Scarecrow (41 page)

Lightning lit up the sky—waves crashed against the side of the supertanker—thunder roared—bullets banged down against the foredeck.

Knight and Mother nailed the two snipers up on the bridge of the
Talbot
with a blitzkrieg of fire.

‘I should have known!' Schofield shouted as they charged across the foredeck toward a door at the base of the control tower. ‘Killian wouldn't leave the ships unguarded!'

‘So who are they? Who did he get to do the guarding?' Mother yelled.

On the way to the tower, they found a large access hatch sunk into the deck. Knight and Schofield opened it . . .

. . . to be met by the deafening
brack-a-brack!
of automatic gunfire and the sight of a long vertical ladder disappearing down into the ship's vast missile hold.

Of more immediate interest to Schofield and Knight, however, was what they saw at the base of the ladder.

The source of the gunfire.

To their utter amazement, they saw a team of black-clad commandos—brandishing Uzis and M-16s with clinical precision, and firing them ferociously at an unseen enemy.

Schofield jammed the hatch shut again.

‘I think we interrupted someone's battle,' he said.

Mother yelled, ‘What did you see down there?'

‘We're not the first people to arrive at this tanker,' Schofield said.

‘What! Who's down there?'

Schofield exchanged a look with Knight.

‘Not many elite units use Uzis these days,' Knight said. ‘Zemir. I'd say it's the Sayaret Tzanhim.'

‘I agree,' Schofield said.

‘Would someone
please
tell me what's going on!' Mother yelled in the rain.

‘My guess,' Schofield called, ‘is that we've been beaten to this ship by the only other man in the world who can disarm the CincLock security system. It's that Israeli Air Force guy from the list—Zemir—with a crack team of Israel's best troops, the Sayaret Tzanhim, protecting him.'

‘Hey, this day has been so weird, I'd believe fucking anything,' Mother said. ‘So where now?'

Schofield checked his watch.

1735 hours.

1135 in New York.

Ten minutes to launch.

He said, ‘We let the Israelis do the dirty work downstairs. Hell, I'm happy to let Zemir be the hero and disarm those missiles. As for us: into the tower. I want to check those snipers. See who we're up against before we go running into that mess downstairs to help Zemir.'

They came to the door at the base of the tower, flung it open just as—

Bam!

—they were assaulted by the blinding white beam of a helicopter searchlight.

Schofield spun in the doorway, rain in his face.

‘Oh, you have got to be joking . . .' he said.

There, landing on the long flat foredeck of the supertanker—a hundred yards away, its searchlight panning the area—was an obviously stolen Alouette helicopter.

It touched down on the deck.

And out of it stepped three men in Russian battle-dress uniforms and carrying Skorpion machine pistols . . .

Dmitri Zamanov and the last two remaining members of the Skorpions.

‘Damn. I forgot,' Knight said, ‘you've still got a price on your head. It's Zamanov. Run.'

 

Into the control tower. Up some ladder-stairs. Emerging onto the bridge.

1736.

Fairfax's voice in Schofield's ear: ‘
Scarecrow. We've taken the bridge of the San Francisco tanker. Found enemy snipers wearing the uniforms of the Eritrean Army
 . . .'

Schofield went straight over to the bodies of his snipers.

African soldiers.

Commandos. Khaki fatigues. Black helmets.

And on their shoulders, a crest—but
not
the crest of Eritrea.

Rather, it was the badge of the Nigerian Army's elite commando unit: the Presidential Guard.

As veterans of Africa's many civil wars, the Nigerian Presidential Guard were CIA-trained killers who in the past had been used against their own citizens as much as against their nation's enemies. In the streets of Lagos and Abuja, the Presidential Guards were known by another name: the Death Squads.

Killian's protection team.

Two snipers up here. And more men downstairs, guarding the missile silos—the unseen enemy that the Israelis were fighting right now in the hold.

‘Mr Fairfax. Did you say yours were Eritrean?'

‘
That's right
.'

‘Not Nigerian?'

‘
Nope. My Marines confirm it. Definitely Eritrean insignia.
'

Eritrea?
Schofield thought—

‘Scarecrow,' Mother said, opening a storeroom door wide. Four body bags lay on the floor of the storeroom. Mother quickly unzipped one—to reveal the stinking corpse of a Global Jihad terrorist.

‘Ah, now I get it,' Schofield said. ‘The whipping boys.'

He keyed his sat-mike: ‘Mr Fairfax. Tell your Marines to stay sharp. There'll be more African troops down in the main hold, guarding the silos. Sorry, David. It's not over for you yet. You have to get past those troops and get your satellite uplink unit within sixty feet of the missiles' control console for me to disarm them.'

‘
Ten-four
,' Fairfax's voice signed off. ‘
We're on the case
.'

Mother joined Knight at the windows of the bridge, searching the area outside for Zamanov.

‘Do you see him?' Mother said.

‘No, the little Russian ratbastard's disappeared,' Knight said. ‘Probably gone after Zemir.'

Suddenly Rufus's voice exploded in their earpieces:

‘
Boss. Scarecrow. I got a new contact closing in on your tanker. A large cutter of some kind. Looks like the French Coast Guard.
'

‘Christ,' Schofield said, moving to the windows, seeing a large white boat approaching them on their starboard side.

