doing at least two-sixty.
Chunks of falling rock rained down on the tunnel. It
was as if the passageway were now a living creature biting
down at the heels of the speeding X-rail pod.
Bang!
A chunk of concrete the size of a baseball landed on the
roof of the pod. Schofield snapped to look up at the sound.
And then--
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
A deafening hailstorm of chunks rained down on top of
the pod.
No! Schofield's mind screamed. Not now! Not this close
to the end!
The advancing wall of collapsing rock had caught them.
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang--
Chunks assaulted the pod's windscreen, shattering it.
Glass exploded everywhere.
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang--
Small chunks started entering the cockpit. The whole
pod started to shudder violently, as if it were about to run off
its ...
And then all of a sudden the concrete rain slowed and
the pod blasted clear of the falling chunks.
Schofield turned in his seat and saw the moving waterfall
of concrete receding into the tunnel behind them, shrinking
back behind a bend, falling back like a hungry monster
that had given up on the chase. The ripplelike expansion of
the concussion wave had run its course and petered out.
They'd outrun it.
Just.
And as the X-rail pod continued on its way down the
tunnel, Shane Schofield fell back into his seat and breathed a
long and deep sigh of relief.
BY THE TIME SCHOFIELD AND GANT WERE AIRLIFTED FROM
the canyonway outside the X-rail loading dock adjoining
Lake Powell by a Marine CH-53E, there was a veritable armada
of Army and Marine Corps helicopters in the air
above Area 7.
They looked like a swarm of tiny insects, black dots
hovering in the clear desert sky--all keeping at a safe distance
to avoid any lingering radiation.
The President was now safely ensconced in his Marine
helicopter, which itself was surrounded by no less than five
other Marine Super Stallions. Until the radio transmitter attached
to his heart was removed, the Marines would stay by his side.
And the moment he had been lifted off the tarmac at
Area 7, he had issued a standing order that all Air Force aircraft
in the continental United States be grounded pending
further notice.
schofield and gant--and their precious microwave-transmitting black box--were reunited with the President, Book II, Juliet and Kevin at Area 8, which had been secured twenty minutes before their arrival by two Marine Recon units.
During their sweep of the base, the Marines had found no live personnel except one Nicholas Tate III, Domestic Policy Adviser to the President of the United States, rambling incoherently, saying something about calling his stockbroker.
474
Matthew Reilly
Gant was immediately placed on a stretcher and her ankle
attended to by a corpsman. Schofield was given a temporary
gauze dressing for his bullet wounds, a sling for his
arm, and a dose of codeine for the pain.
"Nice to see you made it out, Captain," the President
said as he came over to where they sat. "Not so Caesar, I
take it?"
"I'm afraid he couldn't make it, sir," Schofield said. He
held up the black box, its green transmission light blinking.
"But he's with us in spirit."
The President smiled. "The Marines who swept this
base said they found something outside it that you might like
to see."
Schofield didn't understand. "Like what?"
"Like me, you sexy thing," Mother roared as she
stepped out from behind the President.
Schofield grinned from ear to ear. "You made it!"
The last he had seen, Mother had been flipping end over
end inside a speeding cockroach.
"Fucking indestructible is what I am," Mother said. She
was limping slightly on her real leg. "When it got hit by that
missile, I knew my cockroach was done for. And I didn't figure
old Caesar and his buddies would take kindly to finding
me in it. But when I ran off the runway, I kicked up a hell of
a dust cloud. So I bailed out under the cover of the cloud.
The cockroach flipped and smashed and I just dug a little
hole for my head in the sand under its front bumper, ripped
my fake leg off for added effect, and played dead until Caesar
and his choppers flew off."
"Ripped your fake leg off for added effect ..."
Schofield said. "Nice touch."
"I thought so," she smiled. Then she jutted her chin at
him. "What about you? Last I saw, you and the Prez were
heading off into outer space. Did you save the fucking day again?"
'I might have," Schofield said.
"More to the point," Mother whispered conspiratorially,
Area 7
475
"did you do what I told you to do with You-Know-Who?"
She nodded theatrically at Gant. "Did you kiss the friggin'
girl, Scarecrow?"
Schofield snuffed a laugh, cast a sideways look at Gant.
"You know what, Mother? As a matter of fact, I think I
did."
A SHORT WHILE LATER, SCHOFIELD SAT ALONE WITH THE President.
"So what's the word on the rest of the country?" he
asked. "Have they been watching all this every hour on the
Emergency Broadcast System?"
