Area 7

by Matthew Reilly

  Unfortunately, when the little platform had arrived up in the ground-level hangar - rising up through the matching square hole in the corner of the main platform - Gant had still had the black box from the AWACS plane in her possession.

  But she hadn't wanted to alert any of the prisoners to its significance, so she'd placed it on the floor of the mini elevator, and as soon as the platform had come flush against the floor of the main hangar, she'd "accidentally" kicked it clear, sending it tumbling out onto the hangar floor, a short way from the elevator shaft.

  With the hunt in the pit now over, the prisoners gathered around the aircraft elevator shaft turned their attention to the President and his guardians.

  An older prisoner stepped out of the larger group of inmates, a shotgun held lazily in his hand.

  He was a very distinctive-looking individual.

  He appeared to be about fifty, and judging from the confidence of his stride, he clearly had the respect of the group. Although the top of his head was bald, long gray-black hair flowed down from its sides, growing past his shoulders. A narrow angular nose, pale white skin, and hollow bloodless cheeks completed his very Gothic appearance.

  "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly," the long-haired man said as he stepped in front of the President. He had a soft silky voice, menacing in its slow articulation.

  "Good morning, Mr. President," he said pleasantly. "How nice of you to join us. Remember me?"

  The President said nothing.

  "But of course you do," the prisoner said. "I'm an 18-84. In one way or another, you've met all nine of the people who during your presidency have been convicted under Title 18, Part I, Chapter 84 of the United States Code. It's that part of the Code that prohibits ordinary Americans from attempting to assassinate their President.

  "Grimshaw, Seth Grimshaw," the long-haired prisoner said, offering his hand. "We met in February, just a couple of weeks after you -became President, as you were leaving the Bonaventure Hotel in LA viaits underground kitchen. I was the one who tried to put a bullet in your skull."

  The President said nothing.

  And he didn't take Grimshaw's proffered hand.

  "You managed to keep that whole incident quiet," Grimshaw said. "Very impressive.

  Especially since all someone like me really wants is publicity. And besides, it's not wise to scare the nation, is it? Better to keep the ignorantmasses unaware of these troublesome little attempts on your life. As they say, ignorance is bliss."

  The President said nothing.

  Grimshaw looked him up and down, cast a bemused eye over the black combat clothing that the Chief Executive now wore. The President, Juliet and Schofield were all still dressed in their black 7th Squadron combat attire. Gant and Mother, on the other hand, still wore their formal - but now very dirty - Marine dress uniforms.

  Grimshaw smiled, a thin, satisfied smile.

  Then he strolled over to the inmate holding the Football and took the silver briefcase from him. He opened it, then glanced from its countdown display screen to the President.

  "It would appear that my recently liberated associates and I have intruded upon something rather interesting. A game of cat-and-mouse, it would seem, judging by your clothes and the way you unceremoniously scampered through my cell block earlier." He clucked his tongue reproachfully. "Really, Mr. President, I must say, this is not at all presidential. Not at all."

  Grimshaw's eyes narrowed.

  "But who am I to stop such an imaginative spectacle? The President and his loyal bodyguards versus the treacherous military-industrial complex." Grimshaw turned. "Goliath. Bring the other captives over here."

  At that moment, an extraordinarily large prisoner - Goliath, Schofield guessed - stepped out from behind Grimshaw and headed off in the direction of the hangar's internal building. He was an absolute giant of a man, with massive tree-trunk-sized biceps and a squared-off head reminiscent of Frankenstein's monster. He even had a flat square bulge that protruded from his forehead - the signature mark, Schofield knew, of someone who'd had a steel plate inserted in his skull. Goliath carried a P-90 assault rifle in one massive fist and Schofield's Maghook in the other.

  He returned moments later.

  Behind him came the seven Air Force men who – along with the four unfortunate radio operators - had been captured inside the control room earlier: Colonel Jerome T. Harper.

  Boa McConnell and his four Bravo Unit men, two of whom were badly wounded.

