‘How much do they weigh?’ Schofield asked.
Ivanov shrugged. ‘They are heavy for their small size, as one would expect of a semi-nuclear substance. Perhaps three kilograms each. Why?’
‘Because a three-kilogram sphere the size of a golf ball will sink like a stone,’ Schofield said. ‘If we can steal those spheres and get them to the coast and hurl them into the ocean, finding them would be all but impossible.’
‘This is true,’ Ivanov said.
‘Wait a second,’ Mother said. ‘Aren’t we talking about radioactive material here? You can’t just pick up a nuclear substance and run off with it.’
Ivanov said, ‘No, this is the advantage of red uranium. While its explosive energy is great, its passive radioactive decay is minimal. You can carry it in a suitcase or even create a hand grenade with a tiny amount of it—’
‘Hold on. There are other devices made from this stuff?’
‘Why, yes. Our weapons scientists fell in love with red uranium. It is an almost perfect thermobaric explosive. Smaller devices were fashioned, including hand grenades with red uranium cores the size of ball bearings that could blow apart a T-72 tank.’
‘You assholes built nuclear hand grenades?’ Mother said.
Ivanov bowed his head. ‘This island is a product of a different time. We were given leave to create whatever weapons science would allow and so we did. On occasion, we may have gone too far—’
‘No shit,’ Mother said.
‘Hey! I have a family, too!’ Ivanov said indignantly. ‘Two sons. Six grandchildren. They live in Odessa, in southern Ukraine. If the weapon is ignited, the firestorm will kill them, too. I have as much to lose in all this as you do. I may have helped build this terrible thing, but I most assuredly do not wish to see it set off.’
‘Okay, everyone, settle down.’ Schofield got back on topic. ‘What about the missiles that are used to fire the spheres into the gas cloud? Where are they located?’
Ivanov nodded. ‘Our enemy will have readied the battery of intermediate-range ballistic missiles on the launch pad to the south of the main tower. Sabotaging those missiles is a possibility, but as one would expect, the missile site is very well protected—one can only get to it via a high, single-lane bridge. If our enemies have men guarding the missile site, it will be exceedingly difficult to get to.’
Schofield was silent for a moment, deep in thought.
‘There might be one other thing we can do,’ he said. ‘It occurred to me before, but it comes with . . . complications.’
‘What’s that?’ Mother asked.
‘The reason we’re here is because this Army of Thieves is able to detect incoming missiles and bombers from long range, right? They even managed to turn a Russian ICBM around and have it strike its own launch site.’
Mother shrugged. ‘They’re teched up. We know this.’
Schofield said, ‘But it goes deeper than that. To possess this kind of early-warning capability—which lets them see an incoming missile or plane from thousands of miles away—they must be patched into some kind of early-warning satellite. Which means somewhere on this island there’s a satellite uplink connecting them to that satellite.’
‘Oh, I see, I see . . .’ Veronique Champion nodded. ‘But, yes, as you say, such a plan brings with it substantial complications.’
Mother didn’t get it. ‘Wait, wait. What complications? I don’t see it.’
Schofield said, ‘If we take out the Army of Thieves’ satellite uplink—destroy it or disable it—then the Army of Thieves will be blinded and we can open the way for a nuclear strike on this island.’
‘Once that uplink is destroyed,’ Champion added, ‘a nuclear missile launched from, say, Alaska or a site in central Russia could strike this island inside twenty minutes. The complication is—’
‘Us,’ Schofield said. ‘We won’t have time to get away before any nuclear missile hits. If we can find and knock out their uplink, we can save the world . . . but in doing so, we kill ourselves.’
‘Oh,’ Mother said. ‘Right. I see.’
There was a short silence.
‘We have to keep it as an option,’ Schofield said seriously. ‘Maybe not our first option, but if all else fails, we might have to consider it.’
He turned to the group.
