 |
AIRSPACE OVER DRAGON ISLAND |
Schofield’s Antonov shot through the air at phenomenal speed.
On the distant northern horizon, Schofield saw the silhouette of Dragon Island: its jagged southern mountains, and on the northern plateau, the disc-shaped tower with its lone spire and the two colossal vents.
He keyed the Antonov’s radio. ‘American listening post, do you copy? This is Captain Shane Schofield, USMC, in distress. Is anyone out there monitoring this frequency?’
A voice immediately came on the line, jabbering in angry Russian. Then suddenly, static cut over him and an American voice came in.
‘Captain Schofield, hold for secure line,’ some clicks, then: ‘Captain Schofield, this is United States Air Force Listening Post Bravo-Charlie-Six-Niner, operating out of Eareckson Air Station in the Aleutian Islands. We’d been instructed to keep an ear out for you, in case you called. Please state your service number and comm-security passcode for verification.’
Schofield did so, adding, ‘Now put me through to the White House Situation Room.’
‘Patching you through now, sir.’
The President’s crisis team was still gathered in the White House Situation Room. With them now, however, were two extra people from the Defense Intelligence Agency: Dave Fairfax and Marianne Retter. And the CIA’s representative was no longer present: when Dave and Marianne had commenced their briefing, they had requested that he leave the room.
When word came in that Scarecrow was on the line, the National Security Advisor and former Marine general, Donald Harris, jammed his finger down on the speakerphone.
‘Scarecrow, Don Harris. I have the President and the crisis team here with me. Where are you and what’s happened with the atmospheric device?’
‘I stopped the activation of the device, sir, but I need to know: with the uplink signal down, have the Russians launched a nuke at Dragon?’
‘Yes, they have. Three minutes ago.’
‘How long till it hits?’
‘Nineteen minutes.’
‘Shit. Can you get the Russians to self-destruct it?’
‘No. Satellite scans reveal that this missile’s guidance control systems have been disabled to prevent any outside takeover, even from its own base. After what happened to the last nuke they fired at Dragon, the Russians made sure this one would hit its target. Nothing can stop that missile now.’
There was silence on the other end of the line.
‘Scarecrow?’ Harris asked. ‘Where are you?’
‘In a plane about sixty klicks south of Dragon.’
‘Then what the hell are you thinking? Get out of there. In nineteen minutes that island is gonna be a mushroom cloud.’
‘I have people back there, sir,’ Schofield’s voice said.
The President leaned forward.
‘Captain Schofield, this is the President—’
‘Excuse me, sir, but by any chance did a guy named Dave Fairfax get in touch with the White House?’
The President turned to look at Fairfax.
‘Why, yes, in fact he did. He drove right through the side gate, actually. He’s here now, with Ms Retter from the DIA. They were just briefing us on some CIA plan called “Dragonslayer” and an agent named Calderon.’
‘I’ve been doing battle with Mr Calderon all morning. Hey, Dave.’
‘Hey, Scarecrow,’ Fairfax said to the speakerphone, aware of all the eyes now on him. ‘How ya doin’ over there?’
‘I died for a while, but I’m okay now. Thanks for everything, buddy. That info you sent made all the difference. Hope it didn’t get you into too much trouble.’
‘A little,’ Dave said.
‘Well, thanks. Tell the DIA director and the President that this Marine thinks you deserve a promotion. And Mr President, one more thing. I may have stopped the ignition of the atmospheric device, but Calderon got away—the bastard had an exit plan—but he’ll have to turn up at Langley sometime. I may not come back from this, but I want him brought in. Can you do that for me?’
‘We’ll find him,’ the President said. ‘You have my word on that, Captain.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’ve gotta go now. I just arrived back at Dragon.’
The Antonov soared over Dragon Island.
Schofield checked the timer on his old Casio digital watch. As soon as he’d been told that the Russian nuke was nineteen minutes out, he’d started the watch’s timer. It was now at:
14:41 . . . 14:40 . . . 14:39 . . .
Schofield did the calculations in his head. Another minute to land—perhaps ten to find whoever of his team was still alive: Zack, Emma, Mother, Baba and Champion—and then four to get back on the Antonov and get to MSD, minimum safe distance from the blast.
The numbers didn’t look good. There wasn’t nearly enough time nor did he have enough weaponry to take on the Army of Thieves. All he had was Bertie on his back—out of ammo—and a couple of pistols he’d found on the Antonov.
Either we all survive together or we all die together, he remembered his own words back at their camp.
‘Fuck it,’ he said.
He scanned the base as he came in for landing and saw men running every which way.
