Area 7

by Matthew Reilly

  "Carries special zero-gravity AMRAAM missiles on its wings. It's designed for a quick launch and short target oriented missions: flying up into a low-earth orbit, knocking out enemy spy satellites or space stations, then coming home."

  "How many people can it hold?" Fairfax asked.

  The Air Force man frowned. "Three command crew. Maybe ten or twelve in the weapons hold, at the very most. Why?"

  Now Fairfax was thinking fast.

  "Oh, no way..." he breathed. "No way!"

  He lunged for a nearby printout.

  It was the printout of the last message he had decoded, the same one he had used to reveal the men of Echo Unit as traitors. It read:

  3-JUL 04:04:42

  SATELLITE INTERCEPT (ENGLISH)

  VOICE 1:

  WU and LI have arrived back at Area 7 with the virus. Your men are with them. All the money has been accounted for. Names of my men who will need to be extracted: BENNETT, CALVERT, COLEMAN, DAYTON, FROMMER, GRAYSON, LITTLETON, MESSICK, OLIVER and myself.

  Fairfax read the line: "Names of my men who will need to be extracted."

  "Extracted..." he said aloud.

  "What are you thinking?" the Air Force liaison man asked.

  Fairfax was in a world of his own now. He saw it clearly.

  "If you wanted to get a top-secret vaccine out of a top secret Air Force base in the middle of the U.S. desert, how would you do it? You couldn't fly it out, because the distance is too far. You'd be shot down before you even made it to California. Same for an overland extraction. You'd never make it to the border before we caught you. By sea? Same problem. But these Chinese bastards have figured it out."

  "What do you mean?" "You don't get something out of America by going north, south, east or west," Fairfax said.

  "You get it out by going up. Into space."

  * * *

  Schofield looked at his watch.

  9:47 a.m.

  Thirteen minutes to get the Football to the President.

  He and Book II had been flying for several minutes now, soaring over the desert landscape in their gaudy lime green biplane at a swift 190 miles an hour.

  In the distance ahead of them - rising up out of the flat desert plain - they could just make out the low mountain, the runway, and the small cluster of buildings that was Area 7.

  Immediately after they had taken off, Schofield had taken the opportunity to open the silver Samsonite container that he had found on the lake floor.

  Inside it, he saw twelve shiny glass ampules, sitting in foam-lined pockets. Each tiny glass bulb was filled with a strange blue liquid. A white stick-on label on each ampule read:

  I.V. VACCINATION AMPULE

  Measured dose: 55 ml

  Tested against SV strain V.9.1

  Certified: 3/7 05:24:33

  Schofield's eyes widened.

  It was a field vaccination kit - measured doses of the vaccine that Kevin's genetically constructed blood had provided, doses that could be administered by syringe. And created only this morning.

  It was Gunther Botha's masterwork.

  The antidote to the latest strain of the Sinovirus.

  Schofield stuffed six of the little glass ampules into the thigh pocket of his 7th Squadron fatigues. They might come in handy later.

  He tapped Book II on the shoulder, handed him theother six. "Just in case you catch a cold."

  Still sitting in the forward seat of the biplane, for the whole trip thus far Book II had been staring silently forward.

  He took the ampules Schofield offered him, pocketed them in his stolen 7th Squadron uniform. Then he just resumed his brooding forward gaze.

  "Why don't you like me?" Schofield asked suddenly, speaking into his helmet mike.

  Book II's head cocked to the side.

  A moment later, the young sergeant's voice came through Schofield's helmet. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you for a long time, Captain." His voice was low, cold.

  "What's that?"

  "My father was on that mission to Antarctica with you. But he never came back. How did he die?"

  Schofield fell silent. Book II's father - Buck Riley Sr., the original "Book" Riley - had died a horrific death during that terrible mission to Wilkes Ice Station. A murderous British SAS commander named Trevor Barnaby had fed him, live, to a pool of ferocious killer whales.

  "He was captured by the enemy. And they killed him."

  "How?"

  "You don't want to know."

