—and then she fell and in the haze of smoke and flying glass,
Schofield lost sight of her as she dropped out of sight below the maintenance shack's window frames.
A moment later the two IG-88 forces put the issue beyond doubt.
At the exact same time, both IG-88 teams fired rocket launchers at the maintenance shack.
Two fingers of smoke lanced toward Mother's little shack from both fore and aft.
They hit it together and—boom!—the shed's four walls blasted outward, the whole structure exploding in an instant, its flat floor section just dropping through the air to the water sixteen feet below.
Schofield made to step out of the sub but Knight pushed him back in.
'No! We go! Now!' Knight yelled above the gunfire.
He shoved Schofield into the mini-sub, and Schofield landed inside it—
—only to discover that someone else was already there.
Schofield's feet hit the floor of the mini-sub, and he looked up to see a sword blade rushing directly at his face.
Reflex action.
He whipped up his empty H&cK pistol and—clang!—the blade rushing at his throat hit the pistol's trigger-guard and stopped: one inch from Schofield's neck.
Dmitri Zamanov stood before him.
He held a short-bladed Cossack sword in his hands, and his eyes blazed with hatred.
'You chose the wrong hiding place,' the Russian bounty hunter
growled.
Then before Schofield could move, he punched two buttons.
First, the internal 'hatch' button.
The hatch whizzed shut, its steel door irising closed.
And second, the 'asds release' button, and suddenly Schofield felt his stomach turn as the entire mini-submarine dropped from its chains and fell sixteen feet straight down, landing with a massive splash in the rising body of seawater.
'Goddamn it!' Aloysius Knight couldn't believe it. 'What is this
shit!'
One moment, he'd been shoving Schofield into the yellow ASDS and was about to climb in after him—the next, the sub's hatch closed right in front of him and then the whole fucking thing dropped down into the water below!
Hypercharged bullets hit the girders all around him as the IG-88
teams rushed past the destroyed maintenance shack and onto the submarine catwalk.
So Knight did the only thing he could do. He dived into the second mini-submarine, bullet-marks sizzling across the soles of his boots as he did so.
Schofield and Zamanov fought.
No style here. No graceful technique.
It was pure street-fight.
In the tight confines of the mini-sub, they rolled and punched— and punched and punched.
Schofield's empty gun was useless, but Zamanov's Cossack sword was the key.
Which was why the first thing Schofield had done after their sub had bounced with a splash into the water was hit Zamanov's wrist, causing him to drop the sword.
And then they wrestled—ferociously—Schofield because he was fuelled by Mother's recent sacrifice, Zamanov because he was a psychopath.
They hurled each other into the sub's walls, fighting with venom, drawing blood with every blow.
Schofield broke Zamanov's cheekbone.
Zamanov broke Schofield's nose, while another of his blows dislodged Schofield's earpiece.
Then Zamanov tackled Schofield, throwing him against the sub's control panel, and all of a sudden—shoosb—the mini-sub began to . . .
. . . submerge.
Schofield peeled himself off the instrument panel, saw that he'd knocked the 'BALLAST' switch. The ASDS was going under.
And suddenly they were underwater. Out through the sub's two hemispherical domes, Schofield saw the now-submerged world of the missile hold.
Everything was silent, tinged with blue—the floor, the missile
silos, the dead bodies—an amazing man-made underwater
seascape.
The Talbot was now leaning slightly to starboard, the hold's
floor tilted at least 20 degrees to that side. Zamanov scooped up his sword. The yellow mini-sub continued its slow-motion freefall through
the watery hold.
And Zamanov and Schofield engaged—Zamanov swinging lustily, Schofield grabbing the bounty hunter's sword-hand as it
came down.
But then, with a muffled crash, their ASDS hit the floor of the
missile hold . . .
. . . and started to slide on its side toward the open starboard
cargo door
Schofield's world tilted crazily.
Both men were thrown sideways.
The sub slid down the sloping floor before, to Schofield's utter horror, it tipped off the edge of the doorway and fell out through it, into the open sea.
