Area 7

by Matthew Reilly

  The crowd of prisoners was oddly silent - stunned, it seemed, by Gant's lightning-fast death blow.

  Then they cheered their approval. Wolf whistles rained down on Gant. Claps and cheers.

  "Whoa, baby!"

  "Now that is what I call a woman!"

  At the northern end of the pit, the President slid to the ground beside Juliet Janson, hauled her up, but when they both got to their feet, they froze.

  Before them, standing next to one of the upturned engines of the AWACS plane - alone but closer now – stood Colonel Jerome T. Harper.

  On the ground to his left, lying on the floor, was Boa McConnell. He was groaning painfully, still reeling from Mother's crunching shoulder-tackle earlier.

  The hoots and hollers from the prisoners enveloped them.

  "Come on, Mr. Prez! Get some blood on your hands! Kill the fucker!"

  "Eat shit, Harper!"

  "U-S-A! USA!"

  Harper knew the score. All his men were either dead or useless.

  And yet still he seemed strangely confident...

  It was then that he pulled something out of his pocket.

  It looked like a high-tech grenade of some sort - a small pressurized cylindrical canister with a nozzle on its top and a vertical clear-glass window on its side.

  Through the narrow glass window, the President could see the contents of the grenade very clearly.

  It was filled with a mustard-yellow liquid.

  "Oh, Jesus..." he breathed.

  It was a biological grenade.

  A Chinese biological grenade.

  A pressure-sealed explosive charge filled with the Sinovirus.

  An evil grin cracked Harper'ss face.

  "I was hoping it wouldn't come to this," he said. "But fortunately for me, like every Air Force man at this complex, I have already been immunized against the Sinovirus. The same, however, cannot be said for you or your brave Marine guardians."

  Then, without so much as a blink, Harper pulled the pin on the Sinovirus grenade.

  Harper didn't see him until it was too late.

  As he pulled the pin on the grenade, all he saw was a flashing blur of movement from the wreckage to his immediate left.

  The next thing he knew, Shane Schofield was standing beside him, emerging from the darkness, swinging a length of piping upward like a baseball bat.

  The pipe struck Harper on the underside of his wrist, causing the Sinovirus grenade to fly out of his hand and go soaring upwards.

  The live biological grenade flew up into the air.

  It flew in a kind of bizarre slow motion, tumbling end over end, high above the northern half of the pit.

  Schofield watched it, eyes wide.

  The prisoners watched it, mouths agape.

  The President watched it, awestruck.

  Harper watched it, an evil grin forming on his face.

  One, one-thousand...

  Two, one-thousand...

  Three...

  At that moment, at the height of its arc, about thirty feet above the floor of the pit - directly above its northernmost section - the Sinovirus grenade went off.

  In the firelight of the prisoners' torches, the aerosol explosion of the grenade inside the hangar was almost beautiful.

  It looked like the blast of a water-filled firecracker – a giant star-shaped burst of mist - with multiple fingers of watery yellow particles shooting outwards from a central point, showering laterally, fanning out like a giant umbrella over the sunken aircraft elevator platform, orange firelight glinting off every single particle.

  And then in wondrous slow motion, the whole misty cloud began to fall, first at its extremities, then in its center, down over the pit.

  Like slow-falling snow, the Sinovirus particles descended.

  Since it had detonated above the floor line of the hangar, the yellow mist hit the prisoners standing on the rim first.

  Their reaction was as sudden as it was violent.

  Most of them doubled over where they stood, started hacking, vomiting. Some fell to their knees, dropping their flaming torches, others lapsed instantly into involuntary fits.

  Within a minute, all but two were on the floor, writhing in agony, screaming as their insides began to liquefy.

  Seth Grimshaw was one of the two.

  Along with Goliath, he stood unaffected by the falling yellow mist, while everyone around him lay dying.

  Although only they and the now-dead Gunther Botha knew it, Grimshaw and Goliath had been the original test subjects for the vaccine against the Sinovirus the previous afternoon.