  "How?" Schofield shut his eyes. "They hung him upside-down over a pool of killer whales and lowered him in."

  "The Marine Corps never tells you how," Book II said softly, his voice tinny over the radio. "They just send you a letter, telling you what a patriot your dad was, and informing you that he was killed in action. Do you know, Captain, what happened to my family after my father died?"

  Schofield bit his lip. "No. I don't."

  "My mother used to live on the base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I was in basic training at Parris Island. You know what happens to a Marine's wife when her husband is killed in action, Captain?"

  Schofield knew. But he said nothing.

  "She gets moved off the base. Seems the wives of living soldiers don't like the presence of newly single widows on the base - widows who might go stealing their husbands.

  "So my mother, after losing her husband, got moved out of her home. She tried to start over, tried to be strong, but it didn't work. Three months after she was moved off the base, they found her in the bathroom of her new shoebox apartment. She'd taken a whole bottle of sleeping pills."

  Book II turned in his seat, looked Schofield straight in the eye.

  "That's why I was asking you about using risky strategies before. This isn't a game, you know. When someone dies, there are consequences. My father is dead, and my mother killed herself because she couldn't live without him. I just wanted to make sure my father didn't die because of some high-risk tactical maneuver of yours."

  Schofield was silent.

  He'd never really known Book II's mother.

  Book Sr. hadn't really socialized with his fellow Marines, preferring to spend his downtime with his family. Sure, Schofield had met Paula Riley at the odd lunch or dinner, but he'd never really gotten to know her. He'd heard about her death - and at the time he'd wished that he'd done more to help her.

  "Your father was the bravest man I have ever known," Schofield said. "He died saving another person's life. A little girl fell out of a hovercraft and he dived out after her, shielded her from the fall. That's how they caught him. Then they took him back to the ice station and killed him. I tried to get back in time, but I...I didn't make it."

  "I thought you said you'd never lost to a countdown."

  Schofield said nothing.

  "He talked about you, you know," Book II said. "Said you were one of the finest commanders he'd ever served under. Said he loved you like his own son, like me. I don't apologize for being a little cold toward you, Captain. I just had to get your measure, make my mind up for myself."

  "And your decision?"

  "I'm still making up my mind."

  The plane swooped down toward the desert floor.

  It was 9:51 when the lime-green Tiger Moth touched down on the dusty desert plain, kicking up a cloud of sand behind it, in the midst of the raging sandstorm.

  As soon as the biplane skidded to a halt, Schofield and Book II were out of it - Schofield holding the Football and his Desert Eagle pistol, Book with two nickel-plated M9's... charging toward the trench carved into the earth that housed the entrance to the Emergency Exit Vent.

  Bodies lay everywhere, half-covered in sand.

  Nine Secret Service people, all dressed in suits. And all dead. Members of Advance Team 2.

  Four dead Marines littered the ground as well. All in full dress uniform. Colt Hendricks and the men of Nighthawk Three, who had come out here to check on the Escape Vent.

  Christ, Schofield thought as he and
Book II hurdled the bodies, heading for the Vent's entrance.

  All this death... and all of it will have consequences.

  9:52 a.m.

  Schofield and Book hit the entrance to the Emergency Exit Vent on the fly - it was still open from the Reccondos' entry before - and entered a narrow concrete tunnel and the cool shade of the Area 7 complex.

  They came to a rung ladder that stretched down into darkness - grabbed it and slid down it for a full five hundred feet. There were no lights here, so they slid by the light of Schofield's small barrel-mounted flashlight. Armed with his two ornamental pistols, Book II didn't have a flashlight.

  9:53 a.m.

  They hit the bottom, and saw a long one-man-wide concrete tunnel stretching away from them, gradually sloping downward - again, no lights.

  They took off down it, running hard.

  Schofield spoke into his Secret Service wrist mike as he ran: "Fox! Fox! Can you read me? We're back! We're back inside the complex!"

  His earpiece fizzled and crackled.

  No reply.

