Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves Read online

  Also by Matthew Reilly

  CONTEST

  ICE STATION

  TEMPLE

  AREA 7

  SCARECROW

  HOVER CAR RACER

  HELL ISLAND

  SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS

  THE SIX SACRED STONES

  THE FIVE GREATEST WARRIORS

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.

  First published 2011 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Karanadon Entertainment Pty Ltd 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Reilly, Matthew, 1974–

  Scarecrow and the army of thieves / Matthew Reilly.

  9781742610283 (hbk).

  9781742610870 (pbk).

  A823.3

  Typeset in 11/14 pt Sabon by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Illustrations by Laurie Whiddon, Map Illustrations

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2011 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  Copyright © Karanadon Entertainment Pty Ltd 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves

  Matthew Reilly

  Adobe eReader format 978-1-74262-855-4

  EPub format 978-1-74262-856-1

  Mobipocket format 978-1-74262-934-6

  Online format 978-1-74262-854-7

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  To my loyal readers,

  this one’s for you

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Matthew Reilly

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY BACKGROUND REPORT

  PROLOGUE

  FIRST PHASE

  SECOND PHASE

  THIRD PHASE

  FOURTH PHASE

  FIFTH PHASE

  SIXTH PHASE

  FINAL PHASE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY

  SO ENERGETIC ARE THESE ACTIONS AND SO STRANGELY DO SUCH POWERFUL DISCHARGES BEHAVE THAT I HAVE OFTEN EXPERIENCED THE FEAR THAT THE ATMOSPHERE MIGHT BE IGNITED . . .

  Nikola Tesla, inventor

  MORE: WHAT WOULD YOU DO? CUT A GREAT ROAD THROUGH THE LAW TO GET AFTER THE DEVIL?

  ROPER: I’D CUT DOWN EVERY LAW IN ENGLAND TO DO THAT!

  MORE: OH? AND WHEN THE LAST LAW WAS DOWN, AND THE DEVIL TURNED ROUND ON YOU—WHERE WOULD YOU HIDE?

  Robert Bolt,

  A Man for All Seasons

  HISTORY IS MOVING PRETTY QUICKLY THESE DAYS AND THE HEROES AND VILLAINS KEEP ON CHANGING PARTS.

  James Bond in Casino Royale,

  written by Ian Fleming

  DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

  BACKGROUND REPORT

  CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET/EYES ONLY

  AUTHOR: RETTER, MARIANNE (D-6)

  SUBJECT: THE ‘ARMY OF THIEVES’

  INCIDENT 1: 9/9

  THE CHILEAN PRISON BREAKOUT

  The first incident occurred on September 9 and it involved the mass breakout of one hundred prisoners from a maximum-security military prison at Valparaiso, Chile.

  Shortly before dawn, a small force of heavily armed men attacked the prison using military tactics and suppressed weapons. The operation took less than thirty minutes. All of the prison’s guards were killed.

  Among the prisoners released were twelve former high-ranking members of the Comando de Vengadores de Mártires, the ‘Avengers of the Martyrs’, a right-wing paramilitary group that performed abductions and assassinations for the Pinochet regime.

  On their departure, the attackers left a message on the gates of the prison:

  THE ARMY OF THIEVES IS RISING!

  It had been painted in the dead guards’ blood.

  INCIDENT 2: 10/10

  THE THEFT OF THE ‘OKHOTSK’

  One month and one day later, on October 10, a Russian cargo freighter, the OKHOTSK, was seized by persons unknown off the west coast of Africa.

  According to its cargo manifest, the ship was carrying timber, fuel and building supplies destined for Zimbabwe and its seizure was initially believed to be the work of west African pirates. But then the Russians sent half of their Atlantic fleet to find the ship.

  Our investigations have revealed that the OKHOTSK was actually carrying a large weapons shipment intended for sale to three embargoed African regimes. Its cargo was:

  • 310 AK-47 ASSAULT RIFLES;

  • 4.5 million rounds of 7.62mm AMMUNITION for those rifles;

  • 90 RPG-7 GRENADE LAUNCHERS;

  • 9 STRELA-1 AMPHIBIOUS ANTI-AIRCRAFT VEHICLES, each equipped with four 9M31 surface-to-air missiles;

  • 12 ZALA-421-08 unmanned aerial surveillance DRONES;

  • 18 machine-gun-mounted JEEPS;

  • 9 SHIPBORNE TORPEDO LAUNCH PODS containing four APR-3E torpedoes each; and

  • 2 MIR-4 DSRV (Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle) mini-submarines.

  The freighter was manned by a ten-man squad of Spetsnaz special forces troops.

  This last fact makes it extremely unlikely that the OKHOTSK was taken by African pirates. African pirates are usually poor fishermen who attack commercial vessels for the purpose of securing ransoms; at the first sign of any military presence on a ship they invariably flee.

