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The 7th Squadron men slowed slightly, if only because
this was such an odd thing for Elvis to do. He was quite
obviously unarmed and yet he just kept moving slowly
forward--twenty yards from them, twenty yards from the
President--completely calm.
The 7th Squadron commandos never heard the mantra
he was repeating softly to himself as he walked. "You killed
my friend. You killed my friend. You killed my friend ..."
Quickly and efficiently, one of the 7th Squadron men
raised his P-90 and fired a short burst. The volley ripped
Elvis's chest to shreds and he fell, and the 7th Squadron men
resumed their advance.
It was only when they reached Elvis that they heard him
speaking, gurgling through his own blood: "You killed my
friend ..."
And then they saw his bearlike right hand open like a
flower--
--to reveal, resting in his palm, a high-powered RDX
hand grenade.
"You killed my ..."
Elvis drew his final breath.
And his hand relaxed completely--releasing the
grenade's spoon--and to the utter horror of the men of
Bravo Unit standing close around it, the powerful RDX
grenade went off with all its terrible force.
THE X-RAIL TRAIN ROCKETED THROUGH THE TUNNEL SYSTEM.
Sleek and streamlined, with its bullet-shaped nose and
its flat X-framed fuselage, the twin-carriage train whipped
through the wide tunnel at a cool two hundred miles per
hour--and this despite its blasted-out windows and bullet
battered walls.
It moved with little noise and surprising smoothness.
This was because it was propelled not by an engine, but
rather by a state-of-the-art magnetic propulsion system that
had been developed to replace the aging steam-operated catapults
on the Navy's aircraft carriers. Magnetic propulsion
required few moving parts yet yielded phenomenal ground
speeds, making it very popular among engineers who lived
by the rule that the more parts a piece of machinery has, the
more parts it has that can break.
Book II sat in the driver's compartment, hands on the
controls. Herbie sat beside him. The driver's compartment
was the only part of the X-rail car that hadn't had all its windows
blasted to pieces.
"Aw, shit!" Schofield's voice yelled from behind them. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"
Schofield strode into the driver's compartment.
"What's wrong?" Book II asked.
"This is what's wrong," Schofield said, indicating the
silver Samsonite briefcase dangling from his combat webbing.
The Football. "Damn it! Everything was happening
too fast. I never even thought about it when the President
dived off the train. What time is it?"
area 7 223
It was 8:55.
"Great," he said. "We now have just over an hour to get
this suitcase back to the President."
"Should we turn around?" Book II asked.
Schofield paused, thinking fast, a thousand thoughts
swirling through his head.
Then he said decisively: "No. I'm not leaving that boy.
We can get back in time."
"Uh, but what about the country?" Book II said.
Schofield offered him a crooked smile. "I've never lost
to a countdown yet, and I'm not about to start today." He
turned to Herbie. "All right, Herbie. Twenty-five words or
less: tell me about this X-rail system. Where does it go?"
"Well, it's not exactly my area of expertise," Herbie
said, "but I've traveled on it a few times. So far as I know,
it's actually made up of two systems. One heads west from
Area 7, taking you to Lake Powell. The other heads east,
taking you to Area 8."
As Herbie explained, they were on the system that extended
forty miles to the west, out to Lake Powell.
Schofield had heard of Lake Powell before. Truth be
told, it was not so much a lake as a vast one-hundred-and-ninety-mile-long
mazelike network of twisting water-filled
canyons.
Situated right on the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell
had once looked like the Grand Canyon, an enormous system
of gorges and canyons that had been carved into the
earth by the mighty Colorado River, the same river that
would create the Grand Canyon farther downstream.
Unlike the Grand Canyon, however, Lake Powell had
been dammed by the U.S. government in 1963 to generate
hydroelectric power--thus backing up the river, creating the
lake, and turning what was already a striking vista of rock
formations into a spectacular desert canyonland that was
half-filled with water.
Now giant sand-yellow mesas rose majestically out of
the lake's sparkling blue waters, while towering templelike
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buttes lorded over its flat blue horizon. And, of course, there
were the chasms and canyons, now with canals at their bases
instead of dusty rocky paths.
Kind of like a cross between the Grand Canyon and
Venice, really.
Like any large project, the damming of the Colorado
River in 1963 had raised howls of protest. Environmentalists
claimed that the dam raised silt levels and threatened the
ecosystem of a two-centimeter-long variety of tadpole. This
seemed like nothing, however, to the owner of a tiny rest stop gas station, who would see his store--built on the site
of an old western trading post--covered by a hundred feet of
water. He was compensated by the government.
