Area 7

SEVENTH CONFRONTATION

Schofield re-armed himself.

With Book II and Juliet both wounded, he was going back inside alone.

He got his Maghook back from Book, slid it into the shotgun holster on his back. He also grabbed the P-90 that Seth Grimshaw had brought out of the complex. It only had about forty rounds left in it, but that was better than nothing. He jammed Book's M9 and his own Desert Eagle pistol into his thigh holsters. And last of all, he swapped his water damaged wrist mike and earpiece for Juliet's working unit.

Book and Juliet would remain up in the tower armed with a P-90, guarding the President, the Football and Kevin until the Army and Marine forces arrived at the base.

Schofield pulled out Nicholas Tate's cell phone, dialled the operator. He got Dave Fairfax's voice straight away, cutting into the call.

"Mr. Fairfax, I need a favor."

"What?"

"I need the lockdown release codes for Special Area 7, the codes that turn off the self destruct mechanism. Now, I can't imagine they're kept in a book somewhere. You're going to have to get onto the local network itself and somehow pull them out."

"How long have I got?" Fairfax asked.

"You've got exactly nineteen minutes."

"I'm on it."

Fairfax hung up.

Schofield jammed a fresh clip into his M9. As he did so, a figure appeared at his side.

"I think she's still alive, too," Kevin said suddenly.

Schofield looked up, appraised the little boy for a moment "How did you know I was thinking that?"

"I just know. I always know. I knew that Dr. Botha was lying to the Air Force men. And I could tell that you were a good man. I can't see exactly what someone's thinking, just what they're feeling. Right now, you're worried about someone, someone you care about. Someone who's still inside."

"Is this how you knew it was me on the space shuttle?"

"Yes."

Schofield finished loading his guns. "Any final tips, then?" he asked Kevin.

The little boy said, "I only saw her once, when you were both standing outside my cube. I only sensed one thing about her: she really likes you. So you'd better save her."

Schofield gave him a wry smile. "Thanks."

And then he was away.

He tried the top door entrance first.

No luck.

Caesar had changed the code, manually it seemed. No time for Fairfax to crack that one.

That left only one other option: the Emergency Exit Vent.

Schofield ran for Caesar's abandoned Penetrator helicopter.

It was 10:48 a.m.

Two minutes later, Caesar's Penetrator — now flown by Schofield — landed next to the EEV in a swirling cloud of dust and sand.

The EEV hadn't been hard to find. Mr. Hoeg's lime green biplane — still sitting there on the desert floor — betrayed the exit's location quite unambiguously.

No sooner had the black helicopter touched the ground than Schofield was out of it and running toward the EEV.

He leapt down into the earthen trench and disappeared inside the exit's open steel doorway at a run.

It was 10:51 when Schofield stepped out onto the darkened X-Rail tracks on Level 6, his gun raised.

The world down here was pitch-black, save for the thin beam of his P-90's barrel-mounted flashlight.

He saw bodies laid out before him, shadows in the dim light — the remnants of the previous battles that day.

Air Force vs. Secret Service.

South Africans vs. Air Force.

Schofield and his Marines vs. Air Force.

Christ…

But another thing weighed on his mind. Kevin, of course, had been right. Apart from saving Caesar Russell, Schofield had a far more personal reason for entering Area 7 again.

He wanted to find Libby Gant.

He didn't know what had happened to her after the Sinovirus grenade had gone off up in the main hangar, but he refused to believe that she was dead.

Schofield brought his wrist mike to his lips. "Fox. Fox. Are you out there? This is Scarecrow. I'm back inside. Can you hear me?"

In a dark place somewhere inside Area 7, Libby Gant stirred, a voice invading her dreams.

"…you hear me?"

She'd been unconscious for nearly an hour now, and she didn't have a clue where she was or what had happened to her.

Her last memory was of being inside the control room upstairs and seeing something important and then suddenly… nothing.

As she blinked awake, she saw that she was still wearing her bright-yellow biohazard suit, except for the helmet. It had been removed.

It was only then that she became aware of a pain in her shoulders. Gant opened her eyes fully — and an ice-cold chill rippled down her spine.

Her entire upper body was bound to a pair of steel girders that had been arranged in the shape of an X. Her wrists were held high above her head — crucifix-style — affixed to the arms of the cross with duct tape, while more thick tape held her throat tightly up against the junction of the X. Her legs — duct-taped at the ankles — were laid out flat in front of her.

Gant began to breathe very very fast.

What the hell was this?

She was someone's prisoner.

As she hung helplessly from the cross, eyes wide and terrified, she slowly began to regain her senses. She took in the area around her.

The first thing she noticed about this place was that there was no electric lighting. Three small fires illuminated the immediate area.

It was in this grim firelight that she saw Hagerty.

Colonel Hot Rod Hagerty sat immediately to her right, similarly "crucified" — his legs stretched out on the floor in front of him, his arms outstretched on his own cross. His eyes were shut, his head bent. Every few seconds he groaned.

Gant looked at the room around them.

She was sitting underneath an overhang of some sort, in dark shadow; a stagelike structure stood out in the open space in front of her. Some children's toys lay scattered about the stage, amid shards of glass.

It looked as if — once — a glass cube of some sort had encased the stage, but now only half of that cube remained standing.

Gant realized where she was.

She was in the area that had contained Kevin's sterilized living area. Right now, she must be sitting directly underneath the observation lab that had overlooked the cube, beneath the overhang it created.

And then Gant saw the third crucified figure in the room, and she gasped in revulsion.

It was the Air Force colonel, Jerome Harper.

Or what was left of him.

He lay to Gant's left, also under the overhang, his arms taped to a cross high above his head, his head leaning as far forward as the duct tape around his throat would allow.

But it was his lower body that seized Gant's shocked attention.

