And they fought—Mother trying to pin his gun-hand, Schofield trying to push her clear.
Taller, stronger and far bulkier, at first Mother had the jump on him. She pinned him underneath her great weight and punched his gun-wrist. The Desert Eagle dropped out of his hand. Then she smacked him hard in the face—
The blow had a strange effect on Schofield.
It seemed to focus him.
With almost disturbing ease, he grabbed Mother's left wrist with two fingers and twisted it. Mother roared with pain and Schofield—with perfect centre-of-gravity manipulation—threw her clear off him.
And they both stood.
Facing each other on the wind-lashed cliff, squaring off in the driving rain.
'I won't let you do it, Scarecrow!' Mother yelled.
'I'm sorry, Mother. It's too late.'
Mother moved.
She advanced quickly, unleashing a bone-crushing right, but Schofield ducked it, hit her back, square on the nose. Mother swung again, but Schofield—perfectly balanced in the mud— avoided that blow too, and hit her again.
Mother staggered back to a standing position. 'You're gonna have do more than that to get rid of me!'
She lunged at him again, driving into him with her shoulders, tackling him linebacker-style, lifting him off his feet and sending them both crashing to the earth.
Over by the Black Raven, Aloysius Knight and Rufus just stood there in the rain, watching the fight like stunned spectators.
Rufus took a step forward, making to intervene—but Knight stopped him with a light hand to the chest, never taking his eyes off the battle.
'No,' he said. 'This is for the two of them to sort out.'
Schofield and Mother rolled in the mud, struggling.
Mother seemed to have him pinned when suddenly Schofield landed a short sharp elbow to her jaw and—again with surprising strength—rolled her clear.
He stood.
She stood.
Both were dripping with mud.
Mother staggered slightly, tiring, but she re-engaged anyway, swinging blindly.
Schofield parried every blow easily now, martial-arts-style. Mother roared in frustration just as he spun on one knee and swept her legs out from under her, and Mother fell unceremoniously onto her butt in the mud.
Having won for himself the distance he needed, Schofield walked back over to his gun, picked it up.
'Scarecrow, no!' Mother called, tears welling in her eyes. 'Please, Shane, don't. . .'
And for some reason, that stopped him.
Schofield paused.
Then he realised what it was.
For as long as he could remember, Mother had never called him by his first name. Not even in situations outside the Marine Corps.
He lowered the gun an inch, gazed at her.
She looked pathetic: on her knees on the ground, covered in mud, tears streaking down her face.
'Shane,' she called, 'the world may not care. The world may not know that it needs people like you and Gant. But I care! And I know that I need you! Shane, I have a husband and some beautiful nieces—they're thirteen years old and they all dress like Britney fucking Spears—and I have a mother-in-law who hates my guts.
'But I love them all, love 'em to death, and I don't want to see them living in a world of suffering and death that is run by a bunch of billionaire motherfuckers. But I can't stop that from happening. I can't. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, in the end I'm just not smart enough, not quick enough, not good enough. But you are. You can beat them. And do you know why? I do. I've always known it. And my little Chickadee knew it, too, and that was why she loved you. It's because you can do things that other people can't.'
Mother was on her knees in the mud, eyes filled with tears.
'Shane, I ain't the smartest kid in the class, but I know this: people are people. They're selfish and they're self-centred, they do stupid things and they have absolutely no idea that there are heroes like you out there looking after them every day.'
Schofield didn't say a word.
The rain smacked against his cheeks.
But Mother had broken the spell.
Life was coming back into his eyes.
'I don't call you Shane,' she said. 'You probably know that. But do you know why?'
Schofield was rooted to the spot. Frozen.
'No. Why?'
'Cause you ain't a regular fucking fella. You ain't a "Brad" or a "Chad" or a "Warren". You're the Scarecrow. The fucking Scarecrow.
'You're more than just an ordinary guy. Which is why I've never treated you like an ordinary guy. You're better than all of them. But if you off yourself now, if you take the easy way out, then you're taking the path that Brad or Chad or Warren would take. That ain't you. That ain't the Scarecrow. The Scarecrow is made of tougher stuff than that. Now, I ain't saying living is going to be easy—I don't know if any normal person could bounce back after hearing what you just heard—but if anyone can, it's you.'
