Date: 26 April, 2003, 7:58 p.m.
Subject: NEXT D.O.D. INSPECTION
Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that last week's six-monthly inspection by the Department of Defense Oversight Committee went spectacularly well. I thank you all for your hard work, especially over the past few months.
They were impressed with our progress and amazed by our technological gains.
The next six-monthly inspection is slated for 26 October at the Norfolk installation plant, to commence at 12 noon, department heads only. As usual, strict security clearance provisions will apply for the week preceding the inspection.
Regards,
PD
And that was it.
At 12 noon today, October 26, the Department of Defense would be sending an inspection team into Axon's missile construction facility in Norfolk, Virginia.
And presumably at that time, they were going to discover that something was amiss at the plant, that the missiles had been tampered with in some way, or perhaps even gone—stolen—at which point. . .
. . . the US Government would go searching for the only men in the world who were able to disarm the CincLock system.
Men with abnormally quick reflexes.
The men on the list.
And then it dawned on Book—for some reason, Jonathan Killian and Majestic-12 wanted the US Government to carry out that inspection today. Although he didn't know why yet, somehow today's inspection was an integral part of their plan.
Which made him understand something else more clearly. It had always bothered Book that this bounty hunt might only serve to warn the very men who could foil M-12's plans.
But now this explained it.
At 12 noon today, the US Government was going to discover something at Axon's Norfolk plant, something about the state of the Chameleon missiles and the Kormoran launch ships. Something which was crucial to Majestic-12's plan to start a new Cold War.
'We have to get to that plant,' Book said aloud.
He turned to Scott Moseley. 'Mr Moseley. Call the Department of Defense. Tell them to send their Kormoran-Chameleon inspection team in early. And get on the horn to our people in Guam. Get someone to check out Axon's plant there as well.'
'Got it,' Moseley said.
Book then turned his attention to the stream of decimalised numbers on the launch list: the GPS co-ordinates of the launch sites and
the targets. 'Better find out where these missiles are going to be fired from and what they're aiming at.'
As he booted up a GPS plotting program on his computer, he keyed his satellite radio. 'Scarecrow! It's Book! Come in! I've got some big news for you . . .'
NEAR THE FORTERESSE DE VALOIS BRITTANY, FRANCE
26 OCTOBER, 1500 HOURS LOCAL TIME (0900 HOURS E.S.T USA)
The Axon chopper that had swung to a halt in front of Aloysius Knight and Libby Gant could be seen zooming away along the coastline, getting smaller and smaller, heading back toward the Forteresse de Valois—with Knight and Gant now inside it.
A lone figure treading water in the ocean waves at the base of the cliffs watched it fly away.
Schofield.
Naturally, when his blazing Mack had launched itself off the roadway and smashed into the hovering Mirage fighter jet, Schofield hadn't been in it.
As soon as his truck's tyres had left the road, he had bailed out the driver's side door, dropping into the air beneath the flying rig.
The truck hit the fighter.
Gigantic explosion. Colossal noise. Metal flying everywhere.
But Schofield had been under the blast when it had happened— well below the fireball, but also out of Gant or Knight's sight—and he fell like a bullet through the air.
His first thought had been: Maghook.
Not this time. Out of propellant.
Damn.
He kept falling—not vertically, but at a slanting angle thanks to the inertia of the truck—the cliff-face streaking past him at phenomenal speed. He saw the ocean waves below him, rushing upwards. If he hit the water from this height, his body would explode against the surface and burst like a tomato.
Do something! his mind screamed.
Like what!
And then he remembered—
—and quickly yanked the ripcord on his chest webbing. The rip-cord that was attached to the attack parachute still on his back. He'd been wearing it ever since the battle on board the Hercules. It had been so compact that he'd almost forgotten it was there.
The attack parachute blossomed above him, a bare 80 feet above the water.
It didn't slow his fall completely, but it did enough.
He lurched in the air about 20 feet above the waves, his downward speed significantly reduced, before—shoom—he entered the water feet-first and disengaged the parachute, allowing himself to shoot into the ocean trailing a finger of bubbles above him.
And not a second too soon.
For a moment later, the Mack rig and the Mirage fighter crashed down in a flaming metal heap into the waves nearby.
Schofield surfaced a short distance out from the cliffs, amid some of the burning remains of the fighter jet.
Careful to stay out of sight, he trod water amid the floating debris and sure enough, a minute later, he saw the Axon chopper swing around a nearby cliff-bend and zoom back toward the castle.
Had Gant and Knight got away? Or were they in that chopper?
'Fox! Fox! Come in! This is Scarecrow,' he whispered into his throat-mike. 'For what it's worth, I'm still alive. Are you okay?'
A single laboured cough answered him. It was an old technique—she was up there but she obviously couldn't talk. They'd caught her.
'One for yes, two for no. Are you in that Axon chopper I just saw?'
Single cough.
'Are you wounded badly?'
Single cough.
'Really badly?'
Single cough.
Shit, Schofield thought.
'Is Knight with you?'
Single cough.
'Are they taking you back to the castle?'
Single cough.
'Hang in there, Libby. I'm coming for you.'
Schofield looked around himself and was about to start swimming for the shore when abruptly he saw the French destroyer surging to a halt 200 yards away from him off the coast.
On the side of the great ship, he saw a small patrol boat being lowered into the water, with at least a dozen men on board it.
The patrol boat dropped into the ocean and immediately zipped away from the destroyer, heading directly for him.
Schofield could do nothing except watch the French patrol boat approach him.
'I'm sure the French have forgotten about that thing in Antarctica,' he muttered to himself.
Then his earpiece burst to life.
'Scarecrow! It's Book! Come in! I've got some big news for you.'
'Hey, Book, I'm here.'
'Can you talk?'
Schofield rose and fell with the waves of the Atlantic. 'Yeah, sure, why not.' He eyed the patrol boat, now only 150 yards away. 'Although I have to warn you, I think I'm about to die.'
'Yes, but I know why,' Book II said.
'Book, patch Gant and Knight in on this transmission,' Schofield said. 'They can't talk, but I want them to hear this, too.'
Book did so.
Then he told them all about the Kormoran 'supertankers' and the Chameleon clone missiles, and Majestic-12's plan to start a new Cold War—on Terror—by firing those missiles on the major cities of the world. He also told them about the CincLock VII security system which only Schofield and those on the list could disarm, and the incorporation by Ronson Weitzman of the US Universal Disarm Code into it, a code which Rosenthal had described as 'a yet-to-be-determined Mersenne Prime'.