Harper's legs were missing.

No, not just missing.

Hacked off.

Everything from the Air Force colonel's waist down had been brutally carved away — like a carcass in an abattoir — leaving a gigantic slab of raw hacked flesh around his hips. Indeed, Harper's whole waist region was just a foul bloody mess that ended at the curved bony hook of his spinal column.

It was the most disgusting thing Gant had ever seen in her life.

Her eyes swept the room, as the full extent of her predicament became clear.

She was the prisoner of a monster. An individual who, until today, had been a guest here at Area 7.

Lucifer Leary.

The Surgeon of Phoenix.

The serial killer who had terrorized hitchhikers on the Vegas-to-Phoenix interstate — the former medical student who would kidnap his victims, take them home, and then eat their limbs in front of them.

Gant looked about herself in horror.

Leary — a big man, she recalled, at least six-eight, with a hideous facial tattoo — was nowhere to be seen.

Except for Hagerty and herself, the whole observation area was completely and utterly empty.

Which, in a strange way, was even more frightening.

Schofield made for the stairwell at the eastern end of Level 6.

He had to get to the control room overlooking the main hangar — to enter the termination codes before 11:05; or if he couldn't do that, to capture Caesar and get him out of Area 7 before the nuke went off at 11:15.

He threw open the stairwell doorway — and was instantly confronted by an enormous black bear, caught in the beam of his small flashlight, rearing up on its hind legs, baring its massive claws and bellowing loudly at him!

Schofield dived off the edge of the X-rail platform as the family of bears ambled out of the stairwell — papa bear, mama bear and three little baby bears, all in a row.

Nicholas Tate had been right.

There were bears on the loose.

Papa bear seemed to sniff the air for a moment. Then he headed westward, toward the other end of the underground railway station, followed by his brood.

As soon as they were a safe distance away, Schofield dashed into the open stairwell.

Dave Fairfax was tapping feverishly at the keyboard of his supercomputer.

After five minutes' work, the computer had found a source number that represented Area 7's self-destruct release code.

Not bad progress, really. There was only one problem.

The number had 640 million digits. He kept typing.

10:52.

Schofield bounded up the stairwell, in near pitch darkness, his flashlight beam wobbling.

As he ran, he tried to get Gant on the airwaves. "Fox, this is Scarecrow. Can you hear me?" he whispered. "I repeat, Fox, this is Scarecrow…"

No reply.

He ran past the firedoor to Level 5 — the door with the thin jets of water shooting out from its edges — then came to Level 4, the lab level, hurried past its open door, heading upward.

On the other side of Level 4, Gant heard the voice again. It sounded tinny and distant.

"…repeat, Fox, this is Scarecrow…"

Scarecrow…

The voice was coming from Gant's earpiece, which now hung loosely from her ear. It must have been dislodged when her captor had knocked her unconscious.

Gant looked up at her left wrist, duct-taped to the cross high above her head.

She still had her Secret Service wrist mike attached to it. But there was no way she could bring it to her mouth, and the mike only worked when you spoke into it at close range.

So she started tapping her finger on the top of the microphone.

Schofield came to the floor door that opened onto Level 2 and suddenly stopped.

He'd heard a strange tapping in his earpiece.

Tap-tap-taap. Tap-taap-tap….

Long and short taps.

Morse code.

Morse code that read, "F-O-X. F-O-X…"

"Fox, is that you? One tap for no, two taps for yes."

Tap-tap.

"Are you okay?"

Tap.

"Where are you? Tap out the floor number."

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

10:53.

Schofield burst through the Level 4 firedoor, scanning the decompression area down the barrel of his gun.

It was dark.

Very dark.

This end of the floor was completely deserted — the decompression chamber was empty, as were the test chambers opposite it, and the catwalks above. The sliding horizontal doorway in the floor — the one that led down to the Level 5 cell bay — however, was still open.

The water level down on Level 5 had risen considerably over the last few hours. It had leveled off flush against the floor of Level 4. Inky black wavelets lapped up against the edges of the horizontal opening so that it now looked like a little rectangular pool.

Level 5, it seemed, was completely underwater now.

Schofield stepped past the pool — just as something slashed quickly through its waves. He spun, whipped his gun around, but whatever it had been was long gone.

This was not what he needed.

Dark complex. Bears moving around the stairwells. Caesar and Logan in here somewhere.

Water everywhere. Not to mention the possible presence of more prisoners.

He came to the wall that divided Level 4 in two, flung its door open and snapped his gun up… and immediately saw Gant on the far side, beyond the shattered remains of Kevin's cube, lying spread-eagled up against a bizarre steel cross.

Schofield ran across the observation area, slid to his knees in front of Gant.

As he arrived before her, he dropped his P-90, clasped her head gently in his hands and, without even thinking, kissed her on the lips.

At first, Gant was a little stunned, then she realized what was happening and she kissed him back.

When he pulled away, Schofield saw the two men on either side of her.

First he saw Hagerty, out cold, similarly crucified.

Then he saw the dead Colonel Harper — saw the raw pink flesh of his hacked-off lower body, saw his exposed tailbone.

"Holy Christ…" he breathed.

"Quickly," Gant said. "We don't have much time, he'll be back soon."

"Who?" Schofield started unraveling her duct-taped throat.

"Lucifer Leary."

"Oh, shit…" Schofield started working faster. The tape around Gant's neck came free. He started on her wrists…

There came a loud resonating boom from within the walls.

Schofield and Gant both looked up, eyes wide.

"The aircraft elevator…" Schofield said.

