Area 7

SIXTH CONFRONTATION

And suddenly Schofield and the others entered a whole new ball game.

In the main hangar of Area 8, a fierce gun battle was already under way.

Explosions boomed, gunfire roared.

Shafts of sunlight streamed in through the hangar's gigantic open doors. About fifty yards away from the elevator, filling the open doorway — partially blocking the incoming sun — was the birdlike rear end of a silver Boeing 747.

"Son of a bitch," Schofield breathed as he saw the streamlined space shuttle mounted on the 747's back.

Gunfire rang out from over by the hangar doors.

Five black-clad 7th Squadron commandos — the treacherous men from Echo Unit, Schofield guessed — were taking cover behind the doors, firing their P-90's at something outside the hangar.

"This way," Schofield said, hurrying out of the elevator. The three of them skirted around a Humvee and a pair of cockroach towing vehicles until they could see what lay beyond the hangar doors: two black Penetrator helicopters, hovering low over the tarmac outside the hangar, blocking the way of the shuttle-carrying 747.

The six-barreled Vulcan miniguns mounted underneath the noses of the two Penetrators were raining down a storm of bullets on the Echo Unit men in the hangar — pinning them down, preventing them from dashing across the twenty yards of open ground to the wheeled stairway that led onto the 747.

Missiles lanced out from the wing stubs of the Penetrators, zeroing in on the 747. But the jumbo must have been using the latest electromagnetic countermeasures, because the missiles never got near them — they just went berserk as soon as they got close to the big plane, rolling through the air away from it, before slamming into the ground and detonating in showers of concrete and sand.

Even the onslaught of flashing orange tracer bullets from the helicopters just veered away from the body of the giant jumbo, as if some invisible magnetic shield prevented them coming near it.

From his position behind the cockroach, Schofield recognized two of the men seated inside one of the helicopters: Caesar Russell and Kurt Logan.

I'll bet Caesar's not happy with Echo, he thought. Caesar and Logan must have arrived only moments earlier — just as the men of Echo had been boarding their escape plane. Caesar's choppers, it seemed, must have opened fire before all the Echo men had been able to get on the plane, before they'd been able to get away with Kevin.

Kevin…

Schofield scanned the battlefield. He couldn't see the little boy anywhere.

He must already be on board the plane…

And then without warning the 747 powered up, its four massive jet engines blasting air everywhere, sending any loose objects tumbling across the hangar.

The plane started moving forward — away from the hangar, out onto the runway — toward the two black Penetrators. Its wheeled staircase clattered to the ground behind it.

It was a good tactic.

The Penetrators knew that they stood no chance against the weight of the rolling 747, so they split like a pair of frightened pigeons, moving out of the way of the massive jumbo.

It was then that Schofield saw an Echo man standing in the open side door of the 747, saw him wave to his men still in the hangar and then toss a thin rope ladder from the doorway.

The rope ladder hung from the small doorway, swaying beneath the rolling plane.

At that same moment, movement near the hangar's entry caught his eye and he spun, and saw the five Echo men at the hangar door dash for the Humvee parked near his cockroach.

They were going to try to board the 747… while it was moving!

As soon as the Echo men moved, a withering burst of tracer fire from the Penetrators outside flooded in through the hangar's open doorway, shredding the ground at their feet.

Two of the men fell, hit, their bodies erupting in a thousand explosions of red. The other three made it to the Humvee, clambered inside, started her up. The big car peeled off the mark, turning in a wide circle — Shoooooom!

A missile rocketed in through the open hangar doors, heading straight for the skidding Humvee.

The Humvee's life was short.

The missile hit it square on the nose — so hard that the wide-bodied jeep was sent flailing back across the slippery hangar floor, before it slammed against a wall and filled with light and blasted outwards in a shower of metal.

"Holy exploding Humvees, Batman!" Mother said.

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

"What are we doing?" the President asked.

Schofield pointed at the moving jumbo outside. "We're getting on that plane."

As with many desert bases, Area 8's elongated runway was roughly L-shaped, with the shorter arm of the "L" meeting the open doorway of the complex's main hangar.