The Army of Thieves had lost not only its supreme leader but its whole command group. Now the thugs were looking for someone to tell them what was happening and what to do.
He keyed Bertie’s short-range radio: ‘Mother, Baba! Zack, Emma! Renard! Can any of you hear me—?’
A man’s voice came in. ‘I hear ya, buddy, although I sure ain’t your fucking mother.’
‘I hear ya, too,’ another reedy voice hissed. ‘Calling for your mommy, eh? I think I fucked her once and she loved every minute of it.’
There was no reply from Mother, Baba or any of the—
‘Captain, it’s me,’ a softer voice came in.
It was Zack.
‘I’m alive and have E with me.’ Knowing others were listening, he was obviously being careful not to mention Emma’s name.
‘We gotta get everyone off this island. You’ve got nine minutes to meet me at the spot where Baba emptied out some diesel fuel.’ Schofield didn’t want to broadcast their meeting point.
‘Copy that. See you there.’
A few seconds later, a woman’s voice came in, her accent French:
‘Scarecrow, this is’—a pained cough—‘Renard. You’—cough—‘came back?’
‘Where are you now, Renard?’
‘Where you left me. But I have’—Blam! A gunshot, loud and close—‘a bit of a problem here.’
‘Stay there. I’m on my way.’
Blam! Another. ‘Hurry.’
‘Ooh, aah! Yeah, stay there, Renard, we’re coming, too!’ another voice mimicked Champion’s over the airwaves.
14:01 . . . 14:00 . . . 13:59 . . .
As he banked over Dragon Island, Schofield tried to reach Mother and Baba, but he only got more crude replies from snarling Thieves.
Nothing from Mother or Baba.
Damn . . . he thought sadly.
Schofield brought the Antonov in for landing, shooting past the mighty vents before sweeping low over the disc-shaped tower—with one of its spires now lying on its side—and touching down on the runway. The Antonov’s tyres hit the tarmac and it taxied down the length of the runway, before pulling up fifty metres short of the western cliffs.
At least twenty members of the Army of Thieves had been gathered by the airstrip’s hangars when the plane had come roaring in and landed.
They immediately leapt into jeeps and charged after it, to see if their boss was on board.
Schofield leapt out of the Antonov—
13:10 . . . 13:09 . . . 13:08 . . .
—and saw it.
Saw the motorcycle-and-sidecar lying askew on the northern side of the runway, the one whose rider and gun-toting partner Bertie had shot earlier. Their dead bodies still lay beside it.
Schofield ran over to the bike-and-sidecar, lifted it upright and kickstarted it. It roared to life.
He peeled out, kicking up a spray of dirt behind him.
12:30 . . . 12:29 . . . 12:28 . . .
He couldn’t believe what he was doing.
He was going back into Dragon Island—doomed Dragon Island, inhabited by a leaderless throng of Thieves—with only twelve minutes left to save his friends.
Schofield gunned his motorbike up the hill that lay between Dragon Island’s runway and its abandoned whaling village—the same hill he’d hurtled down half an hour earlier.
11:00 . . . 10:59 . . . 10:58 . . .
He glanced back at the runway and saw four jeeps filled with Thieves arrive at his plane; saw them swarm inside it.
They emerged shortly after, looking confused and bewildered. One of them saw Schofield speeding away, pointed and opened fire. Two jeeps took off in pursuit.
Schofield reached the fork in the road at the top of the hill and swung left, heading for the whaling village as his timer passed through ten minutes.
10:00 . . . 9:59 . . . 9:58 . . .
A minute later, he came to the roadblock guarding the whaling village, the same one where Typhon had outwitted him earlier.
A single Army of Thieves jeep was still parked sideways there, but the men who had been manning it lay dead: shot by Bertie in the smoke-grenade haze that Champion had provided for him.
Schofield raced past the roadblock and skidded to a halt in front of the frost-covered village.
He leapt off the bike, gun up. ‘Renard!’ he called.
Movement to his left—
—a shaggy polar bear flashed between a pair of sheds and went bounding away.
Blam!-Blam!
Gunshots.
From within the village, from the direction the bear had gone.
Schofield ran that way.
He rounded a corner just as—Blam!-Blam!-Blam!—more gunshots rang out and he saw Veronique Champion, sitting in a corner with her back to the wall, her last remaining gun, her tiny Ruger LCP pocket pistol, extended and firing at a shaggy white bear!
That bear dropped, punctured all over with bullet wounds—and in a fleeting instant, Schofield saw three more dead bears lying in the snow beside it and in that instant, he saw what Champion had been dealing with in his absence: holding off a steady supply of polar bears with a very small-calibre gun.
