Scarecrow (42 page)

‘Probably not,' Schofield said, ‘but today they're our bestest buddies. We watch over them while they watch over Zemir.'

1741.

From behind his missile silo, Schofield watched as Zemir's CincLock unit illuminated like a laptop and Zemir stared at its touchscreen, flexing his fingers in anticipation of the disarm sequence he was about to face.

He's going to disarm the missile system
, Schofield thought.

Excellent. We might get out of here without much hassle after all
.

But then, to his absolute horror, Schofield saw three shadowy figures descending by rope from the rafters of the missile hold
above and behind
Zemir's console platform.

None of the Sayaret Tzanhim saw them. They were too busy firing at Demon Larkham and his IG-88 bounty hunters.

‘No,' Schofield whispered. ‘
No, no, no
 . . .'

The three shadowy figures whizzed down their ropes at lightning speed.

Zamanov and his Skorpions.

Ziplining down from the ship's foredeck, from a hatch near the bow.

Schofield broke cover, yelled uselessly above the gunfire: ‘
Behind
you!'

Of course, the Israelis responded immediately.

By firing at him. Even Zemir himself looked up, about to start the disarm sequence.

Schofield dived back behind his silo, rolled to the ground, peered back out—

—just in time to see the three Skorpions land lightly on the elevated platform a few yards
behind
the preoccupied Zemir.

And Schofield could only watch, powerless, as in the strobe-like glare of the Israelis' muzzle-flashes, Zamanov crept silently forward, drew his Cossack fighting sword and swung the blade at Zemir's neck from behind in a brutal horizontal slashing motion.

And in that instant, Shane Schofield became the last person on the bounty list still alive.

And the only man on Earth capable of disarming the CincLock-VII missile security system.

Zemir's head dropped off his shoulders. He had not even been able to start the disarm sequence.

Schofield's mouth fell open. ‘This cannot be happening.'

One of the Sayaret Tzanhim glanced over his shoulder—in time to see Zemir's headless corpse drop off the console platform and down to the floor, spilling blood; to see Zamanov stuff Zemir's ragged head into his rucksack and whiz back up his retractable zipline—

Blam!

Covering the fleeing Zamanov, the other two Skorpions shot the Israeli trooper in the face—just as two more Sayaret Tzanhim soldiers were blasted by IG-88 fire from the
other
direction.

Fire from both directions—twin forces of professional bounty hunters—assailed the Israeli commando team.

And as the remaining Sayaret Tzanhim noticed Zemir's fallen body and the fleeing Skorpions above it, they became confused and in the face of IG-88's superior firepower, lost formation.

They were decimated.

IG-88 overwhelmed them. Within moments, the entire Israeli force was dead.

1742.

IG-88 took control of the barricade. Demon Larkham strode like a conquering general into the enemy blockade. He pointed up at the ceiling, at Zamanov and his Skorpions fleeing on their retractable ziplines with Zemir's head in their possession.

The three Skorpions hit the ceiling next to a wide cargo hatch.

Zamanov's two companions climbed up through the hatch first, stepping up into the pouring rain on the foredeck, reached back down as Zamanov handed them the severed head of Simon Zemir.

Supermachine-gun fire riddled their bodies.

The two Skorpions on the foredeck convulsed violently, their chests exploding in bloody fountains.

A six-man subteam of IG-88 troopers stood in the rain waiting for them. Demon Larkham had anticipated this, and so had already dispatched a second team to the foredeck.

The rucksack containing Zemir's head dropped to the deck, and the IG-88 subteam ran forward, grabbed it.

Outnumbered and outgunned, Zamanov ducked below the floorline, swung over to a catwalk high above the missile hold and disappeared into the shadows.

Down in the missile hold itself, Schofield was speechless.

This was unbelievable.

With three minutes to go till the nuclear missiles fired, Zemir was dead and IG-88 held the control console. Twenty of them, with MetalStorm guns!

He needed some kind of distraction, a
really big
distraction.

‘Call Rufus,' he said to Knight.

