Scarecrow by Matthew Reilly
‘France,’ Book II said aloud. ‘It’s always fucking France.’
Dodds said, ‘Book, what the hell is going on? Everyone here is scared shitless. This could be the biggest terrorist attack in history and they’re going to use our own missiles against us.’
‘This isn’t a terrorist thing, Dodds,’ Book said. ‘It’s a business thing. Trust me, the terrorists were already dead when they got to that plant. I’m starting to think that the French Secret Service has been giving Majestic12 some quiet assistance. I gotta go. Book, out.’
Book turned his gaze back toward the container ships and supertankers resting at anchor off Staten Island—a pack of leviathans awaiting permission to enter the Hudson and East Rivers.
Thanks to the Kormoran project, each one of them was a potential missile launch vessel.
‘So which one is it?’ the pilot asked.
‘Just go to GPS co-ordinates 28743.05—4104.55,’ Book said. ‘That’s where it’ll be.’
The pilot adjusted his dials, flew by his GPS locator.
Book checked the launch list on his hand-held computer for the hundredth time. After he had spoken with Schofield earlier, he and Scott Moseley had calculated the GPS locations of the last two Kormoran tanker-launchers:
After that, he and Moseley had then plotted all the boats on a map of the world:
The sum of it all?
In addition to the three tankers set to fire their nuclear-tipped missiles on America, England, France and Germany, there were two extra Kormoran ships out there: one in the Arabian Sea, ready to fire on both India and Pakistan, and another in the Taiwan Straits, aiming cloned Taep’o-Dong ICBMs at Beijing and Hong Kong.
‘Jesus H. Christ . . .’ Book whispered.
He shook himself out of it, hit his satellite mike.
‘Fairfax? You there? How you doing out West?’
PACIFIC OCEAN,
TWO MILES OFF SAN FRANCISCO BAY
0825 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(1125 HOURS E.S.T. USA)
Dave Fairfax sat in a Super Stallion of his own, flanked by his own Marine Recon team, his right foot shaking incessantly—a nervous gesture that betrayed his rather extreme fear.
He wore a helmet that was too big and a bulletproof vest that was even bigger, and he held in his lap a real-time satellite uplink unit. He felt very small compared to the Marines all around him.
At the moment, his Super Stallion was powering low over the waves of the Pacific, heading toward—
A lone supertanker lying silently at anchor off the San Francisco coast.
‘Hi, Book,’ Fairfax yelled into his newly-acquired throat-mike. ‘We have our tanker, and she’s a big one, all right. She’s exactly where she should be; her position matches the GPS co-ordinates you gave me. Tanker identified as the MV Jewel, registered in Norfolk, Virginia, to the Atlantic Shipping Company, a deep subsidiary of Axon Corporation.’
Fairfax’s foot kept shaking. He wished it would stop.
‘Oh, and I got that Mersenne prime for you,’ he said. ‘God, man, Mersennes are very cool mathematics. There are only thirty-nine that we know of, but some of those are, like, two million digits long. They’re a very rare kind of prime number. You get them by applying a strict formula: Mersenne prime = 2p–1, where “p” is a prime number, but where the answer is also prime. Three is the first Mersenne prime because 22–1 = 3, and both 2 and 3 are prime. So they start small, but end up very big. The sixth Mersenne is 131071. It’s based on the prime number, 17. That is, 217–1 = 131071, which is also prime—’
‘So the answer is 131071,’ Book said.
‘Uh, yes,’ Fairfax said.
‘I’ll pass that on to the Scarecrow,’ Book said. ‘Thanks, David. Out.’
The signal went dead.
Fairfax scowled at his treacherous foot.
‘Goes with the job, Mister Fairfax,’ the Marine leader, Trent, said, nodding at Fairfax’s foot. ‘But if the Scarecrow trusts you to do this, then you must be up to the challenge.’
‘I’m glad he thinks I’m up for it,’ Fairfax muttered.
The Super Stallion roared toward the tanker.
