to their work and their fierce loyalty to their former
commander--and his labeling of them as Schofield's
"harem" was a sign of affection from a man who rarely
showed it.
Schofield, however, was used to being considered unusual.
Indeed, that was why he was stationed aboard Marine One.
About eighteen months previously, as a lieutenant, he'd
been in command of a Marine Reconnaissance Unit that had
been sent to a remote ice station in Antarctica, to investigate
the discovery of a possible alien spacecraft.
In a word, the mission had gone to hell on an express
elevator.
Including himself, only four of his twelve Marines had
survived the nightmare, during which they had been forced
to defend the station against two foreign military forces and
infiltrators from within their own unit. To top it off,
Schofield himself had been declared dead by some corrupt
members of the Marine Corps hierarchy, men who had been
prepared to make that lie a reality.
His eventual return to America--alive and well--had
sparked a media frenzy.
His face appeared on every major newspaper in the nation.
Wherever he went, even after the initial frenzy, tabloid
journalists and photographers tried to snap his picture or
coax information out of him. After all, he was a walking
talking monument to the corruption of the United States
military--the good soldier who had been targeted for extermination
by the faceless generals of his own military leadership.
Which left the Marine Corps with a serious problem: where to put him?
In the end, the answer had been rather inventive.
The safest place to hide Schofield was right in front of
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the world's media, but in the one place where they wouldn't
be able to touch him.
He would be assigned to Marine One.
The chopper was based at the Marine Corps Air Facility
at Quantico, Virginia, so Schofield could live on the base,
making access to him all but impossible. And he would work
on board the President's VH-60N, which was only really
ever seen landing at the White House, and even then, always
at a safe distance from the press.
When the transfer was made, Mother and Gant had
elected to go with Schofield. The fourth survivor of their
Antarctic disaster, a private named Rebound Simmons, had
decided to leave the Marine Corps after their ill-fated mission.
That had been a year ago.
In that time, Schofield--quiet at the best of times and
not given to small talk--had made only a handful of friends
in the White House: mainly people among the Secret Service
and the domestic staff; the ordinary people. With his reflective
silver antiflash glasses, however, he was popular
with the President's playful grandkids. As such, to their delight,
he was nearly always assigned to guard them whenever
they visited. And yet, despite this, he had never actually
spoken conversationally with the President.
Area 7 loomed large in front of Marine One. Schofield
could see the massive doors of the complex's enormous
hangar slowly opening, revealing bright electric lighting inside.
Grier spoke into his helmet mike: "Nighthawk Two, this
is Nighthawk One, beginning descent now."
IN THE BELLY OF NIGHTHAWK TWO, SERGEANT ELIZABETH
"Fox" Gant sat hunched in a canvas jumpseat, trying vainly
to read from a folder perched on her knees.
Unlike Marine One, the rotor noise inside Nighthawk
Two was absolutely deafening. And since it never carried the
President, its interior decor was about a thousand times
Area 7 35
more utilitarian. No upholstered seats or embroidered armrests
here.
Now a staff sergeant, Libby Gant was twenty-eight
years old, well, as of six hours ago.
Compact and fit, she had short blonde hair and sky-blue
eyes, and in regular battle dress--fatigues, body armor and
MP-10--she cut a smart figure. In full dress uniform--
peaked hat, dress coat and trousers--she looked spectacular.
Since they were flying in restricted Air Force airspace,
tensions of coordinating Marine One's flight path with those
of civilian air traffic weren't an issue, so Gant--studying
part-time for entry into Officer Candidate School--took the
opportunity to brush up on some of her notes.
She was just getting to Course 9405, Advanced Tactical
Command, when a soft voice invaded her consciousness.
"Happy birthday to you ...
Happy birthday to you ...
Happy birthday, dear Staff Sergeant Ga-ant ...
Happy birthday to you."
She looked up from her work and sighed.
Sliding into the empty seat beside her was Nicholas
Tate III, the President's Domestic Policy Adviser. Tate was
handsome in a European sort of way--with dark eyebrows,
olive skin and a male model's jawline--and confident in the
extreme. Today he wore a three-thousand-dollar Armani suit
and matching Armani cologne. Apparently it was the latest
thing.
Tate held out a small neatly wrapped package for Gant
to take.
"Twenty-eight, if I'm not mistaken," he said.
"That's right, sir," Gant said.
"Please, call me Nick." He nodded at the gift. "Well, go
on. Open it."
Reluctantly, Gant unwrapped the small package, unveiling
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an aqua-green box. She popped the lid, revealing an absolutely
gorgeous silver necklace.
