Thinking about Knight made Mother look over her shoulder.
Over in a corner of the yard, by himself, sat Schofield—cleanshaven and wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a pair of reflective Oakleys. He sipped on a Coke, staring up into the sky.
He had hardly spoken to anyone since he had arrived, which was not unusual these days. Gant's death in France had hit him hard. He'd been on indefinite leave ever since, and didn't look like coming back to active duty any time soon.
Everyone gave him a bit of space.
But just then, as Ralph was sizzling the onions, the doorbell rang.
Courier delivery. For the attention of Shane Schofield. Care of Mother's address.
A large cardboard envelope.
Mother took it to Schofield in the yard. He opened it. Inside the envelope was a lone gift-shop card with a cheesy cartoon of a cowboy that read: 'your new life begins today, buckaroo!'
Inside it was a handwritten message:
SCARECROW,
I'M SORRY I COULDN'T MAKE IT TODAY, BUT A NEW JOB CAME UP.
HAVING SPOKEN WITH MOTHER RECENTLY, I REALISED THAT THERE IS SOMETHING I SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU FOUR MONTHS AGO.
DID YOU KNOW THAT, STRICTLY SPEAKING, MY CONTRACTUAL COMMITMENT TO MY EMPLOYER TO KEEP YOU ALIVE EXPIRED WHEN YOU DISARMED THAT MISSILE OVER MECCA. MY TASK WAS TO KEEP YOU ALIVE 'UNTIL 12 NOON, 26 OCTOBER OR UNTIL SUCH TIME AS CAPTAIN SCHOFIELD'S REASON FOR ELIMINATION HAS BEEN UTILISED TO ITS FULLEST POTENTIAL.'
I HAVE NEVER GONE BEYOND THE LETTER OF A CONTRACT
BEFORE. TO BE HONEST, I ACTUALLY THOUGHT ABOUT LEAVING YOU IN THAT DUNGEON—AFTER ALL, BY THEN, YOUR REASON FOR ELIMINATION HAD INDEED BEEN UTILISED TO THE FULLEST.
BUT AFTER WATCHING THE WAY YOUR MEN—AND YOUR WOMEN—STOOD BY YOU OVER THE COURSE OF THAT AWFUL DAY, AFTER OBSERVING THE LOYALTY THEY HAD TO YOU, I CHOSE TO STAY AND FIGHT BY YOUR SIDE.
LOYALTY IS NOT SOMETHING THAT SIMPLY HAPPENS, CAPTAIN. IT IS ALWAYS PREDICATED BY AN INDEPENDENT SELFLESS ACT: A SUPPORTIVE WORD, A KINDLY GESTURE, AN UNPROVOKED ACT OF GOODNESS. YOUR MEN ARE LOYAL TO YOU, CAPTAIN, BECAUSE YOU ARE THAT RAREST OF MEN: A GOOD MAN.
PLEASE LIVE AGAIN. IT WILL TAKE TIME. BELIEVE ME, I KNOW. BUT DO NOT ABANDON THE WORLD JUST YET—IT CAN BE A TERRIBLE PLACE, BUT IT CAN ALSO BE A BEAUTIFUL PLACE, AND NOW MORE THAN EVER IT NEEDS MEN LIKE YOU.
AND KNOW THIS, SHANE 'SCARECROW' SCHOFIELD. YOU HAVE WON MY LOYALTY, A FEAT WHICH NO MAN HAS ACHIEVED FOR A VERY LONG TIME.
ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, IF YOU NEED HELP, JUST MAKE THE CALL AND I'LL BE THERE.
YOUR FRIEND,
THE BLACK KNIGHT
P.S. I AM SURE SHE IS WATCHING OVER YOU RIGHT NOW.
Schofield folded up the card. And stood up.
And started walking out of the yard and down the driveway, heading for his car out on the street.
'Hey!' Mother called, concerned. 'Where are you going, champ?'
