Scarecrow

'Then vou're not going to kill me?'

'Captain, if I was going to kill you, you'd already have a bullet

in your brain. No. My job is to keep you alive.' 'Keep me alive?'

Knight said, 'Captain, understand. I am not doing this because I like you or because I think that you are in any way special. I am being paid to do this, and paid well. The bounty on your head is 18.6 million dollars. Rest assured, I am being paid considerably more than that to make sure that you don't get killed.'

'Okay, then,' Schofield said. 'So who's paying you to keep me alive?'

'I can't say.' 'Yes, you can.'

'I won't say.' Knight's eyes didn't waver. 'But your employer—'

'—is not a subject for discussion,' Knight said. Schofield chose another tack.

'All right, then, so why is this all happening? What do you know about this bounty hunt?'

Knight shrugged, looked away.

Rufus answered for him. Released from straight reportage, his tone was simple, honest. 'Bounty hunts happen for all kinds of reasons, Captain Schofield. Catch and kill a spy who goes AWOL with a secret in his head. Catch and retrieve a kidnapper who's been paid his ransom—mark my words, hell hath no fury like a rich guy who wants payback. Some of those rich assholes prefer to pay us two million dollars so they can catch some kidnapper who took them for one. It ain't often, though, that you get a list worth ten million dollars in total, let alone almost twenty million dollars per head.'' 'So what do you know about this hunt then?' Schofield asked. 'The ultimate sponsor is unknown,' Rufus said, 'as is the reason for staging it, but the assessor—a banker from AGM-Suisse named Delacroix—is experienced at this sort of thing. We've run into him before. And so long as the assessor is legitimate, most bounty hunters don't care about the reason for a hunt.' Rufus turned to Knight. Knight just cocked his head. 'Big hunt. Fifteen targets. All have

to be dead by 12 noon today, New York time. 18.6 meg per head. That's 280 million dollars in total. Whatever the reason for staging this hunt is, it's worth paying over a quarter of a billion dollars for.'

'You say that we all have to be dead by 12 noon, New York time?' Schofield said. This was the first he'd heard of the time limit placed on the hunt. He looked at his watch.

It was 2:05 p.m. here in Afghanistan. That made it 4:05 a.m. in New York. Eight hours till crunch time.

He fell silent, thinking.

Then abruptly he looked up.

'Mr Knight, now that you've found me, what are your instructions from here?'

Knight nodded slowly, impressed that Schofield had asked this question.

'My instructions are very clear on this point,' he said. 'From now on, I am to keep you alive.'

'But you haven't been told to keep me imprisoned, have you?'

'No . . .' Knight said. 'I have not. My instructions are to allow you complete freedom of action—to go wherever you please—but under my protection.'

And with that a piece of the puzzle fell into place in Schofield's mind.

Whoever was paying Knight to protect him not only wanted Schofield kept alive, that person also wanted Schofield to be active, to do whatever this bounty hunt was designed to stop him doing.

He turned to Knight. 'You said you knew where Gant is. How?'

'The MicroDot aerosol charge that Rufus dropped onto the turnaround area before the Demon's boys got there,' Knight said.

Schofield had heard about MicroDot technology. Apparently, it was the Next Big Thing in nanotechnology.

MicroDots were microscopic silicon chips, each about the size of a pinhead but with enormous computing power. While many believed that MicroDots would be the basis for a new series of liquid-based supercomputers—imagine a liquid ooze filled with supercomputing particles—at the moment they were mainly used

by prestige car manufacturers as tracking devices: you sprayed the bottom of your Ferrari with MircoDot-loaded paint, then the Dots, and your car, could be traced anywhere in the world, and no car thief, however persistent, could wash them all off.

The MicroDot charge that Rufus had detonated on the turnaround area had released an aerosol cloud of about a billion MicroDots over the area.

'The Demon, his men, his vehicles and your girl are all covered in MicroDots,' Knight said. He pulled a jerry-rigged Palm Pilot from his belt. It bristled with home-made attachments and antennas, and looked a little chunkier than a regular PDA, as if it were

waterproof.

On its screen was a map of the world and superimposed on that map, over Central Asia, was a set of moving red dots.

Demon Larkham's team.

'We can trace them to any point in the world on this,' Knight said.

Schofield started thinking, tried to order his thoughts, to weigh up his options so he could arrange a plan of action.

Then at last he said, 'The first thing we have to do is find out why all this is happening.'

He pulled out the bounty list, analysed it for the hundredth time. Mother and Book II read it over his shoulder. 'The Mossad,' Mother said softly, seeing one entry:

11. ROSENTHAL, Benjamin Y. ISR Mossad

'What about it?' Schofield said.

'That Zawahiri guy said something about the Israeli Mossad down in the mine, before he lost his head. He was crazy, shouting about how he'd survived Soviet experiments in some gulag, and then the US cruise-missile attacks in '98, and then about how the Mossad knew he was invincible, since they'd tried to kill him a

dozen times.'

'The Mossad . . .' Schofield mused.

He keyed his sat-comm. 'David Fairfax, you still there?'

'So long as there's coffee around, I'm still here,' came the reply.

'Mr Fairfax, look up Hassan Mohammad Zawahiri and Benjamin Y. Rosenthal. Any cross-matches?'

'just a second,' Fairfax's voice said. 'Hey, got something already. A match from some US-Israeli intelligence swap. Major Benjamin Yitzak Rosenthal is Hassan Zawahiri's "katsa", or case officer, the guy who monitors him. Rosenthal is based in Haifa, but it seems that only yesterday he was recalled to Mossad's London headquarters.'

'London?' Schofield said.

A plan was beginning to form in Schofield's mind.

And all of a sudden he started to feel alive.

He'd been on the back foot all morning, reacting—now he was getting proactive.

'Book, Mother,' he said, 'how would you like to pay Major Rosenthal a visit in London? See if he can shed some light on this situation.'

'Be happy to,' Mother said.

'Sure,' Book II said.

Aloysius Knight watched this exchange casually, uninterested.

'Oh, hey, Scarecrow,' Fairfax's voice said, T was going to mention this before but I didn't get a chance. You remember that US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command paper I mentioned earlier, the "NATO MNRR Study". Well, that thing is out of my reach from here. It was deprioritised two months ago and deleted from the USAMRMC's files. An archive copy exists in some warehouse in Arizona, but otherwise all other copies have been shredded or deleted.

'But I did find something on the two guys who wrote it, those two fellas on your list who worked for Medical Research Command: Nicholson and Oliphant. Nicholson retired a couple of years ago and is now living at some retirement village in Florida. But Oliphant quit USAMRMC only last year. He's now chief physician in the ER at St John's Hospital, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon.'

'Is that so?' Schofield said. 'Mister Fairfax, would you like to be a field officer for a day?'

'Anything to get out of this office, man. My boss is the biggest

asshole on the planet.'¹

'When you get a chance, then, why don't you go down to St John's and have a chat with Doctor Oliphant.'

'You got it.' Fairfax signed off.

'What about you?' Mother said to Schofield. 'You're not going to stay with this bounty hunter, are you?' She shot Knight a withering glare. Knight just raised his eyebrows.

'He says I can go wherever I like,' Schofield said. 'It's up to him

to protect me.'

'So where are you going?' Book II asked.

Schofield's eyes narrowed. 'I'm going to the source of this bounty hunt. I'm going to that castle in France.'

Book II said, 'What are you going to do? Knock on the front

door?'

'No,' Schofield said. 'I'm going to collect a bounty.'

'A bounty?' Mother said. 'I, er, don't mean to be devil's advocate, but don't you need a . . . head ... to collect the reward?'

'That's right,' Schofield said, looking at Knight's modified Palm Pilot, the mini-computer that depicted Demon Larkham's progress. 'And I know just where to get some. And at the same time, I'm going to get Gant back.'

10. POLANSKI, Damien G. _USA j

BERLIN, GERMANY

22 OCTOBER, 2300 HOURS

ca1 nJat ^fUCk_K^8,rls_u^fr°^mbehind' P^umP-g ®" * ,ackhammer and calhng out cowboy shouts. And he was an ass man, too. He loved young twenty-somethings with tight little bottoms.

She d discovered these facts from the prostitutes of Berlin's red hght district, whose services he engaged often

Damien Polanski's career had seen better days

An Eastern Bloc expert during the Cold War, he was now

stauoned m the ISS's Berlin field office, growing older and more

irrelevant every day. His daring conquests of the '80s-th TZ-

•on of Karmonov, the discovery of the Soviet 'Cobra' files-long

forgotten by an intelligence agency that didn't love you back

An old dog in a new world.

She caught his eye easily enough. It wasn't hard. She was stunning to look at-long slender legs, muscular shoulders small perfectly-formed breasts and those cool Eurasian eyes

I he Ice Queen, some called her.

She'd stood at the bar opposite his booth, dropped her purse

^^^^^^^^^^^^

She emerged from the bathroom wearing nothing at all, her hands hidden behind her back. Polanski's eyes widened with delight. He dived onto the bed, and turned—just as the short-bladed samurai sword that she gripped in her hands sliced clean through his neck.

7. NAZZAR, Yousef M. LEBN HAMAS

BEIRUT, LEBANON

23 OCTOBER, 2100 HOURS

Witnesses would say it was one of the most professional hits they had ever seen in Beirut—which was saying something.

They saw Yousef Nazzar, a senior HAMAS commander known to have been trained by the Soviets, enter the apartment building.

Not a moment later, two sedans skidded to a halt outside the lobby and eight commandos piled out of them, rushed into the building. One of them carried a white box with a red cross on its side.

One thing was common to all the witnesses' accounts: the guns the assassins used. They were either identified or described as VZ-61 Skorpion machine pistols.

And then suddenly the assassins were out and, with a squeal of

tyres, were gone.

Yousef Nazzar's body was found later, spreadeagled on the floor

of his apartment, the head missing.

8. NICHOLSON, Francis X. USA USAMRMC

CEDAR FALLS RETIREMENT VILLAGE

MIAMI, FLORIDA

24 OCTOBER, 0700 HOURS

The front-desk nurse couldn't have known he was a killer.

When she'd asked, 'Can I help you?' he had replied politely that he was from the hospital, come to collect the personal effects of a recently-transferred resident of Cedar Falls.

He was tall and thin, with deep black skin and a high forehead. More than one witness would describe him as 'African' in appearance. They didn't known that in the global bounty hunting community he was known by a very simple name: 'the Zulu'.

Dressed in a white labcoat, he strode calmly through the home, carrying a white organ-delivery box in his hand.

He found the room quickly, found the old man, Frank Nicholson, lying in his bed asleep.

Without missing a beat, the Zulu drew a machete from under his coat and . . .

The police found his car two hours later, abandoned in the long-term carpark at the airport.

By that time, however, the Zulu was sitting in the first-class section of United Airlines Flight 45 bound for Paris, the white organ-delivery box resting on the seat beside him.

Frank Nicholson was missed at the retirement village. He'd been a popular resident, friendly and outgoing.

The management had liked him too. Since he'd been a doctor in his career days, he'd saved more than one elderly resident who had collapsed on the golf course.

It was funny, though, unlike many others, he'd never really spoken about his glory days.

If asked he would say he'd been a scientist at the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick, 'just doing some medical tests for the armed forces' before he'd retired the previous year.

And then came that night when the assassin had come and cut off his head.

FORTERESSE DE VALOIS

BRITTANY, FRANCE

26 OCTOBER, 1150 HOURS LOCAL TIME

(0550 HOURS E.S.T USA)

He'd always loved anarchy.

Loved the idea of it, the concept of it: the complete and utter loss of control; society without order.

He particularly loved the way people—common people, average people, ordinary people—responded to it.

When soccer stadiums collapsed, they stampeded.

When earthquakes struck, they looted.

During anarchic warfare—Nanjing, My Lai, Stalingrad—they raped and mutilated their fellow human beings.

The teleconference with the other members of the Council wouldn't begin for another ten minutes, which gave Member No. 12 enough time to indulge his passion for anarchy.

His real name was Jonathan Killian.

Jonathan James Killian HI, to be precise, and at 37 he was the youngest member of the Council.

Born into wealth—his father had been American, his mother French—he had the supercilious bearing of a man who was accustomed to having everything he desired. He was also possessed of a cold level stare that could give the most combative negotiator pause. It was a powerful gift, one that was accentuated by an

unusual facial feature: Jonathan Killian had one blue eye and one brown.

He was worth $32 billion, and by virtue of a labyrinthine network of companies, was the ultimate owner of the Forteresse de Valois.

Killian had always disliked Member No. 5.

While wealthy beyond measure thanks to an inherited Texan oil empire, No. 5 was of low intellect and prone to tantrums. At 58, he was still essentially a spoilt brat. He had also been a continually stubborn opponent of Killian's ideas in Council meetings. He was very irritating.

Right now, however, Member No. 5 stood in a wide stone dungeon on the lowest level of the Forteresse de Valois, deep within the castle's stone mount, accompanied by his four personal assistants. The dungeon was called the Shark Pit.

Sixteen feet deep with sheer stone walls, it was perfectly circular; and wide too, about 50 yards across. It was also filled with an irregular array of elevated stone stages. One thing about it was clear: once a person was placed inside it, escape was impossible.

In the pit's centre, plunging vertically down into the earth, was a 10-foot-wide 'sink-hole' that led directly to the ocean.

Right now, the tide was coming in, so the water entering the Pit via the sink-hole was rising fast, spilling out into the wider pit, filling it, turning the irregular collection of elevated stages into a series of small stone islands—much to the horror of Member No. 5 and his assistants.

Adding to their fear, two dark shapes could be glimpsed swimming through the alleyways between the islands, just beneath the surface of the water—shapes featuring dorsal fins and bullet-shaped heads.

Two large tiger sharks.

In addition to all this, the Shark Pit came with two other features worth noting.

First, a viewing balcony situated on its southern side. Before the

Revolution, the French aristocracy were known to hold gladiatorial contests in their dungeons—usually pitting peasants against peasants, or in the more elaborate dungeons like the one at the Forteresse de Valois, peasants against animals.

The second noteworthy feature of the Shark Pit could be found on the largest of its elevated stone platforms, over by the northern wall. On this stage sat a truly terrifying device: a 12-foot-high guillotine.

Tall and brutal, the guillotine was an addition made by Jonathan Killian himself. At its base was a crude wooden block with slots carved into it—slots for a person's head and hands. A crank handle on the guillotine's side raised its steeply-angled blade. A simple release lever dropped it.

Killian had been inspired by the acts of Japanese soldiers during the sack of the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937.

During three horrific weeks, the Japanese had subjected the Chinese to unspeakable torture. Over 360,000 people were murdered by hand during that time. Horror stories emerged of Japanese soldiers conducting beheading contests; or worse, giving fathers a choice: rape their own daughters or watch them be raped; or telling sons to have sex with their own mothers or die.

Killian was intrigued. Usually, the Chinese men would take the honourable way out and accept death rather than perform such hideous acts.

But some did not.

And that was what had amused Killian. Just how far people would go in pursuit of self-preservation.

And so he'd had the guillotine inserted into the Shark Pit.

It was designed to give those who were placed in the pit a similar

choice.

Die a terrifying death at the mercy of the tiger sharks, or die quickly and painlessly by their own hand on the guillotine.

Sometimes, when he had a group of people in the pit (as he did today), Killian would offer them Faustian bargains: 'Kill your boss on the guillotine, and I will release the rest of you'; 'Kill that hysterical screaming woman, and I will release the rest of you.'

Of course, he never released anyone. But the prisoners never knew that, and on many occasions they themselves died with blood on their hands.

The five people in the pit scratched desperately at the walls, the incoming water rising rapidly around them.

One of No. 5's female assistants made it a few feet up the wall— making for a tiny stone handhold there—but she was quickly pulled down by a bigger man who saw the handhold as his chance at life.

Killian watched them from the southern viewing balcony, utterly fascinated.

One of these people is worth $22 billion, he thought. The others earn about $65,000 a year in salaries. Yet now they are all truly equal.

Anarchy, he thought. The great equaliser.

Soon the water level rose five feet above the floor—chest height—and the two tiger sharks now roamed the pit more freely in a rush. At first the people cowered on the stone islands, but soon those islands also went sufficiently under the surface.

Five people. Two sharks.

It wasn't pretty.

The sharks rushed the hapless people—ramming them into the water, taking them under, ripping them open. Blood stained the churning waves.

After a male assistant went under in a froth of spraying blood, No. 5's two female assistants killed themselves on the guillotine.

So, too, No. 5 himself.

In the end, rather than face the sharks, he preferred to cut off his own head.

Then abruptly it was over and the rising water enveloped the guillotine stage, washing it clean of evidence, and the sharks gorged themselves on the headless corpses too, and Jonathan Killian III turned on his heel and headed up to his office for the noon teleconference.

Faces on television screens, arrayed around the walls.

The faces of the other members of the Council, tuning in from around the world. Killian took his seat.

Five years previously, he had inherited his father's vast shipping and defence-contracting empire—a maze of companies known as the Axon Corporation. Among other things, Axon Corp constructed destroyers and long-range missiles for the US Government. In each of the first three years after his father's death, Jonathan Killian had increased Axon's annual profits fivefold.

His formal invitation to join the Council had come soon after. 'Member No. 12,' the Chairman said, addressing Killian. 'Where is Member No. 5? He is staying with you, is he not?'

Killian smiled. 'He pulled a muscle in the swimming pool. My personal physician is looking at him now.' 'Is everything in place?'

'Yes,' Killian said. 'The Kormoran ships are in position all around the world, fully armed. DGSE delivered the corpses to America last week and my facility in Norfolk has been liberally stained with their blood—ready for the US inspectors. All systems are in place, merely awaiting the go signal.' Killian paused. Took the plunge.

'Of course, Mr Chairman,' he added, 'as I've said before, it's not too late to initiate the extra step—'

'Member No. 12,' the Chair said sharply, 'the course of action has been decided upon and we will not deviate from it. I'm sorry, but if you raise this "extra step" matter again, penalties will be imposed.' Killian bowed his head. 'As you wish, Mr Chairman.' A Council penalty was something to be avoided. Joseph Kennedy had lost two of his famous sons for disobeying a Council directive to cease doing business with Japan in the '50s. Charles Lindbergh's infant son was kidnapped and killed, while Lindbergh himself had been forced to endure a smear campaign suggesting he admired Adolf Hitler—all because he had defied a Council edict to keep doing business with the Nazis in the 1930s.

More recently, there was the impertinent Enron board. And everyone knew what had happened to Enron.

As the teleconference went on, Jonathan Killian remained silent.

On this issue, he felt he knew better than the Council.

The Zimbabwe Experiment—his idea—had more than proved his point. After decades of economic repression at the hands of Europeans, poverty-stricken African majorities no longer cared for the white man's property rights.

And the Hartford Report on global population growth—and Western population decline—had only further bolstered his argument.

But now was not the time to argue.

The formal business of the teleconference concluded, and several of the Council members stayed online, chatting among themselves.

Killian just watched them.

One member was saying, 'Just bought the drilling rights for a flat billion. I said take it or leave it. These stupid African governments just don't have a choice . . .'

The Chairman himself was laughing: '. . . I ran into that Mattencourt woman at Spencer's the other night. She certainly is an aggressive little filly. She asked again if I would consider her for a seat on the Council. So I said, "What are you worth?" She said, "26 billion." "And your company?" "170 billion." So I say, "Well, that's certainly enough. What do you say, you give me a blow job in the men's room right now and you're in." She stormed off!'

Dinosaurs, Killian thought. Old men. Old ideas. You'd expect better from the richest businessmen in the world.

He pressed a button, cutting the signal, and all of the televisions on the walls around him shrank to black.

AIRSPACE ABOVE TURKEY

26 OCTOBER, 1400 HOURS LOCAL TIME

(0600 HOURS E.S.T USA)

The MicroDots that had attached themselves to Demon Larkham's IG-88 team told a peculiar tale.

After leaving the Karpalov coalmine, Larkham's team had flown to a British-controlled airfield in Kunduz—a fact which had immediately rung alarm bells in Schofield's head.

Because it meant that Larkham was working with the tacit approval of the British government on this matter.

