Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves Read Online Free PDF

to take his own life. Even Mother had wondered if he’d ever be the same again.
    But after four months of mourning that was labelled stress leave, he’d gone to his superiors at Marine Headquarters in the Naval Annexe Building in Arlington and announced that he was ready to get back to work.
    Given the concerns about his mental state—and the wariness some Marines had about working with him—he was at first assigned to a teaching position at the Marine Corps’ recruit training facility at Parris Island in South Carolina.
    For such an experienced and decorated warrior, the appointment was seen by many as an insult, but it had actually been a good fit.
    As the former commander of a Force Recon unit, the new recruits at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island had hung on his every word. And Schofield had turned out to be an excellent teacher: generous with his knowledge, uncommonly patient, and always willing to stay late to work with a recruit who wasn’t quite getting it. His students adored him.
    That said, everyone at Marine HQ knew it was bullshit. It was just that no-one wanted to rush Scarecrow back into active service. (Although there were rumours that as a damaged and therefore expendable leader, he had been sent on a particularly bloody mission to an island in the Pacific Ocean called Hell Island. But no-one could verify these rumours and Schofield himself would not be drawn on them.)
    And then came the first French assassination attempt.
    They were waiting for him one Sunday night outside a restaurant in Beaufort as he emerged from dinner with his grandfather: a pair of DGSE agents looking to bag the French military’s five-million-euro floating bounty on the Scarecrow.
    Schofield had spotted them lurking across the street, had seen them follow him and his grandfather to the nearby parking structure. Upon entering the parking lot’s stairwell, he’d quickly doubled back, disarmed and disabled them both.
    The two French agents were now in Leavenworth in a special section reserved for protected inmates. The prisoners at Leavenworth, despite their own crimes, were oddly patriotic when it came to foreigners who tried to kill United States Marines and had not given the two Frenchmen a pleasant welcome.
    The second attempt had come six months later.
    It had happened on a quiet country road a few miles from Parris Island, as Schofield was driving back there late one night. Another pair of French agents had pulled up alongside his car and abruptly opened fire. A short running gun-battle had followed and it ended with Schofield firing back with his Desert Eagle pistol and killing the gun-toting passenger before ramming the rival car off a bridge, sending the second French assassin plunging into a swamp.
    The driver had survived. He was next seen sitting slumped on the front steps of DGSE headquarters in Paris, still covered in mud, handcuffed, with a pink bow tied around his mouth. A message was written in permanent marker on his forehead: ‘This belongs to you.’
    Despite a face-to-face meeting between the new American President and his French counterpart on the subject, the French resolutely refused to remove the bounty on Schofield’s head.
    And then this assignment had come up.
    The Corps needed experienced Marines to test new equipment in extreme climates. It would involve accompanying scientists from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the famous DARPA, and some private contractors to the ends of the Earth—baking deserts, steaming rainforests and the brutal cold of the Arctic—to test prototypes of new weapons, tents, armour and vehicles.
    Naturally, it wasn’t the kind of mission that the Corps wanted to waste on top talent, but as far as the brass were concerned it was perfect for Scarecrow: psychologically scarred, possibly unpredictable and the target of a vengeful foreign nation, it would keep him usefully occupied and out of harm’s way.
    Schofield didn’t mind the Arctic.
    It was quiet