Scarecrow (23 page)

And then she was out.

Out the door and up the fire stairs to the roof.

She hit the roof running, dashed out into the rain, just as Book landed his Lynx on it. She climbed inside and the chopper lifted off, leaving the smoking ruins of the King's Tower smouldering in its wake.

 

OFFICES OF THE DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, SUB-LEVEL 3, THE PENTAGON 26 OCTOBER, 0700 HOURS LOCAL TIME (1200 HOURS IN LONDON)

Dave Fairfax's boss caught him as he was leaving his office to go to St John's Hospital and find Dr Thompson Oliphant.

‘And just where do you think you're going, Fairfax?' His name was Wendel Hogg and he was an asshole. A big guy, Hogg was ex-Army, a two-time veteran of war in Iraq, a fact which he never failed to tell people about.

The thing was, Hogg was stupid. And in the tradition of stupid managers worldwide, he (a) clung rigidly and inflexibly to rules, and (b) despised talented people like David Fairfax.

‘I'm going out for coffee,' Fairfax said.

‘What's wrong with the coffee here?'

‘I've tasted hydrofluoric acid that was better than the coffee here.'

Just then, a small waif-like young woman entered the office. She was the mail clerk, a quiet mousy girl named Audrey. Fairfax's eyes lit up at the sight of her—unfortunately, so did Hogg's.

‘Hey, Audrey,' Fairfax said, smiling.

‘Hi, Dave,' Audrey replied shyly. Others might have said she was plain, but Fairfax thought she was beautiful.

Then Hogg said loudly, ‘Thought you said you were leaving, Fairfax. Hey, while you're doing a Starbucks run, why don't you get us a couple of grande frappacinos. And make it snappy, will ya.'

A million witty retorts passed through Fairfax's brain, but instead he just sighed. ‘Whatever you say, Wendel.'

‘
Hey
,' Hogg barked. ‘You will address me as Sergeant Hogg or Sergeant, young man. I didn't take a bullet in Eye-raq to be called
Wendel
by some spineless little keyboard-tapper like you, Fairfax. 'Cause when the time comes, boy, to stand up and stare into the enemy's eyeballs,'—he threw a cocksure grin at Audrey—‘who would you want holding the gun, you or me?'

Fairfax's face reddened. ‘I'd have to say you, Wendel.'

‘Damn straight.'

And with an embarrassed nod to Audrey, Fairfax left the office.

EMERGENCY WARD, ST JOHN'S HOSPITAL, ARLINGTON, USA 26 OCTOBER, 0715 HOURS

Fairfax entered the ER of St John's, went over to the reception counter.

It was quiet at this time of the morning. Five people sat slumped like zombies in the waiting area.

‘Hi, my name is David Fairfax. I'm here to see Dr Thompson Oliphant.'

The desk nurse chewed bubble gum lazily. ‘Just a second.
Dr Oliphant!
Someone here to see you!'

A second nurse appeared from one of the curtained-off bed-bays. ‘Glenda, shhh. He's out back catching some shut-eye. I'll go get him.'

The second nurse disappeared down a back hallway.

As she did so, an exceedingly tall black man stepped up to the reception counter beside Fairfax.

He had deep dark skin and the high sloping forehead common to the inhabitants of southern Africa. He wore big fat Elvis sunglasses and a tan trenchcoat.

The Zulu.

‘Good morning,' the Zulu said stiffly. ‘I would like to see Dr Thompson Jeffrey Oliphant, please.'

Fairfax tried not to look at the bounty hunter—tried not to betray the fact that his heart was now beating very very fast.

Tall and lanky, the Zulu was gigantic—the size of a professional basketball player. The top of Fairfax's head was level with his chest.

The desk nurse popped a bubble-gum bubble. ‘Geez, old Tommy's popular this morning. He's out back, sleeping. Someone's just gone to get him.'

At that moment, a bleary-eyed doctor appeared at the end of the long ‘Authorized Personnel Only' corridor.

He was an older guy: grey-haired, wrinkled face. He wore a white labcoat and he rubbed his eyes as he emerged from a side room putting on his glasses.

‘Dr Oliphant?' the Zulu called.

‘Yes?' the old doctor said as he came closer.

Fairfax was the first to see the weapon appear from under the Zulu's tan trenchcoat.

It was a Cz-25, one of the crudest submachine-guns in the world. It looked like an Uzi only meaner—the ugly twin brother—with a long 40-round magazine jutting out of its pistol grip.

The Zulu whipped up the gun, levelled it at Oliphant, and oblivious to the presence of at least seven witnesses, pulled the trigger.

Standing right next to the big assassin, Fairfax did the only thing he could think to do.

He lashed out with his right hand, punching the gun sideways, causing its initial burst to strafe a line of bullet holes along the wall next to Oliphant's head.

People ducked.

Nurses screamed.

Oliphant dived to the floor.

The Zulu backhanded Fairfax, sending him crashing into a nearby janitor's trolley.

Then the Zulu walked—just walked—around the reception desk and into the staff-only corridor, toward Oliphant, his Cz-25 extended.

He fired ruthlessly.

The nurses scattered out of the way.

Oliphant scrambled on his hands and knees into a supply room that branched off the corridor, bullet-sparks raking the ground at his toes.

Fairfax lay among the shattered janitorial supplies from the trolley he'd slammed into. He saw a bag of white powder that had been on the trolley: ‘
ZEOLITE-CHLORINE—INDUSTRIAL-STRENGTH CLEANING AGENT—AVOID SKIN CONTACT
'. He grabbed it.

