Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (32 page)

Calderon threw a sideways glance at Mobutu.

Schofield, despite his overwhelming exhaustion, felt his heart skip—this was it, this was the end—but Calderon suddenly laughed.

‘Oh, no, not yet, Captain,’ he said, with a torturer’s relish. ‘I
told
you I was going to break you before I killed you. You didn’t witness Elizabeth Gant’s death, but trust me, you will see your loyal friend, Mother Newman, die before your very eyes.’

Despite his own pain, Schofield shot a look at Mother.

‘Really, Scarecrow. To lose
one
loved one is tragic. To lose a second is simply careless. What if it happened again: your closest friend horribly executed, dying in extreme pain,
right in front of your eyes
? That would break a man.’

Schofield’s face went pale, draining of blood.

Calderon smiled.

‘Mobutu. Put the box on her and insert the rats.’

What followed was more than Schofield—weakened, pinned down, helpless—could bear.

The original rat box was lifted off Hartigan’s head and Schofield saw the gruesome remains of Hartigan’s face. It was beyond disgusting.

Both of Hartigan’s eyes had been
chewed out
and were now just empty bloody sockets, dangling with ragged flesh. Schofield stifled the urge to vomit as he saw the smaller of the two rats scurry
in through
Hartigan’s left eye socket and then race out his gaping mouth.

Hartigan’s corpse was unceremoniously tossed onto the conveyor belt, and to the chants of the crowd of Thieves—‘Fire! Fire!’—it disappeared into the furnace.

Mobutu walked with the box over to Mother’s forklift and Schofield’s heart sank.

He couldn’t handle this. First Gant, now Mother. His mind reeled at the thought of what was about to happen.

Abruptly, Calderon called, ‘Let’s make this a double feature! Bring out a second box! For her French friend!’

The crowd loved this. They cheered as a second, identical box was brought out.

The veins in Schofield’s forehead bulged as he tried with what little energy he had left to yell through the bit in his mouth.

Mobutu used his stepladder to reach up and place Hartigan’s grisly box over Mother’s head. As this happened, for the briefest of instants, Schofield caught Mother’s eye . . .

She was looking directly at him
.

The look on her face was one of the most profound sadness, of longstanding friendship and deep affection. She mouthed the word ‘Goodbye’ just as the box came down over her head and cut off Schofield’s view of her face.

Schofield strained against his bonds, but it was useless. He slumped against the bedframe, out of energy, out of determination and finally, completely, out of options.

There was nothing he could do to stop this. All he could do was watch as his closest friend in the world died a foul death at the hands of Marius Calderon.

Calderon saw this.

Shane Schofield was beaten, his mind, his spirit broken.

The second box came down over Baba’s head and as its neck hole was stuffed with rags, Schofield thought he heard Mother say something to Baba. It was muffled, so he couldn’t hear what she said, but it was short, just a few final words.

Then, grinning with delight at the show he was putting on for his cohorts, Mobutu mounted his stepladder between Mother and Baba, opened the top panels of both boxes and held a rat in each hand poised above the boxes, ready to be dropped.

The crowd cried for him to put them in, but Mobutu waited for the signal from Calderon.

Calderon held up his microphone. ‘Zack. Emma. Me again. If you’re out there, this is the sound of Gunnery Sergeant Newman and her French friend, Master Sergeant Huguenot, having their faces eaten by rats.’

He nodded to Mobutu.

Mobutu dropped the rats, one into each box.

The crowd cheered.

A second rat for each box quickly followed, then Mobutu flipped the panels shut.

Schofield watched helplessly.

Then the kicking, thrashing and screaming began.

It was exactly as it had been with Hartigan.

As Calderon held up his microphone, both Mother and Baba started shrieking in pain, bobbling from their suspended arms, their bound legs trying to lash out.

Hideous noises came from their headboxes—screaming, grunting, crunching sounds.

As with Hartigan, the terrible scene lasted about thirty seconds before first Mother, then Baba, went limp and they both just hung there, strappado-style, hands behind their backs, their heads bent and still.

Tears began to form in Schofield’s eyes.

Calderon said sadly, ‘You, Captain, are a dangerous man to know. I honestly can’t fathom how you live with yourself. Of course, from what I hear, you struggle to do even that: I know you tried killing yourself once—like your father, aren’t you?—but the plucky Sergeant Newman stopped you. The question is
who will stop you now?
’

Schofield clenched his teeth around his bit, tears pouring down his face.

