for you inside. We're honored to have you, sir. Welcome to
Area 7."
"Thank you, Colonel," the President replied. "It's a
pleasure to be here. Lead the way."
AS SOON AS THE PRESIDENT WAS TAKEN AWAY, DISAPPEARING
inside the enormous main hangar with his highest-level entourage
in tow, the major in charge of the 7th Squadron detachment
came up to Schofield.
Major Kurt Logan was about six-one, with closely
shaved hair and heavily pockmarked skin. Schofield had actually
met him before, although he doubted Logan would remember
him.
It had been at a special command and leadership course
run by the Navy at their SEAL compound in Fort Lauderdale in 1997. Through a combination of smart tactics and
ruthless follow-through, the softly spoken Logan had come
first in the class by a clear forty points. He could assess any
battlefield situation in an instant, and when it came to engaging"
the enemy, he was uncompromising. Schofield, then
just a budding Recon Unit commander, had come tenth in a
class of sixteen.
From the looks of things, Logan hadn't changed much.
His whole bearing--hands clasped firmly behind his back,
steely level gaze--indicated a powerful, confident inner
strength. Battle-hardened strength.
"Excuse me, Captain," Logan said in a soft Southern
drawl. He offered Schofield a sheet of paper. "Our personnel
list for your records."
Schofield took the list, then gave one of his own to Logan
in return.
It was common practice at presidential inspections for
both sides to swap personnel lists, since the President's people
wanted to know who was at the base they were inspecting,
Matthew Reilly
and the base people wanted to know exactly who was in
the presidential convoy.
Schofield glanced at the Area 7 list. Columns of meaningless
names ran down it.
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
SPECIAL AREA (RESTRICTED) 07
ON-SITE PERSONNEL
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET
NAME
NAME
COMMAND UNIT
Harper, JT (CO)
7TH SQUADRON
Alvarez, MJ A Frommer, SN E
Arthurs, RT C Gale, A D
Atlock, FD B Giggs, RE B
Baines, AW A Golding, DK D
Bennett, B E Goldman, WE A
Biggs, NM C Grayson, SR E
Boland, CS B Hughes, R A
Boyce, LW D Ingliss, WA B
Calvert, ET E Johnson, SW D
Carney, LE E Jones, M D
Christian, FC A Kincaid, R B
Coleman, GK E Littleton, SO E
Coles, M B Logan, (MAJ) KW A
Crick, DT D McConnell, BA B
Criece, TW A Messick, K E
Davis, AM E Milbourn, SK D
Dayton, AM E Morton, IN C
Dillan, ST D Nance, GF D
Doheny, FG A Nystrom, JJ D
Egan, RR B Oliver, PK E
Fraser, MS C Price, AL C
Fredericks, GH A Rawson, MJ C
NAME UNIT Area 7 NAME 45 UNIT
Sayles, MT Sommers, SR Stone, JK B C C Taylor, AS Willis, IS Wolfson, HT B C A
CIVILIAN STAFF
Botha, GW MED
Franklin, HS MED
Shaw, DE MED
He did notice something, though.
There were more names here than there were 7th
Squadron men on the tarmac. While there had been forty
commandos out on the tarmac, there were fifty 7th Squadron
members on the list. He figured there must be another ten
man unit inside the base somewhere.
As Schofield looked at the list, Logan said, "Captain, if
you wouldn't mind, we'd like you to move your--"
"What appears to be the problem, Major?" a voice said
from behind Schofield. "Don't bother with Captain
Schofield. I am in command here."
It was Ramrod Hagerty, the White House Liaison Officer.
With his Englishman's mustache and distinctly battle-hardened posture, Hagerty was everything Kurt Logan was
not.
Before he answered him, Logan looked Hagerty up and
down. What he saw obviously didn't impress him.
"I was led to believe that Colonel drier was in ultimate
command of Marine One," Logan said coolly--and correctly.
"Well, ah, yes ... yes, technically, he is," Hagerty said.
"But, as White House Liaison, anything to do with the
movement of these helicopters must go through me first."
Logan looked at Hagerty in stony silence.
Then he said, "I was about to ask the captain here if he
wouldn't mind rolling your helicopters into the main hangar
while the President is at the base. We wouldn't want enemy
satellites knowing that we had the Boss visiting, now would
we?"
46
Matthew Reilly
"No, no, of course not. Of course not," Ramrod said.
"Schofield. Make it happen."
"Yes, sir," Schofield said dryly.
THE GIANT DOUBLE DOORS OF THE HANGAR CLOSED WITH A resounding
boom.
The two lead helicopters of Marine Helicopter
Squadron-1 were now parked inside the main hangar of Area
7, their rotors and tail booms folded into their stowed positions.
