Area 7

by Matthew Reilly

  There, sitting in a swivel chair in the middle of the destroyed command room, waiting for Schofield and smiling broadly at him, was Caesar Russell.

  "I thought you might be back," Caesar said.

  He was unarmed.

  "You know, Captain," he said, "a man like you is wasted on this country. You're clever, you've got courage, and you'll do whatever it takes to win, including the bizarre and the illogical, such as saving me. You and your efforts would be unappreciated by the ignorant fools who make up this nation. Which is why," he sighed, "it is such a shame that you have to die."

  It was then that the gun cocked next to Schofield's head.

  Schofield turned - to see Major Kurt Logan standing behind him, his silver SIG-Sauer pistol pointed right at Schofield's temple.

  11:04.

  "Come in," Caesar said. "Come in."

  Logan relieved Schofield of his Desert Eagle as the two of them stepped into the destroyed control room.

  "Come and watch America's death sentence," Caesar waved at an illuminated screen behind him. It was like the one Schofield had seen outside. It read:

  1005

  *********WARNING*********

  EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.

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

  SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE DURATION: 10:00 MINUTES.

  *********WARNING*********

  Schofield saw a clock at the bottom corner of the computer screen ticking upward.

  11:04:29.

  11:04:30.

  11:04:31.

  "Tick-tick-tick," Caesar said deliciously. "How frustrating this must be for you, Captain. No clever plans to save you now, no space shuttles, no secret exits. Once the ten minute self destruct sequence is set in motion, nothing can stop it from going off. I will die, and so will you, and so, too, will America."

  The clock on the screen ticked upward.

  Covered by Logan, Schofield could only watch helplessly as it approached 11:05 a.m.

  11:04:56.

  11:04:57.

  Schofield clenched his fists with frustration.

  He knew the code! He knew it. But he couldn't use it. And where the hell was Gant? What was she doing?

  11:04:58.

  11:04:59.

  11:05:00.

  "Lift-off," Caesar smiled.

  "Shit," Schofield said.

  The screen beeped.

  LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL S.A.(R) 7A

  FACILITY SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ACTIVATED.

  10:00 MINUTES TO DETONATION.

  A blinking countdown commenced on the screen.

  10:00.

  9:59.

  9:58.

  At that very same moment, an army of battery-powered revolving red lights exploded to life throughout the complex - inside the main hangar, down in the aircraft elevator shaft, even inside the control room.

  An electronic voice boomed out from an emergency PA system.

  "Warning. Ten minutes to facility self-destruct..."

  And just then - as they were bathed in strobing red light - Schofield saw Kurt Logan take his eyes off him, just for a split second, to look out at the lights.

  Schofield took the chance.

  He drove his body into Logan's, sending both of them crashing against a computer console.

  Logan brought his gun around, but Schofield grabbed his wrist and banged it down against the console, causing the 7th Squadron commander to release the pistol.

  Caesar just sat back, grinning with satisfaction, watching the fight in front of him with mad delight.

  Schofield and Logan fought hard, covered in red emergency lighting. They looked like mirror images, two elite soldiers who had studied from the same manual, exchanging identical blows, employing identical evasive moves.

  But Schofield was exhausted from his previous battle with Lucifer and he unleashed a loose swing which Logan punished without mercy.

  He ducked beneath Schofield's wayward blow and then tackled him around the waist, lifting Schofield clear off the ground and driving him backwards toward the shattered windows of the control room.

  Schofield blasted out through the destroyed windows of the command room, back-first, flying through the air. He shut his eyes and waited for the crushing impact with the floor thirty feet below.

  It never came.

  Instead, his fall was unexpectedly short.

  Thud!

  Schofield slammed down on a rough wooden surface that rocked beneath his weight.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was lying on top of one of the enormous wooden cargo crates that hung from the main hangar's ceiling mounted rail network.

  It had been parked just outside the control room, a little to the left, allowing the command center a clear view of the hangar.

