Scarecrow Returns

ALARMS BEGAN to sound all over Dragon Island. Sirens came to life.

The two crane-operated drawbridges giving access to the main disc-shaped tower began to rise, sealing off the building. On the helipad, the crews of the two Ospreys ran for their planes.

Bertie’s camera lens saw and heard it all, including the two Russian Army trucks filled with men that came speeding out from over by the eastern lighthouse, coming toward the cable car terminal.

While he waited for the cable car down on Acid Islet, Schofield had a look at Emma’s leg wound: the bullet had taken a nick out of her thigh. Schofield patched it up. He also wrapped a gauze bandage around his own shot left little finger, splinting it to the finger next to it.

The cable car arrived.

Everyone boarded it and as they rode it for two seemingly endless minutes, Schofield eyed the Ospreys and the two trucks on his wrist guard with concern.

Both Ospreys had been in the middle of refueling when the alarm had sounded and the fuel hoses refilling their tanks were still connected, preventing them from lifting off. The trucks, however, were already halfway to the terminal. This was now a race to see who would get to the terminal first—his cable car or the trucks. And the Ospreys wouldn’t be far behind.

Schofield checked the time.

10:40 A.M.

“People, we’ve got twenty minutes till those uranium spheres are primed and ready to be fired into the gas cloud.”

“It’s not enough time,” Mario said forlornly.

“While there’s still a second to spare, we keep trying,” Schofield said firmly.

On his wrist guard, he pulled up a plan of Dragon Island’s main tower, nestled in its circular, almost moat-like chasm:

“Okay,” he said, “they’re going to be coming at us the moment we land on Dragon, so we can’t waste a second once we’re there. Dr. Ivanov, you said the spheres are in the shorter spire on the main tower. How wide is that chasm surrounding the tower?”

Ivanov said, “It is broad. Perhaps 250 feet.”

Schofield grimaced. “Too wide for a Maghook.” He nodded at Champion’s French-made Maghook-equivalent, the one she’d used to swing to safety in the Bear Lab. “I didn’t get to ask you before: what is that and how long is its cable?”

Champion said, “It is a FAMAS Ligne Magnétique Multi-Purpose Grappling Gun, but we just call it ‘Le Magneteux.’ While similar to the Armalite MH-12 Maghook, it is, with respect, superior to that device in almost every way.”

She offered the Magneteux to Schofield. It looked like his Maghook, only sleeker, more modern, and a little larger. It also bore not one but two hightech silver grappling hooks sitting in parallel firing barrels.

“The Magneteux has two cables, each two hundred feet long, plus two hooks which fire from two independently directable firing barrels. Each hook has fold-out claws, magnetic adhesion and a threaded drill-bit that can lodge into solid surfaces like stone, concrete or, if fired from close enough, steel.”

Schofield examined the sharpened tip of the Magneteux’s hook. It was indeed threaded like a self-tapping screw. “It spins as it flies?” he asked. “And that causes it to drill into a solid surface?”

“Correct.”

“Impressive.” His little Maghook certainly couldn’t do that.

Baba cut in. “Each cable of the Magneteux can hold a load of up to 2,200 pounds. The American Maghook can barely hold four hundred.”

“What’s this?” Schofield touched a compact, detachable black unit clipped to the side of the Magneteux: it looked like a rubber suitcase grip with four small motorized clamp-wheels attached to it. “An ascender?”

“Yes,” Champion said. “A motorized ascender. It clips onto the cable and hauls you up it. Very fast. Beats climbing.”

Ivanov said, “But if the cable is only two hundred feet long, it’s not going to be long enough. The moat is at least 250 feet wide.”

Schofield didn’t say anything. He just held the French Magneteux in his hands. “Two thousand pounds, you say? For each cable.” He turned to Baba: “You have one of these as well?”

“Oui.”

Schofield nodded, thinking quickly now. He glanced at the incoming trucks on the wrist guard. “If we can get hold of a—Dr. Ivanov, do you keep any vehicles in the terminal at the top of this cable? Any jeeps, maybe, or cars?”

Ivanov said, “No jeeps or cars. But there is a garage attached to the western side of the terminal that houses some small fuel trucks. They are old but still in working order.”

“That’ll do,” Schofield said. “All right, folks. This is the plan.”

As the cable car rose, he quickly outlined his plan for getting to the uranium spheres on the shorter spire of the main tower and, if necessary, stealing them.

When he was finished, Baba swore, Champion gasped, Zack gulped and Mother just said, “You’re insane, you know that?”

“The only way for this to work,” Schofield said, “is to do it fast. Nonstop. If we stop for even a moment, it’s over. They’ll move the spheres and we’re screwed. Hopefully, they’ll be caught off guard and we’ll need the hesitation that usually follows that. Having said all this, the plan will require two of you to take something of a leap of faith with me. Mother? Baba? You up for it?”

Mother said, “Always.”

Baba looked closely at Schofield. His jaw twitched. Then he said: “Qui veut vivre éternellement?”

“What’s that mean?” the Kid asked.

“It means,” Baba said gruffly, “who wants to live forever? The Barbarian is afraid of no man or mission. I will take this leap of faith with you.”

“Good,” Schofield said. “Okay, everyone, take a look at this map and make sure you know where you have to go—”

But just then, as he passed around the wrist guard with the map on it, a voice spoke in Schofield’s ear.

“Captain Schofield,” it said pleasantly. “Captain Shane Michael Schofield of the United States Marine Corps, call sign: ‘Scarecrow.’ I am the Lord of Anarchy, General of the Army of Thieves. You’ve managed to survive a lot longer than I thought you would, and I see now that you are on the cusp of setting foot on my island.”

