Scarecrow ss-3

by Matthew Reilly

  over their bound hands jump-rope style—bringing their wrists in front of their bodies—and hold up their plastic flex-cuffs.

  Mother didn't need instructions.

  Two shots—and the flex-cuffs were history. Knight and Rufus were free.

  Over on the viewing balcony, Cedric Wexley quickly threw his ten-man team into action—he sent four over the balcony into the Pit, while he ordered the other six out through the back door of the balcony, into a corridor.

  Then he himself whipped up his M-16 and hustled Jonathan Killian out of the dungeon.

  Down in the Pit, Knight snatched up a Colt Commando rifle from one of the fallen D-boys and started firing at the four ExSol men leaping down into the Pit from the balcony.

  Beside him, Rufus—still unarmed—whirled and killed a third Delta man with a driving flat-palmed blow to the nose.

  'Rufus!' Knight yelled. 'Get Schofield out of those stocks!'

  Rufus scrambled for the guillotine.

  Over by the guillotine, the rat-faced man named Noonan was ducking ricochets, a short distance from the still-pinned Schofield.

  When he spotted a brief gap in the gunfire, he reached up for the shuriken throwing knife holding the guillotine blade suspended above Schofield's head. If he could remove it, the blade would fall, decapitating Schofield.

  Noonan's hand gripped the shuriken knife—

  —just as a diving backhand punch from Rufus sent him flying.

  Noonan landed on his stomach near the edge of the stone platform, and found himself eye-to-eye with one of the tiger sharks in the water. He recoiled instantly, clambered to his feet.

  Rufus, however, landed next to Schofield, and now covered by the rifle-firing Knight, yanked up the guillotine's stocks and pulled Schofield free.

  One shot from Knight severed Schofield's flex-cuffs, but then suddenly, inexplicably, Rufus hurled Schofield around and covered him with his own body.

  An instant later, the big man was assailed in the back by several rapid-fire bullets.

  'Ah!' he roared, his body jolting with three hits.

  The volley had come from Wade Brandeis—standing nearby on one of the stone islands, nursing his bloodied right hand while firing a Colt Commando wildly with his unnatural left.

  'No!' Aloysius Knight yelled.

  He turned his own gun on Brandeis—but the rifle went dry, so instead he just hurled himself across the slick platform, sliding on his chest, and slammed into Brandeis's legs, tackling the Delta man and sending both of them tumbling into the shark-infested pool.

  Free from the guillotine, Schofield turned to see Noonan staggering toward the steel door that led out from the Shark Pit.

  As he ran, Noonan pulled a remote from his jacket and hit a button.

  The thick steel door rose, opening. Noonan bolted for it.

  'Damn it, shit!' Schofield yelled, taking off after him. 'Mother!'

  Mother was on a nearby stage, taking cover behind one of the random stone objects in the Pit and firing at the two remaining D-boys with a pistol when she heard Schofield's shout.

  She turned fast and loosed a volley at the fleeing Noonan. She didn't hit him, but her burst did cut him off from the exit, forcing him to stop and take cover behind a stone block.

  She didn't get to see if this actually helped Schofield, though,

  because the momentary distraction had given her two Delta opponents the opening they needed.

  One of them nailed her in the chest with a dozen rapid-fire shots from his Colt. Of course, her borrowed flak vest was bulletproof, so the shots just jolted her backwards, shot after shot after shot.

  Under the weight of heavy fire, Mother staggered backwards, and just as the D-boy firing at her raised his aim for the kill-shot to her head—

  —she dropped abruptly—

  —into the water, and the kill-shot went high.

  Mother sank underwater.

  Brief merciful silence.

  Then she came up—knowing what would be waiting—breaching the surface with her pistol extended, and nailed the two D-boys just as they themselves fired at her.

  The two Delta men dropped, their faces bloody messes.

  Mother sighed with relief.

  It was then that she felt an odd swell in the water around her.

  She turned . . .

  . . . and saw a large bow-wave surging through the water toward her, the high dorsal fin of a tiger shark scything through the waves, charging at her.

