Scarecrow Returns

A FIVE-FOOT-HIGH HORIZONTAL finger of yellow-red fire whooshed past Schofield, completely filling the walkway as it rushed by him: a blasting, rushing, rampaging stream of liquid fire.

Dubois never stood a chance.

The fire lanced right through him, liquefying his body in an instant. An entire human being just melted in the blink of an eye.

Schofield’s eyes boggled.

It looked like the elongated tongue of fire sent forth by a flamethrower, only bigger, much bigger: this was a tongue of fire eight feet wide by five feet high, contained only by the walls of the walkway. It was as if the walkway had suddenly been flooded not with water but with fire: blazing yellow liquid fire.

Before it destroyed Dubois, the finger of flame had rocketed down the roofed section of the sunken passageway, its intense heat shattering the reinforced glass awning, sending successive sections of the awning exploding skyward.

Then, after liquefying the Frenchman, the river of fire slammed into the snow-mound and obliterated it, too, slicing through it like a hot knife through butter and sending an explosion of steam shooting a hundred feet into the air, engulfing the area around the walkway in a dense cloud of fog.

Schofield fell back from the blazing, glowing walkway.

When he re-gathered himself—wild bullets were still impacting all around him—he saw that the finger of fire had burned itself out, the snow-mound was simply gone, and the gray concrete walls and floor of the half-buried walkway glowed incandescent orange, like embers in a fireplace, the outer layer of the concrete having been melted by the intense heat.

Covered by the newly created fog, Schofield rolled backward with Champion and dropped into the nearest trench, landing next to Mother, the Kid, Baba and Ivanov. Mario and Chad hovered nearby, both looking very anxious. Zack and Emma were nowhere to be seen.

“What the hell was that!” Schofield gasped.

“That,” Ivanov said, “was a grenade with a thermobaric core.”

“But it was tiny . . .” Mario said.

“Its red-uranium core would have been the size of a pinhead,” Ivanov said, “and its explosion was small because it only fed off the ambient oxygen in the air. An explosion that uses an incendiary gas cloud is far more potent.”

“That was a small explosion?” Mother said.

“Doesn’t matter now.” Schofield stood, gazing up at the watchtower looming above the mist-enshrouded trench system. “Unless we get out of this Stadium fast, we’re not going to be any use to anyone. We’re heading for that tower, people.”

As they hurried off, the Kid came alongside Schofield. “Sir, I can’t find Zack and Emma, and neither of them are wearing headsets.”

Schofield frowned for a second in thought, before he touched his throat-mike and said, “Bertie? Do you read me?”

“I read you, Captain Schofield,” Bertie’s voice replied.

“Put me on speaker, please.”

“You are on speaker.”

“Zack? You hear me?”

Zack’s voice came in. It sounded distant, like someone on a speakerphone. “I hear you, Captain.”

“Where are you? Is Emma with you?”

Zack was hurrying through a misty trench with Bertie whizzing along beside him and Emma draped over his shoulder, limping.

“We’re in the trench system, but we must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. We’re lost.”

“Can you see the watchtower in the middle of the Stadium?” Schofield’s voice said through Bertie’s speaker.

Zack peered out over the rim of the trench he was standing in. At first he saw nothing but the rocky inner wall of the crater and the office building that they had come through.

“No . . .” He turned and jumped. “Oh, wait, I see it. Damn, we went the wrong way. I took us back toward the northern end of the crater.”

“Never mind. You did good. You stayed alive. Just head for that watchtower. We’ll meet you there.”

“Got it.”

Zack and Emma hurried off, unaware of the distinctive footprints Zack’s cold-weather Nike boots left in the mud behind them.

Schofield strode quickly through the trench-maze, moving fast and low, taking every turn decisively. Ahead of him, rising above the fog layer, was the watchtower, coming closer with every step.

“So what’s your brilliant plan, Captain?” Champion said.

“Down here, we’re rats in a maze.” He never stopped moving. “They have men all around us—three sniper positions to the south, east and west, plus the flushing team behind us to the north. If we stay here, it’s only a matter of time till they take us out. We need to turn the tables. We need to take some higher ground, take them out, and then roll on to Dragon Island without losing any more time. That watchtower is the key to it all.”

A stray bullet whistled down through the fog and lodged in the mud-wall beside Schofield’s head. He barely noticed it, kept moving.

Champion said, “If they see you up in that watchtower, they’ll hit it with an RPG within thirty seconds . . .”

“I know,” Schofield said. “That gives me thirty seconds to do what I have to do.”