"Hey. This is need-to-know. Believe me, I really need to
know."
The Air Force man hesitated for a moment.
Then he said, "Area 8 contains two working prototypes
of the X-38 space shuttle. It's a satellite killer--a smaller,
sleeker version of the standard shuttle that gets launched off
the back of a high-flying 747."
"A satellite killer?"
"Carries special zero-gravity AMRAAM missiles on its
wings. It's designed for a quick launch and short target
oriented missions: flying up into a low-earth orbit, knocking
out enemy spy satellites or space stations, then coming
home."
"How many people can it hold?" Fairfax asked.
The Air Force man frowned. "Three command crew.
Maybe ten or twelve in the weapons hold, at the very most.
Why?"
Now Fairfax was thinking fast.
"Oh, no way ..." he breathed. "No way!"
He lunged for a nearby printout.
It was the printout of the last message he had decoded,
the same one he had used to reveal the men of Echo Unit as
traitors. It read:
3J11L Q4;04;4? satellite intercept
VOICE 1: WU and LI have arrived back at Area 7 with the virus.
Your men are with them. All the money has been
area 7
accounted for. Names of my men who will need to
be extracted: BENNETT, CALVERT, COLEMAN, DAYTON,
FROMMER, GRAYSON, LITTLETON, MESSICK, OLIVER
and myself.
Fairfax read the line: "Names of my men who will need
to be extracted."
"Extracted ..." he said aloud.
"What are you thinking?" the Air Force liaison man
asked.
Fairfax was in a world of his own now. He saw it
clearly.
"If you wanted to get a top-secret vaccine out of a top
secret Air Force base in the middle of the U.S. desert, how
would you do it? You couldn't fly it out, because the distance
is too far. You'd be shot down before you even made it
to California. Same for an overland extraction. You'd never
make it to the border before we caught you. By sea? Same
problem. But these Chinese bastards have figured it out."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't get something out of America by going
north, south, east or west," Fairfax said. "You get it out by
going up. Into space."
schofield looked at his watch.
9:47 a.m.
Thirteen minutes to get the Football to the President.
He and Book II had been flying for several minutes
now, soaring over the desert landscape in their gaudy lime
green biplane at a swift 190 miles an hour.
In the distance ahead of them--rising up out of the flat
desert plain--they could just make out the low mountain, the
runway, and the small cluster of buildings that was Area 7.
Immediately after they had taken off, Schofield had
taken the opportunity to open the silver Samsonite container
that he had found on the lake floor.
Inside it, he saw twelve shiny glass ampules, sitting in
foam-lined pockets. Each tiny glass bulb was filled with a
strange blue liquid. A white stick-on label on each ampule
read:
I.V. VACCINATION AMPULE
Measured dose: 55 ml
Tested against SV strain V.9.1
Certified: 3/7 05:24:33
Schofield's eyes widened.
It was a field vaccination kit--measured doses of the
vaccine that Kevin's genetically constructed blood had provided,
doses that could be administered by syringe. And created
only this morning.
It was Gunther Botha's masterwork.
The antidote to the latest strain of the Sinovirus.
area 7 317
Schofield stuffed six of the little glass ampules into the
thigh pocket of his 7th Squadron fatigues. They might come
in handy later.
He tapped Book II on the shoulder, handed him the
other six. "Just in case you catch a cold."
Still sitting in the forward seat of the biplane, for the
whole trip thus far Book II had been staring silently forward.
He took the ampules Schofield offered him, pocketed
them in his stolen 7th Squadron uniform. Then he just resumed
his brooding forward gaze.
"Why don't you like me?" Schofield asked suddenly,
speaking into his helmet mike.
Book II's head cocked to the side.
A moment later, the young sergeant's voice came
through Schofield's helmet. "There's something I've been
wanting to ask you for a long time, Captain." His voice was
low, cold.
"What's that?"
"My father was on that mission to Antarctica with you.
But he never came back. How did he die?"
Schofield fell silent.
Book II's father--Buck Riley Sr., the original "Book"
Riley--had died a horrific death during that terrible mission
to Wilkes Ice Station. A murderous British SAS commander
named Trevor Barnaby had fed him, live, to a pool of ferocious
killer whales.
"He was captured by the enemy. And they killed him."
"How?"
"You don't want to know."
"How?"
Schofield shut his eyes. "They hung him upside-down
over a pool of killer whales and lowered him in."
"The Marine Corps never tells you how," Book II said
softly, his voice tinny over the radio. "They just send you a
letter, telling you what a patriot your dad was, and informing
you that he was killed in action. Do you know, Captain, what
happened to my family after my father died?"