‘All right, people, here’s how we’re going to do this. If we can somehow get in, I say we make this a split-op: one team goes for the spheres while a smaller second team tries to disable the missile battery. I’ll lead the first team: if we can disrupt the reheating of those spheres before eleven o’clock, we stop this thing cold; if not, we steal the spheres and get them to the coast and toss them into the ocean. At the same time, the second team—I’m thinking of the Kid and Mario here—tries to knock out the missiles, thus preventing the bad guys from firing the spheres into the gas cloud should the first team fail.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ Mother said.
‘If we can get in there by eleven o’clock,’ Champion said. ‘That in itself will be extremely difficult.’
Schofield nodded. ‘While we’re doing all this, Dr Ivanov is going to try and spot any recently-added satellite uplink dishes around the complex. In the event of everything going to Hell, our last resort will be blowing the uplink and calling in a nuclear airstrike on ourselves. Any questions?’
No-one said a word. They were all taking in exactly what the final option meant.
‘I have a question,’ Mother said. ‘For him.’ She jerked her chin at Ivanov. ‘Who the fuck designs and builds a global-killing weapon like this?’
Ivanov smiled tightly. ‘You may not like the answer. You see, we stole the plans for the atmospheric device, indeed for this whole complex, from a top secret laboratory at Nellis Air Force Base in the United States of America. Your country designed this terrible weapon. We just built it.’
Schofield nodded at the reinforced glass door, at the shaggy polar bears on the other side.
‘What about them? What’s the story with the bears?’
‘They were another experiment,’ Ivanov said. ‘An experiment gone wrong.’
‘Oh, come on. What did you do to the bears?’ the Kid asked.
‘It was not one of my projects,’ Ivanov said, ‘and not one I agreed with. The idea was not unlike the infamous US tests with dolphins: we tried to train the bears to carry out certain military tasks. Laying mines, attaching explosives to submarines. One group, however, was given advanced mood-altering drugs, to heighten their aggressive instincts, the goal being to turn them into hyper-aggressive frontline troops that would strike fear into the hearts of an enemy force as they rampaged toward them.’
Emma Dawson was shocked. ‘You tried to make polar bears more aggressive? And obedient? Were you out of your minds?’
Ivanov shrugged. ‘There was a similar American project only recently, involving gorillas, based on an island in the Pacific Ocean known as Hell Island.’
At his words, Mother glanced at Schofield but he just shook his head imperceptibly.
‘But it didn’t work, did it?’ he said.
‘No. The drugs wreaked havoc with the bears’ primitive brains and they became demented, enraged, deranged with fury. They started attacking their handlers and the other bears. They also became very resourceful and continually broke out of their cages.’
‘They attacked the other bears.’ Schofield recalled the dead polar bear they’d seen on the ice floe earlier that morning, the one that had been torn to pieces by something. ‘And they’re cage-breakers. Wait, are you saying that those bears in that lab are not trapped in there?’
‘Oh, no,’ Ivanov said. ‘There are other exits to that laboratory: cracks in the roof dome, fire exits. When Dragon Island was decommissioned in 1991 and reduced to a skeleton staff, we just left the bears to their fate. They come and go as they please. These ones choose to stay here.’
Emma shook her head. ‘You just left them. You guys are something else.’
r /> Schofield gazed through the reinforced glass door at the pacing bears. ‘Deranged polar bears. Just what I need—’
‘Er, Captain . . .’ Zack said, looking the other way, down into the pool of water behind them. He was crouched at its edge with Bertie beside him. ‘What is that?’
Schofield turned . . .
. . . and saw it.
An eerie green glow coming from deep within the pool.
It was moving, growing, coming closer.
Schofield hurried to the edge of the pool, where he grabbed Bertie, flipped him upside-down, and plunged the little robot’s stalk-mounted lens under the surface while keeping his display screen above the waterline.
‘Shit!’
On the display Schofield saw six small sea-sleds rising quickly through the haze—each sled bearing two armed men wearing scuba gear. They were zooming quickly through the tunnel toward the dock, their forward lights emitting sharp green beams.
‘They sent a dive team in behind us . . .’