The President smiled. "It's funny you should ask. While
you were gone, we examined the complex's power history, and we found this."
He pulled out a printout of Area 7's source power history,
pointed to one entry.
07:37:b6
WARNING:
Auxiliary
power
malfunction
bystein
Malfunction
located at
terminal
1A2
Receiving no
response
from
systems:
TRACS;AUX
SYS-1; RAD
COM
SPHERE;
MBN;
FXT FAN
The President said, "Remember you said that you blew
up a junction box on one of the underground hangar levels
earlier this morning? Sometime around 7:37."
Matthew Reilly
"Yeah ..."
"Well, it seems that that junction box was kind of important.
Among other things, it housed the controls for the
base's auxiliary power system and its radiosphere. It also
housed a system called the MBN. You know what 'MBN'
stands for?"
"No ..."
"Stands for the Military Broadcast Network, the previous
name for the Emergency Broadcast System. Seems the
MBN's outgoing transmission cable was destroyed in that
blast. And because the LBJ Protocol was never initiated this
morning, Caesar's transmissions over the Emergency
Broadcast System were delayed by forty-five minutes."
"But the system was destroyed at 7:37 ..." Schofield
said.
The President smiled.
"Correct," he said, "which means that every time Caesar
Russell spoke into his digital camera this morning, he
wasn't transmitting at all. He was speaking to no one but the
people at Area 7."
Schofield blinked, trying to comprehend it all.
Then he said: "So the country doesn't know this happened ..."
The President nodded ruefully.
"It seems," he said, "that the people of America have
been preoccupied all day with another drama, an accident
involving Hollywood's highest paid actress and her actor fiance".
"It appears that the unlucky couple have been trapped in
the Swiss Alps all day, cut off by an avalanche while hiking
illegally on Swiss military property. Sadly, their unscrupulous
guide was killed, but I believe that just in the last hour
our two superstars have been found safe and well.
"As I understand it, CNN has been covering the whole
drama all day, updating the public every hour, recycling
some amateur footage of the area, giving updates. Biggest
news event since Diana's car crash, they tell me."
Area 7 477
Schofield almost laughed.
"So they really don't know," he said.
"That's right," the President said. "And that, Captain, is
the way it will stay."
exactly six hours later, the second X-38 space shuttle
from Area 8 was launched off the back of a high-flying 747.
Its mission: the destruction of a rogue Air Force reconnaissance
satellite hovering in a geosynchronous orbit above
southern Utah.
So far as the shuttle's pilots could tell, it appeared that
the satellite in question had been sending and receiving a peculiar
microwave signal down into the Utah desert.
In the end, the pilots didn't care what it was doing. They
had orders, which they followed to the letter.
And so they blasted the satellite out of the sky.
WITH THE CONTROLLING SATELLITE DESTROYED, THE TYPE 240
plasma explosives in the airports were rendered useless,
apart from their proximity sensors, which would take a little
more time to disable.
Over the next few hours, all fourteen bombs would be
disarmed and dismantled, and then taken away for analysis.
IN ADDITION TO THE DISARMING OF THE PLASMA BOMBS, THE
destruction of the satellite also allowed for the removal of
the radio transmitter attached to the President's heart.
The procedure was conducted by a renowned civilian
heart surgeon from Johns Hopkins University Hospital under
the watchful eye of three other cardiac surgeons and
armed supervision by the United States Secret Service and
the United States Marine Corps.
Never was a surgeon more careful--or more nervous-- during an operation.
Area 7 479
Limited anaesthesia was used. Although the public was
never notified of it, for twenty-eight minutes, the Vice
President was in charge of the United States of America.
AN INVESTIGATORY COMMITTEE WOULD LATER BE FORMED TO
conduct an inquiry into the Air Force's role in the Area 7 incident.
As a result of that inquiry, no less than eighteen high
ranking Air Force officers in charge of a dozen bases across
the southwestern United States and ninety-nine junior officers
and enlisted men stationed at those bases were tried for
treason in closed session.
It appeared that all of the men linked to the day's events
were either currently serving, or had once served, at either
the Air Force Special Operations Command, based at Hurlbut Field, Florida, or with the 14th and 20th Air Forces at
Warren and Falcon Air Force Bases in Wyoming and Colorado.
All, at one time or another, had been under the direct
command of Charles "Caesar" Russell.
