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The Knight and the Scarecrow.

Storming up the spiralling stone stairwell—illuminated by firelight, rising from the depths of the dungeon—two warriors of equal awesome skill, covering each other, moving in tandem, their Colt Commando machine-guns blazing.

Like the six ExSol men guarding the stairwell had a chance.

As Schofield had suspected, Cedric Wexley had dispatched his six remaining mercenaries to this side of the Pit, to cut off their escape.

The ExSol meres had divided themselves into three pairs stationed at regular intervals up the stairwell, firing from alcoves in the walls.

The first two mercenaries were ripped to shreds by fire from the uprushing warriors.

The second pair never even heard it coming as two shuriken throwing knives whipped around the corner of the curving stairwell—banking through the air like boomerangs—and lodged in their skulls.

The third pair were cleverer.

They'd set a trap.

They had waited at the top of the stairwell, inside the long stone tunnel beyond the ante-room—the tunnel with the boiling-oil gutters—the same tunnel that led to the verification office, where Wexley himself now stood with Killian and Delacroix.

Schofield and Knight arrived at the top of the stairwell, saw the two mercenaries in the tunnel, and the others beyond them.

But this time when Schofield moved, Knight didn't.

Schofield dashed through the ante-room, firing at the two

mercenaries in the tunnel, taking them down just as they tried to do the same to him.

Knight leapt up after him shouting, 'No, wait! It's a tra—'

Too late.

The three large steel doors came thundering down from the ceilings of the tunnel and the ante-room. A fourth sealed off the stairwell leading down from the ante-room.

Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!

And Schofield and Knight were separated.

Schofield: trapped in the tunnel with the two fallen ExSol mercenaries.

Knight: caught in the ante-room.

Schofield froze in the sealed-off tunnel.

He'd hit both of the mercenaries in here—they now lay sprawled on the floor, one dead, the other whimpering.

Killian's voice came over the speakers: 'Captain Schofield. Captain Knight. It was a pleasure to know you both—'

Knight spun in the ante-room, saw the six microwave emitters arrayed in a circle around the ceiling, embedded in the rock.

'Deep shit. . .' he breathed.

Killian's voice boomed: '—but the game ends now. It seems only fitting that your deaths be hard-won.'

Inside the office, Killian peered through the small perspex window that allowed him to see into the boiling-oil tunnel. He saw Schofield there, trapped like a rat.

'Good-bye, gentlemen.'

And Killian hit the two buttons on his remote that triggered each chamber's booby trap: the microwave emitters in Knight's anteroom, and the boiling-oil gutters in Schofield's tunnel.

First, Killian heard the humming vibrations from the ante-room, quickly followed by the sound of repeated gunshots.

This had happened before.

People had sometimes tried to shoot their way out through the ante-room's steel doors. It had never worked. On a couple of occasions, some had attempted to shoot the microwave emitters themselves, but bullets weren't powerful enough to penetrate the emitters in their reinforced stone emplacements.

Then with an explosive spurt, steaming yellow oil sprayed across the tiny perspex window separating Killian from the tunnel holding Schofield, blotting out his view of Shane Schofield.

But he didn't need to see Schofield to know what was happening.

As the superheated boiling oil sprayed its way down the length of the tunnel, Killian could hear Schofield's screams.

A minute later, after both the screaming and the gunshots had ceased, Killian opened the steel doors—

—to be confronted by a surprising sight.

He saw the bodies of the two ExSol men lying in the tunnel, blistered and scorched by the boiling oil. One of them had his arms frozen in a defensive cowering posture—he had died screaming in agony, trying to fend off the oil.

Schofield, however, was nowhere to be seen.

In his place, standing at the ante-room end of the tunnel was a dark man-sized shape.

A body bag, standing upright.

It was a black polymer-plastic body bag. A Markov Type-Ill, to be precise. The best the Soviets had ever built—and the only item that Wade Brandeis had not taken from Schofield's vest. Capable of keeping in any kind of chemical contamination, now it seemed that it had successfully kept boiling oil out.

In a flash the zipper on the body bag whizzed open from the inside and Schofield emerged from it, leading with his MP-7.

His first shot hit Killian's hand—sending the remote flying from his grip—thus keeping the tunnel's doors open.

His second shot blew off Killian's left earlobe. Seeing the gun in Schofield's hand, Killian had ducked reflexively behind the doorframe. A nanosecond slower and the shot would have taken off his head.

Schofield stormed down the narrow tunnel toward the office, his MP-7 blazing.

Cedric Wexley returned fire from the cover of the office doorway.

Bullets flew every which way.

Chunks of stone fell off the wall-columns that lined the tunnel.

The floor-to-ceiling panoramic window in the office behind Wexley shattered completely.

But the key question in a stand-off like this was simple: who would run out of ammunition first? Schofield or Wexley?

Schofield did.

Ten feet short of the office doorway.

'Shit!' he yelled, ducking behind a stone column that barely concealed him.

Wexley smiled. He had him.

But then, strangely, another source of gunfire assailed Wexley's position—gunfire that came from behind Schofield, from the anteroom end of the tunnel.

Schofield was also perplexed by this and he turned . . .

... to see Aloysius Knight charging down the length of the tunnel, his Colt Commando raised and firing.

Schofield caught a fleeting glimpse of the ante-room in the distance behind Knight.

On its stone floor were 9mm shell casings—a dozen of them— relics of Knight's shooting spree during the activation of the microwave emitters.

But they weren't regular shell casings.

These shell casings had orange bands around them.

The emplacements of the six microwave emitters in the anteroom may have been able to withstand regular bullets. But they'd been no match for Knight's gas-expanding bull-stoppers.

Knight's fire was all that Schofield needed.

Wexley was forced to return fire and within moments he was dry too. Unfortunately, so was Knight.

Schofield sprang.

He flew into the office at speed, striking Wexley in his already

broken nose, breaking it again.

Wexley roared with pain.

And Wexley and Schofield engaged. Brutal hand-to-hand combat. South African Reccondo vs United States Marine.

But as they came together in a flurry of moves and parries, Monsieur Delacroix stepped forward, a glistening knife appearing from his right sleeve-cuff and he lunged at Schofield with it.

The blade got within an inch of Schofield's back before Delacroix's wrist was clutched from the side by an exceedingly strong grip and suddenly Delacroix found himself staring into the eyes of Aloysius Knight.

'Now that just isn't fair,' Knight said, a moment before he was stabbed deep in the thigh by a second knife that had appeared from Delacroix's other cuff.

Delacroix's knife-wielding hands moved like lightning, forcing the now-limping Knight to step back across the floor.