earlier that morning, was Caesar Russell.
russell grinned at the camera.
When he spoke, his voice boomed out from the tower's
speakers.
"Greetings, Mr. President, people of America. I know
it's a little early for my hourly update, but since, alas, it appears
that my race has been run, I'm sure you won't mind an
early commentary.
"My men are vanquished, my cause lost. I would
area 7
commend the President and his brave bodyguards for their
efforts, but such is not my way. I merely leave you all with
one parting comment: this country can never be the same,
after today ..."
Then Caesar did something that made Schofield's blood completely freeze.
He pulled open the front of his combat fatigues, revealing his chest.
Schofield's jaw dropped. "Oh no ..."
There, on Russell's chest, was a long vertical scar, right over his heart--the scar of a man who had had heart surgery
sometime in the past.
Caesar grinned, an evil, maniacal, completely insane grin.
"Cross my heart," he said, "and hope to die."
"what?" the president said. "I don't get it."
Schofield was silent.
He got it.
He snatched a piece of paper from his pocket. It was the printout he'd gotten Brainiac to
on the plane right at the very start of all this--when he'd needed to know if there really was a radio transmitter planted on the
President's heart.
Schofield scanned the printout. It still had the circles
Brainiac had drawn on it before:
50
75
100
He recalled Brainiac's earlier explanation. "It's a standard rebounding signature. The satellite sends down a search signal--they're the tall spikes on the
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positive side--and then, soon after, the receiver on the
ground, the President, bounces that signal back. Those are
the deep spikes on the negative side.
"Search and return. Interference aside, the rebounding
signature seems to repeat itself once every twenty-five seconds."
"Interference aside ..." Schofield said as he stared at
the printout.
"Only there is no interference. There are two separate signals. The satellite needs to pick up two signals ..." He
grabbed a nearby pen and joined the four circles into two pairs.
"This graph indicates two distinct signal patterns,"
Schofield said. "The first and the third. And then the second
and fourth."
"What are you saying?" the President asked.
"What I'm saying, Mr. President, is that you're not the
only man at this complex with a radio transmitter attached to
his heart. It's Caesar's trump card, his last resort, so that
even if he loses, he still wins. Caesar Russell has a transmitter
attached to his heart. So now, if he dies, the devices at the
airports go off."
"But he's inside the complex," Book II said, wincing
with pain, "and in exactly twenty minutes, the self-destruct
sequence will be initiated."
"I know," Schofield said, "and so does he. Which means
I now have to do something that I never thought I'd ever want to do. I have to go back into Area 7 and stop Caesar
Russell from getting killed."
SEVENTH
CONFRONTATION
3 July, 1045 Hours
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
SPECIAL AREA (RESTRICTED) NO.7
1045 HOURS
GROUND LEVEL: Main Hangar
LEVEL 1: Hangar Bay
LEVEL 2: Hangar Bay
LEVEL 3: Living Quarters
SCHOFIELD RE-ARMED HIMSELF.
With Book II and Juliet both wounded, he was going
back inside alone.
He got his Maghook back from Book, slid it into the
shotgun holster on his back. He also grabbed the P-90 that
Seth Grimshaw had brought out of the complex. It only had
about forty rounds left in it, but that was better than nothing.
He jammed Book's M9 and his own Desert Eagle pistol into
his thigh holsters. And last of all, he swapped his water damaged
wrist mike and earpiece for Juliet's working unit.
Book and Juliet would remain up in the tower armed with a P-90, guarding the President, the Football and Kevin until the Army and Marine forces arrived at the base.
Schofield pulled out Nicholas Tate's cell phone, dialed
the operator. He got Dave Fairfax's voice straight away, cutting
"Mr. Fairfax, I need a favor."
"What?"
"I need the lockdown release codes for Special Area 7,
the codes that turn off the self-destruct mechanism. Now, I
can't imagine they're kept in a book somewhere. You're going
to have to get onto the local network itself and somehow
pull them out."
"How long have I got?" Fairfax asked.
"You've got exactly nineteen minutes."
"I'm on it."
Fairfax hung up.
Schofield jammed a fresh clip into his M9. As he did so,
a figure appeared at his side.
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"I think she's still alive, too," Kevin said suddenly.
Schofield looked up, appraised the little boy for a moment
"How did you know I was thinking that?"
"I just know. I always know. I knew that Dr. Botha was
lying to the Air Force men. And I could tell that you were a
good man. I can't see exactly what someone's thinking, just
what they're feeling. Right now, you're worried about someone,
someone you care about. Someone who's still inside."