  'Oh, no way!' she yelled. 'No fucking way! I've survived far too much today to end up as fish food!'

  She fired her pistol at the inrushing shark—blaml-blaml-blaml-blamt-blam'.-blam!

  The shark didn't slow down.

  Mother's shots hit it, but the big shark just powered through the waves.

  Blam'.-blaml-blam!

  The shark still didn't slow down.

  It rose out of the frothing water, jaws wide—

  —just as Mother, still firing, raised one of her legs instinctively and—

  —chomp!

  The shark clamped down on her left leg.

  And Mother didn't react at all.

  Her left leg was her artificial leg, made of titanium. A replacement for an injury from a previous adventure.

  Two of the shark's teeth broke. Shattered into fragments.

  'Try eating this, motherfucker,' Mother said, levelling her pistol at the tiger shark's brain.

  Blam.

  The shark bucked violently in the water, but when it came down, it was stilled, dead, its jaws clamped around Mother's left leg, as if even in its last moment of life, it had been unwilling to let go of its prize.

  For her part, Mother just kicked the 10-foot shark away from her and leapt out of the pool to get back into the action.

  While Mother had been firing at the shark, on the other side of the Pit, Schofield had chased after Noonan and caught him—tackling him—just as he had arrived at the open doorway to the dungeon.

  The ISS man tried to kick Schofield clear, but Schofield just flung Noonan back into the dungeon and started hitting him—with venom.

  One punch, and Noonan staggered backwards.

  'I know you pulled the lever . . .' Schofield said grimly.

  Second punch, and Noonan's nose broke, spraying blood.

  'I know she died in pain . . .'

  The third punch, and Noonan's jaw broke. He slipped, lost his footing.

  'You killed a beautiful thing . . .'

  Schofield grabbed Noonan two-handed and hurled him headfirst into the guillotine. Noonan's head slid into the stocks underneath the razor-sharp blade, which itself was still held up by the shuriken.

  'So now you're gonna die in pain . . .' Schofield said.

  And with that Schofield yanked the shuriken out of the guillotine's wooden guide rails—causing the blade to drop the final two feet.

  'No!' Noonan screamed. 'Noooo—!'

  Chunk.

  Noonan's rat-like head hit the stone floor like a bouncing ball, his eyelids blinking rapidly in those first moments after decapitation before they settled into a blank stare, forever frozen in a final look of absolute utter horror.

  Ten yards away from the guillotine, floating in the shark-infested water, Aloysius Knight was engaged in the fight of his life with Wade Brandeis.

  With their equal Delta training, they were perfectly matched, and as such, they traded punches and tactics, splashing and ducking under the surface in a fight that could only be to the death.

  Then suddenly both men rose above the surface, nose-to-nose. Only now Brandeis had a small gun pressed up against Knight's chin. He had him.

  'I always had the wood on you, Knight!'

  Knight spoke through clenched teeth:

  'You know, Brandeis, ever since that night in Sudan, I've thought of a thousand ways to kill you. But until right now, I'd never thought of this one.'

  'Huh?' Brandeis grunted.

  And with that, Knight yanked Brandeis around in
the water and brought him right into the path of the inrushing second tiger shark.

  The big 10-foot shark rammed into Brandeis at full speed, taking him in its mouth, its gnashing chomping teeth inches away from Knight's own body. But the shark only had eyes for Brandeis, drawn by his bleeding right hand.

  'Sleep with one eye open, you fuck,' Knight said.

  Caught in the grip of the massive shark, Brandeis could only stare back at him—and scream as he was eaten alive.

  Knight clambered out of the water, out of the bloody froth that had once been Wade Brandeis, and headed back to join Schofield.

  Knight rejoined Schofield behind the guillotine—at the spot where Schofield had just pulled the wounded Rufus out of the line of fire of the four ExSol men now traversing across the Pit's stone islands.

  Schofield had also collected some weapons—two Colt Commando assault rifles, one MP-7, one of Knight's H&K 9mm pistols, plus Knight's own fully-loaded utility vest, taken from one of the dead Delta men.

  Mother joined them.

