Love Machine roared.
A separate volley hit both of his front tires and they
punctured loudly, and suddenly he was skidding out of control,
sliding precariously close to the edge of the elevator
shaft and the now ten-foot drop to the slowly descending
platform.
Somehow, he didn't fall into the shaft. Instead, he
180 Matthew Reilly
bounced across the northeastern corner of the great square
hole, shooting past the 7th Squadron men who had hammered
him with gunfire, and slammed at tremendous speed
into the remains of Nighthawk Two, which still sat near the
northern wall of the hangar--attached to its own towing vehicle,
its cockpit blasted open--right where Book II had left
it ninety minutes earlier.
ELVIS SAW THE CRASH FROM HIS POSITION INSIDE MARINE ONE, saw Love Machine's cockroach plough into Nighthawk Two
and lurch to a thunderous halt, the bricklike towing vehicle
half-buried in the helicopter's crumpled side.
And then he saw the three 7th Squadron men rushing
toward the crashed cockroach.
"Oh, no ..." he breathed.
meanwhile, schofield, book II, juliet and the president-- still dressed in their black 7th Squadron uniforms--were
fighting their own unique kind of battle.
Since it was now descending into the square-shaped
shaft, the aircraft elevator platform had effectively become a
great walled pit, the four walls of the shaft bounding it on
every side. And with the remains of the AWACS plane still
strewn about the platform, it was also now a twisted steel
maze.
Seven members of Bravo Unit moved among the pieces
of the plane, searching for them, hunting them.
Schofield guided his people along the eastern edge of
the platform, leading the way, hurdling broken pieces of
plane, eyes watchful for the enemy, but searching the floor
for something else, something he had planted--
There.
The broken section of wing was right where he had left
it.
Schofield hurried over to it. It was resting on the ground
at the corner of the moving elevator platform, up against the
northern and eastern walls. With Book II's help, he lifted the
area 7 181
portion of wing off the elevator's floor, revealing a wide
square hole in the platform.
The hole was about ten feet square. It was that part of the
platform that usually housed the detachable mini-elevator.
Right now, the detachable section of the elevator platform
lay about fifteen feet below them, farther down the
shaft--nestled in the corner, unmoving, waiting for them.
By placing the broken section of wing over the top of it
earlier, Schofield had ensured that the 7th Squadron didn't
know this exit existed.
It was their escape route.
"love machine! You still alive?" elvis yelled into his
mike from the cockpit of Marine One.
"Aw, fuck ..." came the pained reply.
"Can you move?"
"Get out of here, man. I'm gone. I'm hit and my ankle
was busted in the crash--"
"We don't leave anyone behind," another voice said
firmly over the same frequency.
It was Schofield's voice.
"Elvis. You and Fox get clear. I'm closer--I'll take care
of Love Machine. Love Machine, sit tight. I'm coming for
you."
ON THE DOWNWARD-MOVING ELEVATOR PLATFORM, SCHOFIELD
spun and looked upwards.
"What are you doing?" Book II asked.
"I'm going to get Love Machine," he said, eyeing the
destroyed fuselage of the AWACS plane above him. It was
still tilted sharply forward--nose down, ass up. The elevated
rear section of the plane was still above the rim of the hangar
floor. But not for long. Soon the downward movement of the
platform would bring it below the rim.
"Take the President down," he said to Book II and
Juliet.
"What are you going to do?" Juliet said.
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Matthew Reilly
"I'm going to get my man," Schofield said. "I'll meet
you downstairs."
With that he took off into the twisted metal forest
around them.
Book II and Juliet could only watch him go. And then
they set about their own task of leaping down to the detachable
mini-elevator in the shaft below them.
SCHOFIELD RAN.
Up the steeply sloping left-hand wing of the destroyed
AWACS plane.
He reached the top of the wing, then used some dents in
the side of the fuselage to climb up onto the battered plane's
roof. It was then that he was spotted by two of the Bravo
Unit men on the platform below him.
Their P-90 assault rifles erupted.
But Schofield never stopped moving. He just kept running,
dancing up the slanted roof of the plane, heading
aft--toward the point where the rear section of the
downward-moving plane was about to swing past the rim
of the shaft.
He hit the rear edge of the plane's roof just as it
swooped past the rim and he jumped--diving forward, leaping
full-stretch--and landed with a thud, face-first, out of
the line of fire, on the main hangar's shiny concrete floor,
twenty feet away from Love Machine's crashed cockroach.
He looked up just in time to see the three 7th Squadron
commandos arrive at the cockroach's door.
love machine sighed as he saw the muzzle of a P-90 Assault
rifle appear a few inches in front of his face.
