Area 7

by Matthew Reilly

"Ah, shit," Schofield said sadly.

  "...and we're about to lose Elvis."

  "What?" Schofield said, perplexed and horrified at the same time.

  But he didn't get to discuss it further, for at that moment, three more puncturelike whumps reverberated through the underground station.

  Thwump!

  Thwump!

  Thwump!

  Three rocket-launched grenades sped across the width of the station, zeroing in on the slow moving X-Rail train, three thin lines of smoke cutting through the air behind them, before suddenly - swoop!-swoop!-swoop! - one after the other they shot in through the shattered windows of the second X-Rail car.

  The X-Rail car that held the President.

  As if on cue, Schofield heard Mother's voice roar over his earpiece: "Oh, fuck me!"

  The twin-engined X-Rail train began to pick up speed, heading for the tunnel.

  In the second railcar, Gant couldn't believe what was happening.

  Three grenades!

  All in her carriage.

  She saw the options in a nanosecond: If we stay, we die for sure. If we get out, we take our chances with the 7th Squadron. In that case, death is probable, but not certain.

  "We can't stay here!" she yelled instantly. "Out! Out!"

  She and Juliet immediately grabbed the President by his coat and hauled him toward the door.

  They didn't miss a step as they ran through the doorway and dived out of the moving train onto the platform, rolling quickly as they landed.

  Hot Rod Hagerty and Nicholas Tate jumped nervously from the moving rail car, landing awkwardly.

  A split second later, the figure of Mother – obviously not wanting to wait in line behind Hagerty and Tate – came flying out through one of the broken windows next to the doorway. She somersaulted as she hit the platform, gun tucked up against her chest, rolled to her feet.

  A moment later, the three grenades went off – three consecutive blasts, booming out from the second rail car.

  A trio of brilliant fireballs expanded laterally throughout the interior of the rail car - illuminating the entire carriage like a spectacular elongated lightbulb – consuming every available inch of space within it.

  Angry flames billowed out from the windows of the carriage, snapping the window frames like twigs, cracking the car's walls.

  The fireballs fanned out over the underground platform, expanding over Gant and the others' heads as they scurried behind the station's concrete pillars to avoid the fire of the advancing 7th Squadron men.

  The entire X-Rail train rocked with the triple grenade explosion, but it kept on going, picking up speed with every yard.

  In the front carriage, Schofield was almost knocked off his feet by the blast. When he managed to regain his balance and look back down the track, he felt a rush of horror sweep through him.

  He saw the President - flanked by Gant and Mother and Juliet - taking cover on the underground station's platform.

  Damn it!

  The President was off the train!

  The accelerating X-Rail train was now approaching the western end of the station, coming alongside the 7th Squadron commandos positioned there. Schofield saw the 7th Squadron men, right alongside his carriage, but they paid him no heed.

  They only had eyes for the President.

  And suddenly Schofield had a decision to make.

  Leap off the train and stay with the President - the President on whose back the fate of the country rested.

  Or go after the boy...

  Then, in a fleeting instant, just as the train was about to disappear into the tunnel, Schofield saw him, and he knew then that the President would get away - at least away from the Level 6 station. And he knew that Gant and Mother would see it, too.

  And with that, he made his decision to go after Kevin.

  A second later, Schofield's view of the X-Rail station - the image of the ten 7th Squadron commandos leapfrogging their way down the platform toward the President of the United States and his last few guardians - was replaced with that of the impenetrable black wall of the tunnel.

  Gant ducked, covering her head from the chunks of concrete that were raining down all around her.

  They were screwed.

  The 7th Squadron had them.

  There was nowhere they could go, nowhere they could run. They were stuck out in the very middle of the platform, outnumbered, outgunned and out of goddamned luck.

  And then she saw Elvis.

  Walking like a robot - an automaton, completely out in the open - toward the advancing 7th Squadron men, despite the raging gunbattle going on all around him.

