Lake Powell.
Schofield and Book saw a wide flat awning, a small
glass-windowed office, and a wide garage door. And underneath the awning: two old-style petrol pumps.
It was a gas station.
An underwater gas station.
IT WAS NESTLED UP AGAINST THE BASE OF THE CLIFF, AT THE
point where the enormous circular crater containing the
small mesa met a wide canyon stretching westward, right on
the corner.
It was then that Schofield remembered what this gas
station was.
It was the rest-stop petrol station that had been flooded
over when Lake Powell had been created in 1963 by the
damming of the Colorado River--the old 1950's-era gas station
that had been built on the site of an old trading post.
"Let's move," he said. "Before we use up all the oxygen
in here."
"To where?" Book II asked incredulously. "The gas
station?"
"Yep," Schofield said, looking at his watch.
It was 9:26.
Thirty-four minutes to get the Football back to the
President.
"Gas stations have air pumps," he said, "for inflating
tires. Air that we can breathe until those Penetrators go
away. Maybe when the government compensated him, the
guy who owned this station just upped and left everything
behind."
"That's your magic escape plan? Any air left in those
pumps will be forty years old. It could be rancid, or contaminated
by God-only-knows what."
"If it's air-sealed," Schofield said, "then some of it may
still be good. And right now, we don't have any other options.
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I'll go first. If I find a hose, I'll signal you to come over."
"And if you don't?"
Schofield unclipped the Football from his webbing and
handed it to Book II. "Then you'll have to come up with
a magic plan of your own."
the super stallion lay on the bottom of the lake, surrounded by the silent underwater world.
Abruptly, a finger of bubbles issued out from its open
rear section--trailing the figure of Shane Schofield, still dressed in his black 7th Squadron battle uniform, as he entered the water from within the sunken helicopter.
Schofield hovered in the void for a moment, looked
about himself, saw the gas station, but then suddenly he saw
something else.
Something resting on the lakebed directly beneath him
about three feet away.
It was a small silver Samsonite container--heavy duty
obviously designed to protect its contents from strong impacts; about the size of two videocassettes placed side by side. It sat on the silty lake floor, perfectly still, weighed
down by a small anchor.
It was the object Gunther Botha had tossed over the side
of his bipod when Schofield and Book had interrupted him.
Schofield swam down to it, cut away the anchor with a
knife, and then attached the silver container's handle to the
clip on his combat webbing.
He'd look at its contents later.
Right now he had other things to do.
He headed for the underwater gas station, pulling himself through the water with long powerful strokes. He covered the distance between the Super Stallion and the gas
station quickly, and soon found himself hovering in front of
the ghostlike submerged structure.
His lungs began to ache. He had to find an air hose
soon--
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Matthew Reilly
There.
Beside the open doorway of the gas station's office.
A black hose, connected to a large pressurized drum.
Schofield swam for it.
He came to the hose, grabbed it and pressed down on its
release valve.
The hose's nozzle sputtered to life, spewing out some
pathetically small bubbles.
Not a good sign, Schofield thought.
And then, in a sudden billowing rush, a wash of big fat
bubbles came bursting out of the hose.
Schofield quickly put his mouth over it and, without a
second thought, breathed in the forty-year-old air.
At first, he gagged, and coughed awfully. It tasted bitter
and stale, foul. But then it got cleaner and he began to
breathe it in normally. The air was okay--just.
He waved to Book in the helicopter, gave him the
thumbs-up.
As Book swam over with the Football, Schofield pulled
the air hose into the gas station's little office, so that any
stray bubbles got trapped against the office's ceiling rather
than rising to the lake's surface and alerting the Penetrators
to their new air source.
While he did so, he looked at the submerged gas station
all around him.
He was still thinking about Botha.
The South African scientist's escape plan couldn't have
involved just coming to this sunken petrol station. It had to
be something more than that ...
Schofield looked around the gas station's office and the
garage adjoining it. The whole structure was nestled up
against the base of the sunken cliff.
Just then, however, through the rear window of the little
office, Schofield saw something built into the base of the
cliff behind the gas station.
A wide boarded-up doorway.
It was constructed of thick wooden beams, and it appeared
area 7
to burrow into the cliff face. A pair of mine-car
tracks disappeared underneath the planks that sealed its entrance.
A mine.
Botha's plan was beginning to make more sense.
Thirty seconds later, Book II joined him inside the office and gulped in some air from the hose.
