Scarecrow ss-3

by Matthew Reilly

  'Son of a bitch,' Knight breathed.

  A flurry of thoughts rushed through his mind: Schofield was dead—a man worth millions to Knight // he could have kept him alive—what did he do now—and what did he do with this wounded woman who was worth absolutely nothing to him?

  The first thing you do is get out of here alive, a voice said inside him.

  And then suddenly—shoom!—the last-remaining Peugeot rally car whizzed past his rig, heading quickly down the road.

  Surprised, Knight looked ahead and saw the road before him.

  It contained a strange but impressive feature: at the next curve, a small castle-like structure arched over the roadway.

  Made of stone and topped with tooth-like battlements, it was a two-storey gatehouse which must have been as old as the Forteresse de Valois itself. Presumably, it marked the outer boundary of the Forteresse's land.

  On the far side of this gatehouse, however, was a compact drawbridge, spanning a 20-foot section of empty space in the roadway. You only got over the gap if the drawbridge was lowered, and at the moment, it was.

  But then the Peugeot arrived at the gatehouse and disgorged one of its occupants who ran inside—and suddenly, before Knight's eyes, the drawbridge slowly began to rise.

  'No . . .' he said aloud. 'No!'

  He floored it.

  The Kenworth rig roared toward the medieval gatehouse, picking up speed.

  The drawbridge rose slowly on its iron chains.

  It was going to be close.

  The big rig rushed forward.

  The bridge rose slowly: one foot, two feet, three feet. . .

  The men in the Peugeot opened fire as Knight's rig thundered over the last fifty yards.

  Knight ducked. His windshield shattered.

  The drawbridge kept rising . . .

  . . . and then the rig roared in through the gatehouse's archway, whipping past the Executive Solutions men . . .

  . . . and raced up the ramp-like drawbridge, easily doing a hundred, before—vooml—it launched itself off the leading edge of the bridge, shooting high into the sky, soaring over the vertiginous gap in the road beneath it and . . .

  Whump!

  . . . the big rig hit solid ground again, banging down on the roadway, bouncing once, twice, three times, before Knight regained control.

  'Phwoar,' he sighed, relieved. 'That was—'

  SLAM!

  The road in front of the rig erupted in a mushroom cloud of dirt.

  A shellburst from the destroyer.

  Knight hit the brakes and his rig skidded sharply, lurching to a halt inches away from a newly-created hole in the road.

  Knight groaned.

  The entire road in front of him had simply vanished—the whole

  width of it vaporised—the distance across the chasm to the other side at least thirty feet.

  He and Gant were trapped—perfectly—on the vertical cliff-face, bounded both in front and behind by sheer voids in the roadway.

  And at that moment, as if right on cue, the Axon corporate helicopter—which had watched the entire chase from a safe distance high above the road—hovered into view beside them, its pilot speaking into his helmet radio.

  'Fuck,' Knight said.

  UNITED STATES EMBASSY LONDON, ENGLAND 1400 HOURS LOCAL TIME (0900 HOURS E.S.T USA)

  lIn their opinion, the war on terror isn't going far enough. While the members of Majestic-12 didn't plan the September 11 attacks, make no mistake, they are taking full advantage of them . . .'

  The man talking on the television screen was Benjamin Y. Rosenthal, the Mossad agent who had been killed on the roof of the King's Tower an hour ago.

  Book II watched the TV intently. Behind him stood the State Department guy, Scott Moseley.

  Arrayed on the desks around them were documents—hundreds of documents. Everything Benjamin Rosenthal knew about Majestic-12 and this world-wide bounty hunt.

  Book scanned the pile of documents again:

  Surveillance photos of men in limousines arriving at economic summits.

  Secretly-taped phone transcripts.

  Stolen US Department of Defense files.

  Even two documents taken from the French central intelligence agency—the notorious DGSE. One was a DGSE dossier on several of the world's leading businessmen who had been invited to a private dinner with the French President six months ago.

  The second document was far more explosive. It outlined the recent capture by the DGSE of 24 members of the terrorist organisation Global Jihad, who had been planning to fly a tanker plane into the Eiffel Tower. Like Al-Qaeda, Global Jihad was a truly world-wide terrorist group, made up of fanatical Islamists who wanted to take the concept of holy war to a whole new global level.

