Scarecrow Returns ss-5

by Matthew Reilly

  “. . . at which several Chilean members of the Army of Thieves learned how to be really bad dudes,” Dave said.

  “Right. The only reason I found out about this Calderon guy was when I was looking into those twelve Chilean officers broken out of the Valparaiso prison. They all attended the School of the Americas at the time Calderon was a teacher there. All twelve were his students.”

  “No shit . . .”

  “So I looked up his record,” Retter said. “In addition to all that other stuff, Calderon has spent the bulk of his career in the Agency’s psychological warfare division. He’s an expert in, and I quote from his file: ‘the retrieval of mission-critical information from unwilling enemy combatants through unrestrained psychological interrogation.’”

  “Torture,” Dave said.

  “Psychological torture. For the last twenty-odd years, Marius Calderon has been the CIA’s foremost expert in psy-ops and non-invasive torture, and these days non-invasive torture is back in fashion. Calderon’s methods are standard practice at Gitmo and other rendition sites.

  “His theory is that you can get a man to do anything or reveal anything by ruthlessly attacking his mind.

  “It’s said that in Afghanistan in 2005 he ‘turned’ three captured Taliban troops using subliminal methods—he stapled their eyes open and bombarded them for six days straight with videos of violence, sadism, live amputations and bestiality, while beating them relentlessly and overwhelming them with loud music and the cries of other people being tortured. Those Taliban troops were then released and sent back to their villages, where they became ticking psychological time-bombs, ready to explode when Calderon gave the word. After the CIA broadcast a certain radio message, all three of them went on shooting rampages in their home villages, killing over thirty people before turning their guns on themselves.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Back in the early 1980s, Calderon was the wunderkind of the CIA, the boy genius. In 1983, at the age of 27, he conceived and coordinated the little-known Able Archer 83 exercise—a simulation of a NATO nuclear attack on the USSR that involved the participation of real heads of state. The Soviets, as Calderon had predicted they would, thought it was real and readied their nuclear arsenal . . . while every American military and intelligence agency observed them closely. For the rest of the 1980s, we knew all the Soviets’ moves before they did. Reagan loved it. He gave Calderon the Intelligence Medal for it.

  “Impressed by his work on Able Archer 83, the CIA used Calderon for all sorts of geopolitical analyses—Russia, China, Central and South America. But most of all, they used him as a predictor, an analyst of enemy intent, a forecaster of how America’s enemies would react in certain scenarios, just like in Able Archer.

  “Calderon was such a good reader of people and their motivations, their emotions and their intentions, that he was often able to predict what they would do. For instance, Calderon predicted every one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s internal strategems, from his rise to General Secretary of the Politburo in 1985 to glasnost and perestroika. Any time Reagan met Gorbachev, the President was briefed personally by Calderon beforehand. Reagan would say it was like seeing all of Gorbachev’s cards before playing poker with him.

  “I actually found one old report that Calderon wrote about China back in 1982, with some predictions he made back then.”

  Retter still had her briefcase with her, filled with the files and notes she’d been taking to the White House. She opened it, pulled out a printed document and handed it to Dave.

  It was titled:

  THE COMING RISE OF CHINA

  AND THE ENSUING FALL OF AMERICA

  ANALYSIS BY

  MARIUS CALDERON

  JULY 2, 1982

  “Nice title,” Dave said. “Very alarmist.”

  Retter said, “The Communist Party called China’s economic reforms ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ but we would just call it free-market capitalism with a brutal government. The reforms began in 1978 and were slow to take hold. It wasn’t until the late 1990s and 2000s that China’s economy became the powerhouse we know it to be today. But in 1982, it was still a dump, an agrarian economy with collective farms and useless state-owned industries. Nobody took China seriously back then . . . except Marius Calderon. Read some of the highlighted paragraphs and remember that Calderon wrote them back in 1982.”

  Dave scanned the document, glancing at the paragraphs Retter had marked with highlighter. They included:

  THE 21ST–CENTURY SUPERPOWER: CHINA

  Make no mistake, the Communist Party’s sweeping economic reforms will create a new China, a China that by the year 2010 will challenge America as the dominant player in the world’s economy.

  As China’s economy opens and expands, its industry will devour the globe’s supplies of iron ore and aluminum, and its middle class will grow wealthier. A billion Chinese consumers will demand TVs, cars, refrigerators, plus all the other consumer goods that Americans have taken for granted since the 1950s, our golden age.

  America is in decline. We don’t manufacture anything anymore. The dream years from 1945 to 1970 (when we had no industrial competition from the countries we defeated in the Second World War, Germany and Japan) are over. Now in the 1980s, both Germany and Japan build better cars, white goods and consumer electronics than we do. American blue-collar workers can’t compete with cheap labor from countries like Japan and Taiwan.

  But all this is nothing compared to the industrial behemoth that China will become.

  It was industrial might that allowed the North to win the Civil War; it was industrial might that allowed America to prevail on two fronts in the Second World War. China’s industrial might is of a scale not seen before on this planet. And its recent economic reforms are designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to rouse the sleeping dragon and awaken that industrial might.