Overall, in a service of nearly 400,000 men and women,
one hundred and seventeen traitors was not a very large
group, barely a dozen to each tainted base. But considering
the aircraft and ordnance at those bases, it was more than
enough to carry out Caesar's plan.
It further emerged at the trials that five of the USAF
personnel involved in the plot were Air Force surgeons who
at various times had performed procedures on congressional
members, including the United States senator and onetime
presidential hopeful, Jeremiah K. Woolf.
Circumstantial evidence presented at all the trials also
suggested that every Air Force man involved in the incident
was a member of an informal racist society within the
United States Air Force known as the Brotherhood.
All were sentenced to life imprisonment at an undisclosed
military prison, with no hope of parole. Unfortunately,
the plane delivering them to the secret prison
inexplicably crashed during flight. There were no survivors.
In the investigatory committee's final report to the Joint
480
Matthew Reilly
Chiefs of Staff, the subject of "informal antisocial interest
groups" within the armed forces was raised. While it was acknowledged
in the report that most such societies had been
removed from the military during a purge in the 1980's, the
report recommended that a new investigation be initiated
into their continued presence.
The Joint Chiefs, however, did not accept that such societies
existed, and therefore rejected the recommendations
OVER THE NEXT SIX MONTHS, THERE WOULD BE A NUMBER OF
unconfirmed reports from tourists in the Lake Powell area
concerning the sighting of a family of Kodiak bears around
the northeastern portion of the lake.
Officers of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigated
the reports, but no bears were ever found.
A COUPLE OF WEEKS LATER, A QUIET CEREMONY WAS HELD IN A
dark underground meeting room beneath the White House.
Inside the room were nine people.
The President of the United States.
Captain Shane Schofield--with his arm in a sling.
Staff Sergeant Elizabeth Gant--with crutches on account
of her broken ankle.
Gunnery Sergeant Gena "Mother" Newman--with her small bald-headed trucker husband, Ralph.
Sergeant Buck Riley Junior--with sling.
United States Secret Service Agent Juliet Janson--with
sling.
David Fairfax, of the Defense Intelligence Agency-- wearing his good sneakers.
And a small boy named Kevin.
The President bestowed upon Schofield and his team of
Marines the Congressional Medal of Honor (Classified), for
acts of valor in the field of battle despite the endangerment
of their own lives.
It was, however, an award they could tell no one about.
But then again, they all agreed it was probably better
that way.
while the others stayed to eat in the white house dining
room--during which dinner the President had a particularly
lively conversation with Mother and Ralph about the
Teamsters--Schofield and Gant took their leave, and went
out, alone, on their second date.
482
Matthew Reilly
When they got to the venue, they
found that they had
the place to themselves.
A single candle-lit table stood in the center of the wide
wood-paneled room.
And so they took their places and dined.
Alone.
In the President's private dining room, on the upper floor
of the White House, overlooking the Washington Monument.
"Give them whatever they want," the President had instructed
his personal chef. "Just put it on my tab."
By flickering candlelight, they talked and talked till late
in the evening.
As dessert arrived, Schofield reached into his pocket.
"You know," he said, "I meant to give you this on your
birthday, but the day kind of got away from me."
He pulled a crumpled piece of cardboard from his
pocket. It was small, about the size of a Christmas card.
"What is it?" Gant asked.
"It was your birthday present," Schofield said sadly. "It
was in my trouser pocket all day--I had to take it with me
every time I changed uniforms--so I'm afraid it got a little,
well, beat up."
He handed it to Gant.
She looked at it, and she smiled.
It was a photograph.
A photograph of a group of people standing on a beautiful
Hawaiian beach. Everyone was wearing board shorts
and loud Hawaiian shirts.
And standing next to each other at the very edge of the
group, smiling for the camera, were Gant and Schofield.
Gant's smile was a little uncomfortable, and Schofield's
kind of sad, behind his reflective silver sunglasses.
Gant remembered the day as if it were yesterday.
It had been that barbecue held on a beach near Pearl Harbor, celebrating her promotion to Schofield's Recon Unit.
"It was the first time we met," Schofield said.
"Yes," Gant said. "Yes, it was."
area 7
"I've never forgotten it," he said.
Gant beamed. "You know, this is the nicest birthday
present I've received this year."
Then she lifted herself up out of her seat, leaned over the table and kissed him on the lips.
after their dinner, they arrived downstairs, where
they were met by a presidential limousine. It was flanked
however, from in front and behind, by four Marine Corps