Scarecrow ss-3

by Matthew Reilly

  'Captain Schofield,' Lefevre said, 'allow me to introduce to you the CincLock-VlI security system. We would like to see you disarm it.1

  FORTERESSE DE VALOIS

  BRITTANY, FRANCE

  26 OCTOBER, 1600 HOURS LOCAL TIME

  (1000 HOURS EST USA)

  They dragged Libby Gant into the dark underground pit.

  Bloodied and wounded and teetering on the edge of consciousness, she noticed its circular stone walls, the pool of tidal seawater that filled most of its floor area. Seawater which contained two prowling sharks.

  Thunk.

  The upper half of the guillotine's wooden stocks came down over Gant's neck, pinning her head firmly in place.

  The armed man covering her shot home the lock. Gant had never seen him before: he had carrot-red hair, vacant black eyes, and an exceedingly ugly rat-like face.

  The imposing frame of the guillotine loomed above her—her head now fastened twelve feet beneath its suspended blade.

  Gant grimaced. She could barely even kneel. The tracer wound to her chest burned with pain.

  Next to Rat Face stood one of the bounty hunters—Cedric Wexley's No. 2, a psychotic ex-Royal Marine named Drake. He covered Gant with a Steyr-AUG assault rifle.

  Gant noticed that Drake was wearing a strange-looking flak vest—a black utility vest equipped with all manner of odd-looking devices, like a Pony Bottle and some mountaineering pitons.

  It was Knight's vest.

  That made her look up.

  And she saw him.

  There, fifteen feet in front of her—standing on a stone platform which was itself two inches under the waterline, his eyes squeezed painfully shut since his amber glasses had been removed, his back pressed against the curved stone wall of the pit, his wrists manacled and his holsters glaringly empty—was Aloysius Knight.

  A voice echoed across the watery dungeon.

  '"Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." Yeats, I believe.'

  Jonathan Killian appeared in the viewing balcony—with the bounty hunter Cedric Wexley at his side.

  Killian gazed out over the Shark Pit like an emperor at the Colosseum, his eyes falling on Gant, fifty yards away, on the other side of the pit.

  'Anarchy is loosed upon the world, Lieutenant Gant,' he said pleasantly. 'I must say I like the sound of that. Don't you?'

  'No,' Gant groaned with pain.

  They didn't have to raise their voices; their words echoed across the dungeon.

  Killian said, 'And Captain Knight. I find your actions most disturbing. A bounty hunter of your fame hindering a hunt. There can be only one conclusion: you are being paid to do so.'

  Knight just stared back at the young billionaire, said nothing.

  it concerns me to think that someone wishes to foil the plans of the Council. Who is paying you to save Schofield, Captain Knight?'

  Knight said nothing.

  'Noble silence. How predictable,' Killian said. 'Perhaps when I have your tongue wrenched from your mouth, you will wish you had spoken sooner.'

  'We know your plan, Killian,' Gant said through clenched teeth.

  'Start a new Cold War to make money. It won't work. We'll blow the lid on it, inform the US Government.'

  Killian snorted.

  'My dear Lieutenant Gant. Do you honestly think I fear governments} The modern Western government is but a gathering of overweight middle-aged men trying to gloss over their own mediocrity with the attainment of high office. Presidential planes, Prime Ministerial offices, they are but the illusion of power.

  'As for a new Cold War,' Killian mused, 'well, that is more the Council's plan than my own. My plan would embody somewhat more vision.

  'Consider that poem by Yeats. I particularly love the notion of the falconer no longer being able to command his falcon. It suggests a nation that is no longer capable of controlling its most deadly weapon. The weapon has developed a mind of its own, realised its own deadly potential. It has outgrown its owner and attained dangerous independence.

  'Now place that in the context of the US defence industry. What happens when the missile builders no longer choose to obey their masters? What happens when the military-industrial complex decides it no longer needs the United States Government?'

  'The Scarecrow will stop you,' Gant said defiantly.

