Scarecrow Returns

MOTHER CHARGED through the undergrowth at the base of the mountain, pushing ice-encrusted branches out of the way, hustling across the slope. Zack and Emma hurried along behind her, Zack carrying the compact Samsonite case with the spheres in it.

“Mother!” he called forward as he ran. “What do we do!”

Mother was trying to figure that out.

“I’m working on it!” she said between panting breaths. “Usually I got the Scarecrow around to think for me! He does the thinking and I do the shooting. It’s not often I have to think for myself.”

She kept running, her mind whirring. She kept hearing Schofield’s last words to her: “You’re on your own this time.”

So she asked herself, What would Scarecrow do?

“Okay,” she said. “First, we gotta stay off the road. They can’t drive a truck through brushland. Second, we either find a way to the coast—which doesn’t look likely—or we find somewhere to hide these spheres.”

“You can’t hide them on land,” Zack said. “They might be small and their radioactivity minor, but they are still radioactive. Even if you buried them in the dirt, they could still be found with a Geiger counter.”

Mother said, “Then we hide with them, while staying as mobile as possible. If we can stay out of sight for long enough, maybe the cavalry will arrive before these bastards find us.”

Emma said, “When we were looking at the map before, I remember seeing a quarry or a mine in this part of the island. Some kind of rare granite—”

As she said this, they crested a low rise and beheld a wide open-cut quarry before them, its sheer, square walls carved deep into the base of a small mountain.

Sloping ramps of hard-packed earth zigzagged their way into the great pit, while a network of steel ladders provided access from ramp to ramp; long-abandoned mining trucks stood like ghostly mechanical statues at various places on the ramps, rusted solid. Two very basic buildings provided a pair of entrances to the mine system.

Mother stopped for a moment, her eyes narrowing. She whispered to herself: “All right, you stupid grunt, think. What would Scarecrow do?”

And it hit her. “I know what he’d do. Okay, lovebirds. Listen up.”

Minutes later, a pursuing Strela from the Army of Thieves pulled to a halt on the crest overlooking the quarry—just in time to see Mother, moving backward, gun up, disappear inside one of the entrances to the mine.

“They’re going inside the mine,” the pursuit group’s leader, the Caucasian officer known as Mako, said into his radio.

Typhon’s voice came over the line. “There are only two entrances. Secure them, then go in and kill them all.”

“Roger that,” Mako said. “This won’t take long.”

It didn’t take long.

Mako’s team moved with speed and precision. They sealed off the mine and then went in hard, leapfrogging one another in a coordinated rolling formation.

The mine system wasn’t that complicated—it was just a basic rock mine from which granite was extracted—and within a few minutes, they were fired upon from a shadowy corner.

Mother.

That standoff didn’t last long, either, maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Mother fought bravely, but she was woefully outnumbered and outgunned, and eventually, she ran dry, and Mako’s men steadily flanked her until she stopped firing and stood up, arms raised in surrender.

Mako’s team swarmed all over her position . . .

. . . to discover that she was alone.

Zack and Emma weren’t there, and neither was the all-important case.

Mother had done what Scarecrow would’ve done: she’d lured her pursuers into the mine and kept them occupied for as long as she could, giving Zack and Emma time to escape with the spheres.

Mother stepped out from her position, arms raised, her face illuminated by half a dozen barrel-mounted flashlights.

Mako keyed his radio: “Sir, this is Mako. We got one of the Marines, but she was a decoy. The other two are gone and they have the case. They’re somewhere else on the island.”

To Mako’s surprise, the voice that answered him was not Typhon but the Lord of Anarchy himself: “One of the Marines, you say? Is it the woman, the big one? Newman?”

Mako jabbed Mother with his gun. “Are you Newman?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, it’s her.”

“Bring her to me, alive,” the Lord of Anarchy said. “Do not harm her. I intend to enjoy that pleasure myself.”

Elsewhere, Zack and Emma hurried through scrub, icy branches lashing their faces, running as fast as they could, away from the quarry-mine.

They knew full well that Mother would eventually be caught—that her fake last stand was designed to give them valuable time to get away and hide—and they didn’t want her sacrifice to be in vain.

Staying on the south side of the island, however, was not an option. While mountainous, it was too barren and treeless, too exposed. There was nowhere to hide. Nor was there any way to get in touch with anyone back home—to tell them that the Army of Thieves was being prevented from effecting their plan.

That meant venturing back north into the sprawling main complex of Dragon Island—to both hide and find some communications gear, and maybe even link up with the Kid and Mario.

Zack and Emma dashed across a shallow rocky ford in the river and headed back north, toward the main complex.

A mile or so behind them, two Army of Thieves Strelas stopped on the road overlooking the quarry-mine. The tattooed men on it glared at Mother—and offered a few lewd obscenities—as she was led away by Mako and his men.

One man ambled a short distance away from the main group, where he crouched on one knee and peered at the muddy ground.

It was Bad Willy. His left ear was now bandaged, but the gauze had leaked and an ugly splotch of blood stained it.

Bad Willy gazed long and hard at the muddy ground . . .

. . . at the fresh shoe-prints in it, including one kind of print that was not often found on secret Soviet bases.

Nike hiking boot-prints.

“Oh, Zacky-boy . . .” Bad Willy said. “I told you I’d find you.”

Calling his men to follow—on foot, since it was quieter, better for hunting—Bad Willy set off after Zack and Emma.