Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (9 page)

Inside the Beriev’s cockpit, Schofield and Mother were moving frantically now.

Mother released the young Russian private from his flight seat and they shimmied out the smashed cockpit windows.

Schofield slid to Vasily Ivanov’s side and had just started to extract Ivanov from his flight seat when, through the lopsided cockpit windshield, he saw one of the Cobras loose a pair of heat-seeking missiles.

The two missiles looped through the air, zeroing in on the stricken plane.

Scarecrow yelled, ‘
Bertie!
Missile scrambler! Now!’

Outside the Beriev, Bertie replied, ‘
Missile scrambling initiated.
’ He then emitted a powerful burst of short-range electronic jamming.

Almost immediately the two missiles peeled away and slammed into the ice plain a short distance from the Beriev in twin explosions of fire and ice.

Schofield struggled with Ivanov’s seatbelt. It was jammed with frost.

‘Mother!’ he called. ‘Get back to the boats! Before that Osprey lands and unloads ground troops!’

‘What about you?’ Mother shouted back.

‘I gotta get this guy out! I’ll catch up! Now, go!’

Mother bolted, hauling the dazed young Russian private with her. As they ran across the fifty yards of open ground between the Beriev and the lead containing their boats the second Cobra tried to loose another missile, but this one also went haywire and smashed into the ice.

‘Cobras, forget it. They’ve got anti-missile countermeasures,’ the pilot named Hammerhead said. ‘I’m going to unload the ground team. You take care of those two runners.’

The Osprey powered ahead of the two Cobras, up-tilted its rotors and swung into a hover.

As it did so, its side doors were pulled open from within and drop ropes were tossed out. Within seconds, eight heavily armed men in black balaclavas and Marine Corps parkas were sliding down the ropes and hitting the ground one after the other.

They fanned out in perfect formation, AK-47s up, moving in on the crashed Beriev.

At the same time, one of the Cobras pivoted in the air and aimed its M134 at the fleeing figures of Mother and the Russian private.

The minigun whirred to life, barrels spinning, and unleashed a thunderous burst of hypermachine-gun fire.

The ice behind Mother’s running feet leapt upward as bullets strafed it.

‘Dive!’ she yelled to the young private limping along beside her.

They dived forward, toward the ladder hooks looped over the edge of the ice, chased by bullets.

Mother hit the ice on her belly and slid forward like a batter trying to steal second, before she hit the edge and went flying off it into open space, falling suddenly as she felt a bullet slap against the sole of her left boot. She dropped in a clumsy heap onto the first boat waiting at the base of the ladder.

Behind her, the Russian private did the same, but he was a split second behind Mother and that made a world of difference to the result.

As he slid over the lip, he was literally ripped apart by the hail of bullets. Blood fountains spurted all over his body, but propelled by his own dive, his corpse continued off the edge and, like Mother, it also dropped into the first AFDV, right next to Emma Dawson, who screamed at the sight of the bullet-riddled body that thudded down next to her like a slab of meat on a butcher’s block. It was no longer recognisable as a human being.

Mother gasped, out of breath. ‘Mother
fucker
, that was close! Oh, Jesus, Scarecrow . . .’

The roar of the hovering Osprey was deafening. A tornado of ice and snow swirled around the Beriev.

Inside the crashed plane’s cockpit, Schofield splashed some water from his canteen onto Ivanov’s buckle and the frost melted and the seatbelt unjammed. Schofield yanked the Russian from his flight seat.

‘Come on, buddy,’ he said, peering outside and seeing the eight-man balaclava-and-parka-wearing force approaching the Beriev from the south. He glanced eastward.

‘Mother, you okay?’

‘
I’m clear, but my guy’s toast. What about you?
’

‘On my way—uh-oh . . .’

One of the balaclava-clad men dropped to a prone position, took aim down the sights of a very powerful bipod-mounted machine gun and squeezed the trigger—

—
braaaaaaaaack!

The gunman was himself thrown backwards by a terrible burst of machine-gun fire.

Schofield snapped up to see—of all things—Bertie’s gunbarrel smoking.

‘Oh, good robot,’ he said. ‘Good robot.’