  'Yes. Yes. The Scarecrow,' Killian said. 'Our mutual friend. He is a special one, isn't he? Did you know that the Council was so concerned about his presence on the list that they went to the trouble of arranging a sham mission to Siberia just to trap him? Needless to say, it didn't work.'

  'No shit.'

  'But if he is still alive,' Killian said, 'then, yes, it is something of a problem.'

  Killian locked eyes with Gant. . .

  . . . and she felt her spine turn completely to ice. There was something in his glare that she had never seen before, something truly terrifying.

  Aloysius Knight saw it, too, and he immediately became concerned.

  This was happening too fast. He shifted in his stance, strained against his manacles.

  'Now,' Killian said, 'in any standard story, a villain like me would seek to draw out the troublesome Schofield by holding his beloved Lieutenant Gant hostage. I believe this was exactly Demon Larkham's thinking earlier today.'

  'Yes,' Gant said warily. 'It was.'

  'But it didn't work, did it?' Killian said.

  'No.'

  'Which is why, Lieutenant Gant, I must do something more to flush Shane Schofield out. Something that will make finding me far more important to him than disrupting the Council's plan. Mister Noonan.'

  At that moment Rat Face—Noonan—grasped the release lever on the guillotine and Gant swallowed in horror.

  Then she looked over at Knight, locking eyes with him.

  'Knight,' she said. 'When you get out of here, tell Schofield something for me. Tell him I would have said yes.'

  Then, without pause or patience, Rat Face pulled the lever and the guillotine's terrible blade dropped from its perch and rushed down its guide-rails toward Gant's exposed neck.

  Chunk.

  Libby Gant's headless body dropped to the ground at the base of the guillotine.

  A hideous waterfall of blood gushed out from its open neck, spilling across the stone stage before flowing off it into the seawater at the platform's edge.

  The blood in the water quickly attracted the sharks. Two pointed grey shadows appeared at the edge of the guillotine's stage, searching for the source of the blood.

  'Jesus, noV Aloysius Knight yelled, straining at his chains, staring at the gruesome sight in total apoplectic shock.

  It had happened so fast.

  So quickly.

  Without any hesitation.

  Libby Gant was dead.

  Despite the pain of the light hitting them, Knight's eyes were wide, his face white. 'Oh God, no . . .' he gasped again.

  He snapped to glare up at Jonathan Killian—but Killian's face was a mask. His cool hard stare had not changed at all.

  And then suddenly one of the men in the pit was coming towards Knight.

  It was Drake, the ExSol mercenary, carrying one of Knight's Remington shotguns and wearing his utility vest. The other man, Rat Face, was leaving the pit via a steel door over by the guillotine.

  'What about this one?' Drake asked Killian.

  Killian waved a hand. 'No guillotines for the Black Knight. No games that might permit him to escape. Shoot him in the head and then feed him to the sharks.'

  'Yes, sir,' Drake said.

  The giant mercenary strode across a narrow stone bridge between the guillotine's stage and Knight's wall-platform, each step kicking up a shallow splash.

  As Drake approached him, the squinting Knight assessed his options.

  There weren't many.

  He could barely see.

  His hands were manacled.
r />   Drake was coming closer.

  Thinking furiously, Knight bit his lip so hard that he drew blood. He spat the gob of bloody saliva away in disgust.

  Drake halted about six feet from him, out of range from anything Knight could do—like strangle him with his legs, or kick him in the crotch.

  Drake raised Knight's silver Remington, aimed it at Knight's head. 'Heard you were better than this, Knight.'

  At which point, Knight nodded down at Drake's feet and said, 'I am.'

  Drake frowned.

  And looked down—to see one of the tiger sharks in the water right next to his boots, drawn to the edge of the platform by Knight's blood-laced saliva.

  Just as Knight had hoped.

  'Ah—' Drake took an involuntary step back from the big ten-foot shark at his feet. . .

  . . . and walked into the strike zone of a far more dangerous predator.

  What Knight did next, he did very very fast.

  First, he whip-snapped his body upwards, lashing out with his legs, and grabbed Drake hard around the ribs from behind. Knight squeezed and there came a hideous snap-snap-snap, the sound of Drake's ribs breaking.