Not a good sign, Schofield thought, as he ripped through the sky in the back of Aloysius Knight's Black Raven.

So the British knew what was going on . . .

At the airfield in Kunduz, the IG-88 men had divided into two sub-teams, one getting on board an aircraft and heading in the direction of London, the other boarding a second plane and heading for the northwestern coast of France.

The aircraft flying toward London—a sleek Gulfstream IV executive jet—was pulling rapidly away from the second one, a lumbering Royal Air Force C-130J Hercules cargo plane.

Right now, Knight's Sukhoi was paralleling Larkham's planes, flying just beyond the horizon, its stealth features on full power.

'Common tactic for the Demon,' Knight said. 'Dividing his men into a delivery team and a strike team. The Demon takes the strike team to liquidate the next target while his delivery team ferries the heads to the verification venue.'

'Looks like the strike team is going to London,' Schofield said. 'They're going after Rosenthal.'

'Likely,' Knight said. 'What do you want to do?'

Schofield could think of nothing else but Gant, sitting in the belly of the Hercules.

'I want that plane,' he said.

Knight punched some keys on his computer console.

'All right, I'm accessing their flight data computer. That Hercules is scheduled for a mid-air refuelling over western Turkey in ninety minutes.'

'Where's the tanker plane taking off from?' Schofield asked.

'A VC-10 aerial tanker is scheduled for lift-off from the Brits' Akrotiri air force base on Cyprus in exactly forty-five minutes.'

'Okay,' Schofield said. 'Book and Mother, Rufus here will take you to London. Find Benjamin Rosenthal before Larkham's strike team does.'

'What about you?' Mother asked.

'Captain Knight and I are getting off in Cyprus.'

Forty-five minutes later, a British Vickers VC-10 air-to-air refuelling tanker lifted off from its island runway on Cyprus.

Unbeknownst to the plane's four-man crew, it contained two stowaways in its rear cargo bay—Shane Schofield and Aloysius Knight—whom Rufus had dropped off, under the curtain of active stealth, in the shallows three miles away.

For their part, Rufus, Mother and Book II had powered off immediately in the Black Raven, cutting a beeline for London.

Soon the VC-10 was zooming through Turkish airspace, pulling alongside the RAF Hercules coming from Afghanistan.

The tanker moved in front of the Hercules, rose a little above it. Then it extended a long swooping fuel hose—or 'boom'—from its rear-end. The boom was about 70 metres long and at its tip was a

circular steel 'drogue¹, which would ultimately attach itself to the receiving aircraft.

Controlled by a lone operator, or 'boomer', lying on his stomach in a glassed-in compartment at the rear of the tanker plane, the boom angled in toward the receiving probe of the Hercules.

The Hercules' receiving probe—essentially, it was just a horizontal pipe—was located just above the cargo plane's cockpit windows.

The aerial ballet went perfectly.

The tanker's boom operator extended the boom, manoeuvred it into place, just as below and behind it the Hercules flew forward and—kerchunk—the Hercules' receiving probe locked into the drogue at the end of the boom and fuel started pumping between the two moving planes.

While this was happening, Knight started loading his H&K pistol with some odd-looking 9mm rounds. Each bullet had an orange band painted around it.

'Bull stoppers,' he said to Schofield. 'Every Delta man's best friend. Gas-expanding nine-millimetre rounds. Better than hollow points. They enter the target and then blow big.'

'How big?'

'Big enough to cut a man in half. Want some?'

'No thanks.'

'Here, then,' Knight placed some of the orange bullets in a pocket on Schofield's combat webbing. 'For when you reconsider.'

Schofield nodded at Knight's utility vest, at the peculiar array of devices hanging from it—the Pony Bottle, the mini blowtorch, the mountaineering pitons. There was even a very small pouch-like rollbag which Schofield recognised.

is that a body bag}' he asked.

'Yeah. A Markov Type-Ill,' Knight said. 'Gotta hand it to the Soviets. Nobody ever built a better one.'

Schofield nodded. The Markov Type-Ill was a chemical body bag. With its double-strength ziplock and poly-coated nylon walls, it could safely hold a body infected with the worst kind of

contamination: plague, chem weapons, even superheated radioactive waste. The Russians had used a lot of them at Chernobyl.

It was the pitons, however, that intrigued Schofield the most. He could understand a bounty hunter carrying a portable body bag with him, but pitons?

Pitons are small springloaded scissor-like devices that mountain climbers jam into tiny crevices. The piton springs open with such force—pinioning itself against the walls of a crevice—that climbers can attach ropes to it and hold up their bodyweight. Schofield wondered what a bounty hunter might use them for.

'Question,' he said. 'What do you use pitons for?'

Knight shrugged casually. 'Climb over walls. Up the sides of buildings.'

'Anything else?' Schofield asked. Like torture, perhaps.

Knight held Schofield's gaze. 'They do have . . . other uses.'

When the refuelling was almost complete, Schofield and Knight sprang.

'You take the boomer,' Knight said, drawing a second 9mm pistol. 'I'll take the cockpit crew.'

'Right,' Schofield said, before adding quickly: 'Knight. You can do whatever you want on the Hercules, but how about using non-lethal force here.'

'What? Why?'

'This crew didn't do anything.'

Knight scowled. 'Oh, all right. . .'

'Thanks.'

And they moved.

With its fifteen wraparound cockpit windows, the C-130 cargo plane provided its pilots with exceptional visibility, and right now the two pilots of the British Hercules could see the bird-like rear-end of the VC-10 high above them, the long swooping fuel hose

extending out from it like a tail and attaching itself to the receiving probe directly above their cockpit.

They'd done this sort of mid-air refuelling a hundred times before. Once the two planes were connected, the pilots had switched over to automatic pilot and become more concerned with observing the fuel pumping stats than with watching the amazing view outside.

Which was probably why they didn't notice when—twenty-two minutes into the refuelling—a lone black-clad figure came whizzing down the length of the fuel hose like a death-defying stuntman and their cockpit windows exploded under his withering assault of gunfire.

The sight was truly spectacular.

Two gigantic planes flying in tandem at 20,000 feet, connected tail-to-nose by the long swooping fuel hose . . .

. . . with a tiny man-shaped figure sliding down the hose as if it were a zipline, hanging onto a makeshift flying-fox one-handed, an H&K pistol held in his free hand, firing at the cockpit of the Hercules plane!

The two pilots of the Hercules went down in a hail of smashing glass.

Wind rushed into the cockpit. But the plane, under automatic pilot, remained steady.

For his part, Aloysius Knight slid down the fuel hose at incredible speed, hanging onto a seatbelt that he had lashed over the hose—his face covered in a high-altitude breathing mask, an ultra-compact MC-4/7 attack parachute strapped to his back.

Since the Hercules' receiving probe was situated directly above its cockpit, Knight's slide ended with him blasting right through the shattered glass windows of the Hercules and landing inside its wind-assaulted cockpit.

He keyed his radio mike. 'All right, Scarecrow! Come on down!'

A few seconds later, a second figure—also wearing a breathing mask and a small attack parachute—swung down from the tanker plane, shooting down the length of the fuel hose before disappearing inside the shattered windows of the Hercules.

In the cargo hold of the Hercules, everyone turned—eight black-clad commandos, two men in suits, and two prisoners—as a terrible crash rang out from the cockpit, followed by the roar of inrushing air.

The eight commandos were members of the IG-88 delivery team. The two men in suits had no names that anyone knew but they did possess MI-6 identity badges: British Intelligence.

And the two prisoners were Lieutenant Elizabeth 'Fox' Gant and General Ronson H. Weitzman, both from the United States Marine Corps, both captured by the Demon's forces in Afghanistan.

Just before the mid-air attack had commenced, Gant had regained consciousness—to find herself seated in the wide cargo hold of the Hercules, her hands flex-cuffed behind her back.

A few feet away from her, Ronson Weitzman—one of the most senior officers in the entire US Marine Corps—lay spreadeagled on his back, on the bonnet of a Humvee parked in the cargo bay, tied down, his arms stretched wide as if he had been crucified horizontally, his wrists attached by two separate pairs of handcuffs to both of the Humvee's side mirrors.

The right sleeve of Weitzman's uniform had been torn off and a rubber tourniquet was tied tightly around his exposed arm.

Flanking the General were the two MI-6 men. Gant had awoken just as the shorter one had been removing a hypodermic needle from Weitzman's arm.

'Give it a couple of minutes,' the short one had said.

The General had raised his head, his eyes glazed.

'Hello, General Weitzman,' the taller intelligence officer smiled. 'The drug you are feeling right now is known as EA-617. I'm sure a man of your rank has heard of it. It's a neural disinhibitor—a drug that retards the release of the neurotransmitter "GABA" in your brain—a drug that will make answering our questions truthfully just that little bit easier.'

'Wha—?' Weitzman looked at his arm. '. . . 617? No . . .'

Watching the scene from a discreet distance were the members of the IG-88 bounty hunting team—led by the tall and strikingly

handsome soldier Gant had seen in the caves in Afghanistan. She had heard the other IG-88 men calling him 'Cowboy'.

'All right, General,' the tall MI-6 man said. 'The Universal Disarm Code. What is it?'

Weitzman frowned, squinting hard, as if his brain was trying to resist the truth drug.

'I... I don't know of any such code,' he said unconvincingly.

'Yes you do, General. The United States Universal Disarm Code. The code that overrides any and every security system in the US armed services. You oversaw its entry into a secret US military project called the "Kormoran Project". We know about Kormoran, General. But we don't know the code, and the code is what we want. What is it?'

Gant was completely shocked.

She'd heard rumours about the Universal Disarm Code. It was the stuff of legend: a numerical code that overrode every US military security system.

Weitzman blinked, fighting the drug. 'It. . . it doesn't. . . exist...'

'No, General,' the tall man said. 'It does exist, and you are one of five people in the US military establishment who know it. Maybe I will have to increase the dosage here.'

The tall man pulled out another syringe, inserted it into Weitzman's exposed arm.

Weitzman groaned, ^lNo . . .'

The EA-617 serum went into his arm.

And that was when the cockpit windows had exploded under Knight's hailstorm of gunfire.

Schofield dropped into the cockpit of the Hercules, landed next to

Knight.

'Now can I use lethal force?' Knight shouted.

'Be my guest!'

Knight pointed to a TV monitor on the cockpit dashboard—it showed a high-angle view of the Hercules' rear cargo hold.

Schofield saw about a dozen large wooden crates near the cockpit steps, one Humvee with Weitzman crucified on the bonnet, eight bad guys in black combat uniforms, two bad guys in suits and on the floor, up against the wall of the cargo hold, on the left-hand side of the Humvee, her hands cuffed behind her back . . .

. . . Libby Gant.

'Too many to take out with guns,' Schofield said.

'I know,' Knight said. 'So we take guns out of the equation.'

He pulled two small grenades from his combat webbing—small hand-held charges painted pale yellow.

'What are—?' Schofield asked.

'British AC-2 charges. Adhesive-chaff grenades.'

'Anti-firearm charges,' Schofield said, nodding. 'Nice.'

The British SAS, experts in counter-terrorist ops, had developed the AC-2 for operations against armed hostage takers. They were basically standard flash-bang grenades, but with one very special extra feature.

'You ready? Just remember, you get one shot before your gun jams,' Knight said. 'Okay, let's rock this joint.'

At which point, he cracked open the cockpit door and hurled his two AC-2 charges into the cargo hold beyond it.

• • •

The two pale yellow grenades flew into the hold, skipping across the tops of the wooden cargo crates before landing on the floor beside the Humvee and—

—flash-bang!

The standard explosion came first: blinding white flashes of light followed by ear-crashing bangs, designed to deafen and disorient.

And then came the AC-2 grenades' extra feature.

As they exploded, the two grenades sent brilliant starbursts of tiny white-grey particles shooting out in every direction, completely filling the enclosed space of the cargo bay.

The particles looked like confetti, and after they dispersed, they floated in the air, infinitesimally small, forming a white-grey veil over the scene, making it look like a snowglobe that had just been shaken.

Only this wasn't confetti.

It was a special form of adhesive chaff—a sticky stringy compound that stuck to everything.

The cockpit door burst open, and Knight and Schofield charged into the cargo hold.

The nearest IG-88 commando reached for his rifle, but received an arrow-bolt in his forehead—care of the mini-crossbow attached to Knight's right forearm guard.

A second-nearest man also spun quickly, and—shlip!—received an arrow from Knight's left-arm crossbow square in the eye.

It was the third IG-88 commando who actually managed to pull the trigger on his Colt Commando assault rifle.

The machine-gun fired—once. One bullet only. Then it jammed.

It had been 'chaffed'. The sticky adhesive chaff of Knight's grenades had got into its barrel, its receiver, all its moving parts, rendering it useless.

Schofield nailed the man with the butt of his Maghook.

But the other IG-88 men learned quickly, and within seconds, two Warlock hunting knives slammed into the wooden cargo crates beside them.

Knight responded by pulling one of the most evil-looking weapons Schofield had ever seen from his utility vest: a small four-bladed ninja throwing star, or shuriken. It was about as big as Schofield's hand: four viciously-curving blades that extended out from a central hub.

Knight threw the shuriken expertly, side-handed, and it sliced laterally through the air, whistling, before—shnick! shnick!—it cut the throats of two IG-88 commandos standing side-by-side.

Five down, Schofield thought, three to go, plus the two guys in suits . . .

And then suddenly a hand grabbed him— —a stunningly strong grip—

—and Schofield was hurled back toward the cockpit doorway. He hit the floor hard, and looked up to see an enormous IG-88 trooper stalking toward him. The IG-88 man was huge: at least six feet nine, black-skinned, with bulging biceps and a face that bristled with unadulterated fury.

'Wot the fuck d'you fink you're doin'?' the giant black man said. But Schofield was already moving again—he quickly jumped to his feet and unleashed a thunderous blow with his Maghook's butt at the black trooper's jaw. The blow hit home. And the big man didn't even flinch. 'Uh-oh,' Schofield said.

The giant black trooper punched Schofield, sending him flying back into the wind-blasted cockpit like a rag doll. Schofield slammed into the dashboard.

Then the big black trooper picked him up easily and said, 'You came in froo that window. You go out froo that window.'

And without so much as a blink, the gigantic trooper hurled Shane Schofield out through the broken cockpit windows of the Hercules and into the clear open sky.

In the particle-filled cargo hold, Aloysius Knight—charging forward, hurling throwing stars—spun around to check on Schofield . . .

. . . just in time to see him get thrown out through the cockpit windows.

'Holy shit,' Knight breathed. Like himself, Schofield was wearing a parachute, so he'd be okay, but his sudden disappearance didn't help the mathematics of this fight at all.

Knight keyed his radio mike. 'Schofield! You okay?'

A wind-blasted voice replied: 'I'm not gone yetV

Seen from the outside, the Hercules was still cruising steadily at 20,000 feet, still behind and below the VC-10 tanker plane . . . only now it was possessed of a tiny figure hanging off its nose cone.

Schofield clung to the bow of the speeding Hercules, his body assaulted by the speeding wind, 20,000 feet above the world but thanks to his Maghook, now magnetically affixed to the nose of the cargo plane.

His big black attacker—the man's IG-88 nickname was, appropriately, 'Rocko'—stood peering out the cockpit windows above him.

Then Rocko ducked inside and suddenly reappeared with a Colt .45 pistol which had been kept in the cockpit and as such had been unaffected by Knight's chaff grenades.

'Whoa, shit!' Schofield yelled as the first shot went flying over his head.

He'd been hoping that Rocko would just assume he'd fallen to

his death and then head back inside the plane, giving Schofield a chance to climb back in through the cockpit windows.

But not now . . .

And so Schofield did the only thing he could do.

He undipped Gant's Maghook from his belt, and now moving downward with two Maghooks, affixed it to the hull of the Hercules below him—clunk!—and swung down below the nose-cone of the massive plane, out of the line of Rocko's fire, so that he was now hanging from the underbelly of the cargo plane, 20,000 feet above the earth.

He spoke into his voice-activated throat-mike.

'Knight! I'm still in the game! I just need you to open an external door for me!'

Inside the cargo bay, Knight ducked a flying knife and threw one of his shurikens into the chest of one of the suit-wearing bad guys.

He heard Schofield's call, saw the big red control button that opened the Hercules' cargo ramp, hurled a shuriken at it.

Thwack!

The multi-bladed throwing knife hit the button, pinned it to its console and with a low vmmtnmm, the rear cargo ramp of the Hercules began to open.

'All right, Captain! The cargo ramp is open!' Knight's voice said in Schofield's earpiece.

Schofield moved as quickly as he could along the underbelly of the Hercules, manoeuvring the two Maghooks above him, alternately magnetising and demagnetising them, and then swinging from them like a kid on a jungle gym, making his way along the 60-foot length of the cargo plane's belly, toward its now-open rear ramp.

• * *

Wind blasted into the cargo bay, rushing in through the plane's open rear loading ramp, sending the chaff particles suspended in the air whizzing into swirls. An indoor blizzard.

Inside the cargo hold, Knight slid to Gant's side.

'I'm here to help you,' he said quickly, bringing his knife toward her flex-cuffs—

—just as two great black hands grabbed him and yanked him backwards.

Rocko.

The big IG-88 trooper banged Knight against the side of the Humvee. Knight's knife flew from his grip.

The IG-88 leader, Cowboy, stepped out from his cover position on the right side of the Humvee.

'His glasses!' he called.

Rocko let fly with a savage punch that cracked the bridge of Knight's yellow-tinted glasses, and also broke his nose. The cracked glasses fell from his face, exposing his eyes to the light.

'Ahh!' Knight squeezed his eyes shut.

Another crunching blow from Rocko knocked the wind out of him.

'Put him in front of the car,' Cowboy said, unclasping the Humvee's flight restraints before jumping behind the wheel. 'Knees in front of the tyres.'

Rocko did as he was told—lay the limp Knight in the path of the Humvee's tyres and stepped out of the way.

Cowboy fired up the engine, thrust the Humvee into gear, jammed down on the gas pedal.

The Humvee rushed forward, heading straight for Aloysius Knight's kneecaps.

And Cowboy felt a small satisfying bump as the big jeep ran over the bounty hunter and slammed into the side of a cargo crate.

'Damn it! Fuck!' Rocko yelled.

'What?' Cowboy called.

'The other one is back!'

None of the British men had seen Schofield re-enter the Hercules.

Not Cowboy or Rocko or the only other remaining bad guy in the hold—the surviving suited man from British Intelligence.

Hadn't seen him climb up into the hold behind the Humvee, via the rear cargo ramp, clutching onto his Maghooks.

Nor had they seen him slink down the right side of the Humvee and race across in front of it, tackling Aloysius Knight out of the way . . . while at the same time dragging the other remaining IG-88 commando to the ground in front of the speeding vehicle, causing it to bump over him instead.

Schofield and Knight fell against the side wall of the hold, right next to Gant.

Knight clutched his eyes. Schofield didn't even stop for breath.

He sliced open Gant's flex-cuffs, gave her the knife. 'Hey there, babe. Missed you in Afghanistan. Quickly, help me free the General.'

General Weitzman was still spreadeagled on the bonnet of the Humvee, his wrists handcuffed to the car's mirrors.

Gant scooped up a set of keys from the run-over IG-88 man, found a handcuff key.

In the meantime, Schofield rose, just as beside him Cowboy emerged from the driver's door of the Humvee—while at the forward end of the vehicle, Schofield saw the British Intelligence guy remove a knife embedded in a wooden crate.

A bad guy sandwich.

Schofield extended his arms in both directions, raising his two Maghooks simultaneously. In the chaff-filled environment of the cargo hold, he'd only get one shot from each.

He fired.

The first shot didn't hit Cowboy—but it wasn't meant to. Rather, it hit the car door that Cowboy had been opening. From such close range, the Maghook thundered into the armoured door, banging it shut, knocking Cowboy back into the car.

The suit-wearing Intelligence man was hit square in the chest by the other Maghook. He just folded in half, his ribs cracked, and went crashing back into the crate behind him.

For her part, Gant was busy unlocking General Weitzman's left hand. The cuff around his wrist came free.

'Okay,' she said. 'Other wrist. Other side . . .'

