Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves Read online

  ‘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:

  FFAX: GOT AN UPDATE ON YOUR FRENCH PROBLEM.

  Soon after, they were corresponding via live encrypted messaging:

  SCRW: WHAT’S UP?

  FFAX: LATEST TAPS ON DGSE REVEAL THAT LAST MONTH AN AGENT KNOWN AS ‘RENARD’ REQUESTED TO TAKE THE LEAD ON YOUR CASE.

  SCRW: REQUESTED?

  FFAX: YEAH. I DID SOME CHECKING. FROM WHAT I CAN FIND, RENARD IS AN AGENT FROM ‘M’ UNIT IN THE DGSE’S ACTION DIVISION. ‘M’ UNIT IS FRANCE’S EQUIVALENT OF THE CIA’S SPECIAL ACTIVITIES DIVISION. THEY PERFORM PARAMILITARY OPS, SPECIALISING IN EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS AND ASSASSINATIONS. RENARD HAS NEVER WORKED WITH THE U.S. SO WE HAVE NO FILE ON HIM. IDENTIFYING MARKS: A TATTOO ON THE INSIDE OF HIS RIGHT WRIST SHOWING A TALLY OF PAST KILLS, CURRENTLY AT THIRTEEN.

  SCRW: THANKS FOR THE HEADS-UP.

  FFAX: ANY TIME. WATCH YOUR BACK.

  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.’

  The Kid said, ‘Why the delay in setting off the weapon?’

  ‘It takes time to prime the weapon’s principal element, some small uranium spheres, and they’re not fully primed yet. That’s why we have this window.’

  ‘Cutting it a little close, aren’t we?’

  ‘Closer than you think,’ Schofield said. ‘We need to prep all our gear. After that, it’ll take us nearly three hours just to get there. And the island itself is seriously fortified. Even if they open the front door for us, we’ll have maybe an hour to get in and get to the weapon in time, then disable or destroy it. And somehow I don’t think they’ll be opening the front door for us.’

  He turned to the four civilians: Zack, Emma, Hartigan and Chad.

  ‘But four Marines is not enough to do this. We need as many bodies as we can get and if you’re willing to come along and help us, I will gladly take you. However, let me say this very clearly from the outset: this is not compulsory. None of you has to come. We’ll be a secondary team—I repeat, a secondary, back-up team—but if the primary SEAL unit fails to resolve this, we will be going in. And that will be ugly.

  ‘So none of you has any illusions about what “ugly” means, let me tell you now: it means shooting to kill, bloody wounds, broken bones and dead bodies right in your face. So, if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to and no-one will hold it against you.

  ‘But . . .’ he held up a finger, ‘if you do come, then I ask only one thing of you: that you obey my orders. However crazy or bizarre they seem, there will always be some logic to them. In return, I promise that I will not leave you. If you are captured or caught, while I still have breath in my body, I will come for you. Got that? Good. All right then. Who’s in and who’s out? Speak now or forever hold your peace.’

  The group fell silent.

  The civilians variously stared at the flickering gas flame or at their feet, deciding what to do.

  Zack spoke first, swallowing, then nodding. ‘I’m in.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Emma Dawson said uncertainly. ‘Although I’m not much with a gun. I fired one once at my uncle’s ranch.’

  ‘Don’t worry, honey babe,’ Mother said gently. ‘Give me a couple of minutes with you and you’ll be a kick-ass bitch from Hell, just like me.’

  Jeff Hartigan snorted. ‘This is ridiculous. What chance have you got—four Marines and some untrained civilians—against a dug-in military force? Like hell I’m going. I’m staying here and so is Chad.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Chad said quietly. ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘What?’ His boss whirled.

  Schofield turned, too. He hadn’t expected this.

  ‘I said I’m going.’

  ‘You will do no such thing,’ Hartigan said. ‘You’ll stay here with me while these others go off and get themselves killed.’

  The assist
ant shook his head. Schofield wondered if he’d ever stood up to his boss before.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Hartigan, but I think we have to do something—’

  ‘You think we have to do something,’ Hartigan mimicked. ‘Please. Chad, I thought you were smarter than this.’

  Chad bowed his head. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  Schofield said, ‘I’m not. It’s good to have you aboard, Chad.’ He turned to Hartigan. ‘Sir, if everyone else is going, staying here on your own does present certain dangers. Perhaps you’d like to reconsider—’

  ‘I’ll be perfectly fine, thank you very much, Captain,’ Hartigan said. ‘You are the ones who should rethink your positions. Idiots.’