Calderon grinned callously, his grey eyes alive. ‘Captain Shane Schofield: son to a brutal father, lover to a doomed woman, and now witness to the death of his truest friend. Consider yourself broken. Which means now it is time for you to die—’

‘Sir!’ a voice called from the exit doorway.

Both Calderon and Schofield turned to see a Thief standing by the door.

‘What?’ Calderon called.

‘We got ’em! The two civilians with the spheres! Bad Willy just caught ’em! He’s bringing ’em in now!’

In the end, the capture of Zack and Emma had come about almost exactly as Calderon had planned.

After separating from Mother at the quarry-mine, Zack and Emma had searched desperately for a place to hide with the two spheres.

Upon crossing the river, they’d arrived back at the base’s runway, where they found a cluster of barracks structures: superlong halls that had once been living quarters for the substantial Soviet force stationed at Dragon Island.

Zack thought they’d be perfect: dusty and abandoned, and presumably filled with bunk beds, trunks and footlockers, plus locker rooms, toilets and shower rooms that would offer many places to hide.

Zack and Emma had come to the first barracks and cautiously peered inside it—

A long-legged woman in fishnet stockings, high heels and black lace lingerie walked by, casually smoking a cigarette.

Zack frowned. ‘What the hell—?’

Emma hushed him. ‘Look. There’s another one.’

Sure enough, a second, similarly dressed woman joined the first, also smoking a cigarette as they stood beneath a glowing wall-mounted heater. In addition to the sexy underwear, both women, Zack and Emma now saw, wore garish make-up; they started talking, in a drawling Eastern European tongue.

Emma realised it first. ‘They’re prostitutes . . .’

Zack said, ‘Six weeks in the Arctic is a long tour, especially for an army of hooligans. They have needs. Their boss thought of everything. Come on, let’s check out the next barracks.’

Unfortunately, the second barracks building wasn’t any better: it, too, was clearly being used by the Army of Thieves. While currently empty, its long hall was filled with row upon row of slept-in bunk beds and half-open footlockers. They couldn’t hide there.

Zack and Emma hurried past the second barracks, came to one of the hangars adjoining the runway, and ducked inside it.

An enormous Antonov cargo plane filled the space. It was identical to the one that Schofield had driven into the river, another An-12.

Zack peered in through its open rear ramp: plenty of crates, some large objects covered in tarps and netting.

Emma said, ‘They have
another
plane?’

‘With a lot of stuff in it to hide behind,’ Zack said. ‘Inside, now!’

He guided Emma into the big plane’s hold and they huddled behind some crates piled up in a dark corner.

It was from here that they heard the torture over the base’s loudspeakers: first, Ironbark’s, then Hartigan’s.

But it was Schofield’s electric shock treatment on the parrilla that betrayed their location.

Ever since he had spotted Zack’s Nike bootprints in the mud earlier, Bad Willy had smelt blood.

Unlike Zack and Emma’s desperate stumbling flight, his movement had been slow and methodical: he and his men had been progressing steadily, patiently, searching for and ultimately finding a new Nike print in the snow or mud; until they stopped at one muddy print that had been left on the concrete doorstep of the hangar containing the second Antonov cargo plane.

Bad Willy and his men had stalked quietly through the dark hangar as Hartigan’s shrill screams had come blaring in over the loudspeakers.

Every so often, Bad Willy would command his men to silence and hold up a wand-shaped listening device and listen intently through its headphones.

When Schofield’s electric shock torture began, Bad Willy had been holding the wand pointed at the open rear hold of the Antonov and as Schofield had screamed through his wooden bit, Willy heard it in his headphones.

A woman’s soft gasp.

His men stormed the plane and found Zack and Emma huddled behind a tarp-covered mound with their Samsonite case.

Zack and Emma were shoved into the gasworks by Bad Willy and his triumphant team.

Mother and Baba’s rat torture had only just finished and the two new arrivals took in the grim scene: Schofield strung up on his vertical bedframe, connected to the transformer; Mother and Baba hanging strappado-style, their heads covered by the wooden boxes, both deathly still.

Bad Willy carried the Samsonite case over to Calderon who opened it and beheld the two small maroon spheres inside.

