Scarecrow (22 page)

The pilot complied and the chopper swung below Mother, its speed-blurred rotor blades forming a hazy white circle beneath her dangling feet.

Then the bounty hunter above her resumed his kicking, only harder.

Crack!

She heard one of her fingers break.

‘You mother
fucker
!' she yelled.

He kicked again.

The rotor blades roared like a buzzsaw ten feet below Mother's boots.

Her attacker raised his foot for one last blow. He brought it down hard—

—just as Mother did a most unexpected thing.

She withdrew the knife from the table, causing
both of them
to slide quickly downward, off the table's lower edge, toward the blurring blades of the helicopter!

Her attacker couldn't believe it.

Without the knife to lean on, he rocketed downward, sliding off the lower edge of the boardroom table!

They slid off the bottom end of the table together—but unlike her attacker, Mother had been prepared. As she went off the edge, she stabbed her knife into the underside of the table, and swung in underneath it, her fall halted.

The IG-88 man shot right past her, off the edge of the table and out into space . . .

. . . and the world went slow as Mother watched his horrified face—eyes wide, mouth open—falling, falling, dropping away from her.

Then he hit the rotor blades—
splat-choo!
—and his entire human shape just disappeared, spontaneously erupting into a star-shaped burst of blood.

A wash of red liquid splattered the windscreen of the chopper and the Lynx peeled away from the building.

Mother didn't even have time to sigh with relief.

For just then, as she hung from the downward-pointing boardroom table, pelted by the London rain,
the whole table shifted slightly
.

A sudden jolt.

Downward.

Mother snapped to look up: saw that the legs pinioning the table to the 40th floor were buckling.

The table was going to fall
.

‘Oh, damn it all to fucking hell!' she yelled to the sky. ‘I am not going to die!'

She gauged her position.

She was at the corner of the building—the south-west corner—on the western side.

Just around the corner, slightly below her, she could see one of the glass elevators, stopped on the 38th floor on the southern face of the building.

‘Okay,' she said to herself. ‘Stay calm. What would the Scarecrow do?'

Maghook
, she thought.

She drew her Maghook, aimed it up at the interior ceiling of the 40th floor, and fired.

Nothing happened.

The Maghook didn't fire.

Its trigger just clicked and its barrel emitted a weak fizzing noise. It was out of gas propellant.

‘Oh, come on!' Mother yelled. ‘That never happens to the Scarecrow!'

Then suddenly the table lurched again, dropped another two feet.

Mother started unspooling the Maghook manually—with her teeth—muttering as she did so. ‘Not fair. Not fair. Not
fucking
fair . . .'

The table teetered on the edge of the 40th floor, its legs groaning under the weight, about to snap—

Mother felt she had enough rope and with her free hand, hurled the Maghook's grappling hook up at the 40th floor.

It landed on the edge of the shattered windowsill, its claws catching . . .

. . . just as the table tipped wholly out of the window . . .

. . . and Mother let go of her knife, swung away from the falling boardroom table . . .

. . . and the table fell through the rainy sky, all twenty-five feet of it dropping down the side of the building . . .

. . . while Mother swung on her rope, swooping around the corner of the building, before she slammed into the glass wall of the elevator just around the corner, and grabbed hold of its roof rim.

Seven whole seconds later, the gigantic boardroom table of Goldman, Marcus & Meyer hit the sidewalk and smashed into a billion tiny pieces.

 

Book and Rosenthal arrived at the roof on the window-washer's platform.

They ducked behind an exhaust stack, peered out to see one of Demon Larkham's Lynx helicopters resting on the rooftop helipad, it rotors turning, veiled in the pouring rain.

‘Keep talking,' Book said to Rosenthal. ‘This Majestic-12 wrote the list. And they want Schofield dead because . . .'

‘Because of the Cobra tests,' Rosenthal said. ‘Because
he passed
the Cobra tests. Although in NATO they were called something else: Motor Neuron Rapidity of Response tests. “Cobra” was the Russian name.'

