A couple of the other space-suited men in the cargo hold also began unbuckling their seatbelts, getting up to help with the transfer.
Schofield saw the chance, tuned to channel 03.
"Okay," he turned to the President. "This is it. Follow me."
As casually as he could make it look, Schofield reconnected his air hose to his life-support briefcase and began unbuckling his seat belts.
The President did the same.
As his belts came free, Schofield felt the weightlessness take hold of him. He gripped a ceiling handhold and before anyone could stop him - or even ask him what he was doing - he casually stepped over to Kevin and began reattaching the boy's life-support briefcase and disengaging him from his seat.
A couple of the faceless Echo astronauts looked over, curious.
Schofield gestured to the cockpit - Wanna have a look?
Kevin nodded.
The Echo men went back to their work.
With the President in tow behind him - holding on to the ceiling handholds - Schofield led Kevin forward, into the shuttle's cockpit.
The view from the cockpit was even more incredible.
Through the panoramic forward windshield, the Earth looked amazing, stretching away from them like an enormous aqua-blue convex lens.
The last remaining pilot in the cockpit turned in his seat as they entered.
Over to channel 05: "Just thought we'd come up and see the view," Schofield said, coughing through his voice to mask it.
"Not bad, huh? Just be sure to keep your visors on. Radiation's a killer, and the sun is almost blinding."
Schofield put Kevin in the empty co-pilot's seat. Then he turned to the President, clicked back to channel 03.
"You unbuckle his seat belts, then use them to secure his arms. I'll take care of his life-support hose."
"Huh... how? When?"
"After I do this..." Schofield said.
And with that he leaned forward, grabbed the pilot's gold-tinted visor, and wrenched it open.
"Argh!" the pilot roared, as raw white sunlight assaulted his eyes. Underneath his gold-tinted visor was a clear glass bubble that afforded no protection against the pure sunlight.
Schofield then ripped the man's life-support system out of its wall socket, while at the same time, the President unclasped his seat belts and quickly looped them behind the man's flight seat, pinning his arms firmly to his sides.
Deprived of his life support - and now tied to his own seat - the pilot started to gasp desperately for air.
Schofield dived for the cockpit door, slammed his fist down on a switch next to the entryway.
The door slid quickly shut, enclosing the three of them inside the cockpit.
The President spun, "So what...?"
But Schofield was still moving.
He knew he had about three seconds before someone reopened the cockpit door from the rear cargo compartment.
There was a keypad next to the door, identical to the one on the other side.
Schofield rushed over to it.
Apart from the usual numbered keys and open/close switches, there was one long red rectangular button on the panel, concealed behind a clear-plastic safety casing. It read:
EMERGENCY USE ONLY:
COCKPIT SECURITY LOCK
Schofield flipped open the safety casing and hit the big red button.
Immediately - thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk! - the door's five emergency deadbolts locked into place, sealing off the cockpit like a bank vault.
A second later, Schofield heard a weak thumping noise coming from the other side: the sound of the Echo men hammering angrily on the door.
Reflective gold helmets peered in through the five-inch thick window in the dividing wall, waving furious fists.
Schofield didn't care.
This shuttle was now his.
He leaned over Kevin in the co-pilot's seat the earth and the stars laid out before him.
In addition to the view, he was confronted by another intimidating sight: the X-38's flight console - a collection of about a million tiny switches, lights, buttons and monitors.
It looked like the cockpit of a jumbo jet... only more complex.
The President took the rear navigator's seat, lifting Kevin onto his lap.
"So, what now?" he asked. "Don't tell me you know how to fly a space shuttle, too, Captain."
"Unfortunately not," Schofield said. He turned to face the bound and still-gagging shuttle pilot. "But he does."
Schofield pulled his SIG-Sauer from his thigh pocket and held it to the choking pilot's visor. The President reattached the man's life-support hose. The pilot stopped gasping as Schofield flicked his intercom to channel 03.