In any case, with its ninety-three named gorges and
God-only-knew how many others, for a few years Lake
Powell became a popular tourist destination for house
boaters. But times had changed, and the tourist trade had
slackened off. Now it lay largely silent, a ghostlike network
of winding chasms and ultra-narrow "slot canyons," in
which there was to be found no flat ground, only sheer vertical
rock and water, endless water.
"This X-rail tunnel meets the lake at an underground
loading bay," Herbie said. "The system was built for two
reasons. First, so that the construction of Areas 7 and 8 could
be kept absolutely secret. Materials would be hauled on
barges up the lake and then delivered forty miles underground
to the building site. We still use it occasionally as a
back-door entrance for supplies and prisoner delivery."
"Okay," Schofield said. "And the second reason?"
"To act as an escape route in the event of an emergency,"
Herbie said.
Schofield looked forward.
X-rail tracks rushed by beneath him--and above him-- at incredible speed. The wide rectangular tunnel in front of
the train bent away into darkness.
A sudden noise made him spin, pistol up.
Brainiac froze in the doorway to the driver's compartment,
his hands snapping into the air.
area 7
225
"Whoa-whoa-whoa! It's me!"
Schofield lowered his gun. "Knock next time, will you?"
"Sure thing, Boss." Brainiac sat d
own in a spare seat.
"Where have you been?"
"In the back of the second carriage. I got separated from
the others when those rocket grenades came flying in. Dived
into a storage compartment just as the three grenades went
off."
"Well, it's good to have you here," Schofield said. "We
need all the help we can get." He turned to Herbie. "Can we
get telemetry on any of the other trains on this system?"
"I think so," Herbie said. "Just give me a second
here ..."
He punched some keys on the driver's console. A computer
monitor on the dashboard came to life. In a few seconds,
Herbie brought up an image of the X-rail system.
X-RAIL NETWORK 3-589-001
Schofield saw an elongated S-bend that stretched horizontally
from Area 7 to the network of canyons that was
Lake Powell. He also saw two blinking red dots moving
along the trackline toward the lake.
"The dots are X-rail trains," Herbie said. "That's us
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closer to Area 7. The other one must have left about ten minutes
ahead of us."
Schofield stared at the first blinking dot as it arrived at
the loading bay and stopped.
"So, Herbie," he said, "since we've got a bit of time, this
Botha character. Who is he?"
NO SOONER HAD ELVIS'S HAND GRENADE GONE OFF THAN
Gant and Mother and Juliet were up on their feet and firing
their guns hard, covering the President as they all ran back toward
the fire stairwell from which they had entered Level 6.
The blast of Elvis's RDX grenade had killed five of the
7th Squadron men instantly. Their bloodied limbs now lay
splayed across the X-rail tracks on either side of the central
platform.
The five remaining members of Bravo Unit had been
farther away from the grenade when it had gone off. They
had been knocked over by the concussion wave, and were
now scrambling to find cover--behind pillars and down on
the X-rail tracks--in the face of Gant and the others' retreating
fire.
Into the fire stairs.
Gant led the President up the stairwell. She was breathing
hard, legs pumping, heart pounding, Mother, Juliet,
Hagerty and Tate close behind her.
The group came to the Level 5 firedoor.
Gant reached for the door's handle--then pulled her
hand back sharply.
Small jets of water spurted out from the edges of its
frame. The jets of water shot out from the door's rubber seal,
mainly from down near the floor, losing intensity as they
moved higher. No water sprayed out from the top of the
door.
It was as if there was a waist-high body of water behind
the fireproof door, just waiting to break through.
And then, from behind the door, Gant heard some of the
most hideous shrieking sounds she had ever heard in her
area 7 227
life. It was horrific--pained, desperate. The cries of trapped
animals ...
"Oh, no ... the bears," Juliet Janson said as she came
alongside Gant and saw the firedoor. "I don't think we want
to go in there."
"Agreed," Gant said.
They raced up the stairs and came to Level 4. After
checking the decompression area beyond the door, Gant
gave the all-clear.
The six of them entered, fanned out.
"Hello again!" a voice boomed out suddenly from
above them.
Everyone spun. Gant snapped her gun up fast, and found
herself drawing a bead on a wall-mounted television set.
Caesar's face was on it, grinning.
"People of America, it is now 9:04, and thus time for
your hourly update."
caesar gave his report smugly.