The newly arrived bear roared as it bounded toward Champion and she fired at it, too, but after one more shot, the little Ruger went dry and she looked up in horror as the bear, furious and deranged, charged at her unhindered.
Schofield fired both his pistols and the bear went sprawling head-first into the snow, hit squarely in the back of the head, and it slid up against Champion’s feet, its tongue lolling, its brains oozing out from a huge exit wound.
Champion looked up and saw Schofield and exhaled with deep relief.
He hurried over, quickly lifted her in his arms and carried her back to the motorbike.
As he carried her, Champion found herself looking directly at Bertie, peeping over Schofield’s shoulder.
‘Hello,’ Bertie’s electronic voice said pleasantly.
‘’Allo,’ she replied.
‘Looks like we got here just in time,’ Schofield said, sliding her into the bike’s sidecar.
‘I still can’t believe you came back at all.’
Schofield checked his watch.
8:01 . . . 8:00 . . . 7:59 . . .
‘In eight minutes, this island is going to be wiped off the face of the Earth by a Russian nuclear missile,’ he said. ‘And my philosophy is simple: when it comes to my teammates, I don’t leave anyone behind.’
He gunned the motorbike. ‘Hang on.’
They zoomed up the hill, away from the whaling village, back up into Dragon Island.
Sixty seconds later, they arrived at the fork in the road at the top of the hill. From there they could see all the main features of Dragon Island: the airstrip, the disc-shaped tower, the northern bay.
7:01 . . . 7:00 . . . 6:59 . . .
Schofield stopped the bike, his eyes focused on the runway—
‘Oh, no . . .’
He saw the Antonov, surrounded by cheering members of the Army of Thieves, being pushed slowly toward the cliffs at the end of the runway!
The plane tipped off the runway and began to roll down the short embankment separating the airstrip from the cliff-edge. Then the Antonov tumbled over the cliff and fell out of sight.
The Thieves all around it cheered.
Schofield swallowed, his eyes wide. Of all the things that might have happened, he hadn’t expected that. But then, the Army of Thieves had no idea of the thermonuclear strike only six minutes away.
‘What?’ Champion said. ‘What?’
‘That plane was our escape,’ Schofield said flatly. ‘We are now officially stuck here.’
Schofield stared out at the spot where his Antonov had disappeared over the cliff, stunned.
Champion said, ‘There must be another way out of this. Another plane or helicopter, or maybe some kind of bunker we can hide in—’
Gunfire sizzled over their heads from the two Army of Thieves jeeps that had just arrived from the runway.
It roused Schofield from his reverie and he snapped round to face Champion, something in his eyes. ‘A bunker, yes . . . a nuclear bunker.’
Champion said, ‘Ivanov said there was a special bunker-like laboratory buried under the main disc—’
‘No. Not that one. We’d never reach it in time anyway. I saw another one. Earlier. But where was it . . . ?’
More bullets whistled past them.
Champion ducked. ‘Can you think as we ride!’
‘Right.’ Schofield gunned the bike away with renewed intensity, fleeing from the jeeps.
A few seconds later, he turned to Champion. ‘I just remembered where it is.’
6:00 . . . 5:59 . . . 5:58 . . .
Schofield’s bike-and-sidecar skidded to a halt in front of the cable car terminal.
Schofield carried Champion toward the terminal’s side garage, the door of which was suddenly hurled open from within by Zack and Emma. As requested, they’d gone to the place where Baba had released diesel fuel earlier.
Zack ushered them inside. ‘What’s going on?’
5:10 . . . 5:09 . . . 5:08 . . .
Schofield hurried past him, still carrying Champion. ‘When they saw the uplink had been turned off, Russia fired a nuclear missile at this island. It’s five minutes away.’
Zack went pale. ‘Five minutes? What can we possibly do in five—?’
‘We get to a nuclear bunker.’ Schofield raced through the garage and entered the terminal proper. He hurried over to the cable car and looked up at its cable stretching all the way down to Acid Islet.
He recalled seeing the thick lead door in the hall on Acid Islet earlier, the one down on the bottom level with a nuclear symbol and a warning sign in Cyrillic on it. At the time, he’d thought it was a chamber for nuclear storage, but it wasn’t: it was a nuclear bunker.
Of course, Dragon Island would have several fallout bunkers on it. It was a first-strike Cold War target. And placing a bunker under Acid Islet made sense: the islet was already partially protected by the cliffs of the bay, plus the seawater separating it from Dragon Island would act as an extra buffer against the concussion wave from any nuclear explosion.
‘That cable car is too slow. It won’t get us down fast enough,’ Emma said.