‘You sure?'

‘It's the only way.'

‘Right,' Knight said. ‘You're a truly crazy man, Captain Schofield.' Then Knight spoke into his throat-mike. ‘Rufus. How is Plan B coming along?'

Rufus's voice came in. ‘
I got the nearest one for you! And she's one big momma! I'm a hundred yards out, engines running, and pointed straight at you!
'

One hundred yards away from the
Talbot
, a second supertanker was powering through the storm with Rufus at the helm.

Waiting its turn to unload its cargo at Cherbourg, the giant 110,000-ton container ship, the MV
Eindhoven,
had been sitting at rest in the Channel, its engines idling, when Rufus had landed the
Black Raven
on its foredeck.

Now, but for Rufus, it was empty, its sailing crew of six having wisely decided to depart on a lifeboat after Rufus had strafed their bridge windows with two M-16s.

‘What do you want me to do!' Rufus shouted into his radio.

On the
Talbot
, Schofield assessed the situation.

The Rufus Plan was always meant to be a last resort—a means by which Schofield could
sink
the false supertanker if he failed to disarm its missiles.

He stole a glance at the control console and its barricade and suddenly his blood froze.

Demon Larkham was looking directly back at him
. He'd spotted them.

The Demon smiled.

‘Rufus,' Schofield said. ‘Ram us.'

 

17:42:10.

Demon Larkham's men charged out from behind their barricade, winding their way between the missile silos, their MetalStorm rifles blazing.

Coming after Schofield.

Schofield led Mother and Knight over to a lifeboat positioned beside the open cargo door on the starboard side of the hold.

‘Quickly,' he yelled. ‘Get in!'

They all dived into the lifeboat, then snapped up to return fire.

The IG-88 men closed in.

Schofield fired hard. So did Mother and Knight, trying to hold them off until Rufus arrived.

But the IG-88 troopers kept advancing.

‘Come on, Rufus,' Schofield said aloud. ‘Where are you . . . ?'

And then—magnificently—Rufus arrived.

 

It sounded like the end of the world.

The shriek of rending metal, of steel striking steel.

The collision of the two supertankers on the surface of the English Channel, veiled in sleeting rain, was an awesome,
awesome
sight.

Two of the largest moving objects on the planet—each nearly a thousand feet long and each weighing more than 100,000 tons—collided at ramming speed.

Rufus's stolen tanker, the
Eindhoven
, ploughed bow-first right into the port flank of the
Talbot
, hitting it perfectly perpendicularly.

The sharpened bow of the
Eindhoven
drove like a knife into the side of the
Talbot
, smashing into it like a battering ram.

The port flank of the
Talbot
just crumpled inward. Seawater gushed in through the gigantic gash the
Eindhoven
created in its side.

And like a boxer recoiling from a blow, the entire supertanker rocked wildly in response to the impact.

At first, it rolled to starboard, so great was the force of Rufus's ramming strike. But then as seawater began to enter the
Talbot
en masse, the missile-firing supertanker tilted dramatically—and fatally—back to port.

At which point it rolled over onto its left-hand side and began to sink.

Fast.

The scene inside the missile hold of the
Talbot
would have made Noah gulp.

In here, the impact had been a thunderous experience.

Not even Schofield had been prepared for the sheer power of the blow, or the sudden appearance of the
Eindhoven
's pointed bow thrusting unexpectedly
right through
the port-side wall of the missile hold.

In response, the entire hold had swayed to starboard, throwing everyone off their feet.

Then seawater began to enter the hold through the gigantic gash—in monumental proportions.

A tidal wave of water, ten feet high and utterly immense in its force, rushed into the hold, swallowing several members of IG-88 in an instant, lifting forklifts and cargo containers and missile parts clear into the air.

The water rushed underneath Schofield's lifeboat, lifting it off its mounts. Schofield immediately released the craft from its davits and gunned the engine.

Within seconds, the hold's floor was completely under water, the water level rising fast.

