For its part, the Mirage just rocked—then swayed—and then exploded, blasting out in a brilliant blinding fireball.
Then it dropped out of the sky, falling four hundred feet straight down the cliff-face with the remains of the Mack truck buried in its nose, before it smashed into the waves below with a single gigantic splash.
And in the middle of it all, in the middle of the tangled mechanical mess, without a rope or a Maghook to call on, was Shane M. Schofield.
Knight and Gant saw it all from their rig as they sped away along the winding cliff-side road.
They saw Schofield’s Mack blast through the guardrail and crash into the hovering Mirage after which came the fiery explosion and the long drop to the ocean below.
No-one could have survived such an impact.
Despite her wounds, Gant’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Oh God, no. Shane . . .’ she whispered.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Knight breathed.
A flurry of thoughts rushed through his mind: Schofield was dead—a man worth millions to Knight if he could have kept him alive—what did he do now—and what did he do with this wounded woman who was worth absolutely nothing to him?
The first thing you do is get out of here alive, a voice said inside him.
And then suddenly—shoom!—the last-remaining Peugeot rally car whizzed past his rig, heading quickly down the road.
Surprised, Knight looked ahead and saw the road before him.
It contained a strange but impressive feature: at the next curve, a small castle-like structure arched over the roadway.
Made of stone and topped with tooth-like battlements, it was a two-storey gatehouse which must have been as old as the Forteresse de Valois itself. Presumably, it marked the outer boundary of the Forteresse’s land.
On the far side of this gatehouse, however, was a compact drawbridge, spanning a 20-foot section of empty space in the roadway. You only got over the gap if the drawbridge was lowered, and at the moment, it was.
But then the Peugeot arrived at the gatehouse and disgorged one of its occupants who ran inside—and suddenly, before Knight’s eyes, the drawbridge slowly began to rise.
/> ‘No . . .’ he said aloud. ‘No!’
He floored it.
The Kenworth rig roared toward the medieval gate-house, picking up speed.
The drawbridge rose slowly on its iron chains.
It was going to be close.
The big rig rushed forward.
The bridge rose slowly: one foot, two feet, three feet . . .
The men in the Peugeot opened fire as Knight’s rig thundered over the last fifty yards.
Knight ducked. His windshield shattered.
The drawbridge kept rising . . .
. . . and then the rig roared in through the gatehouse’s archway, whipping past the Executive Solutions men . . .
. . . and raced up the ramp-like drawbridge, easily doing a hundred, before—voom!—it launched itself off the leading edge of the bridge, shooting high into the sky, soaring over the vertiginous gap in the road beneath it and . . .
Whump!
. . . the big rig hit solid ground again, banging down on the roadway, bouncing once, twice, three times, before Knight regained control.
‘Phwoar,’ he sighed, relieved. ‘That was—’
SLAM!
The road in front of the rig erupted in a mushroom cloud of dirt.
A shellburst from the destroyer.
Knight hit the brakes and his rig skidded sharply, lurching to a halt inches away from a newly-created hole in the road.
Knight groaned.
The entire road in front of him had simply vanished—the whole width of it vaporised—the distance across the chasm to the other side at least thirty feet.
He and Gant were trapped—perfectly—on the vertical cliff-face, bounded both in front and behind by sheer voids in the roadway.
And at that moment, as if right on cue, the Axon corporate helicopter—which had watched the entire chase from a safe distance high above the road—hovered into view beside them, its pilot speaking into his helmet radio.
‘Fuck,’ Knight said.
FIFTH ATTACK
ENGLAND—FRANCE—USA
26 OCTOBER 1400 HOURS (ENGLAND)
E.S.T. (NEW YORK, USA) 0900 HOURS
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Farewell address to the nation, JANUARY, 1961
UNITED STATES EMBASSY
LONDON, ENGLAND 1400 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(0900 HOURS E.S.T. USA)
‘In their opinion, the war on terror isn’t going far enough. While the members of Majestic-12 didn’t plan the September 11 attacks, make no mistake, they are taking full advantage of them . . .’
The man talking on the television screen was Benjamin Y. Rosenthal, the Mossad agent who had been killed on the roof of the King’s Tower an hour ago.
Book II watched the TV intently. Behind him stood the State Department guy, Scott Moseley.
Arrayed on the desks around them were documents—hundreds of documents. Everything Benjamin Rosenthal knew about Majestic-12 and this world-wide bounty hunt.
Book scanned the pile of documents again:
Surveillance photos of men in limousines arriving at economic summits.
Secretly-taped phone transcripts.
Stolen US Department of Defense files.
Even two documents taken from the French central intelligence agency—the notorious DGSE. One was a DGSE dossier on several of the world’s leading businessmen who had been invited to a private dinner with the French President six months ago.
The second document was far more explosive. It outlined the recent capture by the DGSE of 24 members of the terrorist organisation Global Jihad, who had been planning to fly a tanker plane into the Eiffel Tower. Like Al-Qaeda, Global Jihad was a truly world-wide terrorist group, made up of fanatical Islamists who wanted to take the concept of holy war to a whole new global level.