  Unlike the others, they had Kevin's vaccine coursing through their veins.

  They were immune.

  The yellow mist fell through the darkness.

  It was now about fifteen feet above the lowered elevatorplatform - five feet above the rim - and still falling steadily.

  Alone on the eastern side of the pit, Libby Gant had seen the grenade detonate, had seen the spectacular aerosol explosion high above the pit. She didn't have to be a rocket scientist to guess what it was.

  A biological agent.

  The Sinovirus.

  Move!

  Gant spun. She was standing right next to the eastern wall of the pit, ten feet below the rim.

  The rim itself was now empty, all the inmates having moved around to the northern side earlier.

  Gant didn't waste a second.

  She was still wearing her full dress uniform, which meant she had no gas-mask - so she definitely didn't want to be here when the Sinovirus descended into the pit.

  The particles were fourteen feet off the floor.

  And falling...

  Gant pushed one of the AWACS plane's big black tires up against the concrete wall, jumped up onto it, hauled herself out of the ten-foot-deep pit.

  She rolled up onto the hangar's floor, careful to stay low, beneath the layer of descending Sinovirus particles.

  She saw the hangar's internal building about twenty yards away from her, saw the slanted observation windows of its upper level.

  The control room, she thought. Caesar's command center.

  Staying low but moving fast, Gant hurried for the doorway at the base of the internal building.

  The yellow haze continued to fall.

  Having consumed the prisoners on the northern edge of the pit, its particles now dipped below the rim, drifting down into the pit itself.

  Schofield looked anxiously about himself.

  In the pandemonium of the grenade blast and the ensuing wails of the dying prisoners - as they fell, they dropped their torches, plunging the pit into even thicker darkness - he had lost sight of Jerome Harper.

  After the blast, Harper had dashed off into the darkened forest of the AWACS wreckage, disappearing. Schofield didn't like the idea of him lurking somewhere in the area.

  But right now, he had other things to worry about.

  The mist was now inside the pit - nine feet off the floor - and still falling.

  He looked over at the President and Juliet.

  Like him, they were still wearing their stolen 7th Squadron uniforms - complete with ERG-6 half-face gas masks wrapped around their necks.

  "Captain! Your gas mask! Put it on!" the President yelled, pulling on his own mask. "If you breathe the virus into your lungs directly, it'll kill you in seconds! With the mask on, it's a lot slower!"

  Schofield lifted his mask over his face.

  Juliet, however, yanked her mask up and over her head and threw it over to Mother, just back from her fight with Webster. Unlike the other three, Mother was still dressed in her maskless full dress uniform.

  "But what about you...?" she said.

  Juliet indicated her Eurasian features. "Asian blood, remember. It won't hurt me. But it'll kill you if you don't put that on!"

  "Thanks!" Mother said as she clamped the mask over her nose and mouth.

  "Quickly!" Schofield said. "This way!"

  Gas mask on, he charged into the da
rkened maze of wreckage, heading for the northeastern corner, for the mini elevator parked there.

  The others took off after him, racing into the darkness.

  After several seconds of running, Schofield came to the mini-elevator, lying flush against the floor in the corner of the pit.

  A flaming torch lay on it. One of the dying prisoners up on the rim must have dropped it into the pit when the virus had struck him down.

  Schofield snatched it up and turned to see the President and Mother arrive at his side.

  It was only then that any of them noticed.

  No Juliet.

  Juliet Janson lay sprawled on the ground back near the AWACS's fuselage.

  Just as she had been about to charge into the maze after Schofield and the others, a strong hand had appeared from completely out of nowhere and grabbed her ankle, causing her to trip and fall.

  The hand belonged to Boa McConnell, lying spread eagled on the floor, still dazed from Mother's tackle earlier, but alert enough to recognize one of his enemies.

  Now, he held on to Juliet's ankle, refusing to let go.

  Juliet struggled.

  Boa extracted a long K-Bar knife from his boot, raised it. Juliet's eyes went wide as he made to plunge the knife into her ankle...