The little yellow sub fell quickly through the darkened water of the English Channel—beneath the gigantic hull of the MV Talbot.
The sheer size of the foundering supertanker above it dwarfed the ASDS. The mini-sub looked like an insect underneath a sinking blue whale.
But while the supertanker was sinking slowly and gradually, the mini-sub—its ballast tanks full—was descending at speed.
More than that.
It shot vertically down through the water, free-falling like an
express elevator.
The average depth of the English Channel is about 120 metres. Here, off Cherbourg, it was 100 metres deep, and the ASDS was covering that depth quickly.
Inside it, Schofield and Zamanov fought in near darkness,
struggling in the ghostly blue glow of the mini-sub's instrument lights.
'After I kill you, I am going to cut your fucking American heart out!' Zamanov roared as he struggled to extract his sword-hand from Schofield's grasp.
Up until then, the fight had used more or less standard moves. But then Zamanov went for what Marines call 'the Lecter move'— a very uncivilised tactic.
He bared his teeth and tried to bite Schofield's face.
Schofield recoiled instantly, stretched his face out of range, and Zamanov got what he really wanted—his sword-hand back.
He made to swing, just as with a jarring thud, their sub hit the bottom of the Channel and both men fell to the floor.
They rose together, moving like lightning.
Zamanov leapt up and swung—just as Schofield lunged forward, ducking inside Zamanov's swing arc, at the same time whipping something metallic from his borrowed utility vest and jamming it into the Russian's mouth!
Zamanov didn't have time for shock, because Schofield didn't hesitate.
He activated the mountaineering piton—and turned his head away, not wanting to see this.
With a powerful snap! the piton's pincer-like arms expanded, shooting instantaneously outward, searching for something to wedge themselves against.
What they found were Zamanov's upper and lower jaws.
Schofield never saw the actual event, but he heard it.
Heard the foul crack of Zamanov's lower jaw being stretched far further than it ever was designed to go.
Schofield turned back to see the Russian's jaw hanging grotesquely from his face, dislocated and broken. The upper arm of the piton, however, had done more damage: it had bruised Zamanov's brain, leaving Zamanov frozen bolt upright in mid-stance, the shock having shut down his entire body.
The Russian fell to his knees.
Schofield seized his sword, stood over the fallen bounty hunter.
Zamanov's eyes blinked reflexively. The only sign that he was still conscious.
Schofield wanted to run him through, or even cut his head off, to do to Zamanov what he had done to others . . .
But he didn't.
He couldn't.
And so he just let the Russian waver where he knelt, and then he watched as a moment later Zamanov fell flat on his face with a final bloody splat.
The fight over, Schofield grabbed his dislodged earpiece,
put it back in his ear—
'Schofield! Schofield! Come inV Knight's voice blared in his ear. 'Are you alive out there!'
'I'm here,' Schofield said. 'I'm on the bottom. Where are you?'
'I'm in the other sub. Put your exterior lights on so I can see where you are.'
Schofield did so.
At which moment Knight's voice said, 'Oh, fuck me . . .'
'What?'
'Do you have power?' Knight said quickly.
Schofield tried his instrument panel. No response. 'I have air, but no propulsion. Why? What is it? Can't you just come and get me?'
'There's no way I can make it in time.'
'In time? In time for what? What's the problem?'
'It's a . . . uh . . . very big one . . .'
'What?'
'Look up, Captain.'
Schofield peered up through the top dome of his mini-submarine.
And saw the hull of the supertanker—impossibly huge—gliding steadily down through the water above him, freefalling through the Channel waters like the moon falling out of the sky . . . its colossal mass heading straight for him.
Schofield swallowed at the awesome sight: 100,000 tons of pure supertanker was about to land right on top of his tiny submarine.
Its bulk was so vast, so immense, that it generated a deep vibrating rrmmmmmm as it moved down through the water.
'Now you don't see that every day,' Schofield said to himself. 'Knight!'