  He had no weapon in his hands. Indeed, his massive fists were clenched firmly on either side of his body as he walked. His face was entirely devoid of emotion - his eyes fixed, his jaw set.

  Elvis, it seemed, had his own mission now.

  "Oh, Jesus," Gant breathed. "Take care, Elvis."

  Then she turned to the others, "Get ready, people. We're leaving."

  "What?" Hot Rod Hagerty blurted. "How?"

  "Elvis is going to buy us some time. Take cover and get ready to move."

  Sergeant Wendall "Elvis" Haynes, USMC, strode purposefully toward the oncoming 7th Squadron commandos, in between them and the President's group.

  The 7th Squadron men slowed slightly, if only because this was such an odd thing for Elvis to do. He was quite obviously unarmed and yet he just kept moving slowly forward - twenty yards from them, twenty yards from the President - completely calm.

  The 7th Squadron commandos never heard the mantra he was repeating softly to himself as he walked. "You killed my friend. You killed my friend. You killed my friend..."

  Quickly and efficiently, one of the 7th Squadron men raised his P-90 and fired a short burst. The volley ripped Elvis's chest to shreds and he fell, and the 7th Squadron men resumed their advance.

  It was only when they reached Elvis that they heard him speaking, gurgling through his own blood: "You killed my friend..."

  And then they saw his bearlike right hand open like a flower - to reveal, resting in his palm, a high-powered RDX hand grenade.

  "You killed my..."

  Elvis drew his final breath.

  And his hand relaxed completely - releasing the grenade's spoon - and to the utter horror of the men of Bravo Unit standing close around it, the powerful RDX grenade went off with all its terrible force.

  * * *

  The X-Rail train rocketed through the tunnel system.

  Sleek and streamlined, with its bullet-shaped nose and its flat X-framed fuselage, the twin carriage train whipped through the wide tunnel at a cool two hundred miles per hour - and this despite its blasted-out windows and bullet battered walls.

  It moved with little noise and surprising smoothness. This was because it was propelled not by an engine, but rather by a state-of-the-art magnetic propulsion system that had been developed to replace the aging steam-operated catapults on the Navy's aircraft carriers. Magnetic propulsion required few moving parts yet yielded phenomenal ground speeds, making it very popular among engineers who lived by the rule that the more parts a piece of machinery has, the more parts it has that can break.

  Book II sat in the driver's compartment, hands on the controls. Herbie sat beside him. The driver's compartment was the only part of the X-Rail car that hadn't had all its windows blasted to pieces.

  "Aw, shit!" Schofield's voice yelled from behind them. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

  Schofield strode into the driver's compartment.

  "What's wrong?" Book II asked.

  "This is what's wrong," Schofield said, indicating the silver Samsonite briefcase dangling from his combat webbing. The Football. "Damn it! Everything was happening too fast. I never even thought about it when the President dived off the train. What time is it?"

  It was 8:55.

  "Great," he said. "We now have just over an hour to get this suitcase back to the President."

  "Should we turn around?" Boo
k II asked.

  Schofield paused, thinking fast, a thousand thoughts swirling through his head.

  Then he said decisively: "No. I'm not leaving that boy. We can get back in time."

  "Uh, but what about the country?" Book II said.

  Schofield offered him a crooked smile. "I've never lost to a countdown yet, and I'm not about to start today." He turned to Herbie. "All right, Herbie. Twenty-five words or less: tell me about this X-Rail system. Where does it go?"

  "Well, it's not exactly my area of expertise," Herbie said, "but I've traveled on it a few times. So far as I know, it's actually made up of two systems. One heads west from Area 7, taking you to Lake Powell. The other heads east, taking you to Area 8."

  As Herbie explained, they were on the system that extended forty miles to the west, out to Lake Powell.

  Schofield had heard of Lake Powell before. Truth be told, it was not so much a lake as a vast one-hundred-and-ninety-mile-long mazelike network of twisting water-filled canyons.