"He must have gone upstairs," Gant breathed, "and now he's back. Hurry…"

Faster now, Schofield continued untying the tape around Gant's left wrist, but it was done too tightly. His fingers fumbled with the tape. This was taking too long…

He spun, saw some glass shards lying over by Kevin's stagelike living area — shards that he could use to cut the duct tape. He slid over toward them and sifted through them, trying to find one that was sharp enough. He found one, just as Gant called, "Scarecrow!" and he stood and turned — and found himself confronted by an extremely tall broad-shouldered figure.

Schofield froze.

The figure just stood there before him — perhaps a yard away, his face shrouded in shadow — absolutely motionless.

He towered over Schofield, gazing at him silently. Schofield hadn't even heard him approach.

"Do you know why the weasel never steals from the alligator's nest?" the shadowy figure asked. Schofield couldn't even see the man's mouth move.

Schofield swallowed.

"Because," the figure said, "it never knows when the alligator will return."

And then the giant man stepped into the firelight — and Schofield saw the most fearsome, evil looking face he'd ever seen in his life. The face was big — like its owner — and it had a hideous black tattoo covering its entire left side, a tattoo depicting five ragged claw marks scratched down the length of the man's face.

Lucifer Leary.

He was absolutely enormous, too, at least six-foot eight, with massive muscular shoulders and gigantic tree trunk legs; almost a full foot taller than Schofield. He wore prison-issue jeans and a sky-blue shirt with the sleeves ripped off. His black eyes revealed not a trace of humanity — they just stared at Schofield like empty black orbs.

Then Leary opened his mouth, smiling menacingly, revealing foul yellow teeth.

The effect was mesmerizing, almost hypnotic.

Schofield shot a glance back over at Gant, at his P-90 lying on the floor in front of her. Then, in what he thought was a quick draw, he whipped his two pistols from his thigh holsters.

The guns barely got out of their sheaths. Leary had anticipated the move.

Quick as a rattlesnake, he lunged forward and clamped his fists around Schofield's gun hands, seizing them by the wrists.

And then the bigger man started to squeeze.

Schofield had never felt such intense pain in his life. He dropped to his knees, teeth clenched — his wrists held in Leary's giant paws. Blood flow to his hands ceased. It felt as if his fingers — bulging with redness — were going to burst.

He released his pistols. They clattered to the floor. Leary kicked them away.

Then, with the guns gone, he seized Schofield by the throat, lifted him clear off the ground and hurled him across Kevin's living area.

Schofield went crashing across the stage, sliding through some toys, before he exploded through a still upright section of glass and went tumbling off the far edge of the stage.

Lucifer stalked around the elevated platform after him, his every step crunching on broken glass.

Schofield groaned, tried to stand.

He needn't have bothered.

Within seconds, Leary was there.

The massive killer lifted Schofield off the floor by his combat webbing and punched him hard in the face, sending his head snapping backwards.

Gant could only watch helplessly from her cross — her hands still tightly bound, Schofield's P-90 lying on the floor only inches away from her — as Lucifer pounded Schofield.

The fight was all one-way traffic.

Lucifer hit, Schofield recoiled, collapsed in a heap to the floor.

Lucifer strode forward, Schofield struggled to stand up.

And then Lucifer hurled Schofield through the doorway that divided Level 4, sending him sliding into the decompression area.

Lucifer followed him in.

Another kick and Schofield rolled — bleeding and gasping — up against the rim of the horizontal doorway in the floor, filled as it was with lapping water.

And then from out of nowhere, a giant reptilian head came bursting up out of the water and lunged at Schofield's head.

Schofield rolled quickly, avoiding the fast-moving jaws as they snapped down an inch away from his face.

Jesus!

It was a Komodo dragon. The largest lizard in the world, a known man-eater. The President had said they kept some of them here — along with the Kodiak bears, in cages down on Level 5 — for use on the Sinovirus project.

The electric locks on their cages, it seemed, hadn't survived the power shutdown either.

At the sight of the Komodo dragon in the pool, a thin smile cracked Lucifer's hideous face.

He lifted Schofield off the ground and held him out over the reptile-infested pool.

As he hung above it, legs kicking, hands grappling at Lucifer's enormous fists, Schofield saw the dark alligator like bodies of at least two dragons in the water beneath him.

Then without so much as a pause, Lucifer dropped Schofield into the pool.

Schofield splashed down into the water in an explosion of foam, a moment before Lucifer pressed a button in the floor beside the doorway, causing the hole's sliding garage style door to close quickly over the ripples that marked the spot where Schofield had plunged into it.

Within seconds, the leading edge of the door met the opposite rim.

Ka-chunk.

Sealed.

Shut.

Lucifer grunted a laugh as he heard Schofield's fists banging on the underside of the sliding door, heard the sloshing of water underneath the closed door — the sound of the dragons mauling the foolish Marine.

Lucifer smiled.

Then he headed back toward the other side of Level 4, where the pleasure of carving up the pretty female soldier awaited him.

Libby Gant gasped in horror as lucifer leary returned alone to the observation area of Level 4.

No.

Lucifer couldn't have…

No…

The giant serial killer strode confidently across the wide hall-like room, his head lowered, his eyes locked on Gant's.

He dropped to his knees in front of her, pushed his face close to hers. His breath was foul — it reeked of eaten human flesh.

He stroked her hair.

"Such a shame, such a shame," he trilled, "that your knight in shining armor was not the brave warrior he thought himself to be. Which only leaves us, now, to get… better acquainted."

"Not likely," said a voice from behind Lucifer.

The giant spun.

And there, in the doorway that led to the decompression area, his whole body dripping with water, stood Shane Schofield.

"You'll have to get rid of me," he said grimly, "before you lay a finger on her."

Lucifer roared, snatched up Schofield's P-90 and let rip with an extended burst.

Schofield just stepped behind the doorway, out of sight, as the dividing wall all around the door was shredded by the hailstorm of gunfire.

Within seconds, however, the gun ran dry and Lucifer discarded it and stormed across the observation area, into the decompression area.

