could be adapted for use on something the American government
was working on--a vaccine against the Sinovirus, a
virus that distinguishes between races."
"So we brought him here," Schofield said.
"That's right," Herbie said.
"And now it seems we're discovering that Professor
Botha isn't all that trustworthy."
"It would seem so."
Schofield paused for a moment, thinking.
"And he's not working alone," he said.
"How do you know?"
Schofield said, "All those dead 7th Squadron men we
saw when we arrived on Level 6 earlier. I've never met Gunther Botha before, but I'm pretty sure he couldn't wipe out
an entire 7th Squadron unit all by himself. Remember,
Botha opened three doors, the two X-rail doors and the
Emergency Escape Vent--which opens onto Level 6.
"He let a team of men in through that vent. They were
the ones who killed the 7th Squadron men there. Judging by
the bullet wounds in their backs and the amount of slashed
throats, I presume Botha's friends caught the 7th Squadron
men from behind." Schofield bit his lip. "But that still
doesn't tell me what I want to know."
"And what is that?"
Schofield looked up. "If Botha is selling us out, what I
want to know is: who is he selling us out to?"
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"IT WAS A SECURITY RISK FROM THE START, BUT WE COULDN'T
have done it without him," the President said.
He and the others were sitting in the observation lab
overlooking the smashed glass cube on Level 4, catching
their breath.
When they'd arrived moments earlier, they'd been confronted
by the sight of a thick circular ceiling hatch lying on
the floor of the lab.
The 7th Squadron had been through here.
Which hopefully meant they wouldn't be coming back
soon. It would be a good place to hide, for a while.
Libby Gant was the only one who stood--still on edge--gazing down at the destroyed cube. The underground complex had grown strangely silent since Caesar's last update,
as if the 7th Squadron weren't prowling around it anymore,
as if they had stopped hounding the President, at least
for the moment.
Gant didn't like it.
It meant something was up.
And so she had just asked the President about Gunther
Botha, the man who had taken Kevin.
"Botha knew more about racially targeted viruses than
all of our scientists put together," the President went on.
"But he had a history."
"With the apartheid regime?"
"Yes, and beyond that. What we feared the most were
his links with a group called Die Organisasie, or the Organisation.
It's an underground network comprising former
apartheid ministers, wealthy South African landowners, former
elite troops from the South African armed forces, and
ousted military leaders who fled the country when apartheid
collapsed, rightfully fearing that the new government would
have their heads for past crimes. Most intelligence agencies
believe that Die Organisasie only wants to retake South
Africa, but we're not so sure."
"What do you mean?" Gant asked.
The President sighed. "You have to realize what's at
area 7 233
stake here. Ethnically selective bioweapons like the
Sinovirus are like no other weapon in the history of
mankind. They are the ultimate bargaining tool, because
they have the power to sentence a defined population to
death while absolutely, without question, protecting another.
"Our fears about Die Organisasie don't just relate to
what they'd do to the Republic of South Africa. It's what
they'd do to the entire African continent that frightens us."
"Yes ..."
"Die Organisasie is a racist organization, pure and simple.
They actually believe white people are genetically superior
to black people. They believe that black people should be slaves to whites. They don't just hate South African black
people, they hate all black people.
"Now, if Die Organisasie has the Sinovirus and the vaccine
to it, they could release it Africa-wide, and give the cure
only to those white groups who supported them. Black
Africa would die, and the rest of the world wouldn't be able
to do a thing about it, because we wouldn't have the vaccine
to the Sinovirus.
"Do you remember in 1999 when Ghaddafi spoke of
uniting Africa like never before? He spoke of creating 'the
United States of Africa,' but it was regarded as a joke.
Ghaddafi could never have made that happen. There are far
too many tribal issues to overcome to unite the various black
African nations. But," the President said, "an organization
that had the Sinovirus and its cure in its possession could
rule Africa with an iron fist. It could turn Africa--resource rich Africa, complete with a billion-strong black slave workforce
--into its own private empire."
SCHOFIELD'S BATTERED X-RAIL CAR RACED THROUGH THE underground
tunnel.
They had been traveling for ten minutes now and
Schofield was beginning to feel anxious. They would be arriving
at the loading dock adjoining the lake soon and he
didn't know what to expect.
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Matthew Reilly
One question about Area 7, however, was still bothering
him. "Herbie, how did the Air Force get a sample of the
Sinovirus?"
"Good question," Herbie said, nodding. "It took a
while, but eventually we managed to turn two Chinese lab workers at the biowarfare facility in Changchun. In return
for a one-way trip to America and twenty million U.S. dollars
each, they agreed to smuggle several vials of the virus
out of China."
