Scarecrow Returns

WITHOUT WARNING, there came a mighty explosion.

At first it was difficult to tell where it had come from. It hadn’t come from the summit of the shorter spire. Nor had it come from anywhere near the Osprey and Mother, the crane-bridges or the rim of the moat.

No, it erupted—a sudden powerful blast—from the base of the short spire, from the point where it rose from the disc-shaped body of the tower, from the point where Schofield had planted a wad of PET plastic explosive beside the elevator earlier.

The fireball sent a cloud of concrete blasting out from the northern side of the spire’s base, carving a great chunk out of it . . .

. . . causing the whole short spire to topple like a slow-falling tree.

It was an absolutely incredible sight.

The spire—with the glass-enclosed lab at its summit—seemed to fall in horrifying slow motion, tipping from its destroyed base, falling northward.

It finished its terrible fall with a bone-crunching, earth-shuddering impact, a colossal crash of concrete on concrete: the spire’s long slender body crashing down against the flat upper surface of the main disc.

The spire’s glass-enclosed lab smashed down against the very edge of the disc—not far from the cables holding up Mother’s tanker truck—every single one of its windows shattering with the mighty impact, sending glass spraying out in every direction.

A cloud of concrete dust flew up around the whole mess, and when it cleared, the spire could be seen lying on its side, looking like a dead snake: its once-straight-and-vertical column now broken and horizontal; its glass lab was wrecked beyond repair, resting crumpled on its side.

As he gazed out at it through the dome of his command center, the Lord of Anarchy found it hard to believe that anyone inside the lab could have survived such a fall.

Unless they had been prepared for it, he thought.

And there he was.

A tiny figure came hurrying out of the shattered side-turned lab, carrying some small black cases, and running for the cables holding up the tanker truck.

Shane Schofield.

Of course, it hadn’t exactly been easy for Schofield.

After depositing the six spheres into the three little Samsonite cases, Schofield had raced around to the southern side of the lab, to the elevator’s doors. On the way, he’d grabbed the two mattresses from the cots in the bunkroom and laid them vertically against the elevator’s door. Then he’d pressed himself against the mattresses and held on tight as the cluster of PET explosives he’d placed at the base of the spire went off.

The explosives detonated and the spire fell northward and he rode it all the way down on its southern side. When the lab hit the disc and every window in it shattered as one, Schofield’s body slammed against the two mattresses which lay flat against the now-horizontal elevator door, softening the blow, sort of. Shards of glass had rained down all over his body but luckily nothing bigger than that hit him.

He was shaken and dazed, which was more than the two techs could say. They’d been crushed under the falling lab. The fate of the Russian traitor, Kotsky, had been worse. He’d been flung by the force of the fall clear out of the lab and Schofield had last seen him flying through the windows, screaming all the way to his death at the bottom of the concrete moat.

Schofield didn’t care.

He couldn’t stop. He had to keep moving.

He hustled out of the destroyed lab, covered in concrete dust, heading out into the Arctic chill once again.

As for Mother, the spectacular fall of the shorter spire had saved her life.

It came crashing down just above the hovering Osprey, causing the Osprey’s pilot, Hammerhead, to take evasive action and bank away from it. Concrete dust billowed out all around Mother and the Osprey, obscuring the air around both of them for a few precious moments.

Mother heard the Osprey’s rotors roaring as it banked around her. It would be back in a few seconds—

A sudden thump made her turn, and she saw Scarecrow standing on the roof beside her, with two Samsonite cases clipped to his gun-belt and a third in his hand. He’d just whizzed down a cable from the edge of the disc using his ascender as a descender.

Mother yelled, “Christ, this is the craziest snatch’n’grab I’ve ever seen!”

“It’s desperation over style, Mother.” He hurried over to the tail end of the suspended tanker truck, to the two cables that rose up from it to the rim of the massive moat.

“But did you have to destroy everything?” she shouted.

“I haven’t destroyed everything yet. Hurry up, this isn’t over! This way!”

He reached for the Magneteux at the rear of the truck.

“But you didn’t bring the ascender!” Mother shouted.

“We’re not using the ascender this time! Hold on to me!”

Mother knew not to argue. She just looped her arms around Scarecrow’s waist and held tight. As she did so, the dust cloud parted and she saw the Osprey materialize behind them, hovering in the void, guns poised.

“Scarecrow!”

“Just hang on!” With his other hand, Schofield grabbed the French Magneteux that Baba had looped around the rung ladder of the truck and—

—pressed the unspool switch.

The French Maghook unspooled a fraction and the result was instantaneous: it came free of the tanker’s rear ladder.

Which meant the tanker truck was now no longer suspended between the rim and the tower, and Schofield and Mother swooped away from the tower, swinging northward on that Magneteux’s cables—while the tanker truck, still dangling from the other pair of cables attached to the main tower, swung southward, where it smashed into the right wing of the hovering Osprey!

The Osprey rocked in midair, like a boxer recoiling from a punch. The swinging truck had shattered its starboard wing, and it dropped out of the sky, wheeling out of control before crashing down against the bottom of the moat, where it exploded spectacularly.

For their part, Schofield’s and Mother’s swing ended with them slamming at speed into the outer wall of the concrete moat. They bounced off the wall, but somehow managed to hang on.

Schofield then reeled in the Magneteux and they whizzed up the side of the chasm, where Zack, Emma, Champion and Baba awaited them in the cement mixer and the stolen jeep.

“Alors!” Baba exclaimed. “This is my kind of mission!”

“Holy fucking shit, dude,” Zack said, surveying the destruction all around them.

Schofield didn’t stop moving. He climbed into the back of the jeep with Baba and threw the Magneteux to Champion, saying: “Drive! We’re not out of this yet. We have to get to the coast and throw these spheres into the sea.”

“Why can’t we just throw them into the bay from the cable car terminal?” Zack asked.

“Water’s too shallow there. They could find the spheres easily with divers. We need to dispose of them in deeper water—”

Gunfire cut him off.

Four troop trucks filled with Army men were hurtling toward them from both crane-bridges.

Schofield yelled, “Mother! Take the wheel of that cement mixer and lead the way! You’re our blocker! Get us to the airstrip! Hopefully Ivanov has found us a plane!”

They sped off the mark, heading for the runway.