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Schofield thought about that.

  Cruz was probably right. The French team’s plan had undoubtedly been cut short by Buck Riley’s arrival at the station and his accidental discovery of what had really happened to the crashed French hovercraft. The French commandos’ plan had been to win the Americans’ trust and then shoot them in the back. Since that plan hadn’t come to fruition, it was no surprise that they hadn’t been able to set any erasers.

  ‘But I did find something, sir,’ Santa Cruz said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I found a radio, sir.’

  ‘A radio?’ Schofield said dryly. It was hardly a mind-blowing discovery.

  ‘Sir, this ain’t no ordinary radio. It looks like a portable VLF transmitter.’

  That got Schofield’s attention. A VLF, or very low frequency transmitter is a rare device. It has a frequency range of between 3 kHz and 30 kHz, which, in real terms, amounts to an unbelievably long wavelength. It is so long – or, in radio terms, so ‘heavy’ – that the radio signal travels as a ground signal that follows the curvature of the earth’s surface.

  Until only very recently, signals travelling at such low frequencies required very high-powered transmitters, which were, of course, very large and cumbersome. As such, they weren’t often used by ground forces. Recent developments in technology, however, had resulted in heavy, but nonetheless man-portable, VLF transmitters. They looked and weighed about the same as the average backpack.

  The fact that the French had brought such a transmitter to Wilkes bothered Schofield. There was really only one use for VLF radio signals and that was –

  No, that’s ridiculous, Schofield thought. They couldn’t have done that.

  ‘Cruz, where did you find it?’

  ‘Down in the drilling room,’ Santa Cruz’s voice said.

  ‘Are you there now?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Bring it out to the pool deck,’ Schofield said. ‘I’ll come down after I check on Montana outside.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Schofield clicked off his intercom. He and Sarah came to the entrance passageway.

  ‘What are erasers?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘What? Oh,’ Schofield said. He only just remembered that Sarah wasn’t a soldier. Schofield took a deep breath. ‘“Eraser” is the term used to describe an explosive device that is planted in a battlefield by a covert incursionary force for use in the event that their mission fails. Most of the time, an eraser is set off by a delay switch, which is just an ordinary timer.’

  ‘Okay, wait a minute. Slow down,’ Sarah said.

  Schofield sighed, slowed down. ‘Small crack units like these French guys we met tonight usually find themselves fighting in places where they’re not supposed to be, right. Like, there would probably be an international incident if it could be proved that French troops were in a US research station trying to kill everybody, right?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’

  ‘Well, there’s no guarantee that these crack units are gonna succeed in getting what they came for, is there,’ Schofield said. ‘I mean, hey, they might come up against a team of tough hombres like us and wind up dead.’

  Schofield grabbed a parka off a hook on the wall, and began to put it on.

  He said, ‘Anyway, these days, nearly all elite teams – the French parachute regiment, the SAS, the Navy SEALs – nearly all of them carry contingency plans just in case they fail in their missions. We call those contingency plans “erasers” because that’s exactly what they’re designed to do: erase that whole team’s existence. Make it look like that team was never there. Sometimes they’re called cyanide pills, because if any of the enemy are caught, the eraser will ultimately act as their suicide pill.’

  ‘So, you’re talking about explosives,’ Sarah said.

  ‘I’m talking about special explosives,’ Schofield said. ‘Most of the time erasers are either chlorine-based explosives, or high-temperature liquid detonators. They’re designed to wipe off faces, vaporise bodies, destroy uniforms and dogtags. They’re designed to make it look like you were never there.

  ‘Erasers are actually a relatively recent phenomenon. No one had ever really heard about them until a couple of years ago when a German sabotage team was caught in an underground missile silo in Montana. They were cornered so they pulled the pin on three liquid-chlorine grenades. After those things went off, there was nothing left. No soldiers. No silo. We think the Germans were there to disable some ballistic nuclear missiles that we said didn’t exist.’

  ‘A German sabotage unit. In Montana,’ Sarah said in disbelief. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Germany supposed to be our ally?’