  A triangle of thick chains connected the massive crate to the overhead rail system six feet above it. The chains were held together by a spring-loaded ring mechanism not unlike the closable circular latch one finds on a necklace.

  Attached to the ring mechanism was a square control unit made up of three big buttons which presumably moved the crate back and forth along the rails.

  Then suddenly, the crate rocked wildly and Schofield looked up to see that Kurt Logan had jumped out onto it after him.

  Down on the hangar floor, Libby Gant had heard the crash of breaking glass and snapped to look up.

  She had just found what she was looking for amid the debris on the floor when she saw Schofield come exploding out through the control room's windows and land hard on the wooden crate suspended high above the hangar floor.

  Then she saw Kurt Logan jump out through the window, and land easily on the crate next to him.

  "No..." Gant breathed.

  She drew her gun, but abruptly, a barrage of bullet impact-sparks lit up the floor all around her.

  She dived for cover behind a couple of dead bodies. When she finally looked up, she saw Caesar Russell leaning out from the destroyed control room windows, brandishing a P-90 and yelling, "No, no, no! A fair fight, please!"

  "Warning. Nine minutes to facility self-destruct..."

  Up on the wooden crate, Logan kneeled astride Schofield, hit him hard in the face.

  "You've made today a lot harder than it had to be, Captain."

  His face gleamed with anger in the strobelike red light.

  Another punch.

  Hard. Schofield's head slammed back against the crate, his nose gushing with blood.

  Logan then grabbed the control unit above his head and hit a button.

  With a jolt and a sway and the clanking of mechanical gears, the crate began to move out across the hangar, toward the open aircraft elevator shaft. It was petrol powered, so it hadn't been affected by the complex's power loss.

  As the crate began to glide out over the hangar, Logan kept pounding Schofield, talking as he did so.

  "You know, I remember..."

  Punch.

  "...taking out you Marine pussies at the annual war games..."

  Punch.

  "...Too fucking easy. You're a disgrace..."

  Punch.

  "...to the country, to the flag, and to your fucking bitch whore mothers."

  Punch.

  Schofield could barely keep his eyes open.

  Christ, he was getting his ass kicked...

  And then the crate swung out over the four-hundredfoot-deep aircraft elevator shaft and Logan pressed a button on the control unit, stopping it.

  The big crate swung to a halt directly above the wide, yawning shaft.

  "Warning. Eight minutes to facility self-destruct..."

  Schofield peered over the edge of the crate, saw the shaft's concrete walls, now lined with revolving red lights, plummeting like four matching vertical cliffs down into bottomless black.

  "Good-bye, Captain Schofield," Logan said, as he lifted Schofield by his lapels and stood him at the edge of the crate
.

  Schofield - battered, bloody, bruised and exhausted - couldn't resist. He stood unsteadily at the edge of the crate, the great hole of the elevator shaft yawning wide beneath him.

  He thought about the Maghook on his back, but then saw the ceiling. It was made of sheer flat fiberglass. The Maghook wouldn't stick to it with its magnet, nor could it get a purchase on it with its hook.

  In any case, he didn't have any energy left to fight.

  No more guns.

  No more Maghooks.

  No more ejection seats.

  He had nothing that Logan didn't have more of.

  And then, just as Logan was about to push him off the edge of the crate, Schofield saw Gant - a shadow amid the redness - saw her taking cover behind some bodies next to the eastern rim of the elevator shaft.

  Except friends...

  He turned suddenly to face Logan... and to Logan's complete surprise, he smiled, and raised his open palm, revealing his Secret Service microphone.

  Schofield then looked Logan deep in the eye and said, "Sydney Harbour Bridge, Gant. You take the negative."

  Logan frowned. "Huh?"

  And then before Logan could even think to do anything, with his last ounce of strength, Schofield reached over Logan's shoulder and unlatched the spring-loaded ring mechanism holding the crate to the overhead rail system.

  The result was instantaneous.

  In a kind of hellish slow motion that was only accentuated by the strobing red lighting, the crate - with both Schofield and Logan on it - just fell away from its ceiling mounted rails, spilling the two combatants off its back... and the three of them - Schofield, Logan and the crate itself - dropped together into the four-hundred-foot abyss of the elevator shaft.