Then he leapt to his feet and ran forward—while everyone else ran
away
from the action—and peered down into the staff-only corridor where he saw the Zulu stop in front of an open doorway and raise his Cz-25.

Fairfax hurled the bag of powdered chlorine through the air. It hit the Zulu square in the side of the head and exploded in a puff of white dust.

The Zulu screamed, staggering away from the doorway, swatting at his powder-covered head, trying desperately to remove the burning zeolite on his skin. His Elvis sunglasses now bore a layer of white powder on their lenses. His flesh had started bubbling.

Fairfax dashed forward, slid on the floor underneath the Zulu, peered in through the doorway—and saw Dr Thompson Oliphant cowering underneath some supply shelves, covering his face.

‘Dr Oliphant! Listen to me! My name is David Fairfax. I'm with the Defense Intelligence Agency. I'm not much of a hero, but I'm all you've got right now! If you want to get through this, you'd better come with me!'

Oliphant extended his hand and Fairfax grasped it, lifting the doctor to his feet. Then they ducked under the swatting Zulu and raced out past the reception counter into the early morning air.

 

The automatic sliding doors opened for them—just as the doors themselves shattered under Cz-25 bullet-fire.

The Zulu was moving again and coming after them with a vengeance.

An ambulance was parked right outside the Emergency Ward's entrance.

‘Get in!' Fairfax yelled, throwing open the driver's side door. Oliphant jumped in the passenger side.

Fairfax fired her up and hit the gas. The ambulance peeled off the mark, but not before the two of them heard an ominous
whump!
from somewhere at the back of the vehicle.

‘Uh-oh . . .' Fairfax said.

In his side mirror he saw the tall dark figure of the Zulu standing on the rear bumper, his hands clinging to the ambulance's roof rails.

The Zulu was on the ambulance!

The ambulance's tyres squealed as Fairfax gunned it out of the undercover turning bay and into the parking lot proper.

He bounced the white van over a gutter and a nature strip hoping to dislodge the Zulu from its bumper. The ambulance rocked wildly as it jounced down another gutter and Fairfax was certain that no-one could have held on after all that.

But then the rear doors of the ambulance were hurled open from the outside and the Zulu stepped into the rear compartment!

‘Shit!' Fairfax yelled.

The Zulu no longer had his Cz-25, having discarded it in favour of holding onto the ambulance with both hands.

But now, safely inside the speeding ambulance, he withdrew a long-bladed machete from his trenchcoat and stared at Fairfax and Oliphant with blazing fury in his bloodshot eyes.

Fairfax eyed the machete. ‘Oh, man . . .'

The Zulu swept forward through the rear compartment, clambering quickly over a locked-down wheeled gurney.

Fairfax had to do something fast.

He saw the road up ahead divide—one lane heading left for the exit, the other sweeping to the right, up a curving concrete ramp that gave access to the hospital's multi-storey parking lot.

He chose right, and yanked the steering wheel hard over, hitting the gas as they charged up the spiralling ramp—the centrifugal force of their high-speed turn causing the Zulu in the back to lose his balance and slam against the outer wall, his forward progress momentarily halted.

But they could only go up for so long, Fairfax thought. The parking structure was only six storeys high.

He had five floors to think of something else.

At the same time, someone else was watching the ambulance's wild rise up the tightly curving ramp from across the street.

A strikingly beautiful woman with long legs, muscular shoulders and cool Japanese eyes.

Her real name was Alyssa Idei, but in the bounty hunting world she was known simply as the Ice Queen. She'd already collected the bounty on Damien Polanski and now she was after Oliphant.

She wore only black leather—tight hipster pants, biker jacket and killer boots. Her long black hair was tied back. Under her jacket, tucked into a pair of shoulder holsters, were two high-tech Steyr SPP machine pistols.

She started up her Honda NSX and pulled out from the kerb, and headed for the multi-storey parking lot.

Tyres squealing, Fairfax's ambulance wound its way up the curving ramp, its open rear doors flailing wildly.

They hit Level 3.

Three floors to go before they reached the roof—before the Zulu in the back would be able to move freely again.

But now Fairfax knew what he was going to do.

He was going to drive the ambulance off the top level of the parking structure—leaping out of it at the last moment with Oliphant, leaving the Zulu inside.

‘Dr Oliphant!' he yelled, glancing back at the Zulu. ‘Listen up and listen fast because I don't know if we'll get another chance to talk about this! You're a target in an international bounty hunt!'

‘What!'

‘You have an eighteen-million-dollar price on your head! I think it has something to do with a NATO study that you did back in 1996 with a guy named Nicholson at USAMRMC! The MNRR Study. What was that study about?'

Oliphant frowned. He was still in shock, and trying to assimilate this line of questioning with the ongoing attempt on his life was hard.

‘MNRR? Well, it was . . . it was . . .'

The ambulance continued its dizzying ascent.

Level 4 and rising.

‘It was . . . it was like the Soviet Cobra tests, a test of—'

As Oliphant spoke, Fairfax stole a glance back at the Zulu—and suddenly saw that the demonic figure of the bounty hunter was far closer than he had expected him to be and was now
swinging his machete right at Fairfax's head!

No defence.

No escape.

The machete whistled forward.

And slammed into the headrest of Fairfax's seat, its steel blade stopping—dead—a millimetre from Fairfax's right ear.

Jesus!

But now the Zulu was on them. Somehow, he had managed to manoeuvre his way forward, despite the powerful inertia of the turning-and-rising ambulance.