Scarecrow

One hundred and fifty warplanes.

All manner of fighter planes made up the aerial armada.

Old planes, new planes, red planes, blue planes—anything that could carry a missile—a motley collection of once-great fighters purchased from First World nations after their First World use-by dates had expired.

The Sukhoi Su-17—built in 1966 and long since discarded by the Russians.

The MiG-25 Foxbat—superseded in the 1980s by more modern variants, but which could still hold its own against all but the best American planes.

The French-made Mirage V/50—one of France's biggest military exports, which they sell to anyone: Libya, Zaire, Iraq.

There were even a few feisty Czech L-59 Albatrosses, a favourite among African nations.

Performance-wise, all these fighters lost ground to more modern planes like the F-22 Raptor and the F-15E. But when they came equipped with top-of-the-line air-to-air missiles—Sidewinders, Phoenixes, Russian R-60Ts and R-27s, missiles that were easily obtainable at the arms bazaars of Romania and the Ukraine—this older force of fighters could match it with the best of them. Fighters may be expensive and hard to get, but good-quality

missiles can be bought by the dozen.

And if nothing else, Schofield thought, these guys have the advantage of sheer numbers.

The best-equipped F-22 in the world could not hold off a force of this size forever. Ultimately, sheer force of numbers would overwhelm even the best technology.

'What do you think, Rufus?'

'This baby wasn't built to fight, Captain,' Rufus said. 'She was built for speed. So that's what we're gonna do with her—we're gonna fly her low and fast and we're gonna do what no pilot has ever done before: we're gonna outrun any missiles those bastards throw at us.'

'Missiles chasing us,' Schofield said. 'Nice.'

Rufus said, 'For what it's worth, Captain, we've got exactly one piddly little single-barrel gun pointing out from our nose. I think it's there for decoration.'

Just then, a new voice came over their headsets: 'American X-15s, this is Captain Harold Marshall of the USS Nimitz. We have you on our scopes. The Jolly Rogers are en route. They will intercept you as you reach the enemy force. Five Prowlers have been sent ahead at hundred-mile intervals to provide electronic jamming for you. It's going to get hot in there, gentlemen, but hopefully we can punch a hole big enough for you guys to shoot through.'' There was a pause. 'Oh, and Captain Schofield, I've been informed of the situation. Good luck. We're all right behind you.'

'Thank you, Captain,' Schofield said softly. 'Okay, Rufus. Let's rock.'

Speed.

Pure, unadulterated speed. 7,000 km/h is about 2,000 metres per second. Seven times supersonic is super super fast.

The two X-15s ripped through the sky toward the swarm of enemy aircraft.

As they came within twenty miles of the African planes, a phalanx

of missiles issued out from the armada—forty tail-like smoketrails streaming toward them.

But no sooner had the first missile been loosed, than its firer—a Russian MiG-25 Foxbat—erupted in a burst of orange flames.

Six other African planes exploded, hit by AIM-120 AMR A AM air-to-air missiles, while twenty of the missiles loosed by the African armada exploded harmlessly in mid-air, hitting chaff-deploying dummy missiles that had been fired from—

—an incoming force of American F-14 fighters bearing ominous skull-and-crossbones symbols on their tailfins.

The famous 'Jolly Rogers' from the Nimitz. About a dozen F-14 Tomcats, flanked by nimble F/A-18 Hornets.

And suddenly a gigantic aerial battle, unheard of in modern warfare, was underway.

The two X-15s banked and swerved as they shot through the ranks of the African armada, avoiding mid-air explosions, dive-bombing fighters, waves of tracer bullets and superfast missile

smoketrails.

All manner of fighter planes whipped through the twilight sky— MiGs, Mirages, Tomcats and Hornets, rolling, diving, engaging,

exploding.

At one point, Schofield's X-15 swooped upside-down to avoid one African fighter, only to come on a head-on collision course with another African bogey—a Mirage—but just as the two planes were about to slam nose-to-nose into each other, the African plane exploded—hit from underneath by a brilliant AMRAAM shot— and Schofield's X-15 just blasted right through its flaming remains, sheets of burning metal scraping against the X-15's flanks, the severed hand of the enemy plane's dead pilot smearing a streak of blood across the X-15's canopy right next to Rufus's eyes.

And yet the African missiles never hit the NASA rocket planes.

They would get close, and then the missiles would just swerve wildly around the X-15s as if the two NASA planes were protected by some kind of invisible bubble.

In actual fact, they were.

Care of the five US Navy EA-6B Prowlers—with their directional AN/ALQ-99F electronic jamming pods—that were flying parallel to the X-15s, ten miles away.

Nuggetty and tough, the Prowlers knew that they could never keep up with the superfast X-15s, so they had cleverly placed themselves parallel to Schofield's flight path but spaced out, each Prowler protecting the rocket planes with its jamming signal before passing the X-15s onto the next Prowler, like relay runners passing a baton.

'American X-15s, this is Prowler Leader,' a voice said in Schofield's headset. ' We can cover you up to the Canal, but we just ain't fast enough to keep up. You'll be on your own from there.'

'You've done more than enough already,' Schofield said.

'Christ! Look out!' Rufus yelled.

For right then, in the face of the Prowlers' long-range electronic protection, the African planes embarked on a new strategy.

They started doing kamikaze dives at the X-15s.

Suicide runs.

\

Electronic countermeasures may be able to disrupt the homing systems of a missile, but no matter how good they are, they cannot stop a man wilfully flying his plane into another.

A half-dozen fighter jets rained down on the two X-15s, screaming through the sky, loosing withering waves of tracer bullets as they did so.

The two X-15s split up.

Rufus rolled his plane right and down, while the other X-15 banked left, avoiding its dive-bomber by a bare foot, but not before a lone tracer bullet from one of the kamikazes entered its canopy from the side and exited out the other side: a flight path that also entailed a short trip through the head of Knight's pilot.

Blood and brains splattered the interior of the X-15.

The plane peeled away into the sky, out of control, heading eastward, away from the battle.

Knight scrambled into the front seat—where he quickly unbuckled the dead pilot and hurled his body into the back. Then Knight himself took the controls, trying desperately to bring the plane up before she ploughed into the Mediterranean Sea.

The sea rushed up before him—faster, faster, faster . . .

Boom.

For their part, Schofield and Rufus had swung their plane low over the sea—so low in fact that they were now rushing barely twenty feet above the waves, kicking up a continuous whitewater geyser

behind them at the same time as criss-crossing missiles blasted into the water all around them.

'I see the Canal!' Rufus yelled above the din.

It lay about twenty miles ahead of them, the mouth of the Suez Canal—a modern-day marvel of engineering; two colossal concrete pillars flanking the entry to the mighty sealane that gave access to the Red Sea.

And above it, more planes from the African armada.

'Rufus! Bank left!' Schofield yelled, peering up through their canopy.

Rufus did so—rolling them on their side just as two Czech L-59s went screaming past them on either side and buried themselves in the sea.

And then all of a sudden they hit the confines of the Canal—

—and lost the electronic protection of the Prowlers.

Schofield's X-15 blasted down the length of the Suez Canal, flying low, banking around anchored ships, turning the mighty concrete-walled canal into little more than an obstacle-filled trench—but effectively flying under the main body of the aerial armada.

They had run the blockade.

But then into the Canal behind them shot two American-made Phoenix missiles that had somehow found their way onto the wing-mounts of an African fighter jet.

The X-15 rushed down the water-filled trench.

The two Phoenix missiles gained on it.

Two suicide fighters rained down—coming at the X-15 from either side in a scissor formation—but Rufus rolled the rocket plane and the two fighters missed it by inches—blasting instead into the sandy banks of the Canal, exploding in twin geysers of sand and fire.

And then the two Phoenix missiles came alongside the X-15's tail and Schofield saw an amazing thing: he could read the stencilled lettering on their sides: 'XAIM-54A—HUGHES MISSILE SYSTEMS.'

'Rufus . . . !' he yelled.

'I know!' Rufus called back.

'Please do something!'

'Was just about to!'

And suddenly Rufus swung them to the right, up over the bank of the Canal, swinging them around in a wide wide circle, heading back towards the Mediterranean.

The two missiles followed, swooping around in identical semicircles, unaffected by the incredible G-forces.

Since the bulk of the African armada had been protecting the Egyptian coastline, only about six African fighter planes remained back here.

These planes saw the X-15 swoop around in its wide circle, coming back toward them, and thought that this was their lucky day.

Wrong.

The X-15—circling, circling—shot through their midst like a bullet through a stand of trees, blasting between two African MiGs with barely 10 feet to spare on either side . . .

. . . but leaving the MiGs in the path of the two Phoenix missiles.

Boom-boom!

The MiGs exploded and the X-15 continued its wide circle until it was back in the trench of the Canal, back on its south-easterly course.

However, its wide circle—easily two hundred kilometres wide— had allowed one of the African planes to loose a last-ditch missile, its finest: a single stolen American AIM-120 AMRAAM, the best air-to-air missile in the world.

The AMRAAM shot through the air behind the speeding X-15, closing in on it like a hungry hawk.

'I can't shake it!' Rufus yelled.

'How long will it stay on our tail?' Schofield asked. 'Doesn't it have a cut-out switch if the chase goes too long?'

'No! That's the thing about AMRAAMs! They just chase you all day and all night! Wear you down and then kill you.'

'Well, no AMRAAM has ever chased one of these planes before! Keep going! Full throttle! Maybe we can outrun it—'

A voice in his earpiece cut him off.

It was Scott Moseley, and his voice sounded dead, shocked.

'Uh, Captain Schofield. I have some really bad news'

'What?'

