The torpedo closed in.
Schofield's bipod whipped across the water. Book II
saw what Schofield was aiming for--the boulder ...
The bipod hit the rock ramp, just as the torpedo swung
in underneath its jet engines and--
--the bipod shot up out of the water, its exposed twin
hulls rocketing up the length of the rock--scratching,
shrieking, screeching--and then suddenly, whoosh!, like a
stunt car leaping up into the sky, it shot off the end of the
sloping boulder, just as the torpedo detonated against the
base of the ramp, shattering it into a thousand fragments that
went showering upwards in a glorious flower-shaped formation
behind the soaring bipod.
The double-hulled boat landed in the water with a
splash, still moving fast.
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Matthew Reilly
Schofield looked forward just in time to see the South
African bipod up ahead of him veering left, heading for a
semicircular tunnel burrowed into the left-hand wall of the
canyon.
He took off after it, the remaining torpedo charging
through the water behind him like a hungry crocodile.
The South African bipod shot into the tunnel.
A second later, Schofield's twin-hulled boat whipped
into the darkness behind it.
The torpedo swung in after them.
their headlamps blazing, the two bipods zoomed down
the length of the narrow tunnel at almost a hundred miles an
hour, the dark wet walls of the passageway streaking past
them in a blur, like some ultrafast indoor roller-coaster ride.
Schofield concentrated hard as he drove.
It was so fast!
The tunnel itself was about twenty feet wide and
roughly cylindrical in shape, with its walls curving slightly
as they touched the shallow water surface. About two hundred
yards ahead of him, he saw a small point of light--the
end of the tunnel.
Suddenly Book II yelled, "It's closing!"
"What!"
"That other torpedo!"
Schofield spun.
The torpedo behind them was indeed moving in
quickly, closing the gap fast.
He snapped to look forward--saw the water-blasting jet
engines of the South African bipod five yards in front of
him. Damn it. Since each bipod was about thirteen feet
wide, the tunnel wasn't wide enough to pass.
Schofield gunned it left--but the South African bipod
cut him off. Tried right. Same deal.
"What do we do?" Book II called.
"I don't--" Schofield cut himself off. "Hang on!"
"What?"
"Just hold on tight!"
area 7 255
The torpedo weaved its way under the surface of the
shallow water like a slithering snake, edging dangerously
close to Schofield's stern.
Schofield hit his thrusters, pulled closer to the South
African bipod in front of him--so that now the two sleek
twin-hulled boats were whipping along at a hundred miles
an hour in the tightly enclosed space barely afoot apart.
Schofield saw the South African driver turn quickly in
his seat and see them.
"Hello!" Schofield gave the man a wave. "Goodbye!"
And with that, just as the torpedo began to disappear
underneath the stern of Schofield's boat, Schofield jammed
his thrusters as far forward as they would go and yanked his
steering yoke hard to the right.
His speeding bipod swung quickly right, the whole
twin-hulled boat lifting completely out of the water as it ran up the curving right-hand wall of the tunnel. The bipod
bounced so high up the wall that for a moment it was actually
traveling at right angles to the earth.
The torpedo didn't care. With its original target lost, it
quickly overtook Schofield's wall-skimming boat and zeroed
in on the only other object in the vicinity--the South
African bipod.
The explosion in the narrow confines of the tunnel was
huge.
The South African bipod was blasted to bits--bits that
were flung all around the tunnel, followed by a rolling, roaring
fireball that filled the narrow cylindrical passageway.
Still moving fast, Schofield's twin-hulled boat swooped
down off the sloping wall and blasted right through the
charred remains of the South African bipod, exploding
through the billowing wall of fire that now filled the tunnel
before--suddenly, gloriously--it burst into the bright open
space of the awaiting canyon at the end of the passageway.
SCHOFIELD EASED BACK ON THE THROTTLE AND HIS BIPOD
ground to a halt in the middle of this new canyon.
His face and body were soaking wet, covered in spray.
Book II was the same.
He looked at this new high-walled canyon around them,
trying to get a bearing on where they were, and quickly realized
that this wasn't a new canyon at all—it was the same
subcanyon he had taken earlier when he and Book II had
separated from Brainiac. Indeed, as he now saw, he and
Book weren't far from the fork in the canyon where they had
split up from Brainiac.
Schofield revved the engine, started to swing around, to
continue his pursuit of the rogue South African bipod, when
suddenly he heard a strange thumping noise to his right.
He snapped around.
And saw another helicopter ... a fourth helicopter ... half-obscured by the vertical wall of the canyon, hovering
fifty feet above the water at the fork of the two subcanyons.
