From somewhere in those passageways, Zack heard a low growl.
“I don’t think these trenches are empty . . .” he said.
In the walkway, Schofield was still firing back at the pursuing force with Dubois hanging from his shoulder.
He jerked his chin southward. “Mother! I want that watchtower! Get to it via the trenches! Kid, Mario, protect Dr. Ivanov and Chad, and catch up with Zack and Emma!”
“Whatever you say, Scarecrow!” Mother hurried up and out of the walkway, firing in every direction as she went. Mario and Chad went next, followed by the Kid who reached back down to grab Ivanov.
Veronique Champion came alongside Schofield, still firing nonstop.
“Captain!” she shouted. “We can’t continue like this! We need to change the conditions of this battle or we won’t last much longer!”
“I know! I know!”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Yeah! We get into the trenches and work our way over to that watchtower!”
“And then?”
“From there, I’m going to—” Gunfire cut him off.
“Never mind! That is good enough for me for now!” Veronique threw an arm underneath Dubois and, covered by Baba, helped Schofield drag the wounded French soldier up the snow-mound.
They had almost made it up the mound when suddenly Schofield realized that the gunfire from behind them had stopped.
He frowned, peered back down the walkway.
There was now no one at the base of the stairs at that end. No shadowy figures, nobody.
That wasn’t good. It meant they were up to somethi—
Clink, clink, clink.
A small metal cylinder bounced down the stairs and rolled to a halt at that end of the walkway.
It looked to Schofield like a smoke grenade, only smaller. At first he thought it might be another acid grenade, but this cylinder wasn’t painted silver. Rather, it was painted bright red with yellow bands at either end.
Up above Schofield, Ivanov had stopped and turned, too, and he saw the grenade.
His eyes went wide. “Captain! Get out of the trench now! It’s a reduranium grenade!”
Baba and Champion were already out of the trench. Champion was reaching back down, pulling Schofield—with Dubois on his shoulder—up the snow-mound, when suddenly Dubois’s boots slipped and as he scrabbled for a purchase, Dubois—almost unconscious from loss of blood—lost his grip on Schofield’s hand and fell back down the mound, tumbling back into the walkway.
Schofield made to dive after him but before he could, he heard Ivanov yell to Champion: “No! It’s too late! Get the captain out!” and Schofield felt Champion yank him up and out of the walkway and he fell face-first onto cold hard-packed mud a split second before the red-and-yellow grenade spectacularly went off.
A FIVE-FOOT-HIGH HORIZONTAL finger of yellow-red fire whooshed past Schofield, completely filling the walkway as it rushed by him: a blasting, rushing, rampaging stream of liquid fire.
Dubois never stood a chance.
The fire lanced right through him, liquefying his body in an instant. An entire human being just melted in the blink of an eye.
Schofield’s eyes boggled.
It looked like the elongated tongue of fire sent forth by a flamethrower, only bigger, much bigger: this was a tongue of fire eight feet wide by five feet high, contained only by the walls of the walkway. It was as if the walkway had suddenly been flooded not with water but with fire: blazing yellow liquid fire.
Before it destroyed Dubois, the finger of flame had rocketed down the roofed section of the sunken passageway, its intense heat shattering the reinforced glass awning, sending successive sections of the awning exploding skyward.
Then, after liquefying the Frenchman, the river of fire slammed into the snow-mound and obliterated it, too, slicing through it like a hot knife through butter and sending an explosion of steam shooting a hundred feet into the air, engulfing the area around the walkway in a dense cloud of fog.
Schofield fell back from the blazing, glowing walkway.
When he re-gathered himself—wild bullets were still impacting all around him—he saw that the finger of fire had burned itself out, the snow-mound was simply gone, and the gray concrete walls and floor of the half-buried walkway glowed incandescent orange, like embers in a fireplace, the outer layer of the concrete having been melted by the intense heat.