"Is this how you knew it was me on the space shuttle?"
"Yes."
Schofield finished loading his guns. "Any final tips,
then?" he asked Kevin.
The little boy said, "I only saw her once, when you were
both standing outside my cube. I only sensed one thing
about her: she really likes you. So you'd better save her."
Schofield gave him a wry smile. "Thanks."
And then he was away.
He tried the top door entrance first.
No luck.
Caesar had changed the code, manually it seemed. No
time for Fairfax to crack that one.
That left only one other option: the Emergency Exit Vent.
Schofield ran for Caesar's abandoned Penetrator helicopter.
It was 10:48 a.m.
TWO MINUTES LATER, CAESAR'S PENETRATOR--NOW FLOWN
by Schofield--landed next to the EEV in a swirling cloud of
dust and sand.
The EEV hadn't been hard to find. Mr. Hoeg's lime
green biplane--still sitting there on the desert floor--betrayed
the exit's location quite unambiguously.
No sooner had the black helicopter touched the ground
than Schofield was out of it and running toward the EEV.
He leapt down into the earthen trench and disappeared
inside the exit's open steel doorway at a run.
Area 7 433
it was 10:51 when schofield stepped out onto the darkened
X-rail tracks on Level 6, his gun raised.
The world down here was pitch-black, save for the thin
beam of his P-90's barrel-mounted flashlight.
He saw bodies laid out before him, shadows in the dim
light--the remnants
of the previous battles that day.
Air Force vs. Secret Service.
South Africans vs. Air Force.
Schofield and his Marines vs. Air Force.
Christ ...
But another thing weighed on his mind. Kevin, of
course, had been right. Apart from saving Caesar Russell,
Schofield had a far more personal reason for entering Area 7
again.
He wanted to find Libby Gant.
He didn't know what had happened to her after the
Sinovirus grenade had gone off up in the main hangar, but he
refused to believe that she was dead.
Schofield brought his wrist mike to his lips. "Fox. Fox.
Are you out there? This is Scarecrow. I'm back inside. Can
you hear me?"
IN A DARK PLACE SOMEWHERE INSIDE AREA 7, LIBBY GANT
stirred, a voice invading her dreams.
"--you hear me?"
She'd been unconscious for nearly an hour now, and
she didn't have a clue where she was or what had happened
to her.
Her last memory was of being inside the control room
upstairs and seeing something important and then suddenly ... nothing.
As she blinked awake, she saw that she was still wearing
her bright-yellow biohazard suit, except for the helmet.
It had been removed.
It was only then that she became aware of a pain in her
shoulders. Gant opened her eyes fully--
--and an ice-cold chill rippled down her spine.
Her entire upper body was bound to a pair of steel girders
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that had been arranged in the shape of an X. Her wrists
were held high above her head--crucifix-style--affixed to
the arms of the cross with duct tape, while more thick tape
held her throat tightly up against the junction of the X. Her
legs--duct-taped at the ankles--were laid out flat in front
of her.
Gant began to breathe very very fast.
What the hell was this?
She was someone's prisoner.
AS SHE HUNG HELPLESSLY FROM THE CROSS, EYES WIDE AND
terrified, she slowly began to regain her senses. She took in
the area around her.
The first thing she noticed about this place was that
there was no electric lighting. Three small fires illuminated
the immediate area.
It was in this grim firelight that she saw Hagerty.
Colonel Hot Rod Hagerty sat immediately to her right,
similarly "crucified"--his legs stretched out on the floor in
front of him, his arms outstretched on his own cross. His
eyes were shut, his head bent. Every few seconds he
groaned.
Gant looked at the room around them.
She was sitting underneath an overhang of some sort, in
dark shadow; a stagelike structure stood out in the open
space in front of her. Some children's toys lay scattered
about the stage, amid shards of glass.
It looked as if--once--a glass cube of some sort had
encased the stage, but now only half of that cube remained
standing.
Gant realized where she was.
She was in the area that had contained Kevin's sterilized
living area. Right now, she must be sitting directly underneath
the observation lab that had overlooked the cube, beneath
the overhang it created.
And then Gant saw the third crucified figure in the
room, and she gasped in revulsion.
It was the Air Force colonel, Jerome Harper.
area 7 435
Or what was left of him.
He lay to Gant's left, also under the overhang, his arms
taped to a cross high above his head, his head leaning as far
forward as the duct tape around his throat would allow.
But it was his lower body that seized Gant's shocked
attention.
Harper's legs were missing.
No, not just missing.
Hacked off.