'I can't make it in time!' Knight yelled in frustration.
'Shit,' Schofield said, looking left and right.
Options! his mind screamed. He couldn't swim away from the tanker. At 1000 feet long and 200 feet wide, it was just too big. He'd never get out from under it in time.
The only other alternative was to stay here and be crushed to death.
Some choice. Certain death or certain death.
But if that was all there was, then at least he might be able to achieve something before death came.
And so on the bottom of the English Channel, Shane Schofield keyed his satellite mike.
'Book! How are you doing over there in New York?'
'We own the Ambrose, Scarecrow. All enemy troops are down. We're at the control console now, and I've plugged the satellite uplink into it. I have the time as 1152. You've got eight whole minutes to disarm this thing.'
Schofield saw the supertanker falling through the water above him—a silent freefalling giant. At its current speed, it would hit the bottom in less than a minute.
'You might have eight minutes, Book, but I don't. I have to disarm those missiles now.'
And so he pulled his CincLock-VII unit from its waterproof pouch and hit its satellite uplink. The unit came to life:
sat-link: connect 'ambrose-049'~uplink connection made.
activate remote system.
missile launch sequence in progress.
press 'enter' to initiate disarm sequence.
first protocol (proximity): satisfied.
initiate second protocol.
The red and white circles from the New York launch ship's missile control console appeared on Schofield's screen.
And with the mighty hull of the Talbot thundering down through the great blue void above him, Schofield started the disarm sequence.
The supertanker was gathering speed.
Falling, falling . . .
Schofield's moves became faster.
The supertanker was eighty feet above him.
A red circle blinked, Schofield punched it.
Sixty feet. . .
Fifty feet. . .
The noise of the falling supertanker grew louder—rrmmmmmm.
Forty feet. . .
Thirty feet. . .
Schofield hit the last red circle. The display blinked:
SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): SATISFIED. THIRD PROTOCOL (CODE ENTRY): ACTIVE. PLEASE ENTER AUTHORIZED DISARM CODE.
Twenty feet. . .
The water all around his little submarine darkened dramatically, consumed by the shadow of the supertanker.
Schofield entered the Universal Disarm Code: 131071. Fifteen feet. . . The screen beeped:
THIRD PROTOCOL (CODE ENTRY): SATISFIED. AUTHORIZED DISARM CODE ENTERED. MISSILE LAUNCH ABORTED.
And as he waited for the end—the true end; the end that he physically could not escape—Schofield closed his eyes and thought about his life and people who had been in it:
He saw Libby Gant smiling that thousand-watt smile, saw her kissing him tenderly—saw Mother Newman shooting hoops on her garage basketball court, saw her big wide grin on her big wide face—and tears welled in his eyes.
That there were still missiles to disarm somehow didn't bother Schofield. Someone else would have to solve that this time.
When it came, the end came swiftly.
Ten seconds later, the supertanker MV Talbot hit the bottom of the English Channel with an earth-shaking, earth-shuddering boom.
It landed right on top of Schofield's stricken ASDS and crushed it in a single pulverising instant.
I
The thing was, Schofield wasn't in the sub when it happened.
Seconds before the Talbot hit the bottom—when it was barely twelve feet off the seabed, its shadow looming over the mini-sub, and Schofield was lost in his thoughts—a dull metallic clunk was heard hitting the outside of his ASDS.
Schofield snapped to look out the windows and saw a Maghook attached to the metal exterior of his little submarine, its rope stretching away across the ocean floor, disappearing into the darkness to the side of the falling supertanker.
Knight's voice exploded in his ear: 'Schofield! Come on! Move! Move! Move!'
Schofield was electrified into action.
He took a breath and hit the 'hatch' button.
The hatch irised open and water gushed into the sunken mini-submarine. It took barely two seconds for it to completely fill the sub, and suddenly Schofield was outside, moving fast, grabbing the Maghook attached to the sub's flank.
No sooner had he clutched it than Knight—at the other end of the rope—hit the hook's demagnetise switch and the Maghook's rope began to reel itself in quickly.