Covered by the newly created fog, Schofield rolled backward with Champion and dropped into the nearest trench, landing next to Mother, the Kid, Baba and Ivanov. Mario and Chad hovered nearby, both looking very anxious. Zack and Emma were nowhere to be seen.
“What the hell was that!” Schofield gasped.
“That,” Ivanov said, “was a grenade with a thermobaric core.”
“But it was tiny . . .” Mario said.
“Its red-uranium core would have been the size of a pinhead,” Ivanov said, “and its explosion was small because it only fed off the ambient oxygen in the air. An explosion that uses an incendiary gas cloud is far more potent.”
“That was a small explosion?” Mother said.
“Doesn’t matter now.” Schofield stood, gazing up at the watchtower looming above the mist-enshrouded trench system. “Unless we get out of this Stadium fast, we’re not going to be any use to anyone. We’re heading for that tower, people.”
As they hurried off, the Kid came alongside Schofield. “Sir, I can’t find Zack and Emma, and neither of them are wearing headsets.”
Schofield frowned for a second in thought, before he touched his throat-mike and said, “Bertie? Do you read me?”
“I read you, Captain Schofield,” Bertie’s voice replied.
“Put me on speaker, please.”
“You are on speaker.”
“Zack? You hear me?”
Zack’s voice came in. It sounded distant, like someone on a speakerphone. “I hear you, Captain.”
“Where are you? Is Emma with you?”
Zack was hurrying through a misty trench with Bertie whizzing along beside him and Emma draped over his shoulder, limping.
“We’re in the trench system, but we must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. We’re lost.”
“Can you see the watchtower in the middle of the Stadium?” Schofield’s voice said through Bertie’s speaker.
Zack peered out over the rim of the trench he was standing in. At first he saw nothing but the rocky inner wall of the crater and the office building that they had come through.
“No . . .” He turned and jumped. “Oh, wait, I see it. Damn, we went the wrong way. I took us back toward the northern end of the crater.”
“Never mind. You did good. You stayed alive. Just head for that watchtower. We’ll meet you there.”
“Got it.”
Zack and Emma hurried off, unaware of the distinctive footprints Zack’s cold-weather Nike boots left in the mud behind them.
Schofield strode quickly through the trench-maze, moving fast and low, taking every turn decisively. Ahead of him, rising above the fog layer, was the watchtower, coming closer with every step.
“So what’s your brilliant plan, Captain?” Champion said.
“Down here, we’re rats in a maze.” He never stopped moving. “They have men all around us—three sniper positions to the south, east and west, plus the flushing team behind us to the north. If we stay here, it’s only a matter of time till they take us out. We need to turn the tables. We need to take some higher ground, take them out, and then roll on to Dragon Island without losing any more time. That watchtower is the key to it all.”
A stray bullet whistled down through the fog and lodged in the mud-wall beside Schofield’s head. He barely noticed it, kept moving.
Champion said, “If they see you up in that watchtower, they’ll hit it with an RPG within thirty seconds . . .”
“I know,” Schofield said. “That gives me thirty seconds to do what I have to do.”
SCHOFIELD AND his group
came to the edge of the trench system, to the point where it was closest to the watchtower.
“Okay, folks”—Schofield readied his MP-7—“this little operation will have two phases. First phase, I’m the bait. I make a break for the watchtower . . . their snipers up on the eastern and western rims fire on me . . . you take them out. Got it?”
“Oui,” Baba said.
“So long as you’re happy being bait,” Mother said.
“And the second phase?” Champion asked.
“I take out their other sniper position over on that southern watchtower.”
“Which will of course depend on whether you survive the first phase,” Champion said.
“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s roll.”
And with those words, he broke cover and sprinted for the base of the watchtower.
Muzzle flashes erupted immediately from the eastern and western rims of the crater, and a line of bullets chewed up the dirt inches behind Schofield’s running feet.