"The guys in the decompression chamber," Schofield
said, recalling the Asian faces he had seen inside the chamber
on Level 4 earlier.
"Yes."
"But there were four men inside the chamber."
"That's right," Herbie said. "As you'd probably understand,
in China, top-secret government lab workers can't
just up and leave the country that easily. We had to get them
out. The other two men inside that quarantine chamber were
the two 7th Squadron soldiers who extracted them from
China--two Chinese-American officers named Robert Wu
and Chet Li. Wu and Li used to be a part of Echo Unit, one
of the five 7th Squadron teams based at Area 7, which was
why they were chosen--"
Abruptly, Schofield held up his hand, moved to the
front windshield.
"Sorry, Dr. Franklin," he said, "but I'm afraid that'll
have to do for the moment. I have a funny feeling that things
are about to get a little hairy."
He nodded at the tunnel ahead of them.
At the end of the long concrete tunnel, beyond its rapidly
streaking gray walls, was a tiny luminous speck of
light--growing larger as they approached it--the familiar
glow of artificial fluorescent lighting.
It was the loading dock.
They had
arrived at the end of the tunnel.
"DON'T GO IN," SCHOFIELD SAID TO BOOK. 'THEY COULD BE
waiting for us inside. Stop in the tunnel. We'll walk the rest
of the way."
The bullet-riddled X-rail train slowed to a halt in the
darkness of the tunnel, a hundred yards short of the illuminated
loading dock.
Schofield was out of it in an instant—Desert Eagle in
one hand, the Football flailing from his waist—leaping
down to the concrete next to the tracks. Brainiac, Book II
and Herbie followed close behind him.
They ran down the tunnel toward the light, guns up.
Schofield came to the end of the tunnel, peered around
the concrete corner.
Brilliant white light assaulted his eyes. He found himself
staring at a giant rocky cavern that had been converted
into a modern loading dock—a curious mix of flat concrete
and uneven rocky surfaces.
Two sets of X-rail tracks lay on either side of a long
central platform. The track on Schofield's side of the platform
was empty, while the track on the other side was occupied
by another X-rail train ... Botha's.
It lay still, unmoving.
Some black steel cranes ran on wall-mounted rails,
leading from the X-rail tracks to a wide pool of water at the
far end of the enormous rocky cavern.
The water in the pool glowed a brilliant aquamarine
green, enriched by the minerals of Lake Powell. The pool itself
disappeared to the west, winding its way into a twisting
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Matthew Reilly
black cave that Schofield could only assume led out to the
lake. Three ordinary-looking houseboats and a couple of
strange-looking sand-colored speedboats bobbed on its surface,
tied to the loading bay's concrete dock.
There was one other thing that Schofield noticed about
the immense underground loading bay.
It was empty.
Completely and utterly empty.
Deserted.
Schofield stepped cautiously out from the tunnel, and
climbed up onto the central platform between the two X-rail
tracks, dwarfed by the sheer size of the cavern.
And then he saw it.
Standing at the other end of the platform, over by the
pool of water leading out to the lake.
It looked like some bizarre kind of supermarket display:
a small chest-high "pyramid" of yellow ten-gallon barrels,
in front of which sat a chunky Samsonite trunk--black and
solid and high-tech. The trunk's lid was open.
As he approached them, Schofield saw that the yellow
barrels had words stenciled on their sides.
"Oh, damn ..." he said as he read them.
AFX-708: EXPLOSIVE FILLER.
AFX-708 was a shockingly powerful explosive epoxy,
used in the famous BLU-109 bombs that had ripped Saddam
Hussein's bunkers to shreds in the Gulf War. A 109's super hardened nose would drive down into a solid concrete
bunker and then the AFX-708 warhead inside it would detonate
--hard--and blow the bunker up from the inside.
With Book II, Brainiac and Herbie behind him,
Schofield looked inside the open Samsonite trunk that sat in
front of the collection of AFX barrels.
A timer display stared back up at him.
00:19.
00:18.
00:17.
"Mother of God ..." he breathed. Then he turned to the
others, "Gentlemen! Run!"
area 7 237
seventeen seconds later, a bone-crunching explosion
ripped through the loading bay.
The cluster of AFX-708 barrels sent a devastating ball
of white-hot light shooting out in every direction, expanding
radially.
The rock-and-concrete walls of the loading bay cracked
under the weight of the explosion, blasting outwards in a
million lethal chunks, one entire wall just disintegrating to
powder in the blink of an eye. Gunther Botha's X-rail train--
so close to the source of the blast--was simply vaporized.