  And the lone individual who had been observing the morning's events from the shadows of Caesar Russell's control room.

  Schofield recognized him instantly.

  So did the President.

  "Webster..." he said softly.

  Warrant Officer Carl Webster, the official guardian of the Football, stood with the Air Force people, looking very uncomfortable. Beneath his thick hairy eyebrows, his eyes darted left and right, as if searching for an escape.

  "You cocksucking little bastard," Mother said. "You gave the Football to Russell. You sold out the President."

  Webster said nothing.

  Schofield watched him. He had wondered whether Webster had been abducted by the 7th Squadron earlier that morning. More than anything else, Caesar Russell had needed the Football to carry out his presidential challenge, and Schofield had speculated as to how he had obtained it from Webster.

  Quite clearly, force hadn't been necessary - the blood on the Football's handcuffs had obviously been a ruse. Webster, it seemed, had been bought long before the President had arrived at Area 7.

  "Now, now, children," Seth Grimshaw said, waving the Football in his hand. "Save your strength. You'll be able to settle all your scores in a moment. But first" - he turned to the Air Force colonel, Harper - "I have a question that needs answering. The exit to this facility. Where is it?"

  "There is no exit," Harper lied. "The facility is in lock down. You can't get out."

  Grimshaw raised his shotgun, pointed it at Harper's face, shucked the pump action. "Perhaps I'm not being specific enough."

  He then turned and fired two booming shots into the two injured Bravo Unit men standing next to Harper. They were blasted off their feet.

  Grimshaw turned the gun back to Harper, raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  Harper's face went white. He nodded over at the regular elevator: "There's a door that branches off the personnel elevator shaft. We call it the top door. It leads outside. Keypad code is 5564771."

  "Thank you, Colonel, you really are too kind, Grimshaw said. "Now then, we must let you children finish what you've started. As I'm sure you'll understand, once we depart this dreadful place, we can't allow any of you to leave it alive. But as a final gesture of good will, I am going to offer you all one last favor - albeit one that is more for my entertainment than ours."

  "I am going to give you all one last chance to kill each other. Five against five. In the killing pit. So at least the winner will die knowing who won your impromptu civil war." He turned to Goliath. "Put the Air Force people in here. Stand the President's little posse on the other side."

  Schofield and the others were marched at gunpoint to the far side of the pit, the eastern side.

  The five remaining Air Force men - Jerome Harper, Boa McConnell, the last two men from Bravo Unit, and the traitor, Warrant Officer Webster - stood directly opposite them, separated by the two-hundred-foot-wide sunken aircraft elevator platform.

  "Let the battle begin," Seth Grimshaw bared his teeth. "To the death."

  Schofield dropped down into the pit and immediately found himself confronted by a twisted metal maze – the enormous broken pieces of the smashed AWACS plane.

  The Boeing 707's wings lay at all angles, snapped and broken and still dripping with water. Its gigantic barrel-like jet engines stood on their ends. And in the very center of the pit - easily the largest single piece of the destroyed plane - stood the AWACS's horribly broken fuselage. Long and cylindrical, it lay diagonally across the pit, no
se down, like a massive dead bird.

  The darkness of the main hangar didn't help things.

  The only light was the firelight from the inmates' torches - they cast long shadows down into the maze, turning it into a dark metal forest where you couldn't see more than a few feet in front of your face.

  How the hell did we get into this? Schofield thought.

  He and the others stood on the eastern side of the pit, up against its solid concrete wall, not sure what to do.

  Abruptly, a shotgun round blasted into the wall above Schofield's head.

  Seth Grimshaw called: "The two teams will engage each other immediately! If you do not begin eliminating one another soon, we will start eliminating you from up here!"

  "Christ..." Juliet Janson gasped.

  Schofield turned to face his group. "Okay, we don't have much time, so listen up. Not only do we have to survive this, but we have to find a way out of here afterwards."

  "The mini-elevator," Gant nodded to their right, to the northeastern corner of the pit where the detachable mini platform now lay flush against the pit's floor, albeit covered by five armed prisoners.

