Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (24 page)

The berserker saw it, immediately recognised its importance, and scooped it up.

Then, right on cue, as if this whole situation wasn’t already outrageous enough, an amphibious Strela came
roaring
in through the rear opening, kicking up a bow wave as it deliberately ran aground in the shallow water now covering the floor of the hold.

With Mother cut off by the Strela, Baba gone and Schofield too far away, the nimble berserker hopped, skipped and jumped his way down the semi-flooded hold and leapt onto the Strela’s bow-deck, yelling to its driver words to the effect of ‘We have them! Go!’

The driver didn’t waste any time. The Strela’s engines whined as it reversed out of the hold, dropping back into the swirling waters of the river, about to get away when—

Roooaaaar!

Schofield heard it before he saw it.

Heard the roar of the cement mixer’s engine firing up before he saw the big truck, with its heavy mixing tub on its back, reverse—at speed—toward the rear of the semi-flooded hold.

The truck, driven by Zack, carved through the knee-deep water and went flying out the rear opening, where it crunched down
onto
the bow of the retreating Strela. Such was the weight of the cement mixer that its rear bumper drove
right into
the Strela’s driver’s compartment, horrifically denting it, crushing the hapless driver and gunner inside.

It had been a last-ditch ploy by Zack: he’d seen the berserker grab the case and done all he could do to stop his escape.

But it wasn’t over yet.

For it was then that the bizarre cement-mixer-embedded-in-the-Strela hybrid began to float away from the plane!

It separated from the plane quickly—a few feet suddenly became twenty, and it drifted southward across the river’s surface, heading for the bank opposite the runway.

But it still had a bad guy aboard it: the berserker who had leapt onto the Strela with the sphere case. He started firing crazily at the cab of the cement mixer that had thwarted his triumphant escape.

The cement-mixing tub prevented him from getting a clear shot but his angry rounds still managed to impact all around Zack and Emma in the cab. They ducked their heads as glass showered over them.

Zack risked a glance in the rear-view mirror and saw their nimble attacker coming toward the cab, gun raised, a second before the mirror itself exploded under the crazed man’s gunfire.

Zack and Emma ducked away from the mirror’s exploding shards but when they looked up again, it was to see the berserker standing in the cab’s doorway, the sphere case in one hand, his AK-47 in the other, levelled at their faces.

He cackled crazily. ‘Bye-bye, birdies!’ he squealed with glee as he pulled the trigger.

The berserker’s head snapped grotesquely backward, hit in the nose by a single bullet from Mother, appearing from the other side of the cement mixer, her M9 pistol aimed across the cabin.

Unseen by anyone, after Zack had reversed his cement mixer into the Strela, she’d dived after it and caught hold of the cement mixer’s side-rail.

The berserker swayed for a moment, just long enough for Emma to reach out and grab his Samsonite case before he fell off the running board and disappeared into the fast-flowing river.

‘Thanks, Mother—!’ Zack called, but he was cut off by a jarring jolt as their cement-mixer-Strela hybrid ran aground against an outcropping of boulders on the south bank of the river.

They were ashore.

Mother looked westward, in the direction of the waterfall: it was barely a hundred metres away—

—when suddenly her view was blocked by the second Strela, bursting up and out of the river ahead of her, wheels turning, surging out of the water onto the shore.

‘Fuck me,’ Mother said.

She glanced over at the Antonov—it was now almost at the waterfall.

‘Scarecrow!’ she said into her radio. ‘I got Zack and Emma and one sphere case, but we’re cut off from the cliffs!’

‘
I’m up to my neck in bad guys here, Mother
,’ came the reply. ‘
I’m afraid you’re on your own this time
—’

The signal cut off.

Mother pursed her lips.

‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Come on, kids, if we can’t get to the cliffs, we gotta find another way to dispose of these spheres before those bastards catch us.’

They leapt off their shipwrecked cement mixer and dashed across the shore, heading south into the rugged mountainous interior of Dragon Island.

Schofield was still stuck on the Antonov, rushing toward the waterfall with two Samsonite cases—four spheres—still to get rid of.

Things had got completely out of control.

The waterfall was fast approaching. Mother was gone, along with Zack and Emma. Baba had been flattened against the wall by the cement mixer. Champion was slumped on the floor at his feet, on the edge of consciousness. He’d been shot and he still had two berserkers up in the cockpit about to—

The cockpit door flew open. The two berserkers came rushing out of it, their gunfire raking the hold.

But their fire went high, and just as the berserkers caught sight of Schofield at the base of the steps beneath them and re-aimed their weapons, the entire plane suddenly tipped precariously forward,
outrageously
forward—

The plane had reached the waterfall.

And was going over.

THE ANTONOV AND THE WATERFALL

But then abruptly the Antonov lurched to a shuddering stop.

With an ear-piercing shriek of metal on rock, the big plane came to an unexpected halt right on the lip of the waterfall!

It was an incredible sight: the big cargo plane, with its right wing belching fire and smoke, perched on the edge of the mighty Arctic waterfall, its nose tilted dizzyingly downward, its outstretched wings hanging low over the surging waves of the river, waves that rushed past it before launching themselves out into the void and falling three hundred feet into the ocean far below.

