A sudden whoosh. The flash of steel. And abruptly the General's head jolted slightly, a line of red appearing across his neck . . .
. . . and then, right in front of Schofield's eyes, General Ronson H. Weitzman's head tipped off his shoulders.
The head bounced on the floor, rolled to a stop at Schofield's feet. After beheading, the human head actually lives for up to 30 seconds. As such, Weitzman's disembodied face stared gruesomely up at Schofield from the floor, eyelids fluttering for a few moments before, mercifully, the facial muscles at last relaxed and the head went still.
Schofield snapped to look up, and saw Demon Larkham's handsome young deputy, Cowboy, standing on the other side of the Humvee, brandishing a long-bladed machete, fresh blood dripping from its blade.
His eyes were wide with bloodthirsty madness, and he made to hurl the machete at Schofield—
—just as a hand gripped his wrist from behind and slammed it down on the bonnet of the Humvee, causing the machete to spring out of Cowboy's grasp, at the same time as this unseen assailant quickly snapped the Humvee's other handcuff around Cowboy's now-exposed wrist.
Cowboy spun: to see Aloysius Knight standing behind him, now wearing a new pair of amber-lensed glasses.
'Not bad, Cowboy. You remembered my Achilles heel.'
Then Knight grabbed the machete and smiled at the IG-88 assassin. 'And I remember yours. Your inability to fly.'
Knight then walked to the driver's door of the Humvee, leaned inside and shifted the car into reverse. He nodded to Schofield and Gant: 'Stand clear.'
Cowboy and Rocko—cuffed to opposite sides of the Humvee— stared at Knight in horror.
'Goodbye, boys.'
And with that, Knight stabbed the Humvee's gas pedal to the floor with the machete.
The Humvee shot off the mark, racing backwards, toward the open rear cargo ramp.
It hit the edge doing twenty, before it tipped off it, rear-end first, and to Cowboy and Rocko's absolute terror, dropped out of sight and fell 20,000 feet straight down.
After the Humvee had disappeared out the back door of the Hercules, Schofield rushed over to Gant and held her tightly in his arms.
Gant returned his grip, her eyes closed. Others might have cried at such a reunion, but not Gant. She felt the emotion of the moment, but she was not one to shed tears.
'What the hell is going on?' she asked when they separated.
'Bounty hunters,' Schofield said. 'My name is on a list of people who have to be exterminated by noon today, New York time. They grabbed you to get to me.'
He told Gant about his experience in Siberia and then in Afghanistan, about the bounty hunters he had met—Executive Solutions, the Hungarian, the Spetsnaz Skorpions, and of course, Demon Larkham's IG-88. He also showed her the bounty list.
'What about him?' Gant nodded at Knight as he disappeared inside the cockpit to disengage their plane from the tanker. 'Who is he?'
'He,' Schofield said, 'is my guardian angel.'
There came a pained groan from over by the wooden crates.
Schofield and Gant spun quickly . . .
. . . and saw one of the suit-wearing British agents lying on the floor, clutching his broken ribs. It was the man Schofield had hit in the chest with his Maghook.
They went over to him.
The suited man was wheezing desperately, coughing blood.
Schofield bent down, examined him. 'His ribs are smashed. Punctured lungs. Who is he?'
Gant said, 'I only caught part of it. He and the other suit were interrogating the General with some disinhibiting drug, asking him about the American Universal Disarm Code. They said Weitzman oversaw the code's incorporation into something called the Kormoran Project.'
'Is that so?' Schofield said. 'A disinhibiting drug.' He looked around the hold, saw a medical kit on the floor. It had spilled out some syringes, needles and serum bottles. He grabbed one of the serum bottles, checked its label.
'Then let's see how he handles a dose of his own medicine.'
Aloysius Knight returned from the cockpit to find the suit-wearing British agent seated up against the wall of the cargo hold, his sleeve rolled up, and with 200 mg of EA-617 coursing through his veins.
Knight touched Schofield on the shoulder.
'I've disengaged us from the tanker plane,' he said. 'We're currently on autopilot, staying on the course they already set: heading for a private airstrip in Brittany, on the French Atlantic coast. And Rufus just called. He's going to drop your people at an abandoned airfield about forty miles outside of London.'
'Good,' Schofield said, thinking of Book II and Mother heading for the Mossad's headquarters in London.
Then he turned his attention to the captured British agent.
After a few vain efforts to resist the disinhibiting drug, it soon emerged that the man's name was Charles Beaton and he was a member of MI-6, British Intelligence.
'This bounty hunt. What do you know about it?' Schofield
asked.
'Nearly twenty million per head. Fifteen heads. And they want you all out of the picture by 12 noon today, New York time.'
'Who are they} Who's paying for all this?'
Beaton snorted derisively. 'They go by many names. The
Bilderberg Group. The Brussels Group. The Star Council. The Majestic-12. M-12. They are an elite group of private industrialists who rule this planet. Twelve of them. The richest men in the world, men who own governments, men who bring down entire economies, men who do whatever they want. . .'
Schofield leaned back, his eyes widening.
lO-kay . . .' Knight said drily.
'Give me names,' Schofield said.
'I don't know their names,' Beaton said. 'That's not my area. My area is the American military. All I know is that Majestic-12 exists and that it's bankrolling this bounty hunt.'
'All right, then. Do you know what they hope to achieve by staging this hunt?'
'No,' Beaton said. 'My job was to get the Universal Disarm Code from Weitzman and then give him to the bounty hunter, Larkham. To take advantage of this bounty hunt. I don't know about the hunt itself or Majestic-12's reasons for staging it.'
'So who at MI-6 does know?'
'Alec Christie. He's our man on the inside. He knows everything about Majestic-12 and presumably, this bounty hunt. But the problem is MI-6 doesn't know where Christie is anymore. He disappeared two days ago.'
Christie.
Schofield remembered the name from the list:
2. CHRISTIE, Alec P. UK MI-6
'But this Christie guy must have blown his cover,' he said, 'because Majestic-12 put him on the list as well.'
He tried a new angle. 'What are these Kormoran and Chameleon Projects that you were interrogating Weitzman about?'
Beaton winced, still trying to resist the drug. 'Kormoran is a US Navy project. Deep black. In World War II, the German Navy disguised some of their strike vessels as commercial freighters. One of these was called the Kormoran. We believe that the US Navy is doing the same thing but on a modern scale: building warships
capable of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles, only these warships don't look like warships. They're disguised as supertankers and container ships.'
'Whoa,' Gant whispered.
'Okay. That's Kormoran,' Schofield said. 'What about the Chameleon Project?'
'I don't know about Chameleon.'
'You sure?'
Beaton groaned. 'We know it's linked to Kormoran, and we know it's big—it has the highest US security classification. But at this stage, we don't know exactly what Chameleon entails.'