his cell phone to his ear--was Nicholas Tate in.
Schofield hit the elevator's call button.
As he waited for the lift to arrive, he noticed Tate for the
first time. The White House suit was clearly rattled, freaked
out by the morning's events. But it was only then that
Schofield realized that Tate was speaking into his cell phone.
"No," Tate said irritably into the phone, "I want to know
Area 7
who you are! You have interrupted my phone call to my
stockbroker. Identify yourself."
"What on earth are you doing?" Schofield asked.
Tate frowned, spoke very seriously--in doing so, indicating that he had gone completely bonkers. "Well, I was calling my broker. I figured by the way things are going today, I'd sell off my U.S. dollars. So, after we got out of that train tunnel, I called him up, but no sooner do I get him on the line than this asshole cuts across the connection."
Schofield snatched the phone from Tate's hand.
"Hey!"
Schofield spoke into it. "This is Captain Shane M.
Schofield, United States Marine Corps, Presidential Detachment, serial number 358-6279. Who is this?"
A voice came through the phone: "This is David Fairfax of the Defense Intelligence Agency. I'm speaking from
a monitoring station in D.C. We have been scanning all transmissions emanating from two Air Force bases in the Utah desert. We believe that there may be a rogue Air Force unit
at one of those bases and that the President's life may be in
danger. I just enacted an emergency breakthrough on your
friend's telephone call."
"Believe me, you don't know the half of it, Mr. Fairfax,"
Schofield said.
"Is the President safe?"
"He's right here." Schofield held the phone out for the
President.
The President spoke into it: "This is the President of the
United States. Captain Schofield is with me."
Schofield added, "And we are currently in pursuit of
that rogue Air Force unit you just mentioned. Tell me everything
you know about it--"
Just then, the elevator pinged.
"Hold on." Schofield raised his P-90 toward the elevator.
The doors opened ...
... revealing horribly blood-splattered walls and a particularly
grisly sight.
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The gunned-down bodies of three dead Air Force men
lay strewn about the elevator--no doubt members of the
skeleton crew stationed at Area 8.
"I think we got a fresh trail," Mother said.
They hurried into the lift.
Tate stayed behind, determined not to go near any more
danger. The President, however, insisted on going with
Schofield and Mother.
"But, sir--" Schofield began.
"Captain. If I'm going to die today as the representative
of this country, I'm not going to do it cowering in some corner,
waiting to be found. It's time to stand up and be
counted. And besides, it looks like you could do with some
numbers."
Schofield nodded. "If you say so, sir. Just stay close and
shoot straight."
The elevator doors closed and Schofield hit the button
for ground level.
Then he brought Tate's cell phone back to his ear.
"Okay, Mr. Fairfax. Twenty-five words or less. Tell me
everything you know about this rogue Air Force unit."
IN HIS SUBTERRANEAN ROOM IN WASHINGTON, DAVE FAIRFAX
sat up straighter in his chair.
Events had just gotten a lot more real.
First, he had picked up the cell phone call coming out of Area 8. Then he had cut across the line--interrupting some moron--and now he was speaking to this Schofield character, a Marine on the President's helicopter detail. As soon as
he had heard it, Fairfax had punched Schofield's serial number into his computer. Now he had Schofield's complete military history--including his current posting on Marine One--right in front of him.
"Okay," Fairfax said into his headset mike. "As I said, I'm DIA, and recently I've been decoding a set of unauthorized transmissions coming out of those bases. Now, first of all, we think a team of former South African Reccondos are heading there--"
"Don't mind them. Killed them already," Schofield's voice said. "The rogue unit. Tell me about the rogue unit."
"Oh ... okay," Fairfax said. "By our reckoning, the rogue unit is one of the five 7th Squadron units guarding the
Area 7 complex: the unit designated 'Echo' ..."
at area 8, the elevator whizzed up the shaft.
Fairfax's voice came through the cell phone. "... I believe that this unit is aiding Chinese agents in an attempt to steal a biological vaccine that was being developed at
Area 7."
Schofield said, "Do you have any idea how they're going to get the vaccine out of America?"
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might not believe it ..."
"I'll believe just about anything, Mr. Fairfax. Try me."
"Okay ... I believe they're going to load the vaccine
onto a satellite-killer shuttle based at Area 8 and fly it up
into a low orbit where they will rendezvous with the Chinese
space shuttle that launched last week. They will then transfer
both themselves and the vaccine onto the Chinese shuttle
and land it back inside Chinese territory where we can't get
to it or them ..."
"Son of a bitch," Schofield breathed.
"I know it sounds crazy, but ..."