‘Motor Neuron Rapidity of Response?' Book II said. ‘You mean reflexes.'

‘Yes. Exactly,' Rosenthal said. ‘It's all about reflexes. Superfast reflexes. The reflexes of the men on that list are the best in the world.
They passed the Cobra tests
, and only someone who passed the Cobra tests can disarm the CincLock-VII missile security system, and CincLock-VII is at the core of Majestic-12's plan. That's why Majestic-12 needs to eliminate them.'

‘A missile security system . . .'

‘Yes, yes, but don't be fooled. This bounty hunt is but one element of Majestic-12's larger plan.'

‘And what is that plan?'

‘Smashing the existing world order. Creating worldwide warfare. Scorching the earth so that it can regrow afresh,' Rosenthal said. ‘Listen, I have a whole file on this downstairs. The Mossad has been debriefing me on it for the last two days. It's a file on this bounty hunt, on Majestic-12, its members, and, most importantly, what its overall plan is—'

Rosenthal's head exploded. Burst like a blood-filled water balloon.

There was no warning.

Rosenthal's face was simply ripped to pieces by a lethal 20-round burst from a MetalStorm rifle somewhere behind Book II.

Book spun—

—and saw Demon Larkham himself standing in the doorway to the fire stairs, thirty yards away, his MetalStorm rifle pressed against his shoulder.

Book looked down at Rosenthal, bloodied and broken. The Mossad man would tell no more tales—not without his face.

And so Book ran.

For the helicopter parked nearby, his pistol up and firing.

The glass wall of the elevator shattered and Mother swung inside it.

She was now on the south face of the tower, on the 38th floor. She saw the other glass elevators sitting silently in position, level with her own.

If the elevators were numbered 1-through-5 going across the face of the building, then Elevators 1, 2, 3 and 5 were stopped on Level 38. A gap existed where the fourth elevator should have been. It must have been on a lower floor. Mother stood in Number 1, on the far left-hand side of the southern face.

She hammered the ‘DOOR OPEN' button.

It was like standing in a fishbowl and Mother knew that the Lynx helicopter that had terrorised her before would come searching for her soon and she didn't want to be a sitting duck when it di—

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
 . . .

The Lynx.

Mother turned.

It was right there!

Hovering just out from her glass elevator, off to the western side, seemingly staring at her.

Mother kept hitting DOOR OPEN. ‘Damn it, fuck! Is this button actually wired to anything?'

And then she saw the puff of smoke from one of the Lynx's side-mounted missile pods.

They were firing a missile at her!

A TOW missile blasted out of the pod, carving a horizontal line
straight at
Mother's glass elevator.

The elevator doors started to open.

The missile roared toward Mother's eyes.

Mother squeezed through the doors and dived out of the lift just as the TOW missile pierced her elevator's shattered western wall, entering it from the side, its superhot tail-flame charring the whole interior of the elevator before—
clash!
—it shot out the other side and rocketed into the next glass elevator beside it.

The sight was truly amazing.

The TOW missile shot across the southern face of the King's Tower, blasting through
all four
of the glass elevators parked there—
clash!-clash!-clash!-clash!
—causing sequential explosions of glass as it penetrated each lift's walls, one after the other—before in a final glorious shower of glass, it shot out of the last elevator and peeled off into the Thames where it exploded in a gigantic geyser of spray.

For her part, Mother landed in a clumsy heap inside the reception area on the 38th floor, the door of her glass elevator open behind her.

Lying flat on the floor, she looked up.

And saw four IG-88 bounty hunters standing in the destroyed reception area, right in front of her. They looked just as shocked to see her as she was to see them.

‘Talk about out of the frying pan . . .' Mother breathed.

The IG-88 men whipped up their MetalStorm rifles.

Mother pounced to her feet and leapt in the only direction she could: back out onto her elevator.

Into the elevator, ducking behind its control panel just as a wave of hypermachinegun fire rushed in through the open doorway.

Rain and wind whipped all around Mother, the semi-destroyed elevator now little more than an open-air viewing platform that looked out over London.