'Our early warning satellites just picked up an ICBM launch signature from south-central Yemen. Flight characteristics indicate that it is a Jericho-2B intercontinental ballistic missile, heading north toward Mecca. Captain, Killian knows you're coming. He's fired the missile early.'

'Oh, no way!' Schofield yelled, staring off into the sky. 'You have got to be kidding. That is not fair. That is not fucking fair!'

He looked at the weapons strapped to his chest, guns that he had planned to use to storm the missile base in Yemen. All useless now.

He held up the CincLock-VII disarm unit and just shook his head . . .

Then he froze.

Staring at the CincLock unit.

'Mr Moseley. Do you have telemetry on that missile signal?'

'Sure:

'Send it through.'

"You got it:

A moment later, Schofield's trip computer beeped and a map similar to the one he had seen earlier appeared on its screen. An arrow-like icon representing the Chameleon missile approaching Mecca tracked northwards up the screen.

Schofield punched in his own transponder signal into the computer and a second icon appeared on the screen, tracking southward:

Schofield saw the flight data on the screen: signal IDs, airspeeds, altitudes.

He almost didn't need to do the math.

The picture said it all.

Two aircraft were converging on Mecca: his X-15 and the Chameleon missile, labelled by the satellite's automated recognition system as a Jericho-2B intercontinental ballistic missile.

Both aircraft were travelling at practically the same speed and were roughly equidistant from Mecca.

'Rufus,' Schofield said flatly.

'Yeah?'

'We're not going to Yemen anymore.'

'I kinda figured that,' Rufus said, defeat in his voice. 'What are we going to do now?'

But Schofield was hitting buttons on his computer, doing rapid calculations. It would be absolutely incredible if this worked.

He and Rufus were still about 1,000 kilometres from Mecca. Time to target: 8:30.

He did the calculations for the Chameleon missile.

It was slightly further away. Its countdown read:

TIME TO TARGET: 9:01 . . . 9:00 . . . 8:59 . . .

That's good, Schofield thought. We'll need the extra thirty seconds to overshoot Mecca and swing around . J.

Schofield's eyes gleamed at the very idea of it. He looked down at the CincLock unit strapped to his chest, gripped it in his hands.

'Sixty feet,' he whispered aloud.

Then he said, 'Hey Rufus. Have you ever chased a missile?'

TIME TO TARGET: 6:00 . . . 5:59 . . . 5:58 . . .

Schofield's X-15 shot through the darkening sky at bullet speed—still pursued by the AMRAAM missile.

'You want me to fly alongside it?' Rufus said, dumbstruck.

'That's exactly what I want you to do. We can still disarm that ICBM, we just have to be within sixty feet of it,' Schofield said.

'Yeah, but in flight} Nobody can keep a plane side-by-side with a missile at Mach 6.'

'I think you can,' Schofield said.

From where he was sitting, Schofield didn't see the grin cross Rufus's broad bearded face.

'What do you need me to do?' the big pilot said.

Schofield said, 'ICBMs fly high and then come down vertically on their targets. This Chameleon is currently at 27,000 feet. She should stay at that altitude until she's practically over Mecca, and then she'll start her dive. At Mach 6, it'll take her about five seconds to make that vertical run. But I need at least twenty-five seconds to disarm her. Which means we have to get alongside her while she's flying level at 27,000 feet. Once she goes vertical, it's all over. We're screwed. Think you can bring us around so that we're travelling beside her?'

'You know, Captain,' Rufus said softly, 'you're a lot like Aloysius. When you talk to me, you make me feel like I could do anything. Consider it done.'

TIME TO TARGET: 2:01 . . . 2:00 . . . 1:59 . . .

The X-15 blasted into the sky, chased by the AMRAAM, shooting

down the length of the Red Sea while at the same time rising—rising, rising—to an altitude of 27,000 feet.

'We just passed Mecca!' Rufus yelled. 'I'm going to start our turn now. Keep an eye out, we should be able to see that Chameleon any minute now . . .'

Rufus banked the speeding rocket plane, bringing it round in a wiiiide 180-degree arc that would hopefully end with the X-15 coming alongside the nuclear missile, joining it on its flight path toward Mecca.

The X-15 rolled onto its side, shot through the air, banking left in its gigantic turn.

The sudden course-change allowed the AMRAAM missile behind it—ever-closing, ever-ravenous—to reel them in even more. It was only a hundred yards behind the X-15 now, and still closing.

TIME TO TARGET: 1:20 . . . 1:19 . . . 1:18 . . .

'There it is!' Rufus yelled. 'Dead ahead!'

Schofield strained against the G-forces to peer out over Rufus's shoulder, out at the twilight Arabian sky.

And he saw it.

The mere sight of the intercontinental ballistic missile took his breath away.

It was incredible.

The Jericho-2B clone ICBM looked like a spaceship from a science fiction movie—something that was far too big, far too sleek, and moving far too fast to exist on Earth.

The 70-foot-long cylinder shot like a spear through the sky, a white-hot tailflame blazing from its base like a magnesium flare, leaving an impossibly long smoketrail in its wake. The smoketrail extended, snakelike, a God-sized python, over the distant horizon, streaking away toward the missile's source, Yemen.

And the sound it made.

A single, continuous BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

If Schofield's X-15 was ripping the fabric of the sky, then this baby was shredding it to pieces.

The banking X-15 roared round in a giant semi-circle, careering

in toward the moving ICBM, while itself trailed by the dogged AMRAAM.

TIME TO TARGET: 1:00 . . . 0:59 . . . 0:58 . . .

One minute.

And then, like the arms of a flattened Y converging to meet at the stem, the X-15 rocket plane and the Chameleon missile came alongside each other.

But they weren't level yet.

The X-15 was just behind and to the left of the ICBM—parallelling the horizontal column of smoke shooting out of the ICBM's base.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:50 . . . 0:49 . . . 0:48 . . .

But the rocket plane was moving slightly faster than the missile, so it was gradually hauling the ICBM in.

Noise was everywhere. The roar of supersonic speed.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

TIME TO TARGET: 0:40 . . . 0:39 . . . 0:38 . . .

'Get me closer, Rufus!' Schofield called.

Rufus did so—and the nose-cone of the X-15 came alongside the tail of the roaring ICBM.

The CincLock VII unit didn't respond. They still weren't close enough to the missile's CPU.

The X-15 crept forward, edging up the length of the Chameleon missile.

'Closer!'

TIME TO TARGET: 0:33 . . . 0:32 . . . 0:31 . . .

Out through the cockpit canopy, Schofield saw the lights of a city down in the evening darkness below.

The holy city of Mecca.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:28 . . . 0:27 . . . 0:26 . . .

And the X-15 came level with the mid-point of the missile and Schofield's disarm unit beeped:

FIRST PROTOCOL (PROXIMITY): SATISFIED. INITIATE SECOND PROTOCOL.

'I'm gonna get you,' Schofield said to the ICBM.

The reflex response pattern on his unit began its sequence, and Schofield began hitting its touchscreen.

The two rocket-propelled aircraft carved a sonic tear through the sky, travelling side-by-side at astronomical speed.

And then the AMRAAM behind the X-15 made its move.

Rufus saw it on his scopes. 'Come on, Captain . . . !'

'I just. . . have ... to do . . . this first. . .' Schofield grimaced, concentrating on the reflex-response test.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:19 . . . 0:18 . . . 0:17 . . .

The AMRAAM powered forward, closing in on the tailflame of the X-15.

'It's approaching lethal range!' Rufus yelled. Lethal range for an AMRAAM was twenty yards. It didn't have to actually hit you, only explode close to you. 'You've got maybe five seconds!'

'We don't have five seconds!' Schofield shouted, not taking his eyes off the screen, his fingers moving quickly over it.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:16 . . . 0:15 . . . 0:14 . . .

'I can't take evasive action!' Rufus yelled desperately. 'I'll move us out of proximity! Jesus Christ! We can't come this far to lose now! Two seconds!'

Schofield kept hitting the touchscreen.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:13 . . . 0:12 . . .

'One second!'

And the AMRAAM entered lethal range—20 yards from the X-15's tailpipe.

'No!' Rufus yelled. 'Too late—!'

'Not if I can help it? a voice said suddenly in their earpieces.

Then, in a supersonic blur, something black and fast shot sideways across the wake of the X-15—cutting in between the AMRAAM and Schofield's X-15, so that the AMRAAM hit it and not Schofield's plane.

An explosion rocked the sky and Rufus whirled around in his seat to see the front half of another X-15 rocket plane go tumbling through the air, its rear-end vaporised, destroyed by the AMRAAM.

Knight's X-15.

He must have survived the death of his pilot and then stayed on their trail, catching up with them while they'd made their two time-consuming circling manoeuvres. And now he had flown himself into the path of the AMRAAM missile that had been about to take them out!

The shattered front half of Knight's X-15 fell through the sky, nose-first, before abruptly, its canopy jettisoned and a flight seat blasted out from the falling wreckage, a parachute blossoming above it a moment later.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:11 . . . 0:10 . . .

Schofield hardly even noticed the explosion. He was consumed with the reflex pattern on his touchscreen: white, red, white, white, red . . .

TIME TO TARGET: 0:09 . . .

'Whoa, shit! It's going vertical!' Rufus yelled.

With a sickening roll, the Chameleon missile abruptly changed course, banking downward, pointing its nose directly down at Mother Earth.

Rufus manoeuvred his control stick and the X-15 copied the move—and went vertical with the ICBM—and suddenly the two rocketcraft were travelling supersonically, side-by-side, heading straight down!