Small and thin, it looked like a length of the finest silver
thread, its polished surface sparkling. A small but stylish diamond
dangled like a teardrop from the front of the necklace.
"It's from Tiffany's," Tate said.
Gant looked up at him. "I'm not allowed to wear jewelery in uniform, Mr. Tate."
"I know. I was hoping you could wear it when I took
you to dinner at Nino's next Saturday."
Nino's was a restaurant in Georgetown, popular among
Washington socialites and arguably the most expensive
eatery in town.
Gant sighed. "I'm seeing someone."
It was kind of true. Only last weekend, after a tentative
start, she and Shane Schofield had gone out on something
resembling a date.
"Now, now, now," Tate said, "I heard about that. One
date does not a relationship make."
This was getting difficult. Gant held the necklace up to
the light of the window. "You know, this looks a lot like a
necklace I saw in Paris once."
"Oh, really?"
At Gant's mention of the word "Paris," however, one of
the other Marines sitting nearby cocked her head to the side.
Tate never saw it.
"Yes," Gant said. "We were there a couple of months
ago with the Boss, and I had a day off, so I--"
"Jesus H. Christ, would you take a look at that!" a lusty
woman's voice cut Gant off.
"Hey there, Mother," Gant said, as Gunnery Sergeant
Gena "Mother" Newman appeared in the narrow aisle next
to her.
"How you doin' there, Birthday Babe?" Mother said
with a knowing smile.
The "Paris" code was one they had used several times
before. When either of them encountered an unwanted male
admirer, she would slip the word "Paris" into the conversation
Area 7 37
and the other, hearing the signal, would come to the rescue.
It was a common trick used by girlfriends worldwide.
Granted, at six feet four inches and an even 200 pounds,
Mother rarely had to use it. With her dark, heavyset features,
fully shaved head and gruff no-nonsense manner, she was almost
the perfect antithesis of Libby Gant. Her call-sign,
"Mother," said it all, really. It wasn't indicative of any extraordinary maternal qualities. It was short for motherfucker.
A gifted warrior, adept at all kinds of heavy weaponry and
guncraft, she'd been promoted to the highly respected rank
of gunnery sergeant a year ago.
In addition to this--thanks to a close encounter with a
killer whale during the disastrous mission to Antarctica--
Mother had one other, highly unusual physical feature.
A prosthetic lower left leg.
The nasty incident with the killer whale had deprived
her of everything below the left knee. That said, she'd done
better than the killer had. It had received a bullet to its brain.
What Mother now had in place of her natural left foot
and shin was a state-of-the-art prosthetic limb which, so its
makers claimed, guaranteed total and undiminished body
movement. Featuring titanium-alloy "bones," fully rotating
joints and hydraulic muscle simulators, its operation was so
sophisticated--involving nerve impulse reception and automatic
weight-shifting--that it required an internal prologic
computer chip to control it.
Mother was gazing at the glistening Tiffany's necklace.
"Whoa, that is one mighty fine piece of jewelry," she
gawped. She turned to Nick Tate: "That piece of string must
have cost you a pretty penny, sonny Jim."
"It was within my price range," Tate said coolly.
"Probably cost more than I make in a year"
"Probably did."
Mother ignored him, turned to Gant. "Sorry to rain on
your parade, Birthday Babe, but the skipper sent me back to
get you. He wants you up front for the landing."
"Oh, okay."
Gant stood, and as she did, she handed Tate back his
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necklace. "I'm sorry, Nicholas, but I can't accept this. I'm seeing someone else."
And with that she headed up front.
over at the emergency escape vent, colt hendricks
just stood with his mouth agape, staring down into the
trench.
The sight before him was nothing short of horrific.
All nine members of the Secret Service's secondary advance
team lay on the sand-covered floor of the trench, their bodies twisted at all angles, riddled with bullet holes. The
size of the wounds indicated hollow-point ammunition had
been used--bullets that expanded once they entered the
wound, guaranteeing a kill. A few of the agents had been
shot in the face--their heads had been all but blown off. Blood was everywhere, drying in the sand.
Hendricks saw the agent-in-charge of the Secret Service
team, a man named Baker--mouth open, eyes wide, bullet
hole in the forehead. In Agent Baker's outstretched hand
was the Advance Team's All-Clear beacon switch. The attack
must have happened so quickly that he hadn't even had
time to flick the switch.
Beyond Baker, Hendricks saw a solid-looking steel
door set into the dirt wall of the trench--the escape vent itself.
It just stood there, resolutely closed.
Hendricks spun on his heel, yanked out his radio, headed back toward Nighthawk Three.