  Schofield just nodded and said no more.

  They spent the next half-hour hurriedly preparing for the mission: the Marines field-stripped their weapons, checked their mags; Zack loaded up Bertie with ammunition; and Mother even gave Emma and Chad a quick lesson in marksmanship.

  When Schofield saw that Zack was bringing the experimental wristguard, he grabbed it and sent off a message to Dave Fairfax:

  SCRW: SOMETHING’S COME UP. GEARING UP FOR BATTLE. CAN YOU LOOK UP A TERRORIST GROUP CALLED THE ‘ARMY OF THIEVES’ FOR ME, PLUS AN OLD SOVIET ARCTIC BASE CALLED ‘DRAGON ISLAND’. ANY INFO WOULD BE APPRECIATED. GOTTA RUN. OUT.

  He then ordered everyone, civilians included, to put on drysuits in case they fell into the freezing water. Schofield and his Marines wore new snow-camouflaged drysuits—they looked like regular battle fatigues, only they were made of ultralight watertight material that retained body heat—with their gunbelts and holsters on the outside. On their backs, as always, all the Marines carried their signature weapon, the Armalite MH-12 Maghook, a magnetic grappling hook.

  The civilians wore simple grey drysuits with hooded parkas on top for extra warmth; and since they didn’t have combat boots, they just wore their cold-weather Arctic boots, a mixture of heavy-duty Nikes and Salomons.

  When everyone was ready, the seven members of the departing team boarded the two assault boats and set off on the long journey south to Dragon Island.

  Jeff Hartigan watched them go, remaining at the camp, alone. His last words to Schofield were, ‘You’re a fool, Captain. You must realise that you cannot win this.’

  Schofield didn’t reply. He just started his boat and pulled away.

  ARCTIC ICE FIELD

  4 APRIL, 0840 HOURS

  2 HOURS 20 MINUTES TO DEADLINE

  Killer whales and extreme cold are two things that the Arctic and the Antarctic have in common, but in many other respects they are actually quite different.

  While Antarctica is a vast landmass covered in snow and ice, the Arctic is simply a giant frozen sea. Even the North Pole itself is situated on floating ice. In 1953, a submarine called the USS Nautilus sailed under the Pole; six years later, the USS Skate surfaced at the Pole, bursting up through the ice itself.

  Around March every year, as the sun rises for the first time in months, the sea ice begins to melt, creating long cracks called ‘leads’. As the region warms, these leads get wider and wider, forming a labyrinthine network of canals and alleyways in the sea ice, some a few feet deep, others over thirty feet deep. Polar bears hunt in leads because seals and small whales surface in them to breathe.

  The leads were also useful for an insertion team, as any land-based radar system could only scan the surface of the sea ice: anything down in the sunken network of leads would not be detectable to such devices. The leads could really only be monitored by human eyes looking down from a surveillance aircraft, and as Scarecrow’s little assault boats raced down a major lead to the site of the crashed Beriev, no such aircraft could be seen.

  At 8:40 a.m., Schofield’s boats came to a small pancake-shaped ice floe floating out in the middle of their lead.

  A large white shape lay slumped on it, unmoving.

  ‘What is that . . . ?’ Mother said over the radio.

  Schofield slowed his boat, bringing it in close to the little ice floe. The white shape became clearer.

  ‘It’s a polar bear,’ he said.

  ‘Great, now we can test that stupid bear repellent,’ Mother said. ‘Hey Kid, go on. Go over and pat the nice widdle bear.’

  ‘Not this time, Mother,’ Schofield said as his boat came further around the ice floe and he saw the other side of the unmoving bear. ‘This bear’s deader than disco.’

  It certainly was. The bear’s throat was ripped open, its belly a grisly mess of blood, flesh and sprawling intestines. This polar bear had practically been disembowelled.

  The Kid said, ‘Jesus . . . the thing’s been gutted.’

  ‘But not eaten,’ Schofield observed. ‘That’s not right.’

