Scarecrow

by Matthew Reilly

  Four seconds . . .

  The three cars raced in formation along the narrow cliff-side roadway.

  Three seconds . . .

  The Ferrari pushed them up against the rocky wall on their right. The WRX’s right wheels lifted slightly, rubbing against the hard stone wall. But the Porsche behind it kept pushing it forward fast.

  ‘Please do something,’ Gant said.

  Two seconds . . .

  The stone archway of the tunnel rushed toward them.

  ‘Okay . . .’ Schofield said. ‘You want to play nasty? Let’s play nasty.’

  One . . .

  Then, just as the WRX was about to slam at tremendous speed into the arched entrance of the tunnel, Schofield allowed the Ferrari to push him closer to the wall, driving him further up it, making the WRX rise up to about 60 degrees, its right-hand wheels riding clear up onto the wall itself.

  And then time slowed and Schofield did the impossible.

  He let the WRX ride so high up the rocky wall that, five metres short of the tunnel’s archway, the electric blue rally car went too high . . . and rolled . . . to the left, turning completely upside down . . . so that it landed, on its roof . . . on the roof of the low-slung Ferrari travelling beside it.

  And so, for a brief instant in time, the WRX and the Ferrari were travelling rooftop-to-rooftop, the WRX’s wheels pointing skyward, its roof resting momentarily on the roof of the lower red Ferrari!

  And then time sped up again and the WRX rolled off the Ferrari, bouncing back down to earth, now safely on the ocean side of the scarlet red supercar, and blasted into the tunnel with the Ferrari on its right.

  The Porsche, unfortunately, had no options.

  Travelling right behind Schofield it had intended to pull away at the last moment. Its driver, however, had never imagined that Schofield might roll over the top of the Ferrari. When Schofield did so, the Porsche driver stared at his feat for a split second too long.

  As such, it was the Porsche that hit the archway at colossal speed. Instant fireball.

  The Ferrari was only slightly more fortunate.

  Having rolled over the top of it, Schofield now started ramming it into the wall of the tunnel. He did a better job than they had, cutting across the bow of the Ferrari, causing it to jackknife against the tunnel’s right-hand wall and flip and tumble—spinning over and over like a toy flung by a child—bouncing down the confined space of the tunnel, skimming off its walls, before it stopped on its roof, wrecked and crumpled, its occupants deader than disco.

  Schofield and Gant blasted out of the tunnel, just as the second Skorpion Mi-34 attack chopper swooped in alongside them, flying parallel to the cliff-side roadway with a sniper in its right-side doorway firing viciously.

  One thing was clear—while Schofield was driving as fast as he could, the nimble chopper was merely cruising.

  ‘Fox!’ Schofield called. ‘We have to get rid of that chopper! Nail that sniper!’

  ‘Gladly,’ Gant said. ‘Lean back!’

  Schofield did so as Gant raised her Desert Eagle pistol and fired it across his body, out through his window at the chopper.

  Two shots. Both hit their mark.

  And the sniper dropped . . . out of the chopper’s door.

  But he was buckled to a safety rope, so after about 40 feet of falling, his rope snapped taut and his fall abruptly stopped.

  ‘Thanks, honey babe!’ Schofield called, watching the suspended figure when suddenly Gant shouted, ‘Scarecrow! Look out! Another fork!’

  He snapped forward and saw a new fork in the road, this one with a side-road branching left and downward, while the Ocean Road continued flat to the right.

  Left or right, he thought. Pick a side.

  A shellburst from the incoming French destroyer hit the right-hand road.

  Left it is.

  He swung the car left, tyres squealing, and careered down the steeply sloping side-road.

  The chopper followed.

  Half a mile behind Schofield, Aloysius Knight was shooting along the Great Ocean Road in his shiny black Lamborghini Diablo.

  The two semi-trailer rigs that had formed the road block before now rumbled along directly in front of him, while beyond them, he saw the three yellow Axon-sponsored Peugeots that ExSol had taken from the castle.

  And about fifty yards beyond the Peugeots, he saw Schofield’s blue WRX reach a fork in the road, hounded by the remaining Skorpion Mi-34 helicopter.

  Knight stole a glance left at the destroyer out on the ocean, just as two bird-like shadows shot through the air over the warship, heading directly for the coastal road.

