Caesar stepped closer.
And saw that the boot belonged to the horribly bloodied
body of Python Willis—the commanding officer of Charlie
Unit, the 7th Squadron unit that had been bringing Kevin
back to Area 7.
Caesar's face darkened.
Charlie Unit lay dead before him. And Kevin was
nowhere to be seen.
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Matthew Reilly
Then Caesar saw the mark on the wall next to Python
Willis's dead fingers, a symbol scrawled in blood, a final
gesture from Charlie Unit's commander before he'd died.
A single capital "E."
Caesar just stared at it, pursing his lips.
Logan came up beside him. "What is it?"
"Let's get to the secondary command post," Caesar said
flatly. "And when we get there, I want you to find out what's
happened to Echo Unit."
shane schofield emerged from the air vent hatch underneath
Marine One, flanked by the four heavily armed
prisoners. He no longer carried the Football. One of his captors
now held it like a new toy.
As he slid out from underneath the Presidential helicopter,
he thought he heard clapping and shouting ...
... and then suddenly--boom!--a gunshot made him
start. The shot was quickly followed by a loud roar of approval.
Then another booming gunshot--and more cheers and
applause.
Schofield felt his blood run cold.
What the hell was he walking into?
He emerged from beneath Marine One and immediately
saw about thirty prisoners, their backs to him, gathered
around the central aircraft elevator platform.
In the time since his capture in the air vent down below,
the massive platform--with the tangled remains of the destroyed
AWACS plane still on it--had been lowered about
ten feet below the floor-line of the hangar and halted, so that
now it formed a gigantic square-shaped pit in the center of
the hangar.
The mob of inmates was crowded around the makeshift
pit, looking intently down into it like gamblers at a cockfight,
shaking their fists, shouting and cat-calling. One
shaggy-looking individual was screaming, "Run, little man!
Run! Run! Ha-haaaaa.
area 7 337
They were the most motley crew Schofield had ever
seen.
Their angry faces were covered in scars and tattoos.
Each prisoner's uniform had been tailored to his own personal
tastes--some had ripped off their shirtsleeves and
turned them into headbands, others wore their shirts open,
others still, wore no shirts at all.
Schofield was marched over to the edge of the pit. He
looked down into it.
Amid the maze of AWACS plane pieces that littered the
square concrete hole, he saw two blue-uniformed Air Force
men--young men and, judging by their perfectly pressed
uniforms, office bunnies, radio operators probably--running
like frightened animals.
In the pit with them were five burly inmates--all armed
with shotguns--prowling through the maze, hunting the two
hapless radio operators.
Schofield saw the bodies of two more radiomen lying in
pools of blood in separate corners of the pit: the cause of the
cheers he had heard moments before.
It was then, however, that to Schofield's horror, a small
band of prisoners emerged from the other side of the hangar.
In the midst of this new group of inmates, Schofield saw
Gant, Mother, Juliet ... and the President of the United
States.
"Tell me this isn't happening," he breathed to himself.
DOWN IN THE DARKNESS OF THE LEVEL 1 HANGAR, NICHOLAS
Tate III, Domestic Policy Adviser to the President of the
United States, gazed nervously up into the elevator shaft.
The President and his three female protectors hadn't returned
and now Tate was worried.
"Do you think the inmates got them?" he asked Hot Rod Hagerty.
They could hear the shouts and gunshots from up in the
main hangar. It was like standing outside a stadium during a
football match.
"I hope not," Hagerty whispered.
Tate continued to stare up into the shaft, a thousand
thoughts flickering through his mind, most of them relating
to his own self-preservation. A minute passed.
"So what do you think we should do?" he said at last,
without turning around.
There was no reply.
Tate frowned, spun around. "I said ..." He froze.
Hagerty was nowhere to be seen.
The Level 1 hangar stretched away from him, shrouded
in darkness, the only presence, the shadows of the gigantic
planes inside it.
Tate's face went blank.
Hagerty was gone.
Vanished ... silently, instantly ... in the space of a single
minute.
It was as if he'd just been erased from existence.
A lightning bolt of fear shot through Nicholas Tate.
area 7 339
Now he was alone, down here, in a locked-down facility
filled with treacherous Air Force commandos and the nastiest
collection of murderers known to man.
And then he saw it.
Saw a glint of light on the floor a few yards away from
him, at the spot where he had last seen Hagerty standing. He
went over to it, picked it up.
It was a ring.
A gold officer's ring.
Hagerty's graduation ring from Annapolis.
THE LAST TWO RADIO OPERATORS DIDN'T LAST LONG.