  Schofiled fell through the air.

  Fast.

  At first he saw the red-lit hangar rushing past him, swinging upwards - then suddenly that image was replaced by the rim of the elevator shaft, swooshing by him as he dropped into the shaft itself. Then all he saw were rapidly rushing concrete walls speeding by in a blur of gray and he glanced up and saw the wide square up at the top of the shaft shrinking very, very quickly above him.

  He saw Logan falling beside him, a look of absolute terror on his face. It looked as if Logan couldn't believe what Schofield had just done.

  He'd just dropped both of them into the shaft, crate and all!

  Schofield, however, just prayed that Gant had heard him.

  And as he fell through the air, surrounded by red light, he coolly unslung his Maghook, initiated its magnet, selected a positive charge, and looked up in search of his only hope.

  Gant had heard his call.

  Now she lay on her stomach on the rim of the shaft, aiming her own Maghook - now charged negatively – down into it.

  "Scarecrow," she said into her radio mike, "you fire first. I'll make the shot."

  As he fell down the elevator shaft, Schofield fired his positively charged Maghook into the air.

  It rocketed up the shaft - flying perfectly vertical – its tail rope wobbling through the air behind it.

  Kurt Logan, falling alongside Schofield, saw what he was doing and yelled, "No...!"

  "Come on, Fox," Schofield whispered. "Don't let me die."

  Libby Gant's eyes narrowed as she gazed down the barrel of her Maghook.

  Despite all the distractions around her - the flashing red lights, the klaxons, the droning electronic warning voice - she drew a bead on Schofield's flying Maghook: an arcing dot of glinting metal shooting up out of the blackness of the shaft, coming toward her.

  "Nothing's impossible," she whispered to herself.

  Then, cool as ice, she pulled the trigger on her own Maghook.

  Whump!

  The bulbous magnetic head of her Maghook shot out of its launcher, rushed down into the shaft, trailing its own length of rope.

  Schofield's maghook shot up the shaft.

  Gant's Maghook shot down the shaft.

  Schofield fell, with Logan and the crate beside him.

  Gant rode her Maghook all the way down. "Come on, baby. Come on..." Since they were oppositely charged, they'd only have to pass by close to each other to - Clang!

  The two Maghooks hit - in midair - like twin missiles slamming into each other in the sky!

  The Sydney Harbour Bridge.

  Their powerful magnetic charges held them firmly together, and up in the hangar, Gant quickly hooked her launcher into a grate in the floor.

  Two maghooks equals three hundred feet of rope.

  And a three-hundred-foot fall means one hell of a jolt.

  When he saw Gant's flying magnetic hook connect with his own, Schofield - still falling fast - slung his launcher under his shoulders and around his chest. Then he tensed his arms around the rope, bracing himself for the impending jolt.

  This was going to hurt.

  It hurt.

  With an outrageous snap, the ropes of the two Maghooks went taut and Schofield bounced up into the air, yanked upward like a skydiver opening his parachute - while below him, Kurt Logan and the wooden crate just kept on falling, and slammed into the aircraft platform below them.

  The wooden crate just exploded, its walls shattering into splinters as it hit the platform.

  Logan met a similar fate.

  He landed hard - screaming - on the jagged remains of the AWACS plane that still littered the elevator platform. His head was separated from his shoulders as his throat hit an upwardly pointed piece of wing. The rest of his body just flattened with the phenomenal impact, splatting like a tomato when it hit the platform.

  As for Schofield, after he was snapped upwards by the ropes of the two Maghooks, he swung in toward the side wall of the shaft. He slammed into it heavily, bounced off it, and was left hanging next to the sheer concrete wall a bare eighty feet above the elevator platform, breathing hard, his shoulders and arms aching from the jolt, but alive.

  The two maghooks reeled schofield up the shaft quickly.

  "Warning. Six minutes to facility self-destruct."