‘You’re right, it won’t.’ Schofield was still looking up at the cable. It stretched steeply away from them, sweeping down to the station on Acid Islet a thousand feet away.
He turned.
‘Everybody up onto the roof of the cable car. We’re gonna zipline down that cable.’
4:20 . . . 4:19 . . . 4:18 . . .
They all clambered up onto the roof of the bullet-battered cable car.
The cable swooped downward, impossibly long and dizzyingly steep, ending at the islet far, far away.
Once they were all up on the roof of the cable car, Schofield said, ‘Okay, Zack and Emma: use your belts. Loop them over the cable like this.’
He looped Zack’s belt over the cable, then crossed its two ends so they formed an X. ‘We dislodged most of the ice on the cable when we came up earlier, so the cable shouldn’t be too icy. To slow yourself as you slide, pull your hands outward; that’ll cause your belt to squeeze on the cable and arrest your slide. Got it? Good. Go.’
Zack went. He leapt off the cable car and with a scream of terror shot down the super-long cable. He became very tiny very quickly as he slid away.
Emma was next. She stepped tentatively to the edge of the cable car’s roof.
‘We’re seriously out of time, Emma,’ Schofield urged. ‘You gotta go now.’
‘Right,’ she said, and with a final deep breath, she slid away down the outrageously long zipline.
That left Schofield and Champion. Schofield lashed his own belt over the cable—
3:31 . . . 3:30 . . . 3:29 . . .
—and pulled Champion into a tight embrace.
Their faces were inches apart. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his neck while his hands were stretched upward, holding his belt looped over the cable.
‘Hang on tight,’ he said.
And for the briefest of moments, Veronique Champion looked deep into his scarred eyes.
And to Schofield’s complete surprise, she suddenly gave him a quick but passionate kiss on the lips. ‘I’ve never met a man like you. You are special.’ She pulled back from him. ‘Now fly, Scarecrow! Fly!’
As she said it, five members of the Army of Thieves burst through the terminal’s door, machine guns blazing.
But their bullets hit nothing, for the moment they entered the terminal, Schofield—with Champion gripping him tightly and Bertie still on his back—leapt off the cable car’s roof.
The tiny figures of Schofield and Champion shot down the super-long cable that connected Dragon Island’s clifftop terminal with Acid Islet’s sea-level station.
They looked infinitesimally small in front of the towering cliffs behind them and the vast horseshoe-shaped bay around them—but they didn’t care for the view now.
They slid fast, very fast, shooting down the long swooping cable, their enormous slide lasting a full twenty seconds.
Schofield gripped his belt tightly and as he saw the yawning square doors of the station on the islet getting closer, he pulled outward on his belt, causing it to tighten around the cable.
They slowed immediately and at first he thought he had left his braking move too late, and he pulled with all his strength on the belt and it bit against the cable, trying to slow, and they entered the lower station fast and—
—swung to a lurching halt.
Zack and Emma were already on the platform and they helped Champion down.
When she was safely down, Schofield dropped to the platform and checked his watch:
3:01 . . . 3:00 . . . 2:59 . . .
‘Three minutes, folks,’ he said. ‘Run. Run as fast as you can.’
They bolted out of the cable car station, down the short road and into the huge hall-sized building filled with vats and tanks.
2:00 . . . 1:59 . . . 1:58 . . .
Zack and Emma ran in front, while Schofield ran with Champion draped over his shoulder, limping along as fast as she could.
1:30 . . . 1:29 . . . 1:28 . . .
Across some catwalks, zigzagging.
1:00 . . . 0:59 . . .
‘One minute!’ Schofield called.
Down some ladders. Champion made it awkward, slowing them down.
0:40 . . . 0:39 . . .
Schofield landed on the bottom level and saw the door he’d seen before: the superthick metal door with the nuclear symbol on it. ‘There it is!’
0:30 . . . 0:29 . . .
They rushed across the floor of the hall.
0:18 . . . 0:17 . . .
Zack and Emma dashed inside the thick reinforced doorway.
0:16 . . . 0:15 . . .
Schofield, Bertie and Champion ducked in after them.
0:14 . . . 0:13 . . .
Zack and Emma swung the heavy door shut behind them. It closed with a resounding boom.
0:10 . . . 0:09 . . .
They all scampered down a concrete stairwell, down several levels.
0:05 . . . 0:04 . . .
Through two more thick doors.
0:03 . . . 0:02 . . .
Through a final door, which Schofield slammed shut behind them as they all dropped to the floor, backs pressed against the solid concrete wall.
0:01 . . . 0:00.
There was a moment of silence.
Then it came.