He yanked Bertie out of the water and spun, taking in all the available options. The enclosed concrete dock had only two possible escapes: the pool of water and the reinforced glass door that led into the lab containing the polar bears.
‘Between a rock and a hard place.’ Schofield quickly put his battle glasses back on and drew his Desert Eagle pistol . . .
. . . and aimed it at the reinforced glass door. ‘Only one option. Marines, ready your weapons!’
Then he fired repeatedly into the door and eventually its glass shattered and the world went completely mad.
BEAR ISLET
4 APRIL, 1000 HOURS
1 HOUR TO DEADLINE
Gun up and moving fast, Schofield led his people into the realm of the polar bears.
It was a huge laboratory, easily seventy metres across, with a circular upper level that ringed a twenty-foot-deep pit. Schofield and his team were now on that upper level and, looking down into the pit, Schofield saw ten large (and open) cages embedded in its outer walls: cages, he presumed, that had once held the polar bears. The whole lab was covered by a translucent geodesic dome—made of many triangular panels and girders—that sprang across the wide space without the aid of a single support pillar.
Two narrow and rail-less retractable bridges extended from opposite rims of the wide pit to an elevated platform in its middle. The platform had a waist-high console on it and a hatch in its floor. Schofield noticed that the platform’s curved cylindrical wall was made of thick reinforced glass and that it encased a ladder within it; where the ladder met the floor of the pit, a curved glass door gave access to the pit itself. That was how the Soviet scientists had once entered the pit safely: via the platform and its internal ladder.
And the whole place was absolutely filthy.
It stank of bear shit, urine and rotting flesh—the smell of a carnivore’s lair. Some of the panels of the geodesic dome had been shattered, allowing snow to penetrate the lab and form high mounds all around the pit. Through some of the holes in the roof, Schofield could see the sky.
What had once been a shining state-of-the-art laboratory was now the picture of neglect; a frost-covered, rusting, stinking, freezing dump.
The only apparent exit, Schofield saw, was a door on the far southern side of the lab, but thanks to high mounds of snow on both the eastern and western rims of the pit, the only way to get to that door was via the two retractable bridges that extended across the pit.
The four mangy polar bears turned as one as Schofield’s gunfire shattered the glass door. Gathered by the snow mound on the western side of the pit, they watched with great interest as eleven human beings stepped out into the foul lab.
The alpha male rose onto its hind legs and bellowed loudly, issuing a challenge. A younger adolescent bounded toward them, teeth bared.
‘Go! Onto the bridges! Get to that door on the other side!’ Schofield pushed everyone past him as he eyed the approaching bear. He raised his Desert Eagle and fired it twice above the bear’s head.
The big pistol’s booming shots rang out in the wide space. The bear slowed a little but kept advancing.
As he took off after the others, Schofield glanced back inside the dock behind them—
—in time to see a small cylindrical object pop up out of the rectangular pool, tossed up by someone underneath the surface. It hovered in the air for the briefest of moments and at the zenith of its arc, Schofield saw it clearly.
It looked like a standard M67 frag grenade, only it had an odd silver band painted around it. Whatever kind of grenade it was, it had been thrown up by the incoming force to open the way for a sub-surface entry.
‘Grenade!’ he yelled. ‘Take cover!’
Everyone dived behind something: the doorframe, a crate, a barrel. Schofield himself ducked behind the doorway next to the Kid.
The only thing that didn’t take cover was the unfortunate adolescent bear.
The grenade went off.
The grenade’s deafening blast was followed by a wave of superheated silver liquid that came spraying out through the dock’s doorway.
The adolescent bear was hit full-on by the liquid blast and it started wailing immediately, clutching at its eyes, the shaggy fur on its limbs, face and belly splattered with the hot viscous silver goo.
As the bear shrieked, a sizzling sound caught Schofield’s attention.
The doorframe beside his head was melting. A dollop of silver acid slid slowly down the steel frame, dissolving the frame as it went.