Aircraft took off and landed on the longer arm of the "L" but to get out to that runway, all planes had to taxi along the shorter strip first. While the main runway was over five thousand yards long, the shorter runway — or taxiway — was only about four hundred yards in length.

The silver 747 — with the glistening white X-38 space shuttle on its back — rumbled along the taxiway, flanked by the two black Air Force Penetrators.

Windblown sand whistled all around it, the brutal desert sun glinted off its sides.

The big jumbo had reached the halfway point of the taxiway when a speeding vehicle came blasting out of the main hangar behind it.

It was a cockroach.

One of the white flat-bodied towing vehicles that had been parked inside the hangar. Looking like a brick with wheels, it thundered along the taxiway, chasing after the big plane.

In the cramped driver's compartment of the cockroach, Mother drove. Schofield and the President shared the passenger seat.

"Come on, Mother, pick it up!" Schofield urged. "We've got to catch it before it gets to the main runway! Once it gets there and starts on its flight run, we're screwed."

Mother jammed the cockroach into third, its highest gear. The towing vehicle's V8 engine roared as it leapt forward, accelerating through the shimmering desert heat.

The cockroach whipped across the taxiway, closed in on the shuttle-carrying 747.

The Penetrators opened fire on it, but Schofield kicked open the passenger-side window and unleashed a burst from both his and Mother's P-90 assault rifles, hitting the nose mounted Vulcan cannon on one of the Penetrators, causing it to bank away. But the other chopper kept firing hard, kicking up sparks all around the speeding cockroach.

"Mother! Get us under the plane! We need its countermeasures!" Mother hit the gas and the cockroach surged forward, hit its top speed. It reeled in the lumbering 747 — inch by painful inch — until at last the speeding towing vehicle sped underneath the silver jumbo's high tail section.

It was like entering an air bubble.

The bullets from the second Penetrator no longer hit the ground all around them. The fireworks display of their impact sparks ended abruptly.

The cockroach kept rushing forward — now speeding along in the shadow of the shuttle carrying 747 — pushing past its rear landing gear while still remaining in the shelter of its massive body.

The cockroach weaved under the left-hand wing of the 747, the tarmac rushing by beneath it, heading for the rope ladder that dangled from the plane's still-open left-hand door.

The cockroach came to the rope ladder — just as the entire 747 abruptly swung right.

"Goddamn it!" Mother yelled as the cockroach swung out from the shelter of the jumbo into glaring sunlight.

"It's turning onto the main runway!" Schofield shouted.

Like a giant, slow-moving bird, the silver 747 — with the X-38 shuttle on its back — turned onto Area 8's elongated runway.

"Get to that ladder, Mother!" Schofield called.

Mother gunned it, yanked the steering wheel hard-right, directing the cockroach — now momentarily deprived of the jumbo's electromagnetic protection — back in toward the flailing rope ladder, but not before one of the Penetrators swung quickly around in front of the turning 747 and opened fire.

A devastating line of tracer bullets impacted against the tarmac in front of the cockroach, kicking up sparks that ricocheted everywhere.

Several bullets smacked against the cockroach's windscreen, cracking it. Many more, however, bounced up underneath the towing vehicle's speeding front bumper and impacted against the underside of the cockroach — three of them hitting the vehicle's steering column.

The response was instantaneous.

The steering wheel in Mother's hands went haywire.

The cockroach fishtailed wildly, lurching sideways as it sped along the runway under the wing of the 747, swinging left and right.

Mother had to use all her strength just to keep a grip on the steering wheel, to keep the cockroach under control.

The 747 finished its turn, began to straighten up.

The runway in front of it stretched away into the distance — a long, straight ribbon of black that disappeared into the shimmering desert horizon.

"Mother…!" Schofield yelled.

"I know!" Mother shouted. "You go! Get up on the roof! I'll bring us under the ladder! And take the Prez here with you!"

"But what about you…?"

"Scarecrow! In about twelve seconds, that jumbo is going to take off and if you aren't on it, we lose that kid! I have to stay at the wheel of this thing, otherwise it'll spin out!"

"But those Penetrators will kill you once we're gone…!"

"That's why you have to take him with you!" Mother said, nodding at the President. "Don't mind me, Scarecrow. You know it'll take more than a bunch of Air Force cocksuckers to get rid of me"

Schofield wasn't so sure.