ENGLISH CHANNEL, NORTH OF CHERBOURG, FRANCE
26 OCTOBER, 1725 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(1125 HOURS E.S.T. USA)
The Black Raven shot like a bullet through the rain-driven sky, searchlights blazing, zooming high over a constellation of supertanker lights on the English Channel.
While Rufus, Mother and Knight searched the sea for their target, Schofield was talking on the radio with Book II.
‘Okay, I’m sending it all through now,’ Book’s voice said.
Schofield’s Palm Pilot pinged: it now had Book’s plots of all the Kormoran ships on it. Schofield’s eyes widened at the location names: the Arabian Sea, the Taiwan Straits . . .
‘And Fairfax figured out the sixth Mersenne for you,’ Book said. ‘It’s 131071.’
‘131071 . . .’ Schofield wrote it down on his hand. ‘Thanks, Book. Tell David I’ll be in touch with him shortly. Scarecrow, out.’
He switched channels, patched in to the US Embassy in London. ‘Mr Moseley. What’s the word on our submarines?’
‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ Scott Moseley’s voice said.
‘Give me the good news.’
‘The good news is we have Los Angeles-class attack subs in both the Arabian Sea and the Taiwan Straits—close enough to take out the launch boats at those locations.’
‘And the bad news.’
Moseley said, ‘The bad news is the other three launch boats: the ones in New York, San Francisco and the English Channel. They’re going to fire too soon. We don’t have any 688s close enough to get to any of those launch vessels in time. Book and Fairfax are going to have to go in and disarm them in situ, on board.’
‘Okay,’ Schofield said.
‘Found it!’ Rufus pointed to a supertanker rolling at anchor in the raging sea, its deck illuminated by powerful floodlights—just another gigantic supertanker nestled in amongst all the others waiting off the French coast. ‘Transponder signal identifies it as the MV Talbot and its location matches the GPS location perfectly.’
‘Good work, Rufus,’ Schofield said. ‘Mr Moseley, thanks for your help. Now I have to get to work.’
Schofield turned to Knight and Mother. ‘We take the launch tankers in the order that they’ll fire. This one first. Then we hightail it out of here and disarm the others by remote from a safe location. Good for you?’
‘Good for me,’ Knight said.
‘Fuckin’ dandy,’ Mother said.
‘Hold on, people,’ Schofield said, his face deadly. ‘We’re going in.’
ENGLISH CHANNEL
1730 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(1130 HOURS IN NEW YORK)
The Black Raven swooped in low over the supertanker’s main deck, cutting across the beams of the ship’s floodlights.
Rain fell all around it—slanting, stinging rain.
Forks of lightning slashed the sky.
Then the bomb bay on the Raven opened and three figures rappelled down from it: Schofield, Knight and Mother.
They were all fully armed—MP-7s, Glock pistols, Remington shotguns—thanks to the Raven’s onboard arsenal. Schofield and Mother even wore two spare utility vests that Knight kept for himself aboard the Raven.
The three of them landed on the superlong foredeck of the Talbot, in front of its control tower, while above them the Black Raven peeled away into the rainy sky.
And not a moment too soon.
For no sooner were Schofield and the others on the deck than the entire area around them exploded with bullet sparks from a pair of snipers firing from the control tower.
NEW YORK BAY
EAST COAST, USA
At the exact same time on the other side of the Atlantic, Book II and his team of Marines were storming their supertanker—the Ambrose—in New York Bay.
Like Schofield, they rode ziplines from their chopper down to the tank
er’s elongated foredeck.
Like Schofield, they entered under fire.
Unlike Schofield, however, they didn’t have the advantage of darkness and pouring rain. It was 11:30 a.m. on this side of the world. Broad daylight.
The two snipers waiting for them inside the bridge of the Ambrose opened fire before Book’s men had reached the bottom of their ropes.
Two Marines fell immediately. Dead. Book hit the deck hard, landing with a heavy thump, returned fire.
SAN FRANCISCO
WEST COAST, USA
It was the same on the West Coast.
Fairfax’s team stormed their supertanker—the Jewel—under heavy sniper fire from its control tower.