Another minute and Schofield leaned outside the office
and saw the blurred rippling outlines of the Air Force Penetrators above the surface wheel around in the air and depart
heading back for Area 7.
As soon as they were gone, he got Book's attention and
pointed at the mine entrance behind the gas station, signalling, I'm going there. You wait here.
Book nodded.
Schofield then flicked on the small barrel-mounted
flashlight on his Desert Eagle pistol and swam out through
the rear window of the office, heading for the mine entrance
at the base of the cliff.
HE CAME TO THE BOARDED-UP MINE, AND FOUND THAT SOME
of its rotting planks had been removed--possibly recently.
He swam inside.
Darkness met him. Impenetrable underwater darkness.
The narrow beam of his flashlight revealed rough rocky
walls, submerged support beams, and the pair of mine-car
tracks on the floor, disappearing into the shadows.
Schofield swam quickly through the mine tunnel,
guided by the beam of his flashlight.
He had to keep track of how far he had gone. There
would come a time very soon when he would have to make a
choice: go back to Book and get some more air from the
hose, or keep going, and hope he made it to a part of the
mine that wasn't filled with water.
The only thing that convinced him that he would find
such an air source was Botha. The South African scientist
wouldn't have come here if he couldn't--
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Matthew Reilly
Suddenly Schofield saw a narrow vertical shaft branching
off his tunnel. A rung ladder ran up its length.
He swam over to the shaft, pointed his flashlight up into
it. The shaft went both up and down, disappearing into
blackness in both directions. It was an access shaft of some
sort, allowing quick and easy movement to all levels of the
mine.
Schofield was running out of air.
He did the math.
The lake was about ninety feet deep here. Hence, ninety
feet up that rung ladder, the water should level out.
Screw it.
It was the only option.
He turned back to get Book.
TWO MINUTES LATER, HE RETURNED TO THE MINE TUNNEL, THIS
time with Book II--and the Football--beside him, plus a
new lungful of air.
They headed straight for the vertical access shaft, used
its rung ladder to pull themselves up it.
The shaft was a tight cylinder, with earthen doorways
opening off it every ten feet or so. Climbing it was like
climbing up a very narrow sewer pipe.
Schofield led the way, moving quickly, counting the
rungs as he climbed, calculating one foot for every rung.
At fifty rungs, his lungs began to burn.
At seventy, he felt bile crawling up the back of his
throat.
At ninety, he still saw no sign of the surface, and he
started to worry that he had got it all wrong, that he had
made a fatal mistake, that this was the end, that he was about
to black out--
--THEN SUDDENLY, GLORIOUSLY, SCHOFIELD'S HEAD exploded
out of the water into beautiful cool air.
He immediately swung his body to the side to allow
Book II to surface next to him. Book burst out of the water
area 7
and both of them gulped in the fresh air as they hung from
the ladder in the tight vertical well.
The shaft still rose into darkness above them--only
now it was no longer filled with water.
Once he had regained his breath, Schofield climbed up
out of the water and stepped through the nearest earthen
doorway.
He emerged inside a wide flat-floored cavern, an old administration
chamber for the mine. What he saw inside the
chamber, however, stopped him cold.
He saw boxes of provisions--food, water, gas cookers,
powdered milk--hundreds of boxes.
Hundreds and hundreds of boxes.
A dozen fold-out cots lined the walls. A table covered
with fake passports and drivers' licenses stood in one corner.
It's a camp, Schofield thought. A base camp.
With enough food to last for weeks, months even--for
however long it would take for the United States government
to stop searching Lake Powell for the men who had
stolen the Sinovirus and its prized vaccine source: Kevin.
Then, once the coast was clear, Botha and his men
would leave the lake and make their way back to their homeland
at their leisure.
Schofield looked at the stacks of boxes. Whoever had
done this had been bringing stuff here for a long time.
"Geez." Book II joined Schofield in the chamber.
"Somebody came prepared."
Schofield looked at his watch.
9:31 a.m.
"Come on. We've got twenty-nine minutes to get this
briefcase back to the President," Schofield said. "I say we go
for the surface, and see if there's a way to get back to Area 7."
Schofield AND BOOK II CLIMBED.
As fast as they could. Up the vertical access shaft.
Schofield with Botha's small Samsonite container. Book II
with the Football.
Within a minute, they reached the top of the ladder and
stepped up into a wide aluminum building of some sort, kind
of like an oversized shed.
A set of mine-car tracks began over on the far side of
the shed, disappearing into the earth. They were flanked by a
collection of rusty loading trays and old conveyor belts.