Impact.
The Russian ICBM came rocketing out of the sky like a thunderbolt, lancing down toward Dragon Island at over a thousand kilometres per hour.
The remaining members of the Army of Thieves had perhaps five seconds to admire its dazzling tailflame and smoketrail—enough time to realise with horror exactly what it was and that it brought with it their deaths.
The missile detonated.
A flash of light and an almighty boom were followed by a shockingly powerful outward-moving blast-wave that consumed Dragon Island.
The base’s two gas vents—previously so huge and gigantic—were instantly ripped apart by the shockwave. They simply disintegrated to dust. The disc-shaped tower tilted and fell before also being obliterated completely by the thermonuclear flame. Some of Dragon’s coastal cliffs trembled under the weight of the colossal explosion and spilled giant chunks of rock into the sea. The cable car terminal toppled off its perch, falling into the bay.
Everything was incinerated, every structure and person on the island was vaporised.
A towering mushroom cloud rose into the sky.
Dragon Island was no more.
So was the Army of Thieves.
Deep within the earth, in their nuclear bunker on Acid Islet, Schofield and the others all looked up at the deafening roar of the blast.
The concrete walls around them shook, but held. The lights flickered, but the generators continued to work.
When it was over, they all looked at each other.
‘What do we do now?’ Zack asked.
Schofield saw an old communications console on the wall. He walked over to it. It was connected to a generator and appeared to be in working order.
‘We radio home. Then we settle in and wait for someone to come and pick us up.’
That wait, it turned out, wasn’t long, only a few days.
After contacting the listening post at Eareckson Air Station again, Schofield was once again put through to the Situation Room.
An attack submarine with nuclear shielding—the USS Seawolf—was dispatched to pick them up. It would arrive, he was told, in three days. Until then, all they could do was wait.
During that wait, they drank what water they had sparingly and shared the few MREs that Bertie carried.
Schofield thought of Mother and Baba—especially Mother. They had apparently succeeded in stopping the launch of the megatrain’s missile, but at what cost: had they been shot? Wounded? Killed? They hadn’t replied to his radio calls earlier. Schofield wondered what had happened to Mother. If she had even been alive when the Russian nuke had hit, he couldn’t see how she could have survived its blast. And if she’d been killed, he hoped she had gone out the same way she had lived—all guns fucking blazing.
‘Farewell, Mother,’ he said softly. ‘You were my loyal, loyal friend. I wish I could’ve been with you at the end. I’ll miss you.’
When the Seawolf eventually arrived, it stayed under the surface of the icy waters of the bay.
The main island was a charred wasteland, a black apocalyptic hellscape.
Although partially sheltered from the primary blast, the hall on Acid Islet was now a skeleton of its former self: every single one of its many glass windows had been shattered and its roof had been wrenched away by the concussion wave. Its many vats and tanks now lay open to the sky.
Three crew members left the Seawolf in full biohazard suits. They carried a trunk with four more protective suits in it and a stretcher.
It took a while, but eventually everyone was transferred to the Seawolf in the biohazard suits. Once aboard, they would be quarantined in a radiation-proof chamber, scrubbed down and continually checked for residual radiation.
Schofield entered the Seawolf last, carrying the broken Bertie in one hand. In front of him walked Zack and Emma, and in front of them, two crewmen carried Champion on the stretcher. During the wait in the bunker, Schofield had cleaned and redressed her stomach wound several times, but now she needed proper medical attention.
On the way to the quarantine chamber, Champion was diverted into the sub’s specially equipped infirmary—a sealed-off medical area specifically designed to treat crew members affected by a radiation leak in the sub’s nuclear reactor. There she would be treated by the sub’s medical officer, also in a biohazard suit.
As he handed Champion over to the medical officer, Schofield heard a muffled shouting coming from inside the sealed-off medical area. It sounded like, ‘Hey! Scarecrow!’
He peered inside—and saw Mother sitting up on a bed, yelling and waving at him.
‘Yeah, you! You big sexy hunk of hero stuff!’ She grinned broadly. ‘You fucking-A did it! You are the man! The fucking man!’
In a bed to her left, attached to a bunch of tubes and drips, and currently in a deep coma, was Baba. Beside him, a heart-rate monitor pulsed weakly; he was alive, barely.
Despite his fatigue, Schofield couldn’t help but smile. Next to him, Zack’s jaw just dropped.
Schofield said to Mother, ‘I tried to call you on the radio but got no response. What happened on the train? How did you get away from the blast?’