The features of the 7th Squadron commando holding
the gun were obscured by the soldier's half-faced gas mask,
but the man's eyes weren't covered. They glinted with satisfaction.
Love Machine closed his eyes, waited for the end.
Blam!
No end.
area 7 183
Confused, he opened his eyes again--to see his executioner,
now with only half a head, sway unsteadily on his
feet, and then fall in a kind of stunned slow motion to the
ground.
The other two commandos spun instantly, only to be cut
down by a ferocious volley of semiautomatic pistol fire.
They were hurled out of view and then to Love Machine's
complete surprise, he saw, standing in their place--The Scarecrow.
Dressed in his black 7th Squadron clothing.
"Come on," Schofield said. "Let's get you out of here."
BOOK II LANDED ON THE NONSKID DECK OF THE MINI-ELEVATOR,
next to Juliet and the President, eight feet below the
downward-moving main platform.
It was dark down here, in the shadow of the principal
platform.
As soon as they were all on the detachable deck, Juliet
hit a button on a small console built into its floor.
The detachable deck began to glide quickly down the
side of the shaft, traveling on its own set of wall-mounted
rails, moving faster than the gigantic main platform above it.
Pulling away.
SCHOFIELD BEGAN TO HAUL LOVE MACHINE OUT OF THE Cockroach.
As he did so, he saw several weapons strewn about the
exploded-open cockpit of Nighthawk Two--a couple of
MP-10's, some grenades, a chunky .44 caliber "Desert Eagle"
semiautomatic pistol, and, most pleasing of all for
Schofield, two gunlike weapons, still in their black-leather
back holsters, that must have spilled out of Nighthawk
Two's weapons cabinet when it had been blown apart earlier.
They looked like high-tech Tommy guns, each possessed
of a short stubby barrel and two handgrips. Sticking
out of each gun's barrel, however, was a chrome grappling
hook with a bulbous magnetic head.
It was the famous Armalite MH-12 Maghook, a grappling
hook which also contained a high-powered magnet for
adhesion to sheer metallic surfaces.
"Oh, yes ..." Schofield said, grabbing the two Maghooks
area 7 185
and handing one of them to Love Machine. He also grabbed
an MP-10, and the big Desert Eagle pistol, which he shoved
into his belt--
Ping!
At that moment, the doors to the nearby personnel elevator
abruptly opened--
--revealing ten fully armed 7th Squadron men!
Python Willis and the men of Charlie Unit.
Python's eyes nearly popped out of his head when he
saw Schofield standing so close and dressed in 7th Squadron
attire.
His men raised their P-90's instantly.
"Oh, shit!" Schofield said as he shoved Love Machine
back into the cockroach's driver's compartment and clambered
in there with him as a volley of bullets slammed into
the cockroach's frame.
Schofield jammed the stick into reverse--hoped to God
it would still go--and planted the gas pedal to the floor.
The cockroach squealed off the mark, its rear tires
smoking, shooting backwards out of the wreck of Nighthawk
Two, impact sparks chasing it across the floor.
The cockroach rushed across the hangar floor in reverse,
narrowly missing the edge of the elevator shaft as it
rocketed toward the now-abandoned barricade on the eastern
side of the shaft.
Schofield turned in his seat as he drove--saw the barricade
rushing toward him a second too late.
He hit the brakes and the big three-ton towing vehicle
did a wild 180-degree spin. The front end of the cockroach
came swinging around like a baseball bat and took out the
barricade with one devastating swipe, sending crates and
Samsonite containers flying everywhere.
The cockroach jolted to a halt.
In its driver's compartment, Schofield lurched forward.
When he looked up to see where he was, he was surprised to
see that, right next to his door, not three feet away, stood the
chair upon which sat the President's briefcase--the Football.
Holy shit.
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Matthew Reilly
The briefcase's handgrip was still tethered to the floor
by the length of superstrong titanium cord, but now, since the
President had successfully reset its ninety-minute timer, it
had been abandoned by the 7th Squadron men, rightfully assuming
that the President's sole objective was now to get out.
So now the Football just sat there, alone, completely
unguarded.
Schofield saw the opportunity, and took it.
He leapt out of the driver's compartment and slid to the
floor beside the Football.
The men of Charlie Unit were charging across the
hangar, guns blazing, pummeling the exposed rump of the
cockroach with a million rounds of lead.
Sheltered by the big towing vehicle, Schofield brought
one of the tiny 7th Squadron Lock-Blasters out of his
pocket, attached it to the tie-down stud in the floor that held
the Football to the ground, hit the activate button, and dived
away.