The horizontal door in its floor now lay open, wavelets still lapping against its rims. The large outlines of the Komodo dragons were still visible beneath the pool's rippling surface.

But, somehow, they hadn't killed Schofield.

And then Lucifer saw him, standing over by the decompression chamber, to the right of the pool.

He charged at Schofield, lashed out with a ferocious right.

Schofield ducked, walked under the punch. He was calmer now, collected. Not so caught-by surprise. He had Lucifer's measure.

Lucifer spun, swung again. Another miss. Schofield punished the error with a crisp hit to Lucifer's face.

Crack.

Instantly broken nose.

Lucifer seemed more stunned than injured. He touched the blood that ran down from his nose as if it were an alien substance, as if no one had ever hurt him before.

And then Schofield hit him again, a great powerful blow, and for the first time, the big man staggered slightly.

Again, harder this time, and Lucifer took an unsteady step backwards. Again, another step backwards.

Again — the most violent punch Schofield had ever thrown — and Lucifer's back foot touched the rim of the pool. He turned slightly — just as Schofield nailed him in the nose, causing the big man to lose his footing completely and fall backwards… into the Komodo-infested pool.

There was a great splash as Lucifer entered the water, and as the foam subsided, the Komodos rushed him, swarming all over his body, turning it into a writhing mass of black reptilian skin, claws and tails, and in the middle of it all, Lucifer's kicking feet and agonized screams.

Then, abruptly, the pool turned a sickening shade of red and Lucifer's legs went still. The Komodos just continued to eat his body.

Schofield winced at the sight, but then, if anyone deserved to die such a horrific painful death, Lucifer Leary did.

Then Schofield hit the button that closed the floor door, obliterating the foul sight, and hurried back to get Gant.

10:59.

Within a minute, Gant was unbound and standing next to Schofield as he freed the bleary eyed Hot Rod Hagerty.

Gant said, "You know, this birthday really has sucked." She nodded toward the decompression area. "What happened in there? I thought Leary had…"

"He did," Schofield said. "Bastard dropped me in a pool filled with Komodo dragons."

"So how'd you get out?"

Schofield pulled out his Maghook. "Apparently reptiles are exceptionally sensitive to magnetic discharges. I only learned that little fact this morning, from a little boy named Kevin. So I just flicked on my Maghook and they didn't want to come near me. Then I opened the floor door up again from below and came back for you. Sadly, Lucifer didn't have a supercharged magnetic grappling hook on him when he fell in."

"Nice," Gant said. "Very nice. So where's the President, and Kevin?"

"They're safe. They're outside the complex."

"So why are you back in here?"

Schofield looked at his watch.

It was exactly 11:00 a.m.

"Two reasons. One, because in exactly five minutes this facility's self-destruct mechanism will be activated. Ten minutes after that, this whole place will be vaporized, and we can't allow that to happen while Caesar Russell is inside it. So we either stop it from going off, or, if we can't do that, we get Caesar Russell out of here before it does."

"Wait a second," Gant said, "we have to save Caesar?"

"It seems our host decided to put a radio chip on his own heart as well as the President's. So if he dies, so does the country."

"Son of a bitch," Gant said. "So what was the second reason?"

Schofield's face reddened slightly. "I wanted to find you."

Gant's face lit up, but she spoke matter-of-factly: "You know, we can talk about this later."

"I think that would be good," Schofield said as Hagerty came free of his bonds, blinking out of his stupor. "What do you say we do it on another date?"

Gant broke out in a grin. "You bet."

11:01.

Schofield and Gant rode the detachable mini-elevator swiftly up the main shaft, now armed only with Schofield's pistols…Gant with the M9, Schofield with the Desert Eagle.

Schofield had sent Hagerty down to Level 6, to escape via the Emergency Exit Vent. When he'd seen the hacked-up half-body of Colonel Harper, Hagerty hadn't argued. He was happy to get out of Area 7 as quickly as possible.

"I don't know if we'll be able to disarm the self-destruct system," Gant said as Schofield gave her a shot of the Sinovirus vaccine to protect her against the contaminated hangar. "You have to enter a lockdown code by 11:05 to call it off, and we don't know any of the codes."

"I've been working on that," Schofield said, pulling out his cell phone. He hit redial and Fairfax's voice came on the line straight away.

"Mr. Fairfax, how goes it?"

"The lockdown termination code is 10502," Fairfax said. "Hacked into the system from behind, from the source code. Got it that way. Turns out it's the operator number of the head dude there, an Air Force colonel named Harper."

"I don't think he'll be needing it anymore," Schofield said. "Thank you, Mr. Fairfax. If I get out of this alive, I'll buy you a beer sometime."

He hung up and turned to Gant.

"Okay. Time to turn off this nuclear time bomb. Then all we have to do is capture Caesar alive."

They rose up the side of the darkened shaft.

Its great square-shaped opening up at ground level loomed above them, backlit by orange firelight.

It turned out that Lucifer Leary had indeed brought the main elevator platform down to Level 4. When they'd arrived at the elevator shaft from the Level 4 observation lab, Schofield and Gant had found the giant platform sitting right there in front of them, piled high with no less than fifteen bodies — prisoners, 7th Squadron commandos, Marines and White House staff — bodies which Leary no doubt planned to dismember in strange and unusual ways.

As such, the shaft now yawned wide above Schofield and Gant, open and airy.

As they traveled quickly up it, Gant reached underneath the moving platform. She emerged with her Maghook, which she'd left attached to the underside of the mini elevator earlier.

"Get ready," Schofield said.

They had arrived at the main hangar.

The hangar looked like hell.

Literally.

Fires burned all over the place, bathing the enormous space in a haunting orange glow. Bodies lay everywhere.