It took Schofield a moment to realize that the voice was coming through the second earpiece he was wearing: the one he’d taken from the dead member of Thresher Team.

It took him another second to see the small surveillance camera in the top corner of the cable car, its pilot light on.

“I’ll take that glance at the camera as proof that you can hear me loud and clear. You have one of my radios in your ear.”

Schofield checked his people. Mother and Veronique Champion both looked back at him, eyes wide—they also wore Army of Thieves earpiece-mikes. But none of the others did, so as they all perused the map, they couldn’t hear the Lord of Anarchy’s words.

The cable car kept rising.

They were less than a minute out now.

The two troop trucks kept closing in.

“My torturers have recently made the acquaintance of your camp-mate, Mr. Hartigan, and he has been most forthcoming with information about you and your band of merry men—civilians tend to be forthcoming when they have a pair of electrodes attached to their skull,” the Lord of Anarchy said.

“And now I have your file in front of me, Captain. You’re a genuine hero. A former Marine Corps pilot, shot down, tortured, rescued, then retrained as a ground officer. Served with distinction ever since, albeit to the considerable dismay of the French government. They still have a price on your head.”

Schofield said nothing.

“Such service, I see, has not been without loss,” the Lord said. “Tell me, Captain, how did you feel when you were informed that Jonathan Killian had cut off your girlfriend’s head?”

Still Schofield said nothing. Mother and Champion listened in dumbstruck horror.

“Never mind. I already know the answer,” the Lord of Anarchy said. “I can see from the file notes of the three psychiatrists who treated you that you did not take it well at all. It was practically a nervous breakdown. Must be hard for a hero to save every hamburger-munching moron in the world but not be able to save the woman he loves. Is it hard to walk through a shopping mall knowing that those fat idiots will never know what you did for them? What you sacrificed for them? Being a hero sure isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Of course, I can’t claim to know what it’s like to die in a guillotine, but I would imagine Lieutenant Gant died with tears in her eyes and begging for her life.”

Schofield touched his earpiece softly, enabling its microphone. “You motherfucker,” he said softly.

“Ah-ha, he speaks,” the Lord of Anarchy said. “A word of advice, Captain: be careful with your new French friends. Ms. Champion is a most efficient killer. I can’t imagine she will forget her orders, even in the unlikely event that you manage to overcome me. But then, Ms. Champion—you can hear me, too, can’t you?—are you still haunted by the face of your dead husband and those of your former colleagues? The ones Hannah Fatah killed after you brought her in? Captain Schofield, look closely at your new friend: she was once a hero like you, and she is now an example of what heroes become after they lose everything.

“The clock is ticking, Captain, and in less than a minute, the real battle will begin. A battle between you and me. Me, with my army of brigands and bandits. You, with your team of damaged souls. Like your loyal Gunnery Sergeant, Ms. Newman, the famous Mother. Did you know that her marriage is in tatters because of you? That her husband has threatened to leave her because of her concern for you? That she herself has been seeing a Marine Corps therapist?”

Schofield didn’t know that.

He looked to Mother—and she turned away.

“Or that Corporal Puzo is not to be trusted. That the Marine Corps knows that he is more loyal to a criminal family in New Jersey than he is to the Corps? That he has been slipping sidearms and assault weapons to that Mob family for over a year? And yet still the Corps was happy to assign him to you.”

Schofield glanced at Mario. The Italian-American lance corporal was peering up at the terminal, blank-faced, oblivious to the fact that he was being talked about.

“Ask yourself, is he a man you can trust in the battle to come? Or what about young Corporal Billy Thompson? Were you aware that he was dropped from active service not because of some minor deafness in the left ear but because of a diagnosed mental disorder? A disorder found at the extreme end of the attention-deficit spectrum, a disorder that makes him highly susceptible to suggestion, peer pressure, that makes him easily led.”

The cable car rose ever higher.

Twenty seconds to go.

The two troop trucks kept coming.

Schofield checked his wrist guard. On it, Bertie’s view panned back to the main tower, to the helipad with the Ospreys on it—

The Ospreys were no longer there.

Schofield’s heart stopped. The Ospreys must be in the air.

His eyes darted upward, searching the sky. His slow-moving cable car that would be an easy target for a pair of gunships—

A savage hail of bullets slammed into the cable car, hitting it all over, shattering its windows and an Osprey shoom ed by overhead.

Everyone ducked below the window-line, except for Baba, who hefted his Kord and loosed a violent burst in reply. The big gun’s supersized rounds razed the entire left side of the Osprey, sending one of its gunners sailing down into the water far below. The Osprey’s left-side engine was also hit and it flared with flames and started belching thick black smoke and peeled away as the second V-22 took its place and unleashed its own rain of gunfire, but at that moment the bullet-riddled and now-windowless cable car entered the upper terminal, mercifully moving out of the line of fire.

Crouched below the window-line, Schofield’s face was now set, his jaw clenched. The Lord of Anarchy had got inside his head but he wasn’t going to let it show.

“You talk a good game, asshole,” he said softly into his Army of Thieves mike, “and you’re obviously connected to be able to get all this information. But now I know something about you: you wouldn’t be saying all this if you weren’t worried about me. And guess what?”

The cable car lurched to a halt beside the terminal’s platform.

“I just landed on your island.”

Schofield clicked off the earpiece mic and raced out of the cable car, guns up, setting foot for the first time that day on Dragon Island.