Scarecrow Returns

DRAGON ISLAND

1042 HOURS

18 MINUTES TO DEADLINE

NO SOONER had the cable car stopped beside the platform of the upper terminal on Dragon Island than Schofield was racing out of it at full speed.

He joined Bertie in the doorway, arriving there in time to see the two enemy trucks skid to simultaneous halts twenty yards away. The main tower soared skyward before him. With its white exterior, it looked futuristic, imposing and impenetrable.

“Bertie, cover us,” he said. “Hold this doorway for as long as you still have bullets.”

“Yes, Captain Schofield.”

Army of Thieves troops began pouring out of the two trucks. Bertie started firing at them and they dived for cover.

As the little robot held the main doorway, Schofield led the others westward, toward the garage Ivanov had said was on that side. Schofield threw open a door that revealed a darkened garage with two small trucks parked inside it. The first was a medium-sized fuel truck with a rusty cylindrical aluminum gasoline tank on its back. A steel-rung ladder ran up the back of the tank and along the length of its upper side. The second truck, parked behind the tanker, was a compact cement mixer with a rotatable barrel mounted on its back.

Schofield pointed at the tanker truck as he moved. “Mother, Baba. Onto the tanker. Mother, start her up. Everyone else, when we drive out of here and get their attention, go as fast as you can to your assigned positions.”

The others—Champion, Ivanov, the Kid, Mario, Zack and Emma—all nodded at him in reply.

Schofield gave them a look. “If this doesn’t work, Mother, Baba and I won’t get out of it alive, so you guys’ll have to come up with something yourselves. Good luck. I’ll either see you all later or see you on the other side.”

Behind him, the engine of the tanker truck came alive.

“Captain.” Baba was peering at a gauge on the side of the tanker truck. “This tank still has fuel in it. Given the plan, it might be wise to empty it. It’ll make it lighter.”

“Do it.”

Baba turned a spigot on the back of the truck’s cylindrical tank. Diesel fuel started pouring out of it, splashing to the ground.

Schofield then climbed into the driver’s seat, while Mother and Baba clambered up the steel-rung ladder on top of the truck’s tank, weapons ready.

“Open the door,” Schofield said.

Ivanov hit a switch and the garage’s roller door slid upward. Daylight flooded into the garage.

Schofield gunned the truck and it roared outside, into battle.

As Schofield’s tanker truck sped out of the garage, Zack turned to check on Bertie back in the terminal’s doorway.

He saw the little robot firing out through the open door, saw enemy rounds ping harmlessly off his flanks.

“Come on, Zack.” Emma pulled him away. “We have to get into position. Bertie’ll be okay.”

Just as she said those words, however, a rocket-propelled grenade hit the doorway in which Bertie stood.

A fireball erupted all around the little robot, consuming him, and a split second later Bertie came flying out of it, hurled backward through the air at alarming speed.

Bertie sailed back across the terminal and slammed into the opposite wall—a few feet from the gaping aperture through which the cable car had entered the terminal; a sweeping view of the northern bay and the islets lay beyond that aperture, as well as a 300-foot sheer drop.

Bertie lay on his side, looking dazed and confused, if a robot could look that way. His fat rubber tires spun but got no traction.

Zack shouted, “No!” but then Bertie righted himself, rolling back up onto his tires and seemed okay—

—just as the first Army of Thieves man, moving low and fast, entered the terminal with another RPG on his shoulder, crouched and fired it at Bertie.

This time the robot stood no chance.

The RPG lanced across the space toward him and detonated.

This blast sent Bertie sailing out through the aperture in the northern wall of the terminal into nothing but air.

With a squealing whistle, Bertie disappeared from Zack’s view and fell a full 300 feet down the face of the cliff before disappearing into the freezing waters of the bay with a tiny splash, his part in this battle now well and truly over.

The sudden emergence of Schofield’s tanker truck from the garage attached to the western side of the terminal caught the other Army of Thieves troops assailing the terminal’s main entrance by surprise.

The tanker truck, with Mother and Baba crouched on top of it and a gushing trail of diesel spilling out behind it, thundered out of the garage and sped in a dead-straight line toward the circular chasm containing the main tower.

The Army men raised their guns, but Mother and Baba sprayed them with a deadly burst and half of them fell. The others took cover—and so didn’t see some of Schofield’s other people scamper out of the garage on foot.

It didn’t matter. The tanker truck had seized the Army men’s attention completely.

Chiefly, this was because its path was very unusual.

For it wasn’t heading toward either of the two crane-bridges that granted one access across the moat to the tower.

No.

It was speeding in a dead-straight line—not on any road, but over open ground—a line that ran directly from the cable car terminal to the tower, a line that would end at the sharp concrete edge of the moat.

“What the hell are they doing?” one of the Army men breathed.

The Lord of Anarchy was watching the speeding tanker truck from his command center on the tower.

“What the hell is he doing?” he said.

The tanker truck picked up speed as it rushed toward the edge of the moat.

It was only twenty yards from the moat and still accelerating when the remaining Osprey thundered by overhead, cannons blazing.

Sizzling rounds strafed the ground all around the speeding truck, raking the dirt behind it, igniting the leaking trail of diesel fuel there.

The line of diesel fuel burst to life, erupting as an elongated wall of flames behind the speeding truck!

Schofield saw it in his side mirror. “As if this wasn’t crazy enough,” he muttered as he kept driving toward the edge of the moat. “Mother! Baba! You ready?”

“Ready up front!” Mother called back.

“Ready at rear!” Baba shouted.

“Please God, this better work . . .” Schofield whispered before he floored it completely and the tanker truck rushed toward the edge of the moat and flew off it into empty, open air.