'Aaaaaaaaahhh!' Rufus yelled.

Schofield's eyes remained fixed to the touchscreen, focused, his fingers moving quickly.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:08 . . .

The X-15 and the ICBM raced toward the Earth like two vertical bullets.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:07 . . .

The lights of Mecca rushed up toward Rufus's eyes.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:06 . . .

Schofield's fingers danced.

And the CincLock disarm unit beeped.

SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): SATISFIED. THIRD PROTOCOL (CODE ENTRY): ACTIVE. PLEASE ENTER AUTHORIZED DISARM CODE.

TIME TO TARGET: 0:05 . . .

Schofield punched in the Universal Disarm Code and the screen beeped again:

THIRD PROTOCOL (CODE ENTRY): SATISFIED. AUTHORIZED DISARM CODE ENTERED.

At which point the crucial line appeared:

MISSILE FLIGHT ABORTED.

What happened next happened in a blur.

High above the minarets of Mecca, the supersonically-travelling Chameleon missile self-destructed in a spectacular explosion. It looked like a gigantic firecracker—a spectacular starburst of sparks spraying out in every direction.

It was moving so amazingly fast, however, that its blasted-apart pieces were just stripped away by the onslaught of uprushing wind. The charred remains of the cloned Jericho-2B would later be found over an area 100 miles in diameter.

Schofield's X-15, on the other hand, suffered a far different fate.

The shock wave from the Chameleon's blast sent it spiralling away from the explosion, completely out of control, rocketing toward the Earth.

Rufus fought heroically with his stick and by doing so managed one single thing: to avoid crashing into any of the inhabited parts of Mecca.

But that was all he achieved. For a bare second later, the X-15 slammed into the desert like a meteor from outer space, smashing vertically into the sandy landscape in a thumping, slamming, earth-shuddering impact that could be heard more than fifty miles away.

And for a moment its fiery explosion lit up the dark desert sky as if it were midday.

The X-15 hit the desert floor doing Mach 3.

It hit the ground hard and in a single flashing, blinding instant, the rocket plane transformed into a ball of fire.

Nothing could have survived the crash.

A split second before the impact, however, two ejection seats could be seen catapulting clear of the crashing plane's cockpit, shooting diagonally out into the sky—seats that contained Schofield and Rufus.

The two flight seats floated back down to earth on their parachutes, landing a mile away from the flaming crater that marked the final resting place of the X-15.

The two seats hit the dusty ground, rocked onto their sides.

There was no movement in them.

For there, lying slumped against their seatbacks, sat Shane Schofield and Rufus, both unconscious, both knocked out by the colossal G-forces of their supersonic ejection.

After a time, Schofield awoke—to the sound of voices.

His vision was blurry, blood seeped down his face, and his head throbbed with a terrible ache. Bruises were forming around his eyes—the natural by-product of ejecting.

He saw shadows surrounding his flight seat. Some men were trying to unbuckle his seatbelts.

He heard their voices again.

'Crazy sons of bitches, ejecting at that speed.'

'Come on, man, hurry up, before the fucking boy scouts from the Marines arrive.'

At the edge of his consciousness, Schofield noted that they were speaking English.

With American accents.

He sighed with relief. It was over. /

Then, with the whistling cut of a knife, his seatbelt came free and Schofield tumbled out of his seat onto the sand.

A man appeared at the rim of his vision. A Westerner, wearing military gear. Through the haze of his mind, Schofield recognised the man's uniform: the customised battle outfit of the US Special Forces' Delta Detachment.

'Captain Schofield . . .' the man said gently, his voice blurry to Schofield's slow mind. 'Captain Schofield. It's okay. You're safe now. We're from Delta. We're on your side. We've also picked up your friend, Captain Knight, a few miles from here.'

'Who—' Schofield stammered. 'Who are you?'

The Delta man smiled, but it wasn't a friendly smile. 'My name is Wade Brandeis. From Delta. We've come from Aden. Don't worry, Captain Schofield. You're perfectly safe with me.'

Schofield dreamed.

Dreamed of being lifted out of his crashed flight seat. . . and flex-cuffed . . . then being loaded into the back of a private Lear jet . . . and the jet taking off . . .

Voices in the haze.

Brandeis saying, 'I heard it first from a couple of guys in the 'Stan. They said he turned up at a cave-hunting site and bolted inside. Said it had something to do with a bounty hunt.

'Then I get a call a few hours ago from a guy I know in ISS—he's one of those background guys, real old-school CIA, knows everything about everyone, so he's fucking untouchable. He's also ex-ICG. Good man. Ugly fuck, though. Looks like a goddamned rat. Name's Noonan, Cal Noonan, but everyone I know just calls him the Rat.

'As always, the Rat knows everything. For instance, he knows I'm working out of Aden. He confirms that there's a price on Schofield's head: eighteen million bucks. He also says that Schofield is on his way to Yemen. If I'm interested, he says, he can arrange leave for me and a few trusted men.

'He also says, wait for it, that Aloysius Knight is with Schofield, and that there's a price on Knight's head, too: two million dollars. Hell, I'd bring Knight in for fucking free. But if someone wants to give me two million bucks to do it, that's even better.'

• • •

The plane flew on. Schofield slept.

He woke briefly, uncomfortable. He was still wearing his utility flak vest, but all the weapons on it had been removed. The only thing they hadn't taken was the tightly-rolled Soviet chemical body bag. Not much of a weapon.

He shifted—and caught a glimpse of Knight and Rufus, also flex-cuffed, sitting a few rows back, covered by armed Delta operators. Rufus was asleep, but Knight was wide awake. He seemed to see Schofield rouse, but Schofield couldn't keep his eyes open.

He dropped back to sleep.

Another waking moment.

The sky outside the window next to him had changed from black to pale blue.

Dawn.

And then the voices came again.

'So where are we taking them?'

'Some castle,' Brandeis said. 'Some castle in France.'

FORTERESSE DE VALOIS

BRITTANY, FRANCE

27 OCTOBER, 0700 HOURS

It was raining heavily when Schofield's jet landed at Jonathan Killian's private airstrip on the coast of Brittany.

A quick transfer to a covered truck and soon—under the watchful eye of Brandeis and his five-man Delta team—Schofield, Knight and Rufus were taken down a steep cliff-side road, heading toward the familiar castle built on its rocky mount just off the coastal cliffs.

The mighty Forteresse de Valois.

The lone truck crossed the massive drawbridge connecting the castle to the mainland, shrouded by rain and lightning.

During the short trip, Knight told Schofield about his history with Wade Brandeis: about that night in Sudan and Brandeis's treacherous ICG links.

'Believe me, I know about the ICG,' Schofield said.

'I've been meaning to catch up with Brandeis for a long time,' Knight said.

As he spoke, Schofield saw the two tattoos on Knight's arm again: 'SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN' and 'BRANDEIS' and suddenly realised that they were in truth a single tattoo: 'SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN BRANDEIS'.

'The thing is,' Knight said, 'Brandeis isn't a bounty hunter, and it shows.'

'How?'

'He's just broken the first rule of bounty hunting.'

'Which is?'

'If you have a choice between bringing someone in dead or alive,' Knight said, 'dead is better.'

At that moment, the truck entered the gravel courtyard inside the castle and crunched to a halt.

Schofield, Knight and Rufus were all shoved out of it, covered by Brandeis and his Delta men.

Monsieur Delacroix was waiting for them.

The Swiss banker stood at the entrance to the classic-car garage, prim and proper as ever.

He was flanked by Cedric Wexley and ten mercenaries from Executive Solutions, Jonathan Killian's private security force.

'Major Brandeis,' Delacroix said. 'Welcome to the Forteresse de Valois. We've been expecting you. Come this way, please.'

Delacroix guided them into the garage and then down some stone stairs to the ante-room that Schofield had seen before—but instead of turning left toward the long forbidding tunnel that took you to the verification office, he turned right, through a small stone doorway that opened onto a tight medieval stairwell that spiralled downwards.

Lit by flaming torches, the stairwell went down and down, round and round, descending deep into the bowels of the castle.

It ended at a thick steel door set into a solid stone frame.

Delacroix hit a switch and with an ominous rumble the steel door rose into the ceiling. Then the dapper Swiss banker stood aside, allowing Brandeis and his prisoners to enter first.

They passed through the doorway—

—and emerged inside a wide circular pit, a dungeon in which sloshing seawater wended its way between an irregular series of elevated stone platforms. In the laneways of water, Schofield saw two sharks, prowling. And on the nearest elevated stage he saw . . .

... a 12-foot-tall guillotine. He froze, caught his breath.

This was the dungeon that Knight had told him about before. The terrible dungeon in which Libby Gant had met her end. This was the Shark Pit.

Once they had all stepped out into the Shark Pit, the steel door behind them slid back into place, sealing them all inside.

Monsieur Delacroix, wisely, had remained outside.

Someone else, however, was waiting for them inside the Pit.

A man with carrot-red hair and a sinister rat-like face.

'Hey, Noonan,' Brandeis said, stepping forward, taking the man's hand.

Schofield remembered Knight's horrifying description of Gant's death, and how a man with red hair and a rat face had pulled the lever that had ended her life.

Schofield glared at the murderer.

For his part, Rat Face turned and glared insolently back at him.

'So this is the Scarecrow,' Rat Face said. 'Resilient little fucker, aren't you. I went to a lot of trouble to arrange that little mission in Siberia yesterday. Set the scene. Sent ExSol to wait for you. Then made sure that it was McCabe and Farrell and you who were sent into the trap. Then I cut your comms from Alaska. McCabe and Farrell weren't good enough. But not you. You survived.

