Area 7

by Matthew Reilly

  "Over there!" she pointed. "They're going for the exit in the elevator shaft. That Air Force guy Harper gave Grimshaw the exit code."

  "Do you know the code?" Book II asked.

  "Do I ever," Juliet leapt to her feet. "I was there when Harper said it. Come on."

  * * *

  Libby Gant was on her own.

  She was standing in a dark hallway inside the command building at the eastern end of the hangar, at the base of a set of stairs - unarmed but alert as hell.

  In the hangar outside, the Sinovirus was loose, and she didn't have a gas mask.

  Okay, she thought, surely in a facility like this, there would have to be some...

  She found them in a cupboard underneath the stairs: biohazard suits. Great big yellow Chemturions - with large, baggy plastic helmets, balloonlike yellow coveralls, and self contained air packs.

  In the same cupboard, Gant also found a chunky Maglite flashlight. Very handy.

  She slipped into one of the Chemturion suits as fast as she could, pulling its Ziploc zipper shut, turning on its self contained air supply. The suit immediately inflated and she started hearing her own breathing as a Darth Vader-like wheeze.

  Now safe from the Sinovirus, she had something else she wanted to do.

  She recalled her previous plan: find Caesar Russell's command center - get the initiate / terminate unit that he'd used to start the transmitter on the President's heart – then use the black box that she'd taken from the AWACS plane earlier to impersonate the President's radio signal.

  The black box.

  So far as she knew, it was still on the floor of the main hangar, in the spot where she had kicked it away from the mini elevator.

  She decided to search the command center for the I/T unit first. Then she'd go back for the black box.

  Guided by the light of her newfound flashlight, she climbed the stairs, came to the command room's doorway.

  The door was ajar.

  Slowly, Gant pushed it open, to reveal a very battered looking room.

  It looked like a war had been fought in there.

  The room's plasterboard walls were shredded with bullet holes. The slanted windows overlooking the main hangar were cracked or completely shattered. Several computer consoles bore fat round holes in their monitors. Others just sat there blank, lacking a power source.

  Dressed in her yellow biohazard suit, Gant entered the room, stepping over a pair of dead 7th Squadron men lying all shot up on the floor. Their weapons were gone, presumably taken by the inmates who had stormed through here.

  Through the faceplate of her airtight suit, Gant's eyes swept the control room, searching for the…

  Yes.

  It was sitting on top of one of the computer monitors and it was just as the President had described it: a small red hand held unit, with a black stub antenna sticking out of its top.

  The initiate / terminate unit.

  Gant picked it up, examined it. It looked like a miniature mobile phone.

  She saw two switches on its face. Beneath each switch was a crude length of tape marked with a handwritten "1" and "2".

  Gant frowned. Why would Caesar need...?

  She shook the thought away, stuffed the IT unit into the chest pocket of her biohazard suit.

  As she did so, she peered out over the darkened hangar to see if she could spot the black box down by the pit.

  The vast hangar floor stretched away from her, veiled by the unearthly mist of the Sinovirus.

  Except for the flickering flames of the prisoners' discarded torches, nothing moved.

  The area was awash with irregularly shaped objects: slumped bodies, Marine One, a crashed cockroach, one battered helicopter, even Bravo Unit's busted-open barricade of crates and boxes.

  Gant's flashlight had a powerful beam, and in the middle of some bodies and debris on the near side of the pit, it illuminated the bright-orange outline of the AWACS's black box. Excellent...

  Gant made to leave, when abruptly, a glint of pale-blue light caught her eye.

  She paused. It seemed that not every monitor in the control room had been shot or lost power.

  Hidden underneath a fallen piece of shredded plasterboard, a lone screen was still glowing.

  Gant frowned.

  The complex's power was out - which meant this system must be operating on an independent power source. Which meant it must be pretty important...

