Scarecrow

by Matthew Reilly

  He spoke into his voice-activated throat-mike.

  ‘Knight! I’m still in the game! I just need you to open an external door for me!’

  Inside the cargo bay, Knight ducked a flying knife and threw one of his shurikens into the chest of one of the suit-wearing bad guys.

  He heard Schofield’s call, saw the big red control button that opened the Hercules’ cargo ramp, hurled a shuriken at it.

  Thwack!

  The multi-bladed throwing knife hit the button, pinned it to its console and with a low vmmmmm, the rear cargo ramp of the Hercules began to open.

  ‘All right, Captain! The cargo ramp is open!’ Knight’s voice said in Schofield’s earpiece.

  Schofield moved as quickly as he could along the underbelly of the Hercules, manoeuvring the two Maghooks above him, alternately magnetising and demagnetising them, and then swinging from them like a kid on a jungle gym, making his way along the 60-foot length of the cargo plane’s belly, toward its now-open rear ramp.

  Wind blasted into the cargo bay, rushing in through the plane’s open rear loading ramp, sending the chaff particles suspended in the air whizzing into swirls. An indoor blizzard.

  Inside the cargo hold, Knight slid to Gant’s side.

  ‘I’m here to help you,’ he said quickly, bringing his knife toward her flex-cuffs—

  —just as two great black hands grabbed him and yanked him backwards.

  Rocko.

  The big IG-88 trooper banged Knight against the side of the Humvee. Knight’s knife flew from his grip.

  The IG-88 leader, Cowboy, stepped out from his cover position on the right side of the Humvee.

  ‘His glasses!’ he called.

  Rocko let fly with a savage punch that cracked the bridge of Knight’s yellow-tinted glasses, and also broke his nose. The cracked glasses fell from his face, exposing his eyes to the light.

  ‘Ahh!’ Knight squeezed his eyes shut.

  Another crunching blow from Rocko knocked the wind out of him.

  ‘Put him in front of the car,’ Cowboy said, unclasping the Humvee’s flight restraints before jumping behind the wheel. ‘Knees in front of the tyres.’

  Rocko did as he was told—lay the limp Knight in the path of the Humvee’s tyres and stepped out of the way.

  Cowboy fired up the engine, thrust the Humvee into gear, jammed down on the gas pedal.

  The Humvee rushed forward, heading straight for Aloysius Knight’s kneecaps.

  And Cowboy felt a small satisfying bump as the big jeep ran over the bounty hunter and slammed into the side of a cargo crate.

  ‘Damn it! Fuck!’ Rocko yelled.

  ‘What?’ Cowboy called.

  ‘The other one is back!’

  None of the British men had seen Schofield re-enter the Hercules.

  Not Cowboy or Rocko or the only other remaining bad guy in the hold—the surviving suited man from British Intelligence.

  Hadn’t seen him climb up into the hold behind the Humvee, via the rear cargo ramp, clutching onto his Maghooks.

  Nor had they seen him slink down the right side of the Humvee and race across in front of it, tackling Aloysius Knight out of the way . . . while at the same time dragging the other remaining IG-88 commando to the ground in front of the speeding vehicle, causing it to bump over him instead.

  Schofield and Knight fell against the side wall of the hold, right next to Gant.

  Knight clutched his eyes. Schofield didn’t even stop for breath.

  He sliced open Gant’s flex-cuffs, gave her the knife. ‘Hey there, babe. Missed you in Afghanistan. Quickly, help me free the General.’

  General Weitzman was still spreadeagled on the bonnet of the Humvee, his wrists handcuffed to the car’s mirrors.

  Gant scooped up a set of keys from the run-over IG-88 man, found a handcuff key.

  In the meantime, Schofield rose, just as beside him Cowboy emerged from the driver’s door of the Humvee—while at the forward end of the vehicle, Schofield saw the British Intelligence guy remove a knife embedded in a wooden crate.

  A bad guy sandwich.

  Schofield extended his arms in both directions, raising his two Maghooks simultaneously. In the chaff-filled environment of the cargo hold, he’d only get one shot from each.

  He fired.