'But not now. Now, there's no escape. In fact, you're gonna buy it the same way your girlfriend did.' Rat Face turned to the Delta men holding Schofield. 'Put him in the guillotine.'

Schofield was shoved over to the guillotine by two of Brandeis's D-boys. His head was thrust into the stocks, while his hands stayed out, flex-cuffed behind his back.

'No!' a voice called from across the Pit.

Everyone turned.

Jonathan Killian appeared on a balcony overlooking the Pit,

flanked by Cedric Wexley and the ten men from Executive Solutions, plus the just-arrived Monsieur Delacroix.

'Put him in face up,' Killian said. 'I want Captain Schofield to see the blade coming.'

The Delta men did as they were told, and rolled Schofield over so that his face was pointed upwards. The 12-foot guide rails of the wooden guillotine stretched away from him to the stone ceiling. At their peak he saw the glistening blade, suspended high above him.

'Captain,' Killian said. 'Through courage and audacity, you have saved the existing world order. Spared the lives of millions of people who will never even know your name. You are, in the true sense of the word, a hero. But your victory is at best temporary. Because I will continue to live—continue to rule—and ultimately my time will come. You, on the other hand, are about to discover what really happens to heroes. Mr Noonan. Drop the blade, and then shoot Captain Schofield's protectors in the head—'

'Killian!' Schofield called.

Everyone froze.

Schofield's voice was even, cold. 'I'll be coming for you.'

Killian smiled. 'Not in this life, Captain. Drop the blade.'

Rat Face strode to the side of the guillotine, and looking down at Schofield, gripped the lever.

At the same time, Wade Brandeis raised his Colt .45 to Knight's head.

'I'll see you in hell, Scarecrow,' Rat Face said.

Then he yanked the lever, releasing the blade.

The guillotine's blade thundered down its guide rails.

And Schofield could do nothing but watch it rush down toward his face.

He shut his eyes and waited for the end.

Chunk!

But the end didn't come.

Schofield felt nothing.

He opened his eyes—

—to see that the guillotine's diagonal blade had been stopped a foot above his neck, its deadly downward rush halted by a five-bladed shuriken throwing knife that had lodged itself with a loud chunk in the vertical wooden guide rail of the guillotine.

So recently had it been thrown, the shuriken was still quivering.

Aloysius Knight was also saved as—a split-second after the shuriken had hit the guillotine—a bullet slammed into Wade Brandeis's gun-hand, sending his pistol splashing into the water, blood gushing from his hand.

Schofield turned ... to see an unexpected but very welcome apparition emerge from the waters of the Shark Pit.

It was a fearsome image—a warrior in grey battle uniform, scuba gear and bearing shuriken throwing knives and guns. Lots and lots of guns.

If Death exists, he's afraid of one person.

Mother.

Mother exploded from the water, now with an MP-7 in each hand, firing them hard. Two of the five Delta men dropped immediately, hit in their chests.

Then things started happening everywhere.

For Knight and Rufus, Mother's entry had been distraction enough to allow them to king-hit their captors and, together, leap

over their bound hands jump-rope style—bringing their wrists in front of their bodies—and hold up their plastic flex-cuffs.

Mother didn't need instructions.

Two shots—and the flex-cuffs were history. Knight and Rufus were free.

Over on the viewing balcony, Cedric Wexley quickly threw his ten-man team into action—he sent four over the balcony into the Pit, while he ordered the other six out through the back door of the balcony, into a corridor.

Then he himself whipped up his M-16 and hustled Jonathan Killian out of the dungeon.

Down in the Pit, Knight snatched up a Colt Commando rifle from one of the fallen D-boys and started firing at the four ExSol men leaping down into the Pit from the balcony.

Beside him, Rufus—still unarmed—whirled and killed a third Delta man with a driving flat-palmed blow to the nose.

'Rufus!' Knight yelled. 'Get Schofield out of those stocks!'

Rufus scrambled for the guillotine.

Over by the guillotine, the rat-faced man named Noonan was ducking ricochets, a short distance from the still-pinned Schofield.

When he spotted a brief gap in the gunfire, he reached up for the shuriken throwing knife holding the guillotine blade suspended above Schofield's head. If he could remove it, the blade would fall, decapitating Schofield.

Noonan's hand gripped the shuriken knife—

—just as a diving backhand punch from Rufus sent him flying.

Noonan landed on his stomach near the edge of the stone platform, and found himself eye-to-eye with one of the tiger sharks in the water. He recoiled instantly, clambered to his feet.

Rufus, however, landed next to Schofield, and now covered by the rifle-firing Knight, yanked up the guillotine's stocks and pulled Schofield free.

One shot from Knight severed Schofield's flex-cuffs, but then suddenly, inexplicably, Rufus hurled Schofield around and covered him with his own body.

An instant later, the big man was assailed in the back by several rapid-fire bullets.

'Ah!' he roared, his body jolting with three hits.

The volley had come from Wade Brandeis—standing nearby on one of the stone islands, nursing his bloodied right hand while firing a Colt Commando wildly with his unnatural left.

'No!' Aloysius Knight yelled.

He turned his own gun on Brandeis—but the rifle went dry, so instead he just hurled himself across the slick platform, sliding on his chest, and slammed into Brandeis's legs, tackling the Delta man and sending both of them tumbling into the shark-infested pool.

Free from the guillotine, Schofield turned to see Noonan staggering toward the steel door that led out from the Shark Pit.

As he ran, Noonan pulled a remote from his jacket and hit a button.

The thick steel door rose, opening. Noonan bolted for it.

'Damn it, shit!' Schofield yelled, taking off after him. 'Mother!'

Mother was on a nearby stage, taking cover behind one of the random stone objects in the Pit and firing at the two remaining D-boys with a pistol when she heard Schofield's shout.

She turned fast and loosed a volley at the fleeing Noonan. She didn't hit him, but her burst did cut him off from the exit, forcing him to stop and take cover behind a stone block.

She didn't get to see if this actually helped Schofield, though,

because the momentary distraction had given her two Delta opponents the opening they needed.

One of them nailed her in the chest with a dozen rapid-fire shots from his Colt. Of course, her borrowed flak vest was bulletproof, so the shots just jolted her backwards, shot after shot after shot.

Under the weight of heavy fire, Mother staggered backwards, and just as the D-boy firing at her raised his aim for the kill-shot to her head—

—she dropped abruptly—

—into the water, and the kill-shot went high.

Mother sank underwater.

Brief merciful silence.

Then she came up—knowing what would be waiting—breaching the surface with her pistol extended, and nailed the two D-boys just as they themselves fired at her.

The two Delta men dropped, their faces bloody messes.

Mother sighed with relief.

It was then that she felt an odd swell in the water around her.

She turned . . .

. . . and saw a large bow-wave surging through the water toward her, the high dorsal fin of a tiger shark scything through the waves, charging at her.

'Oh, no way!' she yelled. 'No fucking way! I've survived far too much today to end up as fish food!'

She fired her pistol at the inrushing shark—blaml-blaml-blaml-blamt-blam'.-blam!

The shark didn't slow down.

Mother's shots hit it, but the big shark just powered through the waves.

Blam'.-blaml-blam!

The shark still didn't slow down.

It rose out of the frothing water, jaws wide—

—just as Mother, still firing, raised one of her legs instinctively and—

—chomp!

The shark clamped down on her left leg.

And Mother didn't react at all.

Her left leg was her artificial leg, made of titanium. A replacement for an injury from a previous adventure.

Two of the shark's teeth broke. Shattered into fragments.

'Try eating this, motherfucker,' Mother said, levelling her pistol at the tiger shark's brain.

Blam.

The shark bucked violently in the water, but when it came down, it was stilled, dead, its jaws clamped around Mother's left leg, as if even in its last moment of life, it had been unwilling to let go of its prize.

For her part, Mother just kicked the 10-foot shark away from her and leapt out of the pool to get back into the action.

While Mother had been firing at the shark, on the other side of the Pit, Schofield had chased after Noonan and caught him—tackling him—just as he had arrived at the open doorway to the dungeon.

The ISS man tried to kick Schofield clear, but Schofield just flung Noonan back into the dungeon and started hitting him—with venom.

One punch, and Noonan staggered backwards.

'I know you pulled the lever . . .' Schofield said grimly.

Second punch, and Noonan's nose broke, spraying blood.

'I know she died in pain . . .'

The third punch, and Noonan's jaw broke. He slipped, lost his footing.

'You killed a beautiful thing . . .'

Schofield grabbed Noonan two-handed and hurled him headfirst into the guillotine. Noonan's head slid into the stocks underneath the razor-sharp blade, which itself was still held up by the shuriken.

'So now you're gonna die in pain . . .' Schofield said.

And with that Schofield yanked the shuriken out of the guillotine's wooden guide rails—causing the blade to drop the final two feet.

'No!' Noonan screamed. 'Noooo—!'

Chunk.

Noonan's rat-like head hit the stone floor like a bouncing ball, his eyelids blinking rapidly in those first moments after decapitation before they settled into a blank stare, forever frozen in a final look of absolute utter horror.

Ten yards away from the guillotine, floating in the shark-infested water, Aloysius Knight was engaged in the fight of his life with Wade Brandeis.

With their equal Delta training, they were perfectly matched, and as such, they traded punches and tactics, splashing and ducking under the surface in a fight that could only be to the death.

Then suddenly both men rose above the surface, nose-to-nose. Only now Brandeis had a small gun pressed up against Knight's chin. He had him.

'I always had the wood on you, Knight!'

Knight spoke through clenched teeth:

'You know, Brandeis, ever since that night in Sudan, I've thought of a thousand ways to kill you. But until right now, I'd never thought of this one.'