One thing about this helicopter struck him straight
away.
It wasn't a Penetrator. It was far too chunky, not nearly
sleek enough.
As he saw it swing around in midair, Schofield recognized
the chopper to be a CH-53E Super Stallion, a powerful heavy-lift transport bird like the two that usually accompanied Marine One. The Super Stallion was renowned for its toughness and strength—with its lowerable rear loading ramp, it could hold fifty-five fully equipped men and carry them into hell and back.
area 7 257
The Air Force men must have brought this Super Stallion
along to carry the boy back in, as the attack-configured
Penetrators only had room for three crew members.
Judging by the way it hovered at the fork of the two
canyons, however, slowly turning laterally, Schofield figured
that this chopper was more than just a prisoner transport--it
was providing support of some kind.
Schofield spun his bipod around, headed slowly and
cautiously toward the Super Stallion.
"What are you doing?" Book II asked. "The kid is that way."
"I know," Schofield said, "but the way I see it, we're not
going to catch that boy on the water. It's time we got into the air."
the three 7th squadron commandos inside the super
Stallion all wore headsets. One flew the chopper while the
other two spoke into microphones, speaking quickly amid
the roar of the helicopter's rotor noise.
They, too, were searching for the rogue South African
bipod that had slipped away after the near collision in the
X-intersection.
"--Penetrator One, this is Looking Glass," one of them
said. "There's a canyon coming up on your right, take that. It
might have gone down that way--"
The other radioman said, "Penetrator Two. Cut back to
the north and check that slot canyon on your left--"
Matthew Reilly
A map of the canyon system glowed green on each of
the men's computer screens.
REAL TIME GEOSAT IMAGE
SATELLITE: xs-0356-070
TARGET AREA: Powell (lake) ct.
GPS GRID: 114°U"I2"W; 23*>45'11"N
OVERLAY: KILE usavsa (u) ?>Wv
The three illuminated dots on the left--P-1, P-2 and
P-3--indicated the three Penetrators prowling the canyons
for the rogue bipod. The stationary dot near the mesa crater,
"L-G," depicted the Super Stallion, call-sign "Looking
Glass." The black line indicated the path of the chase so far.
While the two radiomen continued to issue instructions,
the pilot peered forward through the bubblelike canopy of the
helicopter, his eyes searching the canyon in front of them.
Amid the roar of the rotor blades and the sound of their
own voices in their headsets, none of the crew heard the dull thunk! of a Maghook hitting the underside of their mighty
chopper.
Schofield's bipod sat in the water directly beneath the
Super Stallion--bucking and bouncing on the churning
wash generated by the helicopter's downdraft--having approached
the big transport bird from behind.
Area 7 259
A thin threadlike rope connected the bipod to the underside
of the Super Stallion fifty feet above it--the black
Kevlar fiber rope of Schofield's Maghook.
And then suddenly a tiny figure whizzed up into the air
toward the chopper, reeled upward by the Maghook's internal
spooler.
Schofield.
In a second, he was hanging from the Super Stallion's
underbelly--fifty feet above the water's surface, right next
to an emergency access hatch built into the big helicopter's
floor--gripping the Maghook as it clung to the helicopter's
underside by virtue of its bulbous magnetic head.
The noise was shocking up here, deafening. The wind
blast from the rotors made his 7th Squadron clothes press
against his skin, made the Football hanging from his webbing
twist and flap wildly.
Super Stallions have fully retractable landing gear, so
Schofield grabbed a fat cable eyehole as a handhold. Then
he hit a button on the Maghook, allowing it to unspool down
to Book.
Within seconds, Book II was beside him, hanging from
the Maghook on the underside of the Super Stallion.
Schofield grabbed the access hatch's pressure-release
handle. "You ready?" he yelled.
Book II nodded.
Then, with a firm twist, Schofield turned the handle and
the emergency hatch above them dropped out of its slot.
THE MEN INSIDE THE SUPER STALLION FELT THE BLAST OF wind first.
A gale of fast-moving air rushed into the rear cabin of
the Super Stallion a second before Schofield swung up
through the hatch in its floor, closely followed by Book II.
They came up inside the chopper's rear troop compartment,
a wide cargo hold separated from the cockpit by a
small steel doorway.
The two radiomen in the cockpit both spun at once,
looking back into the hold. They went for their guns.
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Matthew Reilly
But Schofield and Book II were already moving fast,
guns up, mirroring each other's movements perfectly. One
shot from Schofield and the first radioman went down. Another
from Book and the second guy was history.
The chopper's pilot saw what was happening, and realized
quickly that a gun wasn't his best way out of this situation.