But he saw the look in her eye, and he knew that she was prepared to keep driving the cockroach — to her almost certain death — so long as he and the President got on board that plane.

He turned to the President. "Come on. You're coming with me."

The cockroach raced alongside the 747, once again shielded by its electronic countermeasures, swung in underneath its forward left-hand entry door — the door from which the rope ladder dangled.

The two tiny figures of Schofield and the President — still dressed in their black combat uniforms — climbed up onto the roof of the speeding towing vehicle. Conveniently, their 7th Squadron uniforms came with protective goggles, so they put them on to protect their eyes against the storm of sand blowing all around them.

Down in the driver's compartment, Mother continued to grapple with the steering wheel of the cockroach, trying with all her might to keep the rampaging vehicle on a straight course.

On the roof of the cockroach — in the face of the battering wind — Schofield reached for the flailing rope ladder. It fluttered and swayed just out of his reach…

Then suddenly a deafening roar filled his ears.

The 747's four wing-mounted jet engines were coming to life.

Schofield's blood ran cold.

The plane was powering up for take-off, starting its run down the airstrip. Any second now, it would accelerate considerably and pull away from the cockroach.

The rope ladder continued to flutter in the raging wind, a few feet in front of the speeding cockroach. Billowing clouds of sand flew everywhere.

Schofield turned to the President and yelled: "Okay! I grab the ladder! You grab me!"

"What!"

"You'll understand!"

And with that, Schofield charged across the flat roof of the cockroach and leapt off its forward edge… and flew through the air, reaching up with his outstretched arms… and caught the bottom rung of the dangling rope ladder.

He waved for the President to follow. "Now you grab me!"

With a doubtful shake of his head, the President said, "Okay…"

And he ran forward and jumped — just as the silver 747 shot forward, its engines engaging.

The President flew through the short space of air in front of the speeding cockroach before his body slammed into Schofield's, and he threw his arms around the young captain's waist, clasping his hips tightly while Schofield himself held on grimly to the bottom rung of the rope ladder with both of his hands!

Mother's cockroach instantly peeled away behind them, unable to keep up. The two Penetrators also gave up the chase, wheeling to a halt in midair above the runway.

Hanging from the rope ladder — and traveling at close to a hundred miles an hour, with the wind whipping all around him and the President of the United States hanging from his waist — Schofield watched in horror as one of the Penetrators loosed a missile at Mother's nowunprotected cockroach.

The missile hit the cockroach's tail and detonated hard, lifting the rear end of the still speeding towing vehicle a clear five feet off the ground.

With the missile impact, the cockroach fishtailed wildly — and shot off the runway, onto the sand, kicking up an enormous billowing dust cloud — and then it flipped — and tumbled — and rolled — once, twice, three times — before it came to a thumping crashing crushing halt, right on its cockpit, surrounded by falling sand.

And as he hung from the doorway of the accelerating 747, Schofield could only stare at the dust-covered wreck and pray that Mother had died quickly.

But right now he had other things to do.

The 747 continued to rush down the runway.

As it did so, the two tiny figures of Schofield and the President could be seen dangling from its forward left-hand doorway.

The 747 picked up speed. With the extra weight of the X-38 on its back, it required an unusually long take-off run.

Wind whipped all around Schofield and the President as they hung from the rope ladder.

"You go first!" Schofield yelled. "Climb up my body and then go up the ladder!"

The President did as he was told.

With the runway rushing by beneath them, he first climbed up Schofield's body, using his combat webbing for hand- and footholds. Then he stepped off Schofield's shoulders onto the rope ladder itself and began to climb it.

As soon as the President was on the ladder, Schofield began to haul himself up, using only his arms.

The ground continued to whip by beneath them as they ascended the rope ladder, the wind slamming into their bodies.

And then, all of a sudden, as they reached the doorway at the top of the ladder, the speeding runway beneath them just dropped away — dropped dramatically away — and receded rapidly into obscurity.

Schofield swallowed.

They were now in the air.

Caesar Russell's helicopter landed softly on the runway far beneath the rising 747, twenty yards away from Mother's crashed cockroach.

Caesar stepped out of the chopper and just gazed up after the plane.