"I need you to help me bring this thing back down to earth," Schofield said.
"Fuck you..." the pilot said.
"Hmm," Schofield said. He then nodded to the President, who yanked the pilot's life-support hose out of its socket again. The Echo Unit pilot immediately resumed his gagging.
Schofield tried again. "How about I put this another way: either you tell me how to pilot this thing safely back to Utah, or I do it without your help. Now, given the way I fly, either we'll burn up on reentry or crash into a friggin' mountain. Either way, we die. So, the way I see it, you either tell me how to do it, or you get killed watching me try."
The President reattached the pilot's life-support hose. The bound man's face was almost blue.
"Okay," he breathed. "Okay..."
"Great," Schofield said, "Now, the first thing I need is..."
He cut himself off as illuminated green words scrolled out rapidly across the cockpit's transparent heads-up display, or HUD, in the windshield:
FLEEING EAGLE, THIS IS YELLOW STAR.
YOU HAVE ALTERED COURSE.
PLEASE REALIGN TO VECTOR THREE-ZERO-ZERO.
Schofield stared at the words on the HUD. They seemed to hover in the air in front of the starfield.
Then, beyond the transparent display, he saw the Chinese space shuttle, much closer now.
It glided slowly and effortlessly through the void toward his ship, about three hundred yards away and closing quickly.
FLEEING EAGLE, PLEASE CONFIRM.
"Please confirm..." Schofield muttered as he scanned the cockpit's enormous array of switches and found the weapons section. "Confirm this."
He flipped open a safety casing to reveal two red buttons marked missile launch.
"This is for Mother," he said as he jammed his fingers down on both buttons.
The two Shuttles faced each other in space – hovering above the outer atmosphere, lit from below by the brilliant reflected light of the world - the compact X-38 and the much larger Chinese shuttle.
And then suddenly, twin bolts of white shot out from the wings of the X-38 - two missiles, sleek zero-gravity AMRAAM's. They blasted off their wing mounts and rocketed through the vacuum between the two shuttles.
The missiles moved unbelievably fast, converging on the Chinese shuttle like a pair of giant winged needles.
They left no smoke trails in their wakes. No puffs of flame or fire, for nothing survives in a vacuum. Their tail thrusters simply glowed orange against the black star-filled sky.
There was nothing the Chinese space shuttle could do.
There were, quite simply, no defensive measures it could employ up here.
The two AMRAAM's slammed into the Chinese ship at exactly the same time - one hitting it in the middle, the other in the nose.
The shuttle just cracked.
There was an instantaneous flash of blinding white light and the Chinese shuttle spontaneously blew out into pieces which, after the initial blast, just radiated outwards in a kind of accentuated slow motion.
The Yellow Star would not be returning to Earth.
The Echo men were still hammering on the cockpit door as, under the instructions of the tied up pilot, Schofield enabled the X-38's automated re-entry procedures.
There was
nothing the men from Echo Unit could do.
The cockpit door was three-inch-thick titanium. And firing a gun through the five-inch-thick glass window didn't look like a clever option.
Indeed, as the X-38 began its controlled descent out of its orbit, hit the atmosphere and engaged its heat shields against the 4,000°F temperatures outside, they could only strap themselves back into their seats and hang on.
The shuttle rocketed downward under the autopilot. As it did so, Schofield watched the starfield above them slowly fade away, replaced by a hazy purple aura, before suddenly, brilliantly, they burst down into dazzling blue sky.
The orbiting X-38 had traveled eastward - but because it hadn't actually been up that long, only about halfway across Colorado. Looking down, and facing west now, Schofield saw steel-gray mountains and lush green valleys. Beyond them, on the curved horizon, he could see the sandy-yellow Utah desert.
He looked at his watch.
10:36 a.m.
They hadn't been in orbit long at all. About twelve minutes, in fact. Now, gliding downward at supersonic speed, they'd be back in Utah in only a couple more.