  The document that Book now saw was especially notable because one of Global Jihad's leading figures, Shoab Riis, had been among those caught. Normally the capture of such a high-profile terrorist would have been publicised worldwide. But the French had kept Riis's arrest to themselves.

  Rosenthal had added a comment in the margin: 'All were taken to DGSE headquarters in Brest. No trial. No newspaper reports. None of the 24 was ever seen again. Possible connection to Kormoran/ Chameleon. Is France working with M-12? Check further.'

  But the most revealing evidence of all was in the Mossad videotapes of Rosenthal's interrogation.

  Put simply, Rosenthal had been sitting on dynamite.

  First, he had known the composition of Majestic-12:

  The Chairman: Randolph Loch, military industrialist, 70 years old, head of Loch-Mann Industries, the defence contractor. L-M Industries manufactured spare parts for military aircraft like the Huey and Black Hawk helicopters. It had made a fortune out of Vietnam and Desert Storm.

  The Vice-Chair: Cornelius Kopassus, the legendary Greek container-shipping magnate.

  Arthur Quandt, patriarch of the Quandt family steel empire.

  Warren Shusett, the world's most successful investor.

  J. D. Cairnton, chairman of the colossal Astronox Pharmaceutical Company.

  Jonathan Killian, chairman and CEO of Axon Corp, the vast missile and warship-building conglomerate.

  The list went on.

  Apart from, the absence of a few retail fortunes—like the Walton family in America, the Albrechts in Germany or the Mattencourts

  in France—it could have been a list of the Top Ten Richest People on Earth.

  And as Major Benjamin Rosenthal had discovered, they were all men whose fortunes would be considerably enlarged by one thing.

  Rosenthal on the screen: ''Their fortunes are based on military action. War. World War II was the foundation of the Quandt steel empire. In the '60s, Randolph Loch was one of the most vocal supporters of the US going to Vietnam. Warfare consumes oil. Warfare consumes steel. Warfare calls for the construction of thousands of new ships, helicopters, guns, bombs, pharmaceutical kits. In a world of big business, global warfare is the biggest business of them all.''

  And at another time:

  'Look at the "War on Terror". The United States dropped over four thousand bombs on the mountains of Afghanistan, and for what result? They didn 't destroy bridges or supply routes, or military nerve centres. But when four thousand bombs are used, four thousand bombs must be replenished. And that means buying them. And what happened after Afghanistan? Surprise, surprise: another fight was found, this time with Iraq.''

  Another cut:

  'Do not underestimate the influence these men wield. They make Presidents, and they break them. From Bill Clinton's impeachment to the rise of a former KGB agent named Vladimir Putin to the Presidency of Russia, Majestic-12 always has a say in who sits in the seats of world power and for how long. Even if it doesn't directly bankroll a given President's campaign, it always maintains the ability to bring him down at any given moment.

  'To this end Majestic-12 has forged strong links with leading figures in the world's major intelligence agencies. The Director of the CIA: a former bus
iness partner of Randolph Loch. The head of MI-6: Cornelius Kopassus's brother-in-law. That Killian fellow has been a regular visitor to the Paris home of the Director of the DGSE.

  'After all,' the Mossad agent smiled, 'who knows more about a country's leaders than that country's own intelligence service?'

  On the TV screen, Rosenthal became serious:

  'More than anything else, though, the war that M-12 loved the most, the war that garnered them more wealth than they ever dreamed of, was the one war that was never actually fought: the US-Soviet Cold War.

  'Desert Storm. Bosnia. Somalia. Afghanistan. Iraqi Freedom. They pale in comparison to the absolute goldmine that was the Cold War. For as the US-Soviet arms race continued apace and indirect Cold War clashes occurred in Korea and Vietnam, the members of M-12 amassed fortunes of monstrous proportions.

  'But then in 1991 the impossible happened: the Soviet Union collapsed and it all disappeared.

  'The Berlin Wall fell and like a dam breaking, American consumerism flooded the globe. And the biggest winners in the globalised world were no longer American military manufacturers. They were American consumer goods retailers: Nike, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Or European companies like BMW and L'Oreal. I mean, honestly, make-up retailers!