But on the other side of the Humvee stood . . .

Rocko.

Just standing there. Towering above Weitzman's prone body.

Schofield appeared at Gant's side, locked eyes with Rocko.

'Take care of the General,' he said, not taking his eyes off the gigantic commando. 'And get ready for my signal.'

'What signal?'

But Schofield didn't answer her. He just crouched down and withdrew two of Knight's evil-looking shurikens from a dead body. Across the Humvee from him, Rocko did the same.

Then the two of them strode around to the area of open space behind the Humvee, a small space which adjoined the rear loading ramp and looked out over the wide blue sky beyond it.

They stood opposite each other for a moment—the tall and bulky Rocko, and the smaller, more evenly proportioned Schofield—each holding two four-pointed throwing blades in his hands.

And they engaged.

Flashes of silver, the clang of clashing knives.

Rocko lunged, Schofield fended. Rocko lashed, Schofield parried.

As Schofield and Rocko fought at the aft end of the cargo hold, Gant unclasped Weitzman's right handcuff, freeing the General but leaving the open cuff still attached to the side mirror. She slid Weitzman off the Humvee, rolled him to the floor.

All while the General mumbled incoherently: 'Oh, God, the code . . . the universal code ... all right, all right, it does exist, but only a few people know it. . . It's based on a mathematical principle . . . and yes, I inserted it into Kormoran, but there was . . . there was another project involved . . . Chameleon . . .'

Schofield and Rocko danced around the back of the cargo hold, their shurikens flashing and clanging.

They came down the right-hand side of the Humvee—towards Gant and Weitzman—Schofield leading the way, moving backwards, fending off Rocko's slashes.

'Gant!' Schofield called. 'You ready for the signal!'

'Sure! What is it!'

'This!'

And then, brilliantly, Schofield caught Rocko's next swing, and with lightning speed, he shifted his weight and slammed Rocko's knife-hand down into the bonnet of the Humvee, right next to the open handcuff that only moments before had bound Weitzman.

'Now!'

Gant responded instantly, dived up onto the bonnet of the Humvee and clasped the cuff around Rocko's knife-wrist. Rocko's eyes boggled.

He was now shackled to the side mirror of the Humvee! Schofield dived away from him, over toward General Weitzman

on the floor.

'Sir! Are you okay?' he asked quickly, leaning close.

But the General was still babbling. 'Oh, no ... it wasn't just Kormoran. It was Chameleon, too ... oh God, Kormoran and Chameleon together. Boats and missiles. All disguised. Christ. . . But the Universal Disarm Code, it changes every week. At the moment, it's . . . the sixth ... oh my God, the sixth m . . . m . . . mercen . . . mercen—'

A sudden whoosh. The flash of steel. And abruptly the General's head jolted slightly, a line of red appearing across his neck . . .

. . . and then, right in front of Schofield's eyes, General Ronson H. Weitzman's head tipped off his shoulders.

The head bounced on the floor, rolled to a stop at Schofield's feet. After beheading, the human head actually lives for up to 30 seconds. As such, Weitzman's disembodied face stared gruesomely up at Schofield from the floor, eyelids fluttering for a few moments before, mercifully, the facial muscles at last relaxed and the head went still.

Schofield snapped to look up, and saw Demon Larkham's handsome young deputy, Cowboy, standing on the other side of the Humvee, brandishing a long-bladed machete, fresh blood dripping from its blade.

His eyes were wide with bloodthirsty madness, and he made to hurl the machete at Schofield—

—just as a hand gripped his wrist from behind and slammed it down on the bonnet of the Humvee, causing the machete to spring out of Cowboy's grasp, at the same time as this unseen assailant quickly snapped the Humvee's other handcuff around Cowboy's now-exposed wrist.

Cowboy spun: to see Aloysius Knight standing behind him, now wearing a new pair of amber-lensed glasses.

'Not bad, Cowboy. You remembered my Achilles heel.'

Then Knight grabbed the machete and smiled at the IG-88 assassin. 'And I remember yours. Your inability to fly.'

Knight then walked to the driver's door of the Humvee, leaned inside and shifted the car into reverse. He nodded to Schofield and Gant: 'Stand clear.'

Cowboy and Rocko—cuffed to opposite sides of the Humvee— stared at Knight in horror.

'Goodbye, boys.'

And with that, Knight stabbed the Humvee's gas pedal to the floor with the machete.

The Humvee shot off the mark, racing backwards, toward the open rear cargo ramp.

It hit the edge doing twenty, before it tipped off it, rear-end first, and to Cowboy and Rocko's absolute terror, dropped out of sight and fell 20,000 feet straight down.

After the Humvee had disappeared out the back door of the Hercules, Schofield rushed over to Gant and held her tightly in his arms.

Gant returned his grip, her eyes closed. Others might have cried at such a reunion, but not Gant. She felt the emotion of the moment, but she was not one to shed tears.

'What the hell is going on?' she asked when they separated.

'Bounty hunters,' Schofield said. 'My name is on a list of people who have to be exterminated by noon today, New York time. They grabbed you to get to me.'

He told Gant about his experience in Siberia and then in Afghanistan, about the bounty hunters he had met—Executive Solutions, the Hungarian, the Spetsnaz Skorpions, and of course, Demon Larkham's IG-88. He also showed her the bounty list.

'What about him?' Gant nodded at Knight as he disappeared inside the cockpit to disengage their plane from the tanker. 'Who is he?'

'He,' Schofield said, 'is my guardian angel.'

There came a pained groan from over by the wooden crates.

Schofield and Gant spun quickly . . .

. . . and saw one of the suit-wearing British agents lying on the floor, clutching his broken ribs. It was the man Schofield had hit in the chest with his Maghook.

They went over to him.

The suited man was wheezing desperately, coughing blood.

Schofield bent down, examined him. 'His ribs are smashed. Punctured lungs. Who is he?'

Gant said, 'I only caught part of it. He and the other suit were interrogating the General with some disinhibiting drug, asking him about the American Universal Disarm Code. They said Weitzman oversaw the code's incorporation into something called the Kormoran Project.'

'Is that so?' Schofield said. 'A disinhibiting drug.' He looked around the hold, saw a medical kit on the floor. It had spilled out some syringes, needles and serum bottles. He grabbed one of the serum bottles, checked its label.

'Then let's see how he handles a dose of his own medicine.'

Aloysius Knight returned from the cockpit to find the suit-wearing British agent seated up against the wall of the cargo hold, his sleeve rolled up, and with 200 mg of EA-617 coursing through his veins.

Knight touched Schofield on the shoulder.

'I've disengaged us from the tanker plane,' he said. 'We're currently on autopilot, staying on the course they already set: heading for a private airstrip in Brittany, on the French Atlantic coast. And Rufus just called. He's going to drop your people at an abandoned airfield about forty miles outside of London.'

'Good,' Schofield said, thinking of Book II and Mother heading for the Mossad's headquarters in London.

Then he turned his attention to the captured British agent.

After a few vain efforts to resist the disinhibiting drug, it soon emerged that the man's name was Charles Beaton and he was a member of MI-6, British Intelligence.

'This bounty hunt. What do you know about it?' Schofield

asked.

'Nearly twenty million per head. Fifteen heads. And they want you all out of the picture by 12 noon today, New York time.'

'Who are they} Who's paying for all this?'

Beaton snorted derisively. 'They go by many names. The

Bilderberg Group. The Brussels Group. The Star Council. The Majestic-12. M-12. They are an elite group of private industrialists who rule this planet. Twelve of them. The richest men in the world, men who own governments, men who bring down entire economies, men who do whatever they want. . .'

Schofield leaned back, his eyes widening.

^lO-kay . . .' Knight said drily.

'Give me names,' Schofield said.

'I don't know their names,' Beaton said. 'That's not my area. My area is the American military. All I know is that Majestic-12 exists and that it's bankrolling this bounty hunt.'

'All right, then. Do you know what they hope to achieve by staging this hunt?'

'No,' Beaton said. 'My job was to get the Universal Disarm Code from Weitzman and then give him to the bounty hunter, Larkham. To take advantage of this bounty hunt. I don't know about the hunt itself or Majestic-12's reasons for staging it.'

'So who at MI-6 does know?'

'Alec Christie. He's our man on the inside. He knows everything about Majestic-12 and presumably, this bounty hunt. But the problem is MI-6 doesn't know where Christie is anymore. He disappeared two days ago.'

Christie.

Schofield remembered the name from the list:

2. CHRISTIE, Alec P. UK MI-6

'But this Christie guy must have blown his cover,' he said, 'because Majestic-12 put him on the list as well.'

He tried a new angle. 'What are these Kormoran and Chameleon Projects that you were interrogating Weitzman about?'

Beaton winced, still trying to resist the drug. 'Kormoran is a US Navy project. Deep black. In World War II, the German Navy disguised some of their strike vessels as commercial freighters. One of these was called the Kormoran. We believe that the US Navy is doing the same thing but on a modern scale: building warships

capable of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles, only these warships don't look like warships. They're disguised as supertankers and container ships.'

'Whoa,' Gant whispered.

'Okay. That's Kormoran,' Schofield said. 'What about the Chameleon Project?'

'I don't know about Chameleon.'

'You sure?'

Beaton groaned. 'We know it's linked to Kormoran, and we know it's big—it has the highest US security classification. But at this stage, we don't know exactly what Chameleon entails.'

Schofield frowned, thinking.

This was like building a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, until slowly a picture emerged. He had some pieces, but not the whole picture. Yet.

He said, 'So who does know, Mr Beaton? Where has MI-6 been getting all this top secret US information from?'

'The Mossad,' Beaton breathed. 'They have a field office in London at Canary Wharf. We managed to bug it for a few weeks last month. Trust me, the Mossad knows everything. They know about Majestic-12. They know about Kormoran and Chameleon. They know about every name on that list and why they are on it. They also know one other thing.'

'What's that?' Schofield said.

'The Mossad knows Majestic-12's plan for October the 26th.'

KING'S TOWER,

CANARY WHARF, LONDON

26 OCTOBER, 1200 HOURS LOCAL TIME

(1300 HOURS IN FRANCE—0700 HOURS E.S.T USA)

Book II and Mother rode up the side of the 40-storey King's Tower inside a speeding glass elevator.

The Thames stretched out before them, brown and twisting. Old London receded to the horizon, veiled in rain.

The Canary Wharf district stood in stark contrast to the rest of London—a crisp clean steel-and-glass business district that boasted skyscrapers, manicured parks, and no less than the tallest building in Britain: the magnificent Canary Wharf Tower. While much of London was faded 19th-century Victorian, Canary Wharf was crystal-cut 21st-century futurism.

Book and Mother rose high into the grey London sky. Four other glass elevators ferried people up and down the side of the King's Tower, identical glass boxes rushing past them in either direction.

Book and Mother wore civilian clothes: suede jackets, boots, blue-denim jeans and turtleneck jumpers that covered their throat-mikes. Each had a Colt .45 pistol wedged into the back of their

jeans.

A pretty young executive in a Prada suit stood in the lift with them, looking very small next to the broad-shouldered and shaven-headed Mother.

Mother inhaled deeply, then tapped the girl on the shoulder. 'I really love your perfume. What is it?'

'Issey Miyake,' the girl replied.

'I'll have to get some,' Mother smiled.

They'd made good time.

After entering British airspace under active stealth, Rufus had dropped them off at an abandoned airfield not far from London City Airport. From there they'd hitched a ride on a charter helicopter, piloted by an old friend of Rufus's. He'd dropped them at Canary Wharf's commercial heliport 15 minutes later.

Ping.

Their elevator stopped on the 38th floor. Book II and Mother stepped out into the enormous reception area for Goldman, Marcus & Meyer, Lawyers. Goldman Marcus occupied the top three floors of the tower—the 38th, 39th and 40th floors.

It looked like the reception area of a big city law firm—plush, spacious, great view. And indeed to the casual visitor Goldman Marcus was a full-service legal provider.

Only this wasn't just a law firm.

In amongst its many offices, meeting rooms and open-plan areas, Goldman Marcus's offices contained three rooms on the 39th floor that all the lawyers were forbidden to enter—rooms that were kept for the sole and exclusive use of the Mossad, the notorious Israeli Secret Service.

The Mossad.

The most ruthless intelligence service in the world, protecting the most targeted nation in history: Israel.

No other nation has experienced such a continued threat of terrorism. No other nation has been surrounded by so many openly hostile enemies—Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, not to mention the Palestinians inside its borders. No other nation has seen eleven of its Olympic athletes killed on international television.

So how has Israel dealt with this?

Easy. It finds out about foreign threats first.

The Mossad has people everywhere. It knows about international

upheaval before anyone else does, and it acts according to an immovable policy of 'Israel First, Last, Always'.

1960. The kidnap of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in

Argentina.

1967. The pre-emptive strikes on Egyptian air bases during the

Six Day War.

August 31, 1997. There had been a Mossad agent in the bar at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on the night Princess Diana died. He had been shadowing Henri Paul, Diana's driver.

It has even been said that the Mossad knew about the September 11 attacks on America before they happened—and didn't tell the Americans. Because it suited Israel to have the US enter the war on

Islamist terrorism.

In global intelligence communities, there is one golden rule: the

Mossad always knows.

'May I help you?' the receptionist's smile was polite.

'Yes,' Book II said. 'We'd like to speak to Benjamin Rosenthal,

please.'

'I'm afraid there is no-one here by that name.' Book II didn't miss a beat. 'Then please call the Chairman of Partners and tell him that Sergeants Riley and Newman are here to see Major Rosenthal. Tell him we're here on behalf of Captain Shane Schofield of the United States Marines Corps.' 'I'm terribly sorry, sir, but—'

At that moment, as if by magic, the receptionist's phone rang and after a short whispered phone call, she said to Book: 'The Chairman is sending someone down to collect you.'

One minute later an internal door opened and a burly man in a suit appeared. Book and Mother both registered the Uzi-sized bulge under his jacket— Ping.

An elevator arrived. Ping.

Then another one.

Book II frowned, turned.

The doors to the two elevators opened—

—to reveal Demon Larkham and his ten-man IG-88 assault squad.

'Oh, shit,' Book II said.

They came charging out of the elevators, dressed in their charcoal-black battle uniforms, their high-tech MetalStorm guns blazing.

Book and Mother flew over the reception desk together, just as the whole area around them was raked with whirring hyper-machinegun fire.

The burly man at the internal door convulsed under the barrage of gunfire and fell. The receptionist took a bullet in the forehead and snapped backwards.

Demon's team rushed inside, one man lagging behind to take care of the two civilians who had dived over the reception desk.

He rounded the counter and—

—blaml-blaml—

—received two bullets in the face from two separate guns. Book and Mother leapt to their feet, pistols smoking.

'They're here for Rosenthal,' Book said. 'Come on!'

It was like following in the path of a tornado.

Book and Mother entered the main office area.

Men and women in suits lay draped over desks, their bodies riddled with bloody wounds, their workstations smashed.

Up ahead, the IG-88 force stormed through the open-plan office area, their MetalStorm guns blazing.

Glass shattered. Computer monitors exploded.

A security guard drew an Uzi from beneath his jacket—only to be cut down by hypervelocity MetalStorm bullets.

The IG-88 men raced up a beautiful curving internal staircase, up to the 39th floor.

Book and Mother gave chase.

They reached the top of the staircase just in time to see three members of the IG-88 team break away from the others and enter an interrogation room, where they promptly killed two senior Mossad men and dragged a third—a young man who could only be Rosenthal—from the room. Rosenthal was thirty-ish, olive-skinned and handsome; he wore an open-necked shirt and he looked tired beyond belief.

Book and Mother wasted no time. They bounded off the stairs and took out the three bounty hunters, working perfectly as a pair—Book dropped the man on the left, Mother the one on the right, and both of them nailed the man in the middle, blowing him apart with their guns.

Rosenthal dropped to the floor.

Book and Mother raced to his side, scooped him up, draped his arms over their shoulders.

'You Rosenthal?' Book demanded. 'Benjamin Rosenthal?'

'Yes . . .'

'We're here to help you. Shane Schofield sent us.'

A glint of recognition appeared on Rosenthal's face. 'Schofield. From the list . . .'

Blam!

Mother dropped another IG-88 man as he emerged from the next room and saw them.

'Book!' she yelled. 'No time for chit-chat! We have to keep moving! You can debrief him as we run! Up the stairs! Now!'

They swept further up the internal staircase, heading for the 40th floor, running past a set of curving picture windows that looked out over London—before the view of the city was abruptly replaced by that of an evil-looking assault helicopter swinging into position, hovering right outside the windows, staring in at Book and Mother and Rosenthal!

It was a Lynx gunship, the British equivalent of a Huey, equipped with side-mounted TOW missiles and a six-barrelled mini-gun.

'Go!' Mother yelled, hauling them upward. 'Go-go-go-go-go!'

The Lynx opened fire.

There came a cataclysmic shattering of glass as the picture windows encasing the curving staircase collapsed under the weight of the helicopter's fire.

Glass rained down all around Book and Mother as they scampered up the stairs carrying Rosenthal between them, a whole section of the staircase itself falling away behind them, ripped clear from its mountings by the barrage of fire, just as they dived off it to the safety of the 40th floor.

Demon Larkham strode through the wreckage of the 39th floor, listening as reports came in over his headset radio.

'—This is Airborne One. They're up on 40. Two contacts in civilian clothing. They appear to have Rosenthal with them—'

'—Airborne Two, landing on the roof now. Offloading second unit—'

'—This is Airborne Three. We're coming round the north-east corner. Heading for 40—'

'—This is Tech Team. Elevators are locked down. Four elevators are frozen on 38, the fifth is down in the lobby. No-one's going anywhere now—'

'Gentlemen,' Demon said, 'exterminate these pests. And get me Rosenthal.'

Seen from a distance, the three IG-88 Lynx choppers buzzing around the peak of the King's Tower looked like flies harassing a picnicker.

One had landed on the roof, while the other two prowled around the upper floors, peering in through the windows.

At the sound of the windows being blasted to oblivion, a few local businesses called the police.

Book II and Mother charged down a hallway on the 40th floor, dragging Benjamin Rosenthal with them.

'Talk to me!' Book said to Rosenthal as they ran. 'The list. Why are you and Schofield on it?'

Rosenthal heaved for breath. 'Majestic . . . Majestic-12 put us on it. . . I'm on the list because I know who the members of Majestic-12 are, and I can expose them when they carry out their plan.'

'And Schofield?'

'He's different. He's a very special individual. He's one of the few who passed the Cobra tests . . . one of only nine men in the world who can disarm CincLock-VII, the security system on the Chameleon missiles—'

Just then, a fire stairwell door right next to them burst open, revealing four IG-88 mercenaries brandishing MetalStorm rifles and green laser sights.

Book and Rosenthal had no time to react, but Mother did.

She pushed them round a nearby corner, into another corridor,

while she herself dashed the other way down a long hallway, inches ahead of a wave of hypermachinegun fire.

Book and Rosenthal ran northward down their corridor, burst into a small office branching off it.

Dead end.

'Shit!' Book yelled, racing over to the window and looking out just as a Lynx helicopter shoomed past.

And then, outside the window, he saw it.

The four IG-88 bounty hunters who had burst out of the fire stairwell had split into two pairs—two going after Book and Rosenthal, the other pair going after Mother.

The two commandos pursuing Book and Rosenthal saw them enter the side-office twenty yards down the corridor.

They approached the office's door, flanked it silently on either side. The door was marked '4009'.

'Tech Team, this is Sterling Five,' the senior commando whispered into his headset. 'I need a floor schematic. Office number four-zero-zero-niner.'

The response came back. 'It's a dead end, Sterling Five. They've got nowhere to go.'

The senior man nodded to the trooper beside him—and the junior trooper kicked open the door, blazing away with his MetalStorm rifle.

He hit nothing.

The office was empty.

Its single floor-to-ceiling window was already shattered, the pouring London rain sweeping in through it.

No Book.

No Rosenthal.

• * *

The two IG-88 men rushed to the broken window, looked down.

Nothing. Only the sheer glass side of the tower and a grassy park below.

Then they looked up—just as a mechanical whirring came to life above them—and they saw the steel underside of a window-washer's platform rising up the side of the building, heading for the roof.