Kurt Logan walked over to the torpedoed cockroach. It was a battered, tangled wreck.

Mangled steel lay everywhere.

Its driver's compartment was completely flattened, its windshield and roof struts bent shockingly inward. It looked like an aluminum can that had been crumpled flat.

And then he saw the body. It lay facedown in the sand in front of the smashed towing vehicle — twisted and broken. Only the torso and limbs were visible, the head was not. Mother's head lay somewhere underneath the cockroach's lowered front bumper, crushed flat against the ground. Her left pants leg ended abruptly at the knee — her lower leg wrenched off by the force of the impact.

Logan returned to Russell's side. Caesar hadn't taken his eyes off the rising silver plane.

"Echo has the boy," Logan said. "And the Marines have the President."

"Yes," Caesar said, staring up at the fleeing jumbo. "Yes. So now, regrettably, we move to the alternate plan. Which means we head back to Area 7."

The President landed with a heavy thump inside the open doorway of the 747, absolutely breathless.

Schofield followed a few seconds later, also breathing hard. He managed to stagger to his knees and pull the door shut behind him. It sealed with a loud whump!

Both men were lying on the floor, still wearing their protective goggles, when one of the pilots of the 747 — a commando from Echo Unit — came down the stairwell from the upper deck.

The pilot was wearing a baggy bright-orange flight suit which Schofield immediately recognized as a pressure suit.

Pressure suits were mandatory on all high-altitude or low-orbital flights. Although baggy on the outside, they were actually quite figure-hugging on the inside, with elasticized cuffs that ran down the wearer's arms and legs. The cuffs squeezed its wearer's limbs to regulate blood flow through the body and to stop blood draining from the head.

This man's suit had a metal ring around its neck, to which could be attached a space-flight helmet, and a plug-in hose socket on its waist, to which one connected a life support unit.

"Ah, you made it," the Echo pilot said as he approached them, obviously not seeing beyond their 7th Squadron outfits and filthy sand-covered goggles. "Sorry, but we couldn't wait for you any longer. Cobra made the call. Come on, it's only Coleman and me left. Everyone else is already up in the shutt…"

Smack!

Schofield stood quickly and punched him hard in the face, dropping him with one hit.

"Apology not accepted," Schofield said. Then he turned to the President. "Wait here."

"Okay," the Chief Executive replied quickly.

The 747 soared into the sky. Inside it, the world was tilted crazily, at an almost 45-degree angle.

Schofield hurried up the stairs that led to the 747's upper deck and cockpit. He held his P-90 poised in front of him, searching for the second pilot, the man named Coleman.

He found him as he was emerging from the cockpit. Another sharp blow later — this time with the butt of his P-90 — and Coleman was also out cold.

Schofield rushed into the empty cockpit, scanned it quickly.

He'd been hoping to seize the controls and bring the plane down…

No dice.

A screen on the cockpit's display revealed that the plane was flying on autopilot, and heading for an altitude of 67,000 feet — the height at which the 747 would release the space shuttle on its back.

At the bottom of the screen, however, were the words:

Authorization code? Schofield thought.

Shit.

He couldn't switch off the autopilot. Which meant he couldn't bring the plane down…

So what could he do?

He looked about himself, saw the clouds outside, saw the unconscious body of the pilot named Coleman lying on the floor just outside the cockpit.

And as his eyes fell on the pilot's body, he got an idea.

Schofield came back down to the President, hauling the unconscious Coleman on his shoulder.

He nodded toward the other knocked-out pilot at the President's feet. "Put on his flight suit," Schofield said as he dropped Coleman's body to the floor and started undressing it.

Within minutes, Schofield and the President were wearing the two pilots' bright-orange pressure suits — with SIG Sauer pistols concealed in their thigh pockets.

"Where to now?" the President asked.

Schofield gave him a serious look. "Where no man has gone before."

The X-38 Space Shuttle was connected to the launch jumbo by a cylindrical umbilical. Half a dozen titanium struts actually mounted the shuttle onto the back of the 747, but it was the umbilical that allowed human access to and from the spacecraft.

Basically, the umbilical looked like a long vertical tube that stretched upward from the back of the jumbo into the underside of the shuttle. Its entrance was at the midpoint of the jumbo, halfway along its lower deck.

