Scarecrow ss-3

by Matthew Reilly

  'No! Not yet!' he yelled. 'Tell Knight to get outside. He doesn't want to be in here in the next two minutes! In fact, he doesn't want to be anywhere near this ship! Tell him we'll meet him outside!'

  'Copy that,' Knight said, moments later.

  He turned. 'Rufus! Time to bail!'

  'You got it, Boss!' Rufus said. 'Now, where is that other . . . ah,' Rufus said, spotting a second open-air elevator on the opposite side of the hangar bay.

  He powered up the Sukhoi, brought her swooping across the interior of the hangar bay, the roar of her engines drowning out all other sound, before—shoom—the Raven blasted out through the port-side elevator and into blazing sunlight.

  Meanwhile, in the back of his speeding jeep, Schofield rummaged through the RPG pack that Mother had brought.

  It was indeed Knight's Russian-made RPG pack—which meant it contained a disposable rocket launcher and various explosive-tipped rocket charges.

  He found the one he was looking for.

  The notorious Soviet P-61 Palladium charge.

  A Palladium charge—comprising a palladium outer shell around a liquid core of enhanced hydrofluoric acid—has only one purpose: to take out civilian nuclear power plants in a terrible, terrible way.

  Nuclear weapons require a core consistency of 90% enhanced uranium. The nuclear reactors in civilian power plants, on the other hand, have a core consistency of around 5%; while reactors on nuclear-powered aircraft carriers hover at around 50%—as such, neither of these reactors can ever create a nuclear explosion. They can leak radiation—as happened at Chernobyl—but they will never create a mushroom cloud.

  What they do release every single second, however, are massive quantities of hydrogen—highly flammable hydrogen—an action which is nullified by the use of 'recombiners' which turn the dangerous hydrogen (H) into very safe water (H20).

  Mixing palladium with hydrogen, however, has the opposite effect. It multiplies the deadly hydrogen, producing vast quantities of the flammable gas which can then be triggered by the addition .of a catalyst like hydrofluoric acid.

  As such, the P-61 charge operates as a two-stage detonator.

  The first stage—the initial blast—mixes Palladium with hydrogen, multiplying the gas at a phenomenal rate. The second stage of the weapon ignites that gas with the acid.

  The result is a colossal explosion—not quite as big as a nuclear blast, but perhaps the only explosion in the world big enough to crack the reinforced hull of an aircraft carrier.

  'There!' Schofield yelled, pointing at two gigantic cylindrical vents at the aft end of the hangar bay, fan-covered vents which expelled excess hydrogen out the rear port flank of the carrier. 'The reactor's exhaust vents!'

  The jeep whipped through the hangar bay, weaving past flaming fighter jets.

  Schofield stood up in the rear section of the jeep, hoisted the

  RPG launcher onto his shoulder, aimed it at a gigantic fan set into the side of the exhaust stacks.

  'As soon as I fire, Mother, hit the gas and head for the ascending ramp! We're gonna have about thirty seconds between the first stage and the second stage. That means thirty seconds to get off this boat!'

  'Okay!'

  Schofield peered down the sights of the launcher. 'Au revoir to

  you, assholes.'

  Then he jammed his finger down on the trigger.

  The launcher fired, sending its Palladium-tipped RPG rocketing into the upper reaches of the hangar, a dead-straight smoke-trail extending through the air behind it.

  The Palladium charge smashed through the fan in the right-hand exhaust vent and disappeared inside it, heading downward, searching for heat.

  No sooner was it away than Mother floored the jeep, wheeling it around in a tight circle before disappearing into the tunnel-like ascension ramp that allowed vehicle access from the hangar to the upper flight deck.

  Round and round the jeep went, rising upwards.

  As it circled higher, tyres squealing, there came an awesome muffled boom from deep within the bowels of the aircraft carrier.

  The Palladium charge had hit its target.

  Schofield hit his stopwatch: 00:01 . . . 00:02 . . .

  In the air above the Richelieu, the Black Raven was still engaged in the dogfight of its life with the four French Rafale fighters.

  It banked hard, screaming through the air, and took one of the Rafales out with its last remaining missile.