The strafing was about to catch up with him when Mother, Mario, the Kid, Champion and Baba all rose together—Mother, Mario and the Kid pointing east, the French pair pointing west—and opened fire on the enemy positions.
The two sniper posts were ripped apart by their fire, and in each position, three figures were hurled backward. The muzzle flashes from up there ceased.
Schofield hit the base of the watchtower at a run as a new volley of gunfire pinged against its crisscrossing struts.
This gunfire came from the other watchtower, the one that stood on top of the office building at the distant southern end of the Stadium.
His heart pounding, Schofield clambered up his watchtower’s internal ladder.
“Mother! That other watchtower!”
Bullets sizzled past him as he climbed, ricocheting off the tower’s struts, whizzing past his head. One round made a popping sound as it broke the sound barrier millimeters in front of his face and cut a slit-like mark on the lens of his glasses. Another hit his left hand, smashing into his little finger. Schofield grimaced with pain but kept climbing.
The others offered what cover fire they could, but the south-facing angle wasn’t as good as the eastern and western ones, and the fire from the southern watchtower was only minorly inhibited.
Schofield reached the cupola of the watchtower and he saw the whole massive crater spread out around him, a perfect 360-degree view.
But he didn’t stop to enjoy it. His thirty seconds were almost up.
For right then he saw a small figure on the southern watchtower hoist a long-barreled object onto his shoulder: an RPG launcher.
Schofield kept moving.
He yanked his Maghook from his back-holster, aimed it skyward and fired—
—at the exact moment the figure in the southern watchtower fired his rocket-propelled grenade.
The Maghook flew up into the sky, trailing its cable—while the RPG lanced across the Stadium at blinding speed, a tail of smoke extending out behind it.
The Maghook’s magnetic head thunked against the underside of the T-shaped girder-junction above the massive crater and Schofield hit SPOOL on his handgrip and he was suddenly whisked up into the air, shooting skyward on the Maghook’s cable—
—a millisecond before the entire watchtower beneath him was hit by the RPG and exploded, instantly transformed into a multitude of metal shards that showered outward in a star-shaped spray of fire and smoke. A gigantic fireball expanded beneath the fast-rising figure of Shane Schofield.
Reeled upward by the Maghook’s internal spooler, Schofield came to the underside of the girder-junction, and for a moment he hung suspended a dizzying 150 feet above the floor of the Stadium.
He didn’t care. He quickly climbed up on top of the four-pronged girder-junction, re-holstered his Maghook and then did what he’d come up here to do.
He lay down on his belly, pressing his chest armor flat against the superlong metal girder that stretched away from him southward, shooting down at a wickedly steep angle over that half of the Stadium: over the lake and the office building and even the watchtower at the far end.
The girder was about three feet wide; Schofield reached out with his arms and hooked them over each side, gripping his MP-7 in his right hand and his Desert Eagle in his left.
Then he pushed himself off.
Headfirst, Schofield skimmed down the length of the massive girder, sliding on his chest armor, gaining speed as he went, arms and legs bent on either side, pressing against the outer edges of the girder, keeping him steady and controlling his speed as he rocketed down the steep slope.
The floodlights suspended from the girder rushed by beneath him. He saw the lake go by, and then the southern office building came closer, then the watchtower mounted on it.
At which point Schofield opened fire with both his guns—withering fire, deadly fire. He pummeled the watchtower all over and saw all the men on it convulse under the weight of his crushing gunfire. Five of them dropped, dead.
Then he arrived at the southern rim of the crater, arresting his slide by pressing his boots against the outside of the girder, and he came to an abrupt, lurching halt.
He saw three more enemy soldiers in parkas gathered at the base of the watchtower and he slid on his butt down the rocky inner wall of the crater behind them, firing as he did so. They all fell as, finally, he came to a halt at the bottom of the crater wall, guns smoking and empty, his enemy’s position silent and devoid of movement.
He still held his guns leveled even though he was out of ammo. If anyone had survived his attack, he was screwed, but it appeared that no one had.