Schofield and the President hurried toward it.

On the way, they found gear that had been waiting for the two Echo Unit pilots: two white briefcase-like life support systems — small self-contained air-conditioners just like those carried by the shuttle astronauts — and a pair of spherical gold-tinted space helmets that clicked onto the neck rings of their pressure suits.

The reflective gold tint of the helmets' dome-shaped visors — a feature designed to protect the wearer from the brutal quantities of ultraviolet radiation one experiences at extremely high altitudes — completely hid their faces.

They came to the umbilical's entrance: a tubular vertical tunnel that disappeared into the ceiling. A thin steel ladder rose up through its core.

Now dressed completely in his space suit, his face hidden by his reflective gold visor, Schofield peered up into it.

At the top end of the tube, about thirty yards straight up, he could see the illuminated interior of the X-38 shuttle.

He turned to the President and signaled with his finger: up.

They climbed the ladder slowly, weighed down by their cumbersome space suits and life support briefcases.

After about a minute of climbing, Schofield's helmeted head rose up through a circular hatch in the floor of the shuttle.

Schofield froze.

The rear cargo compartment of the space shuttle looked like the interior of a high-tech bus.

It was only a small space, compact, designed to hold anything from men to weapons to small satellites. It had pristine white walls that were lined with life-support sockets, keypads and tie down equipment studs. At the moment, however, the cabin was in personnel-carrying mode: about a dozen heavy-looking flight seats faced forward, grouped in pairs.

And strapped into those seats, Schofield saw, were the men of Echo Unit and their Chinese conspirators.

There were five of them inside the cargo cabin, and they all wore identical space suits — gold tinted helmets and baggy orange pressure suits with small U.S. flags sewn onto the shoulders.

How ironic, Schofield thought.

They were also strapped tightly into their flight seats, in readiness for the high-G transit into orbit.

Through the cockpit door at the front of the cargo compartment, he saw three more space suited individuals — the shuttle's flight team. Beyond them he could see the clear open sky.

As he stood there, sticking half out of the shuttle's floor hatch, Schofield felt his adrenaline surge.

He knew that their reflective gold helmets prevented him and the President from being recognized. But still he felt self-conscious, certain that he looked like an impostor stepping into the heart of enemy territory.

Near the front end of the compartment, there were several empty seats — waiting, presumably, for the two 747 pilots, and the five Echo commandos who had been cut off down in the hangar.

Slowly, Schofield raised himself up and out of the umbilical tunnel.

No one paid him any special attention.

He searched the cabin for Kevin, and at first, to his horror, didn't see him.

No…

But then he noticed that one of the five space-suited figures seated inside the cabin didn't quite seem to fill out his oversized suit.

In fact, it looked almost comical. The suit's gloved arms hung limply on this figure, its booted leggings dangled clumsily to the floor. It appeared that the wearer of this suit was way too small for it…

It had to be.

Rather than bunching up the space suit to allow Kevin's hands to reach into its gloves, the Echo men had made sure that the little boy was receiving the full benefit of the pressure suit's blood-regulating cuffs, even if that meant he looked like Charlie Chaplin wearing an oversized outfit.

All right, Schofield thought as he stepped out of the umbilical's hatch. How am I going to do this?

Why not just grab Kevin before anyone has a chance to unbuckle themselves, then dive down into the umbilical and get back into the 747 and…

Just then a hand seized Schofield's arm, and a voice exploded in his ear.

"Yo, Coleman."

It was one of the shuttle's pilots, faceless behind his gold visor. He had stepped back into the personnel cabin and grabbed Schofield's arm. His tinny voice came in over Schofield's helmet intercom.

"Just you two? What happened to the others?"

Schofield just shook his head sadly.

"Aw, well," the faceless astronaut said. He pointed with two fingers to a pair of flight seats close to the cockpit door. "Take a seat and strap in."

Then, with casual efficiency, the astronaut crouched down, helped the President out of the umbilical, and shut the entry hatch behind him!

Then he just strode forward to the cockpit, speaking into his intercom as he did so: "All personnel, prepare for separation from the launch vehicle in thirty seconds."