  If implemented correctly, I foresee China’s economy growing at double-digit annual rates every year for much of the 1990s and 2000s—

  “Jesus,” Dave said. “This guy foresaw China’s double-digit growth back in 1982.”

  “Read on,” Retter said.

  Dave found the next highlighted passage:

  FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE RISE OF CHINA

  The first casualty of the rise of China will be the average American’s standard of living. Our dollar will become worthless alongside the Chinese yuan (which the Chinese will be reluctant to float). Americans will not be able to travel, while the Chinese will grow ever richer. Large deficits will follow and our government will start borrowing money from the Chinese.

  American unemployment will reach unsustainable levels as low-skilled work (especially factory and manufacturing labor) will be done by cheaper workers in China. And with economic strength goes political strength. As China grows wealthier, it will give aid to poorer countries and ultimately develop greater global influence than the United States—

  Dave looked up from the document. “This guy was good.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Retter said. “He goes on to predict that China will bid for and win the Olympic Games in the first decade of the 21st century and use the Games to showcase China to the world.”

  “Okay. So where is he now?” Dave asked.

  Retter raised her palms. “I asked around at both DIA and CIA, but either no one knows or they aren’t telling. He’s still with the Agency. He did some deep black stuff in its special forces paramilitary unit in 2002—did you know that the Agency owns and operates three Sturgeon-class submarines for clandestine insertions? Then he did some time at U.S. ‘rendition stations’ in Egypt and Turkey from 2003 to 2004. As for where he’s been stationed for the last year or so, and what he’s been doing, no one’s saying.”

  “You think Calderon is connected with the Army of Thieves?” Dave asked.

  “He personally trained the twelve Chileans who were sprung from Valparaiso prison. They know him and they know his methods; they’d be a perfect
officer corps for a renegade army. And there’s something else: I mentioned that Calderon worked at the CIA’s rendition stations in Egypt and Turkey—nasty remote compounds where we tortured prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq. But at the rendition center in Egypt, the CIA helped certain African governments extract information from their captured enemies, and one of our customers was the rather unpleasant government of Sudan that was later brought down.”

  Dave said, “The second breakout was of a hundred Sudanese soldiers from a U.N. prison in the Sudan. Wait. Are you saying that this Calderon guy, a CIA agent, put together the Army of Thieves? Got the officers from Chile and the infantry from the Sudan?”

  “Yes. I have another theory, too, but you’ll think it’s nuts.”

  “Try me.”

  Retter hesitated. “I can’t prove it but . . . well . . .” She took a quick breath. “The leader of the Army of Thieves is smart, bold and totally brazen, yet he always covers his face. Why would you do that if you were an anarchist? I think he does it because he doesn’t want anyone to recognize him. He needs to keep his identity a secret. I think it’s entirely possible that Marius Calderon, a top CIA agent, is the leader of the Army of Thieves.”

  “But why would this Calderon guy want to create a rogue army?” Dave said.

  “That, Mr. Fairfax, is not the question. Calderon is old-school CIA. The real question is: why would the CIA want to create a rogue army?”

  “Maybe asking that question is the reason why they just tried to abduct you outside the Pentagon.”

  “Indeed.” Retter nodded at the screen. “So what’s this document, then, this one Calderon wrote about Dragon Island in 1984 called ‘Possible Locations: Geographical Options for Operation Dragonslayer’? I haven’t seen it.” She gave Dave a look. “I didn’t have the clearance. What’s ‘Operation Dragonslayer’?”

  “Let’s find out.” Dave clicked on it and typed in a few very illegal passwords.

  A warning screen appeared, declaring the document you are about to open is location protected.

  “What’s that mean?” Retter said.

  “It means, once we open it, this computer and its location will be digitally tagged by the owner of the document. They’ll know we opened it and they’ll know where from. If we want to read this, we have to read it fast and then move. You still game?”

  “I want to know. You?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Dave said. He clicked open document.

  A new window opened. Immediately, a blinking time-coded box appeared in the top-right corner of the screen, warning: document opening recorded. sending user identification.

  Dave ignored it. He scanned the document quickly.

  It was a PDF of an old typewritten document, date-stamped August 1984 and headed:

  OPERATION “DRAGONSLAYER”

  ANALYSIS AND OPERATION CONCEPT BY

  MARIUS CALDERON

  AUGUST 1, 1984

  It was short, just three pages long.

  And in the café of that bookstore in suburban Virginia, with their computer’s digital signature being sent who-knew-where, Dave Fairfax and Marianne Retter read it.

  When they were done, they both looked at each other in horror.

  “Oh, fuck . . .” Dave breathed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. No wonder the CIA tried to snatch you. We are in so much trouble.”

  Dave went to switch off his laptop’s Wi-Fi link—he could keep the computer, he could just never link it to the Internet again, otherwise they could keep following him from place to place.

  But he stopped himself short.

  There was one more thing he needed to do.

  So he did it: he sent the document he had just read off into cyberspace.

  “Cut the connection, flyboy. We have to go,” Retter said.

  Dave cut it and they bolted from the bookstore.