  On the contrary, the force of men that took the OKHOTSK knew exactly what was on it and were skilled enough to defeat a team of crack Russian paratroopers to get it.

  To this day, the OKHOTSK has not been found.

  INCIDENT 3: 11/11

  A ROBBERY OVER GREECE

  In the early hours of November 11, an unmarked German Gulfstream jet carrying nine billion euros from Germany to Greece disappeared from the skies above northern Greece.

  The plane’s cargo of hard currency was intended for use in the latest stage of Greece’s financial bailout.

  The wreckage of the plane was discovered the following morning. One crew member was missing, the other three had all been shot in t
he head at close range.

  The money was gone.

  Painted on the interior walls of the plane was the same symbol seen at the Chilean military jail: a circle with an ‘A’ inside it plus the taunt: ‘THE ARMY OF THIEVES WAS HERE!’

  INCIDENT 4: 12/12

  ATTACK ON A MARINE BASE

  Helmand Province, Afghanistan

  In the early hours of December 12, a large and heavily armed force of over one hundred men attacked a remote United States Marine Corps staging and supply base in southern Afghanistan.

  The force attacked with precision, skill and overwhelming violence, killing all of the twenty-two engineers and maintenance staff stationed at the isolated base.

  The attackers’ objective, it seems, was not the murder of US service personnel. They were after the aircraft kept at the base.

  The attackers took four AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters plus two Marine Corps V-22 Osprey ‘Warbird’ gunships (one of which contained eight crates of brand-new USMC cold-weather Arctic/mountain warfare clothing intended for US forces fighting in Afghanistan over the winter).

  The attackers painted on the walls of a tent: ‘SEASON’S GREETINGS, YANKEE SCUM! FROM THE ARMY OF THIEVES!’ plus the ‘A’ symbol.

  INCIDENT 5: 1/1

  A SECOND BREAKOUT

  Darfur, Sudan

  Soon after midnight on January 1, a temporary UN prison camp in the Darfur region of Sudan was raided by a force of armed and masked men.

  102 prisoners variously described as ‘revolutionary fighters, Islamic militants and narco-mercenaries’ from several African nations were freed from the prison and spirited away. All but two of the camp’s UN guards were killed.

  The two surviving guards reported that the raiding force used a variety of Russian-made assault weapons and two American Cobra attack helicopters. The raiders departed with their large number of escapees in two V-22 Osprey gunships with US Marine Corps markings.

  Before they left, they spray-painted a message on one of the prison’s walls: ‘THE ARMY OF THIEVES JUST GOT STRONGER …’

  INCIDENT 6: 2/2

  APARTMENT BOMB IN MOSCOW

  The spectacular destruction of a twenty-story luxury apartment building in Moscow on February 2 has been well documented in the media.

  What was not revealed to the media was the graffiti found covering every wall of the destroyed building’s adjoining parking lot: hundreds of A’s in circles had been spray-painted there.

  INCIDENT 7: 3/3

  THE TORTURE OF AN AMERICAN OFFICIAL

  Washington, D.C., USA

  Shortly after midnight on March 3, a small group of unidentified men raided the Georgetown home of the former US Secretary of Defense, killed his two bodyguards and kidnapped the ageing Secretary.

  The Secretary was found – alive – by two early-morning hikers in Rock Creek Park, bound to a torture device.

  He had been waterboarded.

  Carved into the skin of his chest was the following symbol:

  During his subsequent debriefing, the Secretary exhibited symptoms of severe shock. He continually shouted: ‘Beware the Army of Thieves! Beware the Army of Thieves!’

  CONCLUSIONS

  The seven incidents outlined above describe in somewhat grim detail the rise of a new non-state entity calling itself the ‘Army of Thieves’.

  Where it is based and who comprises it are not known.

  What is known is this: it is a force of militarily-trained individuals that over the last seven months has obtained for itself a considerable supply of weapons, finance and manpower.

  It does not, as yet, show any religious or cultural motivations for its aggressive acts. We do not yet know what is driving this rogue ‘Army’.

  But it wants us to notice it.

  It has carried out one operation a month, every month, for the last seven months, in accordance with a pattern where the number of the day and the month are the same. Clearly, it wants us to see this pattern, and we should be aware of it, because tomorrow is April 4 …

  PROLOGUE

  THE ISLAND OF THE DRAGON

  OSTROV ZMEY

  ARCTIC OCEAN

  4 APRIL, 0500 HOURS

  The plane hurtled down the airstrip, chased by furious machine-gun fire, before it lifted off with a stomach-lurching swoop and soared out over the vast expanse of Arctic sea ice that stretched away to the north.

  The plane’s pilot, a sixty-year-old scientist named Dr Vasily Ivanov, knew he wouldn’t get far. As he’d lifted off, he’d seen two Strela-1 anti-aircraft vehicles—amphibious jeep-like vehicles that were each mounted with four 9M31 surface-to-air missiles—speeding down the runway behind him, about to take up firing positions.