Assorted debris littered the area — the remains of blown up helicopters, crumpled towing vehicles, the pieces of Bravo Unit's failed barricade over by the internal building.

Nothing, it seemed, lay unscarred.

The slanted windows of the control room overlooking the hangar were completely shattered.

Even one of the giant wooden crates hanging from the overhead crane system had a gnarled piece of Nighthawk 2's tail rotor embedded in its side.

Amazingly, however, one object remained untouched by the day's mayhem.

Marine One.

It still stood on the western side of the aircraft elevator shaft, miraculously intact.

As their elevator jolted to a halt inside the hangar, Schofield and Gant looked about themselves cautiously.

11:02.

"The self-destruct computer is in the control room," Gant said.

"Then that's where we're going," Schofield said, heading for the internal building.

"Wait a minute," Gant said, stopping suddenly, her eyes scanning the debris-covered floor around them.

"We don't have a minute," Schofield said.

"You go, then," Gant said. "Call me if you need any help. I'm gonna try something."

"Okay," Schofield said, charging off toward the internal building.

Gant, meanwhile, dropped to her knees and started searching through the bodies and debris around the mini elevator platform.

Schofield burst inside the lower floor of the internal building, leading with his Desert Eagle.

He hit the stairs on the fly, charged up them. For the first time that day, he actually felt in control. He had the lock down code — 10502 — and now all he had to do was punch it into the computer and disarm the nuke.

Then he would have plenty of time to find Caesar — whose men were now history — before he killed himself, and drag him out of Area 7 to face justice.

11:03.

Schofield came to the control room door, pushed it open, his gun leveled in front of him.

What he saw took him completely by surprise.

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:

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.

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.

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.

Trapped.

"Fox…" he said into his mike.

"…Whatever you're going to do…please do it soon."

Gant was sweating, the world around her flashing red. Her ankle throbbed painfully, but she had to concentrate -

"Warning. Four minutes to facility self-destruct…"

She'd brought up the familiar spike pattern on the black box's small LCD screen. Now she turned to the I/T unit.

The only question was which switch on the unit controlled the President's transmitter and which controlled Caesar's — 1 or 2?

Gant had no doubt.

Caesar would make himself Number 1.

Then — in time with the spike screen on the black box, in between its recurring search and return signals — she flicked the switch marked "1" on the initiate/terminate unit, switching off Caesar's microwave signal.

As soon as she did that, she switched on the black box's microwave signal — using it to impersonate Caesar's signal. If she'd done it right, the satellite in orbit above them wouldn't be able to tell that it was a new return signal coming back to it.

A tiny green strobe light on top of the black box started blinking.

Gant keyed her radio mike.

"Scarecrow! I just took care of the radio signal! Nail the bastard!"

As soon as Gant said it, Caesar came into Schofield's view.

The Air Force general smiled at the sight of Schofield, slumped in the cockpit of the destroyed Super Stallion, defiantly raising his ornamental pistol in defense.

Caesar wagged a finger at Schofield. "Oh, no, no, no, Captain, you're not allowed to do that. Remember, no shooting Uncle Caesar."

"No?" Schofield said.

"No."

"Oh…" Schofield sighed.

Then — blam! — quick as a flash, he snapped his gun up and shot Caesar square in the chest.

A gout of blood erupted from Caesar's torso.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Caesar reeled with each shot, staggering backwards, his eyes bulging in astonishment, his face completely aghast. He dropped his P-90 and fell unceremoniously to the floor, landing hard on his butt.

Schofield rose to his feet, stepped out of the chopper and strode over to the fallen Caesar, kicking the general's P-90 away from his clawing fingers.

Caesar was still alive, but only just.

A trickle of blood gurgled out the side of his mouth. He looked pathetic, helpless, a shadow of his former self.

Schofield stared down at him.

"How…how…?" Caesar stammered through the blood. "You…you can't kill me!"

"As a matter of fact, I could," Schofield said. "But I think I'll leave that to you."

And then he hurried off to rejoin Gant and get the hell out of Area 7.

"Warning. Three minutes to facility self-destruct…"

Schofield carried Gant in his arms onto the detachable mini-elevator. Her right ankle had been completely shattered by Caesar's shot, and she couldn't walk on it at all.

But that didn't stop her contributing.

While Schofield carried her, she held the most important black box in the world in her lap.

Their goal now — more than saving their own lives — was to get that flight data recorder out of Area 7 before it was destroyed in the coming nuclear blast. If its signal died now, everything they had fought for would be for nothing.

"Okay, smart guy," Gant said, "how are we gonna get out of this seven-story nuclear grenade?"

Schofield hit the floor panel of the mini-elevator and it began to whiz down the wall of the shaft. He looked at his watch.

11:12:30.

11:12:31.

"Well, we can't get out through the top door," he said.

"Caesar changed the code, and it took my DIA guy ten minutes to crack the lockdown codes. And I don't like our chances of getting out through the EEV in time. It took Book and me a good minute to come down through that vent before. I can't imagine the two of us getting up it in less than ten. And by then, that Escape Vent is gonna be vapor."

"So what are we going to do?"

"There's one way," Schofield said, "if we can get to it in time."

11:12:49.

11:12:50.

Schofield stopped the mini-elevator at Level 2 hangar, and still carrying Gant, hustled down its length, making for the entry to the stairwell at the other end.

"Warning. Two minutes to facility self-destruct…"

They reached the stairwell.

11:13:20.

Schofield burst into it, leapt down it with Gant in his arms, taking the stairs three at a time.

They passed Level 3, the living quarters.

11:13:32.

Level 4, the nightmare floor.

11:13:41.

Level 5, the flooded floor.

11:13:50.

Schofield kicked open the door to Level 6.

"Warning. One minute to facility self-destruct…"

He saw their escape vehicle right away.

