Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (29 page)
Read Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves Online
Authors: Matthew Reilly
Schofield looked over at Dragon Island, looming above the network of leads.
‘No way . . .’ he said aloud.
If the Soviets build the device—which I am quite certain they will do—the next step is setting it off at a time of our choosing, at a time when China is assuming global dominance, but in a way that cannot be connected to America.
For this I propose—
Schofield looked up.
‘Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Those CIA sons of bitches . . .’
For this I propose that we create a fake terrorist army, perhaps two hundred men strong. We could call it the Army of Terror or some similar name—and use it to seize and set off the Tesla device on Dragon Island.
A crucial note: it is important that the members of this terrorist army
do not know
that their army is a sham.
Regular infantrymen are poor actors, mercenaries can never truly be trusted, and private contractors are worse than mercenaries. Only
true believers
can pull off this mission. We must also account for the possibility that members of our army might be captured and interrogated by a friendly nation (indeed, if they are unaware of the true nature of their army, having one or two members captured will actually be advantageous to us).
To that end, I propose we recruit genuinely disaffected militarily-trained individuals and we indoctrinate them to a cause of global chaos and anarchy. Under the leadership of a small inner core of trusted men, including myself, this army will then carry out a series of terrorist acts to establish the group in the global consciousness. After that, we take Dragon Island and set off the Russian device. Of course, when the mission is over, the members of our counterfeit army will need to be liquidated.
Schofield skimmed to the document’s concluding paragraphs:
The predicted outcomes of the proposed operation are as follows:
China is completely destroyed, its population and cities incinerated by a firestorm of never-before-seen proportions. Ninety per cent of India, our next rising low-cost industrial competitor, is also wiped out. A few small slivers at the edges of the continental United States are lost (a necessary loss; we cannot be totally unharmed as that would arouse suspicion). And the Russians are blamed. The story is familiar—once again, Russia’s notoriously poor safety protocols have failed and China’s innocent population has suffered for it. A terrorist group is to blame and America rises again, the income of its working class population secured for the foreseeable future.
The American way of life survives.
Schofield stared at the screen in silence. ‘“The American way of life survives.” Goddamn.’
He’d seen some messed-up plans in his time—he’d even done battle with an ultra-patriotic American agency called the ICG once before—but this took the cake.
He quickly brought up another screen on his wristguard, one he’d seen at the start of all this, showing a map of the world and the spiralling gas plume contaminating it:
And there it was.
The plume completely covered China
.
He hadn’t really noticed that before. Like everyone else, he had been concerned about his own country; but even now that took on a new perspective: compared to China, Asia, Europe and India, America would only suffer a glancing blow at the hands of this atmospheric weapon.
Champion frowned. ‘So the Army of Thieves is a CIA creation? A fake terrorist army?’
‘One hundred per cent made in America,’ Schofield said sourly.
Looking again at the Dragonslayer document, he even saw that Calderon had accounted for something else: the fall of the Soviet Union.
It has been suggested to me that this plan might be hindered by the potential fall of the Soviet regime (an event which this analyst believes will occur around the end of this decade). I do not believe that such a fall will adversely affect the plan. In fact, I think it will strengthen it.
Any new confederation that follows the fall of the Soviet regime will still have to safeguard all of the Soviet Union’s many weapons of mass destruction, in particular its nuclear arsenal and weapons like the Tesla device. High-value ‘exotic matter’ weapons installations like Dragon Island will require upkeep by skeleton crews of military staff, who will be very easily bought off—
Schofield shook his head. ‘And there you have it. A plan that was hatched back in 1984 comes to fruition now—now that China has become the world’s 800-pound gorilla. There were only two things this Calderon guy didn’t predict: that Vasily Ivanov would manage to get away for long enough to send out a distress signal . . .’
‘And the second thing?’
‘That my little test team would be in the area when he did.’
With those words, Schofield brought their life raft to a halt, just short of the end of the lead they were in.
A hundred metres beyond the end of the lead rose Dragon Island, or more particularly the long-abandoned frost-covered whaling village situated on the north-west coast of Dragon.
Schofield gazed at the village.
‘There was a third thing he didn’t anticipate,’ he said. ‘How determined I’d be to stop him.’
Mario and the Kid crouched behind a low concrete wall near the main vents, at a spot overlooking Dragon Island’s missile battery. They were tense and alert, careful to stay out of sight.
Earlier, they’d watched and listened in astonishment as Schofield had rampaged through the complex, ultimately fleeing with the spheres to the runway.
But now things had changed.
Schofield had failed and now they had to step up. Their mission: destroy the Army of Thieves’ missile battery and thus prevent the Army from firing any remaining spheres into the contaminated sky.
The Kid was also mindful of their last-ditch option: finding and destroying the Army of Thieves’ uplink, the satellite dish that was connecting them to a missile-spotting satellite up in orbit and thus protecting them from a nuclear strike.
This was a tougher ask. An uplink dish didn’t have to be that big, which meant it could be anywhere with a line of sight to the sky. If the Army of Thieves were smart—and by all accounts they were—it wouldn’t be easy to spot, and sure enough, neither the Kid nor Mario had seen anything resembling such a dish.
And so, while Schofield had gone on his rampage, Mario and the Kid—still dressed in their Army of Thieves parkas—had carefully made their way toward the missile battery on the south side of the gas vents.
As they’d arrived at this vantage point overlooking the battery, however, a missile had been launched and the southern sky had lit up with blazing white light—and they thought they’d failed completely, that the Army of Thieves had succeeded. But then they heard frantic voices and saw Army men frantically running in all directions.
