Scarecrow Returns

WHILE MOTHER, Baba and the megatrain were heading for a watery grave, Schofield was speeding across Dragon Island’s north-western plain in his jeep, angling toward the runway, now chased by two Army trucks and one motorcycle with a sidecar. Harnessed onto his back, Bertie fired back at them, while Schofield did the same, driving one-handed and firing back with his Steyr TMP.

Ducking bullets, Schofield crested a hill and suddenly beheld the runway, where he saw Calderon’s second plane—an Antonov-12, just like the first one—emerge from its hangar, wheel around on the taxiway and start rumbling down the runway, accelerating to takeoff speed.

Schofield swung his jeep onto a converging course with the plane, a course that would finish at the very end of the runway.

His plan was a desperate one: he intended to drive his jeep in front of the plane, crippling its landing gear and stopping it from taking off. There was no other option: if Calderon got away, he—

A sudden volley shattered his windshield and Schofield spun to see the enemy motorcycle—with a gun-toting passenger in its sidecar—pull alongside him.

Schofield brought up his TMP but it just clicked, empty. Fortunately, at the same time, Bertie swung around and with two blistering shots nailed both the rider and the passenger and the motorbike went tumbling away, end over end.

Schofield chucked the TMP and gunned the jeep. It swung in parallel to the runway, hurtling along at almost seventy miles an hour, just ahead of the rolling Antonov.

But then the Antonov surged forward . . . powering up to takeoff speed, accelerating dramatically . . .

Schofield’s jeep bounced up onto the runway, speeding as fast it could go.

The Antonov-12 thundered down the tarmac, picking up speed. Soon it would overtake the jeep and lift off, after which it would ignite the sky, while Dragon Island and everyone left on it would be destroyed by an angry Russian missile strike.

As he sped along, Schofield glanced forward and saw the end of the runway rapidly approaching. It was dangerously close, with nothing beyond it but sheer cliffs dropping down to the ocean.

I have to get in front of that plane . . .

He made to yank left on his steering wheel when suddenly, with a roar, the Antonov came alongside his jeep, its forward wheels lifting slowly from the runway . . .

He was too late.

No!

The plane lifted off with only twenty yards of runway to spare.

The sight of the Antonov-12 lifting off from Dragon Island’s western runway would have been pretty impressive in and of itself, but its liftoff that day was special in one other way.

Had anyone been watching it from afar, they would have seen the plane soar magnificently into the air with a little jeep speeding along beside it, trying valiantly to keep up. But as the plane took to the air, the keen observer would also have seen the man driving the jeep fire something up at the departing plane: a device with a trailing cable.

Speeding along in the jeep with the wind assaulting his face and the roar of the Antonov assailing his ears, Schofield stood and fired his Magneteux’s grappling hook up at the departing plane.

The Magneteux’s arrow-like head lodged in the plane’s fuselage up near its nose and as the Antonov lifted off, Schofield was yanked up into the air with it, clinging to the Magneteux’s cable.

As he was swept up into the air, hanging from the rising plane, his jeep went flying off the end of the runway, over the cliff, dropping in a great soaring arc into the ocean far below.