Schofield bit his lip. "No. I don't."
Matthew Reilly
"My mother used to live on the base at Camp Lejeune,
North Carolina. I was in basic training at Parris Island. You know what happens to a Marine's wife when her husband is
killed in action, Captain?"
Schofield knew. But he said nothing.
"She gets moved off the base. Seems the wives of living
soldiers don't like the presence of newly single widows on
the base--widows who might go stealing their husbands.
"So my mother, after losing her husband, got moved out
of her home. She tried to start over, tried to be strong, but it
didn't work. Three months after she was moved off the base,
they found her in the bathroom of her new shoebox apartment.
She'd taken a whole bottle of sleeping pills."
Book II turned in his seat, looked Schofield straight in
the eye.
"That's why I was asking you about using risky strategies
before. This isn't a game, you know. When someone
dies, there are consequences. My father is dead, and my
mother killed herself because she couldn't live without him.
I just wanted to make sure my father didn't die because of
some high-risk tactical maneuver of yours."
Schofield was silent.
He'd never really known Book II's mother.
Book Sr. hadn't really socialized with his fellow
Marines, preferring to spend his downtime with his family.
Sure, Schofield had met Paula Riley at the odd lunch or dinner,
but he'd never really gotten to know
her. He'd heard
about her death--and at the time he'd wished that he'd done
more to help her.
"Your father was the bravest man I have ever known,"
Schofield said. "He died saving another person's life. A little
girl fell out of a hovercraft and he dived out after her,
shielded her from the fall. That's how they caught him. Then
they took him back to the ice station and killed him. I tried to
get back in time, but I ... I didn't make it."
"I thought you said you'd never lost to a countdown."
Schofield said nothing.
"He talked about you, you know," Book II said. "Said
area 7 319
you were one of the finest commanders he'd ever served under.
Said he loved you like his own son, like me. I don't
apologize for being a little cold toward you, Captain. I just
had to get your measure, make my mind up for myself."
"And your decision?"
"I'm still making up my mind."
The plane swooped down toward the desert floor.
it was 9:51 when the lime-green tiger moth touched
down on the dusty desert plain, kicking up a cloud of sand
behind it, in the midst of the raging sandstorm.
As soon as the biplane skidded to a halt, Schofield and
Book II were out of it—Schofield holding the Football and
his Desert Eagle pistol, Book with two nickel-plated M9's ... charging toward the trench carved into the earth that housed
the entrance to the Emergency Exit Vent.
Bodies lay everywhere, half-covered in sand.
Nine Secret Service people, all dressed in suits. And all
dead. Members of Advance Team 2.
Four dead Marines littered the ground as well. All in
full dress uniform. Colt Hendricks and the men of
Nighthawk Three, who had come out here to check on the
Escape Vent.
Christ, Schofield thought as he and Book II hurdled the
bodies, heading for the Vent's entrance.
All this death ... and all of it will have consequences.
9:52 a.m.
Schofield and Book hit the entrance to the Emergency
Exit Vent on the fly—it was still open from the Reccondos'
entry before—and entered a narrow concrete tunnel and the
cool shade of the Area 7 complex.
They came to a rung ladder that stretched down into
darkness—grabbed it and slid down it for a full five hundred
feet. There were no lights here, so they slid by the light of
Schofield's small barrel-mounted flashlight. Armed with his
two ornamental pistols, Book II didn't have a flashlight.
9:53 a.m.
area 7 327
They hit the bottom, and saw a long one-man-wide concrete
tunnel stretching away from them, gradually sloping
downward--again, no lights.
They took off down it, running hard.
Schofield spoke into his Secret Service wrist mike as he
ran: "Fox! Fox! Can you read me? We're back! We're back
inside the complex!"
His earpiece fizzled and crackled.
No reply.
Maybe Secret Service radios weren't designed to withstand
long underwater swims.
9:54.
After several hundred yards of running down the ultra
narrow passageway, they burst out through the Emergency
Exit Vent's door on Level 6, and found themselves standing
on the northern tracks of the X-rail station.
The underground station was pitch-black.
Total darkness.
Frightening.
By the beam of his gunlight, Schofield could make out a
score of dead bodies, plus a charred, blasted-open section in
the middle of the central platform--the spot where Elvis's
RDX grenade had gone off earlier.
"The stairs," he said, pointing his beam at the door leading
to the fire stairs on their left. They leapt up onto the platform,
charged for the door.
"Fox! Fox! Can you read me?"