  "We're going to need a diversion," Schofield said, "something to..."

  The flying piece of metal nearly took his head clean off.

  Schofield saw it at the very last second and on a reflex, he ducked, just as the jagged piece of steel slammed like an axe into the concrete wall behind him.

  He spun, searching for the source of the projectile - and he saw it in the shapes of the two commandos from Bravo Unit, bursting out of the darkness, hurdling the pieces of broken plane, each man holding a length of jagged metal like a sword, and charging at Schofield's group at speed!

  "Scatter!" Schofield yelled as the first commando came storming toward him, swinging down hard with his "sword."

  Schofield blocked the blow by grabbing the man's downward-moving wrist, while Gant engaged the other commando.

  "Go!" Schofield yelled to Juliet, Mother and the President. "Get out of here!"

  Juliet and the President dashed off into the darkness.

  But Mother hesitated.

  Schofield saw her. "Go! Stay with the President!"

  The prisoners cheered with delight as over by the eastern wall of the pit, Schofield fought with the first 7th Squadron commando, while behind him, Gant grappled with the second Bravo Unit man.

  The President and Juliet - with Mother a short distance behind them - dashed north through the darkened maze, heading for the mini-elevator at the northeastern corner.

  From above them, however, the chanting prisoners saw what Juliet and the President and Mother could not: three figures closing in on them from their left, moving quickly along the northern wall of the pit - Jerome Harper, Carl Webster, and coordinating the assault, Captain Boa McConnell.

  Schofield and Gant stood back to back, fighting their own separate battles.

  Gant had taken up a length of piping from the floor, and was now wielding it like a quarterstaff against the blows of her Bravo Unit commando.

  The Bravo man swung his piece of steel viciously, two fisted, but Gant parried well, holding her length of pipe sideways, blocking the blow.

  "How you doing back there?" Schofield asked, between blows with his own enemy.

  "Just... frigging... dandy," Gant said, gritting her teeth.

  "We have to get to the President."

  "I know," Gant said, "but first... I have to... save your ass."

  She glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled, and in a fleeting instant, she saw his opponent move in for another blow and she shouted, "Scarecrow! Duck!"

  Schofield dropped like a stone.

  His opponent's sword swooshed over his head, and the man overbalanced, and stumbled right toward Gant.

  Gant was waiting.

  Turning her attention from her own assailant for the briefest of moments, she swung her length of pipe hard, baseball-style.

  Shwack!

  The sound of her pipe hitting the Bravo Unit man's head was absolutely sickening. The commando collapsed in a heap just as Gant spun again - pirouetting like a ballet dancer - returning just in time to block the next blow from her own attacker.

  "Scarecrow! Go!" she yelled.

  "Get to the President!" And with a final look at her, Schofield dashed off into the darkened wreckage.

  About twenty yards to the north of Schofield and Gant, Juliet Janson and the President were running hard, weaving their way through the debris-cluttered maze, heading for the northeastern corner, but unaware of the three men closing in on them from the left.

  They went for Juliet first.

  Two figures came bursting out of the darkness, from behind the destroyed rear end of the AWACS plane - Boa McConnell and Warrant Officer Carl Webster. They crash-tackled Juliet hard, hurling her to the floor.

  The President spun to see her hit the floor, held down by Boa and Webster. Then he turned again, and saw Colonel Jerome Harper, standing amid the AWACS wreckage, watching from a distance.

  The President was hurrying to help Juliet when- whoosh - a large blurring shape came exploding out of the nearby wreckage, missing him by inches.

  Mother.

  Flying through the air, out of the darkness, linebacker style.

  Crunchhhh!

  She shoulder-charged Boa McConnell so hard that she almost snapped his neck. The 7th Squadron commander was thrown off Juliet's body, visibly dazed.

  Carl Webster was momentarily startled by the sudden loss of his fellow attacker, and he turned to see what had happened - just in time to receive a powerful punch from Mother.