During this mayhem, a lone Army sentry caught sight of them, but Mario put him down with a single, silenced shot. As they hid the body, Mario had quickly grabbed the man’s earpiece.
The two of them crowded around the single earpiece and listened in on the Army of Thieves’ commentary of Shane Schofield’s escape down the river:
‘—
just drove the fucking plane into the river!
—’
‘—
Get the Strelas in there!
—’
‘—
Something just came out the back
—’
‘—
Three of them are on that cement mixer. Get them! They’ve got two spheres!
—’
‘—
Get those fucking spheres
—’
Shortly after, the plane had gone over the waterfall and after that, they heard a few transmissions about something happening over at the quarry and then nothing; radio silence.
And so now here they were, alone, Mario and the Kid, looking out over Dragon Island’s missile battery. They might have been too late to stop the first launch, but they wouldn’t let another one happen.
The battery was basically a high, flat-topped rocky mount attached to the rest of the base by a long thin bridge that spanned a gorge. The top of the rocky mount had been levelled and on it sat half a dozen semi-trailer-like transporter erector launchers with missiles on their backs.
The Kid gazed at the missile battery. ‘I think we can get there unnoticed if we rope down this side of the bridge, hopscotch along the base of the gorge and then use Maghooks to get up the other side.’
Mario shook his head. ‘Jesus Christ, don’t you see? We’re fucked. Scarecrow’s dead and soon the others will be, too.’
‘We keep fighting anyway,’ the Kid said firmly. ‘We have to. Now, come on. We got a battery to blow up.’
He scurried off.
Mario scowled. ‘Not everybody’s a hero, Kid,’ he muttered.
They made it across just as the Kid had planned, traversing the gorge and then slithering up onto the flat top of the rocky mount via their Maghooks, before rolling under one of the transporter erector launchers unseen.
Almost
unseen.
A lone surveillance camera had caught them in its sights.
Returning to his command centre, the Lord of Anarchy watched silently as the two Marines crab-crawled onto the mount.
He picked up his microphone.
The Kid lay tensed underneath the launcher, panting.
‘Okay. Gimme your grenades,’ he said to Mario.
Not very enthusiastically, Mario reached for a pouch on his webbing containing some grenades when a voice spoke in his ear: ‘
Hello, Lance Corporal Puzo. Lance Corporal Vittorio Puzo from the state of New Jersey. I see you there on the missile battery, lying on the ground underneath one of my launchers.
’
Mario started. He glanced at the Kid, who showed no sign of hearing anything. Then he realised: the voice had come through his Army of Thieves earpiece.
‘
He can’t hear me, Vittorio. Only you can. And it’s probably better that way, given the offer I’m about to make to you.
’
Mario froze.
‘Dude, give me the grenades,’ the Kid urged.
Mario held up his hand, as if he was afraid of a sentry nearby, when he was actually listening to the voice in his ear.
‘
I am the Lord of Anarchy, Vittorio, the commander of the Army of Thieves. I am your enemy, but this needn’t be so.
’
‘Mario . . .’ the Kid hissed.
Mario handed him four grenades—but kept listening.
‘Go on,’ he said aloud.
‘Huh?’ the Kid said, but let it slide.
‘
I can see what you have been ordered to do, Vittorio: destroy my missiles, thereby preventing me from launching the spheres into the gas cloud. Come now, Vittorio. You know the world. Seriously. Do you think these are the only missile launchers I have at my disposal?
’
Mario frowned. This had occurred to him. As soon as they blew up these launchers, they’d become hunted men straight away. And that would be a useless suicidal gesture if there were other launchers elsewhere.
‘
Vittorio. Look at the situation. If you blow those launchers, my men will come over there in large numbers and kill you.
’
The Kid frowned at Mario, saw that he was mentally far away, listening to something. ‘Hey, man, what the hell are you doing?’
Mario waved him off.
‘
Of course, I have other launchers, Vittorio. So your death will be a futile and stupid sacrifice, a sad waste of your life. But I know you, Vittorio. I’ve got your file here in front of me. You aren’t stupid. Your Uncle Salvatore in Jersey would tell you that this is the time to cut a deal.
’
‘What are you offering?’ Mario said roughly.
The Kid came over. ‘I said, what the hell—’
The Lord of Anarchy said, ‘
If you kill young Corporal Thompson right now and refrain from destroying my launchers, not only will I let you live, I will give you safe passage from this island when this is all over, a mansion in Chile, as many women as you desire, and four million US dollars to live out the rest of your days in substantial luxury.
’
Close enough now, the Kid realised what Mario was doing and he looked at Mario in shock.
‘What the fuck, man—?’
Mario answered him by drawing his Marine-issued M9 pistol and firing it at point blank range into the Kid’s forehead.
Blam!
The Kid snapped violently backwards and dropped to the ground.
Mario stood up and walked away, not even trying to conceal himself from the nearby Army of Thieves men.
The old whaling village sat in a canyon that delved into the cliffs of the north-western coast of Dragon Island. There was only one way to get to it from the island’s main complex: a fenceless single-lane road that ran steeply down one wall of the triangular canyon.
The village itself was a cluster of 19th-century shacks, slaughterhouses, water tanks, gangways and jetties. Chains, hooks and pulleys hung everywhere. The dry cold of the Arctic had preserved it all perfectly, although every piece of wood was pale and faded and every surface was covered in an undisturbed layer of frost.
Schofield and Champion swam, SEAL style, across the hundred metres of flat open sea from the ice field to the cliffs, careful not to cause ripples that a sentry might see; to assist the wounded Champion, Schofield had clipped his combat webbing to her weapons belt, so that he pulled her along as he swam.