The cockpit door slid firmly shut behind the pilot, sealing it off, and Schofield was left standing in the middle of the cabin, staring at the closed pressure hatch in the floor beneath him.

Holy shit….

They were about to go into orbit.

With the president behind him, Schofield made his way forward, to two empty seats near the cockpit door.

As he did so, he observed how the Echo men had attached themselves to the shuttle's centralized life-support system and strapped themselves into their seats.

He arrived at his seat, and plugged a secondary hose from his life-support briefcase into a socket in the seat's arm. Then he sat down and started securing his seat harness.

The President, watching him, did the same, strapping himself into a seat on the other side of the central aisle.

Once he was safely secured, Schofield turned to look about himself.

Across the aisle from him, in the seat directly behind the President, he saw the lopsided figure of Kevin, looking very awkward in his oversized space suit.

It was then that a strange thing happened.

Kevin waved at him.

Waved at him.

It was a rapid side-to-side wave which made the little boy's overlong sleeve flap stupidly in the air.

Schofield frowned, did a double take.

He was wearing his opaque gold-tinted space helmet. There was no way Kevin could see his face.

Did Kevin know who he was?

How could Kevin know who he was?

Schofield dismissed the thought as stupid. Kevin must have just been waving at all of the astronauts.

He turned to check on the President — saw him draw his seat belts tightly across his chest. The President seemed to take a long, deep breath. Schofield knew how he felt.

Suddenly, voices came in over their helmet intercoms.

"Booster ignition standing by…"

"Approaching launch height…"

"Umbilical release in three… two… one… mark."

There came a loud clunking noise from beneath the shuttle, and abruptly, the whole spacecraft rose slightly in the air, felt lighter.

"Umbilical has separated… we are clear of the launch vehicle…"

There came a soft chuckle. Then Cobra Carney's voice: "Burn it."

"Certainly, sir. Prepare to engage Pegasus boosters… Ignition in three…"

The shuttle beneath Schofield began to rumble ominously.

Two…

He waited in tense anticipation.

"…One…Mark."

It looked like someone had ignited a flame thrower.

When the X-38's Pegasus boosters fired, the space shuttle was positioned slightly above its abandoned 747 launch vehicle — its gigantic boosters pointed directly at the silver jumbo beneath it.

The boosters ignited, bright as magnesium flares. Two incredibly long tongues of white-hot fire blasted out from the twin cylindrical boosters on the underside of the X-38.

The two lances of fire shot like lightning bolts straight into the 747, severing it in the middle, cutting through it like a pair of blow torches.

The 747 just snapped in half under the weight of the fiery blast, its back broken in an instant. The fuel inside its wings ignited immediately, and a split second later, the whole gigantic plane just exploded, showering the sky with a thousand pieces of smoke-trailing debris.

Schofield never saw the 747 get destroyed. He was in a whole new world now.

The blast of the boosters igniting was like nothing he had ever heard.

It was loud. Booming. All-consuming.

It had been like the sound of a jet engine thundering to life — only multiplied by a thousand.

Now the shuttle tilted sharply upwards and rocketed forward.

Schofield was thrust back into his seat by the G-force. The whole cabin began to shake and shudder. He felt his cheeks flatten, press back against his face. He clenched his teeth.

Apart from the closed cockpit door, the only visible link between the flight deck and the rear cargo compartment was a five-inch-thick window set into the cockpit's back wall.

Through this window, Schofield could see right through to the forward windshield of the shuttle — through which he could actually see the sky turning purple as they rose higher.

For a few minutes the shuttle soared upward, its massive boosters lifting it high into the sky.

Then, abruptly, over the roar of the rockets, the flight team's voices returned: "Prepare to jettison boosters and switch over to self contained power…"

"Copy that."

"Stand by for booster release. In three… two… one… mark."

Kerchunk!

Schofield felt the weight of the enormous booster rockets drop away from the rising shuttle.

He looked over at the President — the Chief Executive was gripping his armrests tightly. As far as Schofield was concerned, that was actually a good sign. It meant that the President hadn't passed out.

The X-38 rose into the sky. The shuddering and shaking had stopped now and the ride became smoother, quieter, almost as if the X-38 were floating on air.