The small X-rail maintenance vehicle still sat right next to the stairwell door, on the track that led out to Lake Powell, in the spot where it had been sitting all day.

Schofield remembered what Herbie Franklin had said about the maintenance car before. It was smaller than the other X-rail engines, and faster, too — just a round capsule and four long struts, with room for only two people in its podlike cabin.

"Forty-five seconds to facility self-destruct…"

Schofield yanked open the pod's door, heaved Gant into it, then he clambered up into the small round capsule after her.

"Thirty seconds…"

Schofield hit the black start button on the pod's console.

The compact X-rail engine hummed to life.

"Twenty seconds…nineteen…eighteen…"

He looked at the tracks in front of him. They stretched away into flashing red darkness, four parallel tracks converging to a point in the far distance.

"Hit it!" Gant said.

Schofield jammed the throttle forward.

"Fifteen…"

The small X-rail pod leapt off the mark, thundered forward, shooting along the length of the underground subway station, crashing through the strobing red shadows.

"Fourteen…"

Schofield was thrust back into his seat by the speed.

The pod hit 50 mph.

"Thirteen…"

The X-rail pod gained speed quickly. Schofield saw the quartet of tracks both beneath and above the windshield rushing past them.

100 mph.

"Twelve…eleven…"

Then suddenly — shoom! — the X-shaped pod entered the tunnel leading out to Lake Powell, leaving Area 7 behind it.

150 mph.

"Ten…"

250 mph.

Two hundred and fifty miles per hour equalled about 110 yards per second. In ten seconds, they'd be nearly a mile away from Area 7.

"Nine…eight…"

Schofield hoped a mile would be enough.

"Seven…six…"

He urged the little pod onward.

"Five…four…"

Gant groaned with pain.

"Three…two…"

The little maintenance pod rocketed through the tunnel, shooting away from Area 7, banking with every bend, moving at phenomenal speed.

"One…"

"…facility self-destruct activated."

Boom time.

It sounded like the end of the universe.

The colossal roar of the nuclear explosion inside Area 7 was absolutely monstrous.

For a structure that had been designed in the Cold War to withstand a direct nuclear strike, it did quite well containing its own supernuclear demise.

The W-88 self-destruct warhead was situated inside the walls of Level 2, roughly in the center of the underground facility. When it went off, the whole underground complex lit up like a lightbulb, and a white-hot pulse of energy rocketed through its floors and walls — unstoppable, irresistible.

Everything inside the complex was obliterated in a nanosecond…aeroplanes, test chambers, elevator shafts. Even the bloodied and broken Caesar Russell.

From his position on the floor of the main hangar, the last thing he saw was a flash of blinding white light, followed by an instant's worth of the most intense heat he had ever felt in his life.

And then nothing.

But to a large extent, the complex's two-foot-thick titanium outer wall contained the blast.

The concussion wave that the momentous explosion generated, however, shook the sandy earth well beyond the structure's titanium walls, making it shudder and shake for several miles around Area 7, the wave of expanding energy fanning outward in concentric circles, like ripples in a pond.

The first thing to go was the Emergency Exit Vent.

Its tight concrete walls were assaulted by the expanding wall of energy within a second of the blast. They were turned instantly to powder. Had Schofield and Gant been inside it, they would have been pulverized beyond recognition.

It was then, however, that the most spectacular sight of all appeared.

Since the entire complex had effectively become a hollowed-out shell, the superheavy layer of granite above the underground section caved in on it.

From the sky above Area 7, it looked as if a perfectly circular earthquake had struck the facility.

Without warning, an eight-hundred-yard-wide ring of earth around the complex just gave way, turned to rubble, and Area 7's buildings — the main hangar, the airfield tower, the other hangars — were just swallowed by the earth, dropping from sight, until all that remained in the place of Area 7 was a gigantic half-mile-wide crater in the desert floor.

From his position on board a Marine Corps Super Stallion that had arrived at the complex only ten minutes earlier, the President of the United States just watched it all go down.

Beside him, Book II, Juliet Janson and the boy named Kevin just stared in stunned awe at the spectacular end of Area 7.

Down in the X-Rail tunnel, it wasn't over yet.

When the nuke had gone off, Schofield and Gant's maintenance pod had been shooting through the tunnel like a speeding bullet.

Then they'd heard the boom of the blast.

Felt the shudder of the earth all around them.

And then Schofield looked out through the rear window of the two-person pod.

"Son of a…" he breathed.

He saw an advancing wall of falling rock, rampaging through the tunnel behind them!

The roof of the tunnel was caving in, shattering into pieces as the expanding pulse of the concussion wave rippled outward from Area 7. The problem was, it was catching up with them!

The X-rail pod shot through the tunnel at two hundred and fifty miles per hour.

The advancing wall of falling rock shot forward after it, doing at least two-sixty.

Chunks of falling rock rained down on the tunnel. It was as if the passageway were now a living creature biting down at the heels of the speeding X-rail pod.

Bang!

A chunk of concrete the size of a baseball landed on the roof of the pod. Schofield snapped to look up at the sound. And then…

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

A deafening hailstorm of chunks rained down on top of the pod.

No! Schofield's mind screamed. Not now! Not this close to the end!

The advancing wall of collapsing rock had caught them.

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

Chunks assaulted the pod's windscreen, shattering it. Glass exploded everywhere.

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

Small chunks started entering the cockpit. The whole pod started to shudder violently, as if it were about to run off its…

And then all of a sudden the concrete rain slowed and the pod blasted clear of the falling chunks.

Schofield turned in his seat and saw the moving waterfall of concrete receding into the tunnel behind them, shrinking back behind a bend, falling back like a hungry monster that had given up on the chase. The ripplelike expansion of the concussion wave had run its course and petered out.

They'd outrun it.

Just.