  Drake roared with pain.

  Then Knight yanked the mercenary closer so that he could reach

  something hanging from the utility vest—his utility vest—that Drake was wearing.

  Knight pulled a mountaineering piton from the vest and one-handed, jammed the piton into his left-hand manacle and pressed its release.

  With a powerful spring-loaded thwack, the piton expanded in an instant—

  —and the old iron manacle around Knight's wrist cracked open and suddenly his left hand was free.

  Up on the viewing balcony, Cedric Wexley saw what was happening and immediately whipped up his gun, but Knight was holding Drake in the way with his legs.

  And he wasn't finished with Drake either.

  He used his now-free left hand to grab a second item from the vest: the miniature blowtorch.

  Knight yanked the blowtorch from its pouch and immediately pulled the trigger, firing it at point-blank range into Drake's back.

  The mini-blowtorch burst to life, emitting a superheated blue flame.

  Drake roared.

  The spike-like blue flame lanced right through his body, emerging from the other side—the front side—like the blade of a luminescent sword.

  Drake's face, shocked and dying, fell back against Knight's chest.

  'You got off lightly,' Knight growled, applying more power, blasting the insides of Drake's body to nothing.

  Then the body went limp, and fell, and as it did so, Knight unclasped his utility vest from it, at the same time using his piton to break open his other manacle.

  As Drake fell, however, Knight became exposed to Cedric Wexley up in the viewing balcony, who started firing.

  But now Knight was completely free.

  He dived behind Drake's corpse, let bullet after bullet hit it before, without warning, he rolled Drake's body into the blood-stained

  water, right in front of the nearest tiger shark, and then, to everyone's surprise . . .

  . . . leapt into the water after it himself.

  The shark lunged at Drake's corpse, bit into it with an almighty crunch, started tearing it to shreds. The second shark came over quickly and joined in the frenzy.

  A churning bloody foam spilled out across the pool. Waves sloshed every which way.

  After a few minutes, however, the frenzy died down and the water was calm once more.

  But there was no sign of Knight.

  Indeed, Aloysius Knight never surfaced again inside the deadly pool.

  He did surface, however, outside the Forteresse de Valois, amid the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Exactly six minutes after he'd dived underneath the sharks feeding on Drake's body, he breached the surface of the ocean, still holding his Pony Bottle to his lips.

  The mini-scuba bottle had only just had enough air in it to get him through the long underwater passage that connected the Shark Pit to the open sea.

  Knight didn't bob in the water for long. A homing transponder on his vest took care of that.

  In a matter of minutes, the hawk-shaped shadow of his Sukhoi S-37 swung into place above him, blasting the water around him with its thrusters.

  Then a harness fell out of the plane's bomb bay and slapped into the water beside him, and within moments, Aloysius Knight was sitting inside the Black Raven, back with Mother and Rufus.

  'You all right, Boss?' Rufus said, throwing him a new pair of yellow-lensed glasses.

  Knight caught them as he slumped to the floor of the Raven's rear holding cell, put them on. He didn't answer Rufus's question. Just nodded. He was still shell-shocked by the horrific execution he had just witnessed in the Shark Pit.

  Mother said, 'What about the Scarecrow? And my little Chickadee?'

  Knight looked up at her sharply.

  Behind his yellow glasses, his eyes were the picture of horror. He gazed at Mother, wondering what to say.

  Then abruptly he stood. 'Rufus. Do you have a fix on Schofield? Those MicroDots I put on his Palm Pilot should have rubbed off on his hand.'

  'I've got him, Boss. And he's still moving. Looks like someone took him to that French carrier off the coast.'

  Knight turned to Mother, took a deep, deep breath. 'Schofield's alive, but'—he swallowed—'there could be a problem with the girl.'

  'Oh dear God, no . . .' Mother said.

  'I can't talk about it now,' Knight said. 'We have to rescue Schofield.'