But Trent’s men saw it coming.
Their own crack shooter nailed both of the enemy snipers with two shots from the open door of their Super Stallion.
The Marines stormed the ship, landing on the roof of the supertanker’s control tower—with Dave Fairfax running in their midst.
They found the snipers’ nest on the bridge: two snipers had been firing out through the supertanker’s high-visibility bridge windows.
The two snipers had deep black skin, and wore khaki African military fatigues.
‘What the hell?’ Andrew Trent said when he saw their shoulder insignia.
Both snipers wore the badge of the Eritrean Army.
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
Lightning lit up the sky—waves crashed against the side of the supertanker—thunder roared—bullets banged down against the foredeck.
Knight and Mother nailed the two snipers up on the bridge of the Talbot with a blitzkrieg of fire.
‘I should have known!’ Schofield shouted as they charged across the foredeck toward a door at the base of the control tower. ‘Killian wouldn’t leave the ships unguarded!’
‘So who are they? Who did he get to do the guarding?’ Mother yelled.
On the way to the tower, they found a large access hatch sunk into the deck. Knight and Schofield opened it . . .
. . . to be met by the deafening brack-a-brack! of automatic gunfire and the sight of a long vertical ladder disappearing down into the ship’s vast missile hold.
Of more immediate interest to Schofield and Knight, however, was what they saw at the base of the ladder.
The source of the gunfire.
To their utter amazement, they saw a team of black-clad commandos—brandishing Uzis and M-16s with clinical precision, and firing them ferociously at an unseen enemy.
Schofield jammed the hatch shut again.
‘I think we interrupted someone’s battle,’ he said.
Mother yelled, ‘What did you see down there?’
‘We’re not the first people to arrive at this tanker,’ Schofield said.
‘What! Who’s down there?’
Schofield exchanged a look with Knight.
‘Not many elite units use Uzis these days,’ Knight said. ‘Zemir. I’d say it’s the Sayaret Tzanhim.’
‘I agree,’ Schofield said.
‘Would someone please tell me what’s going on!’ Mother yelled in the rain.
‘My guess,’ Schofield called, ‘is that we’ve been beaten to this ship by the only other man in the world who can disarm the CincLock security system. It’s that Israeli Air Force guy from the list—Zemir—with a crack team of Israel’s best troops, the Sayaret Tzanhim, protecting him.’
‘Hey, this day has been so weird, I’d believe fucking anything,’ Mother said. ‘So where now?’
Schofield checked his watch.
1735 hours.
1135 in New York.
Ten minutes to launch.
He said, ‘We let the Israelis do the dirty work downstairs. Hell, I’m happy to let Zemir be the hero and disarm those missiles. As for us: into the tower. I want to check those snipers. See who we’re up against before we go running into that mess downstairs to help Zemir.’
They came to the door at the base of the tower, flung it open just as—
Bam!
—they were assaulted by the blinding white beam of a helicopter searchlight.
Schofield spun in the doorway, rain in his face.
‘Oh, you have got to be joking . . .’ he said.
There, landing on the long flat foredeck of the supertanker—a hundred yards away, its searchlight panning the area—was an obviously stolen Alouette helicopter.
It touched down on the deck.
And out of it stepped three men in Russian battle-dress uniforms and carrying Skorpion machine pistols . . .
Dmitri Zamanov and the last two remaining members of the Skorpions.
‘Damn. I forgot,’ Knight said, ‘you’ve still got a price on your head. It’s Zamanov. Run.’
Into the control tower. Up some ladder-stairs. Emerging onto the bridge.
1736.
Fairfax’s voice in Schofield’s ear: ‘Scarecrow. We’ve taken the bridge of the San Francisco tanker. Found enemy snipers wearing the uniforms of the Eritrean Army . . .’
Schofield went straight over to the bodies of his snipers.
African soldiers.
Commandos. Khaki fatigues. Black helmets.
And on their shoulders, a crest—but not the crest of Eritrea.
Rather, it was the badge of the Nigerian Army’s elite commando unit: the Presidential Guard.