  The first shot didn’t hit Cowboy—but it wasn’t meant to. Rather, it hit the car door that Cowboy had been opening. From such close range, the Maghook thundered into the armoured door, banging it shut, knocking Cowboy back into the car.

  The suit-wearing Intelligence man was hit square in the chest by the other Maghook. He just folded in half, his ribs cracked, and went crashing back into the crate behind him.

  For her part, Gant was busy unlocking General Weitzman’s left hand. The cuff around his wrist came free.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Other wrist. Other side . . .’

  But on the other side of the Humvee stood . . .

  Rocko.

  Just standing there. Towering above Weitzman’s prone body.

  Schofield appeared at Gant’s side, locked eyes with Rocko.

  ‘Take care of the General,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the gigantic commando. ‘And get ready for my signal.’

  ‘What signal?’

  But Schofield didn’t answer her. He just crouched down and withdrew two of Knight’s evil-looking shurikens from a dead body. Across the Humvee from him, Rocko did the same.

  Then the two of them strode around to the area of open space behind the Humvee, a small space which adjoined the rear loading ramp and looked out over the wide blue sky beyond it.

  They stood opposite each other for a moment—the tall and bulky Rocko, and the smaller, more evenly proportioned Schofield—each holding two four-pointed throwing blades in his hands.

  And they engaged.

  Flashes of silver, the clang of clashing knives.

  Rocko lunged, Schofield fended. Rocko lashed, Schofield parried.

  As Schofield and Rocko fought at the aft end of the cargo hold, Gant unclasped Weitzman’s right handcuff, freeing the General but leaving the open cuff still attached to the side mirror. She slid Weitzman off the Humvee, rolled him to the floor.

  All while the General mumbled incoherently: ‘Oh, God, the code . . . the universal code . . . all right, all right, it does exist, but only a few people know it . . . It’s based on a mathematical principle . . . and yes, I inserted it into Kormoran, but there was . . . there was another project involved . . . Chameleon . . .’

  Schofield and Rocko danced around the back of the cargo hold, their shurikens flashing and clanging.

  They came down the right-hand side of the Humvee—towards Gant and Weitzman—Schofield leading the way, moving backwards, fending off Rocko’s slashes.

  ‘Gant!’ Schofield called. ‘You ready for the signal!’

  ‘Sure! What is it!’

  ‘This!’

  And then, brilliantly, Schofield caught Rocko’s next swing, and with lightning speed, he shifted his weight and slammed Rocko’s knife-hand down into the bonnet of the Humvee, right next to the open handcuff that only moments before had bound Weitzman.

  ‘Now!’

  Gant responded instantly, dived up onto the bonnet of the Humvee and clasped the cuff around Rocko’s knife-wrist.

  Rocko’s eyes boggled.

  He was now shackled to the side mirror of the Humvee!

  Schofield dived away from him, over toward General Weitzman on the floor.

  ‘Sir! Are you okay?’ he asked quickly, leaning close.

  But the General was still babbling. ‘Oh, no . . . it wasn’t just Kormoran. It was Chameleon, too . . . oh God, Kormoran and Chameleon together. Boats and missiles. All disguised. Christ . . . But the Universal Disarm Code, it changes every week. At the moment, it’s . . . the sixth . . . oh my God, the sixth m . . . m . . . mercen . . . mercen—’

  A sudden whoosh. The flash of steel. And abruptly the General’s head jolted slightly, a line
of red appearing across his neck . . .

  . . . and then, right in front of Schofield’s eyes, General Ronson H. Weitzman’s head tipped off his shoulders.

  The head bounced on the floor, rolled to a stop at Schofield’s feet. After beheading, the human head actually lives for up to 30 seconds. As such, Weitzman’s disembodied face stared gruesomely up at Schofield from the floor, eyelids fluttering for a few moments before, mercifully, the facial muscles at last relaxed and the head went still.

  Schofield snapped to look up, and saw Demon Larkham’s handsome young deputy, Cowboy, standing on the other side of the Humvee, brandishing a long-bladed machete, fresh blood dripping from its blade.