'Huh?' Brandeis grunted.

And with that, Knight yanked Brandeis around in the water and brought him right into the path of the inrushing second tiger shark.

The big 10-foot shark rammed into Brandeis at full speed, taking him in its mouth, its gnashing chomping teeth inches away from Knight's own body. But the shark only had eyes for Brandeis, drawn by his bleeding right hand.

'Sleep with one eye open, you fuck,' Knight said.

Caught in the grip of the massive shark, Brandeis could only stare back at him—and scream as he was eaten alive.

Knight clambered out of the water, out of the bloody froth that had once been Wade Brandeis, and headed back to join Schofield.

Knight rejoined Schofield behind the guillotine—at the spot where Schofield had just pulled the wounded Rufus out of the line of fire of the four ExSol men now traversing across the Pit's stone islands.

Schofield had also collected some weapons—two Colt Commando assault rifles, one MP-7, one of Knight's H&K 9mm pistols, plus Knight's own fully-loaded utility vest, taken from one of the dead Delta men.

Mother joined them.

'Hey, Mother,' Knight said. 'Last time I saw you, you were inside that maintenance shack in the Talbot, just before it was RPG'd by the Demon's boys. What'd you do, hide in the floor?'

'Screw the floor,' Mother said. 'That damn shack was hanging from the roof of the hold. It had a hatch in the ceiling. That was where I went. But then, of course, the whole fucking boat sank . . .'

Knight said, 'So how did you know we were here?'

Mother pulled out a Palm Pilot from a waterproof pouch in her vest. 'You've got a lot of nice toys, Mr Knight. And you,' Mother turned to Schofield, 'have got MicroDots all over your hands, young man.'

'Nice to see you, Mother,' Schofield said. 'It's good to have you back.'

A volley of bullets from the ExSol men hit the guillotine.

Schofield turned quickly, eyeing the open doorway ten yards away.

'I'm going upstairs now,' he said abruptly, 'to get Killian. Mother, stay with Rufus, and take care of these assholes. Knight, you can come or you can stay. It's your choice.'

Knight held his gaze. 'I'm coming.'

Schofield—still wearing his stripped utility vest—gave Knight one of the rifles, the 9mm pistol and the full utility vest he had picked up. 'Here. You can use these things better than I can. Let's move. Mother, cover fire, please.'

Mother whipped up her gun, sprayed covering fire at the ExSol mercenaries.

Schofield dashed for the door. Knight took off after him . . . but not before quickly grabbing something from Mother.

'What are you taking that for?' Mother shouted after him.

'I've got a feeling I'm gonna be needing it,' was all Knight said before he disappeared through the stone doorway after Schofield.

The Knight and the Scarecrow.

Storming up the spiralling stone stairwell—illuminated by firelight, rising from the depths of the dungeon—two warriors of equal awesome skill, covering each other, moving in tandem, their Colt Commando machine-guns blazing.

Like the six ExSol men guarding the stairwell had a chance.

As Schofield had suspected, Cedric Wexley had dispatched his six remaining mercenaries to this side of the Pit, to cut off their escape.

The ExSol meres had divided themselves into three pairs stationed at regular intervals up the stairwell, firing from alcoves in the walls.

The first two mercenaries were ripped to shreds by fire from the uprushing warriors.

The second pair never even heard it coming as two shuriken throwing knives whipped around the corner of the curving stairwell—banking through the air like boomerangs—and lodged in their skulls.

The third pair were cleverer.

They'd set a trap.

They had waited at the top of the stairwell, inside the long stone tunnel beyond the ante-room—the tunnel with the boiling-oil gutters—the same tunnel that led to the verification office, where Wexley himself now stood with Killian and Delacroix.

Schofield and Knight arrived at the top of the stairwell, saw the two mercenaries in the tunnel, and the others beyond them.

But this time when Schofield moved, Knight didn't.

Schofield dashed through the ante-room, firing at the two

mercenaries in the tunnel, taking them down just as they tried to do the same to him.

Knight leapt up after him shouting, 'No, wait! It's a tra—'

Too late.

The three large steel doors came thundering down from the ceilings of the tunnel and the ante-room. A fourth sealed off the stairwell leading down from the ante-room.

Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!

And Schofield and Knight were separated.

Schofield: trapped in the tunnel with the two fallen ExSol mercenaries.

Knight: caught in the ante-room.

Schofield froze in the sealed-off tunnel.

He'd hit both of the mercenaries in here—they now lay sprawled on the floor, one dead, the other whimpering.

Killian's voice came over the speakers: 'Captain Schofield. Captain Knight. It was a pleasure to know you both—'

Knight spun in the ante-room, saw the six microwave emitters arrayed in a circle around the ceiling, embedded in the rock.

'Deep shit. . .' he breathed.

Killian's voice boomed: '—but the game ends now. It seems only fitting that your deaths be hard-won.'

Inside the office, Killian peered through the small perspex window that allowed him to see into the boiling-oil tunnel. He saw Schofield there, trapped like a rat.

'Good-bye, gentlemen.'

And Killian hit the two buttons on his remote that triggered each chamber's booby trap: the microwave emitters in Knight's anteroom, and the boiling-oil gutters in Schofield's tunnel.

First, Killian heard the humming vibrations from the ante-room, quickly followed by the sound of repeated gunshots.

This had happened before.

People had sometimes tried to shoot their way out through the ante-room's steel doors. It had never worked. On a couple of occasions, some had attempted to shoot the microwave emitters themselves, but bullets weren't powerful enough to penetrate the emitters in their reinforced stone emplacements.

Then with an explosive spurt, steaming yellow oil sprayed across the tiny perspex window separating Killian from the tunnel holding Schofield, blotting out his view of Shane Schofield.

But he didn't need to see Schofield to know what was happening.

As the superheated boiling oil sprayed its way down the length of the tunnel, Killian could hear Schofield's screams.

A minute later, after both the screaming and the gunshots had ceased, Killian opened the steel doors—

—to be confronted by a surprising sight.

He saw the bodies of the two ExSol men lying in the tunnel, blistered and scorched by the boiling oil. One of them had his arms frozen in a defensive cowering posture—he had died screaming in agony, trying to fend off the oil.

Schofield, however, was nowhere to be seen.

In his place, standing at the ante-room end of the tunnel was a dark man-sized shape.

A body bag, standing upright.

It was a black polymer-plastic body bag. A Markov Type-Ill, to be precise. The best the Soviets had ever built—and the only item that Wade Brandeis had not taken from Schofield's vest. Capable of keeping in any kind of chemical contamination, now it seemed that it had successfully kept boiling oil out.

In a flash the zipper on the body bag whizzed open from the inside and Schofield emerged from it, leading with his MP-7.

His first shot hit Killian's hand—sending the remote flying from his grip—thus keeping the tunnel's doors open.

His second shot blew off Killian's left earlobe. Seeing the gun in Schofield's hand, Killian had ducked reflexively behind the doorframe. A nanosecond slower and the shot would have taken off his head.

Schofield stormed down the narrow tunnel toward the office, his MP-7 blazing.

Cedric Wexley returned fire from the cover of the office doorway.

Bullets flew every which way.

Chunks of stone fell off the wall-columns that lined the tunnel.

The floor-to-ceiling panoramic window in the office behind Wexley shattered completely.

But the key question in a stand-off like this was simple: who would run out of ammunition first? Schofield or Wexley?

Schofield did.

Ten feet short of the office doorway.

'Shit!' he yelled, ducking behind a stone column that barely concealed him.

Wexley smiled. He had him.

But then, strangely, another source of gunfire assailed Wexley's position—gunfire that came from behind Schofield, from the anteroom end of the tunnel.

Schofield was also perplexed by this and he turned . . .

... to see Aloysius Knight charging down the length of the tunnel, his Colt Commando raised and firing.

Schofield caught a fleeting glimpse of the ante-room in the distance behind Knight.

On its stone floor were 9mm shell casings—a dozen of them— relics of Knight's shooting spree during the activation of the microwave emitters.

But they weren't regular shell casings.

These shell casings had orange bands around them.

The emplacements of the six microwave emitters in the anteroom may have been able to withstand regular bullets. But they'd been no match for Knight's gas-expanding bull-stoppers.

Knight's fire was all that Schofield needed.

Wexley was forced to return fire and within moments he was dry too. Unfortunately, so was Knight.

Schofield sprang.

He flew into the office at speed, striking Wexley in his already

broken nose, breaking it again.

Wexley roared with pain.

And Wexley and Schofield engaged. Brutal hand-to-hand combat. South African Reccondo vs United States Marine.

But as they came together in a flurry of moves and parries, Monsieur Delacroix stepped forward, a glistening knife appearing from his right sleeve-cuff and he lunged at Schofield with it.

The blade got within an inch of Schofield's back before Delacroix's wrist was clutched from the side by an exceedingly strong grip and suddenly Delacroix found himself staring into the eyes of Aloysius Knight.

'Now that just isn't fair,' Knight said, a moment before he was stabbed deep in the thigh by a second knife that had appeared from Delacroix's other cuff.

Delacroix's knife-wielding hands moved like lightning, forcing the now-limping Knight to step back across the floor.

The blades were the sharpest things Knight had ever seen. Or felt. One of them slashed across his face, carving a line of blood across his cheek.

What had previously been all dapper-Swiss-banker was now a perfectly-balanced bladesman exhibiting the exquisite knife skills only associated with the—

'Swiss Guards, hey, Delacroix?' Knight said as he moved. 'You never told me that. Nice. Very nice.'