"... but it's the only way to get something out of the
United States," Schofield said. "We could stop any other extraction
method--car, plane, boat. But if they went up into
space, we'd never be able to follow them. They'd be home by
the time we got a chase shuttle onto the pad at Canaveral."
"Exactly"
"Thanks, Mr. Fairfax. Call the Marines and the Army,
and get them to mobilize whatever air-capable units they
have--carriers, choppers, anything--and send them directly
to Areas 7 and 8. Do not use the Air Force. Repeat: Do
not use the Air Force. Until further notification, treat all Air
Force personnel as suspicious."
As he spoke, Schofield saw the illuminated numbers on
the elevator ticking upward: "SL-3 ... SL-2 ..."
"As for us," Schofield said, "we have to go now."
"What are you going to do? What about the President? "
"sl-!" became "g" and suddenly Schofield heard muffled
gunfire beyond the elevator doors.
Ping!
The elevator had reached the ground floor.
"We're going after the vaccine," he said. "Call you
later."
And he hung up.
A second later, the elevator's doors opened--
SIXTH CONFRONTATION
3 July, 1023 Hours
--AND SUDDENLY SCHOFIELD AND THE OTHERS ENTERED A
whole new ball game.
In the main hangar of Area 8, a fierce gun battle was already
under way.
Explosions boomed, gunfire roared.
Shafts of sunlight streamed in through the hangar's gigantic
open doors. About fifty yards away from the elevator,
filling the open doorway--partially blocking the incoming
sun--was the birdlike rear end of a silver Boeing 747.
"Son of a bitch," Schofield breathed as he saw the
&n
bsp; streamlined space shuttle mounted on the 747's back.
Gunfire rang out from over by the hangar doors.
Five black-clad 7th Squadron commandos--the treacherous men from Echo Unit, Schofield guessed--were taking cover behind the doors, firing their P-90's at something outside the hangar.
"This way," Schofield said, hurrying out of the elevator.
The three of them skirted around a Humvee and a pair of
cockroach towing vehicles until they could see what lay beyond
the hangar doors: two black Penetrator helicopters,
hovering low over the tarmac outside the hangar, blocking
the way of the shuttle-carrying 747.
The six-barreled Vulcan miniguns mounted underneath
the noses of the two Penetrators were raining down a storm
of bullets on the Echo Unit men in the hangar--pinning
them down, preventing them from dashing across the twenty
yards of open ground to the wheeled stairway that led onto
the 747.
Missiles lanced out from the wing stubs of the Penetrators,
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zeroing in on the 747. But the jumbo must have been
using the latest electromagnetic countermeasures, because
the missiles never got near them--they just went berserk as
soon as they got close to the big plane, rolling through the
air away from it, before slamming into the ground and detonating
in showers of concrete and sand.
Even the onslaught of flashing orange tracer bullets
from the helicopters just veered away from the body of the
giant jumbo, as if some invisible magnetic shield prevented
them coming near it.
From his position behind the cockroach, Schofield recognized
two of the men seated inside one of the helicopters:
Caesar Russell and Kurt Logan.
I'll bet Caesar's not happy with Echo, he thought.
Caesar and Logan must have arrived only moments
earlier--just as the men of Echo had been boarding their escape
plane. Caesar's choppers, it seemed, must have opened
fire before all the Echo men had been able to get on the
plane, before they'd been able to get away with Kevin.
Kevin ...
Schofield scanned the battlefield. He couldn't see the
little boy anywhere.
He must already be on board the plane ...
And then without warning the 747 powered up, its four
massive jet engines blasting air everywhere, sending any
loose objects tumbling across the hangar.
The plane started moving forward--away from the
hangar, out onto the runway--toward the two black Penetrators.
Its wheeled staircase clattered to the ground behind it.
It was a good tactic.
The Penetrators knew that they stood no chance against
the weight of the rolling 747, so they split like a pair of
frightened pigeons, moving out of the way of the massive
jumbo.
It was then that Schofield saw an Echo man standing in
the open side door of the 747, saw him wave to his men still
in the hangar and then toss a thin rope ladder from the doorway.
area 7 393
The rope ladder hung from the small doorway, swaying
beneath the rolling plane.
At that same moment, movement near the hangar's entry
caught his eye and he spun, and saw the five Echo men
at the hangar door dash for the Humvee parked near his
cockroach.
They were going to try to board the 747 ...
... while it was moving!
As soon as the Echo men moved, a withering burst of
tracer fire from the Penetrators outside flooded in through the
hangar's open doorway, shredding the ground at their feet.
Two of the men fell, hit, their bodies erupting in a thousand
explosions of red. The other three made it to the
Humvee, clambered inside, started her up. The big car
peeled off the mark, turning in a wide circle--
Shoooooom!