Book and Rosenthal stood on the window-washer's platform as it rose quickly up the side of King's Tower.

The long rectangular platform hung from two sturdy winch-cranes that stuck out from the tower's roof.

Moments before their attackers had stormed the office, Book had blasted open the window, and with Rosenthal in front of him, leapt up and grabbed its catwalk.

He'd pushed Rosenthal up, and then hauled himself onto the platform, yanking his feet out of view just as the two IG-88 men had burst into the office.

A wave of hypercharged bullets chased Mother as she dashed westward down her hallway with two IG-88 bounty hunters on her tail.

Just as the bullets caught up with her, she dived sharply left, into an office—and found herself standing in a beautifully appointed boardroom.

It had a polished wooden floor, deep leather chairs, and the most gigantic boardroom table she had ever seen. It was easily 30 feet long.

'Fucking lawyers,' Mother breathed. 'Always overcompensating for their teeny-weeny dicks.'

It was a corner office, with floor-to-ceiling windows lining one side, providing a breathtaking view of London. The other side backed onto the exterior elevators.

Mother knew that her Colt pistol didn't stand a chance against the MetalStorm guns of the IG-88 men, so she waited behind the door.

Bang!

They kicked it in, rushed inside.

Mother shot the first man in the side of the head before he even saw her, turned her gun on the second man—

Click.

'Fuck!'

Out of ammo.

She crashtackled the second man instead, sending the two of them flying onto the boardroom table, the bounty hunter's MetalStorm rifle firing wildly in every direction.

The floor-to-ceiling windows of the boardroom took the brunt of the gunfire and spontaneously cracked into a million spiderwebs.

Mother grappled with her attacker on top of the boardroom table. He was a big guy, strong. He unsheathed a knife just as Mother did too and the two blades clashed.

Then, suddenly, as they fought, Mother caught sight of two shapes in the doorway.

Men.

But not IG-88 men.

Rather, two burly Israelis in suits, with Uzis slung over their shoulders and bloodstains on their shirts.

Mossad security men.

The two Israelis saw the fight taking place on the long boardroom table.

'Bounty hunters!' one of them spat.

'Come on!' the other yelled, looking back down the hallway. 'They're coming!'

The first man sneered at Mother and her attacker—then he quickly pulled a high-powered RDX grenade from his pocket, popped the cap and threw it into the boardroom. Then he and his partner dashed off.

Still fending off her attacker's blows with her knife, Mother saw the grenade fly into the room in a kind of detached slow motion. It bounced on the floor, disappearing underneath the gigantic

I

table. Mother heard the unmistakable sound of it clunking against one of the table's tree-trunk-sized legs. And then it detonated.

The blast was monstrous.

Despite its solidity, the corridor-end of the massive table just disintegrated, shattering instantly into a thousand splinters.

As for the rest of the table—still a good 25 feet long—something very different happened.

The concussive force of the grenade lifted the elongated table clear off the floor and—like a railroad car being shunted forward on its tracks—sent it sliding at considerable speed down the length of the boardroom, toward the bullet-cracked windows at the western end of the room.

Mother saw it coming an instant before it happened.

The table exploded through the cracked glass windows, blasting through them like a battering ram, and shot out into the sky, forty

storeys up.

Then with a sickening lurch, the table tipped downwards, and Mother suddenly found herself sliding—fast, down the length of the table, rain pounding against her face—toward four hundred feet of empty sky.

It looked totally bizarre: the elongated boardroom table jutting out from the top floor of the tower.

The table tilted sharply—passing through 45 degrees, then steeper—with the two tiny figures of Mother and the IG-88 commando sliding down its length.

Then—completely without warning—the falling table jolted to a

halt.

Its uppermost edge had hit the ceiling of the 40th floor and wedged against it, while two of its thick legs had locked against the floor right on the precipice—causing the whole table to stop suddenly, suspended at a vertiginous angle 40 storeys above the ground!

Mother slid fast, before at the very last moment she jammed her knife deep into the surface of the table—and using the knife's brass fingerholes as a handgrip, swung to a halt, hanging from the embedded knife, her feet dangling off the lower edge of the almost-vertical table.

Her attacker wasn't as quick-thinking.

In an attempt to get a handhold, he'd dropped his knife as they'd fallen. As it turned out, he hadn't been able to find a handhold, but luckily for him he'd been above Mother as the table had burst out through the window. As such, he'd fallen into her, his feet slamming into her embedded knife.

He now hung above her, one foot crushing her knife-hand, smiling.

Gripping the edges of the table with his hands, he started kicking her fingers, hard.

Mother clenched her teeth, held on grimly despite his blows, the brass fingerholes of her knife deflecting some of them.

And then she heard the noise.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump . . .

The sound of helicopter rotors.

She glanced around and saw a Lynx chopper hovering right beside her like a giant flying hornet.

'Oh, fuck . . .' she moaned.

The IG-88 man above her waved to the chopper pilot, directing him to go down, below them.

The pilot complied and the chopper swung below Mother, its speed-blurred rotor blades forming a hazy white circle beneath her dangling feet.

Then the bounty hunter above her resumed his kicking, only harder.

Crack!

She heard one of her fingers break.

'You motherfucker]' she yelled.

He kicked again.

The rotor blades roared like a buzzsaw ten feet below Mother's boots.

Her attacker raised his foot for one last blow. He brought it

down hard—

—just as Mother did a most unexpected thing.

She withdrew the knife from the table, causing both of them to slide quickly downward, off the table's lower edge, toward the blurring blades of the helicopter!

Her attacker couldn't believe it.

Without the knife to lean on, he rocketed downward, sliding off the lower edge of the boardroom table!

They slid off the bottom end of the table together—but unlike her attacker, Mother had been prepared. As she went off the edge, she stabbed her knife into the underside of the table, and swung in underneath it, her fall halted.

The IG-88 man shot right past her, off the edge of the table and

out into space . . .

. . . and the world went slow as Mother watched his horrified face—eyes wide, mouth open—falling, falling, dropping away

from her.

Then he hit the rotor blades—splat-choo!—and his entire human shape just disappeared, spontaneously erupting into a star-shaped

burst of blood.

A wash of red liquid splattered the windscreen of the chopper and the Lynx peeled away from the building.

Mother didn't even have time to sigh with relief.

For just then, as she hung from the downward-pointing boardroom table, pelted by the London rain, the whole table shifted slightly.

A sudden jolt.

Downward.

Mother snapped to look up: saw that the legs pinioning the table

to the 40th floor were buckling. The table was going to fall. 'Oh, damn it all to fucking hell!' she yelled to the sky. 'I am not

going to die!'

She gauged her position.

She was at the corner of the building—the south-west corner— on the western side.

Just around the corner, slightly below her, she could see one of the glass elevators, stopped on the 38th floor on the southern face of the building.

'Okay,' she said to herself. 'Stay calm. What would the Scarecrow do?'

Maghook, she thought.

She drew her Maghook, aimed it up at the interior ceiling of the 40th floor, and fired.

Nothing happened.

The Maghook didn't fire.

Its trigger just clicked and its barrel emitted a weak fizzing noise. It was out of gas propellant.

'Oh, come on!' Mother yelled. 'That never happens to the Scarecrow!'

Then suddenly the table lurched again, dropped another two feet.

Mother started unspooling the Maghook manually—with her teeth—muttering as she did so. 'Not fair. Not fair. Not fucking fair . . .'

The table teetered on the edge of the 40th floor, its legs groaning under the weight, about to snap—

Mother felt she had enough rope and with her free hand, hurled the Maghook's grappling hook up at the 40th floor.

It landed on the edge of the shattered windowsill, its claws catching . . .

. . . just as the table tipped wholly out of the window . . .

. . . and Mother let go of her knife, swung away from the falling boardroom table . . .

. . . and the table fell through the rainy sky, all twenty-five feet of it dropping down the side of the building . . .

. . . while Mother swung on her rope, swooping around the corner of the building, before she slammed into the glass wall of

the elevator just around the corner, and grabbed hold of its roof

rim.

Seven whole seconds later, the gigantic boardroom table of Goldman, Marcus &C Meyer hit the sidewalk and smashed into a billion tiny pieces.

Book and Rosenthal arrived at the roof on the window-washer's platform.

They ducked behind an exhaust stack, peered out to see one of Demon Larkham's Lynx helicopters resting on the rooftop helipad, it rotors turning, veiled in the pouring rain.

'Keep talking,' Book said to Rosenthal. 'This Majestic-12 wrote the list. And they want Schofield dead because . . .'

'Because of the Cobra tests,' Rosenthal said. 'Because he passed the Cobra tests. Although in NATO they were called something else: Motor Neuron Rapidity of Response tests. "Cobra" was the Russian name.'

'Motor Neuron Rapidity of Response?' Book II said. 'You mean reflexes.'

'Yes. Exactly,' Rosenthal said. 'It's all about reflexes. Superfast reflexes. The reflexes of the men on that list are the best in the world. They passed the Cobra tests, and only someone who passed the Cobra tests can disarm the CincLock-VII missile security system, and CincLock-VII is at the core of Majestic-12's plan. That's why Majestic-12 needs to eliminate them.'

'A missile security system . . .'

'Yes, yes, but don't be fooled. This bounty hunt is but one element of Majestic-12's larger plan.'

'And what is that plan?'

'Smashing the existing world order. Creating worldwide warfare. Scorching the earth so that it can regrow afresh,' Rosenthal said. 'Listen, I have a whole file on this downstairs. The Mossad has been debriefing me on it for the last two days. It's a file on this

bounty hunt, on Majestic-12, its members, and, most importantly, what its overall plan is—'

Rosenthal's head exploded. Burst like a blood-filled water balloon.

There was no warning.

Rosenthal's face was simply ripped to pieces by a lethal 20-round burst from a MetalStorm rifle somewhere behind Book II.

Book spun—

—and saw Demon Larkham himself standing in the doorway to the fire stairs, thirty yards away, his MetalStorm rifle pressed against his shoulder.

Book looked down at Rosenthal, bloodied and broken. The Mossad man would tell no more tales—not without his face.

And so Book ran.

For the helicopter parked nearby, his pistol up and firing.

The glass wall of the elevator shattered and Mother swung inside it.

She was now on the south face of the tower, on the 38th floor. She saw the other glass elevators sitting silently in position, level with her own.

If the elevators were numbered l-through-5 going across the face of the building, then Elevators 1, 2, 3 and 5 were stopped on Level 38. A gap existed where the fourth elevator should have been. It must have been on a lower floor. Mother stood in Number 1, on the far left-hand side of the southern face.

She hammered the 'door OPEN' button.

It was like standing in a fishbowl and Mother knew that the Lynx helicopter that had terrorised her before would come searching for her soon and she didn't want to be a sitting duck when it di—

Thump-thump-thump-thump-tbump-tbump . . .

The Lynx.

Mother turned.

It was right there!

Hovering just out from her glass elevator, off to the western side, seemingly staring at her.

Mother kept hitting door open. 'Damn it, fuck! Is this button actually wired to anything?'

And then she saw the puff of smoke from one of the Lynx's side-mounted missile pods.

They were firing a missile at her!

A TOW missile blasted out of the pod, carving a horizontal line straight at Mother's glass elevator.

The elevator doors started to open.

The missile roared toward Mother's eyes.

Mother squeezed through the doors and dived out of the lift just as the TOW missile pierced her elevator's shattered western wall, entering it from the side, its superhot tail-flame charring the whole interior of the elevator before—clash!—it shot out the other side and rocketed into the next glass elevator beside it.

The sight was truly amazing.

The TOW missile shot across the southern face of the King's Tower, blasting through all four of the glass elevators parked there—clash'.-clash'.-clash'.-clash!—causing sequential explosions of glass as it penetrated each lift's walls, one after the other—before in a final glorious shower of glass, it shot out of the last elevator and peeled off into the Thames where it exploded in a gigantic geyser of spray.

For her part, Mother landed in a clumsy heap inside the reception area on the 38th floor, the door of her glass elevator open behind her.

Lying flat on the floor, she looked up.

And saw four IG-88 bounty hunters standing in the destroyed reception area, right in front of her. They looked just as shocked to see her as she was to see them.

'Talk about out of the frying pan . . .' Mother breathed.

The IG-88 men whipped up their MetalStorm rifles.

Mother pounced to her feet and leapt in the only direction she could: back out onto her elevator.

Into the elevator, ducking behind its control panel just as a wave of hypermachinegun fire rushed in through the open doorway.

Rain and wind whipped all around Mother, the semi-destroyed elevator now little more than an open-air viewing platform that looked out over London.

Mother looked across the southern face of the tower.

The three other glass elevators faced her, lined up in a row, their glass walls all shattered by the TOW.

'Live or die, Mother,' she said aloud. 'Fuck it. Die.'

And so she ran.

Thirty-eight floors up, charging hard, across the southern face of the building, leaping across the three-foot gaps between the semi-destroyed elevators.

As soon as she landed on the second elevator, the Lynx helicopter returned, swooping in fast, now firing with its mini-gun, razing the side of the building with a storm of bullets.

But Mother kept running, outstripping the chopper's brutal rain of fire by centimetres, hurdling over onto the third elevator platform.

The gap where Elevator Number 4 should have been yawned before her.

Mother didn't miss a step.

The gap was wide—twelve feet—but she jumped anyway, diving forward, arms outstretched, 38 storeys up, hoping to catch the floor of the fifth and final elevator with her hands.

No dice.

She knew as soon as she jumped that she wasn't going to make it.

Her hands missed the floor of the fifth elevator by inches and Mother dropped below it.

But the clawed grappling hook of the Maghook in her hand didn't miss the edge of the elevator.

The damn Maghook might not have been working anymore, but by holding its hook in her outstretched hand, Mother had added another twelve inches to her reach.

Which was just what she needed.

The steel claws of the hook caught the floor of the elevator and Mother swung to a halt beneath it. She had just started climbing up into it when—

Thump-thump-tbump-tbump-tbump-thump-tkump . . .

The Lynx.

It was back. Hovering menacingly in front of her as she hung from the destroyed elevator's floor. A second IG-88 Lynx chopper swooped in behind it, checking out the action.

This time the Lynx was so close that Mother could see the pilot's smiling face.

He waved at her, then gripped his gun trigger.

Hanging from the elevator platform, dead for all money, Mother just shook her head.

'No . . .'

The Lynx's gunbarrels began to roll, just as another glimpse of movement caught Mother's eye—a grey smoketrail shooting through the air behind the Lynx—a missile smoketrail that seemed to come from . . .

The second Lynx helicopter.

The missile slammed into the Lynx that had been threatening Mother.

A colossal explosion rocked the air, and in the blink of an eye the Lynx was gone. In the face of the blast wave, it was all Mother could do to hold on.

The wreckage of the first Lynx tumbled down the side of the tower—flaming, smoking.

It landed on a grassy strip at the base of the tower with a massive metal-crushing whutnp!

Mother looked over at the second Lynx helicopter, the one that had shot its buddy out of the sky . . . and saw its pilot.

Book II.

His voice came over her earpiece. 'Hey there. I picked this baby up on the roof. Unfortunately, the pilot was a reluctant seller. I was wondering where you'd got to.'¹

'Ha-de-fucking-ha, Book,' Mother said, hauling herself up into the fifth elevator. 'How about getting me off this damn tower.'

'Be happy to. But can you get something for me first?

Mother charged through a corridor on the 39th floor, leading with her Colt.

The place was a mess. Bullet holes lined the walls. Anything made of glass had been shattered.

If the IG-88 team was still here, they weren't showing themselves.

'It's back near that internal staircase,' Book's voice said in her ear. 'The room where we found Rosenthal. It must be some kind of interrogation facility.'

'Got it,' Mother said.

She could see the doorway near the top of the curving stairs, hurried into it.

She was confronted by a two-way mirror that looked into an adjacent interrogation room. Two video cameras peered through the mirror. Thick manila folders and two digital video tapes lay on a table nearby.

'It's an interrogation centre, all right,' Mother said. 'I got files. I got DV tapes. What do you want?'

'All of it. Everything you can carry. Plus anything with Majestic-12 or CincLock-VII on it. And grab the tapes, including any that are still in the cameras.''

Mother grabbed a silver Samsonite suitcase lying on the floor and stuffed it with the files and digital video tapes. The two cameras also had tapes in them, so she grabbed them, too.

And then she was out.

Out the door and up the fire stairs to the roof.

She hit the roof running, dashed out into the rain, just as Book landed his Lynx on it. She climbed inside and the chopper lifted off, leaving the smoking ruins of the King's Tower smouldering in its wake.

OFFICES OF THE DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE

AGENCY,

SUB-LEVEL 3, THE PENTAGON

26 OCTOBER, 0700 HOURS LOCAL TIME

(1200 HOURS IN LONDON)

Dave Fairfax's boss caught him as he was leaving his office to go to St John's Hospital and find Dr Thompson Oliphant.

'And just where do you think you're going, Fairfax?' His name was Wendel Hogg and he was an asshole. A big guy, Hogg was ex-Army, a two-time veteran of wai in Iraq, a fact which he never failed to tell people about.

The thing was, Hogg was stupid. And in the tradition of stupid managers worldwide, he (a) clung rigidly and inflexibly to rules, and (b) despised talented people like David Fairfax.

'I'm going out for coffee,' Fairfax said.

'What's wrong with the coffee here?'

'I've tasted hydrofluoric acid that was better than the coffee here.'

Just then, a small waif-like young woman entered the office. She was the mail clerk, a quiet mousy girl named Audrey. Fairfax's eyes lit up at the sight of her—unfortunately, so did Hogg's.

'Hey, Audrey,' Fairfax said, smiling.

'Hi, Dave,' Audrey replied shyly. Others might have said she was plain, but Fairfax thought she was beautiful.

Then Hogg said loudly, 'Thought you said you were leaving, Fairfax. Hey, while you're doing a Starbucks run, why don't you

get us a couple of grande frappacinos. And make it snappy, will ya.'

A million witty retorts passed through Fairfax's brain, but instead he just sighed. 'Whatever you say, Wendel.'

'Hey,' Hogg barked. 'You will address me as Sergeant Hogg or Sergeant, young man. I didn't take a bullet in Eye-raq to be called Wendel by some spineless little keyboard-tapper like you, Fairfax. 'Cause when the time comes, boy, to stand up and stare into the enemy's eyeballs,'—he threw a cocksure grin at Audrey—'who would you want holding the gun, you or me?'

Fairfax's face reddened. 'I'd have to say you, Wendel.'

'Damn straight.'

And with an embarrassed nod to Audrey, Fairfax left the office.

EMERGENCY WARD, ST JOHN'S HOSPITAL,

ARLINGTON, USA

26 OCTOBER, 0715 HOURS

Fairfax entered the ER of St John's, went over to the reception counter.

It was quiet at this time of the morning. Five people sat slumped like zombies in the waiting area.

'Hi, my name is David Fairfax. I'm here to see Dr Thompson Oliphant.'

The desk nurse chewed bubble gum lazily. 'Just a second. Dr Oliphant! Someone here to see you!'

A second nurse appeared from one of the curtained-off bed-bays. 'Glenda, shhh. He's out back catching some shut-eye. I'll go get him.'

The second nurse disappeared down a back hallway.

As she did so, an exceedingly tall black man stepped up to the reception counter beside Fairfax.

He had deep dark skin and the high sloping forehead common to the inhabitants of southern Africa. He wore big fat Elvis sunglasses and a tan trenchcoat.

The Zulu.

'Good morning,' the Zulu said stiffly. 'I would like to see Dr Thompson Jeffrey Oliphant, please.'

Fairfax tried not to look at the bounty hunter—tried not to betray the fact that his heart was now beating very very fast.

Tall and lanky, the Zulu was gigantic—the size of a professional basketball player. The top of Fairfax's head was level with his chest.

The desk nurse popped a bubble-gum bubble. 'Geez, old Tommy's popular this morning. He's out back, sleeping. Someone's just gone to get him.'

At that moment, a bleary-eyed doctor appeared at the end of the long 'Authorized Personnel Only' corridor.

He was an older guy: grey-haired, wrinkled face. He wore a white labcoat and he rubbed his eyes as he emerged from a side room putting on his glasses.