Everything was covered in dust and cobwebs.
Schofield and Book raced for the external door, kicked
it open.
Brilliant sunlight assaulted their eyes, wind-blown sand
blasted their faces. The sandstorm was still raging.
The two tiny figures of Schofield and Book II stepped
out of the mine shed ...
... and they found themselves standing on a gigantic
flat-topped desert peninsula that stretched out into Lake
Powell. They looked like ants against the magnificent Utah
landscape—the magnitude of the earth around them dwarfing
even the large aluminum shed from which they had
emerged.
Strangely, though, there was another structure on this
vast flat-topped peninsula. It stood a bare fifty yards away
from the mine shed: a small farmhouse, with a barn attached
to its side.
Schofield and Book ran for it through the storm-tossed
sand.
area 7
THE LETTERBOX AT THE GATE READ: HOEG.
Schofield bolted past it, into the front yard.
He came to the side of the farmhouse, crouched underneath a window, peered inside, just as the wall beside him
exploded with automatic gunfire. He spun to see a man
dressed in denim overalls come charging around the corner
of the farmhouse with an AK-47 assault rifle in his hands.
Blam!
farmer dropped to the dusty ground, dead.
Book II appeared at Schofield's side, his M9 pistol
smoking.
"What the hell is going on here?" he yelled.
"I'm guessing," Schofield said, "that if we live through
this, we'll find that Mr. Hoeg is a friend of Gunther Botha's
Come on."
Schofield ran for the barn, threw open its doors, hoping
against hope that he would find some kind of transportation
inside it ...
"Well, it's about time we had a bit of luck," he said
"Thank you, God. We deserved a break."
Standing there before him--glistening like a new car in
a showroom--was a vehicle common to the farms in these
parts: a beautiful lime-green biplane, a crop duster.
three minutes later, schofield and book were shooting
through the sky, soaring high over the snakelike canyons
of Lake Powell.
It was 9:38 a.m.
This is going to be close, Schofield thought.
The plane was a Tiger Moth--an old World War II biplane
often used for crop dusting in the dry southwest. It had
two parallel wings, one above the fuselage and one below,
that were joined by vertical struts and criss-crossing wires.
Two spindly landing wheels stretched down from the forward
end of its body, like the elongated legs of a mosquito,
and an insecticide sprayer was attached to its tail.
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Matthew Reilly
Like most biplanes, it was a two-seater--the pilot sitting
in the backseat, the co-pilot up front.
And it was a good plane, too, well looked after. Mr.
Hoeg, it seemed, in addition to being a goddamned spy, was
obviously an airplane enthusiast.
"What do you think?" Book said into his flight helmet's
microphone. "Do we go for the X-rail?"
"Not now," Schofield replied. "There's not enough time.
We head straight for Area 7. For the Emergency Exit Vent."
Dave Fairfax's heart was racing.
This had turned into quite an eventful day.
After he'd heard Dave's assessment of the situation at
Area 7 and the presence of a rogue unit there, the DIA assistant director in charge of surveilling the Chinese space shuttle had ordered a blanket tap of a one-hundred-mile circle
surrounding Areas 7 and 8. Now, any signal coming out of
that zone would be picked up by the DIA's surveillance
satellites.
Impressed by Fairfax's work on the matter thus far, the
assistant director also gave the young cryptanalyst free rein
to further pursue the case. "Do whatever you have to, young
man," he'd said. "You report directly to me now."
Fairfax, however, was still puzzled.
Perhaps he was just excited, but something still nagged
at him. The pieces still didn't quite add up.
The Chinese had a shuttle up in space, communicating
with a rogue unit at a U.S. Air Force base.
Okay.
So there was something at this base that the Chinese
wanted. Fairfax guessed it was the virus vaccine that kept
getting mentioned in all the decoded messages.
Okay ...
And the shuttle was the best way to communicate directly
with the men on the ground.
No.
That wasn't right. The Chinese could use any of a dozen
different satellites to communicate with men on the ground.
You didn't need a whole shuttle to do that.
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Matthew Reilly
But what if the shuttle had another purpose ...
Fairfax turned to one of the Air Force liaison people the
DIA had called in. "What sort of hardware does the Air
Force keep at Area 7?"
The Air Force guy shrugged. "Couple of Stealths, an
SR-71 Blackbird, a few AWACS birds. Apart from that, it's
mainly used as a biological facility."
"What about the other complex then? Area 8?"
The Air Force man's eyes narrowed. "That's another
story altogether."