The respite gave Schofield a chance to take in his surroundings more closely.

The first thing he saw was a keypad next to the cockpit door — a locking mechanism, presumably for use in emergencies, like when cabin pressure was lost.

Schofield also examined his space suit. There was a small unit sewn into the sleeve of his left forearm which appeared to control his helmet intercom. At the moment, the unit's display screen indicated that he was currently on channel 05.

He looked over at the President, surreptitiously tapped his wrist unit, then held up three fingers: Switch to channel three.

The President nodded. A few seconds later, Schofield said, "Can you hear me?"

"Yes. What's the plan?"

"We sit tight. And we wait for a chance to take over this bird."

The Shuttle flew higher.

As it did so, the view outside its forward windshield gradually changed. The sky transformed from cloudy purple to ominous black.

And then abruptly, as though a veil had been lifted, Schofield found himself looking at a glorious galaxy of stars, and beneath the starfield — glowing like an opal against the jet-black sky — the wide elliptical expanse of the Earth, curving downward at both extremities, stretching away into the distance like some unbelievably gigantic luminescent orb, so absolutely immense in its size that it was almost too large to comprehend.

It was breathtaking.

They weren't far up, almost exactly at the dividing line between space and the outer atmosphere, about two hundred miles.

The Earth itself — curved and massive and dazzling — filled almost three-quarters of Schofield's field of vision.

He stared at the sight, at the glowing turquoise planet hovering in front of the universe. Then he turned his gaze to the starfield above the planet. It was so clear up here, the starry sky so endless.

And then, one of the stars began to move.

Schofield blinked, looked again.

One of the stars was definitely moving.

"Holy Christ…" he breathed.

It wasn't a star at all.

It was a shuttle, a space shuttle, all but identical in shape and size to the regular American models.

It soared effortlessly in the weightlessness of space, cutting a dead-straight line toward them. The red and yellow flag on its tail was unmistakable. It was the Chinese space shuttle.

Schofield flicked back to channel 05 in time to hear Cobra's voice say: "Yellow Star, this is Fleeing Eagle, I have visual on you now. We are reducing thrust to begin parking orbit. You may commence your approach in thirty seconds."

Just then, the cockpit door slid open and two of the X-38's pilots emerged.

Schofield snapped to look up.

Now that they were in low orbit, they could move around the cabin. It was zero gravity, so they stepped lightly, using handgrips attached to the ceiling to move around.

Both pilots still wore their gold-tinted helmets, still carried their briefcase-like life-support units at their sides. They strode past Schofield and the President, heading aft to prepare for the docking with the Chinese shuttle.

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:

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.

"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:

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.

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.

Instantly, a streamlined warhead shoomed out from the M-72 on his shoulder, streaking through the air at phenomenal speed, heading straight for the Penetrator's cockpit.

The warhead smashed through the helicopter's glass windshield and detonated violently. The walls of the attack helicopter blasted outwards, the chopper just disintegrating in midair.

It dropped out of the sky — a blazing, flaming wreck, trailing a plume of thick black smoke — and crashed down against the tarmac, shattering into pieces.

The final episode of the sequence was the inflating of Schofield's parachute.

It blossomed to life above his ejection seat, lifting him out of it. Then the parachute carried him safely back down to earth, landing him gently on the runway a short way from the twin flaming ruins of the space shuttle and the Penetrator.

The President and Kevin rushed up to him.

"That was so cool!" Kevin gasped.

"Yes. Remind me never to point a loaded weapon at you," the President said.

Schofield discarded his parachute, gazed back down the runway toward the buildings of Area 7.

Area 7…

Strangely, the first thing he thought about was not the Football nor the fate of the country.

It was Libby Gant.

He'd last seen her during their battle in the pit, when Colonel Harper's Sinovirus grenade had gone off and they'd been separated.

But then he saw the helicopter.

Saw the second Penetrator — Caesar and Logan's Penetrator — sitting empty and abandoned outside the main hangar complex.

"Caesar came back to Area 7…" Schofield said aloud. "Why would he do that?"

It was then that he saw a figure emerge from the base of the airfield's control tower, waving one arm weakly.

It was Book II.

Schofield, Kevin and the President met book at the base of the tower.