As the final shots rang out from within the pit, Schofield
and Gant were shoved together, the others beside them.
"Hey there," Gant said.
"Hi," Schofield said.
After Schofield and the President's daring trapeze act,
Gant and her team hadn't fared any better than Schofield had.
No sooner had the President swung back onto the mini
elevator than the little platform had jolted suddenly and
whizzed up the shaft--called by someone up in the main
hangar.
They had risen up into the hangar and found themselves
in the middle of a whole new nightmare.
The prisoners--the former test subjects for Gunther
Botha's vaccine--were now in charge of Area 7.
Although there was no way she could have hidden their
meager supply of guns, Gant did manage to hide her
Maghook on their short ride up the shaft. It now lay clinging
magnetically to the underside of the detachable mini
elevator.
Unfortunately, when the little platform had arrived up in
the ground-level hangar--rising up through the matching
square hole in the corner of the main platform--Gant had
still had the black box from the AWACS plane in her possession.
But she hadn't wanted to alert any of the prisoners to its
significance, so she'd placed it on the floor of the mini
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Matthew Reilly
elevator, and as soon as the platform had come flush against
the floor of the main hangar, she'd "accidentally" kicked it
; clear, sending it tumbling out onto the hangar floor, a short
way from the elevator shaft.
With the hunt in the pit now over, the prisoners gathered around the aircraft elevator shaft turned their attention to the
President and his guardians.
An older prisoner stepped out of the larger group of inmates,
a shotgun held lazily in his hand.
He was a very distinctive-looking individual.
He appeared to be about fifty, and judging from the confidence
of his stride, he clearly had the respect of the group.
Although the top of his head was bald, long gray-black hair flowed down from its sides, growing past his shoulders. A
narrow angular nose, pale white skin, and hollow bloodless
cheeks completed his very Gothic appearance.
"Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly," the
long-haired man said as he stepped in front of the President.
He had a soft silky voice, menacing in its slow articulation.
"Good morning, Mr. President," he said pleasantly.
"How nice of you to join us. Remember me?"
The President said nothing.
"But of course you do," the prisoner said. "I'm an
18-84. In one way or another, you've met all nine of the
people who during your presidency have been convicted under
Title 18, Part I, Chapter 84 of the United States Code.
It's that part of the Code that prohibits ordinary Americans
from attempting to assassinate their President.
"Grimshaw, Seth Grimshaw," the long-haired prisoner
said, offering his hand. "We met in February, just a couple of
weeks after you -became President, as you were leaving the
Bonaventure Hotel in LA viaits underground kitchen. I was
the one who tried to put a bullet in your skull."
The President said nothing.
And he didn't take Grimshaw's proffered hand.
"You managed to keep that whole incident quiet,"
Grimshaw said. "Very impressive. Especially since all
someone like me really wants is publicity. And besides, it's
area 7 341
not wise to scare the nation, is it? Better to keep the ignorant
masses unaware of these troublesome little attempts on your
life. As they say, ignorance is bliss."
The President said nothing.
Grimshaw looked him up and down, cast a bemused eye
over the black combat clothing that the Chief Executive now
wore. The President, Juliet and Schofield were all still
dressed in their black 7th Squadron combat attire. Gant and
Mother, on the other hand, still wore their formal--but now
very dirty--Marine dress uniforms.
Grimshaw smiled, a thin, satisfied smile.
Then he strolled over to the inmate holding the Football
and took the silver briefcase from him. He opened it, then
glanced from its countdown display screen to the President.
"It would appear that my recently liberated associates
and I have intruded upon something rather interesting. A
game of cat-and-mouse, it would seem, judging by your
clothes and the way you unceremoniously scampered
through my cell block earlier." He clucked his tongue reproachfully.
"Really, Mr. President, I must say, this is not at
all presidential. Not at all."
Grimshaw's eyes narrowed.
"But who am I to stop such an imaginative spectacle?
The President and his loyal bodyguards versus the treacherous
military-industrial complex." Grimshaw turned. "Goliath.
Bring the other captives over here."
At that moment, an extraordinarily large prisoner--Goliath, Schofield guessed--stepped out from behind Grimshaw and headed off in the direction of the hangar's internal building. He was an absolute giant of a man, with massive tree-trunk-sized biceps and a squared-off head reminiscent of Frankenstein's monster. He even had a flat square
bulge that protruded from his forehead--the signature mark,
Schofield knew, of someone who'd had a steel plate inserted
in his skull. Goliath carried a P-90 assault rifle in one massive
fist and Schofield's Maghook in the other.
