Read Online Scarecrow by Matthew Reilly - Free Book Online

brands of combat boots. Which meant mercenaries.
    And all of them stepping onto the dock from a wet surface.
    A submarine. A second submarine.
    So, Executive Solutions had been here.
    But they had got here very quickly. Too quickly.
    They must have been tipped off by someone behind the bounty hunt. Given a head-start to claim the American heads.
    There came a sudden grunt and the man in black snapped around, gun up, quick as a mongoose.
    It had come from the balcony level overlooking the warehouse.
    The man in black dashed up a nearby rung-ladder and arrived at a small internal office up on the balcony.
    In the doorway to the shack lay two figures: the first was the dead body of Corporal Max ‘Clark’ Kent; the second was another soldier—judging by his French-made assault rifle, a mercenary from ExSol—and he was still alive.
    But only just. Blood gurgled from a gaping bullet wound to his cheek. Half of his face had been blown off.
    The man in black stood over the wounded mercenary, gazed at him coolly.
    The wounded mercenary extended a hand toward the man, pleading with his eyes, moaning, ‘Aidez moi! S’il vous plait . . . aidez moi . . .’
    The man in black looked over at the concrete overpass that had connected this hall to the collapsed office tower.
    A destroyed 15-storey building: another sign of the Scarecrow .
    The wounded mercenary switched to English. ‘ Please , monsieur. Help me . . .’
    The man in black turned to face him, looked coldly down at the distressed fellow.
    After a long moment, he spoke.
    â€˜No.’
    Then he shot the wounded mercenary in the head.
    The man in black returned to his sleek Sukhoi, rejoined his massive companion.
    They then climbed back into their fighter, took off vertically, and blasted off into the sky, heading south-south-west.
    After the Sukhoi had gone, a lone figure emerged from one of the buildings of Krask-8.
    It was the Hungarian.
    He just stood there on the deserted street and watched the Sukhoi disappear over the hills to the south, his eyes narrowing.

SECOND ATTACK
AFGHANISTAN–FRANCE
26 OCTOBER 1300 HOURS (AFGHANISTAN)
E.S.T. (NEW YORK, USA) 0300 HOURS

    Think of a stretch limo in the potholed streets of New York City, where homeless beggars live. Inside the limo are the air-conditioned postindustrial regions of North America, Europe, the emerging Pacific Rim, and a few other isolated places . . . Outside is the rest of mankind, going in a completely different direction.
    â€”Dr Thomas Homer-Dixon,

DIRECTOR OF THE PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES PROGRAM,
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

    Â 
FORTERESSE DE VALOIS
BRITTANY, FRANCE
26 OCTOBER, 0900 HOURS LOCAL TIME
(1300 HOURS IN AFGHANISTAN—0300 HOURS E.S.T. USA)
    The two bounty hunters crossed the drawbridge that gave entry to the Forteresse de Valois, a mighty castle that thrust out into the Atlantic Ocean from the rugged north-western coast of France.
    Built in 1289 by the mad Compte de Valois, the Forteresse was not your typical French castle.
    Whereas most fortified buildings in France put an emphasis on beauty, the Forteresse de Valois was far more utilitarian. It was a rock, a grim fortress.
    Squat, fat and solid as hell, through a combination of sheer engineering audacity and the uniqueness of its location, in its time the Forteresse de Valois was all-but impregnable.
    The reason: it was built on top of an enormous rock formation that jutted up from the ocean itself, about sixty yards out from the high coastal cliffs.
    As they stretched downward, the fortress’s colossal stone walls blended seamlessly with the vertical sides of the rocky mount, so that the whole structure stood 400 feet above the crashing waves of the Atlantic.
    The castle’s only connection with the mainland was a 60-metre-long spanning bridge of stone, the last twenty metres of which was a lowerable drawbridge.
    The two bounty