Schofield was silent for a long time.
Then at last he spoke.
'I'm going to kill them all, Mother,' he said. 'The bounty hunters who caught her. All the bounty hunters involved in this hunt. Plus everyone on Majestic-12 who made this happen. And when it's all over—however it turns out, whether the world survives this crisis intact or whether it goes to hell on a handcart—I'm going to find Jonathan Killian and I'm going to blow his fucking brains out.'
Mother smiled through her tears. 'Sounds good to me.'
'But Mother,' he added somewhat ominously, 'I won't guarantee what I'll do after that.'
'Then I guess I'll just have to fight you again,' Mother said.
And at that, Schofield blinked.
Life had fully returned.
Mother nodded. 'Scarecrow. Nobody else may ever say this, so
I'll just say it for me . . . and for Ralph, and for the six Britney clones and my bitch from hell mother-in-law. Thank you.'
Schofield came over to her, extended his hand. Mother clasped it and let him haul her up.
Before he could move off, however, she embraced him in a mighty hug, engulfing his body in her massive frame. Then she kissed him on the forehead and guided him back to the Raven with one arm around his shoulders.
'I miss her already,' she said as they walked.
'Me, too,' Schofield said. 'Me, too.'
They walked together.
'Mother, I'm sorry I hit you.'
'Hey, it's okay. I hit you first.'
'Thanks for fighting me. Thanks for not letting me go.'
UPPER NEW YORK BAY, USA
26 OCTOBER, 1125 HOURS LOCAL TIME
Exactly eleven minutes after his Concorde had touched down on the tarmac at JFK, Book II was sitting in the back of a Marine Corps CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter, blasting over the Statue of Liberty and Upper New York Bay, the mighty steel-and-glass mountain range of New York City spread out behind him.
Seated in the hold with him were twelve fully-armed Force Reconnaissance Marines.
'You found terrorists at the plant?' Book shouted into his mike, puzzled. He was talking to the leader of the Department of Defense team that had checked the Axon plant earlier, a man named Dodds.
'Yes. All from Global Jihad, including—wait for it—Shoab Riis. Looks like it was a hell of a fight there,' Dodds said.
'Global Jihad,' Book said. 'But that just doesn't make—' He cut himself off.
Suddenly he understood.
Majestic-12 needed someone to blame for all this. And who better than a terrorist organisation?
For, really, how could Axon Corp help it if Global Jihad terrorists stole their missiles and ships. But where could Majestic-12 find a team of genuine Global Jihad terrorists?
'France,' Book II said aloud. 'It's always fucking France.'
Dodds said, 'Book, what the hell is going on? Everyone here is
scared shitless. This could be the biggest terrorist attack in history and they're
going to use our own missiles against us.'
'This isn't a terrorist thing, Dodds,' Book said. 'It's a business thing. Trust me, the terrorists were already dead when they got to that plant. I'm starting to think that the French Secret Service has been giving Majestic-12 some quiet assistance. I gotta go. Book, out.'
Book turned his gaze back toward the container ships and supertankers resting at anchor off Staten Island—a pack of leviathans awaiting permission to enter the Hudson and East Rivers.
Thanks to the Kormoran project, each one of them was a potential missile launch vessel.
'So which one is it?' the pilot asked.
'Just go to GPS co-ordinates 28743.05—4104.55,' Book said. 'That's where it'll be.'
The pilot adjusted his dials, flew by his GPS locator.
Book checked the launch list on his hand-held computer for the hundredth time. After he had spoken with Schofield earlier, he and Scott Moseley had calculated the GPS locations of the last two Kormoran tanker-launchers:
After that, he and Moseley had then plotted all the boats on a map of the world:
The sum of it all?
In addition to the three tankers set to fire their nuclear-tipped missiles on America, England, France and Germany, there were two extra Kormoran ships out there: one in the Arabian Sea, ready to fire on both India and Pakistan, and another in the Taiwan Straits, aiming cloned Taep'o-Dong ICBMs at Beijing and Hong Kong.