  His eyes were wide with bloodthirsty madness, and he made to hurl the machete at Schofield—

  —just as a hand gripped his wrist from behind and slammed it down on the bonnet of the Humvee, causing the machete to spring out of Cowboy’s grasp, at the same time as this unseen assailant quickly snapped the Humvee’s other handcuff around Cowboy’s now-exposed wrist.

  Cowboy spun: to see Aloysius Knight standing behind him, now wearing a new pair of amber-lensed glasses.

  ‘Not bad, Cowboy. You remembered my Achilles heel.’

  Then Knight grabbed the machete and smiled at the IG-88 assassin. ‘And I remember yours. Your inability to fly.’

  Knight then walked to the driver’s door of the Humvee, leaned inside and shifted the car into reverse. He nodded to Schofield and Gant: ‘Stand clear.’

  Cowboy and Rocko—cuffed to opposite sides of the Humvee—stared at Knight in horror.

  ‘Goodbye, boys.’

  And with that, Knight stabbed the Humvee’s gas pedal to the floor with the machete.

  The Humvee shot off the mark, racing backwards, toward the open rear cargo ramp.

  It hit the edge doing twenty, before it tipped off it, rear-end first, and to Cowboy and Rocko’s absolute terror, dropped out of sight and fell 20,000 feet straight down.

  After the Humvee had disappeared out the back door of the Hercules, Schofield rushed over to Gant and held her tightly in his arms.

  Gant returned his grip, her eyes closed. Others might have cried at such a reunion, but not Gant. She felt the emotion of the moment, but she was not one to shed tears.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ she asked when they separated.

  ‘Bounty hunters,’ Schofield said. ‘My name is on a list of people who have to be exterminated by noon today, New York time. They grabbed you to get to me.’

  He told Gant about his experience in Siberia and then in Afghanistan, about the bounty hunters he had met—Executive Solutions, the Hungarian, the Spetsnaz Skorpions, and of course, Demon Larkham’s IG-88. He also showed her the bounty list.

  ‘What about him?’ Gant nodded at Knight as he disappeared inside the cockpit to disengage their plane from the tanker. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He,’ Schofield said, ‘is my guardian angel.’

  There came a pained groan from over by the wooden crates.

  Schofield and Gant spun quickly . . .

  . . . and saw one of the suit-wearing British agents lying on the floor, clutching his broken ribs. It was the man Schofield had hit in the chest with his Maghook.

  They went over to him.

  The suited man was wheezing desperately, coughing blood.

  Schofield bent down, examined him. ‘His ribs are smashed. Punctured lungs. Who is he?’

  Gant said, ‘I only caught part of it. He and the other suit were interrogating the General with some disinhibiting drug, asking him about the American Universal Disarm Code. They said Weitzman oversaw the code’s incorporation into something called the Kormoran Project.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Schofield said. ‘A disinhibiting drug.’ He looked around the hold, saw a medical kit on the floor. It had spilled out some syringes, needles and serum bottles. He grabbed one of the serum bottles, checked its label.

  ‘Then let’s see how he handles a dose of his own medicine.’

  Aloysius Knight returned from the cockpit to find the suit-wearing British agent seated up against the wall of the cargo hold, his sleeve rolled up, and with 200 mg of EA-617 coursing through his veins.

  Knight touched Schofield on the shoulder.

  ‘I’ve disengaged us from the tanker plane,’ he said. ‘We’re currently on autopilot, staying on the course they already set: heading for a private airstrip in Brittany, on the French Atlantic coast. And Rufus just called. He’s going to drop your people at an abandoned airfield about forty miles outside of London.’

  ‘Good,’ Schofield said, thinking of Book II and Mother heading for the Mossad’s headquarters in London.

  Then he turned his attention to the captured British agent.

  After a few vain efforts to resist the disinhibiting drug, it soon emerged that the man’s name was Charles Beaton and he was a member of MI-6, British Intelligence.

  ‘This bounty hunt. What do you know about it?’ Schofield asked.

  ‘Nearly twenty million per head. Fifteen heads. And they want you all out of the picture by 12 noon today, New York time.’

  ‘Who are they? Who’s paying for all this?’

  Beaton snorted derisively. ‘They go by many names. The Bilderberg Group. The Brussels Group. The Star Council. The Majestic-12. M-12. They are an elite group of private industrialists who rule this planet. Twelve of them. The richest men in the world, men who own governments, men who bring down entire economies, men who do whatever they want . . .’