And as the X-rail pod continued on its way down the tunnel, Shane Schofield fell back into his seat and breathed a long and deep sigh of relief.

By the time Schofield and Gant were airlifted from the canyonway outside the X-Rail loading dock adjoining Lake Powell by a Marine CH-53E, there was a veritable armada of Army and Marine Corps helicopters in the air above Area 7.

They looked like a swarm of tiny insects, black dots hovering in the clear desert sky — all keeping at a safe distance to avoid any lingering radiation.

The President was now safely ensconced in his Marine helicopter, which itself was surrounded by no less than five other Marine Super Stallions. Until the radio transmitter attached to his heart was removed, the Marines would stay by his side.

And the moment he had been lifted off the tarmac at Area 7, he had issued a standing order that all Air Force aircraft in the continental United States be grounded pending further notice. Schofield and Gant — and their precious microwave-transmitting black box — were reunited with the President, Book II, Juliet and Kevin at Area 8, which had been secured twenty minutes before their arrival by two Marine Recon units.

During their sweep of the base, the Marines had found no live personnel except one Nicholas Tate III, Domestic Policy Adviser to the President of the United States, rambling incoherently, saying something about calling his stockbroker.

Gant was immediately placed on a stretcher and her ankle attended to by a corpsman.

Schofield was given a temporary gauze dressing for his bullet wounds, a sling for his arm, and a dose of codeine for the pain.

"Nice to see you made it out, Captain," the President said as he came over to where they sat.

"Not so Caesar, I take it?"

"I'm afraid he couldn't make it, sir," Schofield said. He held up the black box, its green transmission light blinking. "But he's with us in spirit."

The President smiled. "The Marines who swept this base said they found something outside it that you might like to see."

Schofield didn't understand. "Like what?"

"Like me, you sexy thing," Mother roared as she stepped out from behind the President.

Schofield grinned from ear to ear. "You made it!"

The last he had seen, Mother had been flipping end over end inside a speeding cockroach.

"Fucking indestructible is what I am," Mother said. She was limping slightly on her real leg.

"When it got hit by that missile, I knew my cockroach was done for. And I didn't figure old Caesar and his buddies would take kindly to finding me in it. But when I ran off the runway, I kicked up a hell of a dust cloud. So I bailed out under the cover of the cloud. The cockroach flipped and smashed and I just dug a little hole for my head in the sand under its front bumper, ripped my fake leg off for added effect, and played dead until Caesar and his choppers flew off."

"Ripped your fake leg off for added effect…" Schofield said. "Nice touch."

"I thought so," she smiled. Then she jutted her chin at him. "What about you? Last I saw, you and the Prez were heading off into outer space. Did you save the fucking day again?"

"I might have," Schofield said.

"More to the point," Mother whispered conspiratorially, "did you do what I told you to do with You-Know-Who?" She nodded theatrically at Gant. "Did you kiss the friggin' girl, Scarecrow?"

Schofield snuffed a laugh, cast a sideways look at Gant.

"You know what, Mother? As a matter of fact, I think I did."

A short while later, Schofield sat alone with the President.

"So what's the word on the rest of the country?" he asked. "Have they been watching all this every hour on the Emergency Broadcast System?"

The President smiled. "It's funny you should ask. While you were gone, we examined the complex's power history, and we found this."

He pulled out a printout of Area 7's source power history, pointed to one entry.

The President said, "Remember you said that you blew up a junction box on one of the underground hangar levels earlier this morning? Sometime around 7:37."

"Yeah…"

"Well, it seems that that junction box was kind of important. Among other things, it housed the controls for the base's auxiliary power system and its radiosphere. It also housed a system called the MBN. You know what 'MBN' stands for?"

"No…"

"Stands for the Military Broadcast Network, the previous name for the Emergency Broadcast System. Seems the MBN's outgoing transmission cable was destroyed in that blast. And because the LBJ Protocol was never initiated this morning, Caesar's transmissions over the Emergency Broadcast System were delayed by forty-five minutes."

"But the system was destroyed at 7:37…" Schofield said.

The President smiled.

"Correct," he said, "which means that every time Caesar Russell spoke into his digital camera this morning, he wasn't transmitting at all. He was speaking to no one but the people at Area 7."

Schofield blinked, trying to comprehend it all.

Then he said: "So the country doesn't know this happened…"

The President nodded ruefully.

"It seems," he said, "that the people of America have been preoccupied all day with another drama, an accident involving Hollywood's highest paid actress and her actor fiance".

"It appears that the unlucky couple have been trapped in the Swiss Alps all day, cut off by an avalanche while hiking illegally on Swiss military property. Sadly, their unscrupulous guide was killed, but I believe that just in the last hour our two superstars have been found safe and well."

"As I understand it, CNN has been covering the whole drama all day, updating the public every hour, recycling some amateur footage of the area, giving updates. Biggest news event since Diana's car crash, they tell me."

Schofield almost laughed. "So they really don't know," he said.

"That's right," the President said. "And that, Captain, is the way it will stay."

Exactly six hours later, the second X-38 space shuttle from Area 8 was launched off the back of a high-flying 747.

Its mission: the destruction of a rogue Air Force reconnaissance satellite hovering in a geosynchronous orbit above southern Utah.

So far as the shuttle's pilots could tell, it appeared that the satellite in question had been sending and receiving a peculiar microwave signal down into the Utah desert.

In the end, the pilots didn't care what it was doing. They had orders, which they followed to the letter.

And so they blasted the satellite out of the sky.

With the controlling satellite destroyed, the Type 240 plasma explosives in the airports were rendered useless, apart from their proximity sensors, which would take a little more time to disable.

Over the next few hours, all fourteen bombs would be disarmed and dismantled, and then taken away for analysis.