'Jesus H. Christ. . .' Book whispered.
He shook himself out of it, hit his satellite mike.
'Fairfax? You there? How you doing out West?'
PACIFIC OCEAN,
TWO MILES OFF SAN FRANCISCO BAY
0825 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(1125 HOURS E.S.T USA)
Dave Fairfax sat in a Super Stallion of his own, flanked by his own Marine Recon team, his right foot shaking incessantly—a nervous gesture that betrayed his rather extreme fear.
He wore a helmet that was too big and a bulletproof vest that
was even bigger, and he held in his lap a real-time satellite uplink unit. He felt very small compared to the Marines all around him.
At the moment, his Super Stallion was powering low over the waves of the Pacific, heading toward—
A lone supertanker lying silently at anchor off the San Francisco coast.
'Hi, Book,' Fairfax yelled into his newly-acquired throat-mike. 'We have our tanker, and she's a big one, all right. She's exactly where she should be; her position matches the GPS co-ordinates you gave me. Tanker identified as the MV Jewel, registered in Norfolk, Virginia, to the Atlantic Shipping Company, a deep subsidiary of Axon Corporation.'
Fairfax's foot kept shaking. He wished it would stop.
'Oh, and I got that Mersenne prime for you,' he said. 'God, man, Mersennes are very cool mathematics. There are only thirty-nine that we know of, but some of those are, like, two million digits long. They're a very rare kind of prime number. You get them by applying a strict formula: Mersenne Prime = 2P-1, where "p" is a prime number, but where the answer is also prime. Three is the first Mersenne Prime because 22-l = 3, and both 2 and 3 are prime. So they start small, but end up very big. The sixth Mersenne is 131071. It's based on the prime number, 17. That is, 2I7-1 = 131071, which is also prime—'
'So the answer is 131071,' Book said.
'Uh, yes,' Fairfax said.
Til pass that on to the Scarecrow," Book said. 'Thanks, David.
Out:
The signal went dead.
Fairfax scowled at his treacherous foot.
'Goes with the job, Mister Fairfax,' the Marine leader, Trent, said, nodding at Fairfax's foot. 'But if the Scarecrow trusts you to do this, then you must be up to the challenge.'
'I'm glad he thinks I'm up for it,' Fairfax muttered.
The Super Stallion roared toward the tanker.
ENGLISH CHANNEL, NORTH OF CHERBOURG,
FRANCE
26 OCTOBER, 1725 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(1125 HOURS E.S.TUSA)
The Black Raven shot like a bullet through the rain-driven sky, searchlights blazing, zooming high over a constellation of supertanker lights on the English Channel.
While Rufus, Mother and Knight searched the sea for their target, Schofield was talking on the radio with Book II.
'Okay, I'm sending it all through now,' Book's voice said.
Schofield's Palm Pilot pinged: it now had Book's plots of all the Kormoran ships on it. Schofield's eyes widened at the location names: the Arabian Sea, the Taiwan Straits . . .
'And Fairfax figured out the sixth Mersenne for you,' Book said. 'It's 131071:
'131071 . . .'Schofield wrote it down on his hand. 'Thanks, Book. Tell David I'll be in touch with him shortly. Scarecrow, out.'
He switched channels, patched in to the US Embassy in London. 'Mr Moseley. What's the word on our submarines?'
'I've got good news and bad news,' Scott Moseley's voice said.
'Give me the good news.'
'The good news is we have Los Angeles-class attack subs in both the Arabian Sea and the Taiwan Straits—close enough to take out the launch boats at those locations.'
'And the bad news.'
Moseley said, 'The bad news is the other three launch boats: the ones in New York, San Francisco and the English Channel. They're going to fire too soon. We don't have any 688s close enough to get to any of those launch vessels in time. Book and Fairfax are going to have to go in and disarm them in situ, on board.'
'Okay,' Schofield said.