  But then Rufus heard a shrill beeeeeeeeep from his console.

  'They've fully hacked our countermeasure frequency!' he called.

  'We just lost missile shield completely!'

  At that moment, another of the Rafales got on their tail and the two planes roared over the ocean together, the Rafale trailing the Sukhoi, blazing away at it with orange tracers.

  As the Raven rushed forward, Knight swung around in his revolving gunner's chair and opened fire on the trailing plane with the Raven's underslung revolving gun, raking the French fighter's cockpit with a withering rain of fire, shattering its canopy, ripping the pilot to bits, causing his plane to plough into the sea with a jarring explosive splash.

  'Boss!' Rufus called suddenly. 'I need guns forward! Now!'

  Knight spun. What he hadn't seen was that this trailing Rafale had been driving the Raven toward . . . the other two French fighters!

  The two waiting Rafales launched one missile each—

  —twin fingers of smoke lanced into the air, arcing in towards the Black Raven's nose—

  —but Rufus rolled the sleek black plane, flying it on its side just as he engaged his custom-fitted—and very rare—secondary coun-termeasures: a system known as 'Plasma Stealth' that enveloped the entire aircraft in a cloud of ionised gas particles.

  The two missiles went berserk, splitting in a V-shape to avoid the ion cloud around the Sukhoi, and the Raven bisected them at blinding speed—leaving one missile to ditch wildly into the sea and the other to wheel around in the sky.

  But the Raven was still on a collision course with the two incoming Rafales.

  Knight swung forward, opened fire—and destroyed the left-hand wing of one Rafale a moment before the Raven overshot the two French fighters with a deafening roar.

  There was only one Rafale left now, but not for long. A moment after it passed Knight's plane, the last French Rafale was hit by its own missile—the one that had gone rogue after being assailed by the Sukhoi's Plasma Stealth mechanism.

  Knight and Rufus turned to see the final explosion, but as they

  did so, there came another noise from across the waves—a deep ominous boom from within the aircraft carrier.

  'Faster, Mother. Faster,' Schofield eyed his stopwatch:

  00:09 . . .

  00:10...

  The jeep shot up the circular ramp, kicking up sparks against the ramp's close steel walls.

  Abruptly, the entire carrier banked sharply, turning to port, tilting the whole world thirty degrees.

  'Keep going!' Schofield yelled.

  The first-stage blast of the Palladium charge had knocked out the Richelieu's hydrogen recombiners: that was the ominous boom.

  Which meant that uncontrolled hydrogen was now building inside the carrier's cooling towers at an exponential rate. In exactly 30 seconds the second stage of the palladium charge would detonate, igniting the hydrogen and bringing about aircraft carrier Armageddon.

  00:11

  00:12

  The jeep burst out from the ascension ramp into sunlight, bounced to a halt.

  There was pandemonium on the flight deck.

  Smoking planes, charred anti-aircraft guns, dead sailors. One Rafale fighter—nose down, its front wheels destroyed—blocked the Richelieu's No. 2 take-off runway. The fighter must have been just about to take off when the Black Raven had hit it with a missile.

  Schofield saw it instantly.

  'Mother! Head for that broken fighter!'

  'That thing ain't gonna fly, Scarecrow! Not even for you!' Mot
her yelled.

  00:15

  00:16

  Amid the chaos, the jeep skidded to a halt beside the destroyed

  Rafale fighter. Mother was right. With its nose down and its front wheels crumpled, it wasn't going anywhere.

  00:17

  00:18

  'I don't want the plane,' Schofield said. 'I want this.'

  He jumped out of the jeep, reached down and grabbed the catapult hook that lay on the runway in front of the destroyed plane. The small, trapezoidal catapult hook had formerly been attached to the front wheels of the plane. Normally you would attach it to the steam-driven catapult mechanism that ran for the length of the flight deck in order to get your plane to take-off speed in the space of 90 metres.

  Schofield, however, wedged the catapult hook crudely under the front axle of his jeep and then clipped the other end of the hook to the deck catapult.

