Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (6 page)

And some things hadn’t worked well at all.

A new version of the Predator RPG launcher froze up, while the older version worked just fine. And a portable proximity sensor on the armoured wristguard seemed to work okay at first, but toward the end of their tour, it started sensing a large moving object—a three-hundred-foot-long object—within half a mile of their camp.

But there was nothing near the camp. The endless ice plain, split by ever-widening cracks, stretched away to the horizon, starkly and obviously empty.

‘It might be picking up killer whales swimming under the ice,’ Schofield suggested. ‘Or even a submarine.’

‘No, it’s a
lateral
rangefinder. It scans the landscape in a sideways direction, not downward. It’s a glitch,’ Zack said sadly. ‘Shame. But then, that’s exactly why we’re here, to test these things out.’

Naturally, over the course of seven weeks in a remote Arctic camp, they had good and bad days, occasional clashes and the odd petty argument.

Like the time Mother accidentally picked up Zack’s iPhone, thinking it was hers, and listened to some music.

‘Goddamn hip-hop
shit
,’ she said, yanking the earphones from her ears. ‘How can you listen to this? It’s elevator music.’

‘What music do
you
like, then?’ Zack challenged.

‘Music peaked in the eighties, my young friend. Huey Lewis and the News. Feargal Sharkey. Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a fucking bat
live on stage
. It’s the same for movies. Seriously, there hasn’t been a decent balls-to-the-wall action flick since
Predator
. Arnie doing the business and, oh my, Jesse “The Body” Ventura. God broke the mould after he made Jesse Ventura. Hollywood actors today are all fucking nancy boys. Can you think of any leading man today who could say the line, “I ain’t got time to bleed”?’

Zack had to concede that he couldn’t.

But he did manage to convince Mother to listen to some other modern songs and she had to admit that she quite liked Lady Gaga. ‘Although, I’m not a “free bitch” like she is. I’m just a bitch,’ she said after hearing one song.

On another occasion, as they gathered around the small gas fire in the mess tent, the Kid had said, ‘Hey Mother, I saw a killer whale pop up for air through an ice hole the other day. You seen one yet?’

Mother stumped her left boot up on the table and rolled up her trouser leg, revealing that her left leg from the knee down was a prosthetic, all silver plating, hinges and hydraulics.

Zack leaned forward. ‘What is that, stainless steel?’

‘Titanium,’ Mother said. ‘Got it thanks to a killer whale I met in Antarctica.’

‘What happened to the whale?’ the Kid asked.

‘It died,’ Mother said, deadpan.

‘Mother shot it in the head,’ Schofield explained.

‘You shot a killer whale
in the head
?’ the Kid said in disbelief.

‘Fuckin’ fish had my leg in its mouth. What else was I supposed to do?’

Zack said, ‘You know, whales aren’t fish, they’re—’

‘I know they’re mammals!’ Mother snapped. ‘Christ, everyone tells me that. But when one of them’s got you by the foot and is pulling you under, trust me, you don’t care whether it’s a goddamn fucking mammal, all right!’

Schofield grinned.

During a long expedition, people will talk about many things over the campfire and this group was no different.

They discussed politics, sports, the killing of Osama bin Laden, all kinds of subjects.

One night they talked about the rise of China. It was one of the rare nights when Jeff Hartigan dined with the group and he spoke animatedly on the subject.

‘It’s hard to believe that only thirty years ago China was the laughing stock of the world, a rural shithole,’ he said. ‘Now, it’s a genuine global powerhouse: 1.3
billion
people, the bulk of whom work in factories for a few bucks a day, building the world’s fridges, toys and DVD players. But now in China there’s this huge new middle class that wants everything we have in the West: cars, iPhones, the latest fashions. China is the future for every business in the world, in both supply
and
demand.’

Mother looked doubtful. ‘But as China rises, does that mean other countries have to fall? My husband, Ralph, is a trucker. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a lot of his buddies who work in factories get laid off—they’re honest, hardworking, blue-collar workers who just can’t compete with cheap Chinese labour. The work they do just keeps going overseas.’

Hartigan shrugged. ‘Way of the world. A new power rises and an old one falls. America did exactly the same thing to England in the 1800s—outstripped it with industry, land and sheer human capital. Now China is doing it to us. And short of launching an all-out war, you can’t stop this kind of thing.’

‘Then what does the average American worker do? How do they pay their mortgage, keep a roof over their family’s head?’ Mother asked. She wasn’t trying to make a point. She genuinely wanted to know the answer.

Hartigan said, ‘There’s nothing they can do. In things like this,
some
poor bastard has to be the loser. It’s just that the average American has never been the loser before. Now he is. And he’d better get used to it because nothing can stop China now.’

On another occasion, a particularly spirited discussion arose when Zack—a very Jewish New York Jew—raised the classic campfire conundrum, ‘The Nazi Dilemma’.

‘You’re a Jew in Germany during World War II,’ he said, ‘hiding in a ditch beside a country road at night with a group of twenty other Jews. A Nazi regiment marches by. You all duck for cover and lie very still. But in your group is a baby. It starts crying. If the Nazis hear it, they’ll kill all of you. Someone suggests smothering the baby, killing it in order to save the larger group. What do you do? Do you let the baby live and condemn everyone else, including you, to death? Or do you kill one baby so that twenty other people may live?’

‘You find a machine gun and kill the Nazis,’ Mother said.

‘Seriously,’ Zack said.

‘The choice is easy, kill the baby,’ Jeff Hartigan said. ‘The good of the majority must take precedence over the life of one person, even a child.’