'Dr Oliphant?' the Zulu called.

'Yes?' the old doctor said as he came closer.

Fairfax was the first to see the weapon appear from under the Zulu's tan trenchcoat.

It was a Cz-25, one of the crudest submachine-guns in the world. It looked like an Uzi only meaner—the ugly twin brother—with a long 40-round magazine jutting out of its pistol grip.

The Zulu whipped up the gun, levelled it at Oliphant, and oblivious to the presence of at least seven witnesses, pulled the trigger.

Standing right next to the big assassin, Fairfax did the only thing he could think to do.

He lashed out with his right hand, punching the gun sideways, causing its initial burst to strafe a line of bullet holes along the wall next to Oliphant's head.

People ducked.

Nurses screamed.

Oliphant dived to the floor.

The Zulu backhanded Fairfax, sending him crashing into a nearby janitor's trolley.

Then the Zulu walked—just walked—around the reception desk and into the staff-only corridor, toward Oliphant, his Cz-25 extended.

He fired ruthlessly.

The nurses scattered out of the way.

Oliphant scrambled on his hands and knees into a supply room that branched off the corridor, bullet-sparks raking the ground at his toes.

Fairfax lay among the shattered janitorial supplies from the trolley he'd slammed into. He saw a bag of white powder that had been on the trolley: 'zeolite-chlorine—industrial-strength

CLEANING AGENT—AVOID SKIN CONTACT'. He grabbed it.

Then he leapt to his feet and ran forward—while everyone else ran away from the action—and peered down into the staff-only corridor where he saw the Zulu stop in front of an open doorway and raise his Cz-25.

Fairfax hurled the bag of powdered chlorine through the air. It hit the Zulu square in the side of the head and exploded in a puff of white dust.

The Zulu screamed, staggering away from the doorway, swatting at his powder-covered head, trying desperately to remove the burning zeolite on his skin. His Elvis sunglasses now bore a layer of white powder on their lenses. His flesh had started bubbling.

Fairfax dashed forward, slid on the floor underneath the Zulu, peered in through the doorway—and saw Dr Thompson Oliphant cowering underneath some supply shelves, covering his face.

'Dr Oliphant! Listen to me! My name is David Fairfax. I'm with the Defense Intelligence Agency. I'm not much of a hero, but I'm all you've got right now! If you want to get through this, you'd better come with me!'

Oliphant extended his hand and Fairfax grasped it, lifting the doctor to his feet. Then they ducked under the swatting Zulu and raced out past the reception counter into the early morning air.

The automatic sliding doors opened for them—just as the doors themselves shattered under Cz-25 bullet-fire.

The Zulu was moving again and coming after them with a vengeance.

An ambulance was parked right outside the Emergency Ward's entrance.

'Get in!' Fairfax yelled, throwing open the driver's side door. Oliphant jumped in the passenger side.

Fairfax fired her up and hit the gas. The ambulance peeled off the mark, but not before the two of them heard an ominous whump! from somewhere at the back of the vehicle.

'Uh-oh . . .' Fairfax said.

In his side mirror he saw the tall dark figure of the Zulu standing on the rear bumper, his hands clinging to the ambulance's roof rails.

The Zulu was on the ambulance!

The ambulance's tyres squealed as Fairfax gunned it out of the undercover turning bay and into the parking lot proper.

He bounced the white van over a gutter and a nature strip hoping to dislodge the Zulu from its bumper. The ambulance rocked wildly as it jounced down another gutter and Fairfax was certain that no-one could have held on after all that.

But then the rear doors of the ambulance were hurled open from the outside and the Zulu stepped into the rear compartment!

'Shit!' Fairfax yelled.

The Zulu no longer had his Cz-25, having discarded it in favour of holding onto the ambulance with both hands.

But now, safely inside the speeding ambulance, he withdrew a

long-bladed machete from his trenchcoat and stared at Fairfax and Oliphant with blazing fury in his bloodshot eyes.

Fairfax eyed the machete. 'Oh, man . . .'

The Zulu swept forward through the rear compartment, clambering quickly over a locked-down wheeled gurney.

Fairfax had to do something fast.

He saw the road up ahead divide—one lane heading left for the exit, the other sweeping to the right, up a curving concrete ramp that gave access to the hospital's multi-storey parking lot.

He chose right, and yanked the steering wheel hard over, hitting the gas as they charged up the spiralling ramp—the centrifugal force of their high-speed turn causing the Zulu in the back to lose his balance and slam against the outer wall, his forward progress momentarily halted.

But they could only go up for so long, Fairfax thought. The parking structure was only six storeys high.

He had five floors to think of something else.

At the same time, someone else was watching the ambulance's wild rise up the tightly curving ramp from across the street.

A strikingly beautiful woman with long legs, muscular shoulders and cool Japanese eyes.

Her real name was Alyssa Idei, but in the bounty hunting world she was known simply as the Ice Queen. She'd already collected the bounty on Damien Polanski and now she was after Oliphant.

She wore only black leather—tight hipster pants, biker jacket and killer boots. Her long black hair was tied back. Under her jacket, tucked into a pair of shoulder holsters, were two high-tech Steyr SPP machine pistols.

She started up her Honda NSX and pulled out from the kerb, and headed for the multi-storey parking lot.

Tyres squealing, Fairfax's ambulance wound its way up the curving ramp, its open rear doors flailing wildly.

They hit Level 3.

Three floors to go before they reached the roof—before the Zulu in the back would be able to move freely again.

But now Fairfax knew what he was going to do.

He was going to drive the ambulance off the top level of the parking structure—leaping out of it at the last moment with Oliphant, leaving the Zulu inside.

'Dr Oliphant!' he yelled, glancing back at the Zulu. 'Listen up and listen fast because I don't know if we'll get another chance to talk about this! You're a target in an international bounty hunt!'

'What!'

'You have an eighteen-million-dollar price on your head! I think it has something to do with a NATO study that you did back in 1996 with a guy named Nicholson at USAMRMC! The MNRR Study. What was that study about?'

Oliphant frowned. He was still in shock, and trying to assimilate this line of questioning with the ongoing attempt on his life was hard.

'MNRR? Well, it was . . . it was . . .'

The ambulance continued its dizzying ascent.

Level 4 and rising.

'It was ... it was like the Soviet Cobra tests, a test of—'

As Oliphant spoke, Fairfax stole a glance back at the Zulu—and suddenly saw that the demonic figure of the bounty hunter was far closer than he had expected him to be and was now swinging his machete right at Fairfax's head!

No defence.

No escape.

The machete whistled forward.

And slammed into the headrest of Fairfax's seat, its steel blade stopping—dead—a millimetre from Fairfax's right ear.

Jesus!

But now the Zulu was on them. Somehow, he had managed to manoeuvre his way forward, despite the powerful inertia of the turning-and-rising ambulance.

Level 5 . . .

And now Fairfax's eyes narrowed, focused.

He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.

The ambulance responded, increased its speed.

They hit the top of the curving ramp doing 40, the ambulance almost tipping over sideways, ail-but travelling on two wheels.

Then they raced out onto the rooftop—at this hour, it was completely empty—and Fairfax straightened the steering wheel and the ambulance, coming out of its hard turn, bounced back down onto all four wheels, the abrupt change of direction causing the Zulu to fly to the other side of the rear compartment and bang into the wall . . . leaving his machete wedged in Fairfax's headrest.

Fairfax gunned the ambulance, aimed it directly at the edge of the deserted rooftop parking area.

'Dr Oliphant! Get ready to jump!' he yelled.

They rocketed toward the edge of the roof, toward the pathetic little fence erected there.

Fairfax shifted in his seat. 'Get ready ... on three. One . . . two . . . thr—'

The Zulu lunged into the driver's seat from behind and grabbed both Fairfax and Oliphant!

Fairfax was stunned.

Now none of them could get out!

He saw the edge of the rooftop rushing at him at phenomenal unavoidable speed, so in desperation he yanked the steering wheel hard over and for what it was worth, slammed on the brakes.

The ambulance fishtailed, skidded wildly.

And so rather than hitting the fence head-on as Fairfax had intended it to, it did a screeching four-wheel skid, spinning a full 180 degrees so that instead, it slammed into the rooftop's fence rear-end first.

The ass end of the ambulance blasted through the fence and with Fairfax, Oliphant and the Zulu inside it, the whole ambulance went shooting off the edge of the roof, six storeys above the world, and fell—

—only about ten feet.

As the backward-travelling ambulance passed over the edge of the roof and blasted through the little fence, its front bumper bar caught hold of a surviving fence post and anchored the ambulance to the roof.

As such, the ambulance's fall was cut dramatically short. No sooner was most of its bulk over the edge than the whole vehicle jolted to a sudden halt.

And so now it hung vertically from the top floor of the parking structure, hanging by its nose, its rear doors flailing open beneath it.

Inside the ambulance, everything that should have been horizontal was now vertical.

Oliphant still sat in the passenger seat, only now facing upwards, his back pressing into his seat.

Fairfax hadn't been so lucky.

As they had hit the fence, he had been yanked from his seat by the Zulu and hurled into the rear section of the ambulance.

But then the ambulance had gone vertical, sending both of them tumbling ass over head.

And with its rear doors swinging open beneath them—revealing the six-storey drop—Fairfax and the Zulu had clutched at anything they could find.

The big Zulu had grabbed the locked-down gurney. Fairfax had clutched a shelf on the wall.

And so they hung there, inside the vertical ambulance, with a clear drop through the vehicle's rear doors yawning beneath them.

But the Zulu wasn't finished.

He still wanted to get to Oliphant.

He stretched upward, reaching for his machete, still wedged in the headrest of the driver's seat.

'No!' Fairfax yelled, lunging forward.

But he was too late.

Hanging onto the wheeled gurney with one hand, the Zulu lashed his fingers around the machete's grip and yanked it free.

He turned his bloodshot eyes on Fairfax, and his mouth widened into a sinister yellow-toothed grin.

'Bye-bye!' he said, drawing the machete back for the final blow.

'Whatever you say, asshole,' Fairfax said, seeing it.

The Zulu swung.

The blade whistled towards Fairfax's head.

Just as Fairfax lashed out with his foot and kicked open the locks that held the gurney in place.

The response was instantaneous.

The wheeled gurney dropped like a stone, out through the open doors at the bottom of the vertical ambulance . . .

. . . with the Zulu on it!

Fairfax watched as the big man fell with the gurney, his wide eyes receding to specks as he fell and fell and fell.

The gurney flipped on the way down, causing the Zulu to hit the ground first. He impacted against the concrete with a sickening thud, his internal organs shattering. But he was still alive.

Not for long. A second later, the leading edge of the gurney came slamming down against his head, crushing it like a nut.

It took a few minutes for Fairfax and Oliphant to negotiate their way out of the vertical ambulance, but they made it by climbing out through the front windshield and hauling themselves up over the bonnet.

The two of them slumped on the roof of the parking structure, breathless.

Fairfax peered down at the ambulance still hanging from the edge of the rooftop.

For his part, Oliphant was jabbering, overwhelmed with shock:

'It stood for . . . Motor Neuron . . . Motor Neuron Rapidity of Response ... we were testing American and British soldiers for response times, response times to certain stimuli ... all kinds of stimuli: visual, aural, touch . . . reflexes ... it was all about reflexes.

'Christ, we must have tested over three hundred soldiers, and they all had different response times . . . some were super fast, others clumsy and slow.

'But our superiors never told us what the study was for ... of course, we all had a theory. Most of us thought it was for commando-team selection, but some of the techs said it was for a new security system, some amazing new security system for ballistic missiles called CincLock . . . and then all of a sudden, the study was cancelled, the official reason being that the Department of Defense had canned the primary project, but we all thought it was because they'd got the information they needed—'

Shwat!

Still looking down at the ambulance, Fairfax heard the noise behind him.

He turned.

To see the now-headless body of Dr Oliphant kneeling beside him, swaying in position before—whump—it dropped to the concrete floor.

Standing over the corpse, holding a glistening short-bladed samurai sword in one tight fist, was a young leather-clad Japanese woman.

Alyssa Idei.

Bounty hunter.

She grabbed Oliphant's head by the hair and held it casually

by her side. Then in one fluid movement, she sheathed her sword and drew one of her Steyr machine pistols and pointed it at Fairfax.

She gazed at him over the gun. Eyes unblinking. Ice cold.

But then, strangely, a confused frown creased her perfect features, and she jerked her chin at Fairfax.

When it came her voice was as smooth as honey. 'You are not a bounty hunter, are you?'

'No . . .' Fairfax said tentatively. 'No, I'm not.'

'And yet you battle with the Zulu. Why?'

'I . . . I've a friend on your bounty list. I want to help him.'

Alyssa Idei seemed to have trouble grasping this. 'This man was your friend?'

'Well, not this guy. One of the other guys on the list.'

'And you do battle with the Zulu to help your friend?'

'Yes,' Fairfax said. 'I do.'

Her frown vanished, replaced by genuine curiosity. 'What is your name, friend-helper?'

'Er, David Fairfax.'

'Fair Fax. David Fair Fax,' she said slowly, rolling his name around in her mouth. 'I do not see such displays of loyalty often, Mr Fair Fax.'

'No?' Fairfax said.

She eyed him sexily. 'No. Your friend must be quite a man to inspire this bravery in you. Such bravery, Mr Fair Fax, is rare. It is also alluring. Intoxicating.'

Fairfax gulped. 'Oh.'

Alyssa said, 'And so I shall let you live. So that you may further help your friend—and so that we might meet again in fairer circumstances. But understand this, David Fair Fax, if we find ourselves together again, in a situation where you are protecting your friend, you will receive no such favour again.'

Then she holstered her gun and spun on the spot, sliding her lithe body into her low-slung sports car.

And she was gone.

Fairfax just watched the high-speed Honda whiz out of sight, shooting down the ramp, the headless body of Thompson Oliphant lying on the concrete beside him, the sun rising in the distance, and the sound of police sirens cutting through the dawn.

We live in a double world: carnival on Hie surface, consolidation underneath, where it counts.

From: No Logo by Naomi Klein (HARPER COLLINS, LONDON, 2000)

Bread and circuses. That is all the people desire.

—Juvenal, Roman satirist

LA GRANDE RUE DE LA MER

BRITTANY-ATLANTIC COAST, FRANCE

FORTERESSE DE VALOIS

BRITTANY, FRANCE

26 OCTOBER, 1400 HOURS LOCAL TIME

(0800 HOURS E.S.T USA)

The three tiny figures crossed the mighty stone bridge that connected the Forteresse de Valois to mainland France.

Shane Schofield.

Libby Gant.

Aloysius Knight.

They each carried a white medical transport box.

Three boxes. Three heads.

Owing to the fact that Schofield was one of the most wanted men in the world—and the fact that they were about to enter the inner sanctum of this bounty hunt—Schofield and Gant were partially disguised.

They now wore the charcoal battle uniforms and helmets of IG-88, taken from the men on the Hercules. In addition to their own weapons—now cleaned of chaff—they also carried MetalStorm rifles. For extra effect, Schofield wore several bloodstained bandages across his jaw and normal sunglasses over his eyes, just enough to cover his features.

In his thigh pocket, however, he also carried one of Knight's chunky modified Palm Pilots.

Knight pressed the doorbell to the castle. 'Okay, since I'm the only one of us who's done this before, I'll take the heads in to the assessor. You'll be asked to wait behind, in a secure area of some sort.'

'A secure area?'

'Assessors don't take kindly to bounty hunters who try to storm their offices and steal their money. It's happened before. As such, assessors usually have rather nasty protective systems. And if this assessor is who I think he is, then he's not a very nice person.

'In any case, just keep your eye on your Pilot. I'm not sure how much information I'll be able to syphon out of his computer, but hopefully I can pull enough so that we can find out who's paying for this hunt.'

Knight had an identical Palm Pilot in his own pocket. Like many such devices, it came with an infra-red data transfer feature, so you could send documents from your computer to your Palm Pilot wirelessly.

Knight's modifications to his Pilot, however, included a search program that allowed his device to access—wirelessly—any computer that he could get within ten feet of.

Which meant he could do something very special indeed: he could hack into standalone computers. If he could get close enough.

The castle's gates opened.

Monsieur Delacroix appeared, dapper as always.

'Captain Knight,' he said formally. 'I was wondering if I might be seeing you.'

'Monsieur Delacroix,' Knight said. 'I had a feeling you'd be the assessor. I was just saying to my associates here what a charming fellow you were.'

'But of course you were,' Delacroix said drily. He eyed Schofield and Gant in their IG-88 gear. 'New helpers. I did not know you had been recruiting from Monsieur Larkham's fold.'

'Good help is hard to find,' Knight said.

'Isn't it just,' Delacroix said. 'Why don't you come inside.'

They passed through the castle's showroom-like garage, filled with its collection.of expensive cars: the Porsche GT-2, the Aston Martin, the Lamborghini, the turbo-charged Subaru WRX rally cars.

Delacroix walked in the lead, pushing a handcart with the three head boxes stacked on it.

'Nice castle,' Knight said.

'It is rather impressive,' Delacroix said.

'So who owns it?'

'A very wealthy individual.'

'Whose name is—'

'—something I am not authorised to divulge. I have instructions on this matter.'

'You always do,' Knight said. 'Guns?'

'You may keep your weapons,' Delacroix said, uninterested. 'They won't be of any use to you here.'

They descended some stairs at the rear of the garage, entered a round stone-walled anteroom that preceded a long narrow tunnel.

Delacroix stopped. 'Your associates will have to wait here, Captain Knight.'

Knight nodded to Schofield and Gant. 'It's okay. Just don't be shocked when the doors lock.'

Schofield and Gant took a seat on a leather couch by the wall.

Delacroix led Knight down the narrow torch-lit tunnel.

They came to the end of the forbidding passageway, to a well-appointed office. Delacroix entered the office ahead of Knight, then turned, holding a remote in his hand.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

The three steel doors in the tunnel whomped down into place, sealing Schofield and Gant in the ante-room and Knight in the tunnel.

Knight didn't even blink.

Delacroix set about examining the heads—heads that were originally captured by Demon Larkham in the caves of Afghanistan: the heads of Zawahiri, Khalif and Kingsgate. Laser scans, dental exams, DNA . . .

Knight stood inside the long stone tunnel, trapped, waiting.

He noticed the boiling oil gutters set into its walls. 'Hmmm,' he said aloud. 'Nasty.'

Through a small perspex window set into the steel door, he could see into Delacroix's office.

He saw Delacroix at work, saw the immense panoramic window behind the Swiss banker's desk revealing the glorious Atlantic Ocean.

It was then, however, that Knight noticed the ships outside.

On the distant horizon he saw a cluster of naval vessels: destroyers and frigates, all gathered around a mighty aircraft carrier that he instantly recognised as a brand-new, nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle-class carrier.

It was a Carrier Battle Group.

A French Carrier Battle Group.

Schofield and Gant waited in the ante-room.

A whirring sound from up near the ceiling caught Schofield's attention.

He looked up—and saw six strange-looking antennas arrayed around the ceiling of the round ante-room, embedded in the stone walls. They looked like stereo speakers, but he recognised them as deadly microwave emitters.

He also saw the source of the whirring sound: a security camera.

'We're being watched,' he said.

In another room somewhere in the castle, someone was indeed watching Schofield and Gant on a black-and-white monitor.

The watcher was gazing intently at Schofield, as if he was peering right through Schofield's bandages and sunglasses.

Monsieur Delacroix finished his tests.

He turned to Knight, still captive in the tunnel.

'Captain Knight,' Delacroix said over the intercom. 'Congratulations. Each of your heads has carded a perfect score. You are now $55.8 million richer.'

The Swiss banker pressed his remote and the three steel doors whizzed up into their slots.

Knight stepped into Delacroix's office just as the banker sat down behind his enormous desk and started tapping the keys on his standalone laptop computer.

'So,' Delacroix said, hands poised over the keyboard. 'To which account would you like me to wire the bounty? Am I to assume you are still banking with Alan Gemes in Geneva?'

Knight's eyes were glued to Delacroix's computer.

'Yes,' he said as he hit the 'transmit' button on the Palm Pilot in his pocket.