Mother grinned. ‘I did what you would’ve done: I drove that train at full fucking speed into the submarine dock’s pool! The fire-fight was brutal and my French buddy here got shot up bad—but he held them off long enough to get us over the line. Anyway, just as the train shot into the water, I grabbed Baba and dived off the top of the locomotive, and while it went under, we landed with a splash right beside the bow of that freighter, where I’d seen a little Russian submersible.
‘We were both wounded—him worse than me—so I just dragged him across to that submersible and climbed inside it, to get somewhere dry where I could check his wounds.’
Schofield looked at the still figure of Baba in the bed beside her. He had about six body wounds, including one right in the centre of his chest. Chest wounds were usually fatal unless you had some kind of haemostatic, or blood clotting, agent like Celox gel or a QuikClot sponge—and Schofield knew that Mother and Baba hadn’t had either of those.
‘How on Earth did you patch him up and stop him bleeding out?’
Mother grinned again, and jerked her chin at Zack. ‘It was all thanks to him, actually. You may find this hard to believe, boss, but sometimes I do actually pay attention to techno-babble. One day back at camp, before all this started, Zack was telling me about our new MRE ration packs. He said the water filtration pills in them were chitosan-based and that chitosan is the key ingredient of Celox gel. Now, those MREs also have a crap-tasting jelly in them, and jelly is just gelatin. I figured, well, if I mixed the filtration pills with water and the jelly, I might end up with a gooey gel vaguely like Celox. So I pulled out my MRE and did exactly that. It produced a nice thick gel which I applied to his major wound. It formed a decent clot, not a perfect one, but one that was good enough to seal and contain the wound. The submersible had a first-aid kit with some bandages in it and I used them to cover it all up. Not sure how much longer it would’ve lasted, but it kept him alive long enough till we got picked up.’
Schofield shook his head. ‘You made a clotting gel from the ingredients of your ration pack. You sound like—’
‘I know!’ Mother said. ‘I’m fucking MacGyver!’
‘You sure are. Wait a second. How did you get away, then? I tried to call you on the radio.’
Mother said, ‘I heard you on the radio but my microphone got shot off during the shootout on the train and Baba’s musta fallen off at some point, probably when we landed in the water; we did land pretty hard. Anyway, I could hear you but I couldn’t transmit. You said we had to get off the island, pronto, so I figured some kind of serious boomtime was coming. So I fired up that submersible and drove it as deep as possible, to put as much water between us and Dragon as I could. The Mir worked fine but its radio was a half-broken piece of shit. I only managed to attract this sub’s attention by pinging constantly on the active sonar.’
Schofield nodded at Baba. ‘How is he?’
‘He’s still critical. They put him in an induced coma. The doc doesn’t know if he’ll pull through.’
Schofield said, ‘I gotta go to quarantine and get scrubbed. I’ll talk to you later.’
As he said this, Veronique Champion was placed on the bed to Mother’s right.
Schofield said to Champion, ‘I’ll come back to check on you, too.’
Champion nodded. ‘Thank you . . . again.’
Mother saw this exchange and threw a wide suggestive grin at Schofield. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Take your time, Scarecrow. I got some girl talk to do with my new French chickadee here.’
|
OUTER BALTIMORE |
Shane Schofield sat in the basement office of a little townhouse in the suburbs of Baltimore.
Oddly, he wore his full dress uniform: white peaked cap, fitted blue coat with medals, gold belt buckle and pale-blue trousers with red piping. His attire looked far too formal for the little basement office, but then when he was done here he was going to the White House.
Across from him, behind her desk, sat Brooke Ulacco, his plain-looking, plain-spoken, sixty-bucks-an-hour suburban psychologist.
It was nearing the end of the day and Schofield had just spent the afternoon recounting his experiences at Dragon Island, including his torture at the hands of Marius Calderon.
Until that day, he hadn’t been allowed to talk to Ulacco about his mission to Dragon—as it involved CIA matters, he’d been informed by his superiors that her existing TS/SCI clearance was not high enough. He’d insisted that they get her the appropriate clearance, so he could tell her everything. It had taken a few months and even more background checks but Ulacco had passed and a ‘SAP’—or Special Access Program—addendum was attached to her existing Top Secret clearance. For Schofield it was well worth the wait to be able to tell her everything.
When he had finished recounting his story, Ulacco nodded slowly.
‘So, how’d you do it?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘How did you keep your head together? This Calderon guy tortured you both physically and mentally. He taunted you about your father and about Gant’s death and then, so far as you knew, he killed your closest friend, Mother, in front of you with rats in a goddamn box. As your therapist, I would have serious problems with someone doing this to you. So. How did you do it?’
Schofield leaned back in his chair.
He knew exactly how he’d done it.