  She lifted the broken piece of wall off the screen. The screen read:

  LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL S.A.(R) 7-A

  FAILSAFE SYSTEM HISTORY

  7-3-468201103

  TIME

  KEY ACTION

  SYSTEM RESPONSE

  0658

  AUTHORIZED LOCKDOWN INITIATE CODE ENTERED

  LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL ENABLED

  0801

  AUTHORIZED LOCKDOWN EXTENSION CODE ENTERED

  LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL CONTINUED

  0900

  AUTHORIZED LOCKDOWN EXTENSION CODE ENTERED

  LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL CONTINUED

  1005

  NO AUTHORIZED CODE ENTERED

  FACILITY SELF-DESTRUCT MECHANISM ARMED

  1005

  *********WARNING*********

  EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.

  IF YOU DO NOT ENTER AN AUTHORIZED LOCKDOWN EXTENSION OR TERMINATION CODE BY 1105 HOURS, FACILITY SELFDESTRUCT SEQUENCE WILL BE ACTIVATED.

  SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE DURATION: 10:00 MINUTES.

  *********WARNING*********

  Gant's eyes went wide.

  Facility self-destruct sequence...

  No wonder this system operated on an independent power source.

  But for whatever reason - presumably the sudden intrusion of the inmates - Caesar Russell's people had failed to enter the appropriate lockdown extension code during the window period after 10:00 a.m.

  So now, if no one entered an extension or termination code before 11:05 a.m., Area 7's self destruct sequence would begin - a ten-minute procedure that would culminate in the hundredmegaton thermonuclear warhead buried in the earth beneath the complex going off.

  "Holy mother of God..." Gant breathed. She looked at her watch.

  It was 10:15 a.m.

  She turned to go - at the same moment as a long length of steel piping crashed down against the back of her suit-hooded head.

  Gant dropped to the floor, out cold.

  She never saw her attacker.

  Never saw him heft her onto his shoulder.

  Never saw him carry her out of the control room.

  * * *

  The X-Rail train boomed through the tunnel system, rocketing along on its quartet of tracks at tremendous speed, heading toward Area 8.

  It wouldn't be a long trip. At two hundred miles per hour, they'd cover the twenty miles in about six minutes.

  Although he didn't know exactly where Echo Unit was going with Kevin, Schofield at least knew they had come this way.

  It was better than nothing.

  Having set the train's autopilot, he walked back into the main cabin and sat down with Mother and the President. Nick Tate was off at the other end of the carriage, still somewhat out of it, staring with great concentration at the buttons on his cellular phone.

  Schofield sat down. As he did so, he pulled out his newfound syringe and the antidote to the Sinovirus, and set about injecting himself with it. Mother and the President did the same.

  As he jabbed the needle into his arm, Schofield looked up at the President. "Now, sir, if you don't mind, would you please tell me what the hell is going on at this base?"

  The President pursed his lips.

  "You could start," Schofield prompted, "with why an Air Force Lieutenant General wants to kill you in front of the nation. Then you could tell me why he also wants to keep his hands on a genetically engineered boy who is the vaccine to an ethnic bullet."

  The President bowed his head, and nodded.

  Then he said, "Technically, Caesar Russell is no longer a lieutena
nt general in the Air Force.

  Technically, he is dead. On the twentieth of January this year, the day of my inauguration, Charles Samson Russell was executed by lethal injection at Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary for the crime of high treason."

  "What he wants," the President said, "is what he wanted before he was executed. To radically change the face of this country. Forever. And the two things he needs to do to effect that are: one, kill me, in a highly visible, highly embarrassing way. And two, retain control of the Sinovirus vaccine."

  "To understand why he's doing this, however, you have to understand Russell's history, in particular his links with a clandestine Air Force society known as the Brotherhood."

  "Yes..." Schofield said cautiously.

  The President leaned forward. "Over the past thirty years, various Congressional Armed Services Committees have heard about the existence of certain undesirable societies within the branches of our armed forces; informal underground organizations with less-thanacceptable common interests. Hate societies."