Instantly, the Pilot and Delacroix's computer began communicating.

In the stone-walled ante-room, Schofield saw his Palm Pilot spring to life.

Data whizzed up the screen at dizzying speed. Documents filled with names, numbers, diagrams:

Source

Delivery Sys•

lii-H

Origin

Target

Time

Talbot

Shahab-S

TN7t>

35702.10 5001.00

00001.bS 5231-10

1145

Shahab-S

TN7b

35702.TO 5001-00

00420-02 4100-25

1145

Shahab-S

TN7b

35702.10 5001.00

01312.15 53SA.75

1145

Ambrose

Shahab-S

TN7b

26743-05 4104-55

2fl?43.1fl 4104-b4

1200

Schofield saw the last document, recognised it.

The bounty list.

The Pilot continued to download other documents. Careful to keep it concealed, Schofield clicked on the list, opening it.

This list was slightly different to the one he had taken from the leader of Executive Solutions, Cedric Wexley, in Siberia.

Some of the names on it had been shaded in. The full document

The dead, Schofield thought with a chill. It's a list of the targets who have already been eliminated.

And verified as dead.

Schofield could have added Ashcroft and Weitzman to that list— Ashcroft had been beheaded in Afghanistan by the Spetsnaz bounty hunters, the Skorpions, and Weitzman had been killed on the cargo plane.

Which meant that, at the very best, only five of the original 15 names remained alive: Christie, Oliphant, Rosenthal, Zemir and Schofield himself.

Schofield frowned.

Something bothered him about this list, something he couldn't quite put his finger on . . .

Then he glimpsed the word 'ASSESSOR' on one of the other documents.

He retrieved it.

It was an email:

SUBJECT: PAYMENT OF ASSESSOR'S COMMISSION

PAYMENT OF THE ASSESSOR'S COMMISSION WILL BE MADE BY INTERNAL ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER WITHIN AGM-SUISSE FROM ASTRAL-66 PTY LTD'S PRIVATE ACCOUNT (NO. 437-666-21) IN THE AMOUNT OF US$3.2 MILLION (THREE POINT TWO MILLION US DOLLARS) PER ASSESSMENT.

THE ASSESSOR IS TO BE M. JEAN-PIERRE DELACROIX OF AGM-SUISSE.

Schofield gazed at the words.

'ASTRAL-66 PTY LTD.'

That was where the money was coming from. Whatever it was, Astral-66 was paying for this bounty hunt—

'Good afternoon,' a pleasant voice said.

Schofield and Gant looked up.

A very handsome young man stood at the base of the stone stairs that led up to the garage. He was in his late thirties and clad in designer jeans and a Ralph Lauren shirt which he wore open over a T-shirt in the manner of the very wealthy. Schofield immediately noticed his eyes: one blue, one brown.

'Welcome to my castle,' the handsome young man smiled. His smile seemed somehow dangerous. 'And who might you be?'

'Colton. Tom Colton,' Schofield lied. 'This is Jane Watson. We're with Aloysius Knight, seeing Monsieur Delacroix.'

'Oh, I see . . .' the handsome man said.

He extended his hand.

'Killian. Jonathan Killian. You both look like you've seen a fair

amount of action today. May I get you a drink, or something to eat? Or perhaps my personal physician could give you some clean bandages for your wounds.'

Schofield shot a glance down the tunnel, searching for Knight.

'Please . . .' Killian guided them up the stairs. Not wanting to attract unnecessary attention, they followed him.

'I've seen you before,' Schofield said as they walked up the stone stairway. 'On TV . . .'

'I do make the odd appearance from time to time.'

'Africa,' Schofield said. 'You were in Africa. Last year. Opening factories. Food factories. In Nigeria . . .'

This was all true. Schofield recalled the images from the news— footage of this Killian fellow shaking hands with smiling African leaders amid crowds of happy workers.

They came up into the classic car garage.

'You've a good memory,' Killian said. 'I also went to Eritrea, Chad, Angola and Libya, opening new food processing plants. Although many don't know it yet, the future of the world lies in Africa.'

'I like your car collection,' Gant said.

'Toys,' Killian replied. 'Mere toys.'

He guided them into a corridor branching off the garage. It had dark polished floorboards and pristine white walls.

'But then I enjoy playing with toys,' Killian said. 'Much as I enjoy playing with people. I like to see their reactions to stressful situations.'

He stopped in front of a large wooden door. Schofield heard laughter coming from behind it. Raucous male laughter. It sounded like a party was going on in there.

'Stressful situations?' Schofield said. 'What do you mean by that?'

'Well,' Killian said, 'take for instance the average Westerner's inability to comprehend the Islamic suicide bomber. Westerners are taught since birth to fight "fair": the French duel at ten paces, English knights jousting, American gunslingers facing off on a Wild

West street. In the Western world, fighting is fair because it is presumed that both parties actually want to win a given battle.'

'But the suicide bomber doesn't think that way,' Schofield said.

'That's right,' Killian said. 'He doesn't want to win the battle, because the battle to a suicide bomber is meaningless. He wants to win a far grander war, a psychological war in which the man who dies against his will—in a state of distress and terror and fear— loses, while he who dies when he is spiritually and emotionally ready, wins.

'As such, a Westerner faced with a suicide bomber goes to pieces. Believe me, I have seen this. Just as I have seen people's reactions to other stressful situations: criminals in the electric chair, a person in water confronted by sharks. Oh, to be sure, I love to observe the look of pure horror that crosses a man's face when he realises that he is, without doubt, going to die.'

With that, Killian pushed open the door—

—at the same moment that something dawned on Schofield:

His problem with the master list.

On the master bounty list, McCabe and Farrell's names had been shaded in.

McCabe and Farrell, who had died in Siberia that morning, had been officially listed as dead.

And paid for.

Which meant. . .

The great door swung open—

—and Schofield and Gant were" met with the sight of a dining room filled with the members of Executive Solutions, twenty of them, eating and drinking and smoking. At the head of the table, his broken nose wrapped in a fresh dressing, sat Cedric Wexley.

Schofield's face fell.

'And that,' Killian said, 'is the look I'm talking about.' The billionaire offered Schofield a thin, joyless smile. 'Welcome to my castle . . . Captain Schofield.'

Schofield and Gant ran.

Ran for all they were worth.

They bolted away from the dining room, dashed down the splendid corridor, Jonathan Killian's scornful laughter chasing them all the way.

The ExSol men were out of their seats in seconds, grabbing their weapons, the sight of another $18.6 million too good to resist.

Killian let them hustle past him, enjoying the show.

Schofield and Gant burst into the classic car garage.

'Damn. So many choices,' Schofield said, ripping off his bandages and gazing at the multi-million-dollar selection of cars before him.

Gant looked over her shoulder, saw the Executive Solutions mercenaries thundering down the hallway in pursuit. 'You've got about ten seconds to choose the fastest one, buster.'

Schofield eyed the Porsche GT-2. Silver and low, with an open targa top, it was an absolute beast of a car.

'Nah, it just isn't me,' he said, leaping instead toward the equally-fast rally car beside it—an electric blue turbo-charged Subaru WRX.

Nine seconds later, the men of ExSol burst into the garage.

They got there just in time to see the WRX blasting down the length of the showroom, already doing sixty.

At the far end of the showroom, the garage's external door was opening—thanks to Libby Gant standing at the controls.

The ExSol men opened fire.

Schofield stopped the rally car on a dime, right next to Gant.

'Get in!'

'What about Knight?'

'I'm sure he'll understand!'

Gant dived in through the Subaru's passenger window, just as the garage door opened fully to reveal the castle's sundrenched internal courtyard . . .

. . . and the surprised face of Major Dmitri Zamanov.

Accompanied by six of his Skorpions, and holding a medical transport box in his hands.

A pair of Russian Mi-34 high-manoeuvre helicopters stood in the gravel courtyard behind the Spetsnaz commandos, their rotor blades still turning.

'Oh, man,' Schofield breathed. 'Could this get any worse?'

Down in Monsieur Delacroix's office, Aloysius Knight spun at the sound of gunfire up in the garage.

He looked for Schofield in the ante-room at the other end of the tunnel.

Not there.

'Damn it,' he growled, 'can't this guy stay out of trouble for more than five minutes?'

He bolted out of the office.

Monsieur Delacroix didn't even bother to look up.

Schofield's turbo-charged WRX stood before Zamanov in the entry to the garage.

The two men locked eyes.

The look of surprise on Zamanov's face quickly transformed into one of sheer hatred.

'Floor it!' Gant yelled, breaking the spell.

Bam. Schofield hit the gas pedal.

The rally car shot off the mark, exploding through the doorway, scattering the Skorpions as they dived out of the way.

The WRX zoomed across the castle's courtyard, kicking up gravel, before it shot like a rocket out through the giant portcullis and sped across the drawbridge, heading for the mainland.

Dmitri Zamanov clambered to his feet just as shoom.'-shoom!-shooml-shoom.'-shoom! five more cars whipped past him, blasting out of the garage after the WRX. There was a red Ferrari, a silver Porsche GT-2, and three yellow Peugeot rally cars with 'axon' sponsorship logos on their sides.

ExSol.

In hot pursuit.

'Fuck!' Zamanov yelled. 'It's him! It's Schofield! Go! Go, go, go! Catch him and bring him to me! Before Delacroix gets his head, I am going to skin him alive!'

Four of the Skorpions immediately leapt to their feet and dashed for their two choppers, leaving Zamanov and two others at the castle with their head.

The chase was on.

WHITMORE AIRFIELD (ABANDONED) 40 MILES WEST OF LONDON 1230 HOURS LOCAL TIME (1330 HOURS IN FRANCE')

Thirty minutes earlier—at the time Schofield, Gant and Knight had been arriving at the Forteresse de Valois—Book II and Mother had been landing their stolen Lynx helicopter at the abandoned airfield where Rufus had dropped them off.

They didn't expect to find Rufus still there. He'd said that after unloading them, he would head to France to catch up with Knight.

But when they landed, they saw the Black Raven parked inside an old hangar, surrounded by undercover police cars with strobe lights on their roofs.

Rufus stood sadly by his plane, helpless, covered by six trenchcoat-wearing undercover types and a platoon of heavily-armed Royal Marines.

Mother and Book were grabbed as soon as they landed.

One of the trenchcoat-wearing men approached them. He was young, clean-cut, and he held a cellphone in his hand as if he was halfway through a call.

When he spoke his accent was American.

'Sergeants Newman and Riley? My name is Scott Moseley, US State Department, London Office. We understand you're helping

'Even though some areas in France, including Brittany, are significantly west of London, the whole of France adheres to a single time zone, one hour ahead of England.

Captain Shane M. Schofield of the United States Marine Corps in his efforts to avoid liquidation in an international bounty hunt. Is that correct?'

Book and Mother blanched.

'Uh, yeah . . . that's right,' Book II said.

'The United States Government has become aware of the existence of this bounty hunt. From the information available to us at this time, we have assessed the presumed reason for it and have come to the conclusion that the issue of keeping Captain Schofield alive is one of supreme national importance. Do you know where he is?'

'We might,' Mother said.

'So what's this all about then?' Book II asked. 'Tell us the grand conspiracy.'

Scott Moseley's face reddened. 'I don't personally know the details,' he said.

'Oh, come on,' Book II groaned, 'you've gotta give us more than that.'

'Please,' Moseley said. 'I'm just the messenger here. I don't have the clearance to know the full story. But believe me, I'm not here to hinder your efforts. All I have been told is this: the person or persons behind this bounty hunt have the capacity and perhaps the desire to destroy the United States of America. That is all I've been told. Beyond that, I know nothing.

'What I do know is this: I am here at the direct orders of the President of the United States and my orders are these: to help you. In any way I can. Anywhere you want to go. Anything you need to help Captain Schofield stay alive, I am authorised to give you. If you want weapons, they're yours. If you need money, I have it. Hell, if you want Air Force One to take you anywhere in the world, it is at your disposal.'

'Cool . . .' Mother breathed.

'How do we know we can trust you?' Book II said.

Scott Moseley handed Book his cellphone.

'Who's there?' Book said into it.

'Sergeant Riley?' a firm voice at the other end said. Book II recognised it instantly—and froze.

He'd met the owner of that voice before, during the mayhem at Area 7.

It was the voice of the President of the United States.

This was real.

'Sergeant Riley,' the President said. 'The full resources of the United States Government are entirely at your command. Anything you need, just tell Undersecretary Moseley. You have to keep Shane Schofield alive. Now I have to go.'

Then he hung up.

'Right; Book II whistled.

'So,' Scott Moseley said. 'What do you need?'

Mother and Book exchanged a look.

'You go,' Book said. 'Save the Scarecrow. I'm going to find out what this is all about.'

'Ten-four,' Mother said.

She turned quickly, pointing at Rufus, but addressing Moseley. 'I need him. And his plane, fully fuelled. Plus free passage out of England. We know where the Scarecrow is and we have to get to him fast.'

'1 can arrange the fastest possible—' Moseley said.

'Yeah, but I don't trust you yet,' Mother growled. 'Rufus, I trust. And he's just as fast as anyone else.'

'Okay. Done.' Scott Moseley nodded to one of his men. 'Fuel the plane. Clear the skies:'

Moseley turned to Book. 'What about you?'

But Book wasn't finished with Mother. 'Hey, Mother. Good luck. Save him.'

'I'll do my best,' Mother said. Then she dashed off to join Rufus at the Sukhoi. After a few minutes, its tanks replenished, the Raven rose into the sky and blasted off into the distance, afterburners blazing.

Only when it was gone did Book II turn to face Scott Moseley. i need a video player,' he said.

Schofield's rally car boomed along the coast of north-western France.

The road leading away from the Forteresse de Valois was known as La Grande Rue de la Mer—the Great Ocean Road.

Carved into the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, it was a spectacular coastal highway, a twisting turning blacktop that featured low concrete guard-fences perched over sheer 400-foot drops, treacherous blind corners and the occasional tunnel that carved through rocky outcroppings.

In truth, since the fifteen miles of land surrounding the Forteresse de Valois belonged to Jonathan Killian, it was actually a private road. At two points along its length, side-roads branched off it—one headed upward, to Killian's private airstrip, while a second by-road plunged steeply downward, plummeting to the water's edge, providing access to an enormous boatshed.

Schofield's electric blue WRX ripped along the spectacular ocean road at 180 kilometres per hour. Its engine didn't so much roar as whizz, its turbocharger engaged. With its powerful all-wheel-drive system, the rally car was perfect for the Great Ocean Road's short tight bends.

Behind it, moving equally fast, were the five supercars of ExSol— the Porsche, the Ferrari and the three Peugeots—all in hot pursuit.

'Knight!' Schofield called into his throat-mike. 'You out there? We're ... ah ... in a little trouble here.'

'I'm on my way; came the calm reply.

At that same moment, a mile behind Schofield's WRX—and a long way behind the chase—one final car came shooting out of the Forteresse de Valois and whipped across its drawbridge.

It was a Lamborghini Diablo.

V-12. Rear spoiler. Super low. Supercool. Superfast.

And painted black, of course.

Schofield keyed his satellite radio system.

'Book! Mother! Do you read me?'

Mother's voice answered him immediately. 'I'm here, Scarecrow.''

'We're no longer at the castle,' Schofield said. 'We're on the road leading away from it. Heading north.'

'What happened'?'

'Started out okay, but then just about every bad guy in the world arrived.'

'Have you destroyed everything yet?

'Not yet, but I'm thinking about it. Are you on the way?'

'Almost there. I'm with Rufus in the Raven. Book stayed in London to find out more about this hunt. I'm about thirty minutes away from you.'

'Thirty minutes,' Schofield said grimly. 'I'm not sure we're gonna last that long.'

'You have to, Scarecrow, because I've got a lot to tell you.'

'Executive summary. Twenty-five words or less,' Schofield said.

'The US Government knows about the bounty hunt and they're throwing everything behind keeping you alive. You just became an endangered species. So get your ass to US soil. An embassy, a consulate. Anything.'

Schofield threw the WRX round a tight bend—and was suddenly presented with a vista of the road ahead of him.

The Great Ocean Road stretched away into the distance, twisting and turning like a flat black ribbon, hugging the coastal cliffs for miles.

'The US Government wants to help me?' Schofield said. 'In my

experience, the US Government only looks after the US Government.'

'Uh, Scarecrow . . .' Gant said, interrupting. 'We have a problem.'

'What?' Schofield snapped to look forward. 'Damn. ExSol must have called ahead . . .'

Half a mile in front of them the Ocean Road forked, with a side-road branching off it to the right, heading up the cliff-face. It was the side-road that led up to the airstrip, and right now two big semi-trailer rigs—minus their long trailers—were rushing down its steep slope at considerable speed, rumbling toward Schofield and Gant's fleeing car.

Hovering in the air above the two rigs was a sleek Bell Jet Ranger helicopter with 'axon CORP' written on its flanks, also coming from the direction of the airfield.

ExSol has radioed ahead, Schofield thought, and sent everyone they could from the airfield.

'Those rigs are coming straight for us!' Gant said.

'No,' Schofield said. 'They're not going to ram us. They're going to block the road.'

Sure enough, the two semi-trailer rigs arrived at the junction of the airstrip road and the Great Ocean Road and promptly turned sideways, skidding to simultaneous halts, splaying their combined bulk across the road.

Blocking it completely.

'Mother,' Schofield said into his radio. 'We have to go. Please get here as soon as you can.'

The WRX whipped along the winding cliff-side road, rapidly approaching the two semi-trailer rigs.

Then, two hundred yards short of the road block, Schofield hit the brakes and the WRX squealed to a stop in the middle of the road.

A stand-off.

Two rigs. One rally car.

Schofield checked his rear-view mirror—the gang of five ExSol supercars was shooting along the Ocean Road behind him.

Beyond the ExSol cars loomed the giant stone castle, dark and sombre, before suddenly two helicopters dropped in front of the fortress, blasting through the air in pursuit as well.

Zamanov's two Skorpion Mi-34 choppers.

'Between a rock and a hard place,' Schofield said.

'A very hard place,' Gant said.

Schofield whirled back to face the road in front of him.

His eyes swept the scene—two rigs, the Axon helicopter, sheer rock wall to the right, 400-foot drop to the left, protected by a low concrete fence.

The fence, he thought.

'Pursuit cars are almost on us . . .' Gant warned.

But Schofield was still gazing at the concrete guard-rail fence. The Axon chopper hovered just out from it, almost at road level.

'We can do that,' he said aloud, his eyes narrowing.

'Do what}' Gant turned, alarmed.

'Hang on.'

Schofield slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.

The WRX roared off the mark, racing toward the rigs.

The rally car picked up speed fast, all four of its wheels giving power, its turbocharger screaming—tzzzzzzzzz!

60 kilometres an hour became 80 . . .

100 .. .

120 .. .

The WRX rushed toward the road block.

The two drivers of the rigs—ExSol men who had been waiting up at the airfield—swapped looks. What was this guy doing?

And then, very suddenly, Schofield cut left . . . bringing the rally car close to the concrete guard-rail fence.

Screeeeeeech!

The WRX hit the fence, its left-side wheels scraping against the concrete barrier, pressing against it, pinching against it, causing the whole left-hand side of the car to lift a little off the road . . .

. . . before abruptly—ka-whump!—the WRX mounted the fence!

Its left-hand wheels lifted clear off the asphalt, now riding along the top of the fence, so that the car was travelling at a 45-degree angle.

Schofield and Gant's world tilted sideways.

'There's still not enough room!' Gant yelled, pointing at the rig parked closest to the fence.

She was right.

'I'm not done yet!' Schofield yelled.

And with that he yanked the steering wheel hard to the right.

The response was instantaneous.

The WRX lurched sideways, its front half going right, its tail section going left—swinging dangerously out toward the ocean until finally its tail section slid . . .

. . . off the edge of the concrete guard-rail.

The WRX's rear wheels now hung 400 feet above the ocean!

But the rally car was still moving fast, still skidding wildly forward, its underside sliding along the top of the guard-rail fence—its front tyres hanging over the landward side of the fence, its rear wheels hanging above the ocean—so that now none of its wheels was touching the ground.