SCHOFIELD NEVER SAW IT.
Because by the time the explosives went off, he and the
others were no longer inside the loading bay.
They were outside.
FOURTH CONFRONTATION
3 July, 0912 Hours
NORTH-EASTERN LAKE POWELL,
UTAH, U.S.A.
canyon
Desert plain
THE HEAT hit THEM LIKE A BLAST FURNACE.
Blistering desert heat.
It was everywhere. In the air. In the rock. Against your
skin. Enveloping you, surrounding you, as if you were standing in an oven. The complete opposite of the subterranean
cool of Area 7 and the X-rail tunnel.
Out here, the blazing desert sun ruled.
shane schofield sped down a narrow water-filled
canyon at breakneck speed, blasting through the heat, sitting
at the controls of a very odd-looking--but very fast--speedboat.
With him in the boat was Book II, while behind them, in
a similar craft of their own, were Brainiac and Herbie.
Technically, Schofield's boat was called a PCR-2-- patrol-craft, river, two-man--but it was more commonly
known as a "bipod," a small two-man jet-propelled rivercraft
built by the Lockheed Shipbuilding Company for the U.S.
Basically, it looked as if someone had joined two small
bullet-shaped jet boats with a thin seven-foot crossbeam, in
effect creating a catamaran-type vehicle with two pods at either
end of the beam. Since both open-topped pods were
possessed of powerful two-hundred-horsepower Yamaha
pump-jet engines, it made for an extremely fast--and extremely
stable--boat frame.
Schofield's bipod was painted in desert camouflage colors
--brown blobs on a sandy yellow background--and it
shot over the water at incredible speed, kicking up twin ten foot
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Matthew Reilly
sprays of water behind it. Schofield sat in the left-hand
pod, driving, while Book II sat in the right-hand one, manning
the boat's sinister bow-mounted 7.62 mm machine gun.
The sun shone--burning hot.
It was already 100 degrees in the shade.
"How you guys doing over there?" Schofield said into
his wrist mike as he looked back at the other bipod behind
him--Brainiac was driving, Herbie sat in the gunner's pod.
Brainiac's voice: "I'm okay, but I think our scientist
friend here is turning green."
They were speeding down a twenty-foot-wide slot
canyon that wended its way southward, toward the main
body of Lake Powell.
The pool of water at the far end of the loading bay had
indeed led out to the lake, a tight, dark, winding cave whose
exterior door--a brilliantly camouflaged plate-steel gate designed
to look like a wall of rock--had been left open by the
escaping thieves.
Schofield and his men had emerged from the cave at the
end of a dead-end canyon and powered off not a moment before
the entire wall of rock behind them had been blasted
outward by the monstrous AFX explosion.
The two bip
ods sped around a wide bend in the water
filled canyon.
When viewed from above, this canyon resembled a
race-car track, a never-ending series of twists, turns and full
180-degree bends.
That wasn't so bad.
The trouble started when it met up with all the other narrow canyons of Lake Powell--then the canyon system
resembled a giant high-walled maze of interconnecting natural
canals.
They came to an intersection of three canyons, arriving
at it from the northeast.
At first Schofield didn't know what to do.
Two rock-walled canals stretched away from him--a
fork in the watery road. And he didn't know where Botha
area 7 243
was going. Presumably the South African scientist had a
plan--but what?
And then Schofield saw the waves. Saw a collection of
ripples lapping against the sheer stone walls of the canyon
branching away to the left--barely perceptible, but definitely
there--the residual waves of a motorboat's wash.
Schofield gunned it, swinging left, heading south.
As he traveled down the canyonways, banking with the
bends, he looked upward. The rocky walls of these canyons
rose at least two hundred feet above the water level. At their
rims, Schofield saw clouds of billowing sand, blowing viciously,
offering sporadic relief from the blazing sun.
It was the sandstorm.
The sandstorm that had been forecast to occur that
morning, but which the members of HMX-1 had expected to
miss.
It was absolutely raging up there, Schofield saw, but
down here, in the shelter of the canyons, it was relatively
calm--a kind of meteorological haven below the canyon
system's high rocky rim.
Relatively calm, Schofield emphasized.
Because at that moment, he rounded a final corner and,
completely unexpectedly, burst out into wide open space--
into an enormous craterlike formation with a giant flat
topped mesa rising out of the water in its center.
Although the crater was bounded by magnificent sheer rock walls, it was too wide to offer total protection from the
wild sandstorm above. Flurries of sand whipped down into