‘Thank you, Willy,’ he said. ‘Thank you. You have done well.’ He nodded at Emma. ‘You may have as your reward this delightful young lady, who will no doubt be somewhat
fresher
than our current crop of female companions. She’s yours to do with as you wish.’

Willy leaned forward. ‘
All
mine?’

‘All yours. Men! Let it be known that this woman is Bad Willy’s, to keep as his own, or to share and rent out at any price he names. She is his property, a reward for duties well performed!’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Bad Willy bowed obsequiously. ‘You are too kind.’ He gripped Emma by the arm and took her over to the edge of the balcony.

‘No!’ Zack yelled, but he was backhanded by a Thief standing nearby and he fell to the floor, bleeding from the mouth, while the other Thieves laughed cruelly.

Calderon handed one of the spheres to Typhon. ‘Colonel Typhon. Take this to the missile battery and fire it off into the gas cloud, taking into account the empty section of gas closer to this island. Set the sky on fire.’

Typhon hurried out the door with the sphere.

Fatigued beyond measure, his body aching, Schofield watched the awful scene play out.

Things couldn’t get any worse: Mother and Baba were dead, Emma was about to become way-too-intimately acquainted with a member of the Army of Thieves, and Typhon was about to launch a missile into the contaminated atmosphere and incinerate all of China, most of India, and much of the rest of the northern hemisphere in an act that had been conceived, planned and executed by one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s best minds.

Only then it got worse.

Calderon came over to him, smiling his smug torturer’s grin. When he spoke, he spoke softly, so that only Schofield could hear:

‘Congratulations, Captain, you have served your purpose. Alas, you are of no further use to me, which means you will not see the spectacular end of the world as we know it. I have no more speeches for you and no more torture either. Now you must simply die.’

He lifted Schofield’s reflective glasses off his head and appraised them like a jeweller examining a diamond. They bore many nicks and scratches, including the mark from the bullet that had sliced across them earlier.

Calderon said, ‘I like to keep a souvenir from the men I defeat, trophies that remind me of past victories. These glasses will be my reminder of the day I beat the Scarecrow.’

He pulled out a knife and scratched a deep A-in-a-circle into the wraparound lens of the Oakleys and then held the glasses aloft for the crowd to see.

They roared their approval.

Slipping the glasses into his jacket, Calderon stepped away from Schofield. ‘Mobutu, attach an extra electrode to his heart and apply 10,000 volts. Sorry, Captain, it was nice knowing you. You were a worthy adversary, but America needs me more than it needs you.’

Mobutu attached an extra electrode to the wet skin over Schofield’s heart and resumed his position by the transformer.

Calderon nodded once.

Mobutu turned the dial.

And Schofield jolted more violently than ever before.

Naked sparks flew off the bedframe this time.

Schofield spasmed terribly, his back arching as far as his bonds would allow. He head was thrown backwards and his eyes rolled up into his head and in an instant, it was over.

His body fell completely limp.

It hung from the steel bedframe, unmoving.

Mobutu flicked off the dial and as the Army of Thieves waited tensely, Calderon himself checked Schofield’s pulse.

And found nothing.

Calderon turned . . . and smiled.

He didn’t have to say anything. The crowd roared.

Shane Schofield was dead.

WASHINGTON, D.C. 3 APRIL, 2355 HOURS 1255 HOURS (4 APRIL) AT DRAGON

Dave Fairfax sped through the streets of Washington, D.C. with Marianne Retter by his side in a little Toyota Prius.

After they had opened Marius Calderon’s classified CIA plan to use Russia to destroy China—appropriately named Operation ‘Dragonslayer’—they had given away their position and so had had to run.

Which was why they were now driving in the Prius. It was actually part of the Zipcar network—an eco-friendly car-sharing network that Dave belonged to; Zipcars were parked at various sites around the city and if you had a Zipcard, you could access them. Dave guessed—correctly—that not long after he used his swipecard to access the car, someone somewhere would detect the ensuing deduction on his credit card and flag the car for immediate detention by the D.C. police. But it was worth the risk, because he didn’t plan on being in the car for long.

‘Where are we going?’ Retter asked.

Dave looked determinedly forward. ‘There’s only one place we
can
go: the one place they don’t want you to go.’

They swung onto the north-west arm of Pennsylvania Avenue and beheld the famous mansion at the other end, lit up by floodlights, glowing in the night.

‘We have to get you to your appointment at the White House,’ Dave said.