  DRAGON ISLAND 4 APRIL, 1135 HOURS

  THE LORD of Anarchy—a man known in other circles as Marius Calderon—arrived at the end of the runway, where he was met by Typhon and Big Jesus.

  Surrounded by the men of the Army of Thieves, the three of them looked down at the spot where the Antonov had disappeared under the ocean’s surface.

  “Schofield took four of the spheres over the waterfall with him,” Typhon reported. “But before the plane went over the waterfall, three of his people were spotted leaving the plane with a case containing two spheres—they landed on the southern side of the river, but one of our Strelas blocked them from reaching the cliffs.”

  “They’re on foot?”

  “They are now, yes.”

  “And they still have the spheres?”

  “So far as we can tell. I just sent Bad Willy and his team across the river in a couple of Strelas to pursue them.”

  The Lord of Anarchy gazed at the river: it snaked back up into the mountainous southern half of Dragon. There was a small quarry-mine in there, some dirt roads, but otherwise few places where someone could hide.

  “Hunt them down, kill them, and bring me those spheres,” he said. “We have time but not an endless amount of it.”

  “We also found this,” Big Jesus said, stepping aside as two of his men threw a limp figure to the ground at the Lord of Anarchy’s feet.

  The big, bearded and soaking wet form of Baba lay before the Lord of Anarchy.

  His captors couldn’t know it, but when the cement-mixing truck had been hurled across the hold toward him, Baba had thrown himself out the side door of the Antonov an instant before the cement mixer had slammed against the wall.

  “He washed up on the shore a few minutes ago,” Big Jesus said. “A French commando, in league with the others.”

  The Lord of Anarchy stared at the slumped figure of Baba.

  “This is most fortuitous,” he said. “He will be of use to us in our hunt for his companions. We will torture him and broadcast his cries to his companions on the island. Few can tolerate the wails of a friend being tortured and as you are well aware, Big Jesus, I have forgotten more about torture than most men will ever know. Take him to the gasworks.”

  MOTHER CHARGED through the undergrowth at the base of the mountain, pushing ice-encrusted branches out of the way, hustling across the slope. Zack and Emma hurried along behind her, Zack carrying the compact Samsonite case with the spheres in it.

  “Mother!” he called forward as he ran. “What do we do!”

  Mother was trying to figure that out.

  “I’m working on it!” she said between panting breaths. “Usually I got the Scarecrow around to think for me! He does the thinking and I do the shooting. It’s not often I have to think for myself.”

  She kept running, her mind whirring. She kept hearing Schofield’s last words to her: “You’re on your own this time.”

  So she asked herself, What would Scarecrow do?

  “Okay,” she said. “First, we gotta stay off the road. They can’t drive a truck through brushland. Second, we either find a way to the coast—which doesn’t look likely—or we find somewhere to hide these spheres.”

  “You can’t hide them on land,” Zack said. “They might be small and their radioactivity minor, but they are still radioactive. Even if you buried them in the dirt, they could still be found with a Geiger counter.”

  Mother said, “Then we hide with them, while staying as mobile as possible. If we can stay out of sight for long enough, maybe the cavalry will arrive before these bastards find us.”

  Emma said, “When we were looking at the map before, I remember seeing a quarry or a mine in this part of the island. Some kind of rare granite—”

  As she said this, they crested a low rise and beheld a wide open-cut quarry before them, its sheer, square walls carved deep into the base of a small mountain.

  Sloping ramps of hard-packed earth zigzagged their way into the great pit, while a network of steel ladders provided access from ramp to ramp; long-abandoned mining trucks stood like ghostly mechanical statues at various places on the ramps, rusted solid. Two very basic
buildings provided a pair of entrances to the mine system.

  Mother stopped for a moment, her eyes narrowing. She whispered to herself: “All right, you stupid grunt, think. What would Scarecrow do?”

  And it hit her. “I know what he’d do. Okay, lovebirds. Listen up.”

  Minutes later, a pursuing Strela from the Army of Thieves pulled to a halt on the crest overlooking the quarry—just in time to see Mother, moving backward, gun up, disappear inside one of the entrances to the mine.

  “They’re going inside the mine,” the pursuit group’s leader, the Caucasian officer known as Mako, said into his radio.

  Typhon’s voice came over the line. “There are only two entrances. Secure them, then go in and kill them all.”

  “Roger that,” Mako said. “This won’t take long.”

  It didn’t take long.

  Mako’s team moved with speed and precision. They sealed off the mine and then went in hard, leapfrogging one another in a coordinated rolling formation.

  The mine system wasn’t that complicated—it was just a basic rock mine from which granite was extracted—and within a few minutes, they were fired upon from a shadowy corner.

  Mother.

  That standoff didn’t last long, either, maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Mother fought bravely, but she was woefully outnumbered and outgunned, and eventually, she ran dry, and Mako’s men steadily flanked her until she stopped firing and stood up, arms raised in surrender.

  Mako’s team swarmed all over her position . . .

  . . . to discover that she was alone.

  Zack and Emma weren’t there, and neither was the all-important case.