'Ahhhhhhhr Gant yelled.

The WRX slid laterally along the guard-rail, its weight almost perfectly balanced, its underside scraping and shrieking and kicking up a firestorm of sparks until, to the amazement of the rig drivers, it slid right past their road block, squeezing through the gap between the outermost rig and the fence, a gap that until now had been too narrow for a car to pass through.

But then the inevitable happened.

With a fraction more of its weight hanging over the ocean side of the fence, the car—despite its forward momentum—began to tilt backwards.

'We're going to drop!' Gant shouted.

'No we're not,' Schofield said calmly.

He was right.

For just at that moment, the tail of the sliding car smacked at tremendous speed against the nose of the Axon chopper hovering just out from the fence.

The rear section of the car bounced off the chopper's nose at speed—ricocheting off it like a pinball—the impact powerful enough to punch the sliding WRX back over the fence and back onto the road ... on the other side of the road block.

Just as Schofield had planned.

The WRX's tyres caught bitumen again, regained their traction, and the rally car shot off down the road once more.

Not a moment too soon.

Because a second later, the two rigs backed up, allowing the five ExSol pursuit cars to shoot between them like bullets out of a gun and catch up to Schofield's car.

The ExSol cars were all over them.

The two European sports cars that ExSol had 'borrowed' from Jonathan Killian—the red Ferrari and the silver Porsche, both low and sleek and brutally fast—were right on Schofield's tail.

The two mercenaries inside the Porsche made full use of its open-air targa roof—it allowed one man to stand up and fire at Schofield's WRX. The gunman in the Ferrari had to lean out of its passenger window.

As the rear window of the WRX shattered under a hail of gunfire, Gant turned to Schofield.

'Can I ask you a question!' she yelled.

'Sure!'

'Is there, like, some secret school where they teach you stuff like that? Death-defying driving school?'

'Actually, they call it "Offensive Driving",' Schofield said, glancing over his shoulder. 'It was a special course at Quantico given by a retired Gunnery Sergeant named Kris Hankison. Hank left the Marines in '91 and became a stunt driver in Hollywood. Makes a bundle. But every second year, as a kind of payback to the Corps, he offers the course to Marines assigned to Marine Security Guard Battalion. I got invited last year. You think that was good, you wouldn't believe what Hank can do on four wheels—'

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr!

A line of bullets razed the road beside Schofield's WRX, chewing up the bitumen, smacking against his driver's door. A

split-second later one of the nimble Skorpion Mi-34 choppers roared by overhead.

But then the road bent right, hugging the cliff-face—and the chopper continued straight while the WRX whipped out of its line of fire just as—

SLAM!

—a colossal gout of earth exploded out from the rock wall on the right-hand side of the road, sending a starburst of dirt spraying out spectacularly behind the speeding rally car.

'What the—?' Schofield spun, searching for the source of the massive explosion.

And he found it.

'Oh, this cannot be happening . . .' he breathed.

He saw a warship powering in toward the coast, separating itself from a larger group of naval vessels on the horizon.

It was a French Tourville-class destroyer and its powerful 3.9-inch forward-mounted guns were firing, each shot accompanied by a belch of smoke and a noise so loud that it reverberated right through one's chest: Boom! Boom! Boom!

Then a second later . . .

SLAM!

SLAM!

SLAM!

The shells rammed into the cliff-side roadway, raining dirt all around Schofield's speeding car. Explosions of asphalt and dirt flew high into the air, leaving lethal craters in their wake—craters that took up nearly half the roadway.

After the first shellburst hit, Schofield's WRX screamed over the edge of its crater, blasting through the dustcloud above it and, looking down, Schofield saw that the shell had gouged a semi-circular hole in the Ocean Road that led all the way down to the sea.

The other shells rained down on the Great Ocean Road, striking it left and right. Schofield responded by flinging the rally car right and left, avoiding the newly-created craters by centimetres.

The Axon helicopter behind him banked and swayed, also trying to avoid the destroyer's deadly rain.

But the two more nimble Skorpion Mi-34 choppers didn't care, they just continued to pursue Schofield with a vengeance, their side-mounted cannons shredding the road.

And then Schofield's WRX rounded a bend and zoomed into a cliff-side tunnel and the two Russian choppers rose quickly, swooping over the jagged cliffs, and suddenly Schofield and Gant were enveloped by silence.

Not for long.

Into the tunnel behind them rushed the two ExSol sports cars— the Ferrari and the Porsche—their engines roaring, each car's gunner firing at the fleeing WRX.

Schofield swung left^ toward the ocean side of the tunnel and abruptly discovered that this tunnel wasn't technically a tunnel— precisely because its entire seaward wall wasn't a wall at all. It was a series of thin columns that rushed by in a fluttering blur, allowing drivers to take in the view as they passed through the tunnel.

Schofield caught this information just as he saw a Skorpion chopper appear outside the blurring line of pillars and start firing into the exposed tunnel!

Bullets slammed into the road, his car, and against the far wall.

Schofield weaved right, away from the barrage, pressed his WRX up against the right-hand wall of the curving tunnel, losing speed . . .

. . . and in a second the pursuit cars were on him, the Porsche ramming into his rear bumper, the Ferrari boxing him in on the left, their two ExSol shooter-passengers letting fly.

Automatic gunfire ripped into the WRX.

Schofield's side window shattered—

—just as a deadly shape appeared at the end of the tunnel.

The second Skorpion Mi-34 chopper, rising above the roadway, its side-mounted missile pods poised and ready to fire.

'We're dead,' Schofield said matter-of-factly.

A flare of yellow backblast issued out from the back of one of

the chopper's missile pods just as without warning the chopper itself exploded in mid-air—hit by a shell from the French destroyer off the coast. The Mi-34's missile exploded too, having never cleared its pod.

The massive naval shell hit the Skorpion helicopter so hard that the chopper was hurled against the edge of the roadway, where it crumpled like an aluminium can before falling 400 feet straight down. It hadn't been a deliberate strike, Schofield felt. The chopper had just got in the way.

'Close,' Gant said.

'Just a little,' he said as their car blasted out of the tunnel, racing past the spot where the Mi-34 had fallen, still boxed in against the rock wall by the two ExSol cars.

The three cars whipped along a short stretch of road. But then Schofield saw another tunnel yawning before them, 200 yards awa—

Bang!

The Ferrari rammed into the WRX's left side, forcing it closer to the rock wall.

Schofield grappled with his steering wheel.

The Porsche, meanwhile, pushed up against his rear bumper.

At first Schofield didn't know why they had done this, then he looked forward and saw that the arched entrance to the upcoming tunnel was not flush against the rock wall—it jutted out about six feet.

And so long as the Ferrari and the Porsche kept Schofield and Gant's car pressed up against the rock wall and travelling forward, the WRX would slam right into the protruding archway.

Schofield guessed they had about five seconds.

'This is very bad . . .' Gant said.

'I know, I know,' Schofield said.

Four seconds .. .

The three cars raced in formation along the narrow cliff-side roadway.

Three seconds . . .

The Ferrari pushed them up against the rocky wall on their right. The WRX's right wheels lifted slightly, rubbing against the hard stone wall. But the Porsche behind it kept pushing it forward fast.

'Please do something,' Gant said.

Two seconds . . .

The stone archway of the tunnel rushed toward them.

'Okay . . .' Schofield said. 'You want to play nasty? Let's play nasty.'

One . . .

Then, just as the WRX was about to slam at tremendous speed into the arched entrance of the tunnel, Schofield allowed the Ferrari to push him closer to the wall, driving him further up it, making the WRX rise up to about 60 degrees, its right-hand wheels riding clear up onto the wall itself.

And then time slowed and Schofield did the impossible.

He let the WRX ride so high up the rocky wall that, five metres short of the tunnel's archway, the electric blue rally car went too high . . . and rolled ... to the left, turning completely upside down ... so that it landed, on its roof. . . on the roof of the low-slung Ferrari travelling beside it.

And so, for a brief instant in time, the WRX and the Ferrari were travelling rooftop-to-rooftop, the WRX's wheels pointing skyward, its roof resting momentarily on the roof of the lower red Ferrari!

And then time sped up again and the WRX rolled off the Ferrari, bouncing back down to earth, now safely on the ocean side of the scarlet red supercar, and blasted into the tunnel with the Ferrari on its right.

The Porsche, unfortunately, had no options.

Travelling right behind Schofield it had intended to pull away at the last moment. Its driver, however, had never imagined that Schofield might roll over the top of the Ferrari. When Schofield did so, the Porsche driver stared at his feat for a split second too long.

As such, it was the Porsche that hit the archway at colossal speed. Instant fireball.

The Ferrari was only slightly more fortunate.

Having rolled over the top of it, Schofield now started ramming it into the wall of the tunnel. He did a better job than they had, cutting across the bow of the Ferrari, causing it to jackknife against the tunnel's right-hand wall and flip and tumble—spinning over and over like a toy flung by a child—bouncing down the confined space of the tunnel, skimming off its walls, before it stopped on its roof, wrecked and crumpled, its occupants deader than disco.

.

Schofield and Gant blasted out of the tunnel, just as the second Skorpion Mi-34 attack chopper swooped in alongside them, flying parallel to the cliff-side roadway with a sniper in its right-side doorway firing viciously.

One thing was clear—while Schofield was driving as fast as he could, the nimble chopper was merely cruising.

'Fox!' Schofield called. 'We have to get rid of that chopper! Nail that sniper!'

'Gladly,' Gant said. 'Lean back!'

Schofield did so as Gant raised her Desert Eagle pistol and fired it across his body, out through his window at the chopper.

Two shots. Both hit their mark.

And the sniper dropped . . . out of the chopper's door.

But he was buckled to a safety rope, so after about 40 feet of falling, his rope snapped taut and his fall abruptly stopped.

'Thanks, honey babe!' Schofield called, watching the suspended figure when suddenly Gant shouted, 'Scarecrow! Look out! Another fork!'

He snapped forward and saw a new fork in the road, this one with a side-road branching left and downward, while the Ocean Road continued flat to the right.

Left or right, he thought. Pick a side.

A shellburst from the incoming French destroyer hit the right-hand road.

Left it is.

He swung the car left, tyres squealing, and careered down the steeply sloping side-road.

The chopper followed.

Half a mile behind Schofield, Aloysius Knight was shooting along the Great Ocean Road in his shiny black Lamborghini Diablo.

The two semi-trailer rigs that had formed the road block before now rumbled along directly in front of him, while beyond them, he saw the three yellow Axon-sponsored Peugeots that ExSol had taken from the castle.

And about fifty yards beyond the Peugeots, he saw Schofield's blue WRX reach a fork in the road, hounded by the remaining Skorpion Mi-34 helicopter.

Knight stole a glance left at the destroyer out on the ocean, just as two bird-like shadows shot through the air over the warship, heading directly for the coastal road.

They looked decidedly like fighter jets, originating from the French aircraft carrier on the horizon.

Uh-oh, Knight thought.

He faced forward again just in time to see Schofield's car cut left at the fork in the road, disappearing down a side-road set into the cliff-face.

At which point, he saw Schofield's pursuers do a strange thing.

They split up.

Only one of the Axon Peugeots followed Schofield down the side-road. The other two went right, following the Ocean Road, skirting a newly-formed crater in the roadway.

Then the two trailer rigs came to the fork and went left, charging down the hill after Schofield.

Co-ordinated movement, Knight thought. They've got a plan.

And then Knight himself reached the fork and without any hesitation, he gunned the Lamborghini down the left-hand roadway, shooting down the hill after Schofield.

• * *

Schofield's WRX whizzed down the steep boathouse road, burning around blind corners, skidding around tight bends.

As it sped along, a storm of bullets hammered its flanks and the rock walls all around it—it was still under heavy fire from the Mi-34 chopper flying low through the air behind it, firing at the WRX with its side-mounted machine-guns.

The chopper's dead sniper still hung limply from its open side door, his body swaying wildly, occasionally bouncing on the road, leaving blood on the asphalt.

More fire came from the yellow Peugeot rally car that had followed Schofield down the boathouse road, from the shooter poking out of its passenger-side window with a Steyr.

Two hundred yards behind this speeding gun battle, Knight was also driving hard.

His Lamborghini easily hauled in the two semi-trailer rigs, and he whizzed past them in a fluid S-shaped move before they even knew he was there.

Knight came up behind the yellow Peugeot, tried to get around it on the right, but the Peugeot blocked him. Tried left and gunned it hard—very hard—and in a daring move, overtook the Peugeot on the ocean side of the road.

The Lamborghini shot past the yellow rally car, the driver of the Peugeot looking left just in time to see the Diablo rocket by in a blur of black—at the same time as an M-67 grenade came lobbing in through his open driver's window.

The Lamborghini shot down the road as the Peugeot erupted in a ball of flames. The flaming Peugeot promptly missed the next curve and blasted right through the guard-rail fence there and fell— a long, slow drop that ended in the Atlantic Ocean far, far below.

Knight's Lamborghini was now twenty yards behind Schofield's WRX and the Mi-34 chopper above it.

Knight saw that Schofield was now racing down a long straight stretch of road that ended at a tunnel at the very base of this side-road—a tunnel that gave access to an enormous boatshed.

'Schofield!' Knight called into his radio. 'Don't shoot behind you, okay! The Lamborghini is me!'

'The Lamborghini. Why doesn't that surprise me,' said Schofield's voice. 'Nice of you to join us. Anything you can do about this damn helicopter?'

Knight took in the scene: saw Schofield's blue WRX up ahead, rapidly approaching the tunnel—saw the underbelly of the Mi-34 directly above and behind the WRX, saw the swaying Russian sniper dangling from it, banging and bouncing on the road right in front of his speeding Diablo.

Chopper—sniper—tunnel, he thought.

All he needed was an escape vehicle.

Knight glanced at his rear-view mirror: it was filled by the grille of the first rig—it was a Mack rig, with a distinctive long-nosed bonnet—rumbling down the road behind him.

Thank you very much.

'Hang on, Schofield. I've got this sucker.'

He powered forward, bringing the Lamborghini under the Mi-34 chopper, out of its sight. Then with a rather morbid bang, he charged his car right into the dangling sniper's corpse, so that the body bounced up onto his bonnet and then dropped in through the Diablo's open targa roof.

Knight whipped out a pair of handcuffs—the bounty hunter's most valuable tool—and cuffed the dead sniper's safety harness to the steering wheel of his Lamborghini.

He then hit the cruise control and jumped out of his seat, climbing up and out through the targa roof.

At that moment, the big Mack rig caught up with him and rammed into the back of the Lamborghini.

But Knight was ready for the impact, and as the two vehicles touched, he made his move—dashing across the flat rear section of the Lamborghini, firing his pistol into the windshield of the Mack

as he did so, killing its driver, and then leaping from the rear of the Lamborghini onto the long nose of the Mack!

Within seconds, he was through the rig's shattered windscreen and in its driver's seat, in control of the big rig—and with a front row seat for what was about to happen.

Schofield's WRX shot into the tunnel at the base of the hill.

The Skorpion chopper—knowing it had to go over the tunnel and recapture Schofield on the other side—lifted, or rather, tried to lift.

But the lightweight Mi-34 chopper couldn't rise, owing to the weight of the Lamborghini now anchored to it.

The Skorpion pilot realised the implications of this a second too late.

The driverless Lamborghini rushed into the tunnel's arched entrance, while the chopper rushed over it, and to the pilot's horror, the vertical rope connecting the two vehicles went taut and . . . folded ... as it hit the archway.

The Skorpion chopper and the Lamborghini came together like a pair of scissor blades.

The Diablo was lifted completely off the ground, flying upwards, crunching into the ceiling of the tunnel, crumpling in an instant, bringing down a rain of tiles as it did so.

For its part, the Mi-34 was yanked downward by the rope, and it slammed down into the rocks above the tunnel and exploded in a shower of fire and rubble.

Knight shot under it all—at the wheel of the Mack rig—roaring into the tunnel, shooting past the fiery remains of his discarded Lamborghini.

Up ahead, Schofield blasted out the other end of the same tunnel, started zooming up the hill.

He rounded a corner, saw the upwardly-sloping road ahead— lots of sweeping bends and blind corners, and at the top of the road, the two other yellow Peugeots that had taken the high road.

They'd gone ahead, taking the shorter route, and doubled back, so that now they were shooting down this road, on a collision course with him and Gant.

Schofield's WRX powered up the hill, now trailed by only two vehicles, the two rigs: Knight's long-nosed Mack and the second rig, a snub-nosed Kenworth.

But then the WRX swept around a blind corner and was abruptly confronted by another unexpected sight:

A fighter jet had swung into a hover just out from the bend, its nose pointed menacingly downward, an arsenal of missiles hanging from its-wings.

Schofield recognised it instantly as a Dassault Mirage 2000NTI, the French equivalent of the Harrier jump-jet. Converted from the regular Mirage 2000N, the 'II' was a hover-capable fighter stationed only on France's newest and biggest aircraft carriers. It looked a lot like a Harrier, stocky and hunchbacked, with semi-circular air intakes on either side of a two-man cockpit.

The Mirage's guns erupted and a swarm of laser-like tracer bullets tore into the rock walls above Schofield's car.

Schofield floored it, whipping past the hovering plane as it

wheeled around heavily in the air, its bullet-storm chasing him, but he shot around another bend just as some of its tracers sheared off his rear bumper.

'Here, quickly, take the wheel,' Schofield said to Gant.

She slipped over into the driver's seat while he dipped into a pocket on his combat webbing and removed some bullets— Knight's orange-banded rounds. Bull-stoppers.

'People, no. Fighter planes, yes,' he said as he loaded the orange bullets into his Desert Eagle's magazine, finishing at the same time as a second Mirage swooped down over the road right in front of the WRX, its guns blazing.

But now, Schofield was ready to respond.

He lifted himself out the passenger window, sat on its sill, and pointed his Desert Eagle dead ahead.

The Mirage's bullets tore up the road in front of the WRX just as Schofield started firing repeatedly at the hovering plane— blam!-blam!-blam!-blam'.-blam!-blam!-blam'.-blant!-blam!—hitting it in both of its air intakes at the same time as some of the fighter's tracers sizzled in through the windscreen of his WRX.

Schofield's gas-expanding bullets did their job.

As the first bullets hit the Mirage's intake fans, their internal gases blasted outward, tearing the fans' blades to pieces, warping them, causing them to jam and the plane to stall and also to allow the following bullets to race fully into the jet engines themselves and detonate within the plane's highly volatile fuel injection chambers.

Two small bullets was all it took to destroy a $600 million warplane.

Its engines failing, the Mirage wheeled wildly around in the sky, spraying tracer bullets everywhere, before—boom!—the French fighter blasted out into a thousand pieces, showering liquid fire, before it just dropped out of the sky, landing in a crumpled smoking heap on the road 50 yards in front of the speeding WRX.

Schofield dropped back inside the passenger window . . .

... to see Gant slumped against her door, blood gushing from a giant wound to her left shoulder. A two-inch-wide hole could be

seen in the driver's seat behind her, matching the location of her wound.

She'd been hit by one of the Mirage's tracer bullets.

'Oh, no . . .' Schofield breathed. He dived across the seat, hit the brakes.

The WRX squealed to a halt, just short of the wreckage of the Mirage.

'Fox!' Schofield yelled. 'Libby!'

Her eyes opened, heavy-lidded. 'Ow, that hurts . . .' she groaned.

'Come on,' Schofield kicked open the door and lifted her out, carrying her in his arms. Then, into his radio: 'Knight! Where are you!'

'I'm in the first rig. With another one close behind me. Where are—hang on, I see you.''

'Fox has been hit. We need a ride.'

' When I pull up, get in fast, 'cause that other rig is going to be right on my ass.''

And then Schofield saw Knight: saw the long-nosed Mack rig rumbling up the slope, moving quickly.

With a loud shriek of its brakes, the Mack shuddered to a stop beside the WRX.

Knight threw open the door, and Schofield lifted Gant and himself in. Knight jammed the truck back into gear and hit the gas a bare moment before the snub-nosed Kenworth rig appeared around the bend behind them, coming at full speed, its engine roaring.