‘The CIA will be watching it for sure,’ Retter said as they cruised down Pennsylvania Avenue with the gentle flow of night-time traffic. ‘They’ll have people stationed all around it.’

‘I imagine they will,’ Dave said, ‘so we’re gonna need a little luck.’

They came to the corner of Pennsylvania and West Executive Avenue, the road that gave access to the West Wing Entrance. They turned onto West Executive Avenue.

Dave’s eyes fell on the West Wing Entrance and its boomgated guardhouse.

Retter scanned the wider area, searching for CIA agents. Lafayette Square was filled with the usual crowd: tourists, cops and . . . four pairs of men in suits positioned at strategic points, several of whom were touching their ears and whispering into their cuffs as they surveyed the area.

‘You see ’em?’ Dave said.

Retter said, ‘They could just be Secret Service—’

Suddenly one of the men pointed at their Prius and started running.

‘Shit!’ Retter said. ‘We’re made!’

Dave snapped to look at the West Wing Entrance.

‘Aw, fuck it,’ he said as he floored the gas pedal and yanked left on the steering wheel.

The little Prius squealed as it swung off the road, jumped the kerb and sped towards the West Wing Entrance!

As Dave had expected, uniformed Secret Service guardsmen in the gatehouse opened fire on the little car immediately—although he didn’t think many terrorists charged toward the White House in hybrids. He and Retter ducked as their windshield shattered.

The Prius veered wildly and smashed into a reinforced gatepost, coming to a crunching halt. Its bonnet crumpled and Dave and Retter were flung forward in their seats as the car’s airbags inflated with a sudden
whoosh!

Hissing steam, the little car was quickly surrounded by no fewer than six Secret Service guards, all with their pistols raised.

The CIA men in the park who had briefly given chase on foot hung back—Dave and Retter were now in the Secret Service’s jurisdiction and when it came to the security of the White House, the Service guarded their turf jealously. They didn’t hand over anyone to anyone until they had done their own investigation.

‘Get out of the vehicle with your hands up!’ the lead Secret Service agent yelled furiously.

Dave and Retter exited the vehicle as instructed, and were promptly shoved to the ground, faces rammed into the dirt. They were then handcuffed while the car was searched.

‘No devices in or under the car,’ a guard reported.

The lead guard shook his head. ‘Check their IDs.’ He lifted Dave to his feet. ‘You just landed yourself in big trouble, buddy.’

As he came to his feet, Dave said in a loud voice that every guard could hear, ‘Sir, my name is David Fairfax, Defense Intelligence Agency. This is Marianne Retter, also DIA. Please check your visitor’s log. You’ll find that Ms Retter has an urgent appointment with the President.’

It took twenty minutes—time which Dave and Marianne spent in the back of a prison van parked just inside the West Wing Entrance—but eventually word came through.

The senior Secret Service guard opened the van himself. With him was a presidential aide in a suit.

‘Turns out the lady does have an appointment,’ the senior guard said. ‘And you, Mr Fairfax, have a distinguished record. I’ve been told that if the lady wants you with her, you may accompany her inside.’

Retter said, ‘You bet I do.’

‘Next time,’ the guard said, ‘just stop at the gate and wait your turn.’

‘Sorry,’ Dave said. ‘Couldn’t do that. This place was surrounded by people who wanted to prevent us getting in. If we’d stopped, we’d have been dead.’ He gave the guard a weak smile. ‘Sorry about your gate.’

And with those words, Dave Fairfax and Marianne Retter hurried inside the White House.

DRAGON ISLAND GASWORKS 4 APRIL, 1255 HOURS

Like Ironbark and Hartigan before him, Schofield’s body—still attached to the metal bedframe—was immediately and unceremoniously disposed of: it was tossed off the balcony.

The whole cruel contraption, bedframe and corpse, landed on the long industrial conveyor belt on the level below and commenced its journey toward the furnace fifty yards away. Before it reached the furnace, Schofield’s body would pass underneath the broad ramp that stretched out from the railway platform into the gasworks.

Because of this, Schofield’s corpse would be out of sight from the Army of Thieves men on the balcony for perhaps ten seconds.

Schofield’s immobile body passed under the ramp, disappearing from view.

‘
Fire! Fire!
’ the crowd chanted furiously, eager to see their enemy’s leader fall into the furnace.