As veterans of Africa’s many civil wars, the Nigerian Presidential Guard were CIA-trained killers who in the past had been used against their own citizens as much as against their nation’s enemies. In the streets of Lagos and Abuja, the Presidential Guards were known by another name: the Death Squads.
Killian’s protection team.
Two snipers up here. And more men downstairs, guarding the missile silos—the unseen enemy that the Israelis were fighting right now in the hold.
‘Mr Fairfax. Did you say yours were Eritrean?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Not Nigerian?’
‘Nope. My Marines confirm it. Definitely Eritrean insignia.’
Eritrea? Schofield thought—
‘Scarecrow,’ Mother said, opening a storeroom door wide. Four body bags lay on the floor of the storeroom. Mother quickly unzipped one—to reveal the stinking corpse of a Global Jihad terrorist.
‘Ah, now I get it,’ Schofield said. ‘The whipping boys.’
He keyed his sat-mike: ‘Mr Fairfax. Tell your Marines to stay sharp. There’ll be more African troops down in the main hold, guarding the silos. Sorry, David. It’s not over for you yet. You have to get past those troops and get your satellite uplink unit within sixty feet of the missiles’ control console for me to disarm them.’
‘Ten-four,’ Fairfax’s voice signed off. ‘We’re on the case.’
Mother joined Knight at the windows of the bridge, searching the area outside for Zamanov.
‘Do you see him?’ Mother said.
‘No, the little Russian ratbastard’s disappeared,’ Knight said. ‘Probably gone after Zemir.’
Suddenly Rufus’s voice exploded in their earpieces:
‘Boss. Scarecrow. I got a new contact closing in on your tanker. A large cutter of some kind. Looks like the French Coast Guard.’
‘Christ,’ Schofield said, moving to the windows, seeing a large white boat approaching them on their starboard side.
Schofield couldn’t believe it.
In addition to the Nigerian Death Squad, the Israeli shock troops and the Russian bounty hunters already on this supertanker, they now had a group of French maritime police on the way!
‘That ain’t the Coast Guard,’ Knight said, peering through some night-vision binoculars.
Through them he could see a big white cutter, charging through the chop—could see its knife-like bow, its big foredeck gun, its glassed-in wheelhouse, and blood-bursts all over the wheelhouse’s windows.
Armed men stood at its wheel.
‘It’s Demon Larkham and IG-88,’ Knight said.
1738.
&n
bsp; Seven minutes to launch.
‘Damn it, more bounty hunters,’ Schofield said. ‘Rufus! Can you take them out?’
‘Sorry, Captain, I’m outta missiles. Used them all against that French carrier.’
‘Okay, okay . . .’ Schofield said, thinking. ‘All right, Rufus, you keep to your instructions, okay. If we can’t disarm those missiles in time, we’ll be needing your special help later.’
‘Got it.’
Schofield spun, still thinking, thinking, thinking.
Everything was happening too fast. The situation was spiralling out of control. Missiles to disarm, the Israelis already on board, Nigerian troops, more bounty hunters . . .
‘Focus!’ he shouted aloud. ‘Think, Scarecrow. What do you ultimately have to achieve?’
Disarm the missiles. I have to disarm the missiles by 1745 hours. Everything else is secondary.
His eyes flashed to an elevator at the back of the bridge.
‘We’re going down to the hold,’ he said.
1739 hours.
NEW YORK BAY
1139 HOURS
On the foredeck of their supertanker, in bright morning sunshine, Book’s team of Marines dived for cover.
Book scrambled into a deck hatch, slid down a very long ladder into darkness, followed by his Marine escorts.
He hit the floor, looked around.
He stood in a cavernous hold, easily three hundred yards long. A dozen cylindrical missile silos stretched away into darkness, like colossal pillars holding up the ceiling.
And bunkered down in front of the farthest missile silo, taking cover behind a heavily fortified barricade of steel crates and forklifts, was a team of heavily-armed African commandos.
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
1739 HOURS
The elevator doors opened to reveal the aft section of the supertanker’s main hold.