  They looked decidedly like fighter jets, originating from the French aircraft carrier on the horizon.

  Uh-oh, Knight thought.

  He faced forward again just in time to see Schofield’s car cut left at the fork in the road, disappearing down a side-road set into the cliff-face.

  At which point, he saw Schofield’s pursuers do a strange thing.

  They split up.

  Only one of the Axon Peugeots followed Schofield down the side-road. The other two went right, following the Ocean Road, skirting a newly-formed crater in the roadway.

  Then the two trailer rigs came to the fork and went left, charging down the hill after Schofield.

  Co-ordinated movement, Knight thought. They’ve got a plan.

  And then Knight himself reached the fork and without any hesitation, he gunned the Lamborghini down the left-hand roadway, shooting down the hill after Schofield.

  Schofield’s WRX whizzed down the steep boathouse road, burning around blind corners, skidding around tight bends.

  As it sped along, a storm of bullets hammered its flanks and the rock walls all around it—it was still under heavy fire from the Mi-34 chopper flying low through the air behind it, firing at the WRX with its side-mounted machine-guns.

  The chopper’s dead sniper still hung limply from its open side door, his body swaying wildly, occasionally bouncing on the road, leaving blood on the asphalt.

  More fire came from the yellow Peugeot rally car that had followed Schofield down the boathouse road, from the shooter poking out of its passenger-side window with a Steyr.

  Two hundred yards behind this speeding gun battle, Knight was also driving hard.

  His Lamborghini easily hauled in the two semi-trailer rigs, and he whizzed past them in a fluid S-shaped move before they even knew he was there.

  Knight came up behind the yellow Peugeot, tried to get around it on the right, but the Peugeot blocked him. Tried left and gunned it hard—very hard—and in a daring move, overtook the Peugeot on the ocean side of the road.

  The Lamborghini shot past the yellow rally car, the driver of the Peugeot looking left just in time to see the Diablo rocket by in a blur of black—at the same time as an M-67 grenade came lobbing in through his open driver’s window.

  The Lamborghini shot down the road as the Peugeot erupted in a ball of flames. The flaming Peugeot promptly missed the next curve and blasted right through the guard-rail fence there and fell—a long, slow drop that ended in the Atlantic Ocean far, far below.

  Knight’s Lamborghini was now twenty yards behind Schofield’s WRX and the Mi-34 chopper above it.

  Knight saw that Schofield was now racing down a long straight stretch of road that ended at a tunnel at the very base of this side-road—a tunnel that gave access to an enormous boatshed.

  ‘Schofield!’ Knight called into his radio. ‘Don’t shoot behind you, okay! The Lamborghini is me!’

  ‘The Lamborghini. Why doesn’t that surprise me,’ said Schofield’s voice. ‘Nice of you to join us. Anything you can do about this damn helicopter?’

  Knight took in the scene: saw Schofield’s blue WRX up ahead, rapidly approaching the tunnel—saw the underbelly of the Mi-34 directly above and behind the WRX, saw the swaying Russian sniper dangling from it, banging and bouncing on the road right in front of his speeding Diablo.

  Chopper�
�sniper—tunnel, he thought.

  All he needed was an escape vehicle.

  Knight glanced at his rear-view mirror: it was filled by the grille of the first rig—it was a Mack rig, with a distinctive long-nosed bonnet—rumbling down the road behind him.

  Thank you very much.

  ‘Hang on, Schofield. I’ve got this sucker.’

  He powered forward, bringing the Lamborghini under the Mi-34 chopper, out of its sight. Then with a rather morbid bang, he charged his car right into the dangling sniper’s corpse, so that the body bounced up onto his bonnet and then dropped in through the Diablo’s open targa roof.

  Knight whipped out a pair of handcuffs—the bounty hunter’s most valuable tool—and cuffed the dead sniper’s safety harness to the steering wheel of his Lamborghini.

  He then hit the cruise control and jumped out of his seat, climbing up and out through the targa roof.

  At that moment, the big Mack rig caught up with him and rammed into the back of the Lamborghini.