‘I did what you taught me,’ he said.
‘What I taught you?’ Ulacco was rarely surprised. Her calm, cocksure, seen-it-all facial expression was not often broken. But now it was. ‘What did I teach you?’
‘You taught me to compartmentalise my mind,’ Schofield said. ‘In a memory location. Or in my case, a, ahem, memory submarine.’
Ulacco eyed him closely. ‘I’ve often wondered about this, Shane. You chose a submarine as a memory locale because it is a perfectly sealable structure, but one with a purging option—one from which you can jettison memories. Did you jettison your memories of Libby Gant?’
Ulacco asked that question without expression, poker-faced. And even though she actually hung on the answer, she added, ‘There’s no right or wrong answer to this question, by the way.’
Schofield paused for a full minute, thinking long and hard.
Ulacco watched him, waiting.
Then he spoke.
‘No. I didn’t. I could never jettison my memories of Libby. She was an incredible woman and I loved her and to remove all the wonderful memories of her would be to remove something that makes me whole, makes me who I am, makes me me. During my torture—and especially when I thought Mother had been killed—I just shoved all those good memories into a compartment deep within the submarine of my mind, shut the steel door and spun the flywheel till it was sealed tight. After that, Calderon couldn’t touch Gant. Nothing he could say or do to me would reach those memories, all those great memories. And I was okay.’
‘You were okay? You died.’
‘Only for a little while.’
Ulacco cracked a wry half-smile. ‘So you’re telling me that a memory technique that I taught you here in my crappy basement in Baltimore kept you sane while you were being tortured by one of the world’s foremost experts in breaking the human mind?’
Schofield nodded. ‘Yep.’
Ulacco turned away for a second, and despite herself, actually looked a little proud. It only lasted a second, but Schofield saw it. Then her usual self kicked back in.
‘And then you sorta saved the northern hemisphere from annihilation?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘So you could say that by saving you, I actually saved the world?’ she said cheekily.
Schofield returned her smile. ‘I think you could say that.’ And they laughed, for the first time in any of their meetings.
Ulacco stood. ‘Your time’s up, Captain. And you have an appointment with the President to keep.’
Schofield stood and nodded seriously. ‘Thanks, Doc. Thank you for all your help. Oh, there’s just one more thing.’
|
THE OVAL OFFICE |
Shane Schofield stood to attention in the Oval Office in his full dress uniform while the President of the United States hung a medal around his neck.
Beside him stood Mother, also in her dress blues and also at attention. Beside her stood four civilians—Dave Fairfax, Marianne Retter, Zack Weinberg and Emma Dawson—and one robot. Standing happily by Zack’s side, his lower body completely rebuilt and his exoskeleton shining, was Bertie.
Watched by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Director of DARPA, they had all received various medals for ‘gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of their lives above and beyond the call of duty’.
Off to one side stood Brooke Ulacco, dressed in her quickly assembled Sunday best, looking a little stunned to be there. When the President stood before her, he had no medal in his hands.
‘Dr Ulacco,’ he said softly. ‘Captain Schofield has nothing but the highest regard for you and your skills as a therapist. Being President is a pretty stressful job and I’ve been looking for someone to talk to about it, a therapist of sorts. Someone who’ll be tough but fair, yet also discreet. And I hear you now have a substantial amount of security clearance; this would only require a few more background checks. You up for it?’
For the first time since he had met her, Schofield saw the unflappable Dr Ulacco go wide-eyed with shock.
Once the medal ceremony was over, the President had the Oval Office cleared of everyone but Schofield.
‘I have someone here to talk with you, Captain,’ the President said. He keyed an intercom. ‘Mary, please send in the ambassador.’
A side door opened and into the Oval Office walked three figures: one of whom Schofield had never seen before and two that he had.
The man he didn’t know was a tall regal-looking fellow with swept-back silver hair, a long aquiline nose and an imperious bearing; he wore an obviously expensive suit.
The other two—also wearing civilian clothes—were Veronique Champion and Baba. Champion looked fit and svelte in a tailored skirt-suit and heels. She wore perfectly applied make-up and her black hair hung down to her shoulders, having been cut for the occasion. For his part, Baba had trimmed his beard a little but he looked very uncomfortable in a suit. He still wore one arm in a sling.
‘Captain Schofield,’ the President said, ‘may I introduce to you the French Ambassador to the United States, Monsieur Philippe de Crespigny.’
Schofield noticed that the President had used the formal method of introduction; only when someone did that, they usually introduced the more senior person to the more junior person. For the President to name Schofield first was to suggest that in this room, he ranked higher than the French ambassador. Schofield was sure the ambassador didn’t miss that either.