Mother looked across the southern face of the tower.

The three other glass elevators faced her, lined up in a row, their glass walls all shattered by the TOW.

‘Live or die, Mother,' she said aloud. ‘Fuck it. Die.'

And so she ran.

Thirty-eight floors up, charging hard, across the southern face of the building, leaping across the three-foot gaps between the semi-destroyed elevators.

As soon as she landed on the second elevator, the Lynx helicopter returned, swooping in fast, now firing with its mini-gun, razing the side of the building with a storm of bullets.

But Mother kept running, outstripping the chopper's brutal rain of fire by centimetres, hurdling over onto the third elevator platform.

The gap where Elevator Number 4 should have been yawned before her.

Mother didn't miss a step.

The gap was wide—twelve feet—but she jumped anyway, diving forward, arms outstretched, 38 storeys up, hoping to catch the floor of the fifth and final elevator with her hands.

No dice.

She knew as soon as she jumped that she wasn't going to make it.

Her hands missed the floor of the fifth elevator by inches and Mother dropped below it.

 

But the clawed grappling hook of the Maghook in her hand didn't miss the edge of the elevator.

The damn Maghook might not have been working anymore, but by holding its hook in her outstretched hand, Mother had added another twelve inches to her reach.

Which was just what she needed.

The steel claws of the hook caught the floor of the elevator and Mother swung to a halt beneath it. She had just started climbing up into it when—

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
 . . .

The Lynx.

It was back. Hovering menacingly in front of her as she hung from the destroyed elevator's floor. A second IG-88 Lynx chopper swooped in behind it, checking out the action.

This time the Lynx was so close that Mother could see the pilot's smiling face.

He waved at her, then gripped his gun trigger.

Hanging from the elevator platform, dead for all money, Mother just shook her head.

‘No . . .'

The Lynx's gunbarrels began to roll, just as another glimpse of movement caught Mother's eye—a grey smoketrail shooting through the air behind the Lynx—a
missile
smoketrail that seemed to come from . . .

The second Lynx helicopter.

The missile slammed into the Lynx that had been threatening Mother.

A colossal explosion rocked the air, and in the blink of an eye the Lynx was gone. In the face of the blast wave, it was all Mother could do to hold on.

The wreckage of the first Lynx tumbled down the side of the tower—flaming, smoking.

It landed on a grassy strip at the base of the tower with a massive metal-crushing
whump!

Mother looked over at the second Lynx helicopter, the one that had shot its buddy out of the sky . . . and saw its pilot.

Book II.

His voice came over her earpiece. ‘
Hey there. I picked this baby up on the roof. Unfortunately, the pilot was a reluctant seller. I was wondering where you'd got to
.'

‘Ha-de-fucking-ha, Book,' Mother said, hauling herself up into the fifth elevator. ‘How about getting me off this damn tower.'

‘
Be happy to. But can you get something for me first?
'

Mother charged through a corridor on the 39th floor, leading with her Colt.

The place was a mess. Bullet holes lined the walls. Anything made of glass had been shattered.

If the IG-88 team was still here, they weren't showing themselves.

‘
It's back near that internal staircase
,' Book's voice said in her ear. ‘
The room where we found Rosenthal. It must be some kind of interrogation facility.
'

‘Got it,' Mother said.

She could see the doorway near the top of the curving stairs, hurried into it.

She was confronted by a two-way mirror that looked into an adjacent interrogation room. Two video cameras peered through the mirror. Thick manila folders and two digital video tapes lay on a table nearby.

‘It's an interrogation centre, all right,' Mother said. ‘I got files. I got DV tapes. What do you want?'

‘
All of it. Everything you can carry. Plus anything with Majestic-12 or CincLock-VII on it. And grab the tapes, including any that are still in the cameras.
'

Mother grabbed a silver Samsonite suitcase lying on the floor and stuffed it with the files and digital video tapes. The two cameras also had tapes in them, so she grabbed them, too.