  Even though he was a bulky man, Webster was thrown right off Juliet by the blow and went crashing into a collection of plane pieces. Without a pause, he snatched up a wicked-looking four-foot strip of metal and brandished it at Mother.

  Mother growled.

  Webster charged.

  The fight was as brutal as they come. They couldn't have been more evenly matched – both were experienced in hand-to-hand combat, both were over six feet tall, and they both weighed in at over two hundred pounds.

  Webster roared as he swung his makeshift metal sword.

  Mother ducked, then quickly grabbed a busted piece of the AWACS's wing flap to use as a shield. Webster's blows clanged down against her shield as he forced her back toward the battered wing of the plane.

  As she danced backwards, staving off Webster's slashes, Mother bent down and scooped up a jagged sword of her own.

  She tried to strike back, but Webster had all the momentum. He swung again, cutting deep into her shoulder, tearing open the sleeve of her dress coat, drawing blood.

  "Arrgh!" Mother shouted, dropping her shield, fending off the next three blows with only her sword.

  Damn it, all she needed was one opening, one chance...

  "Why did you betray the President!" she yelled as she stumbled backwards, trying to distract him.

  "There comes a time when a man has to make a decision, Mother!" the Army warrant officer barked back, yelling between blows. "When he has to choose a side! I have fought for this country! I have had friends who died for it, only to be fucked over later by politicians like him! So when the opportunity arose, I decided that I was no longer going to stand by and watch yet another two-bit, whore-banging, draft-dodging fuck drive this country into the ground!"

  Webster swung - a lusty, sideways swipe.

  Mother jumped backwards, avoiding the blow, leaping up onto the wing of the plane, so that she was now three feet off the ground.

  But the wing wobbled slightly under her weight, and she lost her balance for a split second and Webster slashed viciously with his sword - once again slicing sideways - aiming for her now-exposed ankles, way too fast for her to block in time.

  And the vicious blow hit home - Clang!!!

  Webster's weapon hand vibrated monstrously as his jagged metal sword slammed into Mother's dress-uniformed pants leg, just below the knee.

 
Webster blanched.

  "What...?"

  Mother smiled.

  He'd hit her prosthetic lower leg - her titanium-alloy prosthetic lower leg!

  Seeing her opponent's confusion, Mother took her one and only opportunity, and swung her own makeshift sword with all her might.

  Slash!

  A fountain of blood sprayed out from Webster's throat as Mother's blade sliced across his neck, severing his carotid artery.

  Webster's blade fell from his hand, and he dropped to his knees, clutching his bleeding throat. He held his hands out in front of him, gazing at the blood on them in disbelief. Then he took one final horrified look up at Mother, after which he fell face-first into a pool of his own blood.

  The crowd of inmates roared with delight.

  By now, the assembled mob - Seth Grimshaw included - had moved around to the northern side of the pit in an effort to find better spectating positions.

  Some of them had started cheering for the President, a happily deranged chant in the tradition of American Olympic supporters: "U-S-A! USA!"

  On the eastern side of the pit, Gant was still engaged in the fight of her life.

  Her 7th Squadron opponent's swordlike length of steel clanged against her own quarterstaff pipe.

  They fought amid the wreckage, trading blows, the Bravo Unit commando driving her backwards. As he did so, he began to smile with every raging swing. Clearly, he felt he had the edge.

  And so he swung harder, but as Gant saw, this only served to wear him out more with every blow.

  So she feigned fatigue, staggered backwards, "desperately" fended off his swings.

  And then her assailant swung - a lunging sloppy effort, the swipe of a tiring man - and quick as a flash, belying her apparent fatigue, Gant ducked beneath the blow and launched herself upward, thrusting her pipe forward - end first - ramming its solid tip right into the throat of her stunned opponent, crushing his Adam's apple, ramming it two inches back into his windpipe, stopping him dead in his tracks.

  The man's eyes went instantly wide with disbelief. He wobbled unsteadily, wheezing, choking. He may have been standing up, but he was already dead. Staring stupidly at Gant, he crumpled to the ground.