  It was 11:09 when Gant hauled him up over the rim of the great pit.

  "I thought you said the Harbour Bridge was impossible," she said dryly.

  "Believe me, that was a very nice way to be proved wrong," Schofield said.

  Gant smiled. "Yeah, well I only did it because I wanted another..."

  She was interrupted by a thunderous line of gunfire cutting through the air all around them, ripping across both their bodies.

  A ragged bullet wound burst open near Gant's right foot - shattering her ankle - while another two appeared on Schofield's left shoulder. More bullets passed so close to his face he felt their air trails swoosh past his nose.

  Both Marines dropped, gritting their teeth, as Caesar Russell came charging out of the internal building nearby, his P-90 pressed against his shoulder, firing wildly, his eyes gleaming with madness.

  Schofield - hurt for sure, but far more mobile than Gant - pushed Gant behind the remains of Bravo Unit's crate barricade.

  Then he grabbed her Beretta and made a loping dash the other way, through the strobing red on-black world, toward the remains of Nighthawk Two over by the personnel elevator, trying to draw Caesar's fire away from Gant.

  The massive Marine Corps Super Stallion was still parked in front of the regular elevator's doors - battered and dented, its entire cockpit section blasted wide open.

  Caesar's stream of bullets chewed up the ground at his heels, but it was loose fire, and in the flashing red light, Caesar missed wide.

  Schofield made it to the Super Stallion, dived into its exploded-open cockpit, just as the chopper's walls erupted with bullet holes.

  "Come on, hero!" Caesar yelled. "What's the matter? Can't shoot back? What're you afraid of? Go on! Find a gun and shoot back!"

  That, however, was the one thing Schofield couldn't do. If he killed Caesar, he killed every major city in northern America.

  Goddamnit! he thought.

&nb
sp; It was the worst possible situation.

  He was being fired upon by a man he couldn't fire back at!

  "Fox!" he yelled into his wrist mike. "You okay?"

  A stifled grimace over his earpiece. "Yeah..."

  Schofield yelled, "We have to grab him and get him out of here! Any ideas?"

  Gant's reply was drowned out by the complex's electronic voice.

  "Warning. Five minutes to facility self-destruct..."

  Through a small door-window, Schofield saw Caesar approaching the semi-destroyed helicopter from the side, pummeling its flanks with his fire.

  "You like that, hero?" the Air Force general yelled. "You like that!"

  Inside the blasted-open cockpit, everything was shuddering and shaking under the weight of Caesar's fire. Schofield clenched his teeth, gripped his gun. The two bullet holes in his shoulder hurt like hell, but adrenaline was keeping him going.

  Through the cracked door-window of the Super Stallion he saw Caesar - crazed and deranged - firing like a yee-ha cowboy at the chopper, striding cockily around it, heading toward its open cockpit.

  Caesar would have him in about four seconds...

  Then suddenly Gant's voice exploded through his earpiece.

  "Scarecrow! Get ready to shoot. There might be another way..."

  "But I can't shoot!" Schofield yelled.

  "Just give me a second here!"

  Over by the elevator shaft, Gant was crouched over the object she had been searching for earlier - the black box that she had pilfered from the AWACS plane down on Level 2 ninety minutes earlier, the black box that she had surreptitiously kicked away from the mini-elevator when she and the President had arrived in the main hangar before.

  In the flashing light of the complex, she pulled a small red unit with a black stub antenna from the thigh pocket of her baggy biohazard suit.

  It was Russell's initiate/terminate unit - with its two on-off switches marked "1" and "2".

  It was only now that Gant understood why there were two switches on the unit.

  This unit not only started and stopped the radio transmitter on the President's heart, it also started and stopped the transmitter on Caesar's heart.

  Caesar was almost at the blasted-open cockpit of the chopper, his P-90 raised.

  In a few seconds, he would have a clear shot at Schofield.

  "I'm coming...!" he cackled.

  Schofield lay slumped on the floor inside the Super Stallion, pinned down, looking out through its exposed forward section.