Schofield couldn't believe it.

In addition to the Nigerian Death Squad, the Israeli shock troops and the Russian bounty hunters already on this supertanker, they now had a group of French maritime police on the way!

‘That ain't the Coast Guard,' Knight said, peering through some night-vision binoculars.

Through them he could see a big white cutter, charging through the chop—could see its knife-like bow, its big foredeck gun, its glassed-in wheelhouse, and blood-bursts all over the wheelhouse's windows.

Armed men stood at its wheel.

‘It's Demon Larkham and IG-88,' Knight said.

1738.

Seven minutes to launch.

‘Damn it, more bounty hunters,' Schofield said. ‘Rufus! Can you take them out?'

‘
Sorry, Captain, I'm outta missiles. Used them all against that French carrier.
'

‘Okay, okay . . .' Schofield said, thinking. ‘All right, Rufus, you keep to your instructions, okay. If we can't disarm those missiles in time, we'll be needing your special help later.'

‘
Got it.
'

Schofield spun, still thinking, thinking, thinking.

Everything was happening too fast. The situation was spiralling out of control. Missiles to disarm, the Israelis already on board, Nigerian troops, more bounty hunters . . .

‘Focus!' he shouted aloud. ‘Think, Scarecrow. What do you ultimately have to achieve?'

Disarm the missiles. I have to disarm the missiles by 1745 hours. Everything else is secondary
.

His eyes flashed to an elevator at the back of the bridge.

‘We're going down to the hold,' he said.

1739 hours.

 

 

NEW YORK BAY 1139 HOURS

On the foredeck of their supertanker, in bright morning sunshine, Book's team of Marines dived for cover.

Book scrambled into a deck hatch, slid down a very long ladder into darkness, followed by his Marine escorts.

He hit the floor, looked around.

He stood in a cavernous hold, easily three hundred yards long. A dozen cylindrical missile silos stretched away into darkness, like colossal pillars holding up the ceiling.

And bunkered down in front of the farthest missile silo, taking cover behind a heavily fortified barricade of steel crates and forklifts, was a team of heavily-armed African commandos.

 

 

THE ENGLISH CHANNEL 1739 HOURS

The elevator doors opened to reveal the aft section of the supertanker's main hold.

Schofield, Knight and Mother emerged, leading with their guns.

The missile hold was absolutely enormous—a massive interior space the size of three football fields stretched end-on-end. And in its forward half, the Chameleon missile silos: high reinforced titanium cylinders stretching all the way up to the underside of the supertanker's foredeck. Inside them: the most devastating weapons known to man.

And in that forward section of the ship, a
brutal
battle was underway.

A dozen Nigerian commandos were bunkered down beneath the farthest pair of missile silos, covering the missile control console—an elevated platform mounted ten feet off the ground on steel struts, and the place Schofield needed to be within sixty feet of in order to disarm the missiles.

The Nigerians were positioned behind a very well-prepared barricade, and they fired machine guns and hurled grenades at their Israeli attackers.

Bullets and grenades hit the silos, but did no damage—the walls of the silos were far too strong.

In between Schofield and this battle were all sorts of supply materials: shipping containers, missile spare parts; he even saw two yellow mini-submarines with hemispherical glass cockpits suspended from chains high up near the ceiling catwalks.

Schofield recognised the subs as heavily-modified ASDSs—Advanced SEAL Delivery Systems. With their glass domes, these shallow-water mini-submarines were often used by the US Navy to visually inspect the exterior hull of an aircraft carrier or ballistic missile submarine for sabotage devices. It was a given that a project as important as Kormoran–Chameleon would be equipped with them.

1740.

Schofield, Knight and Mother dashed forward, ducking low, winding their way between the supply materials, observing the battle.

Just as the Israelis launched a ruthless offensive.

They sent a few men to the right to draw the Nigerian fire, then they hit the Nigerian barricade with three rocket-propelled grenades from the left.

The grenades shot down the length of the missile hold . . . three white smoke-trails, flying together . . . and hit the Nigerian barricade.

It was like a dam bursting.

The Nigerians flew into the air. Some screamed. Others burned.

And the Israelis stormed forward, killing the Nigerians where they fell, shooting them in the heads, at the same moment as . . .

. . . a gigantic steel loading door set into the starboard wall of the hold rumbled open, rising into the air on its runners.

The massive door opened fully and—
whump!
—a wide steel boarding plank clanged to the floor from
outside
the aperture and like a crew of 16th-century pirates boarding a galleon, the men of IG-88 flooded into the missile hold, charging into it from their stolen Coast Guard boat, their devastating MetalStorm guns blazing.

Schofield watched as—now under fire from at least twenty IG-88 men—the Israeli commandos, the crack Sayaret Tzanhim, seized the area around the missile control console.

They formed a tight semi-circle around the elevated console platform, all facing aft, firing their Uzis and M-16s at IG-88.

Under their protection, the Israelis' leader—a man who could only be Simon Zemir—climbed up onto the steel platform and went straight over to the console, flipped open a briefcase and extracted a CincLock-VII disarm unit.

‘Sneaky bastard Israelis,' Mother said. ‘Is there any US technology that they haven't stolen?'