"Nighthawk One!"
Radio static.
"Goddamn it! Nighthawk One! This is--"
It was as if the desert just came alive.
The dusty desert floor parted--sand falling off canvas
ambush covers--and suddenly, from both sides of Hendricks,
about a dozen man-sized shapes rose from the sand,
submachine guns raised and firing.
A second later, a 9-millimeter Silvertip bullet entered
Hendricks's brain from the side. The subsequent gaseous
Area 7 59
expansion of the hollow-pointed projectile caused his head to
explode.
Hendricks never saw the man who killed him.
Never saw the dark team of desert wraiths take down
the rest of his men with clinical, ruthless efficiency.
And he never saw them take his helicopter and fly it
back toward Area 7.
THE TWO REMAINING PRESIDENTIAL HELICOPTERS DESCENDED
together, landing in a whirlwind of sand in front of the massive
main hangar of United States Air Force Special Area
(Restricted) No. 7.
The giant hangar's enormous twin doors yawned wide,
its interior brightly illuminated. The low mountain into
which the hangar had been carved loomed over the squat
four-building complex.
No sooner had the two choppers touched the ground
than the Secret Service people from Nighthawk Two were
dashing to their positions around Marine One.
A welcoming party stood on the runway in front of the
hangar, standing silently in the cool morning air, silhouetted
by the hangar light behind them.
Two Air Force officers—one colonel and one major ... stood at the head of the welcoming unit.
Behind the two officers stood four rows of fully armed
commandos, ten men to a row. All of them were dressed in
full combat gear—black battle-dress uniforms, black body
armor, black helmets—and they all held high-tech Belgian made
P-90 assault rifles rigidly across their chests.
Looking out through Marine One's cockpit windshield,
Schofield recognized their insignia patches at once. They
were members of a unit rarely seen at U.S. military exercises,
a unit which was shrouded in secrecy, a unit which
many believed was used only in the most critical of missions.
It was the elite ground unit in the United States Air
Force, the famous 7th Special Operations Squadron.
Based in West Germany for much of the Cold War, its
Area 7 41
official task during that time was the defense of U.S. airfields
against the elite Soviet Spetsnaz units. Its unofficial
achievements, though, were far more spectacular.
Masterminding the defection of five senior Soviet nuclear
missile specialists from a secret base in the Ukraine
mountains. The assassination of KGB operations chief
Vladimir Nakov in Moscow in 1990, before Nakov could
himself assassinate Mikhail Gorbachev. And, finally, in
1997, the daring rescue of the CIA's captured Far Eastern
Bureau Chief, Fred Conway, from the dreaded Xiangi
Prison--the all but impregnable maze of grim cells and torture
chambers belonging to the notorious Chinese External
Intelligence Service.
Each man in the formation wore a special combat mask
around his throat--an ERG-6 gas mask. Black and hard, it
looked like the lower half of a hockey mask, and it covered
its wearer's mouth and nose in much the same way Jesse
James's mask had covered his face in the old days.
Three other men stood out in front of the detachment of
7th Squadron members on the deserted runway. All three
wore starched white lab coats. Scientists.
Once the Marine and Secret Service people from
Nighthawk Two were in place, a set of Airstairs folded down
from the forward left-hand side of Marine One.
Two Marines emerged from the helicopter first and took
up their positions at the base of the stairs, backs straight,
eyes forward.
A moment later, Special Agent Frank Cutler stepped out
of the chopper, hand on his holster, eyes watchful. The Secret
Service trusts nobody. Not even the United States Air
Force. Even it could have a disgruntled soldier who might
take a shot at the President.
The President came out next, followed by his staff.
Schofield and a young Marine corporal emerged last of
all.
As usual, Marine One's two pilots, Gunman and Dallas,
stayed on board just in case a rapid departure was called for.
The two parties faced each other on the runway in the
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early morning light--the Air Force detachment stationed at
the complex; the President and his entourage.
Twisting coils of windswept sand swirled around their
bodies. A sandstorm was due later in the day.
A young Air Force captain guided the President over to
the colonel at the head of the Air Force formation--a severe
looking man with gray hair and eyebrows. As the President
came closer, the colonel stepped forward and crisply saluted
his Commander-in-Chief.
"Good morning, Mr. President," he said. "My name is
Colonel Jerome T. Harper, United States Air Force Medical
and Surgical Command, and commanding officer of United
States Air Force Special Area (Restricted) 7. This is Major
Kurt Logan, commander of the 7th Squadron forces here at
the base. Your two Secret Service advance teams are waiting