'In my trade,' Delacroix sneered, 'a man must know how to handle himself.'

Schofield and Wexley traded blows by the doorway.

Wexley was bigger and stronger than Schofield, skilful, too.

Schofield, however, was quicker, his now-famous reflexes allowing him to evade Wexley's more lethal blows.

But after the exertions of the previous twenty-four hours and the crash of the X-15 and the trip as a captive to France, his energy levels were low.

As such, he over-extended with one punch.

Wexley nailed him for the error—a withering blow to the nose that would have killed any other man—and Schofield staggered, but as he fell, he managed to unleash a ruthless blow of his own to Wexley's Adam's apple.

Both men fell, dropping to the floor together—Wexley went sprawling across the open doorway, gasping, while Schofield slumped against the doorframe beside him.

Wexley groaned, and rising to his knees, drew a Warlock hunting knife from his boot.

'Too late, asshole,' Schofield said.

The strange thing was, he had no weapon in his hands. He had something better. He had Killian's remote.

'This is for McCabe and Farrell,' he said, hitting a button on the remote.

Immediately, the steel door above Wexley came thundering down out of its recess, slamming into Wexley's head like a pile-driver, driving it down into the stone floor where—sprack!—it cracked Wexley's head in an instant, flattening it.

With Wexley dead, Schofield turned to find the man he really wanted.

He saw him standing behind the desk.

Jonathan Killian.

Knight was still fighting Delacroix when he saw Schofield approach Killian over by the desk.

It wasn't that Knight was worried about Killian. Far from it. He was worried about what Schofield was going to do.

But he couldn't get away from Delacroix . . .

Schofield stopped in front of Killian.

The contrast couldn't have been more marked. Schofield was covered in dirt and grime, bloodied and beaten and worn. Apart from his bullet-nicked ear and wounded hand Killian was relatively neat and tidy, his clothes perfectly pressed.

The shattered floor-to-ceiling panoramic window overlooking the Atlantic yawned beside them.

The thunderstorm outside raged. Lightning forks tore the sky. Rain lanced in through the broken window.

Schofield gazed at Killian without emotion.

When he didn't speak, Killian just smirked.

'So, Captain Schofield. What are your intentions now? To kill me? I am a defenceless civilian. I have no military skills. I am unarmed.' Killian's eyes narrowed. 'But then, I don't think you could kill me. Because if you killed me now in rank cold blood, it would be my final victory, and perhaps my greatest achievement. For it would only prove one thing: that I broke you. I turned the last good man in the world into a cold-hearted murderer. And all I did was kill your.girl.'

Schofield's eyes never wavered.

His whole appearance was unnaturally still.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, dangerous.

'You once told me that Westerners don't understand suicide bombers,' he said slowly. 'Because suicide bombers don't fight fair. That the battle is meaningless to a suicide bomber, because he wants to win a far more important war: a psychological war in which the man who dies in a state of terror or fear—the man who dies against his will—loses.' Schofield paused. 'While the man who dies when he is emotionally ready, wins.'

Killian frowned.

Schofield never flinched, not even when a totally fatalistic, nihilistic smile washed across his face.

Then he grabbed Killian roughly by the throat and brought the billionaire right up close to his face and growled, 'You're not emotionally ready to die, Killian. But I am. Which means I win.'

'Jesus Christ, no . . .' Killian stammered, realising what was about to happen. 'No!!!'

And with those words, hauling the screaming Jonathan Killian with him, Shane Schofield stepped out through the shattered panoramic window beside them, out into the storm, and the two of them—hero and villain—fell together through 400 feet of sky down to the jagged rocks below.

At the very same moment that Schofield pulled Killian right up close to his face, Aloysius Knight had got the jump on Delacroix.

A quick sidestep to the left had caused Delacroix to stab one of his knives deep into the wood-panelled wall of the office—and allowed Knight to whip his blowtorch out from his utility vest and jam it into Delacroix's mouth and pull the trigger.

The blue flame from the blowtorch blasted out the back of Delacroix's head, spiking right through his skull, sending burnt brains flying across the room. The Swiss banker slumped instantly, dead, a char-rimmed hole driven right through his head.

Knight emerged from behind the fallen Delacroix just in time to see Shane Schofield step out into the storm, taking the screaming Killian with him.

Schofield fell through the rain with Jonathan Killian at his side.

The rocky mount rushed past them, while directly below them, Schofield saw the rocks, assaulted by the waves of the Atlantic, that would end his life.

And as he fell, a strange peace came over him. This was the end, and he was ready for it.

Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, something struck him hard in the back and he jolted sickeningly and without warning . . .

. . . stopped falling.

Jonathan Killian shrank away from him—falling, falling, falling—disappearing with the rain, before slamming into the rocks at the base of the mount where he bent at an obscene angle and

then vanished in a foul explosion of his own blood. He screamed all the way down.

And yet Schofield did not fall.

He just hung from the panoramic window at the end of a Maghook rope—from the Maghook that had just been fired by Aloysius Knight, the Maghook he had taken from Mother before— a desperate last-gasp shot that he had fired as he leaned out the window a second after Schofield had jumped—the bulbous magnetic head of the Maghook having attached itself to the metal plate inside the back section of Schofield's borrowed flak vest.

Schofield allowed himself to be reeled back up to the office like a fish on a line. When he got there, Knight hauled him back inside.

'I'm sorry, buddy,' Knight said. 'But I just couldn't let you go like that. That said, I still think you made your point to Killian.'

Ten minutes later, as the sun appeared on the horizon, a lone Aston Martin sped away from the Forteresse de Valois with Aloysius Knight at the wheel and Shane Schofield, Mother and Rufus inside it. The car took the side-road leading up to the castle's airfield. There, after a very one-sided gunbattle, its occupants stole an Axon helicopter and flew off toward the rising sun.

Over the next few months, a strange variety of incidents took place around the world. \

Just a week later, in Milan, Italy, it was claimed that there had been a break-in at the Aerostadia Italia Airshow, and that an aircraft had been stolen from one of the airshow's outlying hangars.

After the disappointing non-appearance of the fabled US X-15 rocket planes already, this was not the kind of publicity that the air-show needed.

Witnesses claimed that the aircraft taken was a sleek, black fighter which—so they said—took off vertically. While this description matched the description of the experimental Russian Sukhoi S-37, airshow and Italian Air Force officials were quick to point out that no such plane had been slated to appear at the show.

In the lead-up to Christmas, there was also a spate of unfortunate deaths among some of the world's richest families.

Randolph Loch disappeared while on safari in southern Africa. His entire private hunting party was never found.

In March, the Greek shipping magnate Cornelius Kopassus suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep.

Arthur Quandt was found dead with his mistress in the spa of his Aspen lodge.

Warren Shusett was murdered in his isolated country mansion.

J. D. Cairnton, the pharmaceutical tycoon, was hit and killed by a speeding truck.outside his company's New York headquarters. The driver of the truck was never found.

Heirs took over their empires. The world kept turning. The only connection made to their deaths was in a confidential memo to the President of the United States.

It read simply: 'sir, it is over, majestic-12 is no more.'

MAJORCA, SPAIN

9 NOVEMBER, 1100 HOURS

The hired Volkswagen circled the charming cobblestoned piazza on the Spanish island of Majorca, the famed luxury hideaway for the rich and reclusive.

'So where are we going again?' Rufus asked.

'We're going to meet our employer,' Knight said. 'The person who engaged us to keep Captain Schofield alive.'

Knight parked the car outside a streetside cafe.

Their employer was already there.

She sat at one of the sidewalk tables, smoking a cigarette, her eyes hidden behind a pair of opaque Dior sunglasses.

She was a very distinguished-looking woman—late forties, dark hair, high cheekbones, porcelain skin, her posture all at once refined and cultured and confident.

Her name was Lillian Mattencourt.

Billionaire owner of the Mattencourt cosmetics empire.

The richest woman in the world.

'Why if it isn't my knight in shining armour,' she said as they approached her table. 'Aloysius, my dear. Do sit down.'

Over tea, Mattencourt smiled warmly.

'Oh, Aloysius, you have done well. And you shall be rewarded handsomely.'

'Why?' Knight said. 'Why didn't you want him killed?'

'Oh, my dashing young knight,' Lillian Mattencourt said. 'Is it not obvious?'

Knight had thought about this. 'Majestic-12 wanted to start a new Cold War. And Jonathan Killian wanted global anarchy. But your fortune is based on the opposite of that. You want people to feel safe, secure, to be happy little consumers. Your fortune rests on the maintenance of global peace and prosperity. And nobody buys make-up during wartime. Warfare would ruin you.'

Mattencourt waved his answer away. 'My dear boy, are you always so cynical? Of course, what you say is absolutely true. But it was only one small part of my reasoning.'

'What was it then?'

Mattencourt smiled. Then her tone became deadly. 'Aloysius. Despite the fact that I have a greater net wealth than all but a few of them, and despite the fact that my father was once a member of their little club, for many years now, for the sole and single reason that I am a woman, Randolph Loch and his friends have consistently refused to let me join their Council.

'Put simply, after years of suffering their various innuendos and sexual taunts, I decided that I'd had enough. So when I learned of their bounty hunt through sources of my own within the French government, I decided that the time was right to teach them a lesson. I decided, Aloysius, to hurt them.

'And the best way to achieve that was to take from them that which they desired most—their precious plan. If they wanted certain people dead, then I wanted them alive. If they wanted to destroy the existing global order, then I did not.

'I had heard of Captain Schofield. His reputation is well known. Like yourself, he is a rather resilient young man. If anyone could defeat Majestic-12 it was him, with you by his side. As such, he became the man you would protect.'

