Scarecrow Returns

MARIO AND the Kid crouched behind a low concrete wall near the main vents, at a spot overlooking Dragon Island’s missile battery. They were tense and alert, careful to stay out of sight.

Earlier, they’d watched and listened in astonishment as Schofield had rampaged through the complex, ultimately fleeing with the spheres to the runway.

But now things had changed.

Schofield had failed and now they had to step up. Their mission: destroy the Army of Thieves’ missile battery and thus prevent the Army from firing any remaining spheres into the contaminated sky.

The Kid was also mindful of their last-ditch option: finding and destroying the Army of Thieves’ uplink, the satellite dish that was connecting them to a missile-spotting satellite up in orbit and thus protecting them from a nuclear strike.

This was a tougher task. An uplink dish didn’t have to be that big, which meant it could be anywhere with a line of sight to the sky. If the Army of Thieves was smart—and by all accounts they were—it wouldn’t be easy to spot, and sure enough, neither the Kid nor Mario had seen anything resembling such a dish.

And so, while Schofield had gone on his rampage, Mario and the Kid—still dressed in their Army of Thieves parkas—had carefully made their way toward the missile battery on the south side of the gas vents.

As they’d arrived at this vantage point overlooking the battery, however, a missile had been launched and the southern sky had lit up with blazing-white light—and they thought they’d failed completely, that the Army of Thieves had succeeded. But then they heard frantic voices and saw Army men frantically running in all directions.

During this mayhem, a lone Army sentry caught sight of them, but Mario put him down with a single, silenced shot. As they hid the body, Mario had quickly grabbed the man’s earpiece.

The two of them crowded around the single earpiece and listened in on the Army of Thieves’ commentary of Shane Schofield’s escape down the river:

“—just drove the fucking plane into the river!—”

“—Get the Strelas in there!—”

“—Something just came out the back—”

“—Three of them are on that cement mixer. Get them! They’ve got two spheres!—”

“—Get those fucking spheres—”

Shortly after, the plane had gone over the waterfall and after that, they heard a few transmissions about something happening over at the quarry and then nothing; radio silence.

And so now here they were, alone, Mario and the Kid, looking out over Dragon Island’s missile battery. They might have been too late to stop the first launch, but they wouldn’t let another one happen.

The battery was basically a high, flat-topped rocky mount attached to the rest of the base by a long thin bridge that spanned a gorge. The top of the rocky mount had been leveled, and on it sat half a dozen semi-trailer-like “transporter erector launchers” with missiles on their backs.

The Kid gazed at the missile battery. “I think we can get there unnoticed if we rope down this side of the bridge, hopscotch along the base of the gorge and then use Maghooks to get up the other side.”

Mario shook his head. “Jesus Christ, don’t you see? We’re fucked. Scarecrow’s dead and soon the others will be, too.”

“We keep fighting anyway,” the Kid said firmly. “We have to. Now come on. We got a battery to blow up.”

He scurried off.

Mario scowled. “Not everybody’s a hero, Kid,” he muttered.

They made it across just as the Kid had planned, traversing the gorge and then slithering up onto the flat top of the rocky mount via their Maghooks, before rolling under one of the transporter erector launchers unseen.

Almost unseen.

A lone surveillance camera had caught them in its sights.

Returning to his command center, the Lord of Anarchy watched silently as the two Marines crab-crawled up onto the mount.

He picked up his microphone.

The Kid lay tensed underneath the launcher, panting.

“Okay. Gimme your grenades,” he said to Mario.

Not very enthusiastically, Mario reached for a pouch on his webbing containing some grenades when a voice spoke in his ear: “Hello, Lance Corporal Puzo. Lance Corporal Vittorio Puzo from the state of New Jersey. I see you there on the missile battery, lying on the ground underneath one of my launchers.”

Mario started. He glanced at the Kid, who showed no sign of hearing anything. Then he realized: the voice had come through his Army of Thieves earpiece.

“He can’t hear me, Vittorio. Only you can. And it’s probably better that way, given the offer I’m about to make to you.”

Mario froze.

“Dude, give me the grenades,” the Kid urged.

Mario held up his hand, as if he was afraid of a sentry nearby, when he was actually listening to the voice in his ear.

“I am the Lord of Anarchy, Vittorio, the commander of the Army of Thieves. I am your enemy, but this needn’t be so.”

“Mario . . .” the Kid hissed.

Mario handed him four grenades—but kept listening.

“Go on,” he said aloud.

“Huh?” the Kid said, but let it slide.

“I can see what you have been ordered to do, Vittorio: destroy my missiles, thereby preventing me from launching the spheres into the gas cloud. Come now, Vittorio. You know the world. Seriously. Do you think these are the only missile launchers I have at my disposal?”

Mario frowned. This had occurred to him. As soon as they blew up these launchers, they’d become hunted men straightaway. And that would be a useless suicidal gesture if there were other launchers elsewhere.

“Vittorio. Look at the situation. If you blow those launchers, my men will come over there in large numbers and kill you.”

The Kid frowned at Mario, saw that he was mentally far away, listening to something. “Hey, man, what the hell are you doing?”

Mario waved him off.

“Of course, I have other launchers, Vittorio. So your death will be a futile and stupid sacrifice, a sad waste of your life. But I know you, Vittorio. I’ve got your file here in front of me. You aren’t stupid. Your uncle Salvatore in Jersey would tell you that this is the time to cut a deal.”

“What are you offering?” Mario said roughly.

The Kid came over. “I said, what the hell—”

The Lord of Anarchy said, “If you kill young Corporal Thompson right now and refrain from destroying my launchers, not only will I let you live, I will give you safe passage from this island when this is all over, a mansion in Chile, as many women as you desire, and four million U.S. dollars to live out the rest of your days in substantial luxury.”

Close enough now, the Kid realized what Mario was doing, and he looked at Mario in shock.

“What the fuck, man—?”

Mario answered him by drawing his Marine-issued M9 pistol and firing it at point-blank range into the Kid’s forehead.

Blam!

The Kid snapped violently backward and dropped to the ground.

Mario stood up and walked away, not even trying to conceal himself from the nearby Army of Thieves men.