Bertie lay down some more deadly fire and the other attackers variously dived for cover behind the Beriev itself or returned fire at Bertie. Bullets bounced off the little robot’s metal flanks while Bertie just kept panning left and right, emitting short controlled bursts.

But then while Bertie was facing right, Schofield glimpsed another enemy commando to their left—appearing between the Beriev and the lead containing their escape boats—as he swung a Russian-made RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher onto his shoulder.

The man was only just in Scarecrow’s field of vision. Schofield had to peer up through the cracked windshield of the Beriev just to see him. The angle was too narrow to fire at the man and in any case, Schofield didn’t have anything to match the firepower of an RPG.

He looked about himself for options.

Wait a second
. . .

The parka-clad commando peered down the sight of his rocket launcher, steadied it on his shoulder—as inside the cockpit of the Beriev, Shane Schofield pushed Ivanov backward and said, ‘Cover your ears!’

Then Scarecrow yanked on the ejection lever of the Beriev’s copilot’s seat.

A gaseous
whoosh
filled the cockpit as a section of the plane’s roof was jettisoned and the co-pilot’s seat blasted out of the Beriev. Since the plane was lying on its side, the flight seat rocketed
laterally
through the air, shooting low over the ground on a flat horizontal trajectory before it struck the RPG-wielding commando with terrible force, square in the chest, cracking every one of his ribs before sending him flying backwards, all but breaking the man in two.

Vasily Ivanov’s eyes boggled as he looked out through the newly-opened hole in the roof of the cockpit and saw the dead commando on the ice plain.

‘You see that?’ Schofield yelled to Ivanov as the other parka-clad commandos opened fire again. ‘’Cause that’s how we’re getting out of here, too! Is that flightsuit you’re wearing good in Arctic waters?’

‘It is designed to survive in icy water for a short time, yes,’ Ivanov stammered.

‘Good enough.’ Schofield reached out through the smashed cockpit windshield with one hand, yanked Bertie back inside, and handed him to Ivanov. ‘Here, hold my robot!’ Schofield then sat on the remaining pilot’s seat and pulled Ivanov onto his own lap. ‘Now hold on to your breakfast.’

Then, with all three of them sitting on the pilot’s seat, Schofield pulled that seat’s ejection lever.

The flight seat shot out of the Beriev—with Schofield, Ivanov and Bertie on it—blasting through the ring of enemy commandos surrounding the plane!

The seat flew—on its side—a foot above the ice plain, the world around it blurring with speed, the force of its screamingly-fast lateral flight pushing Schofield and Ivanov down into it.

After about forty yards of this kind of flight, the speeding pilot’s seat hit the ground where it bounced twice like a skimming stone before shooting clear off the lip of the ice floe and out over the watery alleyway—out over the stunned faces of Mother and the others still in the two assault boats.

Having cleared the lip, the flight seat arced downward and speared into the freezing water of the lead, entering it with an almighty splash.

‘What was that?’ Chad asked, astonished.

‘That was the Scarecrow,’ Mother said, shoving the Kid out of the driver’s saddle, taking the controls and gunning the engine. ‘Hang on, people! We gotta grab him!’

Underwater silence.

As the flight seat shot under the water’s surface, Scarecrow and Ivanov separated, floating apart in the ice-blue haze. Bertie’s flotation balloons activated immediately on contact with the water and Schofield saw the little robot rise up and away to the surface.

Scarecrow felt the sting of the water against his face, the only part of his body not covered by his drysuit. It was outrageously cold, like daggers of ice.

The impact with the water had flipped his reflective glasses onto his forehead, and as he hovered there in the clear blue water of the Arctic, he was enveloped by eerie silence.

But not total silence. An odd
thrumming
could be heard.

It was then that Schofield realised that he was not alone.

There was something in front of him.

Something impossibly huge, black and enormous, hovering there in the void like a leviathan of the deep. Only it wasn’t an animal of any sort. It was man-made, mechanical.

It was a submarine.

A screaming sense of déjà vu overcame Schofield.

This had happened to him once before, during that mission in Antarctica, when he had come face-to-face with a French nuclear ballistic missile submarine. On that occasion, he had managed to destroy the submarine in question. It was one of the events that had made him a marked man by the French.