And as it filled, the
Talbot
rolled dramatically to port—toward the fatal gash, tilting at least 30 degrees—and Schofield, blasting forward in the motorised lifeboat on the level surface of the water, saw the whole hold all around him start to roll.

17:42:30

From outside, it all made for a very unusual sight.

The
Eindhoven
was still embedded in the side of the
Talbot
—while the
Talbot
, taking on water in incredible quantities, lay foundering half-tilted on its left-hand side, literally hanging off the bow of the
Eindhoven
.

But so great was the weight of the water rushing into its belly, the
Talbot
was actually driving the bow of the
Eindhoven
under the surface as well—as such, the
Talbot
's long foredeck and bridge tower remained above the waterline, slanted at a steep 30-degree sideways angle, while its left-hand flank drove the
Eindhoven
's bow relentlessly downward, toward the waves.

On board the
Eindhoven
, Rufus didn't need to be told what to do.

He raced for the
Raven
, still parked on the foredeck of his tanker, climbed into the cockpit and lifted off into the rain-swept sky.

17:43:30

Inside the rapidly-filling
Talbot
, Schofield was moving fast.

In fact, very very fast.

His motorised lifeboat whipped across the surface, slicing in between the now-slanted missile silos with Mother and Knight positioned on its flanks, shooting at their enemies floating in the water. It was like speed-boating through a forest of half-fallen trees.

After the impact, Demon Larkham and most of his men had all made for the starboard side of the hold—the high side—the only part of the hold still above water.

Schofield, however, cut a beeline for the control console at the forward end of the missile hold.

17:43:48

17:43:49

17:43:50

His lifeboat carved through the chop, his two loyal shooters blazing away, killing IG-88 men as they whistled by.

The lifeboat came alongside the elevated control console. The wire-frame control console was also tilted at a dramatic angle, barely a foot above the rising waterline.

‘Cover me!' Schofield yelled. From where he stood in his lifeboat, he could see the console's illuminated display screen, saw stark red numerals on it ticking downward in hundredths of a second—the countdown to missile launch.

00:01:10.88

00:01:09.88

00:01:08.88

The digitised hundredths of a second whizzed by in such a blur that they looked like 8s.

Schofield pulled his CincLock-VII unit—the one he'd taken from the French—from a waterproof pouch on his vest and once again saw the unit's display.

White and red circles hovered on the touchscreen.

Bing.

A message appeared:

 

MISSILE LAUNCH SEQUENCE IN PROGRESS.

PRESS ‘ENTER' TO INITIATE DISARM SEQUENCE.

FIRST PROTOCOL (PROXIMITY): SATISFIED.

INITIATE SECOND PROTOCOL.

Like before, the white circles on the screen began to blink slowly on and off.

Schofield punched them as they did so.

The countdown ticked ever-downward.

00:01:01

00:01:00

00:00:59

Then abruptly the
Talbot
lurched sharply. The entire supertanker, still hanging off the bow of the
Eindhoven
, was now slowly slipping off it!

With the unexpected jolt, Schofield missed one of the white circles.

The display beeped:

 

SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): FAILED DISARM ATTEMPT RECORDED.

THREE FAILED DISARM ATTEMPTS WILL RESULT IN DEFAULT DETONATION.

SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): RE-ACTIVATED.

‘Shit,' Schofield said.

He started all over again.

The supertanker was still sinking.

He felt water lapping against his boots.

While Schofield punched at the touchscreen, Aloysius Knight fired at the IG-88 force on the high starboard side of the hold.

He loosed a new burst, before suddenly he saw it.

‘Oh, no . . .' he breathed.

‘What?' Mother called.

‘The starboard-side cargo door,' Knight said. ‘It's about to go under.'

He was right. Owing to the leftward tilt of the ship, the massive starboard-side cargo doorway had until now been well above the waterline.

But now the rising water was about to hit it. And that was very bad—because once it did, seawater would start entering the
Talbot
from
both
sides of the ship.

After that, the
Talbot
would go down with frightening speed—

‘Knight!' Mother yelled. ‘Check right!'