Within moments, Schofield was up in the cupola of the second watchtower, reloaded and rearmed and looking down the barrel of one of his enemy’s sniper rifles.
“Mother,” he said into his throat-mike. “The way is clear. Bring everybody through the underwater walkway. I’ll cover you from here.”
Veronique Champion and Baba just stared openmouthed at what they had just seen.
Champion said nothing.
Baba nodded. “I like this man Scarecrow!”
THE KID, Mario, Chad, Ivanov, Champion and Baba dashed for the walkway again—only this time, instead of being fired upon from the far watchtower, they were covered by it, by Schofield.
The original Army of Thieves unit that had hounded them out of the Bear Lab—Bad Willy’s unit—was now pinned down on the stairs at the northern end of the Stadium by Schofield’s sniper fire.
“Zack,” Schofield said into his throat-mike as he peered through the scope of the sniper rifle. “Where are you?”
“We’re still lost in the trenches,” Zack’s voice replied.
“Well, get out of there and get to the walkway again. I have it covered now.”
“Copy that,” Zack said. “We’re coming.”
Zack hustled through the trenches with Emma hanging off his shoulder and Bertie rolling along beside him. He panted as he ran, breathless and afraid.
He rounded a mud-walled, frost-covered corner and saw another mud-walled, frost-covered trench.
He was hopelessly, hopelessly lost.
“How you doing?” he asked Emma.
“It hurts like hell,” Emma winced as she limped along. She looked at him. “Please don’t leave me, Zack.”
Zack stopped, turned and looked her square in the eye. “Emma. Hey. Look at me. No matter how bad it gets, I will not leave you, okay? I will not leave you. Either we get out of this together or we go down together.”
She nodded weakly. “Thanks.”
Zack looked up at the rim of the trench above them. “We gotta get topside. I don’t know which way we’re going anymore—”
“How sweet,” a nasty voice said from somewhere very near.
The dense foggy air made it sound uncomfortably close. “ ‘Either we get out of this together or we go down together.’ Brave words . . . Zack.”
Zack spun, searching for the owner of the voi
ce, but he saw nothing except the empty trench reaching away into the fog.
Emma’s eyes went wide. “They’re in the trenches . . .”
“The name’s Willy,” the voice said. “Bad Willy. Because I have a very bad willy. See, I just love to get acquainted with the ladies even when they don’t want to get acquainted with me. And I must say,” he cooed menacingly, “I just love the sound of your voice . . . Emma.”
Zack and Emma exchanged horrified glances.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are . . .” Bad Willy’s voice sang a moment before Zack heard—very close—the chk-chk of a safety being unlocked.
Zack picked up Bertie by his carry handle. In the thick silence, he worried that the whirring of Bertie’s electric motor might give their position away.
“This way!” Zack whispered as he pulled Emma around another corner, just as a terrifying roar shook the air and a gigantic shaggy polar bear filled the muddy alleyway in front of them.
It reared on its hind legs, rising to its full fourteen-foot height, opening its jaws to reveal a set of fearsome fangs as it bellowed in pure animal rage.
Like the bears in the lab, this bear’s coat was shaggy and matted and filthy. Its eyes were wild, deranged, infuriated.
Zack pushed Emma backward, putting himself between her and the bear. But it was no use. With startling speed, the massive white creature dropped onto all fours and launched itself at them and Zack could only shut his eyes and wait for the end . . .
. . . ONLY nothing happened.
He opened his eyes, to find himself looking into the rapidly dilating nostrils of the bear from a distance of three inches.
Its foul hot breath washed over his face.
Only then did Zack realize that the animal’s nose was twitching, sniffing: sniffing him.
With a rude grunt, the bear jerked away from Zack, all interest in him abruptly and inexplicably lost.
“Why is it—?” Emma said in a hushed voice.
“I don’t—” Zack whispered, but then he realized that he did know why.
Scarecrow Returns ss-5 Page 12