He returned moments later.
Behind him came the seven Air Force men who--along
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with the four unfortunate radio operators--had been captured
inside the control room earlier:
Colonel Jerome T. Harper.
Boa McConnell and his four Bravo Unit men, two of
whom were badly wounded.
And the lone individual who had been observing the
morning's events from the shadows of Caesar Russell's control
room.
Schofield recognized him instantly.
So did the President.
"Webster ..." he said softly.
Warrant Officer Carl Webster, the official guardian of
the Football, stood with the Air Force people, looking very uncomfortable. Beneath his thick hairy eyebrows, his eyes
darted left and right, as if searching for an escape.
"You cocksucking little bastard," Mother said. "You gave the Football to Russell. You sold out the President."
Webster said nothing.
Schofield watched him. He had wondered whether
Webster had been abducted by the 7th Squadron earlier that
morning. More than anything else, Caesar Russell had
needed the Football to carry out his presidential challenge,
and Schofield had speculated as to how he had obtained it
from Webster.
Quite clearly, force hadn't been necessary--the blood
on the Football's handcuffs had obviously been a ruse. Webster,
it seemed, had been bought long before the President
had arrived at Area 7.
"Now, now, children," Seth Grimshaw said, waving the
Football in his hand. "Save your strength. You'll be able to
settle all your scores in a moment. But first"--he turned to
the Air Force colonel, Harper--"I have a question that needs
answering. The exit to this facility. Where is it?"
"There is no exit," Harper lied. "The facility is in lock down. You can't get out."
Grimshaw raised his shotgun, pointed it at Harper's
face, shucked the pump action. "Perhaps I'm not being specific
enough."
area 7
He then turned and fired two booming shots into the
two injured Bravo Unit men standing next to Harper. They
were blasted off their feet.
Grimshaw turned the gun back to Harper, raised his
eyebrows expectantly.
Harper's face went white. He nodded over at the regular
elevator: "There's a door that branches off the personnel elevator shaft. We call it the top door. It leads outside. Keypad code is 5564771."
"Thank you, Colonel, you really are too kind,
Grimshaw said. "Now then, we must let you children finish
what you've started. As I'm sure you'll understand, once we
depart this dreadful place, we can't allow any of you to leave
it alive. But as a final gesture of good will, I am going to offer you all one last favor--albeit one that is more for my entertainment than yours.
"I am going to give you all one last chance to kill each
other. Five against five. In the killing pit. So at least the winner will die knowing who won your impromptu civil war."
He turned to Goliath. "Put the Air Force people in here. Stand the President's little posse on the other side."
SCHOFIELD AND THE OTHERS WERE MARCHED AT GUNPOINT TO
the far side of the pit, the eastern side.
The five remaining Air Force men--Jerome Harper,
Boa McConnell, the last two men from Bravo Unit, and the
traitor, Warrant Officer Webster--stood directly opposite
them, separated by the two-hundred-foot-wide sunken aircraft
elevator platform.
"Let the battle begin," Seth Grimshaw bared his teeth.
"To the death."
SCHOFIELD DROPPED DOWN INTO THE PIT AND IMMEDIATELY
found himself confronted by a twisted metal maze--the
enormous broken pieces of the smashed AWACS plane.
The Boeing 707's wings lay at all angles, snapped and
broken and still dripping with water. Its gigantic barrel-like
jet engines stood on their ends. And in the very center of the
pit--easily the largest single piece of the destroyed plane-- stood the AWACS's horribly broken fuselage. Long and
cylindrical, it lay diagonally across the pit, nose down, like a
massive dead bird.
The darkness of the main hangar didn't help things.
The only light was the firelight from the inmates'
torches--they cast long shadows down into the maze, turning
it into a dark metal forest where you couldn't see more
than a few feet in front of your face.
How the hell did we get into this? Schofield thought.
He and the others stood on the eastern side of the pit, up
against its solid concrete wall, not sure what to do.
Abruptly, a shotgun round blasted into the wall above
Schofield's head.
Seth Grimshaw called: "The two teams will engage each other immediately! If you do not begin eliminating one
another soon, we will start eliminating you from up here!"
"Christ ..." Juliet Janson gasped.
Schofield turned to face his group. "Okay, we don't
have much time, so listen up. Not only do we have to survive
this, but we have to find a way out of here afterwards."
"The mini-elevator," Gant nodded to their right, to the
northeastern corner of the pit where the detachable
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mini platform now lay flush against the pit's floor, albeit covered
by five armed prisoners.
"We're going to need a diversion," Schofield said,