Despite their own considerable size, the two Presidential
helicopters were dwarfed by the cavernous hangar.
Having supervised the roll-in of the choppers, Schofield
now stood in the middle of the massive interior space, alone,
scanning it silently.
The rest of the Marine,<White House and Secret Service
contingent--those who hadn't been senior enough to go
with the President, about twenty people--variously milled
about the helicopters or drank coffee in the two glass-walled
offices that flanked the main doors.
The size of the hangar stunned Schofield.
It was gigantic.
Completely illuminated by brilliant white halogen
lights, it must have stretched at least a hundred yards into the
mountain. A ceiling-mounted rail system ran for its entire
length. At the moment, two large wooden crates hung from
the rails at either end of the hangar.
At the far end of the vast space--facing the doors that
led out to the runway--stood a two-story, completely internal building that ran for the full width of the hangar. This
building's upper floor had angled glass windows that looked
out over the hangar floor.
A small unobtrusive personnel elevator sat quietly underneath
the overhang created by the building's upper level,
sunk in the hangar's northern wall.
Apart from the Presidential helicopters, there were no
other aircraft in the hangar at present. Some large white
painted towing vehicles not unlike those seen at airports lay
Area 7 47
scattered around the hangar floor--indeed, Schofield had
used two of them to bring in the choppers.
By far the most striking feature of the immense hangar,
however, was the massive aircraft elevator platform that lay
in its center.
It was huge, unbelievably huge, like the enormous hydraulic
elevators that hang off the sides of aircraft carriers--
&nb
sp; a giant square-shaped platform in the very center of the
hangar.
At 200 feet by 200 feet, the platform was large enough
to hold an entire AWACS Boeing 707--the Air- Force's famous
radar-detecting airplanes, known for the thirty-foot
flying-saucer-like rotodomes mounted on their backs.
Supported by an unseen hydraulic lift system, the giant
platform took up nearly the whole of the central Area of the
hangar. As with similar aircraft elevators, to maximize efficiency,
on the northeastern corner of the platform was a small detachable section which was itself a working elevator, capable
of operating independently of the larger platform. To do
this it ran on rails attached to the wall of the elevator shaft
rather than on the main platform's telescoping hydraulic
strut--a kind of "platform within a platform," so to speak.
Today, however, the Air Force personnel at Area 7 were
putting on the whole show.
As he stood at the edge of the enormous elevator shaft,
Schofield could see the President--with his nine-man Secret
Service Detail and his high-ranking Air Force tour guides--
standing on the full-sized platform, getting smaller and
smaller as they descended the wide concrete shaft on it.
AT THAT VERY SAME MOMENT, AS SHANE SCHOFIELD STOOD IN
the center of the vast hangar bay, looking down into the wide
elevator shaft, someone else was watching him.
The watcher stood in Area 7's darkened control room,
on the upper floor of the internal building that formed the
eastern wall of the hangar. Around him, four uniformed radio
operators spoke softly into headset microphones:
48
Matthew Reilly
"--Alpha Unit, cover the Level 3 common room--"
"--Echo Unit advises that the Marine investigatory
team from Nighthawk Three had to be neutralized out at the
EEV. They found the secondary advance team. Echo is parking
their chopper in one of the outside hangars now. Returning
to the main hangar when they're done--"
"--Bravo and Charlie Units are to remain in main
hangar--"
"--Delta Unit reports that it is now in position--"
"--the Secret Service are trying to contact their primary
advance team on Level 6. The simulated All-Clear signal,
however, appears to be working--"
Major Kurt Logan arrived at the side of the shadowy
figure. "Sir. The President and his Detail just arrived on
Level 4. All units are in position."
"Good."
"Shall we move now?"
"No. Let him take the tour," the faceless man said.
"There is still one more thing that has to be taken care of before
we can begin."
"GOOD MORNING."
Schofield turned, and saw the smiling faces of Libby
Gant and Mother Newman.
"Hey there," he said.
"Ralph's still pissed at you," Mother said. "He wants a
rematch."
Ralph was Mother's husband. A short nugget of a man
with a moon-shaped smiling face and a limitless ability to
put up with Mother's eccentricities, he was a trucker, owning
his own Mack eighteen-wheeler. It had a painting of an
arrow-struck heart on its side with the word "Mother" flowing
over it. With his short stature and ready smile, Ralph was
widely regarded in the Marine community as a bona fide
legend.
He was also the proud owner of a new barbecue, and at
the obligatory Sunday afternoon lunch at Mother's place a
few weeks ago, he'd challenged Schofield to a shoot-off on
the garage basketball hoop. Schofield had let him win and
Ralph knew it.