  00:19

  00:20

  'Oh, you cannot be serious . . .' Mother said, eyeing the empty runway in front of their jeep—a runway that simply stopped at the bow horizon of the ship. The catapult's rails stretched away for the length of the flight deck like a pair of railway tracks heading toward a cliff edge.

  00:21

  00:22

  Schofield jumped back into the jeep beside Mother.

  'Put her into neutral and buckle up!' he said.

  00:23

  00:24

  Mother snatched up her seatbelt, clicked it on. Schofield did the same.

  00:25

  Then he drew his MP-7 and levelled it at the nearby catapult controls, long since abandoned during the Black Raven's attack . . .

  00:26

  . . . and fired.

  00:27 Ping!

  The bullet slammed into the launch lever, triggering the catapult. And the jeep shot off the mark at a speed that no humble jeep had ever gone before.

  Ninety metres in 2.2 seconds.

  Schofield and Mother were thrust into their seats, felt their eyeballs ram into the backs of their sockets.

  The jeep shot down the runway at unbelievable speed.

  The deck blurred with motion.

  The jeep's front tyres blew out after fifty metres.

  But it still kept rocketing forward—like a cannonball out of a cannon—propelled by the tremendous force of the catapult.

  Truth be told, they weren't travelling as fast as a fighter jet on take-off, since a fighter is also propelled by its own thrusters.

  But Schofield didn't want to fly.

  He just wanted to get off this aircraft carrier before she—

  Blew.

  The jeep hit the edge of the runway . . . and shoomed straight off it . . . blasting out into the sky . . . nose up, wheels spinning . . . just as the entire aircraft carrier behind it shattered spontaneously.

  There was no fire.

  No billowing clouds.

  There was just a mighty, mighty BANG! as every exterior steel wall of the aircraft carrier instantaneously expanded outward—pushed out by the tremendous pressure of ignited hydrogen—bursting at the seams like the Incredible Hulk busting out of his clothes.

  A starburst of a billion rivets was thrown high into the sky.

  The rivets were thrown for miles, and rained down for the next whole minute. A helicopter that had just taken off from the rear of

  the carrier was shredded by the sudden rivet-wave, destroyed in

  mid-flight.

  Dislodged pieces of the carrier—including entire plates of steel—flew out into the air and slammed down into the surrounding French destroyers, denting their sides, smashing their bridge

  windows.

  The greatest damage to the Richelieu occurred at the aft end of the carrier, around the epicentre of the blast: the cooling vents.

  The exterior walls there were simply ripped apart at the seams— at the vertical rivet joints—opening up wide gashes on both sides of the carrier, gashes into which the Atlantic Ocean flowed without

  mercy.

  And the Richelieu—the largest and greatest aircraft carrier ever built by France—began to sink unceremoniously into the ocean.

  Schofield and Mother's jeep, however, flew off the bow of the massive carrier.

  As it soared through the air in front of the ship, they undipped their seatbelts and pushed themselves up and out of the jeep, allowing themselves to sail through the sky above it.

  The drop from the flight deck to the water level was about

  twenty-five metres.

  The jeep hit the water first. A large foamy explosion of spray.

  Schofield and Mother hit it next. Twin splashes.

  It hurt, but they angled their bodies as they entered the water—so that they entered it boots-first and knifed under the surface not a moment before the carrier erupted and its storm of rivets blasted across the surface of the ocean like a rain of deadly shrapnel.

  The mighty aircraft carrier was sinking fast, ass-end first. It was a truly spectacular sight. And then, as its hapless crew hurried for the lifeboats or simply

  leapt for their lives into the ocean, the great warship went vertical— its bow rising high, its aft section completely submerged.

  The rest of the French carrier group was frozen in shock.

  Outside full-scale war, this sort of thing was unthinkable. No country had lost an aircraft carrier since World War II.

  Which was probably why they were slow to react when, a minute after the explosion, the Black Raven swung into a hovering position ten feet above the waves of the Atlantic and plucked two tiny figures from the chop, raising them up on a cable-harness into its rear bomb bay.

  Once the two figures were safely inside it, the sleek Sukhoi rose into the air and blasted off into the sky, away from the shattered remains of the Richelieu carrier group.