  Blam! McConnell's head exploded like a burst balloon, shot from somewhere above them. He flopped to the floor, dead.

  Juliet scrambled away from the body. She looked upward, searching the darkness for the source of the gunshot.

  She found it in the shape of a flaming torch over on the southern side of the pit, being waved from side to side, accompanied by a voice that called: "Janson! Agent Janson!"

  Juliet squinted to see the owner of the torch.

  In the flickering glow of the torch's flames, she could just make out the man holding it - a man in 7th Squadron clothing brandishing a nickel-plated pistol in his spare hand.

  Book II.

  "Janson! Where are you?" Schofield said into his radio mike, as he waited impatiently on the detachable mini elevator.

  Book II's voice answered him. "Scarecrow, it's Book. I've got Janson. You get out of here."

  "Thanks, Book. Fox, you still alive?"

  No reply.

  Schofield's whole body froze.

  And then: "I'm here, Scarecrow."

  He started breathing again. "Where are you?"

  "I'm inside the building at the eastern end of the hangar. Get the President out of here. Don't worry about me."

  "All right..." Schofield said. "Listen, I have to get to Area 8. The bad guys have taken Kevin there. I'm going to take the President with me. Rendezvous with us there when you - oh, shit!"

  "What is it?"

  "The Football. It's still up in the hangar somewhere. Grimshaw had it."

  "Leave that to me," Gant said. "You just get the President out of here. I'll meet you at Area 8 as soon as I can."

  "Thanks," Schofield said. "And Fox..."

  "Yeah?"

  "You be careful."

  There was a pause at the other end. "You too, Scarecrow"

  And with that, Schofield pressed a button and the mini elevator whizzed him, Mother and the President swiftly down the shaft.

  As thes descended quickly, Mother touched Schofield on the shoulder, spoke through her gas mask.

  "Area 8?"

  Schofield turned to face her. "That's right."

  No matter how he looked at it, his mind kept coming back to the same image: the image of the 7th Squadron unit down on the Level 6 platform taking Kevin into the X-rail tunnel, heading for Area 8.

  Kevin...

  The little boy was at the center of all of this.

  Schofield said, "I want to find out what this whole thing has been about. But to do that, I need two things."

  "What?"

  He indicated the President. "First: him."

  "And second?"

  "Kevin," Schofield said firmly. "Which is why we have to get to Area 8 fast."

  * * *

  Caesar Russell, Kurt Logan and the three surviving commandos from Logan's Alpha Unit charged across the runway of Area 7 in the glare of the blazing desert sun, raced into the four story airfield control tower that stood about a hundred yards from the main complex.

  Having emerged from the top door exit inside a small side hangar, they'd made their way to the tower, which doubled as the base's secondary control room.

  They hurried into the tower's command center - it was a replica of the one inside Area 7 - and started flicking switches. Television monitors came to life. Console lights flicked on.

  Caesar said, "Get me a fix on Echo Unit's personnel locators."

  It didn't take long for Logan to find Echo. Every 7th Squadron member had an electronic locator surgically implanted beneath the skin on his wrist.

  "They're on the X-rail. Arriving at Area 8 right now."

  "Fire up the Penetrators," Caesar said. "We're going to Area 8."

  * * *

  Down on Level 1 of the underground complex, Nicholas Tate was wandering around in a terrified daze.

  After the sudden and mysterious disappearance of Hot Rod Hagerty, he didn't know what to do.

  Flashlight in hand, he walked absently to the far end of the darkened hangar, searching for Hagerty. But he stopped twenty yards short of the ramp there when he saw something emerging from it. Already somewhat muddled, now his mind reeled at the sight that met him.

  It was almost surreal.

  A family of bears - yes, bears - stepped out from the ramp and onto the floor of Level 1.

  One gigantic male, a smaller female, and three awkward-looking little cubs ambled out onto the hangar floor. They were all hunched forward, padding along on all fours, sniffing the petrol-soaked air all around them.

  Tate wobbled unsteadily.

  Then he turned and ran back toward the main elevator shaft.