Their eyes were glued to the conveyor belt on the other side of the ramp, waiting for Schofield’s body to reappear.

Marius Calderon also watched, keen to see Schofield destroyed forever.

It was he who frowned first when Schofield’s body
didn’t
reappear as it should have.

The conveyor belt kept rolling by, but in the spot where Schofield’s body and the bedframe should have been, it was bare, empty.

Calderon blinked, confused. Had something happened to Schofield’s body under the ramp? He sent two men down to check on it—only to hear a brief spray of gunfire from down there shortly after. When the two men didn’t return, Calderon started toward some steel stairs leading down to the lower level—

At which moment Schofield reappeared.

Only he wasn’t cuffed to the bedframe . . .

. . . and he wasn’t dead anymore either.

Shane Schofield stepped up onto the balcony, having climbed the steel stairs from the level below.

Calderon couldn’t believe it. And for the first few moments, neither could anyone else in the gathered group of Thieves.

Schofield stood there, stock still, looking like something out of a horror movie: bare-chested and barefoot, he was covered in sweat and water and foul scorch-marks, bloody scratches and open wounds. His jaw was clenched tight and his bloodshot, scarred eyes glared at Calderon with murderous rage.

Not only had he returned from the grave, he had returned from it armed: he held a Steyr TMP machine pistol in one hand and a SIG Sauer P226 pistol in the other.

As he’d stepped up from the stairs he had placed something on the floor beside him, before taking the SIG Sauer from its back. It now stood there next to him like a loyal dog.

A little silver robot.

If anything could be said about Bertie, it was that he was a damned determined little robot.

After being blasted out of the cable car terminal earlier, he had plummeted three hundred feet before landing in the freezing waters of the bay.

Of course, the landing hadn’t harmed him and he automatically inflated his buoyancy balloons and floated to the surface, bobbing there like a funny-looking mechanical duck.

Then his acquisition program kicked in: he searched for a buddy to follow.

His wheels spinning in the water, he made his way slowly but determinedly to the outer edge of the bay, where he saw to the west a point of access to Dragon Island: the abandoned whaling village.

It took him almost an hour to get there, but get there he did, and sure enough, shortly after he arrived, he saw his secondary buddy, Captain Shane M. Schofield, turn up with Veronique Champion.

When Schofield and Champion had been observed entering the whaling village, it had been Bertie doing the observing.

The little robot had hurried to catch up with Schofield, but Schofield had dashed away too quickly, to be outsmarted by Typhon at the roadblock and taken away.

Bertie could only watch in robotic dismay as this had happened.

But then, from out of nowhere, a woman’s voice had said to him, ‘Bonjour, little one.’

‘
Bertie must reacquire his secondary buddy, Captain Shane M. Schofield
,’ Bertie had said earnestly.

‘Oui, he must. And when you find him, I want you to give him a few things from me,’ Champion had said.

Getting past the roadblock had been a team effort: Champion had shot Schofield’s two smoke grenades—still lying near the roadblock, having been thrown to the ground by Typhon—and in the smoky haze that followed, Bertie had been brutal.

Guided by a thermal imager that could see through the smoke as if it wasn’t even there, his cannon had annihilated the roadblock team, ripped them to shreds, and within a minute, Bertie was whizzing up the steep road on his chunky little tyres, heading doggedly into Dragon Island in search of his secondary buddy.

Champion, wounded and unable to be of any more help, watched him go.

But she had given him one more instruction: follow the fresh tyre tracks of the jeep that had taken Schofield away from the roadblock. By following them diligently, Bertie had come to the gasworks.

There he scurried in through a side door and arrived underneath the ramp just in time to see Schofield’s body land with a thud on the conveyor belt right in front of him.

Recognising his secondary buddy, Bertie had whizzed forward and using his little robotic arms, pulled Schofield and the bedframe off the belt. A quick scan had revealed that Schofield had no pulse, so Bertie had unfolded his defibrillator and applied it according to his CPR programming.

Whack. Whack.

Schofield’s body jolted twice . . .

. . . before his eyes flew open and he gasped, sucking in deep rasping breaths to fill his lungs.

As Schofield recovered his breath, Bertie used his blowtorch to cut through his handcuffs and leg rope.

Thanks to the tough little robot, Schofield was alive and free again. Indeed, the only way for him to escape from Marius Calderon and the Army of Thieves had been to die.