One, one-thousand ...
Two, one-thousand ...
Three--
The blast was short and sharp.
With a loud crack! the tie-down stud broke free from
the floor, and suddenly the Football--with the length of titanium
cord still attached to it--was free.
Schofield scooped it up and dived back into the cab of
the cockroach, just as the first 7th Squadron men arrived.
Two of them leapt up onto the back of the cockroach,
landing on it at the exact same moment that Schofield
floored the accelerator and the cockroach took off, the sudden
lurch of motion sending one of the commandos falling
ass-over-head off the back of the towing vehicle.
The second man had better reflexes. He discarded his
P-90, giving himself an extra hand, and somehow managed
to hang on to the roof of the speeding vehicle.
Schofield swung the cockroach around the southern
side of the enormous elevator shaft--tires squealing, engine
roaring, and now with an extra passenger on its back.
area 7
He saw Marine One up ahead, standing on the western
side of the shaft, its rotor blades still turning.
That was where he wanted to go. Pull alongside Marine
One, race inside it and then leap down into its floor hatch
and escape into the ventilation shaft below it.
But his hopes were dashed when he saw the three black
clad men from Alpha Unit appear from the other side of the
Presidential helicopter, guns up.
Ready for him.
Why weren't they?
With shocking suddenness, the small rear window of
the driver's compartment behind Schofield's head exploded
all around him, showering Schofield and Love Machine
with glass, and a pair of black-gloved hands appeared on either
side of Schofield's head, one of them brandishing a
knife!
It was the 7th Squadron commando on the back of the
cockroach. With his head held above the driver's compartment,
he was reaching in with his hands to kill Schofield.
On a reflex, Schofield grabbed the man's knife hand,
while the assassin's other hand clutched madly at his face.
They were still rushing toward Marine One, the cockroach--its two front tires punctured, its driver fighting for
his life--caroming wildly across the shiny hangar floor.
Grappling with the commando behind him, Schofield
saw Marine One ahead of them, saw its rapidly spinning
vertical tail rotor, a blurring circle of motion about six feet
off the ground, a few inches higher than the roof of the
cockroach ...
Schofield didn't miss a beat.
He threw the fast-moving cockroach into a skid, fishtailing
the big vehicle sideways--sliding it underneath the
tail rotor of Marine One, so that the buzz saw-like blades of
the vertical rotor passed low over the cockroach's roof.
Then he heard the commando behind him scream in terror
before--abruptly--the yell was cut short as the tail rotor
sheared the commando's head clean off his body and a
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Matthew Reilly
shocking waterfall of blood gushed down from the roof of
the driver's compartment.
The three men of Alpha Unit standing near Marine One
h
urled themselves clear of the sliding towing vehicle as it
shot beneath the tail boom of the President's helicopter.
The cockroach emerged on the other side of the chopper,
skidding to a sideways halt, so that now the bullet
battered towing vehicle was facing the great square hole that
was the elevator shaft.
Schofield saw the yawning shaft before him--with its
wide hydraulic platform inside it, still making its ponderous
descent; saw the AWACS plane's flying-saucer-like roto
dome about ten feet below the floorline.
He revved the engine.
Love Machine saw what he was thinking.
"You are out of your mind, Captain."
"Whatever works," Schofield said. "Hang on."
He gunned it.
The cockroach shot forward, rear tires squealing,
rushed toward the edge of the shaft.
Speed is everything, Schofield thought as he drove. He
needed enough forward velocity so that the cockroach
would reach the ...
The cockroach rushed toward the rim.
Bullet sparks exploded all around it.
Schofield drove hard.
Then the cockroach hit the edge of the elevator shaft
and launched itself out into the air ...
THE COCKROACH SOARED—WHEELS SPINNING, NOSE HIGH.
Then, as it fell, its forward bumper began to droop and
it resumed the appearance of three tons of steel that was
never intended to fly.
By this time, the elevator platform had descended about
thirty feet below floorline, but the body of the destroyed
AWACS plane—and its intact rotodome—made the fall for
the soaring cockroach only about ten feet.
The cockroach landed—smash!—right on top of the
AWACS plane's downward-slanted rotodome.
The rotodome, titanium-based and very rigid, resisted
the downward energy of the falling vehicle valiantly.
Its support struts, however, did not.
They buckled instantly, snapping like twigs, as did the
body of the airplane underneath the rotodome.
The AWACS's cylindrical fuselage just crumpled like
an aluminum can under the weight of the falling towing vehicle,
effectively cushioning the roach's fall.
The rotodome was driven down into the fuselage, creating
a ramplike effect which allowed Schofield's cockroach