A missile rocketed in through the open hangar doors,
heading straight for the skidding Humvee.
The Humvee's life was short.
The missile hit it square on the nose--so hard that the
wide-bodied jeep was sent flailing back across the slippery
hangar floor, before it slammed against a wall and filled with
light and blasted outwards in a shower of metal.
"Holy exploding Humvees, Batman!" Mother said.
"Quickly!" Schofield said. "This way!"
"What are we doing?" the President asked.
Schofield pointed at the moving jumbo outside. "We're
getting on that plane."
AS WITH MANY DESERT BASES, AREA 8'S ELONGATED RUNWAY
was roughly L-shaped, with the shorter arm of the "L" meeting
the open doorway of the complex's main hangar.
Aircraft took off and landed on the longer arm of the "L" but to get out to that runway, all planes had to taxi along
the shorter strip first. While the main runway was over five
thousand yards long, the shorter runway--or taxiway--was
only about four hundred yards in length.
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Matthew Reilly
The silver 747--with the glistening white X-38 space
shuttle on its back--rumbled along the taxiway, flanked by
the two black Air Force Penetrators.
Windblown sand whistled all around it, the brutal desert
sun glinted off its sides.
The big jumbo had reached the halfway point of the
taxiway when a speeding vehicle came blasting out of the
main hangar behind it.
It was a cockroach.
One of the white flat-bodied towing vehicles that had
been parked inside the hangar. Looking like a brick with
wheels, it thundered along the taxiway, chasing after the big
plane.
In the cramped driver's compartment of the cockroach,
Mother drove. Schofield and the President shared the passenger
seat.
"Come on, Mother, pick it up!" Schofield urged.
"We've got to catch it before it gets to the main runway!
Once it gets there and starts on its flight run, we're screwed."
Mother jammed the cockroach into third, its highest
gear. The towing vehicle's V8 engine roared as it leapt forward,
accelerating through the shimmering desert heat.
The cockroach whipped across the taxiway, closed in on
the shuttle-carrying 747.
The Penetrators opened fire on it, but Schofield kicked
open the passenger-side window and unleashed a burst from
both his and Mother's P-90 assault rifles, hitting the nose mounted Vulcan cannon on one of the Penetrators, causing it to bank away. But the other chopper kept firing hard, kicking up sparks all around the speeding cockroach.
"Mother! Get us under the plane! We need its countermeasures!"
Mother hit the gas and the cockroach surged forward,
hit its top speed. It reeled in the lumbering 747--inch by
painful inch--until at last the speeding towing vehicle sped
underneath the silver jumbo's high tail section.
It was like entering an air bubble.
The bullets from the second Penetrator no longer hit the
area 7 395
ground all around them. The fireworks display of their impact
sparks ended abruptly.
The cockroach kept rushing forward--now speeding
along in the shadow of the shuttle-carrying 747--pushing
past its rear landing gear while still remaining in the shelter
of its massive body.
The cockroach weaved under the left-hand wing of the
747, the tarmac rushing by beneath it, heading for the rope
ladder that dangled from the plane's still-open left-hand
door.
The cockroach came to the rope ladder--
--just as the entire 747 abruptly swung right.
"Goddamn it!" Mother yelled as the cockroach swung
out from the shelter of the jumbo into glaring sunlight.
"It's turning onto the main runway!" Schofield shouted.
Like a giant, slow-moving bird, the silver 747--with the X-38 shuttle on its back--turned onto Area 8's elongated runway.
"Get to that ladder, Mother!" Schofield called.
Mother gunned it, yanked the steering wheel hard-right,
directing the cockroach--now momentarily deprived of the
jumbo's electromagnetic protection--back in toward the
flailing rope ladder, but not before one of the Penetrators
swung quickly around in front of the turning 747 and
opened fire.
A devastating line of tracer bullets impacted against the
tarmac in front of the cockroach, kicking up sparks that ricocheted
everywhere.
Several bullets smacked against the cockroach's windscreen,
cracking it. Many more, however, bounced up underneath the towing vehicle's speeding front bumper and
impacted against the underside of the cockroach--three of them hitting the vehicle's steering column.
The response was instantaneous.
The steering wheel in Mother's hands went haywire.
The cockroach fishtailed wildly, lurching sideways as it
sped along the runway under the wing of the 747, swinging
left and right.
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Matthew Reilly
Mother had to use all her strength just to keep a grip on
the steering wheel, to keep the cockroach under control.
The 747 finished its turn, began to straighten up.
The runway in front of it stretched away into the distance
--a long, straight ribbon of black that disappeared into
the shimmering desert horizon.
"Mother ...!" Schofield yelled.