  "For example?"

  "In the eighties there was a secret group of men in the Army known as the Bitch Killers. They opposed the presence of women in the Army, so they engaged in activities to drive them out of the service. More than eighteen sexual assaults in the Army were attributed to members of this group, even if actual proof was difficult to establish. The extent of its membership was never fully ascertained, but then, that's the problem with these sorts of societies: there is never any physical proof of their existence. They're like ghosts, existing in non-tangible ways - a knowing look during a salute, a nod in a hallway, a subtle promotion over a non-member."

  Schofield was silent.

  While he had never been approached by anyone linked with such a group in his career, he had heard of them. They were like hardcore college fraternities, small groups with their own secret handshakes, their own "codes," their own disgusting initiation ceremonies. For officers, they started at places like West Point and Annapolis; for enlisted men, at training camps around the country.

  The President said, "They form for various reasons: some have religious skews - for example, anti-Semitic groups like the old 'Jewboy League' in the Navy. Or the sexist ones, like the BItch Killers. The formation of groups like this in high-risk occupations is well documented - even police forces like the L.A.P.D. are known to have secret hate societies within their ranks."

  "But in terms of sheer violence, the worst groups were always the racist societies. There used to be one in every service. In the Navy, it was the Order of White America. In the Army, the Black Death. In the Air Force, it was a group known only as the Brotherhood. All three displayed a particular hostility toward black Americans in their ranks."

  "But the thing is," the President said, "they were all thought to have been wiped out during a Department of Defense-initiated purge in the late 1980's. Now while we haven't heard about a resurgence of racist elements in either the Army or the Navy, it was discovered recently that the Brotherhood is indeed alive and well, and one of its key figures was none other than General Charles 'Caesar' Russell."

  Schofield said nothing.

  The President shifted in his seat. "Charles Russell was tried and convicted for ordering the murder of two Navy admirals, advisers to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Turned out, Russell had approached them shortly after my announcement to run for President and asked them to join him in some kind of treasonable endeavour that would change America forever. The only details he told them were that the plan would involve the removal of the President, and that it would rid America of its 'human waste products. The two admirals refused his offer, so Caesar had them eliminated. What he didn't know was that one of those admirals had secretly taped his offer and tipped off the FBI and the Secret Service."

  "Russell was arrested and tried for murder and treason. Since it was a military proceeding, the trial was held immediately, albeit in closed session. During the case the question was, to what America's 'human waste products' actually were was debated at length. Equivocal evidence was brought that Russell was a member of the Brotherhood - a secret cabal of high-ranking USAF officers, mainly from the Southern belt, who intentionally hinder the rise of black Americans through the ranks of the Air Force. It didn't help that the military prosecutor was black, but in any case the issue was never resolved. On the basis of the taped evidence, Russell was found guilty and sentenced to death. When he decided not to lodge any appeals whatsoever, his execution was fast tracked - and he was 'executed' in January of this year. And that was that. Or so we thought."

  Schofield said, "I get the feeling that you knew what Caesar was planning, even if it didn't come out in the court case."

  The President nodded.

  "Over the past ten years, Caesar Russell has been in charge of every major United States Air Force base between Florida and Nevada. The 20th at Warren in Wyoming, which looks after our ICBM stockpile. Space Warfare at Falcon, Colorado, which controls defense satellites and space missions. Area 7, of course. Hell, he even spent a year at AFSOC at Hurlbut Field in Florida, supervising the Air Force's crack special ops teams, including the 7th Squadron. He has loyal followers at each of those bases, senior officers who owe their positions to him, a small but powerful clique of base commanders who we now suspect are also members of the Brotherhood."

  "What Russell also knows, however, is what's inside every one of our most secret bases. He knew of the Sinovirus from its earliest development phases, knew of its potential uses, and he knew of our response to it - a genetically constructed virus-resistant human being - right from the very beginning.