  Maybe Secret Service radios weren't designed to withstand long underwater swims.

  9:54.

  After several hundred yards of running down the ultra narrow passageway, they burst out through the Emergency Exit Vent's door on Level 6, and found themselves standing on the northern tracks of the X-rail station.

  The underground station was pitch-black.

  Total darkness.

  Frightening.

  By the beam of his gunlight, Schofield could make out a score of dead bodies, plus a charred, blasted-open section in the middle of the central platform - the spot where Elvis's RDX grenade had gone off earlier.

  "The stairs," he said, pointing his beam at the door leading to the fire stairs on their left. They leapt up onto the platform, charged for the door.

  "Fox! Fox! Can you read me?"

  Fizzle. Crackle.

  They came to the stairwell door. Schofield threw it open - and immediately heard the rapid clang-clang-clang of more than a dozen pairs of combat boots booming down the stairs... and getting louder.

  "Quickly, this way," he said, diving down onto the tracks on the southern side of the platform, taking cover underneath the struts of the small X-rail maintenance vehicle sitting there.

  Schofield killed his flashlight as Book II landed on the tracks beside him - not a second before the stairwell door burst open and Cobra Carney and the men of Echo Unit came charging out of it, a gaggle of wobbling flashlight beams moving quickly through the darkness.

  Schofield immediately saw Kevin among them, surrounded by four men of Asian extraction.

  "What is this?" Book II whispered.

  Schofield stared at the four men flanking Kevin.

  They were the four men he had seen inside the decompression chamber earlier, the ones who had brought the Sinovirus back from China.

  His mind raced.

  What was going on?

  Kevin had only just been returned to Area 7 on the Penetrators. Yet now he was being moved again. Had Caesar instructed this team of commandos to take him to another, more secure location?

  And yet again the question nagged Schofield: What did Caesar Russell care for Kevin? Wasn't he after the President?

  Cobra and his men leapt down onto the tracks on the other side of the platform, moving with purpose.

  It was then - by the light of Echo Unit's flashlights - that Schofield saw that the blast doors sealing the X-rail tunnel on the other side of the platform were open. They were the doors that sealed off the tunnel that led to Area 8.

  Cobra and his men, with Kevin and the four Asian men among them, disappeared inside the eastern tunnel, looking behind themselves as they went.

  Looking behind themselves... Schofield thought.

  And then he saw Cobra Carney take one last anxious glance over his shoulder before he entered the tunnel, and suddenly Schofield knew.

  These men were stealing Kevin... from Caesar.

  * * *

  Up in the darkened hangar on Level 2 Gant looked nervously at her watch.

  9:55 a.m.

  Five minutes until the President had to place his palm on the Football's analyzer plate.

  And still no word from Scarecrow.

  Shit.

  If he didn't come back soon, this show was over.

  Gant and Mother - with Juliet, the President, Hagerty and Tate - had left the AWACS plane on Level 2, and guided by the flashlights on their gun barrels, had made their way across the underground hangar toward the wide aircraft elevator shaft.

  Still carrying the black box that she had pilfered from the AWACS's belly, Gant was heading for Caesar Russell's command center up on ground level to carry out her plan.

  But if Schofield didn't get back with the Football soon, any plan she had would become academic.

  The complex was eerily silent.

  When combined with the pitch darkness that now shrouded the underground facility, it made for a very haunting atmosphere

  For a moment, Gant thought she heard her earpiece crackle: "...ox?...ead me?"

  Juliet heard it, too. "Did you hear that...?"

  And then so suddenly that it made them all jump, a gunshot echoed up through the elevator shaft.

  Loud and booming.

  The blast of a pump-action shotgun.

  What followed the gunshot, however, was infinitely more terrifying.

  A cackle of laughter.

  An insane cackle that floated up the shaft, cutting through the air like a scythe.

  "Nah-ha-haaaaaaaah! Hellooooo everybody! We're coming to get you!"

  This was followed by a man's voice howling like a wolf. "Arrooooo!"

  Even Mother gulped. "The prisoners..."