  He had perhaps thirty seconds before they blasted him out of the sky.

  Ivanov’s plane was an ugly Beriev Be-12, a genuine 1960s Soviet clunker. Many years ago, as a young recruit in the Soviet Air Defence Force, Ivanov had flown this very kind of plane, before his talents as a physicist had been spotted and he had been reassigned to the Special Weapons Directorate. On one recent occasion when he had sat as a passenger in the freezing hold of this plane, he’d actually thought that the Beriev and he were very similar. They were both ageing workhorses from a bygone era still toiling away: the Beriev was an old forgotten plane used to shuttle old forgotten teams like his to old forgotten bases in the north; Ivanov was just old, his bushy Zhivago-style moustache growing greyer every day.

  He also never imagined he’d actually pilot a Beriev again, but his team’s arrival at the island that morning had not gone according to plan.

  Ten minutes earlier, after an overnight flight from the mainland, the Beriev had been making a slow circuit over Ostrov Zmey, a remote island in the Arctic Circle.

  A medium-sized semi-mountainous island, Ostrov Zmey—‘Dragon Island’—had once held the highest security classification in the Soviet Union alongside nuclear research bases like Arzamas-16 at Sarov and bioweapons centres like the Vektor Institute in Koltsovo. Now, its massive structures lay dormant, kept alive by rotating skeleton crews like Ivanov’s from the Special Weapons Directorate. Ivanov and the twelve Spetsnaz troops on the Beriev with him had been arriving for their eight-week stint guarding the island.

  When they’d arrived, everything had appeared normal.

  As winter faded and the Arctic saw the sun for the first time in months, the sea ice around Dragon had started to break up. The vast frozen ocean stretching north to the pole looked like a pane of smoked glass that had been hit with a hammer—a thousand cracks snaked through it in every direction.

  Yet the cold still lingered. The complex at Dragon remained covered in a thin layer of frost.

  Despite that, it looked magnificent.

  The base’s striking central tower still looked futuristic thirty years after it had been built. As tall as a twenty-storey building, it looked like a flying saucer mounted on a single massive concrete pillar. Two slender high-spired mini-towers were perched atop the main disc, as was the base’s squat glass-domed command centre.

  The towering structure gazed out over the entire island like some kind of space-aged lighthouse. Looming to the east of it were the two mighty exhaust vents. Where the tower exuded grace and sophistication, the vents expressed nothing except brute strength and power. They were the same shape as the cooling towers one saw at a nuclear power plant but twice the size.

  The once-great base bore the usual signs of a skeleton crew: pinpoints of light in various places—offices, guardhouses, on the disc-shaped tower itself.

  It was also a fortress. Well defended by both its construction and the landscape, a small force like Ivanov’s could protect it against any kind of attack. You’d need an army to take Dragon Island.

  As his plane had arrived at the island and overflown it, from his seat in the hold Ivanov had seen a steady plume of shimmering gas issuing from the massive exhaust vents, rising into the sky before being blown south. This was odd but not alarming; probably just
Kotsky’s team venting excess steam from the geothermal piping.

  Upon landing on the island’s airstrip, Ivanov’s team of Spetsnaz guards had disembarked the Beriev and made their way toward the hangar, where Kotsky himself had been standing, waving. Ivanov had lingered behind in the Beriev with a young private he’d ordered to help him carry the new Samovar-6 laser-optic communications gear he’d brought along.

  That small delay had saved their lives.

  Ivanov’s Spetsnaz team had been halfway across the tarmac, totally exposed, when they had been cut down by a sudden burst of machine-gun fire from a force of unseen assailants who had evidently been lying in wait.

  Ivanov had dived into the pilot’s seat and calling on the skills of his past life, gunned the engines and got the hell out of there—which was how he came to be fleeing Dragon Island.

  Ivanov keyed the plane’s radio and shouted in Russian. ‘Directorate Base! This is Watcher Two—!’

  Electronic hash assaulted his ears.

  They’d jammed the satellite.

  He tried the terrestrial system. No good. Same thing.

  Breathing fast, he reached around and grabbed the Samovar radio pack on the seat behind him, the new hardware he’d brought to Dragon Island. It was designed to make secure contact with its satellite not through radio waves but through a direct line-of-sight laser. It had been developed specifically to be immune to the usual jamming techniques.

  Ivanov thunked the high-tech radio on the dashboard, pointed its laser sighter up at the sky and turned it on.

  ‘Directorate Base, this is Watcher Two! Come in!’ he yelled.

  A few moments later, he got a reply.

  ‘Watcher Two, this is Directorate Base. Encryption protocols for the Samovar-6 system are not yet fully operational. This transmission could be detected—’

  ‘Never mind that! Someone’s at Dragon! They were waiting for us and attacked my team as soon as they disembarked the plane! Shot them all to bits on the tarmac! I managed to take off and am now being fired upon—’