‘An acid grenade,’ he said to the Kid. ‘It’s like a frag, only worse. It’s not designed to kill, just to maim and incapacitate, so that we stop to help the wounded—’
It was then that the bear really started wailing, and it was perhaps the most horrific cry Schofield had ever heard.
The silver acid had started eating through the bear’s skin and the poor animal was in absolute agony. Its pelt was peeling off its flesh. Then its belly melted all the way through and its intestines began to ooze out of it, spilling onto the floor with a foul slopping noise.
Terrified and confused, the shrieking bear scratched at its face with its claws, only to scratch off the skin, revealing bone, tendons and flesh. It was a sickening sight.
The bear fell to its knees.
Boom!
It dropped dead, shot through the head by Shane Schofield. A mercy killing.
‘Move, people!’ he yelled. ‘The bad guys will be here in approximately three seconds!’
They arrived in four.
They rose out of the pool like deadly wraiths.
They wore body-hugging grey-and-white wire-heated wetsuits and looked down the barrels of compact MP-5N machine pistols held pressed against their shoulders in expert firing positions.
Schofield couldn’t tell how many of them there were—ten, twelve, maybe fourteen—but having paved the way with the acid grenade, they came up fast and firing.
Bullets shredded the walls.
Schofield and the Kid returned fire, loosing wild shots behind them as they dashed across the first extendable bridge after the others.
‘Mother! Give us cover!’ Schofield yelled.
Leading the group, Mother stopped on the central platform and raised her G36.
‘Baba! Help her!’ Veronique Champion called, and the big French commando joined Mother, aiming his massive Kord at the shattered reinforced door behind them.
The first attacker came through the doorway—braaack!—to be torn apart by the combined brutal fire of Mother and Baba. One second the wetsuit-clad attacker was there, the next he was simply gone.
The civilians hurried past Mother, Baba and Champion, racing out across the second extendable bridge, led by Mario. As they came to the door on the far side—it was surrounded by discarded crates and barrels—the attacking force launched their own machine-gun salvo.
A burst of fire even more powerful than Baba’s and Mother’s came lancing out of the dock’s doorway: heavy machine-
gun fire laced with tracers.
It was so strong it compelled everyone—Mother, Baba, Champion, Schofield and the Kid—to take cover. Mother and Baba ducked behind the console on the platform while Champion stumbled and fell through the hatch in the platform’s floor, dropping down within its reinforced glass walls—while bullets smacked off the curved walls, leaving scratch-marks and cracks—before landing clumsily at the base of the platform structure—
—just in time to see another shaggy polar bear come roaring out of one of the darkened cells and leap at her, jaws bared, aiming for the open door in the base of the glass-walled platform—
—Champion quickly slid forward and kicked the glass door in front of her shut, an instant before the bear slammed into the outside of it, causing the transparent door to shudder violently and the bear to fall back onto its ass, dazed and groaning.
Schofield and the Kid had been halfway across the first bridge when the tracer fire had started.
They both dived forward, joining Mother and Baba behind the console on the central platform.
A shout came from Mario over at the southern door:
‘Kid! Look out! Above you!’
The Kid looked up—
—just as a blurry white shape dropped from the network of girders supporting the geodesic dome and landed on the second bridge right in front of him.
It was another deranged bear.
During the mayhem, it had clambered across the girders and now dropped right in their path. It roared at them an instant before its head exploded like a punctured soccer ball and Schofield and the Kid turned to see Baba holding a massive .44 Magnum pistol extended in his hand.
The headless bear dropped off the bridge and thudded down onto the floor of the pit, blood oozing from its open neck.
‘Fucking Hell . . .’ the Kid gasped.
Mother snapped round at the bearded Frenchman’s shot. ‘Goddamn, you are good!’
‘Oui,’ Baba replied.
Schofield quickly took in the situation.
Veronique Champion was ascending the ladder below him.
Mario and the three civilians—Chad, Emma and Zack, plus Bertie—as well as Ivanov and the third French agent, Dubois, were safely in the far doorway, taking cover there behind some crates and barrels.