  'And so ever since, the members of Majestic-12 have been looking for the one thing that will, without question, restore them to their former glory . . .'

  At that moment, with a flourish, Rosenthal extracted another document from one of his files and held it to the camera.

  '. .. a new Cold War.'

  Book II now held that very same document in his hands.

  The TV screen in front of him was paused, the image of Rosenthal frozen.

  Book scanned the document. It read:

  Source Delivery Sys. lil-H Origin______Target Time

  Talbot Shahab-S TN7b 35702.10 00001.bS 11W

  5001.00 5231.10

  Shahab-S TN7b 35702-10 00420-02 114S

  sooi.oo moo.25

  Shahab-5 TN7b 35702-10 01312-15 1145

  SOOI.OO 53S6-7S

  Ambrose Shahab-5 TN7b 26743-05 26743-16 1200

  4104-55 4104.b4

  Shahab-S TN7b 2A743-05 26231-05 1200

  4104-5S 3635-70

  Jewel Taep'o-Dong-2 N-fl 23222-b2 23222-70 1215

  3745-75 3745-60

  Taep'o-Dong-2 N-6 23222-b2 24230-50 1215

  3745-75 3533-02

  Taep'o-Dong-2 N-6 23222-b2 23157-05 1215

  3745-75 4130-52

  Hopewell Taep' o-I>ong-2 N-6 11100-00 Ilb22-S0 1230

  2327-00 4000-00

  Taep'o-Dong-2 N-6 11100-00 11445-60 1230

  2327-00 2243-25

  Whale Shahab-S TN7b 070M0.MS 07725-05 ISMS

  2327-00 2T5fi.bS

  Shahab-S TN7b 070M0-MS 07332-bO 12MS

  2327-00 3230-SS

  Names and numbers leapt out at Book, and at first he couldn't make head or tail of it.

  But then, slowly, parts of it began to make sense. He recognised the two most repeated names.

  Shahab-5 and Taep'o-Dong-E.

  The Shahab-5 and the Taep'o-Dong-2 were missiles.

  Long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles.

  The Shahab-5 was built by Iran. The Taep'o-Dong-2 by North Korea.

  If international terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda or Global Jihad were to ever get their hands on missiles that could deliver nuclear strikes against the West, it would be the Shahab and the Taep'o-Dong.

  And each of the missiles was nuclear-tipped, as evidenced by the notations: TN-7b and N-fl. The TN-76 was a French-made nuclear warhead; the N-8 was North Korean.

  But this list didn't belong to any terrorist organisation.

  It belonged to Majestic-12.

  And then it hit Book.

  Could this be Majestic-12 impersonating a terrorist organisation?

  He turned quickly, unpaused the image of Rosenthal on the screen.

  The Israeli agent spoke again: 'This new Cold War is an enhanced War against Terrorism. A 50-year War on Terror.

  'Majestic-12 are utilising two US projects to execute their plan: one is called "Kormoran", the other "Chameleon". Kormoran encompasses the launch vessels: missile-launching warships disguised as container ships or supertankers. These supertanker shells are built by the Kopassus Shipping Group, while the missile-launch systems are inserted into those shells at Axon plants in Norfolk, Virginia and Guam. These ships—ordinary-looking supertankers

  and container ships—can sit in harbours and ports around the world and yet never be noticed. That is Kormoran.

  'The "Chameleon" project, however, is far more sinister. Indeed, it is perhaps the most sinister program ever devised by the United States. It centres on the missiles themselves. You see, the missiles mentioned in the document are not pure Shahabs or Taep'o-Dongs.

  'Rather, they are US-built clones of those missiles. What you have to understand is that every major missile in the world has its own personal characteristics: flight signature, contrail wake, even the blast signature left after an impact. Chameleon is designed to exploit these differences. It is a deep-black US project under which America is building intercontinental ballistic missiles that mimic the characteristics of ICBMs built by other countries.

  'Clone missiles.

  'But Chameleon isn't limited to Iranian Shahabs and North Korean Taep'o-Dongs. Other missiles that have been cloned include the Indian Agni-II, the Pakistani Ghauri-II, the Taiwanese Sky Horse, the UK Trident-II D-5, the French M-5, the Israeli Jericho 2B, and of course the Russian SS-18.

