Matthew Reilly Wiki
Don't have an account?
Register
Matthew Reilly Wiki
Advertisement
Register
Matthew Reilly Wiki
Matthew Reilly Wiki
1,087
pages
in: Events, Scarecrow

Majestic-12's Bounty Hunt

Edit

Majestic-12's Bounty Hunt was the contracting of several bounty hunters to hunt down and execute individuals who were potential threats to Majestic 12's plans for a new Cold War.

History[]

Early History[]

When the "billionaires club" Majestic-12 decided to enhance their overall fortunes by initiating a new Cold War, in which their individuals businesses would benefit from and improve their wealth. They chose to utilise a pair of top secret American projects known as Kormoran and Chameleon, which involved disguised battle tankers and clone missiles respectively. By taking over both these projects, M-12 could make several western countries believe they had been hit by terrorist missiles.

In the course of their planning, M-12 discovered that a few individuals could upset their plans due to certain skills or knowledge that they possessed. This included soldiers who had fast enough reflexes to pass the CincLock-VII security system's light-pattern response test (Shane Schofield, Dean McCabe, William Ashcroft, Gregory Farrell, Nigel Kingsgate and Simon Zemir), scientists who worked on the Motor Neuron Rapidity of Response Study (Thompson Oliphant and Francis Nicholson), spies who variously knew about Chameleon and Majestic-12 (Benjamin Rosenthal, Alec Christie and apparently Damien Polanski), men who participated in the Soviet Cobra equivalent of the NATO tests (Hassan Zawahiri, Yousef Nazzar and Iman Khalif), and a high-ranking officer who oversaw Chameleon and Kormoran programs (Ronson Weitzman). As a result, Majestic-12 decided to arrange a bounty hunt to get these fifteen people killed before they could be used to stop them.

One of the targets, the U.S. Marine Shane Schofield, had a reputation for succeeding against overwhelming odds. Unsettled by this, Majestic-12 decided that they would arrange a sham mission as an ambush to increase the chances of him being eliminated. Another target, Christie, had been posing as Randolph Loch's bodyguard for several months, but he had gone missing.

Six days before their plan was set to begin, the members of Majestic-12 met to finalise several details, including the targets on the bounty list. It was agreed that Killian's Forteresse de Valois castle would be used as the verification point where the heads of the targets would be brought for assessment by Monsieur Delacroix, whom M-12 had worked with in the past, as well as the total bounty per head; U.S. $18.6 million.

Scarecrow[]

The faux mission at Krask-8 to eliminate Schofield, which while successful in giving Executive Solutions a head start on the bounty hunt and giving them the chance to take the heads of both Farrell and McCabe, ultimately failed as Schofield escaped death and discovered the existence of the hunt.

Schofield made his way to the Karpalov coalmine in Afghanistan in order to reach his girlfriend, Elizabeth Gant, hoping to reunite with her before any bounty hunter could capture her to try to use Gant as bait. Along the way, however, Schofield learned from David Fairfax, whom he'd asked to look into the names on the bounty list he had obtained from Cedric Wexley, that a few other targets from the bounty list would be at the coalmine, making it a prime target for the bounty hunters.

Indeed, the rogue Spetnaz unit, the Skorpions, interrupted the Allied invasion of the Al-Qaeda base and took Ashcroft's head, while the IG-88 also arrived and collected the heads of Kingsgate, Zawahiri and Khalif. IG-88 also found and kidnapped Gant to use as bait for Schofield, unaware that he had just arrived at the mine while they were departing. The Skorpions soon surrounded Schofield, but were prevented from taking his head by the Black Knight, who had been paid to keep the Marine alive.

Over the next few hours, three more targets were taken out: Nicholson was beheaded in his sleep at his retirement home by the Zulu; Polanski was lured in by the Ice Queen's seduction; and Nazzar's apartment was broken into by the Skorpions. Each target's bounty was soon claimed at the Forteresse de Valois soon after.

As IG-88 split up to simultaneously take their collected heads to Forteresse de Valois and go after Rosenthal, the collection team began assisting a pair of MI6 agents in interrogating Weitzman regarding the universal disarm code. Schofield and Knight freed Gant from them, but failed to keep Weitzman from being decapitated by Cowboy. They soon used the three heads in IG-88's possession to try and infiltrate the castle to learn more about the bounty hunt.

Meanwhile, Book II and Mother's attempt to reach out to Rosenthal was thwarted when the Mossad agent was decapitated during IG-88's assault on King's Tower.

At the same time, Fairfax was forced to fight off the Zulu as he attempted to take out Oliphant. Though the Zulu fell to his death, the Ice Queen cut off Oliphant's head while he and Fairfax were talking.

After his and Gant's identities were exposed while investigating at Forteresse de Valois, resulting in a chase that separated him from his allies, Schofield was captured by a French carrier group, where he learned that they had also captured and interrogated Christie. Soon Christie was incinerated by a fighter jet's thrusters; luckily Schofield was rescued by Knight, Mother and Rufus before the same could befall him.

As they infiltrated the MV Talbot to disable the Chameleon missile onboard, Schofield's group discovered that they had been beaten to the site by Zemir, who was also attempting to disarm the missile. As Zemir's guardians held off the IG-88 bounty hunters, Schofield's attempt to warn them of Dmitri Zamanov's imprending attack from behind instead distracted them further, resulting in Zemir's death and leaving Schofield the last man left on Majestic-12's bounty list.

By the end of the incident, the bounty hunt had proved almost entirely successful, however Schofield was able to survive and thwart Majestic-12's plans, as well as stop Killian's extra step to cause world chaos.

Participating Bounty Hunters[]

Bounty Targets[]

Reason for the Bounty[]

The list was established by Majestic-12 so that they could be assured that their plan to start a new Cold War would not be prevented from occurring. The people on the list were placed on it due to their knowledge of the CincLock-VII security system security system, the Chameleon Project and the Kormoran Project, or because of their quick reflexes which could be used to disarm a CincLock-VII.

Override the CincLock-VII security system[]

Override the Motor Neuron Rapidity of Response Study[]

Soviet Cobra tests[]

Knowledge of Chameleon and Kormoran Projects and Majestic-12[]

Other[]

Trivia[]

  • It is not specifically mentioned why Polanski was added to Majestic-12's bounty list; it can be assumed that because he was never involved in the MNRR study, he must have had information regarding the Cobra studies, M-12 or else his expertise on the original Cold War may have been considered to be a threat.
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.
Advertisement