Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves Read Online Free PDF Page A

cliffs, and in the only two places where the land came down to the water’s edge—a long-abandoned 19th-century whaling village and a submarine dock—there were all manner of fences, walls, gun emplacements and watchtowers. There was a third access point: three small islets nestled in and around the bay on Dragon’s northern coast, but that route was so easily guarded against as to be useless.
    In short, Dragon Island was perfect for a defending force and hell for an offensive one. Even a relatively small garrison could hold out a large attacking army for weeks.
    It was just as he was thinking about the SEAL incursion that a secure ULF signal came in from the USS Miami . It had already started powering toward Dragon and would get there a good hour before Schofield and his people could.
    A short and very one-sided exchange followed with the SEAL commander, a gruff but experienced specialist named Ira ‘Ironbark’ Barker.
    ‘Just sit back, Scarecrow. We’ll take care of this,’ Ironbark had said.
    ‘If you just wait an hour, we can catch up and go in with you,’ Schofield said. ‘I mean, we don’t even know how many men are on that isla—’
    ‘I ain’t waiting and my boys sure as hell don’t need your help,’ Ironbark said. ‘I’ve seen this sort of shit before. No amount of gun-toting thugs can match a fully-trained SEAL team. So I’m gonna say this once and once only: stay out of our way, Scarecrow . We are going to that island and we are going to shoot everything in sight. I don’t want you and your nerds stumbling in there afterward and getting in the way. Besides, who have you got with you anyway, a couple of Marines and some geeks from the science fair?’
    ‘I have seven people. Four Marines, including me, and three civilians.’
    ‘Which means you’ll be about as helpful as a fart in an elevator. Jesus, civilians . Why don’t you leave saving the world to the experts and stay in your heated tents.’
    ‘What about the plane, then?’ Schofield asked pointedly. ‘The Beriev that started all this? Shouldn’t you check that out before you go in? The pilot might still be alive, he might also have some better intel on disabling the device—’
    ‘Fuck the plane and fuck the pilot. I already have the layout of the island and I know enough to disable the weapon. That pilot can’t help me.’
    ‘Well, I’m going to check him out.’
    ‘Fine. Do that. I don’t care. I’ve heard about you, Scarecrow. Heard you got initiative , which to me means you’re unpredictable. And I don’t like unpredictable. Do what you want, just stay out of my way or else you might get shot. Understand?’
    ‘I understand.’
    ‘Ironbark, out.’ The line went dead.
    And that was how Schofield and his little team came to be zooming south through a maze of ice-walled canals, heading for the site of Vasily Ivanov’s crashed Beriev Be-12.
     
SEVEN WEEKS IN AN ARCTIC CAMP
MARCH–APRIL
    How Shane Schofield—a former commander of a crack Force Reconnaissance Unit—came to be in the Arctic with a small team of scientists was a story all by itself.
    Over the years, he and Mother had gone through a lot together: a mission in Antarctica during which they had defended a remote US ice station from French and British special forces units; that business concerning the former President at a secret base in the Utah desert called Area 7; and, of course, the bounty hunt in which a group called Majestic-12 had put an $18.6 million price on Schofield’s head.
    It was during that last incident that Schofield’s girlfriend, Lieutenant Elizabeth ‘Fox’ Gant, had been captured and brutally executed, for no reason other than to taunt Schofield. And although Schofield had ultimately prevailed in that mission, it had been at tremendous cost.
    Some people in authority believed that the matter had taken him to the limit of psychological endurance and even broken him. There were rumours that at one point in the mission he’d tried