- The Mack jounced and bounced over the wreckage of the Mirage fighter strewn across the road, picking up speed. The second rig just barged right through the Mirage's remains before ramming hard into the back of Knight's still-accelerating rig.

Knight, Schofield and Gant were all thrown forward by the impact.

Knight and Schofield turned to each other and said at exactly the same time: 'There are two rally cars coming at us from in front!'

They both paused. Mirror images.

'What happened to her!' Knight said.

'She got shot by a fighter plane,' Schofield said.

'Oh.'

The two trucks charged up the hill, their exhaust stacks belching black smoke.

Then suddenly the two yellow rally cars that had gone ahead came into view, rounding a wide bend right in front of Knight and Schofield's rig, roaring down the same slope—both cars featuring men leaning out their passenger windows, holding AK-47 machine-guns.

They might as well have been firing pea-shooters.

The giant Mack rig blasted right through the left-hand Peugeot, blowing it to smithereens, while the second Axon rally car just fish-tailed out of the way, side-swiping the rock wall on the landward side of the roadway before skidding to a jarring halt, the two rigs rumbling past it.

The Mack reached the top of the hill and rejoined the flatter main road at a fork junction.

The snub-nosed Kenworth was right behind it, closely followed by the last-remaining Peugeot. Rejoining the chase, the rally car leapt up onto the main road a split second before—SLAM!—the entire fork junction erupted in a cloud of dirt, hit by a shell from the ever-present French destroyer.

The two big rigs flew around a bend, the ocean dropping away to their left, when suddenly they were confronted by the yawning entrance to another cliff-side tunnel. This tunnel bent away in a long curve to the right, hugging the cliff-face, and was clearly longer than any of the previous tunnels.

The Mack thundered into the tunnel doing ninety, just as behind it, the Peugeot pulled alongside the Kenworth and the gunman in the rally car's window unleashed a volley of fire at the Mack's rearmost tyres.

The Mack's tyres were blasted apart, started slapping against the roadway, and the big rig's rear-end started fishtailing wildly.

Which was when the Kenworth rig made its move, and powered forward.

'They're coming alongside us!' Schofield yelled.

In the confines of the tunnel, the snub-nosed rig pulled up next to the Mack's right-hand flank.

'I'll take care of it,' Knight said. 'Here, take the wheel.'

With that, Knight jumped out of the driver's seat and charged aft into the Mack's sleeping compartment where he quickly fired two shots into its rear window, a window which opened onto the rig's flat trailer-connection section. Within seconds he had disappeared out through the window, into the roaring wind.

The two rigs rushed through the curving tunnel side-by-side, whipping past its ocean-side columns.

Schofield drove, glancing at the wounded Gant beside him. She was hit badly this time.

There came a loud aerial boom from somewhere nearby, and Schofield snapped round to see the second Mirage fighter whip past the blurring columns on his left, shooting ahead of the chase.

Not a good sign, he thought.

And then the snub-nosed rig came fully alongside his own on the right. He saw two ExSol men inside its cabin, and as it drew level with the Mack, he saw the gunner climb quickly across the driver and throw open the door closest to the Mack.

He was going to come across.

Schofield raised his Desert Eagle pistol in response—click.

No ammo left.

'Crap!'

The Executive Solutions man leapt across the gap between the two speeding semi-trailer rigs, landing on the passenger step of Schofield's Mack. He raised his machine-gun, pointing it in through the window, an unmissable shot—

—at the same time as Schofield drew his Maghook from his thigh holster, aimed it at the thug and pulled the trigger—

Ppp-fzzz . . .

The Maghook didn't fire. It just emitted a weak fizzing sound. It was out of propulsion gas.

'Goddamn it!' Schofield yelled. 'That never happens!'

But now he was out of options: he and Gant were sitting ducks.

The ExSol man in the window saw this, and he leered, his finger squeezing on his trigger.

At which moment he was squashed like a pancake as the Kenworth rig—his rig—rammed viciously into the Mack, hitting it so hard that both trucks were lifted momentarily off the road!

The hapless mercenary simply exploded, his body popping in a burst of red, his eyes bugging before he dropped out of Schofield's view and fell to the rushing roadway beneath the two rigs.

And as the man dropped from sight, he revealed the new driver of the snub-nosed Kenworth rig—Aloysius Knight.

For when the ExSol mercenary had jumped over from the doorway of the Kenworth to the doorway of the Mack, another figure had crossed over in the other direction, from the rear section of the Mack to the rear section of the Kenworth rig.

Knight.

Now the two rigs raced side-by-side through the long curving tunnel, pursued only by the last yellow Peugeot.

But with its blown-open rear tyres, Schofield's Mack was dangerously unstable. It slipped and slid wildly, trying to get traction.

Schofield keyed his radio. 'Knight! I can't hold this truck! We have to come over to you!'

'All right, I'll come in closer. Send your lady over.'

The Kenworth swung in next to the Mack, rubbing up against its side.

Schofield quickly secured the Mack's steering wheel in place with his seatbelt. Then he shuffled over, kicked open the passenger door, and started to help Gant move.

At the same time, Knight opened his driver's side door and extended his spare hand.

Abruptly, gunfire.

Smacking into both trucks' frames. But it was just wild fire from the trailing Peugeot.

Schofield made the transfer, handed Gant over to Knight—who pulled her across the gap into the Kenworth's cab, before laying her gently on the passenger seat.

With Gant safely across, Schofield started to step across the gap__

—just as a shocking burst of a zillion tracer bullets ripped horizontally through the air in front of him, creating a lethal laser-like barrier, cutting him off from Knight and Gant's rig.

Schofield snapped to look forward and saw the source of this new wave of gunfire.

He saw the end of the curving tunnel, saw the road bend away to the right beyond it, and saw, rising ominously into the air just out from the turn, the second Mirage 2000N-II fighter, its six-barrelled mini-gun blazing away.

And then, to Schofield's horror, the line of sizzling tracer rounds swung in toward his rig and—baml-baml-baml-baml-bami-baml-baml-baml-baml-baml-baml—an unimaginable barrage of bullets slammed into the metal grille of the Mack, hammering it with a million pock-marks.

The Mack's engine caught fire, hydraulic fluid sprayed everywhere, and suddenly Schofield could see nothing through his windshield. He pumped the brakes—no good; they were history. Tried the steering wheel—it worked only slightly, enough for him to say to the fighter plane:

'If I'm going down, you're going down with me.'

The Mack careered down the length of the tunnel, together with the Kenworth.

And still the Mirage's withering fire didn't stop.

The two rigs hit the end of the tunnel—separated now and Aloysius Knight had no choice but to take the bend to the right, while Schofield's Mack—its bonnet blazing, its rear tyres sliding— could do nothing but rush straight ahead, ignoring the corner.

Schofield saw it all before it happened.

And he knew he could do nothing.

'Good God . . .' he breathed.

A second later, the speeding Mack truck missed the corner completely and blasted right through the guard-rail fence and shot out into the clear afternoon sky, heading straight for the hovering Mirage fighter.

The Mack truck soared through the air in a glorious arc, nose high, wheels spinning, its path through the sky traced by the line of black smoke issuing out from its flaming bonnet.

But its arc stopped abruptly as the massive trailer rig slammed at tremendous speed into the Mirage fighter hovering just out from the cliff-side roadway.

The truck and the plane collided with astonishing force, the Mirage lurching backwards in mid-air under the weight of the mighty impact.

Already on fire, the Mack completely blew up now, its flaming bonnet driving into the nose of the hovering French fighter. For its part, the Mirage just rocked—then swayed—and then exploded, blasting out in a brilliant blinding fireball.

Then it dropped out of the sky, falling four hundred feet straight down the cliff-face with the remains of the Mack truck buried in its nose, before it smashed into the waves below with a single gigantic splash.

And in the middle of it all, in the middle of the tangled mechanical mess, without a rope or a Maghook to call on, was Shane M. Schofield.

Knight and Gant saw it all from their rig as they sped away along the winding cliff-side road.

They saw Schofield's Mack blast through the guard-rail and crash into the hovering Mirage after which came the fiery explosion and the long drop to the ocean below.

No-one could have survived such an impact.

Despite her wounds, Gant's eyes widened in horror. 'Oh God, no. Shane . . .' she whispered.

'Son of a bitch,' Knight breathed.

A flurry of thoughts rushed through his mind: Schofield was dead—a man worth millions to Knight // he could have kept him alive—what did he do now—and what did he do with this wounded woman who was worth absolutely nothing to him?

The first thing you do is get out of here alive, a voice said inside him.

And then suddenly—shoom!—the last-remaining Peugeot rally car whizzed past his rig, heading quickly down the road.

Surprised, Knight looked ahead and saw the road before him.

It contained a strange but impressive feature: at the next curve, a small castle-like structure arched over the roadway.

Made of stone and topped with tooth-like battlements, it was a two-storey gatehouse which must have been as old as the Forteresse de Valois itself. Presumably, it marked the outer boundary of the Forteresse's land.

On the far side of this gatehouse, however, was a compact drawbridge, spanning a 20-foot section of empty space in the roadway. You only got over the gap if the drawbridge was lowered, and at the moment, it was.

But then the Peugeot arrived at the gatehouse and disgorged one of its occupants who ran inside—and suddenly, before Knight's eyes, the drawbridge slowly began to rise.

'No . . .' he said aloud. 'No!'

He floored it.

The Kenworth rig roared toward the medieval gatehouse, picking up speed.

The drawbridge rose slowly on its iron chains.

It was going to be close.

The big rig rushed forward.

The bridge rose slowly: one foot, two feet, three feet. . .

The men in the Peugeot opened fire as Knight's rig thundered over the last fifty yards.

Knight ducked. His windshield shattered.

The drawbridge kept rising . . .

. . . and then the rig roared in through the gatehouse's archway, whipping past the Executive Solutions men . . .

. . . and raced up the ramp-like drawbridge, easily doing a hundred, before—vooml—it launched itself off the leading edge of the bridge, shooting high into the sky, soaring over the vertiginous gap in the road beneath it and . . .

Whump!

. . . the big rig hit solid ground again, banging down on the roadway, bouncing once, twice, three times, before Knight regained control.

'Phwoar,' he sighed, relieved. 'That was—'

SLAM!

The road in front of the rig erupted in a mushroom cloud of dirt.

A shellburst from the destroyer.

Knight hit the brakes and his rig skidded sharply, lurching to a halt inches away from a newly-created hole in the road.

Knight groaned.

The entire road in front of him had simply vanished—the whole

width of it vaporised—the distance across the chasm to the other side at least thirty feet.

He and Gant were trapped—perfectly—on the vertical cliff-face, bounded both in front and behind by sheer voids in the roadway.

And at that moment, as if right on cue, the Axon corporate helicopter—which had watched the entire chase from a safe distance high above the road—hovered into view beside them, its pilot speaking into his helmet radio.

'Fuck,' Knight said.

UNITED STATES EMBASSY LONDON, ENGLAND 1400 HOURS LOCAL TIME (0900 HOURS E.S.T USA)

^lIn their opinion, the war on terror isn't going far enough. While the members of Majestic-12 didn't plan the September 11 attacks, make no mistake, they are taking full advantage of them . . .'

The man talking on the television screen was Benjamin Y. Rosenthal, the Mossad agent who had been killed on the roof of the King's Tower an hour ago.

Book II watched the TV intently. Behind him stood the State Department guy, Scott Moseley.

Arrayed on the desks around them were documents—hundreds of documents. Everything Benjamin Rosenthal knew about Majestic-12 and this world-wide bounty hunt.

Book scanned the pile of documents again:

Surveillance photos of men in limousines arriving at economic summits.

Secretly-taped phone transcripts.

Stolen US Department of Defense files.

Even two documents taken from the French central intelligence agency—the notorious DGSE. One was a DGSE dossier on several of the world's leading businessmen who had been invited to a private dinner with the French President six months ago.

The second document was far more explosive. It outlined the recent capture by the DGSE of 24 members of the terrorist organisation Global Jihad, who had been planning to fly a tanker plane into the Eiffel Tower. Like Al-Qaeda, Global Jihad was a truly world-wide terrorist group, made up of fanatical Islamists who wanted to take the concept of holy war to a whole new global level.

The document that Book now saw was especially notable because one of Global Jihad's leading figures, Shoab Riis, had been among those caught. Normally the capture of such a high-profile terrorist would have been publicised worldwide. But the French had kept Riis's arrest to themselves.

Rosenthal had added a comment in the margin: 'All were taken to DGSE headquarters in Brest. No trial. No newspaper reports. None of the 24 was ever seen again. Possible connection to Kormoran/ Chameleon. Is France working with M-12? Check further.'

But the most revealing evidence of all was in the Mossad videotapes of Rosenthal's interrogation.

Put simply, Rosenthal had been sitting on dynamite.

First, he had known the composition of Majestic-12:

The Chairman: Randolph Loch, military industrialist, 70 years old, head of Loch-Mann Industries, the defence contractor. L-M Industries manufactured spare parts for military aircraft like the Huey and Black Hawk helicopters. It had made a fortune out of Vietnam and Desert Storm.

The Vice-Chair: Cornelius Kopassus, the legendary Greek container-shipping magnate.

Arthur Quandt, patriarch of the Quandt family steel empire.

Warren Shusett, the world's most successful investor.

J. D. Cairnton, chairman of the colossal Astronox Pharmaceutical Company.

Jonathan Killian, chairman and CEO of Axon Corp, the vast missile and warship-building conglomerate.

The list went on.

Apart from, the absence of a few retail fortunes—like the Walton family in America, the Albrechts in Germany or the Mattencourts

in France—it could have been a list of the Top Ten Richest People on Earth.

And as Major Benjamin Rosenthal had discovered, they were all men whose fortunes would be considerably enlarged by one thing.

Rosenthal on the screen: ''Their fortunes are based on military action. War. World War II was the foundation of the Quandt steel empire. In the '60s, Randolph Loch was one of the most vocal supporters of the US going to Vietnam. Warfare consumes oil. Warfare consumes steel. Warfare calls for the construction of thousands of new ships, helicopters, guns, bombs, pharmaceutical kits. In a world of big business, global warfare is the biggest business of them all.''

And at another time:

'Look at the "War on Terror". The United States dropped over four thousand bombs on the mountains of Afghanistan, and for what result? They didn 't destroy bridges or supply routes, or military nerve centres. But when four thousand bombs are used, four thousand bombs must be replenished. And that means buying them. And what happened after Afghanistan? Surprise, surprise: another fight was found, this time with Iraq.''

Another cut:

'Do not underestimate the influence these men wield. They make Presidents, and they break them. From Bill Clinton's impeachment to the rise of a former KGB agent named Vladimir Putin to the Presidency of Russia, Majestic-12 always has a say in who sits in the seats of world power and for how long. Even if it doesn't directly bankroll a given President's campaign, it always maintains the ability to bring him down at any given moment.

'To this end Majestic-12 has forged strong links with leading figures in the world's major intelligence agencies. The Director of the CIA: a former business partner of Randolph Loch. The head of MI-6: Cornelius Kopassus's brother-in-law. That Killian fellow has been a regular visitor to the Paris home of the Director of the DGSE.

'After all,' the Mossad agent smiled, 'who knows more about a country's leaders than that country's own intelligence service?'

On the TV screen, Rosenthal became serious:

'More than anything else, though, the war that M-12 loved the most, the war that garnered them more wealth than they ever dreamed of, was the one war that was never actually fought: the US-Soviet Cold War.

'Desert Storm. Bosnia. Somalia. Afghanistan. Iraqi Freedom. They pale in comparison to the absolute goldmine that was the Cold War. For as the US-Soviet arms race continued apace and indirect Cold War clashes occurred in Korea and Vietnam, the members of M-12 amassed fortunes of monstrous proportions.

'But then in 1991 the impossible happened: the Soviet Union collapsed and it all disappeared.

'The Berlin Wall fell and like a dam breaking, American consumerism flooded the globe. And the biggest winners in the globalised world were no longer American military manufacturers. They were American consumer goods retailers: Nike, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Or European companies like BMW and L'Oreal. I mean, honestly, make-up retailers!

'And so ever since, the members of Majestic-12 have been looking for the one thing that will, without question, restore them to their former glory . . .'

At that moment, with a flourish, Rosenthal extracted another document from one of his files and held it to the camera.

'. .. a new Cold War.'

Book II now held that very same document in his hands.

The TV screen in front of him was paused, the image of Rosenthal frozen.

Book scanned the document. It read:

Source Delivery Sys. lil-H Origin______Target Time

Talbot Shahab-S TN7b 35702.10 00001.bS 11W

5001.00 5231.10

Shahab-S TN7b 35702-10 00420-02 114S

sooi.oo moo.25

Shahab-5 TN7b 35702-10 01312-15 1145

SOOI.OO 53S6-7S

Ambrose Shahab-5 TN7b 26743-05 26743-16 1200

4104-55 4104.b4

Shahab-S TN7b 2A743-05 26231-05 1200

4104-5S 3635-70

Jewel Taep'o-Dong-2 N-fl 23222-b2 23222-70 1215

3745-75 3745-60

Taep'o-Dong-2 N-6 23222-b2 24230-50 1215

3745-75 3533-02

Taep'o-Dong-2 N-6 23222-b2 23157-05 1215

3745-75 4130-52

Hopewell Taep' o-I>ong-2 N-6 11100-00 Ilb22-S0 1230

2327-00 4000-00

Taep'o-Dong-2 N-6 11100-00 11445-60 1230

2327-00 2243-25

Whale Shahab-S TN7b 070M0.MS 07725-05 ISMS

2327-00 2T5fi.bS

Shahab-S TN7b 070M0-MS 07332-bO 12MS

2327-00 3230-SS

Names and numbers leapt out at Book, and at first he couldn't make head or tail of it.

But then, slowly, parts of it began to make sense. He recognised the two most repeated names.

Shahab-5 and Taep'o-Dong-E.

The Shahab-5 and the Taep'o-Dong-2 were missiles.

Long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The Shahab-5 was built by Iran. The Taep'o-Dong-2 by North Korea.

If international terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda or Global Jihad were to ever get their hands on missiles that could deliver nuclear strikes against the West, it would be the Shahab and the Taep'o-Dong.

And each of the missiles was nuclear-tipped, as evidenced by the notations: TN-7b and N-fl. The TN-76 was a French-made nuclear warhead; the N-8 was North Korean.

But this list didn't belong to any terrorist organisation.

It belonged to Majestic-12.

And then it hit Book.

Could this be Majestic-12 impersonating a terrorist organisation?

He turned quickly, unpaused the image of Rosenthal on the screen.

The Israeli agent spoke again: 'This new Cold War is an enhanced War against Terrorism. A 50-year War on Terror.

'Majestic-12 are utilising two US projects to execute their plan: one is called "Kormoran", the other "Chameleon". Kormoran encompasses the launch vessels: missile-launching warships disguised as container ships or supertankers. These supertanker shells are built by the Kopassus Shipping Group, while the missile-launch systems are inserted into those shells at Axon plants in Norfolk, Virginia and Guam. These ships—ordinary-looking supertankers

and container ships—can sit in harbours and ports around the world and yet never be noticed. That is Kormoran.

'The "Chameleon" project, however, is far more sinister. Indeed, it is perhaps the most sinister program ever devised by the United States. It centres on the missiles themselves. You see, the missiles mentioned in the document are not pure Shahabs or Taep'o-Dongs.

'Rather, they are US-built clones of those missiles. What you have to understand is that every major missile in the world has its own personal characteristics: flight signature, contrail wake, even the blast signature left after an impact. Chameleon is designed to exploit these differences. It is a deep-black US project under which America is building intercontinental ballistic missiles that mimic the characteristics of ICBMs built by other countries.

'Clone missiles.

'But Chameleon isn't limited to Iranian Shahabs and North Korean Taep'o-Dongs. Other missiles that have been cloned include the Indian Agni-II, the Pakistani Ghauri-II, the Taiwanese Sky Horse, the UK Trident-II D-5, the French M-5, the Israeli Jericho 2B, and of course the Russian SS-18.

'They are designed to start wars, but to make it look like someone else fired the first shot. If ever the US needs an excuse to wage war, it simply fires a clone of whichever country it seeks to blame.