Scarecrow Returns

SCHOFIELD WAS wheeled out into an enormous hall-sized space, where a crowd of forty members of the Army of Thieves was waiting for him. He realized immediately that he was inside the gargantuan gasworks beneath Dragon Island’s mighty vents. He was on the highest of three levels, on a large balcony overlooking a massive, massive space. Immediately below him was a middle level, the main feature of which was a long conveyor belt. This belt fed an industrial furnace that sat on the third and bottommost level alongside three gigantic circular vats.

These vats—their green liquid contents steaming ominously and stirred constantly by rotating steel arms—were positioned directly beneath one of the mighty vent towers. An identical set of vats lay farther away, beneath the second enormous vent. Fed by a complex network of interconnected pipes, gauges and valves, the vats were the beating heart of the atmospheric device: the shimmering gas that rose from them was the combustible TEB mixture that would allow the sky to ignite.

On the northern side of the vast space, Schofield saw, of all things, a huge black train—twice the width of a normal train and made of ultra-thick reinforced steel—parked at a platform that opened directly onto the gasworks via a broad ramp. Judging from the direction of its tracks, Schofield guessed the industrial-sized train had been used during the original construction of the gasworks to convey material from the submarine dock on the east coast.

The whole place stank of a foul chemical odor, the reek of TEB, plus another rank smell that Schofield recognized with horror: burnt human flesh.

The crowd of ruffians from the Army of Thieves cheered loudly at Schofield’s appearance.

It was then that Schofield saw the other prisoners.

There were four of them in total: two closer to him—their torture had already begun, inspiring the grim cheers he had heard earlier—and two farther away on the balcony.

Schofield took in the nearer pair first: one was attached to a bed frame just like his. The other hung from the raised prong of a forklift in a most painful position: from his wrists, which had been handcuffed behind his back. His feet hovered just above the ground.

The man on the bed frame was Ironbark Barker: the Navy SEAL leader whose team had been shot to shit in the submarine bay and who himself had later been captured, after successfully sabotaging the TEB gas dispersal for a time.

Ironbark’s face bulged with bruises and cuts, while his naked back was imprinted with a foul grid of charred electrical burns. Schofield saw a thick black industrial-sized electrical cable attached by virue of a transformer to the steel bed frame. A moment later, he noticed the small wooden bit clenched between Ironbark’s bloody teeth.

The second prisoner, the one hanging from the forklift, was Jeff Hartigan, the haughty contractor who had stayed behind in Schofield’s camp against Schofield’s advice.

His head was bent low and he did not move at all—he could have been dead for all Schofield knew. It was hard to tell. Suspended from his cuffed wrists, Hartigan’s shoulders had dislocated some time ago.

Calderon caught Schofield looking at Hartigan. “It is a torture position known as strappado, or ‘reverse hanging.’ It has been used for hundreds of years, by the Medici family in Florence and the Nazis in their concentration camps, and also the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. It is still used today in Turkey—I know this for a fact, as I instructed their torturers in its correct use. Strappado causes excruciating pain, and if left for too long in this position, the subject will suffer first, permanent ligament damage, and second, dislocation of the shoulders, and eventually full loss of use of the arms.”

Calderon smiled. “I personally just like the look of it. The subject is at my complete mercy, with his hands pinned behind his back and his chest thrust outward so that his heart—his life force—is totally exposed.”

Schofield turned to face the other two prisoners and when he recognized them, his jaw dropped.

They were both suspended from a second forklift, one from each prong, also in the strappado position. Unlike Hartigan, however, their heads were unbowed, allowing Schofield to identify them easily.

Mother and Baba.