  ‘Isn’t France supposed to be our ally,’ Schofield replied, raising his eyebrows. ‘It happens. More often than you think. Attacks from so-called “friendly” countries. They even have a term for it at the Pentagon, they call them “Cassius Ops”, after Cassius, the traitor in “Julius Caesar”.’

  ‘They have a term for it?’

  Schofield shrugged into his coat. ‘Look at it this way. America used to be one of two superpowers. When there were two superpowers, there was a balance, a check. What one did, the other countered. But now the Soviets are history and America is the only real superpower left in the world. We have more weapons than any other nation in the world. We have more money to spend on weapons than any other nation in the world. Other countries would go broke trying to keep up with our defence spending. The Soviets did. There are a lot of countries out there – some of whom we call friends – who think that America is too big, too powerful, countries who would really like to see America take a fall. And some of those countries – France, Germany and to a lesser extent, Great Britain – aren’t afraid to give us a little push either.’

  ‘I never knew,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Not many people do,’ Schofield said. ‘But it’s one of the main reasons my unit was sent to this station. To defend it against any of our “allies” who might decide to make a play for it.’

  Schofield pulled his parka tight around himself, and grabbed the handle to the main door leading outside.

  ‘You said you wanted to ask me about something,’ he said. ‘Can you talk as you walk?’

  ‘Uh, yeah, I guess so,’ Sarah said as she quickly grabbed a parka off one of the hooks.

  ‘Then let’s go,’ Schofield said.

  Down on E-deck, Libby Gant was checking the calibration on a depth gauge.

  She and Riley were on the outer perimeter of the deck that surrounded the pool. It had been a good forty-five minutes since they had seen a killer whale, but they weren’t taking any chances. They stayed well away from the water’s edge.

  Gant and Riley were checking the unit’s scuba gear, in preparation for the dive that would be made in the station’s diving bell.

  They were alone on E-deck, and they worked in silence. Every now and then, Riley would wander over to the storeroom in the south tunnel and check on Mother.

  Gant put down the depth gauge she was holding and grabbed another. ‘What happened to his eyes?’ she asked quietly, not looking up from what she was doing.

  Riley stopped working for a moment, and looked up at Gant. When he didn’t speak immediately, Gant raised her own eyes.

  For a while, Riley seemed to evaluate her. Then, abruptly, he looked away.

  ‘Not many people know what happened to his eyes,’ Riley said. ‘Hell, until today, not that many people had even seen his eyes.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Is that why his call-sign is Scarecrow?’ Gant said softly. ‘Because of his eyes?’

  Riley nodded. ‘Norman McLean gave it to him.’

  ‘The general?’

  ‘The general. When McLean saw Schofield’s eyes, he said he looked like a scarecrow McLean had once had guarding his corn field back in Kansas. Apparently, it was one of those scarecrows that had two slits for each eye, you know, like a plus sign.’

  ‘Do you know how it happened?’ G
ant asked gently.

  At first Riley didn’t answer. Then, finally, he nodded. But he didn’t say anything.

  ‘What happened?’

  Riley took a deep breath. He put down the helium compressor he was holding in his hand and looked at Gant. ‘Shane Schofield wasn’t always in command of a ground Recon unit,’ he began. ‘He used to be a pilot, based on the Wasp.’

  The USS Wasp is the flagship of the United States Marine Corps. It is one of seven Landing Helicopter Dockships in the Corps, and it is the battle centre for any major Marine expedition. Most casual observers mistake it for an aircraft carrier.

  What a lot of people don’t know about the Marine Corps is that it maintains a sizeable aviation wing. Although this air wing is used primarily to transport troops it is also used to support ground attacks. For this purpose, it is equipped with lethal AH-1W Cobra Attack Helicopters – instantly recognisable because of their skinny shape – and British-made (but American-modified) AV-8B Harrier II fighter jets, or, as they are more widely known throughout the world, Harrier jumpjets. Harriers are the only attack planes in the world with the ability to take off and land vertically.