Schofield turned to her and smiled—a sad but genuine smile. 'Thank you, Mother. Thank you for worrying about me. I promise, you won't have to do it for too much longer.'
'What are you doing?'
'What am I doing?' he said. 'I'm going to try and start living again.'
The next morning he appeared at the personnel offices of Marine Headquarters in the Navy Annex building in Arlington.
'Good morning, sir,' he said to the Colonel in charge. 'My name is Captain Shane Schofield. The Scarecrow. I'm ready to get back to work.'
AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY
THE WRITING OF SCARECROW
[WARNING—Some of the later questions in this interview address plot points in Scarecrow. Be careful if you are reading them before you read the book!]
What were you trying to achieve with this new novel?
From the very beginning, I was aware that Scarecrow would be closely compared to my other books. This is natural—hey, as soon as you write two books, people automatically compare them and decide which is their favourite. With that in mind, what I really wanted was for Scarecrow to be seen as a new kind of Matthew Reilly novel, a faster book, a book that was more densely packed with plot: a book that was a stylistic leap forward from my previous efforts. I'm hoping people will see Contest, Ice Station, Temple and Area 7 as 'Matthew Reilly Version 1.0' and Scarecrow as the beginning of 'Matthew Reilly Version 2.0'.
It's funny, in the interview at the back of Area 7, I mentioned that I wanted to create a new level of speed and pace in my next book—and then I'd meet people at book signings and they'd say 'How are you possibly going to make it faster? I like to think that Scarecrow has lived up to the promise of being faster and completely out-of-control!
How have you tried to achieve this?
Mainly by combining action and exposition—I wanted my characters to be running away from the bad guys while they were figuring stuff out. A lot of thrillers have rest breaks between the action scenes during which the author spells out the plot. I wanted to fuse the action and the plot advancement together. The result is that
Scarecrow is about the same length as Area 7, but has a lot more happening in it.
What was the inspiration for the bounty hunters in Scarecrow?
It's odd, you know, but for me bounty hunters have only ever appeared in two storytelling spheres: westerns and the original Star Wars trilogy (I haven't read any of Janet Evanovich's books, but I believe her lead character is a bounty hunter).
The idea of international bounty hunters, with their own planes and units and even submarines, was something I adapted from the (real-life) concept of mercenary forces: private armies that sell themselves and their hardware to the highest bidder. In Australia, such forces got a lot of press when Papua New Guinea engaged a mercenary army a few years ago; I also read about them operating in Sierra Leone, helping the government stay in power in exchange for diamonds.
In addition to this, I have always been intrigued by the concept of the Wild West freelance bounty hunter, a concept which was adapted to a sci-fi environment in the Star Wars trilogy, in particular The Empire Strikes Back. Indeed, this is why Demon Larkham's gang—the Intercontinental Guards, Unit 88, or 'IG-88'—is proudly named after the obscure bounty hunter of the same name in The Empire Strikes Back. (For those who don't know, IG-88 was the very tall robot bounty hunter who stands in the background as Darth Vader offers a reward for the bounty hunter who finds the Millennium Falcon. IG-88 utters no dialogue, nor does he actually move, but he became one of those cult Star Wars action figures— probably because he was always the one left on the shelf!).
In any case, the idea of these elite hunters-of-men really appealed to me, and I wanted to fashion a story whereby my hero, Shane Schofield—an able warrior himself—was being pursued by the best manhunters on the planet. And thus Scarecrow was born.
Speaking of bounty hunters, you introduce in Scarecrow a character named Aloysius Knight, a.k.a. the Black Knight. What lay behind his creation?
I had a lot of fun creating Aloysius Knight. From the start, he was designed to be Schofield's darker shadow, his amoral twin (he even has an eye dysfunction to match Schofield's). I wanted him to be the equal of Schofield in battle skills, but darker, more ruthless—as shown, for example, when we first meet him at Krask-8, when he kills the pleading mercenary in cold blood.