  Situated right on the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell had once looked like the Grand Canyon, an enormous system of gorges and canyons that had been carved into the earth by the mighty Colorado River, the same river that would create the Grand Canyon farther downstream.

  Unlike the Grand Canyon, however, Lake Powell had been dammed by the U.S. government in 1963 to generate hydroelectric power - thus backing up the river, creating the lake, and turning what was already a striking vista of rock formations into a spectacular desert canyonland that was half-filled with water.

  Now giant sand-yellow mesas rose majestically out of the lake's sparkling blue waters, while towering templelike buttes lorded over its flat blue horizon. And, of course, there were the chasms and canyons, now with canals at their bases instead of dusty rocky paths.

  Kind of like a cross between the Grand Canyon and Venice, really.

  Like any large project, the damming of the Colorado River in 1963 had raised howls of protest. Environmentalists claimed that the dam raised silt levels and threatened the ecosystem of a two-centimeter-long variety of tadpole. This seemed like nothing, however, to the owner of a tiny rest stop gas station, who would see his store - built on the site of an old western trading post - covered by a hundred feet of water. He was compensated by the government.

  In any case, with its ninety-three named gorges and God-only-knew how many others, for a few years Lake Powell became a popular tourist destination for house boaters. But times had changed, and the tourist trade had slackened off. Now it lay largely silent, a ghostlike network of winding chasms and ultra-narrow "slot canyons," in which there was to be found no flat ground, only sheer vertical rock and water, endless water.

  "This X-Rail tunnel meets the lake at an underground loading bay," Herbie said. "The system was built for two reasons. First, so that the construction of Areas 7 and 8 could be kept absolutely secret. Materials would be hauled on barges up the lake and then delivered forty miles underground to the building site. We still use it occasionally as a back-door entrance for supplies and prisoner delivery."

  "Okay," Schofield said. "And the second reason?"

  "To act as an escape route in the event of an emergency," Herbie said.

  Schofield looked forward.

  X-Rail tracks rushed by beneath him - and above him - at incredible speed. The wide rectangular tunnel in front of the train bent away into darkness.

  A sudden noise made him spin, pistol up.

  Brainiac froze in the doorway to the driver's compartment, his hands snapping into the air.

  "Whoa-whoa-whoa! It's me!"

  Schofield lowered his gun. "Knock next time, will you?"

  "Sure thing, Boss." Brainiac sat down in a spare seat.

  "Where have you been?"

  "In the back of the second carriage. I got separated from the others when those rocket grenades came flying in. Dived into a storage compartment just as the three grenades went off."

  "Well, it's good to have you here," Schofield said. "We need all the help we can get." He turned to Herbie. "Can we get telemetry on any of the other trains on this system?"

  "I think so," Herbie said. "Just give me a second here..."

  He punched some keys on the driver's console. A computer monitor on the dashboard came to life. In a few seconds, Herbie brought up an image of the X-Rail system.

  X-RAIL NETWORK 3-589-001

  Schofield saw an elongated S-bend that stretched horizontally from Area 7 to the network of canyons that was Lake Powell. He also saw two blinking red dots moving along the trackline toward the lake.

  "The dots are X-Rail trains," Herbie said. "That's us closer to Area 7. The other one must have left about ten minutes ahead of us."

  Schofield stared at the first blinking dot as it arrived at the loading bay and stopped.

  "So, Herbie," he said, "since we've got a bit of time, this Botha character. Who is he?"

  * * *

  No sooner had Elvis's hand grenade gone off than Gant and Mother and Juliet were up on their feet and firing their guns hard, covering the President as they all ran back toward the fire stairwell from which they had entered Level 6.

  The blast of Elvis's RDX grenade had killed five of the 7th Squadron men instantly. Their bloodied limbs now lay splayed across the X-Rail tracks on either side of the central platform.

  The five remaining members of Bravo Unit had been farther away from the grenade when it had gone off. They had been knocked over by the concussion wave, and were now scrambling to find cover - behind pillars and down on the X-Rail tracks - in the face of Gant and the others' retreating fire.