"--and your Marines, inept and foolish, have yet to inflict
any losses on my men. They do little but run. Indeed, His
Highness was last seen making a desperate bid for freedom
down on the lowest level of this facility. I am informed that a
firefight has just taken place down there, but await a report
on the result of that exchange ..."
As far as Gant was concerned, it was all bullshit. Whatever
Caesar said, whatever lies he told, it didn't affect their
situation. And it certainly didn't help to watch him gloat.
So while Caesar spoke on the television and the others
watched him, Gant investigated the sliding door set into the
floor that led down to Level 5.
She could just make out muffled shouts coming from
the other side of it. People yelling.
She hit the door open switch, raised her gun. The horizontal
door slid away.
The shouts became screams as the prisoners down on
Level 5 heard the door grind open.
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Gant peered down the ramp.
"Good God," she breathed.
She saw the water immediately, saw it lapping against
the ramp below her. In fact, the ramp simply disappeared
into it.
While Caesar's voice continued to boom, she edged
down the sloping walkway, until her spit-polished dress
shoes stepped ankle-deep into the water.
What she saw shook her.
The entire level was flooded.
Easily to chest height.
It was terribly dark as well, which only served to make
the flooded cell block look all the more frightening.
The inky-black indoor lake stretched away from her, to
the far end of the floor, its liquid form slipping in through the
bars of all the cells--cells which held an assortment of the
most wretched-looking individuals Gant had ever seen.
And then the prisoners saw her.
Screams, shrieks, wails. They shook the bars of their
cells, cells that they would ultimately drown in if the water
level continued to rise.
Like Schofield, Gant hadn't seen the cell bay before. She had only heard the President talk about it when he'd told
them about the Sinovirus and its vaccine, Kevin.
"We'd better go." Juliet appeared at her shoulder. Caesar's
broadcast, it seemed, had concluded.
"They're going to drown ..." Gant said, as Janson
pulled her gently back up the ramp to Level 4.
"Believe me, drowning's too good for the likes of
them," the Secret Service agent said. "Come on. Let's find somewhere to hole up. I don't know about you, but I sure as
hell need a rest."
She hit the door close button and the horizontal door
slid shut, cutting off the prisoners' pained shouts.
Then, with the President and Mother and Hot Rod and
Tate in tow behind them, Gant and Juliet headed for the
western side of the floor.
area 7 229
None of them noticed the long decompression chamber
as they departed.
Although from a distance it appeared normal, had they
looked at it more closely, they would have seen that the
timer-activated lock on its pressurized door had timed out
and unlocked itself.
The door was no longer fully clo
sed.
The decompression chamber was now empty.
It was 9:06 a.m.
"--bravo leader, come in. report--" one of the radio operators said into his microphone.
"--Control, this is Bravo Leader. We have suffered serious
casualties on the X-rail platform. Five dead, two
wounded. One of their guys had an RDX grenade and did a
fucking kamikaze--"
"--What about the President?" the radio man cut in.
"--The President is still in the complex. I repeat: The
President is still in the complex. Last seen heading back up
the fire stairs. Some of his Marine bodyguards, though, took
off down the tunnel in the second X-rail train--"
"--And the Football?"
"--No longer with the President. One of my boys
swears that he saw that Schofield guy with it on the train--"
"--Thank you, Bravo Leader. Bring your wounded up
to the main hangar for treatment. We'll get Echo to flush the
lower floors for the President now--"
"GUNTHER botha used to be a colonel in south africa's
Medical Battalion," Herbie said, as the X-rail car hurtled
down the tunnel toward the desert lake.
"The Meds," Schofield said distastefully.
"You've heard of them?"
"Yes. Not a very nice group to be involved with. They
were an offensive bio-medical unit, a specialized subdivision
of the Reccondos. Elite troops who used biological weapons
in the field."
"That's right," Herbie said. "See, before Mandela, the
South Africans were the world leaders in biowarfare. And,
area 7 237
boy, did we love them. Ever wondered why we didn't do all
that much about defeating apartheid? Do you know who
brought us the Soviet flesh-eating bug, necrotizing fasciitis?
The South Africans.
"But as good as they were, one thing still eluded them.
They'd been trying for years to develop a virus that would
kill blacks but not whites, but they never found it. Botha was
one of their leading lights and apparently he was on the
verge of a breakthrough when the apartheid regime was
overthrown.
"As it turned out," Herbie said, "Botha's core research