Scarecrow Returns

IN THE end, the capture of Zack and Emma had come about almost exactly as Calderon had planned.

After separating from Mother at the quarry-mine, Zack and Emma had searched desperately for a place to hide with the two spheres.

Upon crossing the river, they’d arrived back at the base’s runway, where they found a cluster of barracks structures: superlong halls that had once been living quarters for the substantial Soviet force stationed at Dragon Island.

Zack thought they’d be perfect: dusty and abandoned, and presumably filled with bunk beds, trunks and footlockers, plus locker rooms, toilets and shower rooms that would offer many places to hide.

Zack and Emma had come to the first barracks and cautiously peered inside it—

A long-legged woman in fishnet stockings, high heels and black lace lingerie walked by, casually smoking a cigarette.

Zack frowned. “What the hell—?”

Emma hushed him. “Look. There’s another one.”

Sure enough, a second, similarly dressed woman joined the first, also smoking a cigarette as they stood beneath a glowing wall-mounted heater. In addition to the sexy underwear, both women, Zack and Emma now saw, wore garish makeup; they started talking, in a drawling east European tongue.

Emma realized it first. “They’re prostitutes . . .”

Zack said, “Six weeks in the Arctic is a long tour, especially for an army of hooligans. They have needs. Their boss thought of everything. Come on, let’s check out the next barracks.”

Unfortunately, the second barracks building wasn’t any better: it, too, was clearly being used by the Army of Thieves. While currently empty, its long hall was filled with row upon row of slept-in bunk beds and half-open footlockers. They couldn’t hide there.

Zack and Emma hurried past the second barracks, came to one of the hangars adjoining the runway, and ducked inside it.

An enormous Antonov cargo plane filled the space. It was identical to the one that Schofield had driven into the river, another An-12.

Zack peered in through its open rear ramp: plenty of crates, some large objects covered in tarps and netting.

Emma said, “They have another plane?”

“With a lot of stuff in it to hide behind,” Zack said. “Inside, now!”

He guided Emma into the big plane’s hold and they huddled behind some crates piled up in a dark corner.

It was from here that they heard the torture over the base’s loudspeakers: first Ironbark’s, then Hartigan’s.

But it was Schofield’s electric shock treatment on the parrilla that betrayed their location.

Ever since he had spotted Zack’s Nike boot-prints in the mud earlier, Bad Willy had smelled blood.

Unlike Zack and Emma’s desperate stumbling flight, his movement had been slow and methodical: he and his men had been progressing steadily, patiently, searching for and ultimately finding a new Nike print in the snow or mud; until they stopped at one muddy print that had been left on the concrete doorstep of the hangar containing the second Antonov cargo plane.

Bad Willy and his men had stalked quietly through the dark hangar as Hartigan’s shrill screams had come blaring in over the loudspeakers.

Every so often, Bad Willy would command his men to silence and hold up a wand-shaped listening device and listen intently through its headphones.

When Schofield’s electric shock torture began, Bad Willy had been holding the wand pointed at the open rear hold of the Antonov and as Schofield had screamed through his wooden bit, Willy heard it in his headphones.

A woman’s soft gasp.

His men stormed the plane and found Zack and Emma huddled behind a tarp-covered mound with their Samsonite case.