Scarecrow Read Free Page A

hash.
    â€˜Clark?’ Schofield said.
    â€˜Sorry, Boss, signal’s gone,’ Clark said from the Scout’s wall console. ‘We lost ’em. Damn, I thought these new satellite receivers were supposed to be incorruptible.’ Schofield frowned, concerned. ‘Jamming signals?’
    â€˜No. Not a one. We’re in clear radio airspace. Nothing should be affecting that signal. Must be something at the other end.’
    â€˜Something at the other end . . .’ Schofield bit his lip. ‘Famous last words.’
    â€˜Sir,’ the Scout’s driver, a grizzled old sergeant named ‘Bull’ Simcox, said, ‘we should be coming into visual range in about thirty seconds.’
    Schofield looked forward, out over Simcox’s shoulder.
    He saw the black muddy track rushing by beneath the Scout’s armoured hood, saw that they were approaching the crest of a hill.
    Beyond that hill, lay Krask-8.
    At that same moment, inside a high-tech radio receiving room at McColl Air Force Base in Alaska, the young radio officer who had been in contact with Schofield looked about himself in confusion. His name was Bradsen, James Bradsen.
    A few seconds before, completely without warning, the power to the communications facility had been abruptly cut.
    The base commander at McColl strode into the room.
    â€˜Sir,’ Bradsen said. ‘We just—’
    â€˜I know, son,’ the CO said. ‘I know.’
    It was then that Bradsen saw another man standing behind his base commander.
    Bradsen had never seen this other man before. Tall and solid, he had carrot-red hair and an ugly rat-like face. He wore a plain suit and his black eyes never blinked. They just took in the entire room with a cool unblinking stare. Everything about him screamed ISS.
    The base commander said, ‘Sorry, Bradsen. Intelligence issue. This mission has been taken out of our hands.’
    The Scout attack vehicle crested the hill.
    Inside it, Schofield drew a breath.
    Before him, in all its glory, lay Krask-8.
    It stood in the centre of a wide flat plain, a cluster of snow-covered buildings—hangars, storage sheds, a gigantic maintenance warehouse, even one 15-storey glass-and-concrete office tower. A miniature cityscape.
    The whole compound was surrounded by a 20-foot-high razor wire fence, and in the distance beyond it, perhaps two miles away, Schofield could see the northern coastline of Russia and the waves of the Arctic Ocean.
    Needless to say, the post-Cold War world hadn’t been kind to Krask-8.
    The entire mini-city was deserted.
    Snow covered the complex’s half-dozen streets. Off to Schofield’s right, giant mounds of the stuff slouched against the walls of the main maintenance warehouse—a structure the size of four football fields.
    To the left of the massive shed, connected to it by an enclosed bridge, stood the office tower. Enormous downward-creeping claws of ice hung off its flat roof, frozen in place, defying gravity.
    The cold itself had taken its toll, too. Without an anti-freeze crew on site, nearly every window pane at Krask-8 had contracted and cracked. Now, every glass surface lay shattered or spiderwebbed, the stinging Siberian wind whistling through it all with impunity.
    It was a ghost town.
    And somewhere underneath it all lay sixteen nuclear missiles.
    The Scout roared through the already blasted-open gates of Krask-8 at a cool 80 kilometres an hour.
    It shot down a sloping road toward the complex, one of Schofield’s Marines now perched in the 7.62mm machine-gun turret mounted on the rear of the sleek armoured car.
    Inside the Scout, Schofield hovered behind Clark, peering at the young corporal’s computer screen.
    â€˜Check for their locators,’ he said. ‘We have to find out where those D-boys are.’
    Clark tapped away at his keyboard, bringing up some computer maps of Krask-8.
    One map showed the complex from a side-view:

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