On the nearby runway, the pursuing force of Army of Thieves vehicles skidded to a halt while on the opposite bank, one could see the two Strelas: Mother’s still with the cement mixer embedded in its bow, the other guarding the cliffs.

Everyone inside the plane was thrown forward by the sudden lurch.

Gripping Champion, Schofield was hurled forward and slammed against the wall, while the two berserkers—milliseconds away from killing him—were both flung by the inertia back into the down-turned cockpit.

It took Schofield a second to figure out what had happened.

The landing gear.

The Antonov’s rear landing wheels must have caught on the lip of the waterfall and were now preventing the plane from going over.

This wasn’t how I planned this at all
, Schofield’s mind screamed.
We were supposed to get across the river, then I’d get to the cliffs where I would throw the spheres into the sea. Now I’m hanging off the edge of a waterfall in a plane with two insane attackers who in about two seconds are going to try and kill me again.

His searching eyes found the side door, only eight feet above and behind him. Did he have time to clamber up there and toss the spheres out—

Movement in the cockpit. The berserkers had regathered themselves. They’d be coming in seconds.

‘Fuck it,’ he said aloud, aiming his pistol through the cockpit doorway.

Only it wasn’t aimed at either of the berserkers.

It was aimed at the landing gear retractor lever that hung from the ceiling above the pilot’s seat.

Blam!

He fired and a spark pinged off the landing gear lever and the lever swung forward.

The result was instantaneous.

With its landing gear retracted, the plane went over the waterfall.

If the sight of the Antonov perched on the lip of the waterfall was incredible, the sight of it falling down the face of the waterfall was just astonishing.

It fell nose-first in an almost perfect swan dive, falling at exactly the same speed as the water falling around it, and for a moment, one might have been convinced it would swoop upward at the last second and soar to safety. But that didn’t happen.

The Antonov hit the churning whitewater at the base of the mighty waterfall with a great splash.

The plane’s glass nose shot underwater, its pointed tip penetrating the surface like an Olympic diver, shooting downward in a rush of bubbles.

It was only the wings of the plane—or more specifically, the engines on them—that brought it to a halt: a bone-jarring, deadly halt. The plane’s cockpit had travelled about twenty feet under the surface when the wing-mounted engines hit the surface and the plane’s downward journey stopped instantly.

The experience of the two berserkers in the cockpit was utterly unique: as the plane hit the ocean’s surface, seawater rushed up at them through the shattered forward windows, a great foaming rush of it; but their downward inertia took them the other way and they were flung with terrible force down
into
the surging water.

In the hold behind them, Schofield sat with his back to the plane’s steel forward wall, flat against a flight seat, with the groaning Champion gripped tightly in his arms.

After firing into the landing gear lever, he had leapt into the seat and quickly buckled the seatbelt.

The shuddering impact of the plane against the ocean’s surface jolted him sharply, but the seat absorbed much of the shock and the belt held him tight. Champion was almost shaken from his grip, but somehow he managed to hold her.

But it wasn’t over yet.

The worst was still to come, for the Antonov around him was now vertical, bobbing in the water.

Then, with horrifying speed, it began to sink.

Water rushed up into the Antonov through its shattered cockpit windows, swarming up into the plane in a great roiling, bubbling rush, as if it were a sentient creature trying to swallow the plane from the inside out.

Schofield’s world was turned vertical—the plane was sinking nose-first, so his forward end of the hold was now the
bottom
end—and it was filling fast. Water swelled all around him.

He scrambled to unlatch his seatbelt, still holding the barely conscious Champion.

As he did so, a mini-waterfall of seawater started flowing in through the open side door directly above him, raining down in an unbroken stream.

He looked upward, at the wide square opening at the very top of the hold: the plane’s rear ramp was still open and through the opening it created, Schofield saw the grey Arctic sky.

He took in the situation quickly:

The wings of the plane were currently providing some buoyancy, slowing its descent a fraction, but the plane’s fate was sealed: in a few moments, as it sank further, ocean water would come gushing en masse through that upper opening. At that point, the Antonov would become little more than a metal tube in the ocean, open at both ends, and it would sink to the bottom like a stone.

Schofield clenched his teeth. He still had a job to do: he had to dispose of the spheres.

With Champion draped over his shoulder, he sloshed over to the netting on the port side of the hold and started climbing it, heading for the open port-side door eight feet above him.

With every foot he climbed, the churning water at his boots chased him, rising higher, moving faster.

The water overtook his boots, then his knees, then his waist.

Schofield reached the door, and positioned himself to the side of its little waterfall. He looped some netting around Champion’s left arm to hold her in place, which freed up both his hands, and he opened one of his small Samsonite cases to reveal its two gleaming red uranium spheres. He couldn’t just throw the case out; like many such containers, it was very likely buoyant.

He grabbed one of the spheres—it was small and heavy, a deep polished maroon—and tossed it out the doorway. It fell away into the ocean, sinking quickly.

He did the same with the second sphere. It disappeared forever, too.

Two down. Two to go.

Schofield discarded the first Samsonite case and lifted the second one.