Schofield, Knight and Mother emerged, leading with their guns.
Dodds said, ‘Book, what the hell is going on? Everyone here is scared shitless. This could be the biggest terrorist attack in history and they’re going to use our own missiles against us.’
‘This isn’t a terrorist thing, Dodds,’ Book said. ‘It’s a business thing. Trust me, the terrorists were already dead when they got to that plant. I’m starting to think that the French Secret Service has been giving Majestic12 some quiet assistance. I gotta go. Book, out.’
Book turned his gaze back toward the container ships and supertankers resting at anchor off Staten Island—a pack of leviathans awaiting permission to enter the Hudson and East Rivers.
Thanks to the Kormoran project, each one of them was a potential missile launch vessel.
‘So which one is it?’ the pilot asked.
‘Just go to GPS co-ordinates 28743.05—4104.55,’ Book said. ‘That’s where it’ll be.’
The pilot adjusted his dials, flew by his GPS locator.
Book checked the launch list on his hand-held computer for the hundredth time. After he had spoken with Schofield earlier, he and Scott Moseley had calculated the GPS locations of the last two Kormoran tanker-launchers:
After that, he and Moseley had then plotted all the boats on a map of the world:
The sum of it all?
In addition to the three tankers set to fire their nuclear-tipped missiles on America, England, France and Germany, there were two extra Kormoran ships out there: one in the Arabian Sea, ready to fire on both India and Pakistan, and another in the Taiwan Straits, aiming cloned Taep’o-Dong ICBMs at Beijing and Hong Kong.
‘Jesus H. Christ . . .’ Book whispered.
He shook himself out of it, hit his satellite mike.
‘Fairfax? You there? How you doing out West?’
PACIFIC OCEAN,
TWO MILES OFF SAN FRANCISCO BAY
0825 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(1125 HOURS E.S.T. USA)
Dave Fairfax sat in a Super Stallion of his own, flanked by his own Marine Recon team, his right foot shaking incessantly—a nervous gesture that betrayed his rather extreme fear.
He wore a helmet that was too big and a bulletproof vest that was even bigger, and he held in his lap a real-time satellite uplink unit. He felt very small compared to the Marines all around him.
At the moment, his Super Stallion was powering low over the waves of the Pacific, heading toward—
A lone supertanker lying silently at anchor off the San Francisco coast.
‘Hi, Book,’ Fairfax yelled into his newly-acquired throat-mike. ‘We have our tanker, and she’s a big one, all right. She’s exactly where she should be; her position matches the GPS co-ordinates you gave me. Tanker identified as the MV Jewel, registered in Norfolk, Virginia, to the Atlantic Shipping Company, a deep subsidiary of Axon Corporation.’
Fairfax’s foot kept shaking. He wished it would stop.
‘Oh, and I got that Mersenne prime for you,’ he said. ‘God, man, Mersennes are very cool mathematics. There are only thirty-nine that we know of, but some of those are, like, two million digits long. They’re a very rare kind of prime number. You get them by applying a strict formula: Mersenne prime = 2p–1, where “p” is a prime number, but where the answer is also prime. Three is the first Mersenne prime because 22–1 = 3, and both 2 and 3 are prime. So they start small, but end up very big. The sixth Mersenne is 131071. It’s based on the prime number, 17. That is, 217–1 = 131071, which is also prime—’
‘So the answer is 131071,’ Book said.
‘Uh, yes,’ Fairfax said.
‘I’ll pass that on to the Scarecrow,’ Book said. ‘Thanks, David. Out.’
The signal went dead.
Fairfax scowled at his treacherous foot.
‘Goes with the job, Mister Fairfax,’ the Marine leader, Trent, said, nodding at Fairfax’s foot. ‘But if the Scarecrow trusts you to do this, then you must be up to the challenge.’
‘I’m glad he thinks I’m up for it,’ Fairfax muttered.
The Super Stallion roared toward the tanker.