No. It couldn’t possibly be French
—

And then Schofield saw the markings on the sub’s dome-shaped bow, saw the distinct blue-white-and-red flag painted on it.

Yes, it could.
This submarine was French.

In the meta-time in which the brain operates, Schofield’s mind rapidly connected some dots.

The wristguard’s proximity sensor had picked up this submarine only minutes ago—which meant the sensor might not have been broken earlier in their trip and may actually have picked up the
same
submarine back then—the sub had followed them here—which meant it was a good guess that the sub
wasn’t
part of what was happening at Dragon Island—indeed, it was a better guess that this sub, this French sub which appeared to be following his team,
probably had no idea at all
what was going on at Dragon.

This French submarine, he realised with a shock, was up in the Arctic trying to find
him.

Gazing at the gigantic submarine, Schofield suddenly noticed that there were three smaller submersibles mounted on its back, compact Swimmer Delivery Vehicles—similar to his AFDVs but smaller—carrying three frogmen apiece and which were at that very moment lifting off from the sub and coming toward Schofield.

It was an assassination squad.

A French hit team, coming for him, and yet totally unaware that they’d walked into a far more deadly firestorm.

Schofield swam for the surface.

Schofield burst up from the icy water and found himself treading water beside Ivanov and Bertie—the little robot was floating happily thanks to his flotation balloons, his fat tyres propelling him slowly but valiantly toward Schofield.

‘
Captain Schofield, do you require assistance? My buoyancy features can keep you afloat till our colleagues arrive.
’

Just then, like a shark rising from the depths, the first French SDV breached the surface ten yards from Scarecrow, Ivanov and Bertie.

One frogman drove while two more held short-barrelled FA-MAS assault rifles, raised and ready to fire—

With a roar, something slammed into the first French SDV, sending all three of the frogmen on it flying into the water.

It was Mother’s assault boat and it
crunched
over the top of the smaller French submersible, breaking it clean in two, before Mother swung her AFDV to a perfect halt beside Schofield.

‘Haul them out!’ she yelled to the Kid, Emma and Zack in the rear tray.

Schofield scooped up Bertie while the Kid and the two civilians grabbed him and within seconds he and the robot were in the boat. A moment later, Ivanov was, too.

‘Go,
go!
’ Schofield yelled. ‘This place is about to get really crowded and this might be our one and only chance to get out of here in one piece!’

That was the understatement of the year.

For in the next moment, several things happened at once:

First, the other two French submersibles surfaced, revealing more armed frogmen on their backs.

But then a Cobra thundered by overhead from the direction of the crashed Beriev, rotors thumping, minigun blazing, strafing the world. The skinny attack chopper’s wave of bullet-impacts traced a line across the water’s surface—a line that cut right across one of the newly-surfaced French submersibles, ripping the three frogmen on it to shreds.

That first Cobra was quickly followed by the second AH-1, which swooped into a deadly hover low over the water, right in front of Mother’s boat! It pivoted in the air, levelling its minigun at them.

‘Fuck me . . .’ Mother breathed.

The only weapon they had that possessed anywhere near enough firepower to threaten the Cobra was the grenade launcher on Mother’s G36 which right now lay at her feet, out of reach, and—

Schofield didn’t stop to think about it.

He quickly snatched up Bertie, held the little robot in front of him and instead of pulling a trigger—because Bertie didn’t have one—yelled: ‘Bertie! Fire! Fire! Fire!’

Bertie’s M249 came to stunning life.

Each shot emitted a deep puncture-like whump—
whump!-whump!-whump!
—yet the recoil was largely contained by Bertie’s internal compensator. The shots hit their mark. They erupted all over the Cobra’s body: cracking its canopy, slamming into its engine housing where they ruptured something, causing a thick plume of black smoke to stream out from the Cobra’s exhaust and the chopper banked wildly away, wounded but not defeated.

Mother yelled, ‘Scarecrow! What now! Which way do we go?’

That was the question
, Schofield thought. In the cacophony of clattering gunfire, booming robots and thumping choppers, he tried to think clearly.

We need to talk to this Russian guy, get some intel and make a decent plan. We don’t have much time but
—he recalled the old military maxim—
a good plan with less time is better than a bad plan with more time. Maybe we can double back north, regroup a little, and then head for Dragon
—