  'Hey, Mother,' Knight said. 'Last time I saw you, you were inside that maintenance shack in the Talbot, just before it was RPG'd by the Demon's boys. What'd you do, hide in the floor?'

  'Screw the floor,' Mother said. 'That damn shack was hanging from the roof of the hold. It had a hatch in the ceiling. That was where I went. But then, of course, the whole fucking boat sank . . .'

  Knight said, 'So how did you know we were here?'

  Mother pulled out a Palm Pilot from a waterproof pouch in her vest. 'You've got a lot of nice toys, Mr Knight. And you,' Mother turned to Schofield, 'have got MicroDots all over your hands, young man.'

  'Nice to see you, Mother,' Schofield said. 'It's good to have you back.'

  A volley of bullets from the ExSol men hit the guillotine.

  Schofield turned quickly, eyeing the open doorway ten yards away.

  'I'm going upstairs now,' he said abruptly, 'to get Killian. Mother, stay with Rufus, and take care of these assholes. Knight, you can come or you can stay. It's your choice.'

  Knight held his gaze. 'I'm coming.'

  Schofield—still wearing his stripped utility vest—gave Knight one of the rifles, the 9mm pistol and the full utility vest he had picked up. 'Here. You can use these things better than I can. Let's move. Mother, cover fire, please.'

  Mother whipped up her gun, sprayed covering fire at the ExSol mercenaries.

  Schofield dashed for the door. Knight took off after him . . . but not before quickly grabbing something from Mother.

  'What are you taking that for?' Mother shouted after him.

  'I've got a feeling I'm gonna be needing it,' was all Knight said before he disappeared through the stone doorway after Schofield.

  The Knight and the Scarecrow.

  Storming up the spiralling stone stairwell—illuminated by firelight, rising from the depths of the dungeon—two warriors of equal awesome skill, covering each other, moving in tandem, their Colt Commando machine-guns blazing.

  Like the six ExSol men guarding the stairwell had a chance.

  As Schofield had suspected, Cedric Wexley had dispatched his six remaining mercenaries to this side of the Pit, to cut off their escape.

  The ExSol meres had divided themselves into three pairs stationed at regular intervals up the stairwell, firing from alcoves in the walls.

  The first two mercenaries were ripped to shreds by fire from the uprushing warriors.

  The second pair never even heard it coming as two shuriken throwing knives whipped around the corner of the curving stairwell—banking through the air like boomerangs—and lodged in their skulls.

  The third pair were cleverer.

  They'd set a trap.

  They had waited at the top of the stairwell, inside the long stone tunnel beyond the ante-room—the tunnel with the boiling-oil gutters—the same tunnel that led to the verification office, where Wexley himself now stood with Killian and Delacroix.

  Schofield and Knight arrived at the top of the stairwell, saw the two mercenaries in the tunnel, and the others beyond them.

  But this time when Schofield moved, Knight didn't.

  Schofield dashed through the ante-room, firing at the two

  mercenaries in the tunnel, taking them down just as they tried to do the same to him.

  Knight leapt up after him shouting, 'No, wait! It's a tra—'

  Too late.

  The three large steel doors came thundering down from the ceilings of the tunnel and the ante-room. A fourth sealed off the stairwell leading down from the ante-room.

  Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!

  And Schofield and Knight were separated.

  Schofield: trapped in the tunnel with the two fallen ExSol mercenaries.

  Knight: caught in the ante-room.

  Schofield froze in the sealed-off tunnel.

  He'd hit both of the mercenaries in here—they now lay sprawled on the floor, one dead, the other whimpering.

  Killian's voice came over the speakers: 'Captain Schofield. Captain Knight. It was a pleasure to know you both—'

  Knight spun in the ante-room, saw the six microwave emitters arrayed in a circle around the ceiling, embedded in the rock.

  'Deep shit. . .' he breathed.

  Killian's voice boomed: '—but the game ends now. It seems only fitting that your deaths be hard-won.'

  Inside the office, Killian peered through the small perspex window that allowed him to see into the boiling-oil tunnel. He saw Schofield there, trapped like a rat.

  'Good-bye, gentlemen.'