  Aloysius Knight strode back into the holding cell of the Black Raven, saw Schofield and Mother lying there looking like a pair of drowned rats.

  Schofield glanced up at Knight as he entered. 'Set a course for the English Channel, off Cherbourg. That's where the first Kormoran ship is. We have to find it before it launches its missiles on Europe.'

  Knight nodded. 'I've already told Rufus to take us there.'

  Schofield paused.

  Knight appeared unusually sombre, almost. . . sensitive. What was going on?

  Schofield looked around the tight confines of the holding cell, and it hit him.

  'Where's Gant?' he asked.

  It was then that, behind his amber-tinted glasses, Knight's eyes wavered—just slightly. Schofield saw it and at that moment, he felt something inside him that he had never felt before.

  Absolute, total dread.

  Aloysius Knight swallowed.

  'Captain,' he said, 'we have to talk.'

  ENGLISH CHANNEL COASTLINE, NORTHERN

  FRANCE

  26 OCTOBER, 1700 HOURS LOCAL TIME

  (1100 HOURS E.S.T USA)

  With a burst from its thrusters, the Black Raven landed on a cliff-top overlooking the English Channel, lashed by driving rain.

  Out of its cockpit stepped Shane Schofield. He dropped to the muddy ground and staggered away from the fighter, oblivious to the storm around him.

  After Knight had finished telling him about what had happened in the Shark Pit with Gam and Jonathan Killian and the guillotine, Schofield had said only three words.

  'Rufus. Land now.'

  Schofield stopped at the edge of the cliff, jammed his eyes shut.

  Tears mixed with the rain hammering against his face.

  Gant was dead.

  Dead.

  And he hadn't been there. Hadn't been there to save her. In the past, no matter what happened, he'd always been able to save her.

  But not this time.

  He opened his eyes. Stared into space.

  Then his legs gave way beneath him and he dropped to his knees in the mud, his shoulders heaving violently with every desperate sob.

  Mother, Knight and Rufus
watched him from the open cockpit of the Raven, twenty yards away.

  'Fuck me . . .' Mother breathed. 'What the hell is he going to do now?'

  Schofield's mind was a kaleidoscope of images.

  He saw Gant—smiling at him, laughing, holding his hand as they strolled along the beach at Pearl, rolling up close against him in bed. God, he could almost feel the warmth of her body in his mind.

  He saw her fighting in Antarctica and in Utah. Saving his life with a one-in-a-million Maghook shot inside Area 7.

  And then—shocking himself—he saw Killian at the castle saying, 'I love to observe the look of pure horror that appears on a person's face when they realise that they are, without doubt, going to die.'

  And he saw the world from now on . . .

  Without her.

  Empty.

  Meaningless.

  And with that, he looked down at the Desert Eagle pistol in his holster . . . and he drew it.

  'Hey there, champ,' a voice said from behind him. 'Whatcha planning on doing with that gun?'

  It was Mother.

  Standing right behind him.

  Schofield didn't turn around when he spoke. 'Nobody cares, Mother. We could save the world and nobody would give a shit. People would go on living their lives, completely unaware of soldiers like us. Like Gant.'

  Mother's eyes were locked on the gun in his hand. Rain dripped off it.

  'Scarecrow. Put the gun away.'

  Schofield looked down at the Desert Eagle, seemed to notice it for the first time.

  'Hey,' Mother said. Solely to distract him, she asked a question that she already knew the answer to. 'What did she mean when she said, "Tell him, I would have said yes"?'

  Schofield looked away into the distance, spoke like an automaton.

  'She could read me like a book. I could never keep anything secret from her. She knew I was going to propose in Tuscany. That's what she was gonna say yes to.'

  He shifted his grip on the gun. Bit his lip. Another tear streaked down his face. 'Jesus, Mother. She's dead. She's fucking dead. There's nothing left for me now. Screw it. The world can fight its own battles.'

  With a quick move, he placed the gun under his chin and pulled the—

  But Mother moved faster.

  She tackled him just as the gun went off and the two of them went rolling in the mud by the cliff edge.