ENGLISH CHANNEL, NORTH OF CHERBOURG, FRANCE
26 OCTOBER, 1725 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(1125 HOURS E.S.T. USA)
The Black Raven shot like a bullet through the rain-driven sky, searchlights blazing, zooming high over a constellation of supertanker lights on the English Channel.
While Rufus, Mother and Knight searched the sea for their target, Schofield was talking on the radio with Book II.
‘Okay, I’m sending it all through now,’ Book’s voice said.
Schofield’s Palm Pilot pinged: it now had Book’s plots of all the Kormoran ships on it. Schofield’s eyes widened at the location names: the Arabian Sea, the Taiwan Straits . . .
‘And Fairfax figured out the sixth Mersenne for you,’ Book said. ‘It’s 131071.’
‘131071 . . .’ Schofield wrote it down on his hand. ‘Thanks, Book. Tell David I’ll be in touch with him shortly. Scarecrow, out.’
He switched channels, patched in to the US Embassy in London. ‘Mr Moseley. What’s the word on our submarines?’
‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ Scott Moseley’s voice said.
‘Give me the good news.’
‘The good news is we have Los Angeles-class attack subs in both the Arabian Sea and the Taiwan Straits—close enough to take out the launch boats at those locations.’
‘And the bad news.’
Moseley said, ‘The bad news is the other three launch boats: the ones in New York, San Francisco and the English Channel. They’re going to fire too soon. We don’t have any 688s close enough to get to any of those launch vessels in time. Book and Fairfax are going to have to go in and disarm them in situ, on board.’
‘Okay,’ Schofield said.
‘Found it!’ Rufus pointed to a supertanker rolling at anchor in the raging sea, its deck illuminated by powerful floodlights—just another gigantic supertanker nestled in amongst all the others waiting off the French coast. ‘Transponder signal identifies it as the MV Talbot and its location matches the GPS location perfectly.’
‘Good work, Rufus,’ Schofield said. ‘Mr Moseley, thanks for your help. Now I have to get to work.’
Schofield turned to Knight and Mother. ‘We take the launch tankers in the order that they’ll fire. This one first. Then we hightail it out of here and disarm the others by remote from a safe location. Good for you?’
‘Good for me,’ Knight said.
‘Fuckin’ dandy,’ Mother said.
‘Hold on, people,’ Schofield said, his face deadly. ‘We’re going in.’
ENGLISH CHANNEL
1730 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(1130 HOURS IN NEW YORK)
The Black Raven swooped in low over the supertanker’s main deck, cutting across the beams of the ship’s floodlights.
Rain fell all around it—slanting, stinging rain.
Forks of lightning slashed the sky.
Then the bomb bay on the Raven opened and three figures rappelled down from it: Schofield, Knight and Mother.
They were all fully armed—MP-7s, Glock pistols, Remington shotguns—thanks to the Raven’s onboard arsenal. Schofield and Mother even wore two spare utility vests that Knight kept for himself aboard the Raven.
The three of them landed on the superlong foredeck of the Talbot, in front of its control tower, while above them the Black Raven peeled away into the rainy sky.
And not a moment too soon.
For no sooner were Schofield and the others on the deck than the entire area around them exploded with bullet sparks from a pair of snipers firing from the control tower.
NEW YORK BAY
EAST COAST, USA
At the exact same time on the other side of the Atlantic, Book II and his team of Marines were storming their supertanker—the Ambrose—in New York Bay.
Like Schofield, they rode ziplines from their chopper down to the tank
Like Schofield, they entered under fire.
Unlike Schofield, however, they didn’t have the advantage of darkness and pouring rain. It was 11:30 a.m. on this side of the world. Broad daylight.
The two snipers waiting for them inside the bridge of the Ambrose opened fire before Book’s men had reached the bottom of their ropes.
Two Marines fell immediately. Dead. Book hit the deck hard, landing with a heavy thump, returned fire.
SAN FRANCISCO
WEST COAST, USA
It was the same on the West Coast.
Fairfax’s team stormed their supertanker—the Jewel—under heavy sniper fire from its control tower.
But Trent’s men saw it coming.
