Scarecrow Returns

THE MESSAGE read:

FFAX: THANKS FOR GETTING ME INTO HUGE TROUBLE. ON THE RUN FROM SOME CIA THUGS THANKS TO YOU. READ THIS AND ALL WILL BE REVEALED. I THINK THIS CALDERON GUY IS LEADING YOUR ARMY OF THIEVES. GOTTA RUN NOW.

Schofield frowned. The CIA?

Attached to the message was a document in PDF form, titled OPERATION “DRAGONSLAYER.” He opened it and, sitting down beside Champion so she could look on, started reading:

OPERATION “DRAGONSLAYER”

ANALYSIS AND OPERATION CONCEPT BY

MARIUS CALDERON

AUGUST 1, 1984

Pursuant to my report of July 2, 1982, titled THE COMING RISE OF CHINA AND THE ENSUING FALL OF AMERICA, I have been tasked by the Agency’s Director (Operations) with formulating a plan by which the United States can avoid the fate described therein. The plan I propose is this:

We use Russia to kill China.

Schofield glanced at Champion. “Use Russia to kill China? This is about China?”

They kept reading:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

I have been looking into some of our recent prototype weapons programs and found one—an atmospheric or “Tesla” device that uses the global jet stream to send a flammable plume of gas around the northern hemisphere. Weather models have shown that if placed in certain Arctic locations—including one Soviet fleet maintenance station in the Arctic Circle called Dragon Island—the chief victim of such a device will not be Russia but rather China.

Soviet spy agencies love nothing more than stealing our secrets. They thrive on it. The only thing that gives them greater pleasure than stealing an American military secret is subsequently constructing one of our own superweapons for use against us.

I propose we allow the KGB to steal the plans to this Tesla device—but we include with the device’s plans some fake data showing optimal locations for such a device. In that data will be a note that, if built at Dragon Island, the device will destroy much of America.

Schofield looked over at Dragon Island, looming above the network of leads.

“No way . . .” he said aloud.

If the Soviets build the device—which I am quite certain they will do—the next step is setting it off at a time of our choosing, at a time when China is assuming global dominance, but in a way that cannot be connected to America.

For this I propose—

Schofield looked up.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Those CIA sons of bitches . . .”

For this I propose that we create a fake terrorist army, perhaps two hundred men strong. We could call it the Army of Terror or some similar name—and use it to seize and set off the Tesla device on Dragon Island.

A crucial note: it is important that the members of this terrorist army do not know that their army is a sham.

Regular infantrymen are poor actors, mercenaries can never truly be trusted and private contractors are worse than mercenaries. Only true believers can pull off this mission. We must also account for the possibility that members of our army might be captured and interrogated by a friendly nation (indeed, if they are unaware of the true nature of their army, having one or two members captured will actually be advantageous to us).

To that end, I propose we recruit genuinely disaffected militarily trained individuals and we indoctrinate them to a cause of global chaos and anarchy. Under the leadership of a small inner core of Agency men including myself, this army will then carry out a series of terrorist acts to establish the group in the global consciousness. After that, we take Dragon Island and set off the Russian device. Of course, when the mission is over, the members of our counterfeit army will need to be liquidated.

Schofield skimmed to the document’s concluding paragraphs:

The predicted outcomes of the proposed operation are as follows:

China is completely destroyed, its population and cities incinerated by a firestorm of never-before-seen proportions. Ninety percent of India, our next rising low-cost industrial competitor, is also wiped out. A few small slivers at the edges of the continental United States are lost (a necessary loss; we cannot be totally unharmed as that would arouse suspicion). And the Russians are blamed. The story is familiar—once again, Russia’s notoriously poor safety protocols have failed and China’s innocent population has suffered for it. A terrorist group is to blame and America rises again, the income of its working-class population secured for the foreseeable future.

The American way of life survives.

Schofield stared at the screen in silence.

“ ‘The American way of life survives.’ Goddamn.”

He’d seen some messed-up plans in his time—he’d even done battle with an ultra-patriotic American intelligence agency called the ICG once before—but this took the cake.

He quickly brought up another screen on his wrist guard, one he’d seen at the start of all this, showing a map of the world and the spiraling gas plume contaminating it:

And there it was.

The plume completely covered China.

He hadn’t really noticed that before. Like everyone else, he had been concerned about his own country; but even now that took on a new perspective: compared to China, Asia, Europe and India, America would only suffer a glancing blow at the hands of this atmospheric weapon.

Champion frowned. “So the Army of Thieves is a CIA creation? A fake terrorist army?”

“One hundred percent made in America,” Schofield said sourly.

Looking again at the Dragonslayer document, he even saw that Calderon had accounted for something else: the fall of the Soviet Union.

It has been suggested to me that this plan might be hindered by the potential fall of the Soviet regime (an event which this analyst believes will occur around the end of this decade). I do not believe that such a fall will adversely affect the plan. In fact, I think it will strengthen it.

Any new confederation that follows the fall of the Soviet regime will still have to safeguard all of the Soviet Union’s many weapons of mass destruction, in particular its nuclear arsenal and weapons like the Tesla device. High-value “exotic matter” weapons installations like Dragon Island will require upkeep by skeleton crews of military staff, who will be very easily bought off—

Schofield shook his head. “And there you have it. A plan that was hatched back in 1984 comes to fruition now—now that China has become the world’s 800-pound gorilla. There were only two things this Calderon guy didn’t predict: that Vasily Ivanov would manage to get away for long enough to send out a distress signal . . .”

“And the second thing?”

“That my little test team would be in the area when he did.”

With those words, Schofield brought their life raft to a halt, just short of the end of the lead they were in.

A hundred yards beyond the end of the lead rose Dragon Island, or more particularly the long-abandoned frost-covered whaling village situated on the north-west coast of Dragon.

Schofield gazed at the village.

“There was a third thing he didn’t anticipate” he said. “How determined I’d be to stop him.”