Everything from the Air Force colonel's waist down had
been brutally carved away--like a carcass in an abattoir--leaving a gigantic slab of raw hacked flesh around his hips.
Indeed, Harper's whole waist region was just a foul bloody
mess that ended at the curved bony hook of his spinal column.
It was the most disgusting thing Gant had ever seen in
her life.
Her eyes swept the room, as the full extent of her
predicament became clear.
She was the prisoner of a monster. An individual who,
until today, had been a guest here at Area 7.
Lucifer Leary.
The Surgeon of Phoenix.
The serial killer who had terrorized hitchhikers on the Vegas-to-Phoenix interstate--the former medical student
who would kidnap his victims, take them home, and then eat their limbs in front of them.
Gant looked about herself in horror.
Leary--a big man, she recalled, at least six-eight, with a hideous facial tattoo--was nowhere to be seen.
Except for Hagerty and herself, the whole observation
area was completely and utterly empty.
Which, in a strange way, was even more frightening.
SCHOFIELD MADE FOR THE STAIRWELL AT THE EASTERN END OF
Level 6.
He had to get to the control room overlooking the main
hangar--to enter the termination codes before 11:05; or if
he couldn't do that, to capture Caesar and get him out of
Area 7 before the nuke went off at 11:15.
He threw open the stairwell doorway--
--and was instantly confronted by an enormous black
bear, caught in the beam of his small flashlight, rearing up
on its hind legs, baring its massive claws and bellowing
loudly at him!
Schofield dived off the edge of the X-rail platform as
the family of bears ambled out of the stairwell--papa bear,
mama bear and three little baby bears, all in a row.
Nicholas Tate had been right.
There were bears on the loose.
Papa bear seemed to sniff the air for a moment. Then he
headed westward, toward the other end of the underground
railway station, followed by his brood.
As soon as they were a safe distance away, Schofield
dashed into the open stairwell.
dave fairfax was tapping feverishly at the keyboard of
his supercomputer.
After five minutes' work, the computer had found a
source number that represented Area 7's self-destruct release
code.
Not bad progress, really. There was only one problem.
Area 7 437
The number had 640 million digits.
He kept typing.
10:52.
Schofield bounded up the stairwell, in near pitch
darkness, his flashlight beam wobbling.
As he ran, he tried to get Gant on the airwaves. "Fox,
this is Scarecrow. Can you hear me?" he whispered. "I repeat,
Fox, this is Scarecrow ..."
No reply.
He ran past the firedoor to Level 5--the door with the
thin jets of water shooting out from its edges--then came to
Level 4, the lab level, hurried past its open door, heading
upward.
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF LEVEL 4, GANT HEARD THE VOICE again. It sounded tinny and distant.
"--repeat, Fox, this is Scarecrow--"
Scarecrow ...
The v
oice was coming from Gant's earpiece, which
now hung loosely from her ear. It must have been dislodged
when her captor had knocked her unconscious.
Gant looked up at her left wrist, duct-taped to the cross
high above her head.
She still had her Secret Service wrist mike attached to
it. But there was no way she could bring it to her mouth, and
the mike only worked when you spoke into it at close range.
So she started tapping her finger on the top of the microphone.
schofield came to the floor door that opened onto
Level 2 and suddenly stopped.
He'd heard a strange tapping in his earpiece.
Tap-tap-taap. Tap-taap-tap. ...
Long and short taps.
Morse code.
Morse code that read, "F-O-X. F-O-X ..."
438 Matthew Reilly
"Fox, is that you? One tap for no, two taps for yes."
Tap-tap.
"Are you okay?"
Tap.
"Where are you? Tap out the floor number."
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
10:53.
Schofield burst through the Level 4 firedoor, scanning
the decompression area down the barrel of his gun.
It was dark.
Very dark.
This end of the floor was completely deserted--the decompression
chamber was empty, as were the test chambers
opposite it, and the catwalks above. The sliding horizontal
doorway in the floor--the one that led down to the Level 5
cell bay--however, was still open.
The water level down on Level 5 had risen considerably
over the last few hours. It had leveled off flush against the
floor of Level 4. Inky black wavelets lapped up against the
edges of the horizontal opening so that it now looked like a
little rectangular pool.
Level 5, it seemed, was completely underwater now.
Schofield stepped past the pool--just as something
slashed quickly through its waves. He spun, whipped his
gun around, but whatever it had been was long gone.
This was not what he needed.
Dark complex. Bears moving around the stairwells.
Caesar and Logan in here somewhere. Water everywhere.
Not to mention the possible presence of more prisoners.
He came to the wall that divided Level 4 in two, flung