Their own crack shooter nailed both of the enemy snipers with two shots from the open door of their Super Stallion.
The Marines stormed the ship, landing on the roof of the supertanker’s control tower—with Dave Fairfax running in their midst.
They found the snipers’ nest on the bridge: two snipers had been firing out through the supertanker’s high-visibility bridge windows.
The two snipers had deep black skin, and wore khaki African military fatigues.
‘What the hell?’ Andrew Trent said when he saw their shoulder insignia.
Both snipers wore the badge of the Eritrean Army.
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
Lightning lit up the sky—waves crashed against the side of the supertanker—thunder roared—bullets banged down against the foredeck.
Knight and Mother nailed the two snipers up on the bridge of the Talbot with a blitzkrieg of fire.
‘I should have known!’ Schofield shouted as they charged across the foredeck toward a door at the base of the control tower. ‘Killian wouldn’t leave the ships unguarded!’
‘So who are they? Who did he get to do the guarding?’ Mother yelled.
On the way to the tower, they found a large access hatch sunk into the deck. Knight and Schofield opened it . . .
. . . to be met by the deafening brack-a-brack! of automatic gunfire and the sight of a long vertical ladder disappearing down into the ship’s vast missile hold.
Of more immediate interest to Schofield and Knight, however, was what they saw at the base of the ladder.
The source of the gunfire.
To their utter amazement, they saw a team of black-clad commandos—brandishing Uzis and M-16s with clinical precision, and firing them ferociously at an unseen enemy.
Schofield jammed the hatch shut again.
‘I think we interrupted someone’s battle,’ he said.
Mother yelled, ‘What did you see down there?’
‘We’re not the first people to arrive at this tanker,’ Schofield said.
‘What! Who’s down there?’
Schofield exchanged a look with Knight.
‘Not many elite units use Uzis these days,’ Knight said. ‘Zemir. I’d say it’s the Sayaret Tzanhim.’
‘I agree,’ Schofield said.
‘Would someone please tell me what’s going on!’ Mother yelled in the rain.
‘My guess,’ Schofield called, ‘is that we’ve been beaten to this ship by the only other man in the world who can disarm the CincLock security system. It’s that Israeli Air Force guy from the list—Zemir—with a crack team of Israel’s best troops, the Sayaret Tzanhim, protecting him.’
‘Hey, this day has been so weird, I’d believe fucking anything,’ Mother said. ‘So where now?’
Schofield checked his watch.
1735 hours.
1135 in New York.
Ten minutes to launch.
He said, ‘We let the Israelis do the dirty work downstairs. Hell, I’m happy to let Zemir be the hero and disarm those missiles. As for us: into the tower. I want to check those snipers. See who we’re up against before we go running into that mess downstairs to help Zemir.’
They came to the door at the base of the tower, flung it open just as—
Bam!
—they were assaulted by the blinding white beam of a helicopter searchlight.
Schofield spun in the doorway, rain in his face.
‘Oh, you have got to be joking . . .’ he said.
There, landing on the long flat foredeck of the supertanker—a hundred yards away, its searchlight panning the area—was an obviously stolen Alouette helicopter.
It touched down on the deck.
And out of it stepped three men in Russian battle-dress uniforms and carrying Skorpion machine pistols . . .
Dmitri Zamanov and the last two remaining members of the Skorpions.
‘Damn. I forgot,’ Knight said, ‘you’ve still got a price on your head. It’s Zamanov. Run.’
Into the control tower. Up some ladder-stairs. Emerging onto the bridge.
1736.
Fairfax’s voice in Schofield’s ear: ‘Scarecrow. We’ve taken the bridge of the San Francisco tanker. Found enemy snipers wearing the uniforms of the Eritrean Army . . .’
Schofield went straight over to the bodies of his snipers.
African soldiers.
Commandos. Khaki fatigues. Black helmets.
And on their shoulders, a crest—but not the crest of Eritrea.
Rather, it was the badge of the Nigerian Army’s elite commando unit: the Presidential Guard.