  "The thing is, Charles Russell is smart, very smart. He thought of other possibilities for the one person in the world in possession of the ultimate ethnic bullet and its vaccine. Judging by this transmitter attached to my heart, it looks like he's been planning a revolution for some time now, but it's only the advent of the Sinovirus that makes it totally perfect for him."

  "How so?"

  "Because Caesar Russell wants to take America back to its pre-Civil War state," the President said simply.

  There was a silence.

  "Did you hear the names of the cities he's put his plasma bombs in? Fourteen devices, in fourteen airports, all around the country. Not true. They're not placed all around the country. They're only placed in northern cities. New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Seattle. The furthest south those bombs get is St. Louis. No Atlanta, no Houston, no Miami even. Nothing below the Tennessee-Kentucky state line."

  "Why those cities, then?" Schofield asked slowly.

  The President said, "Because they represent the North, the liberals, the dandies of America who talk a lot, produce nothing, and yet consume everything. And Caesar wants an America without the North.

  "For with the Sinovirus and its cure in his possession, he will have what's left of the nation at his mercy. Every man, woman and child - black and white - will owe their life to him and his precious vaccine."

  The President winced.

  "I imagine the black population would be eliminated first, with the vaccine being administered only to white Americans. Considering Caesar's racist tendencies, I assume it was the black population he was talking about when he mentioned 'human waste products.'"

  "But remember what I said before: he has to do two things to get what he wants: he has to have Kevin in his possession, and he also has to kill me. For no revolution – no true revolution - can take place without the visible and humiliating destruction of the previous regime. The execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in France; the imprisonment of the Czar in Russia in 1918; Hitler's complete 'Nazification' of Germany in the thirties."

  "Anybody can kill a President, if they are determined enough. A revolutionary, however, has to do it in front of the people he desires to rule - showing them that the previous ruling system no longer deserves their respect."

  "And don't be mistaken, Caesar Russell isn't doing this in front of Americ
a. He's doing it in front of the most extreme elements of America - the Timothy McVeighs of the country; the poor, the angry, the disenfranchised, the white supremacists, the white trash, the antifederal militias – those parts of the nation, located mainly in the Southern states, that wouldn't give two shits if the cappuccino-drinking liberals in New York, Chicago and San Francisco were blasted off the face of the earth."

  "But the country would be decimated..." Schofield said. "Why would he want to rule a destroyed country?"

  "Yes, but you see, Caesar doesn't see it that way," the President said. "To his mind, the country wouldn't be destroyed. It would merely be purified, renewed, cleansed. It would be a new beginning. The southern city centers would be intact. The Midwest would still be largely intact, able to provide sustenance."

  Schofield asked, "What about the other armed forces? What would he do about them?"

  "Captain, as you would well know, the U.S. Air Force receives more funding than all the other armed services combined... Sure, it may have only 385,000 personnel, but it has more missiles and strike capability than all the other services combined. If, by virtue of the Brotherhood and his previous commands, Caesar has even a fiftieth of the Air Force behind him, he could scramble his bombers and take out every key Army and Navy installation in this country - plus every Air Force base that was not allied with him – before they could even raise a small counteroffensive effort."

  "Foreign defense would be the same. With its Stealth bombers, strike fighters and a stockpile of nuclear missiles greater than that of any other country in the world, Caesar's new Air Force, acting alone, would be more than capable of handling any hostile foreign incursion."

  "Captain, make no mistake, to Caesar's warped mind, this scenario would be perfect: America would be isolationist once again, completely self-sufficient, and governed by an absolutely lily-white regime. Back to its pre-Civil War state."

  "Motherfucker..." Mother breathed.

  Schofield frowned.

  "Okay, then," he said, "so what if Russell can't pull this off? What if he fails? Surely he isn't just going to accept defeat and walk away. I can't see him simply disarming his bombs if he loses and saying, 'Oh well, I was wrong, you win.'"