  "They must have found the arms cabinet down in the cell bay," Juliet said.

  Abruptly, a loud mechanical clanking noise reverberated up through the elevator shaft.

  Gant looked out over the edge.

  The giant aircraft elevator platform lay at the bottom of the shaft on Level 5, the remains of the destroyed AWACS plane on its back half-submerged in a wide body of water.

  At various places on the elevator platform, Gant saw torches - flaming torches, about twenty of them – moving all around, flickering in the darkness. Torches held aloft by men.

  The escaped prisoners.

  "How many do you see?" Juliet asked.

  "I don't know," Gant said. "Thirty-five, forty. Why, how many are there?"

  "Forty-two."

  "Oh, perfect."

  Then, abruptly, with a great groaning lurch, the elevator platform lifted up out of the lake at the base of the shaft, dripping water.

  "I thought the power..." Mother began.

  Juliet shook her head. "It has a stand-alone hydraulic engine, for use in a power blackout like this."

  The elevator lumbered up the shaft, its massive form moving steadily through the darkness.

  "Quickly. Away from the edge." Gant pushed the President back behind the landing gear of one of the AWACS planes nearby. She and Mother and Juliet clicked off their barrel-mounted flashlights.

  The gigantic elevator platform rumbled past the open doorway of Level 2, continued slowly upward. As it did so, Gant peered around the landing gear of the AWACS.

  The scene looked like something out of a horror movie.

  They were standing on the rising elevator platform - holding flaming torches above their heads; shotguns and pistols in their spare hands - and they howled like animals, whooping it up, their shrill calls grating like fingernails on a chalkboard in the dark silence of the complex.

  The prisoners from the Level 5 cell block.

  Half of them were not wearing shirts - their bare chests shone in the firelight of their torches.

  Others wore bandannas wrapped around their heads and biceps.

  All of them, however, wore soaking-wet trousers, caused by the rising water on Level 5.

  Then the elevator rose out of G
ant's view, and she emerged from her hiding spot to watch its underside climb and climb until it arrived at the main hangar with an ominous, thunderous boom.

  * * *

  Caesar Russell strode purposefully across the control room overlooking the main hangar.

  He had just seen the aircraft elevator platform - with its cargo of howling and shotgun-firing prisoners - rise into view. No sooner had it stopped than prisoners bolted off it, scattering in every direction.

  "Get on the handhelds," Caesar ordered coolly. "Tell Charlie to wait at the top door and prepare for evacuation to the secondary command post. We'll come to them. Where's Echo?"

  "I can't raise them, sir," the nearest radioman replied.

  "Never mind. We'll contact them later. Let's go."

  Everyone started moving. Logan and his three Alpha men. Boa McConnell and his four Bravo men.

  Caesar used a keypad to unlock a small pressure door set into the northern wall of the control room, hurled it open.

  A smooth concrete passageway stretched away from him, sloping down and to the left, where it would ultimately connect with the top door's passageway.

  The three Alpha men led the way. They charged into the passageway, guns first. Caesar himself went next, followed by Logan.

  Colonel Jerome Harper was next in line, but he never got the chance.

  For just as Logan disappeared inside the passageway's entrance, the regular door on the other side of the control room flew open, revealing five shotgun-toting prisoners!

  Boom!

  An entire console was blasted to pieces.

  In the escape passageway, Logan spun - and saw the intruders, and realized that the others weren't going to make it into the tunnel - and with a look to Harper, he made the call and slammed the escape door shut behind him, sealing off the passageway, sealing Harper and the remaining Air Force men inside the control room.

  Eleven men in total were left behind: Harper, Boa McConnell, Boa's four Bravo Unit men, the four radio operators, and the unseen man who had been observing the morning's events from the shadows.

  All were left in the control room, at the mercy of the murderous prisoners.

  * * *

  Down in the Level 6 X-Rail station, Schofield and Book II hurried out from their hiding spot underneath the compact maintenance vehicle, leapt up onto the platform and dashed for the door to the fire stairs.