Suddenly, the heads-up display came to life:
SOURCE AIRFIELD BEACON DETECTED
AIRFIELD IDENTIFIED AS UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
SPECIAL AREA (RESTRICTED) 08
PROCEEDING TO SOURCE AIRFIELD
Area 8, Schofield thought.
No.
He didn't want to go there.
So far as he could see, the only way to end this challenge once and for all was to get away from these bases with the President and the Football.
But to do that, they needed the Football.
And the Football - whose interminable countdown still needed to be satisfied by 11:30 - was last seen at Area 7, in the hands of Seth Grimshaw.
Schofield turned to his captive shuttle pilot. "We need to get to Area 7."
The X-38 descended rapidly, shooting westward, blasting over the barren Utah desert.
It flew down toward Area 8, roaring through the air, but as it came close, Schofield disengaged the autopilot and, now flying the shuttle manually like a regular plane, he allowed the shuttle to overshoot the base.
They covered the twenty miles to Area 7 in less than a minute, and very soon, he saw the low mountain and the cluster of hangars and buildings, and the elongated runway in the sand. In the far distance, on the horizon, he saw the wide expanse of Lake Powell, with its twisting network of water-filled canyons.
He aimed for the runway, sweeping in low over the buildings of Area 7. It ran from east to west, so he was coming straight for it.
The X-38 boomed over the Area 7 complex, shaking its walls, -before touching down perfectly on its black bitumen runway.
But it came in fast - very fast.
Which was why Schofield didn't see the two black Penetrator helicopters sitting silently next to Area 7's hangars.
Didn't see one of them immediately power up and rise into the air as soon as his tires had hit the tarmac.
The X-38 rocketed down the desert runway, its tires smoking.
Schofield tried to rein in the speeding spacecraft, releasing a brake parachute which fluttered to life behind it. The shuttle began to slow.
When at last it had lost all its momentum, Schofield flicked some switches, prepared to take her back to the main hangar.
He never even got to turn the shuttle around.
For at the very moment that he brought it to a halt, he saw the Penetrator helicopter swing menacingly into place in front of him, hovering above the runway like an evil bird of prey.
The Space Shuttle and the winged attack helicopter squared off like a pair of gunslingers on a Wild West street - the shuttle on the runway, the Penetrator floating in the air in front of it.
Inside the shuttle's cockpit, Schofield yanked off his helmet. The President did the same.
"Shit. What do we...?" the President asked.
Bang!
The cockpit door shuddered.
The men of Echo Unit were out of their seats and were once again pounding on it.
Then suddenly the voice of the Penetrator's pilot came in over the radio. It was one of Caesar Russell's 7th Squadron men.
"X-38, this is Air Force Penetrator. Be advised, we have missile lock on you. Release the boy now."
Schofield spun to look at Kevin, thinking fast.
The world was closing in on them - the Penetrator outside, the Echo men inside, missile lock...
And then he saw the compartment sunk into the wall beyond Kevin's seat.
He turned to the President. "Sir, could you help Kevin get his suit off, please?"
The President did so while Schofield hit the talk button. "Air Force Penetrator, what are your intentions?"
As he spoke, Schofield climbed over to the wall compartment and yanked it open.
A sign on its door panel read: SURVIVAL KIT.
The Echo men continued to pound on the cockpit door.
"If you release the boy," the Penetrator pilot said, "we leave you in peace."
"Yeah, right," Schofield muttered.
He was foraging frantically through the shuttle's survival compartment. "Come on," he breathed, "there has to be one in here. There always is..."
Into his mike, however, he said, "And if we don't release the boy?"
"Then we might just have to cut our losses and kill you all."
It was then that Schofield found what he was looking for inside the compartment: a two-foot long cylindrical metal tube that looked like a...