The document that Book now saw was especially notable because one of Global Jihad’s leading figures, Shoab Riis, had been among those caught. Normally the capture of such a high-profile terrorist would have been publicised worldwide. But the French had kept Riis’s arrest to themselves.
Rosenthal had added a comment in the margin: ‘All were taken to DGSE headquarters in Brest. No trial. No newspaper reports. None of the 24 was ever seen again. Possible connection to Kormoran/Chameleon. Is France working with M-12? Check further.’
But the most revealing evidence of all was in the Mossad videotapes of Rosenthal’s interrogation.
Put simply, Rosenthal had been sitting on dynamite.
First, he had known the composition of Majestic-12:
The Chairman: Randolph Loch, military industrialist, 70 years old, head of Loch-Mann Industries, the defence contractor. L-M Industries manufactured spare parts for military aircraft like the Huey and Black Hawk helicopters. It had made a fortune out of Vietnam and Desert Storm.
The Vice-Chair: Cornelius Kopassus, the legendary Greek container-shipping magnate.
Arthur Quandt, patriarch of the Quandt family steel empire.
Warren Shusett, the world’s most successful investor.
J. D. Cairnton, chairman of the colossal Astronox Pharmaceutical Company.
Jonathan Killian, chairman and CEO of Axon Corp, the vast missile and warship-building conglomerate.
The list went on.
Apart from the absence of a few retail fortunes—like the Walton family in America, the Albrechts in Germany or the Mattencourts in France—it could have been a list of the Top Ten Richest People on Earth.
And as Major Benjamin Rosenthal had discovered, they were all men whose fortunes would be considerably enlarged by one thing.
Rosenthal on the screen: ‘Their fortunes are based on military action. War. World War II was the foundation of the Quandt steel empire. In the ’60s, Randolph Loch was one of the most vocal supporters of the US going to Vietnam. Warfare consumes oil. Warfare consumes steel. Warfare calls for the construction of thousands of new ships, helicopters, guns, bombs, pharmaceutical kits. In a world of big business, global warfare is the biggest business of them all.’
And at another time:
‘Look at the “War on Terror”. The United States dropped over four thousand bombs on the mountains of Afghanistan, and for what result? They didn’t destroy bridges or supply routes, or military nerve centres. But when four thousand bombs are used, four thousand bombs must be replenished. And that means buying them. And what happened after Afghanistan? Surprise, surprise: another fight was found, this time with Iraq.’
Another cut:
‘Do not underestimate the influence these men wield.
They make Presidents, and they break them. From Bill Clinton’s impeachment to the rise of a former KGB agent named Vladimir Putin to the Presidency of Russia, Majestic-12 always has a say in who sits in the seats of world power and for how long. Even if it doesn’t directly bankroll a given President’s campaign, it always maintains the ability to bring him down at any given moment.
‘To this end Majestic-12 has forged strong links with leading figures in the world’s major intelligence agencies. The Director of the CIA: a former business partner of Randolph Loch. The head of MI-6: Cornelius Kopassus’s brother-in-law. That Killian fellow has been a regular visitor to the Paris home of the Director of the DGSE.
‘After all,’ the Mossad agent smiled, ‘who knows more about a country’s leaders than that country’s own intelligence service?’
On the TV screen, Rosenthal became serious:
‘More than anything else, though, the war that M-12 loved the most, the war that garnered them more wealth than they ever dreamed of, was the one war that was never actually fought: the US–Soviet Cold War.
‘Desert Storm. Bosnia. Somalia. Afghanistan. Iraqi Freedom. They pale in comparison to the absolute gold-mine that was the Cold War. For as the US–Soviet arms race continued apace and indirect Cold War clashes occurred in Korea and Vi
etnam, the members of M-12 amassed fortunes of monstrous proportions.
‘But then in 1991 the impossible happened: the Soviet Union collapsed and it all disappeared.
‘The Berlin Wall fell and like a dam breaking, American consumerism flooded the globe. And the biggest winners in the globalised world were no longer American military manufacturers. They were American consumer goods retailers: Nike, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Or European companies like BMW and L’Oreal. I mean, honestly, make-up retailers!
‘And so ever since, the members of Majestic-12 have been looking for the one thing that will, without question, restore them to their former glory . . .’
At that moment, with a flourish, Rosenthal extracted another document from one of his files and held it to the camera.
‘. . . a new Cold War.’
Book II now held that very same document in his hands.
The TV screen in front of him was paused, the image of Rosenthal frozen.
Book scanned the document. It read:
Names and numbers leapt out at Book, and at first he couldn’t make head or tail of it.
But then, slowly, parts of it began to make sense. He recognised the two most repeated names.
Shahab-5 and Taep’o-Dong-2.
The Shahab-5 and the Taep’o-Dong-2 were missiles.
Long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The Shahab-5 was built by Iran. The Taep’o-Dong-2 by North Korea.
If international terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda or Global Jihad were to ever get their hands on missiles that could deliver nuclear strikes against the West, it would be the Shahab and the Taep’o-Dong.
And each of the missiles was nuclear-tipped, as evidenced by the notations: TN-76 and N-8. The TN-76 was a French-made nuclear warhead; the N-8 was North Korean.
But this list didn’t belong to any terrorist organisation.
It belonged to Majestic-12.
Scarecrow Page 21