  ‘Schofield was a Harrier pilot on the Wasp. One of the best, so they tell me,’ Riley said. ‘He was in Bosnia in 1995, during the worst of the fighting there, flying patrol missions over the no-fly-zone.’

  Gant watched Riley closely as he spoke. He was staring off into space as he recounted the story.

  ‘One day, late in 1995, he got shot down by a mobile Serbian missile battery that Intelligence said didn’t exist. I think they found out later that it was a two-man strike team in a jeep with six American-made Stingers in the back seat.

  ‘Anyway,’ Book said, ‘Schofield managed to eject a second before the Stingers took out his fuel tanks. He came down bang in the middle of Serb-held territory.’

  Riley turned to face Gant.

  ‘Our lieutenant survived for nineteen days in the Serbian woodlands – alone – while over a hundred Serbian troops swept the forest looking for him. When they found him, he hadn’t eaten in ten days.

  ‘They took him to a deserted farmhouse and tied him to a chair. Then they beat him with a wooden plank with nails stuck into it and asked him questions. Why was he flying over this area? Was he a spy plane? They wanted to know how much he knew about their positions because they thought he was up there providing air support for US ground forces inside Serb territory.’

  ‘US ground forces were inside Serbian territory?’ Gant asked.

  Riley nodded silently. ‘There were two SEAL teams in there. Carrying out covert surgical hits on Serbian leadership positions. Night hits. Good hits. They’d been causing chaos among the Serbs, absolute chaos. They’d be in and out before anyone knew they even existed. They’d go in, slash their victims’ throats and then they’d vanish into the night. They were so good that some of the locals started saying they were ghosts come to haunt them for what they were doing to their own people.’

  Gant said, ‘Did Scarecrow know about them? The SEAL teams inside Serb territory?’

  Book was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Yes. Officially, Schofield was patrolling the no-fly-zone. Unofficially, he was sending grid co-ordinates of Serb leadership farmhouses to the SEALs on the ground. It didn’t make any difference anyway. He never said a word.’

  Gant watched intently as Riley took a deep breath. He was building up to something.

  ‘In any case,’ Book said, ‘the Serbs decided that Schofield had been carrying out reconnaissance for the SEAL teams; that he had been spotting strategic targets from the air and transmitting their co-ordinates to men on the ground. They decided that since he’d been seeing things that he wasn’t supposed to be seeing, they would cut his eyes out.’

  ‘What?’ Gant said.

  Riley said, ‘They pulled a razor blade out of a drawer and they held him down. Then one of them stepped forward and slowly cut two vertical lines down across Schofield’s eyes. Apparently, as he did it, the man with the razor blade quoted something from the Bible. Something about if your hand sins, cut it off, and if your eyes sin, cut them out.’

  Gant felt sick. They had blinded Schofield. ‘What did they do then?’ she asked.

  ‘They locked him in a cupboard and they let him bleed.’

  Gant was still shocked. ‘So how did he get out?’

  ‘Jack Walsh sent a Recon team to go in and get him,’ Riley said.

  Gant’s ears pricked up at the name. Every Marine knew of Captain John T. Walsh. He was the captain of the Wasp, the most revered Marine in the Corps.

  Some thought he should have been Commandant, the highest ranking officer in the United States Marine Corps, but Walsh’s history of disdain for any kind of politician had prevented that. The Commandant is required to liaise regularly with members of Congress and everyone knew – Walsh more than anyone – that Jack Walsh wouldn’t be able to stomach that. Besides, Walsh had said, he would rather command the Wasp and liaise with soldiers. The Marines loved him for it.

  Riley went on. ‘When Scott O’Grady got lifted out of Bosnia on June 8 1995, they put him on the cover of Time magazine. He met the President. He did the whole PR thing.

  ‘When Shane Schofield got lifted out of Bosnia five months later, nobody heard a thing. There were no TV cameras waiting on the deck of the Wasp to photograph him as he stepped off that helicopter. There were no newspaper reporters there to take down his story. Do you know why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because when Shane Schofield landed on the Wasp after being extracted from that farmhouse in Bosnia by a team of United States Marines, he was the worst looking thing you have ever seen.