  Into the fire stairs.

  Gant led the President up the stairwell. She was breathing hard, legs pumping, heart pounding, Mother, Juliet, Hagerty and Tate close behind her.

  The group came to the Level 5 firedoor.

  Gant reached for the door's handle - then pulled her hand back sharply.

  Small jets of water spurted out from the edges of its frame. The jets of water shot out from the door's rubber seal, mainly from down near the floor, losing intensity as they moved higher. No water sprayed out from the top of the door.

  It was as if there was a waist-high body of water behind the fireproof door, just waiting to break through.

  And then, from behind the door, Gant heard some of the most hideous shrieking sounds she had ever heard in her life. It was horrific - pained, desperate. The cries of trapped animals...

  "Oh, no...the bears," Juliet Janson said as she came alongside Gant and saw the firedoor. "I don't think we want to go in there."

  "Agreed," Gant said.

  They raced up the stairs and came to Level 4. After checking the decompression area beyond the door, Gant gave the all-clear.

  The six of them entered, fanned out.

  "Hello again!" a voice boomed out suddenly from above them.

  Everyone spun. Gant snapped her gun up fast, and found herself drawing a bead on a wall mounted television set.

  Caesar's face was on it, grinning.

  "People of America, it is now 9:04, and thus time for your hourly update."

  Caesar gave his report smugly.

  "...And your Marines, inept and foolish, have yet to inflict any losses on my men. They do little but run. Indeed, His Highness was last seen making a desperate bid for freedom down on the lowest level of this facility. I am informed that a firefight has just taken place down there, but await a report on the result of that exchange..."

  As far as Gant was concerned, it was all bullshit. Whatever Caesar said, whatever lies he told, it didn't affect their situation. And it certainly didn't help to watch him gloat.

  So while Caesar spoke on the television and the others watched him, Gant investigated the sliding door set into the floor that led down to Level 5.

  She could just make out muffled shouts coming from the other side of it. People yelling.

  She hit the door open switch, raised her gun. The horizontal door slid away.

&nb
sp; The shouts became screams as the prisoners down on Level 5 heard the door grind open.

  Gant peered down the ramp.

  "Good God," she breathed.

  She saw the water immediately, saw it lapping against the ramp below her. In fact, the ramp simply disappeared into it.

  While Caesar's voice continued to boom, she edged down the sloping walkway, until her spit polished dress shoes stepped ankle-deep into the water.

  She crouched down on the ramp, looked out over Level 5.

  What she saw shook her.

  The entire level was flooded.

  Easily to chest height.

  It was terribly dark as well, which only served to make the flooded cell block look all the more frightening.

  The inky-black indoor lake stretched away from her, to the far end of the floor, its liquid form slipping in through the bars of all the cells - cells which held an assortment of the most wretched-looking individuals Gant had ever seen.

  And then the prisoners saw her.

  Screams, shrieks, wails. They shook the bars of their cells, cells that they would ultimately drown in if the water level continued to rise.

  Like Schofield, Gant hadn't seen the cell bay before. She had only heard the President talk about it when he'd told them about the Sinovirus and its vaccine, Kevin.

  "We'd better go." Juliet appeared at her shoulder. Caesar's broadcast, it seemed, had concluded.

  "They're going to drown..." Gant said, as Janson pulled her gently back up the ramp to Level 4.

  "Believe me, drowning's too good for the likes of them," the Secret Service agent said. "Come on. Let's find somewhere to hole up. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell need a rest."

  She hit the door close button and the horizontal door slid shut, cutting off the prisoners' pained shouts.

  Then, with the President and Mother and Hot Rod and Tate in tow behind them, Gant and Juliet headed for the western side of the floor.

  None of them noticed the long decompression chamber as they departed.

  Although from a distance it appeared normal, had they looked at it more closely, they would have seen that the timer-activated lock on its pressurized door had timed out and unlocked itself.

  The door was no longer fully closed.

  The decompression chamber was now empty.