Lillian Mattencourt raised her nose and inhaled the fresh Mediterranean air, a sign that this meeting was over.

'Now, run along my brave little foot soldier. Run along. You

have done your job and done it well. By tonight, your money will be in your account. All $130.2 million of it, the equivalent I believe of seven heads.'

And with that she stood, donned her hat, and left the cafe, making for her 500 Series Mercedes Benz on the far side of the piazza.

She was inside the car and about to start it when Knight saw the shadowy figure standing in an alleyway not far from it.

'Oh, you cunning bastard,' Knight said a split second before Lillian Mattencourt keyed the ignition.

The explosion rocked the piazza.

Potted plants were thrown across the cobblestones. Table umbrellas were blown inside-out. Bystanders started running toward the flaming ruins of Lillian Mattencourt's Mercedes.

And the man who had been standing in the alleyway walked casually over to Knight's table and sat down beside him.

His flame-scarred face and bald head were covered by sunglasses and a cap.

'Well, if it isn't the Demon,' Knight said flatly.

'Hello, Captain Knight,' Demon Larkham said. 'Two weeks ago, you stole something from me. From a cargo plane travelling between Afghanistan and France. Three heads, if I recall. $55.8 million worth of bounty.'

Knight saw three other members of IG-88 standing nearby, guns under their jackets, flanking him and Rufus.

No escape.

'Oh yeah, that.'

Demon Larkham's voice was low. 'Others would kill you for what you did, but I'm not like that. The way I see it, things like this happen in our profession. It is the nature of the game and I enjoy that game. Ultimately, however, I believe that what happens on the field, stays on the field. That said, considering this unfortunate incident'—Demon waved at the smoking remains of Lillian Mattencourt's car—'and the amount of money that you have just seen go up in smoke, what do you say we consider the debt settled.'

'I'd say that would be a good idea,' Knight said evenly, his lips tight.

'Until we meet again then, Captain,' the Demon said, standing. 'See you on the next safari.'

And with that, Demon Larkham and his men were gone, and all Aloysius Knight could do was gaze after them ruefully and shake his head.

MOTHER'S HOUSE RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, USA 1 MARCH, 1200 NOON FOUR MONTHS LATER

The sun shone brightly over the BBQ underway in Mother's backyard.

It was a Sunday and a small but very close crowd had gathered for a casual get-together.

Mother's trucker husband Ralph was there—tending to the sausages with an oversized spatula. Their nieces were inside, miming to Britney Spears's latest hit.

David Fairfax sat in a deck chair under the clothesline, nursing a beer, swapping stories with Book II and Mother about their adventures the previous October: tales of chases in parking lots near the Pentagon, office towers in London, Zulu bounty hunters, British bounty hunters, and their mirror-image assaults on supertankers on either side of the United States.

They also talked about Aloysius Knight.

'I heard the government cleared his record, cancelled the bounty and took him off the Most Wanted List,' Fairfax said. 'They even said he could come back to Special Forces if he wanted to.'

'So has he?' Book II asked.

'I don't even think he's come back to the States,' Fairfax said. 'Mother? What do you know about Knight?'

'He phones every now and then,' she said, 'but no, he hasn't come back to the States. If I were him, I don't know if I would

either. As far as Special Forces is concerned, I don't think Knight is a soldier anymore. I think he's a bounty hunter now.'

Thinking about Knight made Mother look over her shoulder.

Over in a corner of the yard, by himself, sat Schofield—cleanshaven and wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a pair of reflective Oakleys. He sipped on a Coke, staring up into the sky.

He had hardly spoken to anyone since he had arrived, which was not unusual these days. Gant's death in France had hit him hard. He'd been on indefinite leave ever since, and didn't look like coming back to active duty any time soon.

Everyone gave him a bit of space.

But just then, as Ralph was sizzling the onions, the doorbell rang.

Courier delivery. For the attention of Shane Schofield. Care of Mother's address.

A large cardboard envelope.

Mother took it to Schofield in the yard. He opened it. Inside the envelope was a lone gift-shop card with a cheesy cartoon of a cowboy that read: 'your new life begins today, buckaroo!'

Inside it was a handwritten message:

SCARECROW,

I'M SORRY I COULDN'T MAKE IT TODAY, BUT A NEW JOB CAME UP.

HAVING SPOKEN WITH MOTHER RECENTLY, I REALISED THAT THERE IS SOMETHING I SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU FOUR MONTHS AGO.

DID YOU KNOW THAT, STRICTLY SPEAKING, MY CONTRACTUAL COMMITMENT TO MY EMPLOYER TO KEEP YOU ALIVE EXPIRED WHEN YOU DISARMED THAT MISSILE OVER MECCA. MY TASK WAS TO KEEP YOU ALIVE 'UNTIL 12 NOON, 26 OCTOBER OR UNTIL SUCH TIME AS CAPTAIN SCHOFIELD'S REASON FOR ELIMINATION HAS BEEN UTILISED TO ITS FULLEST POTENTIAL.'

I HAVE NEVER GONE BEYOND THE LETTER OF A CONTRACT

BEFORE. TO BE HONEST, I ACTUALLY THOUGHT ABOUT LEAVING YOU IN THAT DUNGEON—AFTER ALL, BY THEN, YOUR REASON FOR ELIMINATION HAD INDEED BEEN UTILISED TO THE FULLEST.

BUT AFTER WATCHING THE WAY YOUR MEN—AND YOUR WOMEN—STOOD BY YOU OVER THE COURSE OF THAT AWFUL DAY, AFTER OBSERVING THE LOYALTY THEY HAD TO YOU, I CHOSE TO STAY AND FIGHT BY YOUR SIDE.

LOYALTY IS NOT SOMETHING THAT SIMPLY HAPPENS, CAPTAIN. IT IS ALWAYS PREDICATED BY AN INDEPENDENT SELFLESS ACT: A SUPPORTIVE WORD, A KINDLY GESTURE, AN UNPROVOKED ACT OF GOODNESS. YOUR MEN ARE LOYAL TO YOU, CAPTAIN, BECAUSE YOU ARE THAT RAREST OF MEN: A GOOD MAN.

PLEASE LIVE AGAIN. IT WILL TAKE TIME. BELIEVE ME, I KNOW. BUT DO NOT ABANDON THE WORLD JUST YET—IT CAN BE A TERRIBLE PLACE, BUT IT CAN ALSO BE A BEAUTIFUL PLACE, AND NOW MORE THAN EVER IT NEEDS MEN LIKE YOU.

AND KNOW THIS, SHANE 'SCARECROW' SCHOFIELD. YOU HAVE WON MY LOYALTY, A FEAT WHICH NO MAN HAS ACHIEVED FOR A VERY LONG TIME.

ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, IF YOU NEED HELP, JUST MAKE THE CALL AND I'LL BE THERE.

YOUR FRIEND,

THE BLACK KNIGHT

P.S. I AM SURE SHE IS WATCHING OVER YOU RIGHT NOW.

Schofield folded up the card. And stood up.

And started walking out of the yard and down the driveway, heading for his car out on the street.

'Hey!' Mother called, concerned. 'Where are you going, champ?'

Schofield turned to her and smiled—a sad but genuine smile. 'Thank you, Mother. Thank you for worrying about me. I promise, you won't have to do it for too much longer.'

'What are you doing?'

'What am I doing?' he said. 'I'm going to try and start living again.'

The next morning he appeared at the personnel offices of Marine Headquarters in the Navy Annex building in Arlington.

'Good morning, sir,' he said to the Colonel in charge. 'My name is Captain Shane Schofield. The Scarecrow. I'm ready to get back to work.'

AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY

THE WRITING OF SCARECROW

[WARNING—Some of the later questions in this interview address plot points in Scarecrow. Be careful if you are reading them before you read the book!]

What were you trying to achieve with this new novel?

From the very beginning, I was aware that Scarecrow would be closely compared to my other books. This is natural—hey, as soon as you write two books, people automatically compare them and decide which is their favourite. With that in mind, what I really wanted was for Scarecrow to be seen as a new kind of Matthew Reilly novel, a faster book, a book that was more densely packed with plot: a book that was a stylistic leap forward from my previous efforts. I'm hoping people will see Contest, Ice Station, Temple and Area 7 as 'Matthew Reilly Version 1.0' and Scarecrow as the beginning of 'Matthew Reilly Version 2.0'.

It's funny, in the interview at the back of Area 7, I mentioned that I wanted to create a new level of speed and pace in my next book—and then I'd meet people at book signings and they'd say 'How are you possibly going to make it faster? I like to think that Scarecrow has lived up to the promise of being faster and completely out-of-control!

How have you tried to achieve this?

Mainly by combining action and exposition—I wanted my characters to be running away from the bad guys while they were figuring stuff out. A lot of thrillers have rest breaks between the action scenes during which the author spells out the plot. I wanted to fuse the action and the plot advancement together. The result is that

Scarecrow is about the same length as Area 7, but has a lot more happening in it.

What was the inspiration for the bounty hunters in Scarecrow?

It's odd, you know, but for me bounty hunters have only ever appeared in two storytelling spheres: westerns and the original Star Wars trilogy (I haven't read any of Janet Evanovich's books, but I believe her lead character is a bounty hunter).

The idea of international bounty hunters, with their own planes and units and even submarines, was something I adapted from the (real-life) concept of mercenary forces: private armies that sell themselves and their hardware to the highest bidder. In Australia, such forces got a lot of press when Papua New Guinea engaged a mercenary army a few years ago; I also read about them operating in Sierra Leone, helping the government stay in power in exchange for diamonds.

