Scarecrow Returns

ICE FIELD TO THE WEST OF DRAGON ISLAND 4 APRIL, 1155 HOURS

VERONIQUE CHAMPION woke with a start.

She coughed a few times, blinking back to her senses, and then looked around: to find herself sitting in an orange inflatable life raft, moving slowly through a tranquil Arctic lead, paddled by Shane Schofield. High walls of ice rose on either side of her.

A thick waterproof field dressing was wrapped tightly around her belly and lower back, staunching the flow of blood from her gunshot wound.

“What—how did we get here?” she asked. “The last thing I remember is . . .”

Her voice trailed off as she peered upward, in the direction of Dragon Island. She could just see the peaks of Dragon’s southern mountains over the top of the lead’s walls.

Schofield smiled grimly. “You passed out. I dressed your wound and gave you a shot of AP-6.” AP-6 was a field drug developed by SEAL Team Six; it was both a painkiller and a stimulant; it dulled any pain but also jacked up a wounded solider long enough to allow them to get to a field hospital.

“You won’t be doing any somersaults or jumps,” Schofield said, “but you’ll be mobile enough. I managed to dispose of four of the spheres, but there are still two out there: Zack and Emma have them, back on the island, and Mother’s with them. We’re going back in now.”

“Going back? How?”

“I’m taking us through these leads toward the north of Dragon Island, to the old whaling village. I figure the cable car and gantry elevators will be more closely watched now and the submarine station is way over on the other side of the island, so the village is our only choice, the only place where we can land.”

“That’ll take a while.” Champion tried to sit up in the life raft but fell back, grimacing. “Ah . . .”

Schofield glanced at her. “You’ll live but you won’t be doing any more fighting today. The bullet missed your spleen by millimeters and, luckily for you, went right through.”

Champion groaned, blinking away the pain, and lay back against the inflatable bow of the raft. It was unusually peaceful here: the air silent, the water perfectly calm and the ice walls white as snow. It was like floating among the clouds.

“I figure it’ll take us about ten more minutes,” Schofield said, paddling slowly but firmly.

“Un moment, s’il vous plait. You saved me from that sinking plane?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why would you do this? I was sent to kill you. I even told you that when all this is over, I would have to carry out my original mission.”

Schofield stopped paddling for a moment. The boat drifted. He looked at Champion long and hard.

“I saved you because this situation is bigger than your country’s vendetta against me, and I think you’re smart enough to know that.”

Champion returned his gaze. “You . . . trust me? Why?”

“Because you didn’t come to kill me just for France. You came because of your cousin. You thought he was wronged, an innocent civilian murdered by a professional soldier: me. Your premise was wrong but the motive wasn’t. It shows you have a sense of justice, of right and wrong, and I figure if you have that, you’re a decent person, and decent people can be reasoned with. They also deserve to be saved if it’s possible and it was possible.”

Champion cast her eyes downward. She seemed to be looking deep within herself. But when she looked up again, her gaze was hard.

“You’re wrong. I once had a sense of justice. I was once decent. Now I am an assassin. When this is over, wounded or not, I must carry out my orders. I must make sure you are dead.”

Schofield didn’t flinch.

“But you weren’t always an assassin, were you?” he said. “Sorry, but you’re not the type. You’re too thoughtful. Most assassins are cold-blooded for two reasons: one, they can’t empathize, and two, they’re stupid and any idiot can pull a trigger and feel powerful that way. But you’re neither of those things. Something happened to you.”

“You want to psychoanalyze me?”

“Got nothing else to do right now.”

“All right.” Champion lay her head back and gazed skyward, gripping her stomach. “I shall tell you about me, but only if you tell me about you—in particular, how a Marine recovers from the execution of his girlfriend by a psychopath.”

Now it was Schofield who looked down, but only briefly. “Okay, fine. You first.”

Champion said, “Before I was in the Action Division, I was in the DGSE’s Directorate of Intelligence. I monitored Islamic extremist groups in Algeria, Morocco and Yemen. In particular, their increasing enlistment of women. I befriended a Yemeni mother of five, named Hannah Fatah. She fed me excellent information for three years, information that prevented two attacks on Paris—one on the Eiffel Tower and another at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

“Then one day, Hannah asked to be brought in. She was pregnant again and she feared that her superiors had discovered that she was a leak. I brought her in, took her back to the DGSE field office in Marseilles. When she walked into the debriefing room, with my boss—my husband at the time—and his boss watching through a two-way mirror, she set off a small wad of Semtex that had been surgically implanted into her uterus.

“I never suspected anything—Hannah already had a scar on her stomach from the Cesarean birth of her last child, and the explosive was concealed from our X-ray and cathode-ray scanners by a wrapping material made of human bone, designed to appear as a fetus. She passed through four security scanners before she got into that room and killed two very senior DGSE agents, one of them my husband, and three of my other colleagues. I alone survived. She had waited three years to do it.”

Schofield was silent.

Champion said, “My empathy for Hannah Fatah got my husband killed. My closest colleagues, too. So I decided that I would no longer live with empathy. I became cold. I transferred to Action Division, and made my first kill within a month. I’ve been doing it ever since.”

She paused. “Strange. In my research on you, Scarecrow, I struggled to find a defining reason why you became such an efficient killer of men.”

“Your research on me?”

“When you set out to assassinate someone, it is wise to know as much as you can about them. Pressure points, loved ones, weaknesses that can be exploited.”

“Why don’t you tell me about myself then,” Schofield said. “Let’s see what you know and I’ll tell you how accurate it is.”

“Okay,” Champion began.