He grabbed it, snapped to look up - and found himself looking out through the five-inch-thick glass window that opened onto the rear section of the shuttle. On the other side of the glass, aimed right at his face, was a pistol, held by one of the Echo men!
With a flash of white light - and a silent bang - the pistol fired.
Schofield shut his eyes, waited for the bullet to crash through the glass and enter his head.
But the glass was too thick. The bullet just scratched the surface and pinged away.
Schofield breathed again, raced back to his seat.
"Air Force Penetrator," he said as he climbed back into his flight seat and started doing up his seat belts. "All right. All right Listen. I also have the President here." As he spoke, he indicated for the President to undo his belts.
"The President..."
"That's right. I'm going to send him out with the boy. I'm sure you won't mind that. Now, I have your word, you won't fire on us if we send them out?"
"That's right."
"Okay," Schofield said,to Kevin and the President. "When I release the hatch, I want you two to get as far away from this shuttle as you can. All right?"
"Right," Kevin said.
"Right," the President nodded. "But what about you?"
Schofield pulled the hatch release lever.
With a sharp snap-whoosh! a small section of the shuttle's ceiling - the part directly above the tied-up shuttle pilot - went catapulting high into the air, flying end over end.
A wide square of blue sky opened over the pilot.
"Just get as far away from this shuttle as you can," Schofield said. "I'll be joining you in a minute. I just have a helicopter to kill."
In the shimmering desert heat, two tiny figures emerged from the shuttle's cockpit hatch.
The President and Kevin.
The President still wore his orange flight suit, only now he was helmetless. Kevin just wore the regular clothes he'd been wearing underneath his oversized space suit.
The Penetrator loomed above them, its rotor wash shaking the air.
A plastic rope ladder hung down from the shuttle's roof. It had unrolled automatically when the escape hatch had been jettisoned.
The President and Kevin descended the ladder quickly, under the watchful eye of the Penetrator's three crew members.
Then their feet touched the burning-hot tarmac and they hurried away from the shuttle.
&
nbsp; In the Shuttle's cockpit, Schofield was positioning the lap, waiting for Kevin and the President to get clear.
He exchanged a glance with the still-bound shuttle pilot. "What're you looking at?" he said...
Zazzzzzz!
Without warning, a spray of brilliant orange sparks exploded out from the door behind him.
Holy...
The Echo men were using a blow torch to cut through the door!
Must wait for the President and the boy to get clear...
And then the Penetrator pilot's voice came through. "Thank you, X-38. I'm sorry for misleading you, but unfortunately you must now be destroyed. Good night."
Instantly, a Sidewinder missile shot out from the right hand wing stub of the Penetrator, a smoke trail looping through the air behind it. It zoomed downwards, heading straight for the space shuttle's windshield.
The blow torch's sparks sprayed into the cockpit from behind.
Screw it, Schofield thought. Time to blow this joint. And with that, he yanked on the ejection lever beside his seat.
Like a new year's eve firecracker shooting up into the sky, Shane Schofield rocketed up into the air above the grounded space shuttle, sitting on his flight seat.
He carved a perfectly straight vertical path into the air, in the process creating a bizarre triangle between himself, the space shuttle and the Penetrator helicopter.
And then everything happened at once.
First, the Penetrator's missile slammed into the X-38 beneath Schofield, causing it and the Echo men inside it to explode in a billowing blasting fireball.
For his part, Schofield shot high into the air above the flaming explosion, reaching the zenith of his flight path as he drew level with the Penetrator's shocked crew.
It was only then that the chopper's three crew members survival kit onto his shoulder - as he flew upwards on the ejection seat.
Only it wasn't just any old tube.
It was a rocket launcher.
A compact M-72 single-shot disposable rocket launcher, supplied in the survival kit for astronauts who crash-landed in enemy territory and needed some lightweight but heavy hitting firepower.
Hovering in the air in his ejection seat, high above the billowing fireball that had been the X 38, Schofield jammed his finger down on the rocket launcher's trigger.
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