  THE FRENCH AIRCRAFT CARRIER RICHELIEU, ATLANTIC OCEAN, OFF THE FRENCH COAST

  Shane Schofield was thrown into a small steel-walled room adjoining the below-decks hangar. The door slammed shut behind him.

  There was nothing in the room but a table and a chair.

  On the table sat Lefevre's CincLock-VII disarming unit. Next to the unit, with a little red pilot light burning brightly on its top, was:

  A phosphorus grenade.

  High in the corner of the room, hidden behind a dark glass plate, Schofield heard a camera whirring.

  'Captain Schofield,' the DGSE agent's voice came over some speakers. 'A simple test. The phosphorus grenade you see before you is connected by shortwave radio to the CincLock unit on the table. The only way to disarm the grenade is through the CincLock unit. For the purposes of this exercise, the final disarm code is 123. The grenade will go off in one minute. Your time starts . . . now.'

  'Holy shit,' Schofield said, sitting down quickly.

  He examined the CincLock unit up close.

  White and red circles filled the main screen—red on the left, white on the right. Bing. A message appeared on the lower screen:

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

  Immediately, the white circles on the main screen began to flash—each one blinking for a brief instant, one at a time, in a slow random sequence.

  The screen squealed in protest.

  SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): FAILED DISARM ATTEMPT

  RECORDED.

  THREE FAILED DISARM ATTEMPTS WILL RESULT IN DEFAULT

  DETONATION.

  SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): RE-ACTIVATED.

  'What?' Schofield said to the screen.

  'Fifty seconds, Captain,'' Lefevre's voice said. 'You have to touch the illuminated circles in the prescribed order.'' 'Oh. Right.' The white circles began to flash again, one after the other.

  And now Schofield began pressing them—just after they flashed.

  'Forty seconds . . .'

  The white circles' sequence became faster. Schofield's hands began to move faster with them, touching the circles on the screen.

  Then, abruptly, one of the red circles on the left side of the display illuminated.

  Schofield wasn't ready for it. But hit it anyway, and got it in time. The white circles resumed their sequence, now blinking very quickly. Schofield's fingers increased
their pace, too.

  'Thirty seconds . . . you're doing well. . .'

  Then another red circle flashed.

  And this time Schofield was too slow.

  The screen beeped angrily.

  SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): FAILED DISARM ATTEMPT

  RECORDED.

  THREE FAILED DISARM ATTEMPTS WILL RESULT IN DEFAULT

  DETONATION.

  SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): RE-ACTIVATED.

  'Damn it!' Schofield yelled, eyeing the grenade on the table beside him.

  And the white circles began their blinking sequence for a third and final time.

  'Twenty-five seconds left. . .'

  But this time Schofield was prepared, knowing what he had to do. His hands now moved fluidly across the screen, punching the white circles as they blinked, breaking left every so often as a red circle flashed.

  'Ten seconds, nine . . .'

  The sequence became faster. The darting moves to the reds became more frequent—to the point, Schofield thought, where it became a test of his reflexes.

  'Eight, seven . . .'

  His eyes stayed focused on the display. His fingers kept dancing. Sweat trickled into his eyes.

  lSix, five . . .'

  The lights kept blinking: white-white-red-white-red-white.

  'Four, three . . .'

  Bing—a message sprang up on the screen:

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

  'Two..:

  Schofield typed '1-2-3-ENTER' on the keypad. The numbers appeared on the smaller screen. 'One...' Bing.

  THIRD PROTOCOL (CODE ENTRY): SATISFIED. DEVICE DISARMED.

  Schofield exhaled, slumped back in his chair.

  The door to the room opened. Lefevre entered, dove-clapping.

  'Oh, tres bien! Tres bien!' he said. 'Very good, Captain.'

  Two burly French naval commandos covered Schofield on either side.

  Lefevre smiled. 'That was most impressive. Most impressive. Thank you, Captain. You've just reassured us of the verity of Majestic-12's claims. Not to mention the merit of this disarm system. I'm sure the Republic of France will find many uses for it. It really is such a shame that we have to kill you now. Gentlemen, take Captain Schofield back up to the hangar and string him up with the other one.'