In addition to this, I have always been intrigued by the concept of the Wild West freelance bounty hunter, a concept which was adapted to a sci-fi environment in the Star Wars trilogy, in particular The Empire Strikes Back. Indeed, this is why Demon Larkham's gang—the Intercontinental Guards, Unit 88, or 'IG-88'—is proudly named after the obscure bounty hunter of the same name in The Empire Strikes Back. (For those who don't know, IG-88 was the very tall robot bounty hunter who stands in the background as Darth Vader offers a reward for the bounty hunter who finds the Millennium Falcon. IG-88 utters no dialogue, nor does he actually move, but he became one of those cult Star Wars action figures— probably because he was always the one left on the shelf!).

In any case, the idea of these elite hunters-of-men really appealed to me, and I wanted to fashion a story whereby my hero, Shane Schofield—an able warrior himself—was being pursued by the best manhunters on the planet. And thus Scarecrow was born.

Speaking of bounty hunters, you introduce in Scarecrow a character named Aloysius Knight, a.k.a. the Black Knight. What lay behind his creation?

I had a lot of fun creating Aloysius Knight. From the start, he was designed to be Schofield's darker shadow, his amoral twin (he even has an eye dysfunction to match Schofield's). I wanted him to be the equal of Schofield in battle skills, but darker, more ruthless—as shown, for example, when we first meet him at Krask-8, when he kills the pleading mercenary in cold blood.

But most of all, I wanted Knight to be a guy whose reputation preceded him. The men of ExSol are worried that he's coming to Siberia. David Fairfax discovers that he's the second-best bounty hunter in the world—at a time when Knight is standing right in front of Schofield.

As a writer, it's very liberating to create characters such as Knight— it's the same with Mother—because you can do all sorts of things with him. For the simple reason that there are no boundaries. Characters like Knight and Mother are not governed by socially acceptable norms, and so are fun to write about. They swear, they kill bad people, they do crazy things. But having said that, there is one special thing common to both Mother and Knight: their loyalty to their friends—Mother to Schofield, and Knight to his pilot, Rufus. However wild and crazy they may be, they stand by their friends.

As an interesting aside, Knight is named after St Aloysius (pronounced allo-wishus) Gonzaga, a Jesuit saint and the namesake of my old high school, St Aloysius' College, in Sydney.

[THIS QUESTION CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS]

Okay. To the big question: how could you kill Gantl Seriously, Scarecrow sees some of the biggest 'character moments' you've written. What made you make those choices?

You cannot believe how hard that scene was for me to write. Unlike other characters who have met their end in my previous books, Gant had been with me for two-and-a-half books, and I virtually considered her a member of the family. I've neverConsidered myself to be an emotional, fall-in-love-with-my-characters kind of writer, but I remember vividly the day I wrote that terrible scene—I recall physically standing up from my computer and saying (aloud, to my empty office) 'Can I really do this?'

And so I thought about it. A lot. But then I said to myself 'No. This is what makes my novels different to other kinds of books. No character is safe. I've got to hold my nerve.'

It took me another day before I could sit down and actually type the scene, but I did. In the end, though, this is the essential feature of the action-thriller novel—the reader must believe that the hero and his friends might not make it.

Ultimately, however, it was a 'character motivation' thing that made me go through with killing Libby Gant. I decided that I wanted to see what would happen to the hero, Schofield, if such a terrible thing happened. What that led to was one of my favourite scenes in all of my books: the fistfight between Schofield and Mother (I don't know about you, but ever since I created them, I have wondered who would win a fight between Schofield and Mother: in the end, the answer is Schofield).

How do you interact with your military advisors?

This is a good question. My two military guys, Paul Woods and Kris Hankison, are two of the most knowledgable men I've ever known. And their input into my books has been beyond value, for the simple reason that no matter how much research you do on a given topic, someone 'in the industry' will always be able to give you that little bit of nuance, that little bit extra. That is what Paul and Kris do for me on military matters.

That said, sometimes the dictates of my story mean that I have to say to them, 'Sorry, guys, but I'll have to invoke poetic licence on this point.' A good example is the big MOAB bomb in Scarecrow. MOABs are actually satellite-guided, but my story required Gant to place a laser inside the Karpalov Coalmine. So, despite the protests of the guys, I made the MOAB laser-guided.

The best thing about my military advisors is that they have a keen sense of the tone of my books—they know that my novels are outrageous and over-the-top. So they accept that I sometimes have to bend the truth (and, hell, the laws of physics!) for the sake of a roller-coaster story.

Matthew. The French. They were the bad guys in Ice Station. And now Scarecrow. What have you got against the French?

Ha! Er, yes, the French do cop a bit of a pasting in Scarecrow. You have to understand, though, that I don't dislike France. Not at all!

What it boils down to is this: I write fiction. And I'm always looking for new dastardly villains. Back in the days of the Cold War, authors could just make the Soviet Union the evil bad guy. But that doesn't apply anymore. The world has changed. The way I see it— and as I suggested in Ice Station—international alliances are more fickle than we imagine. And France, more than any other major

Western nation, has been a vocal and active opponent of United States hegemony. Since Shane Schofield is American, France is often at cross-purposes with him.

Add to that France's chequered geopolitical history—the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, her nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean, and her outspoken opposition to the US invasion of Iraq—and you have a nation that could, in the world of fiction, have nefarious anti-US plans.

But I stress: it's fiction!

So what else have you been doing?

Since finishing Scarecrow, I have completed two screenplays. I enjoy writing scripts in between my books—a novel takes me a year to write, whereas a screenplay takes me about two months. I adapted my own short story, Altitude Rush, into a full-length screenplay, and have finished the first part of an epic science fiction trilogy that I think will rock the world one day!

Any more books on the way?

Yes indeed. Earlier this year I signed a new two-book deal with my publishers, Pan Macmillan, so there will be at least two more books from me. I have now moved to producing one book every two years—I would love to be able to produce a book every year, but I fear the quality would suffer and I just don't want to end up churning out books simply to keep to a timetable.

Not sure what they'll be about at this stage. One will probably be a Schofield book, although maybe Aloysius Knight could get a novel of his own. And I keep getting asked at book signings if I will be writing a sequel to Templel

Any final words?

As always, I just hope you enjoyed the book. Keep reading and take care.

Matthew Reilly Sydney, Australia November 2003

Matthew Reilly Contest

The New York State Library. A brooding labyrinth of towering bookcases, narrow aisles and spiralling staircases. For Doctor Stephen Swain and his daughter, Holly, it is the site of a nightmare. For one night this historic building is to be the venue for a contest. A contest in which Swain is to compete - whether he likes it or not.

The rules are simple. Seven contestants will enter. Only one will leave. With his daughter in his arms, Swain is plunged into a terrifying fight for survival. He can choose to run, hide or to fight - but if he wants to live, he has to win. For in this contest, unless you leave as the victor, you do not leave at all.

'Matt Reilly, genius ... the arrival of a rare talent' John Birmingham, the Sydney morning herald

'An electrifying . . . novel for the X-Files generation' Jessica Adams, cleo

'Matthew Reilly is our Michael Crichton'

DAILY TELEGRAPH

Matthew Reilly Ice Station

At a remote ice station in Antarctica, a team of US scientists has made an amazing discovery. They have found something buried deep within a 100-million-year-old layer of ice. Something made of METAL.

Led by the enigmatic Lieutenant Shane Schofield, a team of crack United States Marines is sent to the station to secure this discovery for their country. They are a tight unit, tough and fearless. They would follow their leader into hell. They just did ...

'The pace is frantic, the writing snappy, the research thorough. Unputdownable . . .'

WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

'It never slows down ... it is unlike any other new Australian novel'

DAILY TELEGRAPH

'There is enough technological wizardry, military know-how, plot convolution and sheer non-stop mayhem to place it in the premier league of international bestsellers'

THE WEST AUSTRALIAN

'His publisher compares him to Grisham and Crichton, but I reckon the 23-year-old is a cut above'

RALPH

'This is Indiana Jones goes to Antarctica .. . backed by good research about weaponry, science and international jealousies'

NW

Matthew Reilly Temple

Deep in the jungles of Peru, the hunt for a legendary Incan idol is underway - an idol that in the present day could be used as the basis for a terrifying new weapon.

Guiding a US Army team is Professor William Race, a young linguist who must translate an ancient manuscript which contains the location of the idol.

What they find is an ominous stone temple, sealed tight. They open it -and soon discover that some doors are meant to remain unopened . . .

There is no denying it. Matthew Reilly has really arrived'

DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Like Ice Station, Temple is well researched and technically adept. Diehard action buffs will enjoy'

WHO WEEKLY

'Probably the most breathless read in the history of airport fiction'

AUSTRALIAN BOOKSELLER & PUBLISHER

Matthew Reilly Area 7

It is America's most secret base, hidden deep in the Utah desert, an Air Force installation known only as Area 7.

And today it has a visitor: the President of the United States. He has come to inspect Area 7, to examine its secrets for himself. But he's going to get more than he bargained for on this trip. Because hostile forces are waiting inside ...

Among the President's helicopter crew, however, is a young Marine. He is quiet, enigmatic, and he hides his eyes behind a pair of silver sunglasses.

His name is Schofield. Call-sign: Scarecrow.

Rumour has it he's a good man in a storm.

Judging by what the President has just walked into, he'd better be...

THE AUTHOR OF ICE STATION IS BACK AND THRILLERS JUST GOT A WHOLE LOT FASTER.

'Buckle up, put the seat back, adjust the headrest and hang on'

THE SUNDAY AGE

'Australia's new master of action'

DAILY TELEGRAPH