  But Knight was ready for the impact, and as the two vehicles touched, he made his move—dashing across the flat rear section of the Lamborghini, firing his pistol into the windshield of the Mack as he did so, killing its driver, and then leaping from the rear of the Lamborghini onto the long nose of the Mack!

  Within seconds, he was through the rig’s shattered windscreen and in its driver’s seat, in control of the big rig—and with a front row seat for what was about to happen.

  Schofield’s WRX shot into the tunnel at the base of the hill.

  The Skorpion chopper—knowing it had to go over the tunnel and recapture Schofield on the other side—lifted, or rather, tried to lift.

  But the lightweight Mi-34 chopper couldn’t rise, owing to the weight of the Lamborghini now anchored to it.

  The Skorpion pilot realised the implications of this a second too late.

  The driverless Lamborghini rushed into the tunnel’s arched entrance, while the chopper rushed over it, and to the pilot’s horror, the vertical rope connecting the two vehicles went taut and . . . folded . . . as it hit the archway.

  The Skorpion chopper and the Lamborghini came together like a pair of scissor blades.

  The Diablo was lifted completely off the ground, flying upwards, crunching into the ceiling of the tunnel, crumpling in an instant, bringing down a rain of tiles as it did so.

  For its part, the Mi-34 was yanked downward by the rope, and it slammed down into the rocks above the tunnel and exploded in a shower of fire and rubble.

  Knight shot under it all—at the wheel of the Mack rig—roaring into the tunnel, shooting past the fiery remains of his discarded Lamborghini.

  Up ahead, Schofield blasted out the other end of the same tunnel, started zooming up the hill.

  He rounded a corner, saw the upwardly-sloping road ahead—lots of sweeping bends and blind corners, and at the top of the road, the two other yellow Peugeots that had taken the high road.

  They’d gone ahead, taking the shorter route, and doubled back, so that now they were shooting down this road, on a collision course with him and Gant.

  Schofield’s WRX powered up the hill, now trailed by only two vehicles, the two rigs: Knight’s long-nosed Mack and the second rig, a snub-nosed Kenworth.

  But then the WRX swept around a blind corner and was abruptly confronted by another unexpected sight:

  A fighter jet had swung into a hover just out from the bend, its nose pointed menacingly downward, an arsenal of missiles hanging from its wings.

  Schofield recognised it instantly as a Dassault Mirage 2000N-II, the French equivalent of the Harrier jump-jet. Converted from the regular Mirage 2000N, the ‘II’ was a hover-capable fighter stationed only on France’s newest and biggest aircraft carriers. It looked a lot like a Harrier, stocky and hunchbacked, with semi-circular air intakes on either side of a two-man cockpit.

  The Mirage’s guns erupted and a swarm of laser-like tracer bullets tore into the rock walls above Schofield’s car.

  Schofield floored it, whipping past the hovering plane as it wheeled around heavily in the air, its bullet-storm chasing him, but he shot around another bend just as some of its tracers sheared off his rear bumper.

  ‘Here, quickly, take the wheel,’ Schofield said to Gant.

  She slipped over into the driver’s seat while he dipped into a pocket on his combat webbing and removed some bullets—Knight’s orange-banded rounds. Bull-stoppers.

  ‘People, no. Fighter planes, yes,’ he said as he loaded the orange bullets into his Desert Eagle’s magazine, finishing at the same time as a second Mirage swooped down over the road right in front of the WRX, its guns blazing.

  But now, Schofield was ready to respond.

  He lifted himself out the passenger window, sat on its sill, and pointed his Desert Eagle dead ahead.

  The Mirage’s bullets tore up the road in front of the WRX just as Schofield started firing repeatedly at the hovering plane—blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!—hitting it in both of its air intakes at the same time as some of the fighter’s tracers sizzled in through the windscreen of his WRX.

  Schofield’s gas-expanding bullets did their job.

  As the first bullets hit the Mirage’s intake fans, their internal gases blasted outward, tearing the fans’ blades to pieces, warping them, causing them to jam and the plane to stall and also to allow the following bullets to race fully into the jet engines themselves and detonate within the plane’s highly volatile fuel injection chambers.

  Two small bullets was all it took to destroy a $600 million warplane.