He pushed forward on the Super Stallion's control stick,
causing the entire helicopter to lurch dramatically.
Book II lost his balance immediately, and fell.
Schofield, already dancing quickly toward the cockpit,
dived to the floor and slid--forward, fast, on his chest-- toward the open cockpit door.
The pilot tried to kick the door shut and seal off the
cockpit, but Schofield was too quick.
He slid head-first--rolling onto his back as he did so--sliding in through the doorway, into the cockpit, and jolting
to a perfect halt inside the threshold--one hand propping
open the door, the other gripping his .44 caliber Desert Eagle,
aimed directly up at the bridge of the pilot's nose.
"Don't make me do it," he said from the floor, his eyes
looking up the barrel of his gun, his finger poised on the
trigger.
The pilot was stunned, his mouth open. He just glared
down at Schofield--on the floor, with his gun held unwaveringly
in the firing position.
"Don't make me," Schofield said again.
The pilot went for the Glock in his shoulder holster.
Blam!
Schofield put a bullet in his brain.
"Damn it," he said, shoving the dead pilot out of his seat
and taking the controls. "I told you, you asshole."
Schofield AND BOOK'S SUPER STALLION ROARED DOWN THE
narrow canyonway, banking with each bend, heading for the
X-intersection where all the rivercraft had nearly collided
earlier.
In his mind's eye, Schofield remembered seeing the
rogue bipod sneaking off down the western branch of that
intersection and then disappearing off to the right, into a narrow
slot canyon at the far end.
system, he now saw that slot canyon--it snaked its way to
the north, opening onto another lakelike crater with a small
mesa in it.
That was where the rogue bipod had been heading.
But what's waiting in that crater? Schofield thought.
Why are the South Africans heading there?
The Super Stallion thundered down its narrow rock walled canyon, heading for the X-intersection, rounded a bend--
--and came face-to-face with one of the Air Force Penetrators.
Schofield yanked on the control stick, reining the Super
Stallion to a lurching halt in midair.
The Penetrator was hovering above the X-intersection,
turning laterally in the air, looking down each of the four
rock-walled alleyways that met there. It looked like a gigantic
flying shark, searching for its prey.
It saw them.
"Looking Glass, this is Penetrator Three," a voice said
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Matthew Reilly
sharply over Schofield's cockpit intercom. "Got any realtime
imagery from the satellite yet?"
Schofield froze.
Shit.
"Book, quickly. Weapons check."
The Penetrator turned in the air to face the Super Stallion.
"Looking Glass? You listening?"
Book II said, "We got a nose-mounted Gatling gun.
That's it."
"Nothing else?"
The two helicopters faced each other, hovering above
the intersection like a pair of eagles squaring off, a hundred
yards apart.
"Nothing."
"Looking Glass," the voice on the intercom became
cautious. "Please respond immediately with your authentication
code."
Schofield saw the Penetrator's downturned wings--saw
the missiles hanging from them.
They looked like Sidewinders.
Sidewinders ... Schofield thought.
Then, abruptly, he hit the talk button on his console.
"Penetrator gunship, this is Captain Shane Schofield, United
States Marine Corps, Presidential Detachment. I am now in
command of this helicopter. I've only got one word to say to
you."
"And what is that?"
"Draw," Schofield said flatly.
Silence.
Then: "Okay ..."
"What the hell are you doing?" Book II said.
Schofield didn't reply. He just kept his eyes locked on
the Penetrator's wings.
A moment later, with a flash of light, an AIM-9M Sidewinder missile blasted forward from the left-hand wing of the Penetrator.
"Oh, shit ..." Book II breathed.
area 7 263
Schofield saw the charging missile from head-on--saw
its domed nose, saw the star-shaped outline of its stabilizing
fins, saw the looping smoke trail issuing out behind it as it
rolled through the air heading straight for them
"What are you doing!" Book II exclaimed. "Are you
just going to sit there--?"
And then Schofield did the strangest thing.
He jammed his finger down on his control stick's trigger.
With the Sidewinder missile hurtling toward it--and
only a bare second away from impact--the Super Stallion's
nose-mounted Gatling gun came to life, spewing forth a line
of glowing orange tracer bullets.
Schofield angled the line of laserlike bullets toward the
oncoming missile, and just as the missile came within
twenty yards of his helicopter--boom!--his bullets hit the
Sidewinder right on its forward dome, causing it to explode
in midair, fifteen yards short of the hovering Super Stallion.
"What the--?" Book II said.
But Schofield wasn't finished.
Now that the Sidewinder was out of the way, he swung
his line of tracer bullets back up toward the Penetrator.
In the near distance, he could see the Penetrator's two