In addition to the disarming of the plasma bombs, the destruction of the satellite also allowed for the removal of the radio transmitter attached to the President's heart.

The procedure was conducted by a renowned civilian heart surgeon from Johns Hopkins University Hospital under the watchful eye of three other cardiac surgeons and armed supervision by the United States Secret Service and the United States Marine Corps.

Never was a surgeon more careful — or more nervous — during an operation.

Limited anaesthesia was used. Although the public was never notified of it, for twenty-eight minutes, the Vice President was in charge of the United States of America.

An investigatory committee would later be formed to conduct an inquiry into the Air Force's role in the Area 7 incident.

As a result of that inquiry, no less than eighteen high ranking Air Force officers in charge of a dozen bases across the southwestern United States and ninety-nine junior officers and enlisted men stationed at those bases were tried for treason in closed session.

It appeared that all of the men linked to the day's events were either currently serving, or had once served, at either the Air Force Special Operations Command, based at Hurlbut Field, Florida, or with the 14th and 20th Air Forces at Warren and Falcon Air Force Bases in Wyoming and Colorado. All, at one time or another, had been under the direct command of Charles "Caesar" Russell.

Overall, in a service of nearly 400,000 men and women, one hundred and seventeen traitors was not a very large group, barely a dozen to each tainted base. But considering the aircraft and ordnance at those bases, it was more than enough to carry out Caesar's plan.

It further emerged at the trials that five of the USAF personnel involved in the plot were Air Force surgeons who at various times had performed procedures on congressional members, including the United States senator and onetime presidential hopeful, Jeremiah K. Woolf.

Circumstantial evidence presented at all the trials also suggested that every Air Force man involved in the incident was a member of an informal racist society within the United States Air Force known as the Brotherhood.

All were sentenced to life imprisonment at an undisclosed military prison, with no hope of parole. Unfortunately, the plane delivering them to the secret prison inexplicably crashed during flight. There were no survivors.

In the investigatory committee's final report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the subject of "informal antisocial interest groups" within the armed forces was raised. While it was acknowledged in the report that most such societies had been removed from the military during a purge in the 1980's, the report recommended that a new investigation be initiated into their continued presence.

The Joint Chiefs, however, did not accept that such societies existed, and therefore rejected the recommendations of the investigatory committee on this point.

Over the next six month, there would be a number of unconfirmed reports from tourists in the Lake Powell area concerning the sighting of a family of Kodiak bears around the northeastern portion of the lake.

Officers of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the reports, but no bears were ever found.

A couple of weeks later, a quiet ceremony was held in a dark underground meeting room

beneath the White House. Inside the room were nine people.

The President of the United States.

Captain Shane Schofield — with his arm in a sling.

Staff Sergeant Elizabeth Gant — with crutches on account of her broken ankle.

Gunnery Sergeant Gena "Mother" Newman — with her small bald-headed trucker husband, Ralph.

Sergeant Buck Riley Junior — with sling.

United States Secret Service Agent Juliet Janson — with sling.

David Fairfax, of the Defense Intelligence Agency — wearing his good sneakers.

And a small boy named Kevin.

The President bestowed upon Schofield and his team of Marines the Congressional Medal of Honor (Classified), for acts of valor in the field of battle despite the endangerment of their own lives.

It was, however, an award they could tell no one about.

But then again, they all agreed it was probably better that way.

While the others stayed to eat in the white house dining room — during which dinner the President had a particularly lively conversation with Mother and Ralph about the Teamsters — Schofield and Gant took their leave, and went out, alone, on their second date.

When they got to the venue, they found that they had the place to themselves.

A single candle-lit table stood in the center of the wide wood-paneled room.

And so they took their places and dined.

Alone.

In the President's private dining room, on the upper floor of the White House, overlooking the Washington Monument.

"Give them whatever they want," the President had instructed his personal chef. "Just put it on my tab."

By flickering candlelight, they talked and talked till late in the evening.

As dessert arrived, Schofield reached into his pocket.

"You know," he said, "I meant to give you this on your birthday, but the day kind of got away from me."

He pulled a crumpled piece of cardboard from his pocket. It was small, about the size of a Christmas card.

"What is it?" Gant asked.

"It was your birthday present," Schofield said sadly. "It was in my trouser pocket all day — I had to take it with me every time I changed uniforms — so I'm afraid it got a little, well, beat up."

He handed it to Gant.

She looked at it, and she smiled.

It was a photograph.

A photograph of a group of people standing on a beautiful Hawaiian beach. Everyone was wearing board shorts and loud Hawaiian shirts.

And standing next to each other at the very edge of the group, smiling for the camera, were Gant and Schofield. Gant's smile was a little uncomfortable, and Schofield's kind of sad, behind his reflective silver sunglasses.

Gant remembered the day as if it were yesterday.

It had been that barbecue held on a beach near Pearl Harbor, celebrating her promotion to Schofield's Recon Unit.

"It was the first time we met," Schofield said.

"Yes," Gant said. "Yes, it was."

"I've never forgotten it," he said.

Gant beamed. "You know, this is the nicest birthday present I've received this year."

Then she lifted herself up out of her seat, leaned over the table and kissed him on the lips.

After their dinner, they arrived downstairs, where they were met by a presidential limousine. It was flanked however, from in front and behind, by four Marine Corps Humvees, six police cruisers and four motorcycle outriders.

Gant raised her eyebrows at the elaborate motorcade.

"Oh, yeah," Schofield said sheepishly, "there was something else I had to tell you about."

"Yes?" Gant said.

Schofield opened the limousine's rear door wide — to reveal the small sleeping figure of Kevin lying in the backseat.

"He needed a place to stay, at least until they find him a new home," Schofield shrugged. "So I said I'd take him as long as they needed. The government, however, insisted on providing a little extra security."

Gant just shook her head and smiled.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go home."