  'They are designed to start wars, but to make it look like someone else fired the first shot. If ever the US needs an excuse to wage war, it simply fires a clone of whichever country it seeks to blame.

  'The thing is, just as the Chameleon Project has been contracted to the Axon Corporation, the Kormoran supertanker shells are built by Kopassus Shipping. And that is the key. Both projects are contracted to companies owned by M-12 members.'

  'At 11.45 on October 26 we are going to see a rain of nuclear missiles. A rain such as the world has never seen. Co-ordinated. Precise. Missiles falling in fifteen-minute intervals, to accommodate the global news media. One missile hit is reported just as another lands, then another—striking major cities around the world. London, New York, Paris, Berlin. The world is plunged into chaos, wondering which major city will be next.

  'And when it is over, the investigation begins, and the missiles— by their flight characteristics and blast signatures—are determined to be Iranian and North Korean.

  'Terrorist weapons.

  'The world is aghast. Then, naturally, horror turns to anger. The War on Terror must be expanded. It has already been going for two years. Now it runs for another fifty. A new Cold War has begun and the military-industrial complex is mobilised like never before. And Majestic-12 makes billions.''

  Book's mind raced.

  Disguised supertankers. Cloned missiles. And all of it created by his own government. He couldn't believe it. He knew the US Government could do terrible things, but setting up other nations with false missiles?

  And now these cloned missiles were to be fired—not by the US Government, but by the missiles' builders, the men of Majestic-12— on major cities around the world: New York, London, Paris and Berlin . . .

  New York, London, Paris . . .

  And now Book saw the decimalised numbers on the list in a new light.

  They were co-ordinates.

  GPS co-ordinates of both the launch boats and the targeted cities.

  It was then that he noticed the names of the Kormoran supertankers—Ambrose, Talbot, Jewel Hopewell, Whale. Cute joke. They were all named after ships from the Mayflower fleet, the ships that had seeded the New World. Just as Majestic-12 was now attempting to create a new world.

  But what did all this have to do with Shane Schofield and a bounty hunt requiring his death by 12 noon today? Book thought.

  And then he recalled Rosenthal
himself, shouting in the rain on the roof of the King's Tower in London:

  'It's all about reflexes. Superfast reflexes. The reflexes of the men on that list are the best in the world. They passed the Cobra tests, and only someone who passed the Cobra tests can disarm the

  CincLock-VII missile security system, and CincLock-VII is at the core of Majestic-12's plan.'

  CincLock-VII. . . Book thought.

  He flicked through the many folders in front of him, searching for those words.

  It didn't take him long to find them.

  There was a whole file marked 'axon corp—patented cinclock

  SECURITY SYSTEM'.

  It was filled with documents belonging to Axon Corp and the US Department of Defense. The first document's cover sheet was marked:

  Book flicked to the section marked 'security', read the lead paragraph:

  DISARM SYSTEM—CINCLOCK VII

  In keeping with the high level of security necessary for such a weapon, the Chameleon series of missiles has been equipped with Axon's patented CincLock-VII disarm system. The most secure anti-tamper mechanism in the world today, CincLock-VII employs three unique defensive protocols. Unless all three protocols are applied in the prescribed sequence, system activation (or de-activation) is impossible.

  The key to the system is the second protocol. It is based on the well-established principles of pattern-recognition (Haynes & Simpson, MIT 1994, 1997, 2001), whereby only a person who is familiar with, and well-practised in, an established sequential pattern can enter it on demand. A stranger to the system, unless he or she is possessed of abnormally quick motor-neural reflexes, cannot hope to overcome such a system (op. cit. Oliphant &C Nicholson, USAMRMC, 1996, NATO MNRR study).

  Employing these principles, field tests have shown the CincLock VII system to be 99.94% secure against unauthorised use. No other security system in the military can boast such a success rate.

  PROTOCOLS

  The three protocols of the CincLock VII unit are as follows:

  1. Proximity. To ensure against unauthorised arming/disarming, the CincLock unit is not attached to the delivery system. It is a portable disarming unit. The first protocol, then, is proximity to the delivery system. CincLock will only operate within sixty (60) feet of a Chameleon missile's central processing unit.