  And Killian hit the two buttons on his remote that triggered each chamber's booby trap: the microwave emitters in Knight's anteroom, and the boiling-oil gutters in Schofield's tunnel.

  First, Killian heard the humming vibrations from the ante-room, quickly followed by the sound of repeated gunshots.

  This had happened before.

  People had sometimes tried to shoot their way out through the ante-room's steel doors. It had never worked. On a couple of occasions, some had attempted to shoot the microwave emitters themselves, but bullets weren't powerful enough to penetrate the emitters in their reinforced stone emplacements.

  Then with an explosive spurt, steaming yellow oil sprayed across the tiny perspex window separating Killian from the tunnel holding Schofield, blotting out his view of Shane Schofield.

  But he didn't need to see Schofield to know what was happening.

  As the superheated boiling oil sprayed its way down the length of the tunnel, Killian could hear Schofield's screams.

  A minute later, after both the screaming and the gunshots had ceased, Killian opened the steel doors—

  —to be confronted by a surprising sight.

  He saw the bodies of the two ExSol men lying in the tunnel, blistered and scorched by the boiling oil. One of them had his arms frozen in a defensive cowering posture—he had died screaming in agony, trying to fend off the oil.

  Schofield, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  In his place, standing at the ante-room end of the tunnel was a dark man-sized shape.

  A body bag, standing upright.

  It was a black polymer-plastic body bag. A Markov Type-Ill, to be precise. The best the Soviets had ever built—and the only item that Wade Brandeis had not taken from Schofield's vest. Capable of keeping in any kind of chemical contamination, now it seemed that it had successfully kept boiling oil out.

  In a flash the zipper on the body bag whizzed open from the inside and Schofield emerged from it, leading with his MP-7.

  His first shot hit Killian's hand—sending the remote flying from his grip—thus keeping the tunnel's doors open.

  His second shot blew off Killian's left earlobe. Seeing the gun in Schofield's hand, Killian had ducked reflexively behind the doorframe. A nanosecond slower and the shot would have taken off his head.

  Schofield stormed down the narrow tunnel toward the office, his MP-7 blazing.

  Cedric Wexley returned fire
from the cover of the office doorway.

  Bullets flew every which way.

  Chunks of stone fell off the wall-columns that lined the tunnel.

  The floor-to-ceiling panoramic window in the office behind Wexley shattered completely.

  But the key question in a stand-off like this was simple: who would run out of ammunition first? Schofield or Wexley?

  Schofield did.

  Ten feet short of the office doorway.

  'Shit!' he yelled, ducking behind a stone column that barely concealed him.

  Wexley smiled. He had him.

  But then, strangely, another source of gunfire assailed Wexley's position—gunfire that came from behind Schofield, from the anteroom end of the tunnel.

  Schofield was also perplexed by this and he turned . . .

  ... to see Aloysius Knight charging down the length of the tunnel, his Colt Commando raised and firing.

  Schofield caught a fleeting glimpse of the ante-room in the distance behind Knight.

  On its stone floor were 9mm shell casings—a dozen of them— relics of Knight's shooting spree during the activation of the microwave emitters.

  But they weren't regular shell casings.

  These shell casings had orange bands around them.

  The emplacements of the six microwave emitters in the anteroom may have been able to withstand regular bullets. But they'd been no match for Knight's gas-expanding bull-stoppers.

  Knight's fire was all that Schofield needed.

  Wexley was forced to return fire and within moments he was dry too. Unfortunately, so was Knight.

  Schofield sprang.

  He flew into the office at speed, striking Wexley in his already

  broken nose, breaking it again.

  Wexley roared with pain.

  And Wexley and Schofield engaged. Brutal hand-to-hand combat. South African Reccondo vs United States Marine.

  But as they came together in a flurry of moves and parries, Monsieur Delacroix stepped forward, a glistening knife appearing from his right sleeve-cuff and he lunged at Schofield with it.

  The blade got within an inch of Schofield's back before Delacroix's wrist was clutched from the side by an exceedingly strong grip and suddenly Delacroix found himself staring into the eyes of Aloysius Knight.