‘I disagree,’ Emma said. ‘If you kill the baby, you become as bad as the Nazis.’

The Kid said, ‘I could never kill an innocent person to save my own skin, least of all a baby. Couldn’t live with myself.’

‘What about you, Captain Schofield?’ Zack asked.

Schofield looked at them all, before settling his gaze on Hartigan. ‘For me, the choice is also easy. Either we all survive together or we all die together. I don’t leave any man behind. And I’d never sacrifice anyone in my charge who was slow or tired or just a little weaker than everyone else. A civilisation is judged by how it treats the vulnerable.’

‘You’d give your life for a crying baby?’ Hartigan asked, incredulous. ‘And you’d give
my
life as well?’

‘Absolutely and absolutely. But I’d also put up one hell of a fight to save you both before it came to that.’

Mother clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. ‘And that, folks, is why I love serving with the Scarecrow!’

There were also, thankfully, some lighter conversations.

‘Well, with one week to go,’ Mother said, ‘I have to say that this trip has really let me down. My horoscope in
Cosmo
a couple of months ago said that’—she pulled out a page ripped from a magazine—‘“You will meet your mirror image in the next few months, a member of the opposite sex who is your natural partner. The chemistry will be irresistible. Sparks will fly.”’

‘You read
Cosmo
?’ the Kid asked.

‘When I’m in the waiting room at the dentist, yeah.’ Mother tossed the page into the air and gazed pointedly at the men in the tent: Schofield, the Kid, Mario and Zack. ‘I mean, look at you lot. Except for the ever-handsome Scarecrow, who’s like a brother to me and therefore off-limits in that department, the rest of you are a pretty fucking sorry sample of masculinity. No alpha males here.’

‘Hey!’ the Kid said. ‘I’m—’

‘You, young man, are a boy. A whole-lotta-woman like me needs a whole-lotta-
man
,’ Mother said. ‘Oh, well, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t meet my male mirror. My Ralphy might get jealous.’

Ralph was all tattoos, sleeveless checked shirts and Popeye forearms, a real salt-of-the-Earth type. He and Mother had been married for years and as Schofield knew, Mother loved him dearly.

Although one night she’d made an odd comment that had surprised him: ‘I don’t know, Scarecrow, sometimes I worry about Ralphy and me. We got married young and now we’re both nearly forty and we know each other so well, maybe
too
well. There’s no mystery anymore. When I’m home, every night it’s the same old routine—eat dinner, feed the dogs, watch some TV and then finish off with
The Daily Show
. Ralph’s sweet but sometimes . . . I don’t know . . . we’ve even been having stupid fights lately and we never used to do that.’

‘Ralph’s a legend,’ Schofield said, ‘and you’re lucky to have him. You two were made for each other.’

And of course there were times when you had to get away from the group and be by yourself.

Often Schofield would retire to his tent to read a book, while some nights he’d sit down with the DARPA wristguard and correspond with a friend of his at the Defense Intelligence Agency, David Fairfax.

A T-shirt-and-sneakers-wearing cryptanalyst, Fairfax had helped Schofield on a couple of missions and they’d kept in touch.

The night before he got the call from the White House Situation Room, Schofield turned on the wristguard to find a message from Fairfax waiting for him:

Soon after, they were corresponding via live encrypted messaging:

Schofield stared at the screen. No matter who you were, living with a price on your head was a constant source of anxiety and stress. And this French business just wasn’t going away.

He gazed at the screen for a long time before signing off.

For her part, Mother had spent the last seven weeks watching Shane Schofield very closely.

More than anyone else, she knew what he had been through during that Majestic-12 bounty hunt and the months after.

She had been there on a rainswept cliff on the French coast when he had put his own gun to his chin and almost pulled the trigger. She’d been the one who stopped him going through with it.

He appeared to be doing okay. He was actually smiling again, not much but a little. That said, he did admit that he still didn’t sleep well and some days she saw deep bags under his eyes.

Mother knew the Corps had sent him to see a bunch of high-priced shrinks. The psychiatrists had offered him anti-depression drugs but he’d refused. He’d do any therapy they suggested—CBT, couch sessions, even a few sessions of hypnotherapy—but he wouldn’t take drugs. He hadn’t thought very highly of the shrinks, except for one, a lady in Baltimore he’d found separately; he said she was exceptional. But in any case it seemed like he was now more or less back to normal.

More or less
.

For Mother knew he wasn’t completely whole again.

And she knew why he wasn’t sleeping. Her tent was next to his and on several occasions she’d heard him talking in his sleep, yelling plaintive cries of: ‘Fox . . . no . . . not in the . . . guillotine . . . no . . .
NO!
’

Then Mother would hear him wake with a gasp and breathe very heavily for a minute or two.

And then came the morning when the call came from the White House Situation Room.

ARCTIC ICE FIELD 4 APRIL, 0630 HOURS 4 HOURS 30 MINUTES TO DEADLINE

At 6:30 that morning Schofield called the group together, all eight of them, four Marines, four civilians.

He told them what he knew: that a group calling itself the Army of Thieves had taken Dragon Island and would be ready to set off some kind of atmospheric weapon at 11:00 a.m. local time. A missile attack had failed and aerial assaults would be likewise ineffective, which was why they were being sent in. They were one of only two groups close enough to get to Dragon in time by sea.

‘The Army of Thieves?’ Mother said. ‘Never heard of ’em.’

Schofield said, ‘Doesn’t sound like anybody has—at least until recently. The White House is sending through whatever intel they can find. Apparently, the DIA has something and the CIA is checking.’