  Emma said, ‘No, it’s not right at all. The polar bear is an apex predator. The only other animal in these parts that could do something like this is another polar bear. You’re correct: another bear might attack a fellow bear out of starvation or for territorial reasons, but it would almost always eat its fallen rival. Polar bears are the most dangerous bear in the world primarily because they are opportunists; they’ll eat anything they can find, including humans and other bears. But this bear has been slaughtered and then abandoned. Polar bears just don’t do that.’

  ‘Are there any gunshot wounds?’ Mother asked.

  ‘Not that I can see.’ Schofield stared at the dead bear for a long moment. It was absolutely huge, and its snow-white coat was matted with blood. Who or what could have done this?

  It didn’t escape his notice that they were now only about thirty miles from Dragon Island.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, turning. ‘We’ve got a plane to find.’

  He gunned the engine and his sleek assault boat powered away from the remains of the dead polar bear.

  THE BERIEV CRASH SITE

  THE BERIEV CRASH SITE

  4 APRIL, 0900 HOURS

  2 HOURS TO DEADLINE

  Twenty minutes later, the two assault boats pulled to a halt at a junction of two major leads. The ice walls that bounded the watery junction rose about twenty feet above the boats. After two hours of travel, they were close to the co-ordinates of the crashed Beriev.

  Scarecrow extended a ladder, hooked its curved upper prongs over the lip of the ice wall and started climbing. His team remained in the boats below him, huddled in their drysuits and parkas, looking very anxious.

  Schofield’s head appeared above the flat edge of the ice plain.

  The crashed Beriev was right there, barely fifty yards away.

  It was tipped over on its left-hand side, its nose pointing southward. Its tail section was completely destroyed, and its left wing had snapped under the weight of the fuselage rolling onto it. Beyond the plane, a vast expanse of ice stretched away to the west, cracked here and there by leads.

  Far to the south, Schofield saw Dragon Island for the first time.

  It loomed on the horizon, small but visible, a jagged upthrust of mountains on the otherwise perfectly flat horizon. Low clouds hovered above it. It looked dangerous, even from here.

  Scarecrow peered warily up at the sky, scanning for surveillance aircraft.

  Nothing. Only the purple dawn-like sky and some high-altitude clouds, although to the south, around Dragon, the sky did seem to shimmer somewhat.

  He saw something.

  A tiny object, circling lazily high above him. It wasn’t a surveillance plane; it was too small. It looked like a large Arctic bird, gliding on the thermals.

  Schofield swore. He was completely unprepared for a combat mission and he knew it. He was working with untrained civilians just to make up the numbers and he had almost zero surveillance equipment. He wished he had a simple waveguide radar or even just a parabolic dish to scan the immediate airspace. But he didn’t even have that. Right now, all he had were his eyes and they just weren’t good enough.

  ‘Mother, come on up. Bring Bertie with you. Everyone else, stay in the boats for now.’


  He stepped up onto the flat surface of the ice plain, MP-7 submachine gun poised and ready.

  A few moments later, Mother joined him. She plonked Bertie on the ground between them and the little robot beeped and spun on his chunky tyres.

  Mother stood beside Scarecrow, clasping a menacing Heckler & Koch G36A2 assault rifle in her hands.

  Most Force Recon NCOs used the standard-issue M4, but Mother preferred the venerable German assault gun, and hers came with all the optional extras: it had a 100-round C-Mag drum magazine, underslung AG36 grenade launcher with the new anti-tank zinc-tipped incendiary grenades, a Zeiss RSA reflex sight and Oerlikon Contraves LLM01 laser light module. With all the additions, it looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

  Scarecrow glanced from his compact MP-7 to her G36. ‘Could you have attached anything else to that thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Quiet, you,’ she said. ‘Weapons options are like good commanders: you love ’em when you’ve got ’em, and you wish you had ’em when you don’t.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  Mother scanned the area. ‘It’s too quiet here.’

  ‘Yeah, it is. Bertie, acquire and identify that object up in the sky, please.’

  ‘Yes, Captain Schofield.’ Bertie’s optical lens tilted skyward.

  As the robot did this, Scarecrow and Mother approached the crashed plane, guns raised.

  Standing before the Beriev, Schofield pulled down the thermal-vision scope on his helmet.

  He saw the crumpled plane in infra-red, saw the strong residual warmth of its intact wing-mounted engine plus two man-shaped blobs in the cockpit, dim but pulsing.

  ‘I got two human signatures,’ he said. ‘Looks like they’re still alive in there—’