  Its engines failing, the Mirage wheeled wildly around in the sky, spraying tracer bullets everywhere, before—boom!—the French fighter blasted out into a thousand pieces, showering liquid fire, before it just dropped out of the sky, landing in a crumpled smoking heap on the road 50 yards in front of the speeding WRX.

  Schofield dropped back inside the passenger window . . .

  . . . to see Gant slumped against her door, blood gushing from a giant wound to her left shoulder. A two-inch-wide hole could be seen in the driver’s seat behind her, matching the location of her wound.

  She’d been hit by one of the Mirage’s tracer bullets.

  ‘Oh, no . . .’ Schofield breathed. He dived across the seat, hit the brakes.

  The WRX squealed to a halt, just short of the wreckage of the Mirage.

  ‘Fox!’ Schofield yelled. ‘Libby!’

  Her eyes opened, heavy-lidded. ‘Ow, that hurts . . .’ she groaned.

  ‘Come on,’ Schofield kicked open the door and lifted her out, carrying her in his arms. Then, into his radio: ‘Knight! Where are you!’

  ‘I’m in the first rig. With another one close behind me. Where are—hang on, I see you.’

  ‘Fox has been hit. We need a ride.’

  ‘When I pull up, get in fast, ’cause that other rig is going to be right on my ass.’

  And then Schofield saw Knight: saw the long-nosed Mack rig rumbling up the slope, moving quickly.

  With a loud shriek of its brakes, the Mack shuddered to a stop beside the WRX.

  Knight threw open the door, and Schofield lifted Gant and himself in. Knight jammed the truck back into gear and hit the gas a bare moment before the snub-nosed Kenworth rig appeared around the bend behind them, coming at full speed, its engine roaring.

  The Mack jounced and bounced over the wreckage of the Mirage fighter strewn across the road, picking up speed. The second rig just barged right through the Mirage’s remains before ramming hard into the back of Knight’s still-accelerating rig.

  Knight, Schofield and Gant were all thrown forward by the impact.

  Knight and Schofield turned to each other and said at exactly the same time: ‘There are two rally cars coming at us from in front!’

  They both paused. Mirror images.

  ‘What happened to her!’ Knight said.

  ‘She got shot by a fighter plane,’ Schofield said.

&
nbsp; ‘Oh.’

  The two trucks charged up the hill, their exhaust stacks belching black smoke.

  Then suddenly the two yellow rally cars that had gone ahead came into view, rounding a wide bend right in front of Knight and Schofield’s rig, roaring down the same slope—both cars featuring men leaning out their passenger windows, holding AK-47 machine-guns.

  They might as well have been firing pea-shooters.

  The giant Mack rig blasted right through the left-hand Peugeot, blowing it to smithereens, while the second Axon rally car just fishtailed out of the way, side-swiping the rock wall on the landward side of the roadway before skidding to a jarring halt, the two rigs rumbling past it.

  The Mack reached the top of the hill and rejoined the flatter main road at a fork junction.

  The snub-nosed Kenworth was right behind it, closely followed by the last-remaining Peugeot. Rejoining the chase, the rally car leapt up onto the main road a split second before—SLAM!—the entire fork junction erupted in a cloud of dirt, hit by a shell from the ever-present French destroyer.

  The two big rigs flew around a bend, the ocean dropping away to their left, when suddenly they were confronted by the yawning entrance to another cliff-side tunnel. This tunnel bent away in a long curve to the right, hugging the cliff-face, and was clearly longer than any of the previous tunnels.

  The Mack thundered into the tunnel doing ninety, just as behind it, the Peugeot pulled alongside the Kenworth and the gunman in the rally car’s window unleashed a volley of fire at the Mack’s rear-most tyres.

  The Mack’s tyres were blasted apart, started slapping against the roadway, and the big rig’s rear-end started fishtailing wildly.

  Which was when the Kenworth rig made its move, and powered forward.

  ‘They’re coming alongside us!’ Schofield yelled.

  In the confines of the tunnel, the snub-nosed rig pulled up next to the Mack’s right-hand flank.

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ Knight said. ‘Here, take the wheel.’

  With that, Knight jumped out of the driver’s seat and charged aft into the Mack’s sleeping compartment where he quickly fired two shots into its rear window, a window which opened onto the rig’s flat trailer-connection section. Within seconds he had disappeared out through the window, into the roaring wind.