Scarecrow Returns

THE ENTIRE missile battery went up in a great billowing fireball, right in front of Typhon.

A rolling series of explosions went off as, one after the other, the six transport erector launchers on the flat-topped rocky mount blew apart, their gas tanks rupturing, the missiles on their backs either shattering to pieces or being flung off the mount by the force of the blasts.

The only explanation Schofield had for the blast was the tiny figure he’d glimpsed sitting at the end of the road bridge.

It had been the Kid, just sitting there on the roadway. The blast, when it went off, had consumed him and now he was nowhere to be seen.

Schofield recalled seeing Mario earlier, before his torture. Betraying his team and siding with Calderon, Schofield had been told that Mario had shot the Kid in the head.

Schofield couldn’t know for sure, but he suspected that Mario—more mechanic than rifleman and a low-level hoodlum to boot—had made the mistake of many a criminal thug: he had shot the Kid in the forehead and walked away.

The thing was, contrary to popular belief, a forehead shot is the most unlikely head shot to kill someone. Through millennia of evolution, the bone of the forehead, the brain’s primary protective barrier, is the thickest and strongest part of the human skull. Experienced criminal killers always fire two shots into the back of the head, where the skull is much softer: the so-called execution-style killing. Snipers will aim for the temple or, if they can, the eye. But with a shot to the forehead, if the victim can get to a hospital in a reasonable time, the wound is actually very survivable.

The Kid had evidently survived.

Long enough to complete his mission, if slowly.

Schofield pictured him, bleeding from the forehead and moving with difficulty, planting his grenades around the missile site, placing them on gas tanks for maximum effect and then when it was done, slumping on his ass on the roadway, waiting for the end to come.

It had come in spectacular fashion.

When Marius Calderon saw his missile battery go up in flames, his mouth fell open.

He shook the shock away. He hadn’t come this far without contingency plans and he still had a few of those.

“Big Jesus!” he yelled, handing the burly Thief one of the spheres. “Get to the train! Roll it out and use its mobile missile launcher to ignite the atmosphere! Typhon! Come with me!”

“Yes, sir!” Big Jesus hurried back toward the gasworks, unslinging the Kord, accompanied by six other Thieves, their AK-47s raking Schofield’s door, keeping him and his people pinned down inside.

But they didn’t try to enter the gasworks. Big Jesus and his team ran right past the door—pummeling it with gunfire—and hurried around the northern corner of the gasworks.

They were heading for the railway platform’s outer entrance.

After they were gone, Schofield cracked open his door and saw Calderon.

The CIA man was leaping into a jeep—with Typhon, Mario and the other sphere. He sped off in the opposite direction, heading along the road that led around the disc tower toward the runway on the other side.

“Now where is he going?” Mother said.

“He’s hedging his bets,” Schofield said. “He sent those assholes to the train to fire off a sphere on a carriage-mounted missile. If they succeed, he wins. But if they fail, he still has one sphere left, and if he has another plane he can use—”

“He does,” Zack said. “In one of the hangars. Emma and I were hiding in it when we were caught. It looked just like the one you drove off the waterfall. Had a whole lot of stuff in the hold, all covered up.”

“Did it now?” Schofield paused, thinking. “I’m guessing that apart from the missiles on that train, he’s all out of missiles. The only other choice he has left is flying that last sphere directly into the gas cloud and releasing it like a bomb. What the—”

As he said this, Schofield had been peering out through the doorway, watching Calderon’s jeep.

To his surprise, the jeep skidded to a halt beside the cable car terminal overlooking the islets to the north. Typhon leapt out of the jeep and ran inside, appearing a minute later on the roof of the terminal.

Schofield watched him intently. “No . . . no way . . .”

On the roof of the terminal, partially hidden behind a low wall, Typhon crouched for a few seconds and then rose holding something in his hands: a compact and very modern black satellite dish.

The curved dish was square in shape and made of a metal mesh.

Typhon didn’t waste any time. Moments later, he appeared on the ground level again, leapt back into Calderon’s jeep and the jeep sped off.

Schofield’s eyes narrowed.

His mind was whirring now, connecting dots. Things were moving way too quickly, and he was struggling to keep everything clear in his head, when suddenly he saw it, saw it all.

“I think I just figured out what Calderon’s exit strategy is,” he said.

“I thought you already figured that out? It’s his second plane,” Mother said.

“No, the exit strategy for his entire plan, a secret CIA plan that’s been in operation for over twenty years,” Schofield said. “It’s his final exit strategy, one that leaves no trace of the Army of Thieves and thus no witnesses.”

Schofield gritted his teeth, looked around for a nearby vehicle, and spotted one, a jeep. “I have to stop him taking off in that plane or else this whole island and everyone on it is history.”

“What!” Mother said.

“Are you serious?” Baba said.

“Trust me. There’s no time to explain. Right now, I need you two to take care of that train. Do whatever you have to do to stop them launching a missile from it. I’ll take Zack and go after Calderon and his plane. Zack—”

He turned.

Zack was nowhere to be seen.

He was gone.

“Now where the hell did he go?” Mother said.

Schofield gazed back into the gasworks and thought of Emma. “I have an idea, but that’s Zack’s fight. I wish we could help him, but if we don’t stop Calderon now, a whole lot more people will die. Now go. You take the train. I’ll take the plane.”

And with those words, they split up—Mother and Baba dashed back inside the gasworks, heading for the railway platform, while Schofield leapt onto the nearby jeep and gunned it off the mark, speeding as fast as he could in the direction of the runway in a last desperate attempt to stop Marius Calderon.