  ‘The extraction had been bloody. Fierce as hell. The Serbs hadn’t wanted to give up their prized American pilot and they’d fought hard. When that chopper returned and hit the tarmac on the Wasp, it had four seriously-wounded Marines on board. It also had Shane Schofield.

  ‘The medics and the doctors and the support crews charged out and got everybody off the chopper as fast as they could. There was blood everywhere, wounded men screaming. Schofield was taken away on a gurney. He had blood pouring out of both of his eyes. The extraction had been so fast – so intense – that no one had even had a chance to put gauze patches over his eyes.’

  Riley paused. Gant just stared.

  ‘What happened after that?’ she asked.

  ‘Jack Walsh copped shit from the White House and the Pentagon. They hadn’t wanted him to send anyone in for Schofield because Schofield wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. The White House didn’t want the “political damage” that would follow from an American search-and-rescue mission for a downed spy plane. Walsh told them where to shove it, said they could fire him if they wanted to.’

  ‘What about Scarecrow? What happened to him?’

  ‘He was blinded. His eyes had been ripped to shreds. They took him to Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Maryland. It’s got the best eye surgery unit in the country, or so they tell me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they fixed his eyes. Don’t ask me how, ’cause I don’t know how. Apparently, the razor blade cuts were fairly shallow, so there was no damage to his retinas. The real damage, they said, was to the outer extremities of his eyes – the irises and the pupils. Purely physical defects, they said. Defects which could be fixed.’ Riley shook his head. ‘I don’t know what they did – some fancy new laser-fusing procedure, someone told me – but they did it, they fixed his eyes. Hell, all I know is that if you can afford it – and in Scarecrow’s case, the Corps could – you don’t need glasses these days.

  ‘Of course, there was still the scarring on his skin, but otherwise, they did it. Schofield could see again. Twenty-twenty.’ Riley paused. ‘There was only one hitch.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘The Corps wouldn’t let him fly again,’ Riley said. ‘It’s standard procedure across all the armed forces: once you’ve had eye trauma o
f any kind, you can’t fly a military airplane. Hell, if you wear reading glasses, you’re not allowed to fly a military kite.’

  ‘So what did Scarecrow do?’

  Riley smiled. ‘He decided to become a line animal, a ground Marine. He was already an officer from his flying days, so he kept his commission. But that was all he kept. He had to start all over again. He went from flight status, lieutenant-commander, to ground force, lieutenant second class in an instant.

  ‘And he went back to school. Back to the Basic School at Quantico. And he did every course they had. He did tactical weapons training. He did strategic planning. Small arms, Scout/Sniper. You name it, he did it. He did it all. Apparently, he said he wanted to be like those men who’d come in and got him out of Bosnia. What they’d done for him, he wanted to be able to do.’

  Riley shrugged. ‘As you can probably imagine, it didn’t take long for him to get noticed. He was too clever to stay a second lieutenant for long. After a few months, they upped him to full lieutenant, and before long, they offered him a Recon unit. He took it. That was almost two years ago, now.’

  Gant had never known. She had been selected for Schofield’s Recon unit only a year ago and it had never occurred to her to wonder how Schofield himself had become the team’s commander. That sort of thing was officer stuff, and Gant wasn’t an officer. She was enlisted, and enlisted troops know only what they are told to know. Things like the choice of team commander are left to the higher-ups.

  ‘I’ve been in his team ever since,’ Riley said proudly.

  Gant knew what he meant. Riley respected Schofield, trusted his judgement, trusted his appraisal of any given situation. Schofield was Riley’s commander and Riley would follow him into hell.

  Gant would, too. Ever since she had been in Schofield’s Recon team, she had liked him. She respected him as a leader. He was firm but fair, and he didn’t mince words. And he had never treated her any differently from any of the men in the unit.

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’ Riley said softly.

  ‘I trust him,’ Gant said.

  There was a short silence.