As veterans of Africa’s many civil wars, the Nigerian Presidential Guard were CIA-trained killers who in the past had been used against their own citizens as much as against their nation’s enemies. In the streets of Lagos and Abuja, the Presidential Guards were known by another name: the Death Squads.
Killian’s protection team.
Two snipers up here. And more men downstairs, guarding the missile silos—the unseen enemy that the Israelis were fighting right now in the hold.
‘Mr Fairfax. Did you say yours were Eritrean?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Not Nigerian?’
‘Nope. My Marines confirm it. Definitely Eritrean insignia.’
Eritrea? Schofield thought—
‘Scarecrow,’ Mother said, opening a storeroom door wide. Four body bags lay on the floor of the storeroom. Mother quickly unzipped one—to reveal the stinking corpse of a Global Jihad terrorist.
‘Ah, now I get it,’ Schofield said. ‘The whipping boys.’
He keyed his sat-mike: ‘Mr Fairfax. Tell your Marines to stay sharp. There’ll be more African troops down in the main hold, guarding the silos. Sorry, David. It’s not over for you yet. You have to get past those troops and get your satellite uplink unit within sixty feet of the missiles’ control console for me to disarm them.’
‘Ten-four,’ Fairfax’s voice signed off. ‘We’re on the case.’
Mother joined Knight at the windows of the bridge, searching the area outside for Zamanov.
‘Do you see him?’ Mother said.
‘No, the little Russian ratbastard’s disappeared,’ Knight said. ‘Probably gone after Zemir.’
Suddenly Rufus’s voice exploded in their earpieces:
‘Boss. Scarecrow. I got a new contact closing in on your tanker. A large cutter of some kind. Looks like the French Coast Guard.’
‘Christ,’ Schofield said, moving to the windows, seeing a large white boat approaching them on their starboard side.
Schofield couldn’t believe it.
In addition to the Nigerian Death Squad, the Israeli shock troops and the Russian bounty hunters already on this supertanker, they now had a group of French maritime police on the way!
‘That ain’t the Coast Guard,’ Knight said, peering through some night-vision binoculars.
Through them he could see a big white cutter, charging through the chop—could see its knife-like bow, its big foredeck gun, its glassed-in wheelhouse, and blood-bursts all over the wheelhouse’s windows.
Armed men stood at its wheel.
‘It’s Demon Larkham and IG-88,’ Knight said.
1738.
&n
‘Damn it, more bounty hunters,’ Schofield said. ‘Rufus! Can you take them out?’
‘Sorry, Captain, I’m outta missiles. Used them all against that French carrier.’
‘Okay, okay . . .’ Schofield said, thinking. ‘All right, Rufus, you keep to your instructions, okay. If we can’t disarm those missiles in time, we’ll be needing your special help later.’
‘Got it.’
Schofield spun, still thinking, thinking, thinking.
Everything was happening too fast. The situation was spiralling out of control. Missiles to disarm, the Israelis already on board, Nigerian troops, more bounty hunters . . .
‘Focus!’ he shouted aloud. ‘Think, Scarecrow. What do you ultimately have to achieve?’
Disarm the missiles. I have to disarm the missiles by 1745 hours. Everything else is secondary.
His eyes flashed to an elevator at the back of the bridge.
‘We’re going down to the hold,’ he said.
1739 hours.
NEW YORK BAY
1139 HOURS
On the foredeck of their supertanker, in bright morning sunshine, Book’s team of Marines dived for cover.
Book scrambled into a deck hatch, slid down a very long ladder into darkness, followed by his Marine escorts.
He hit the floor, looked around.
He stood in a cavernous hold, easily three hundred yards long. A dozen cylindrical missile silos stretched away into darkness, like colossal pillars holding up the ceiling.
And bunkered down in front of the farthest missile silo, taking cover behind a heavily fortified barricade of steel crates and forklifts, was a team of heavily-armed African commandos.
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
1739 HOURS
The elevator doors opened to reveal the aft section of the supertanker’s main hold.
Schofield, Knight and Mother emerged, leading with their guns.