"Maybe next weekend?" Schofield said. "How about
you? How'd that checkup on the leg go yesterday?"
"In a word, Scarecrow, sen-sational," Mother
said. "I got full movement and I can run just as fast as I used
to. That seemed to satisfy the docs. Hell, I told 'em that just
last week I bowled 275, but that didn't seem to mean much.
Either way, since I'm now part machine, I want a new nickname:
Darth Fucking Vader."
Schofield laughed. "Okay, Darth."
50
Matthew Reilly
"You having trouble with Ramrod again?" Gant asked
seriously.
"The usual," Schofield said. "Hey, happy birthday."
Gant smiled. "Thanks."
"I got you something." Schofield reached into his dress
coat pocket. "It's not huge or anything, but ..." he frowned,
patted his other pockets. "Damn, it's here somewhere.
Maybe it's back on the chopper ..."
"Don't worry about it."
"Can I give it to you later?"
"Sure."
Mother gazed at the enormous hangar around them.
"What the fuck is this place? Looks like Fort Knox."
"More than that," Schofield said.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at the floor just inside the hangar doors."
Mother and Gant did. A series of box-shaped indentations
ran in a line across the concrete floor in front of the
"Now look up."
They did, and saw a series of thick, toothlike metal
protrusions--protrusions which, when lowered, would fit
perfectly into the box-shaped indentations on the floor.
"Piston-driven armored door," Schofield said, "like the
ones they have on Nimitz-class carriers. They're used to divide
the ship's hangar bays into self-contained zones in case
of fire or explosion. But, you'll notice that there aren't any
other armored doors in this hangar. That's the only one,
which means it's the only exit."
"So what are you saying?" Mother asked.
"I'm saying," Schofield said, "that whatever they're doing
in this complex is more important than you or I could
possibly imagine."
THE WIDE ELEVATOR PLATFORM HOLDING THE PRESIDENT OF the United States jolted to a halt in front of a giant steel door
marked with an enormous black-painted "4."
The wide concrete elevator shaft stretched up into the
air above the President and his Secret Service Detail like an
oversized vertical tunnel. The bright artificial light of the
ground-level hangar was but a small square of white now-- three hundred feet straight up.
No sooner had the elevator stopped than the massive
steel door in front of it rumbled upward. Colonel Jerome
Harper led the way, walking and talking quickly:
"This facility was once the headquarters for the North
American Air Defense Command--NORAD--before
NORAD was moved to a more modern facility built underneath
Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado in 1975.
"The complex is surrounded by a two-foot-thick titanium
outer wall, which is itself buried beneath one hundred
feet of solid granite. Like the Cheyenne Mountain complex,
it is designed to withstand a direct hit from a thermonuclear
missile."
Harper handed the President a sheet of paper, on which
was a schematic diagram of the subterranean structure.
The hangar appeared at the top of the diagram--at
&nb
sp; ground level, capped by the low mountain--then the wide
aircraft elevator shaft led downwards, until it met a multileveled
structure built deep within the earth.
Harper said, "The underground complex contains six
levels, the first two of which--Levels 1 and 2--are storage
hangars for high-risk aircraft, much like the ones you saw at
52
Matthew Reilly
Area 8 earlier this morning. Level 3 houses communications
and staff living quarters. Level 5 is confinement. And Level
6 is the X-Rail system.
"Each level is completely scalable to both radiation and
airborne contagions, and the whole facility, if locked down,
is capable of living off a self-contained supply of oxygen for
thirty days. Food supplies are kept in a storage Area on Level
3. Water supply is kept in a 100-million-gallon tank in the
Level 1 hangar."
Their group came to a short upwardly sloping corridor,
at the end of which sat a squat solid-looking door that
looked like a gigantic safe. An Air Force man hurriedly began
opening it.
"Project Fortune was stationed here four years ago, after
the first viable embryo reached maturity," Harper said.
"Now, at last, it has reached a stage where it can be put to
use."
The President waited patiently while the three-foot
thick door was pulled open.
Frank Cutler and the eight other members of the President's
personal Detail stood behind him--silent, impassive,
invisible. At three-minute intervals, Cutler would silently
check his earpiece for the All-Clear beacons from both of
his advance teams. The beacons came in loud and clear.
Then, finally, the door swung open, and the President
looked casually beyond it.
And his jaw dropped.
"Oh ... my ... God ..."
"MY MONEY'S ON THE SUPERBOMB," ELVIS HAYNES SAID AS HE
leaned back in his chair.
Elvis, Schofield, Gant and Mother were sitting in one of
the glass-walled offices by the main doors of the hangar.
With them were Colonels Grier and Dallas, all the other
Marines stationed on board the Presidential helicopters, as
well as the three remaining Secret Service agents.