  Schofield leaned back, his eyes widening.

  ‘O-kay . . .’ Knight said drily.

  ‘Give me names,’ Schofield said.

  ‘I don’t know their names,’ Beaton said. ‘That’s not my area. My area is the American military. All I know is that Majestic-12 exists and that it’s bankrolling this bounty hunt.’

  ‘All right, then. Do you know what they hope to achieve by staging this hunt?’

  ‘No,’ Beaton said. ‘My job was to get the Universal Disarm Code from Weitzman and then give him to the bounty hunter, Larkham. To take advantage of this bounty hunt. I don’t know about the hunt itself or Majestic-12’s reasons for staging it.’

  ‘So who at MI-6 does know?’

  ‘Alec Christie. He’s our man on the inside. He knows everything about Majestic-12 and presumably, this bounty hunt. But the problem is MI-6 doesn’t know where Christie is anymore. He disappeared two days ago.’

  Christie.

  Schofield remembered the name from the list:

  2. CHRISTIE, Alec P. UK MI-6

  ‘But this Christie guy must have blown his cover,’ he said, ‘because Majestic-12 put him on the list as well.’

  He tried a new angle. ‘What are these Kormoran and Chameleon Projects that you were interrogating Weitzman about?’

  Beaton winced, still trying to resist the drug. ‘Kormoran is a US Navy project. Deep black. In World War II, the German Navy disguised some of their strike vessels as commercial freighters. One of these was called the Kormoran. We believe that the US Navy is doing the same thing but on a modern scale: building warships capable of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles, only these warships don’t look like warships. They’re disguised as supertankers and container ships.’

  ‘Whoa,’ Gant whispered.

  ‘Okay. That’s Kormoran,’ Schofield said. ‘What about the Chameleon Project?’

  ‘I don’t know about Chameleon.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Beaton groaned. ‘We know it’s linked to Kormoran, and we know it’s big—it has the highest US security classification. But at this stage, we don’t know exactly what Chameleon entails.’

  Schofield frowned, thinking.

  This was like building a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, until slowly a picture emerged. He had some pieces, but not the whole picture. Yet.

  He said, ‘So who does know, Mr Beaton? Where has MI-6 been getting all this top secret US information from?’

  �
��The Mossad,’ Beaton breathed. ‘They have a field office in London at Canary Wharf. We managed to bug it for a few weeks last month. Trust me, the Mossad knows everything. They know about Majestic-12. They know about Kormoran and Chameleon. They know about every name on that list and why they are on it. They also know one other thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Schofield said.

  ‘The Mossad knows Majestic-12’s plan for October the 26th.’

  KING’S TOWER,

  CANARY WHARF, LONDON

  26 OCTOBER, 1200 HOURS LOCAL TIME

  (1300 HOURS IN FRANCE—0700 HOURS E.S.T. USA)

  Book II and Mother rode up the side of the 40-storey King’s Tower inside a speeding glass elevator.

  The Thames stretched out before them, brown and twisting. Old London receded to the horizon, veiled in rain.

  The Canary Wharf district stood in stark contrast to the rest of London—a crisp clean steel-and-glass business district that boasted skyscrapers, manicured parks, and no less than the tallest building in Britain: the magnificent Canary Wharf Tower. While much of London was faded 19th-century Victorian, Canary Wharf was crystal-cut 21st-century futurism.

  Book and Mother rose high into the grey London sky. Four other glass elevators ferried people up and down the side of the King’s Tower, identical glass boxes rushing past them in either direction.

  Book and Mother wore civilian clothes: suede jackets, boots, blue-denim jeans and turtleneck jumpers that covered their throat-mikes. Each had a Colt .45 pistol wedged into the back of their jeans.

  A pretty young executive in a Prada suit stood in the lift with them, looking very small next to the broad-shouldered and shaven-headed Mother.

  Mother inhaled deeply, then tapped the girl on the shoulder. ‘I really love your perfume. What is it?’

  ‘Issey Miyake,’ the girl replied.

  ‘I’ll have to get some,’ Mother smiled.