Scarecrow (novel)
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| Paperback Editon Cover | |
| Author | Matthew Reilly |
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| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Series | Shane Schofield |
| Genre(s) | Techno-thriller |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan |
| Released | November, 2003 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 462 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-7329-1116-8 |
| Preceded by | Area 7 |
| Followed by | Hell Island |
Scarecrow is the fifth Matthew Reilly novel, and the third to feature the main character Captain Shane Schofield, USMC. It was released in 2003.
[edit] Synopsis
A gruesome USD $18.6 million bounty hunt is on for 15 targets across the world - all either intelligence officers, military personnel or terrorists. The bounty will be paid upon production of the decapitated head of each target. One of them is Shane Schofield (callsign "Scarecrow") our all-action hero. Schofield is leading a special forces team on a mission in Siberia, looking for a missing Delta Force team. Delta had been sent to quell some terrorists, and is led by two of those whose names are on the hitlist.
Arriving on the scene, Schofield proceeds with the mission, splitting his team into two groups. They are subseqeuntly ambushed and a huge battle against mercenaries ensues, ending with the destruction of the Gulag facility by a missile launched from an abandoned Typhoon class submarine and Schofield and his NCO Book II escaping by hijacking a fighter jet.
Schofield gains an unlikely ally in the "Black Knight", a bounty hunter being paid to keep Schofield alive rather than kill him, and their alliance takes them worldwide from Afghanistan to France in a desperate race to stay alive.
At the heart of the conspiracy are the twelve most powerful businessmen in the world; self-styled puppeteers manipulating the course of governments calling themselves the Majestic-12. Member No. 12, Johnathon James Killian controls the Axis Corporation, a defence contractor of the United States commissioned to construct the sinister 'Chameleon' project, a series of nuclear warheads and missiles designed to imitate the weapons of another nuclear power. As an Israeli Mossad agent describes them, "they're designed to start wars ... but to make it look like someone else fired the first shot".
The Chameleon series of missiles is protected by the CincLock-VII security system which can only arm or disarm the missiles if three criteria are met: proximity to warhead (must be within 60 feet), a light-pattern reflex response test and a numerical code. It is the light-pattern reflex test that is the crux of CincLock-VII - only someone who knows the sequence of flashing lights by heart or with unusually fast reflexes will be able to disarm the system. The fifteen names on the bounty list include six soldiers who can disarm the program, two scientists who worked on the NATO precursor to the reflex test, three spies who variously know about Chameleon and Majestic-12, three terrorists who participated in the Soviet equivalent of the NATO tests, and one high-ranking soldier who oversaw key parts of the program.
The Majestic-12 plan to fire a series of Iranian nuclear warheads on London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle and a series of North Korean missiles on New Delhi, Islamabad, Beijing and Hong Kong. With the aid of the French, Majestic-12 stage a series of terror raids on their missile plants and steal their own projects before starting the bounty hunt to stop anyone from getting near Chameleon.
Killian, however, has his own endgame. As an anarchist, he confesses his love for watching people in situations where there is no law or order. Directly in control of the missiles, he substitutes several of the missiles so that India and Pakistan apparently engage in mutual nuclear bombardment, while China is hit by Taiwan. Killian also adds an additional Israeli-made missile, based in Yemen and aimed at Mecca on the day of Ramadan and armed with an American warhead. The book ends in a usual Scarecrow fasion, he blows up everything but before the end he nearly kills himself because of the death of his girlfriend Gant.
Mother, Gant and Book II all return from previous Schofield adventures.
[edit] Trivia
- Matthew Reilly described Scarecrow as the beginning of a Matthew Reilly 2.0 style.
- The name of Demon Larkham's bounty hunter team, IG-88 is taken from the robotic bounty hunter in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
- Aloysius Knight is named after Aloysius Gonzaga, a Jesuit saint who was the namesake of his old high school St Aloysius' College in Sydney, Australia.
