Scarecrow Returns

THE DETONATION of the warhead containing the red-uranium sphere was devastating in its intensity. It sent out a blinding white-hot blast that expanded laterally in every direction.

Inside his Mir submersible, under the surface of the Arctic Ocean, Marius Calderon felt it. It shook his sub, even from this distance.

And then he frowned.

Deep underwater, he shouldn’t have felt the detonation. Water was an excellent buffer against concussion waves. But he had still felt it. The only way he would feel it underwater was if . . .

“No!” Calderon shouted in the solitude of his mini-sub. “No!”

For the warhead had most assuredly detonated, with the red-uranium sphere inside it. The only problem was, it had not detonated in the gas-infused sky.

As Calderon had just realized, it had detonated underwater.

It was the only thing Schofield could think to do.

Roll the warhead out of the cockpit into the hold—

00:20 . . . 00:19 . . . 00:18 . . .

Then pushing it off the back of the ramp—

00:11 . . . 00:10 . . . 00:09 . . .

The warhead tumbled end over end as it fell through the sky, its timer ticking all the way down—

00:08 . . . 00:07 . . . 00:06 . . .

Before it hit the ocean’s surface with a great splash and immediately went under, sinking fast—

00:05 . . . 00:04 . . . 00:03 . . .

Where it sank and sank into the blue haze—

00:02 . . . 00:01 . . . 00:00.

Beeeeeeep!

Boom.

The explosion of the warhead under the surface of the ocean looked like the standard undersea detonation of a thermonuclear device.

After the initial white-hot blast, a great circular cloud of superheated water—packed with billions of swirling micro-bubbles—materialized and expanded, shooting out laterally before it hit the surface, sending an absolutely gargantuan geyser of water spraying up into the sky, the greatest fountain in history.

Thankfully, the warhead had sunk deep enough before it blew. The heavy weight of ocean water above it had defused its potent catalytic power and so it did not ignite the sky.

Indeed, the only person it shook was Marius Calderon.

As he climbed back into the cockpit of the Antonov and saw the great circular explosion down on the ocean’s surface, Schofield breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Battered, bloody, tortured, almost overcome with exhaustion and having lost many brave people in the process, he and his team had beaten impossible odds and stopped the Army of Thieves from setting fire to the world.

It was only then that he saw the uplink dish, sitting on the cockpit’s floor in front of him with all its lights extinguished.

It had been switched off.

“Oh, shit . . .” he said. “The Russians.”

If the Russians had detected this and launched a nuke, Dragon Island and everyone on it had less than twenty minutes to live.

Schofield turned off the autopilot and swung the plane around, banking hard and fast, heading back toward Dragon Island.