'Found it!' Rufus pointed to a supertanker rolling at anchor in the raging sea, its deck illuminated by powerful floodlights—just
another gigantic supertanker nestled in amongst all the others waiting off the French coast. 'Transponder signal identifies it as the MV Talbot and its location matches the GPS location perfectly.'
'Good work, Rufus,' Schofield said. 'Mr Moseley, thanks for your help. Now I have to get to work.'
Schofield turned to Knight and Mother. 'We take the launch tankers in the order that they'll fire. This one first. Then we hightail it out of here and disarm the others by remote from a safe location. Good for you?'
'Good for me,' Knight said.
'Fuckin' dandy,' Mother said.
'Hold on, people,' Schofield said, his face deadly. 'We're going in.'
ENGLISH CHANNEL 1730 HOURS LOCAL TIME (1130 HOURS IN NEW YORK)
The Black Raven swooped in low over the supertanker's main deck, cutting across the beams of the ship's floodlights.
Rain fell all around it—slanting, stinging rain.
Forks of lightning slashed the sky.
Then the bomb bay on the Raven opened and three figures rap-pelled down from it: Schofield, Knight and Mother.
They were all fully armed—MP-7s, Glock pistols, Remington shotguns—thanks to the Raven's onboard arsenal. Schofield and Mother even wore two spare utility vests that Knight kept for himself aboard the Raven.
The three of them landed on the superlong foredeck of the Talbot, in front of its control tower, while above them the Black Raven peeled away into the rainy sky.
And not a moment too soon.
For no sooner were Schofield and the others on the deck than the entire area around them exploded with bullet sparks from a pair of snipers firing from the control tower.
NEW YORK BAY EAST COAST, USA
At the exact same time on the other side of the Atlantic, Book II and his team of Marines were storming their supertanker—the Ambrose—in New York Bay.
Like Schofield, they rode ziplines from their chopper down to the tanker's elongated foredeck.
Like Schofield, they entered under fire.
Unlike Schofield, however, they didn't have the advantage of darkness and pouring rain. It was 11:30 a.m. on this side of the world. Broad daylight.
The two snipers waiting for them inside the bridge of the Ambrose opened fire before Book's men had reached the bottom of their ropes.
Two Marines fell immediately. Dead
.
Book hit the deck hard, landing with a heavy thump, returned fire.
SAN FRANCISCO WEST COAST, USA
It was the same on the West Coast.
Fairfax's team stormed their supertanker—the Jewel—under heavy sniper fire from its control tower.
But Trent's men saw it coming.
Their own crack shooter nailed both of the enemy snipers with two shots from the open door of their Super Stallion.
The Marines stormed the ship, landing on the roof of the supertanker's control tower—with Dave Fairfax running in their midst.
They found the snipers' nest on the bridge: two snipers had been firing out through the supertanker's high-visibility bridge windows.
The two snipers had deep black skin, and wore khaki African military fatigues.
'What the hell?' Andrew Trent said when he saw their shoulder insignia.
Both snipers wore the badge of the Eritrean Army.
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
Lightning lit up the sky—waves crashed against the side of the supertanker—thunder roared—bullets banged down against the foredeck.
Knight and Mother nailed the two snipers up on the bridge of the Talbot with a blitzkrieg of fire.
'I should have known!' Schofield shouted as they charged across the foredeck toward a door at the base of the control tower. 'Killian wouldn't leave the ships unguarded!'
'So who are they? Who did he get to do the guarding?' Mother yelled.
On the way to the tower, they found a large access hatch sunk into the deck. Knight and Schofield opened it . . .
... to be met by the deafening brack-a-brack! of automatic gunfire and the sight of a long vertical ladder disappearing down into the ship's vast missile hold.
Of more immediate interest to Schofield and Knight, however, was what they saw at the base of the ladder.
The source of the gunfire.
To their utter amazement, they saw a team of black-clad commandos—brandishing Uzis and M-16s with clinical precision, and firing them ferociously at an unseen enemy.
Schofield jammed the hatch shut again.
'I think we interrupted someone's battle,' he said.
Mother yelled, 'What did you see down there?'
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