  The detached mini-elevator whipped down the aircraft elevator shaft in near total darkness, with Schofield, Mother and the President on its back, the orange glow from Schofield's torch the only light.

  As they descended, Schofield yanked a couple of Gunther Botha's glass ampules from his thigh pocket - the small glass bulbs containing the antidote to the Sinovirus.

  He turned to the President, spoke through his gas mask: "How long do we have?"

  "Half an hour till the first symptoms set in," the President said, "when it invades the body through the skin. Dermal infection is slower than direct inhalation. That antidote, however, will neutralize the virus in its tracks."

  Schofield handed a glass bulb to both Mother and the President, then pulled out another one for himself. "We need to find some hypodermic needles before we head to Area 8," he said.

  They rode the mini-elevator down to Level 1.

  When they arrived there, however, they were met by Nicholas Tate, bursting forth from the darkness wide-eyed and alarmed. He stepped straight onto the mini-elevator.

  "I... er... don't think you want to go that way," he said.

  "Why not?" Schofield asked.

  "Bears," Tate said dramatically.

  Schofield frowned, looked to the President. Clearly, Tate had lost it.

  "Where's Ramrod?" Mother asked.

  "Gone," Tate said. "Just - poof - disappeared. One minute he was standing here behind me, the next he was just missing. All he left was this."

  Tate held up Hagerty's Annapolis graduation ring.

  Schofield didn't get it.

  The President did.

  "Oh, Jesus," he said. "He's out."

  "Who's out?" Mother asked.

  "There's only one person in this complex who is known to leave a person's jewelry at the site of an abduction," the President said. "The serial killer, Lucifer Leary."

  "The Surgeon of Phoenix..." Schofield whispered, recalling the name and the horror that went along with it.

  "Oh, super," Mother spat. "Just what we need. Another fucking wacko running around this place."

 
; The President turned to Schofield. "Captain, we don't have time for this. If Caesar Russell's got that boy..."

  Schofield bit his lip. He didn't like leaving anybody behind, even Ramrod Hagerty.

  "Captain," the President said, his face hard, "as I said earlier this morning, sometimes in this job I have to make difficult decisions - and I'm going to make one now. If he's still alive, Colonel Hagerty is going to have to look after himself. We can't spend the next hour searching this facility for him. There's something bigger at stake here. Much bigger. We have to get that boy back."

  They took the mini-elevator to the second underground hangar, Level 2, and - now accompanied by the confused Nicholas Tate - dashed down its length.

  Thankfully, there were no bears in this hangar.

  They hit the fire stairwell at a run and rushed down it, guided by the light of Schofield's flaming torch. Since they had come direct from their fight in the pit, they had no weapons, no flashlights, no nothing.

  They came to the bottom of the stairwell, and the door to Level 6.

  Cautiously, Schofield opened it.

  The Level 6 X-rail platform was completely dark.

  No sound. No sign of life.

  Schofield edged out onto the platform. Dark shapes littered the area - bodies from the three separate gunfights that had taken place down there over the course of the morning, the charred remains of Elvis's RDX explosion.

  Schofield and Mother ran straight over to the bodies of some Bravo Unit men. They grabbed a P-90 assault rifle each, plus SIG-Sauer pistols. Schofield even found a first aid field kit on one of the men which contained four plastic wrapped hypodermic needles.

  Perfect.

  He tossed a SIG to the President, but didn't offer a gun to the unstable Tate.

  "This way," he said.

  He hurried along the platform, heading for the X-rail engine that sat on the northern tracks of the underground railway station, pointing toward the open tunnel that led to Area 8.

  * * *

  Up in the main hangar, Book II was pulling Juliet Janson out of the ten-foot-deep pit that was the aircraft elevator platform. He was wearing his uniform's ERG-6 gas mask.

  A thin residual mist hung over the area, the lingering cloud of the Sinovirus.

  Juliet came out of the pit, and with a shout, she saw them: Seth Grimshaw and the giant Goliath disappearing inside the personnel elevator. And Grimshaw was still holding the Football.