Fizzle. Crackle.
They came to the stairwell door. Schofield threw it
open--
--and immediately heard the rapid clang-clang-clang of more than a dozen pairs of combat boots booming down
the stairs ... and getting louder.
"Quickly, this way," he said, diving down onto the
tracks on the southern side of the platform, taking cover underneath
the struts of the small X-rail maintenance vehicle
sitting there.
Schofield killed his flashlight as Book II landed on the
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Matthew Reilly
tracks beside him--not a second before the stairwell door
burst open and Cobra Carney and the men of Echo Unit
came charging out of it, a gaggle of wobbling flashlight
beams moving quickly through the darkness.
Schofield immediately saw Kevin among them, surrounded
by four men of Asian extraction.
"What is this?" Book II whispered.
Schofield stared at the four men flanking Kevin.
They were the four men he had seen inside the decompression
chamber earlier, the ones who had brought the
Sinovirus back from China.
His mind raced.
What was going on?
Kevin had only just been returned to Area 7 on the Penetrators.
Yet now he was being moved again. Had Caesar instructed
this team of commandos to take him to another,
more secure location?
And yet again the question nagged Schofield: What did
Caesar Russell care for Kevin? Wasn't he after the President?
Cobra and his men leapt down onto the tracks on the
other side of the platform, moving with purpose.
the doors that sealed off the tunnel that led to Area 8.
Cobra and his men, with Kevin and the four Asian men
among them, disappeared inside the eastern tunnel, looking
behind themselves as they went.
Looking behind themselves ... Schofield thought.
And then he saw Cobra Carney take one last anxious
glance over his shoulder before he entered the tunnel, and
suddenly Schofield knew.
These men were stealing Kevin ... from Caesar.
UP IN THE DARKENED HANGAR ON LEVEL 2, GANT LOOKED
nervously at her watch.
9:55 a.m.
area 7 323
Five minutes until the President had to place his palm
on the Football's analyzer plate.
And still no word from Scarecrow.
Shit.
If he didn't come back soon, this show was over.
Gant and Mother--with Juliet, the President, Hagerty
and Tate--had left the AWACS plane on Level 2, and guided
by the flashlights on their gun barrels, had made their way
across the underground hangar toward the wide aircraft elevator
shaft.
Still carrying the black box that she had pilfered from
the AWACS's belly, Gant was heading for Caesar Russell's
command center up on ground level to carry out her plan.
But if Schofield didn't get back with the Football soon,
any plan she had would become academic.
The complex was eerily silent.
When combined with the pitch darkn
ess that now
shrouded the underground facility, it made for a very haunting
atmosphere.
For a moment, Gant thought she heard her earpiece
crackle: "--ox?--ead me?"
Juliet heard it, too. "Did you hear that--?"
And then so suddenly that it made them all jump, a gunshot
echoed up through the elevator shaft.
Loud and booming.
The blast of a pump-action shotgun.
What followed the gunshot, however, was infinitely
more terrifying.
A cackle of laughter.
An insane cackle that floated up the shaft, cutting
through the air like a scythe.
"Nah-ha-haaaaaaaah! Hellooooo everybody! We're
coming to get you!"
This was followed by a man's voice howling like a
wolf. "Arrooooo!"
Even Mother gulped. "The prisoners ..."
"They must have found the arms cabinet down in the
cell bay," Juliet said.
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Matthew Reilly
Abruptly, a loud mechanical clanking noise reverberated
up through the elevator shaft.
Gant looked out over the edge.
The giant aircraft elevator platform lay at the bottom of
the shaft on Level 5, the remains of the destroyed AWACS
plane on its back half-submerged in a wide body of water.
At various places on the elevator platform, Gant saw
torches--flaming torches, about twenty of them--moving
all around, flickering in the darkness. Torches held aloft by
men.
The escaped prisoners.
"How many do you see?" Juliet asked.
"I don't know," Gant said. "Thirty-five, forty. Why, how
many are there?"
"Forty-two."
"Oh, perfect."
Then, abruptly, with a great groaning lurch, the elevator
platform lifted up out of the lake at the base of the shaft,
dripping water.
"I thought the power ..." Mother began.
Juliet shook her head. "It has a stand-alone hydraulic
engine, for use in a power blackout like this."
The elevator lumbered up the shaft, its massive form
moving steadily through the darkness.
"Quickly. Away from the edge." Gant pushed the President
back behind the landing gear of one of the AWACS
planes nearby. She and Mother and Juliet clicked off their
barrel-mounted flashlights.