Schofield was yanked across the ocean floor at phenomenal speed—the falling supertanker looming above him, its great endless hull hovering over his body like the underside of a planet, while a foot below him, the sandy ocean floor zoomed by at dizzying speed.
And then abruptly Schofield emerged from beneath the supertanker, his feet sliding out from under it just as the gigantic vessel
hit the bottom of the English Channel with a singular reverberating boom that sent sand and silt billowing out in every direction, consuming Schofield in a dense underwater cloud.
And waiting for him in that cloud—sitting atop the second ASDS, breathing from a new Pony Bottle and holding Gant's Maghook in his hands—was Aloysius Knight.
He handed Schofield the Pony Bottle and Schofield breathed its air in deeply.
Within a minute, the two of them were inside Knight's mini-sub. Knight repressurised the sub, expunged it of seawater.
And then the two warriors rose through the depths of the English Channel, a short silent journey that ended with their little yellow sub breaching the storm-riddled surface—where it was assaulted by crashing waves and the blinding glare of brilliant halogen spotlights: spotlights that belonged to the Black Raven hovering low over the water, waiting for them.
AIRSPACE ABOVE THE ENGLISH CHANNEL 1805 HOURS LOCAL TIME (1205 HOURS E.S.T USA)
The Black Raven shot through the sky, heading south over the English Channel.
A dripping-wet Aloysius Knight dropped into his gunner's chair. The equally-soaked Schofield, however, never stopped moving.
Inside the Raven's rear holding cell, he pulled out his modified Palm Pilot. There was unfinished business to attend to.
He pulled up the missile-firing list—the one that was different to Book's earlier list. He compared the two list
s.
Okay, he thought, the first three entries are the same as on Book's list.
But not the last three: the missiles are different. And there's that extra entry at the end.
To those last three entries, he added the GPS locations that he'd got from Book. The first two of them read:
And suddenly this list took on a whole new dimension.
The cloned missiles being fired on Beijing and Hong Kong from the MV Hopewell were clones of the Taiwanese Sky Horse ICBM. They were also armed with American warheads.
While the missiles firing from the MV Whale on New Delhi were clones of the Pakistani Ghauri-II—and the ones being fired on Islamabad were replicas of the Indian Agni-II.
'Hot damn . . .' Schofield breathed.
How would China react to Taiwanese nuclear strikes?
Badly.
And how would Pakistan and India react to mutual nuclear bombardment?
Very badly.
Schofield frowned.
He couldn't understand why his list differed from Book's.
Okay, think. Where did Book get his original list from?
From the Mossad agent, Rosenthal, who had acquired it during his many months shadowing Majestic-12.
So where did I get mine from?
Schofield thought back.
'Oh, Jesus . . .' he said, remembering.
He'd received it on his Palm Pilot when he and Gant had been sitting in the stone ante-room in the Forteresse de Valois, waiting while Aloysius Knight had been in Monsieur Delacroix's office, hacking wirelessly into Delacroix's standalone computer.
Schofield turned to Knight. 'When you were with Delacroix at the castle, did he say anything about whose office you were in?'
Knight shrugged. 'Yeah. He said something about it not being his office. Said it belonged to the man who owned the castle.'
'Killian,' Schofield said.
'Why?'
But now Schofield understood.
'There must have been another computer in that office. In a drawer or on a side table,' he said. 'You said it yourself. Your Pilot would retrieve documents from any computer in the room. When you initiated the wireless hack, you picked up documents from another computer in that office. Killian's computer.'
'Yeah, so?'
Schofield held up the new list. 'This isn't Majestic-12's plan. Their plan involves starting a global Cold War on Terror. M-12 wants terrorist missiles striking major centres—Shahabs and Taep'o-Dongs. Which was why they left the bodies of the Global Jihad guys at the Axon plant and on the supertankers: to make the world think that terrorists stole the Kormoran ships.
Scarecrow ss-3 Page 30