Book II looked pale, weary. He wore a thick bandage over a wound on his left biceps, the rest of the arm was held in a makeshift sling.

"Scarecrow. Quick," he said, obviously still in pain. "You better come and see this. Now."

As they climbed the stairs of the control tower, Schofield said, "When did Caesar come back to Area 7?"

"They landed only a few minutes before you did. They were all heading for that top door entrance when you guys arrived. I was looking after Janson up in the tower, and we saw the whole ejection-seat thing. Caesar and Logan watched it from the hangar entrance, but when you blasted their boys to kingdom come, they headed straight inside the complex again."

"Caesar went back inside the complex….Why?" Schofield said, thinking hard. Then he looked up. "Any word from Gant?"

"No," Book II said. "I figured she was with you."

"We got separated when that Sinovirus grenade went off before. She must still be inside the complex."

They arrived at the top level of the tower. Juliet Janson lay slumped on a chair, a bandage over her bullet-wounded shoulder, alive but very pale.

Beside her lay the Football.

"So what did you want me to see?" Schofield asked Book.

"This," Book II said, indicating one particular computer screen. It was flashing:

Schofield looked at his watch.

It was 10:43.

Twenty-two minutes till the complex's thermonuclear self-destruct mechanism was set in motion.

And they'd had no word from Gant…

Shit.

"There's another thing," Book II said. "We've managed to get the generators back on line, but the power's still very low. We've been able to get a couple of systems back on, some light systems, a few communication lines and the internal broadcast system."

"And…?"

"Have a look at this."

Book II hit a switch, and one of the console monitors blinked to life.

On it, Schofield saw the image of the control room overlooking the main hangar.

And standing inside the heavily battered room, looking directly into the camera as he had done on several occasions earlier that morning, was Caesar Russell.

Russell grinned at the camera.

When he spoke, his voice boomed out from the tower's speakers.

"Greetings, Mr. President, people of America. I know it's a little early for my hourly update, but since, alas, it appears that my race has been run, I'm sure you won't mind an early commentary.

"My men are vanquished, my cause lost. I would commend the President and his brave bodyguards for their efforts, but such is not my way. I merely leave you all with one parting comment: this country can never be the same, after today…"

Then Caesar did something that made Schofield's blood completely freeze.

He pulled open the front of his combat fatigues, revealing his chest.

Schofield's jaw dropped. "Oh no…"

There, on Russell's chest, was a long vertical scar, right over his heart — the scar of a man who had had heart surgery sometime in the past.

Caesar grinned, an evil, maniacal, completely insane grin.

"Cross my heart," he said, "and hope to die."

"What?" the President said. "I don't get it."

Schofield was silent.

He got it.

He snatched a piece of paper from his pocket. It was the printout he'd gotten Brainiac to on the plane right at the very start of all this — when he'd needed to know if there really was a radio transmitter planted on the President's heart.

Schofield scanned the printout. It still had the circles Brainiac had drawn on it before.

He recalled Brainiac's earlier explanation. "It's a standard rebounding signature. The satellite sends down a search signal — they're the tall spikes on the positive side — and then, soon after, the receiver on the ground, the President, bounces that signal back. Those are the deep spikes on the negative side.

"Search and return. Interference aside, the rebounding signature seems to repeat itself once every twenty-five seconds."

"Interference aside…" Schofield said as he stared at the printout.

"Only there is no interference. There are two separate signals. The satellite needs to pick up two signals…" He grabbed a nearby pen and joined the four circles into two pairs.

"This graph indicates two distinct signal patterns," Schofield said. "The first and the third. And then the second and fourth."

"What are you saying?" the President asked.

"What I'm saying, Mr. President, is that you're not the only man at this complex with a radio transmitter attached to his heart. It's Caesar's trump card, his last resort, so that even if he loses, he still wins. Caesar Russell has a transmitter attached to his heart. So now, if he dies, the devices at the airports go off."

"But he's inside the complex," Book II said, wincing with pain, "and in exactly twenty minutes, the self-destruct sequence will be initiated."

"I know," Schofield said, "and so does he. Which means I now have to do something that I never thought I'd ever want to do. I have to go back into Area 7 and stop Caesar Russell from getting killed."