‘Monsieur.’ The French ambassador bowed as he shook Schofield’s hand. ‘I believe you know Major Champion and Master Sergeant Huguenot.’
Schofield nodded to Champion and Baba. ‘I do. It’s good to see them again and looking so well.’
The President said, ‘The ambassador has a message to deliver to you, Captain, from his President.’
The ambassador stood a little taller. ‘Captain Schofield,’ he said stiffly, formally, ‘the Republic of France sends its sincere thanks to you. Major Champion and Master Sergeant Huguenot have informed the President of France that your actions in the field, in addition to saving several other nations, saved France. It is my duty to inform you that the President has thus rescinded the standing bounty on your head. The Republic of France no longer has a grievance with you, Captain Schofield.’
Schofield’s mouth fell open.
Champion smiled at him. Baba grinned.
And the President of the United States, in particular, looked very, very pleased.
A short buffet of cakes and coffee followed in the Roosevelt Room, as usually happened after a presidential audience.
Zack and Emma were showing the President Bertie’s many features while Champion chatted with Brooke Ulacco.
Mother’s husband, Ralph, was also there in his best suit and a truly awful tie, yet Mother looped her arm firmly through his as they chatted amiably with Baba and Schofield.
‘So, Scarecrow,’ Mother said. ‘Did they ever find that CIA asshole, Calderon, the “Lord of Anarchy”?’
Schofield shook his head. ‘No, but I’m guessing that one day I’ll be called into a high-level meeting and at that meeting will be a very senior CIA asshole who will tell me that Marius Calderon has been found, dead.’
‘Only he won’t be dead . . .’ Mother said.
‘No. Calderon is one of the CIA’s best and brightest. He formulated that plan for Dragon Island nearly thirty years ago and it worked perfectly—everything went as he foresaw it, except for one variable: us. If we hadn’t been up there, all of China and most of the northern hemisphere would be in ashes right now. No, I wouldn’t be surprised if Marius Calderon is already back in the States, back at Langley with a new face and a new name, but probably the same office.’
A few minutes later, the President quietly tapped Schofield on the shoulder. ‘Captain, a word, please.’ He guided him out of the room.
They went downstairs to the Situation Room, where some intelligence people waited, including the directors of the DIA and CIA.
‘Captain,’ the President said, ‘I want you to hear this right from the source. Director.’
The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency stepped forward, looking suitably grim. Despite himself, he looked Schofield up and down before he spoke, as if assessing the man who had ruined a long-laid CIA plan.
‘Mr President. Captain Schofield. We finally found Marius Calderon. He’s dead. Two weeks ago, his submersible was found by a Norwegian fishing trawler, drifting in the Arctic Ocean. The submersible’s oxygen supply had malfunctioned sometime after Calderon went under. He suffocated.’
Schofield looked the CIA director square in the eye.
‘Thank you, Director. I never expected to hear that.’
Schofield returned to the soiree in the Roosevelt Room.
He was met at the door by Mother and Brooke Ulacco.
‘Hey, Scarecrow, we were just talking with Sexy French Chick.’ Mother jerked her chin over at Champion. ‘Guess what? Do you know what renard means in English?’
‘No.’
‘Renard,’ Mother said slowly, ‘is French for fox.’
Schofield took this in. ‘Is that so?’
‘Uh-huh. I think there might be something in that,’ Mother said. ‘You know what else, she asked if you might be open to joining her for a drink after this.’
Schofield glanced over at Champion—and caught her looking at him before she turned quickly away.
He turned to Ulacco. ‘Thoughts?’
Brooke Ulacco shrugged. ‘It was always going to take a formidable woman to light a spark in you again. And that woman is pretty damn formidable. I say, go for it. A date would be good for you. Mother?’
‘I approve,’ Mother said softly as she gave Schofield a peck on the cheek. ‘And I think the old Fox would, too.’
Schofield gazed at Veronique Champion—Renard, Fox—for a long moment, thinking about it.
And then he walked over to join her.
Later that night, Schofield and Champion could be seen in an all-night coffee shop a few blocks from the White House, talking, smiling and, occasionally, laughing.
They talked long into the night.
It was late, after two a.m., when Schofield returned to his temporary barracks apartment at the Marine Corps complex in Arlington.
There was something on his bed.
On the pillow.
A pair of battered wraparound reflective glasses, with an A-in-a-circle etched into them.
His glasses, last seen in the possession of Marius Calderon.
There was nothing else with them. No note. Nothing.
Scarecrow glanced uneasily around the apartment. Then he picked up the glasses and gazed at them long and hard.
THE END