Area 7

SECOND CONFRONTATION

The main hangar had become a battlefield.

Bullet holes raked the floor at Shane Schofield's feet as he raced for the doorway to the northern glass-walled office.

He poked his head around the doorway: "Marines! Scatter!"

But that was all he could say before the window next to him shattered into a thousand fragments and he dived away, crawling for the cover of the two Presidential helicopters and their towing vehicles.

He looked back just in time to see a couple of full dress-uniformed Marines burst out through the windows of the office a moment before the small structure was hit by a Predator shoulderlaunched missile and its walls blasted outwards in a shower of glass and billowing fire.

Schofield slid under Marine One, and found himself lying next to Libby Gant and Brainiac.

Gunfire echoed out all around them. And then bizarrely, above the gunshots, Schofield heard a voice booming out from the hangar's loudspeaker system: "Good luck, Mr. President, and may God have mercy on your soul."

"Holy shit!" Brainiac yelled.

"This way!" Schofield said, crawling on his stomach underneath the big helicopter.

He arrived at a wide grille in the floor. It came away easily. An air vent opened up beneath it.

The steel-walled vent plunged down into the earth, disappearing into darkness.

"Let's go!" Schofield yelled above the gunfire.

Abruptly, a metal panel in the bottom of Marine One burst open — almost decapitating Schofield — and a figure with an M-16 dropped down behind him, the gun leveled at his forehead.

"Fuck! It's you," Mother said as she lowered herself out of the helicopter's emergency escape hatch onto the ground.

"Here, happy birthday," she said, tossing an MP-10 machine pistol to Gant. "Sorry, Scarecrow, nothing for you. That was all I could find in the basic arms cabinet on board. There's more in the forward armory, but Gunman's got the key to that."

"Never mind," Schofield said, "the first thing we've got to do is get out of here and regroup. Then we have to figure out a way of taking these bastards down. This way."

"Did you catch any of that shit on the television?" Mother said as she crawled over to the vent.

Gant and Brainiac climbed down into the vent first, bracing their legs against its walls, shimmying themselves down into it.

"No," Schofield said, "I was too busy dodging bullets."

"Then I've got a lot to tell you," Mother said as they lowered themselves into the shaft.

The President of the United States was moving faster than he had ever moved before. In fact, his feet barely even touched the ground.

At the first sight of the 7th Squadron commandos storming the common room, his nine-man Protective Detail had thrown itself into action.

Four men immediately took up defensive positions in between the President and the oncoming assault troops, throwing their coats open to reveal Uzi submachine guns. The Uzi's buzzed as they unleashed a brutal wave of gunfire at a crushing 600 rounds per minute.

The other five members of the Detail crash-tackled the President out into the nearby fire escape, practically lifting him off his feet as they gang-rushed him out of the room, covering his body with their own.

The door to the fire stairs slammed shut behind them, but not before they saw the 7th Squadron troops clinically take up covering positions behind couches, doors and cupboards and leap-frog each other and tear to shreds the four Secret Service men who had remained behind — drowning out the buzz of their Uzi's with the whirring drone of their P-90 assault rifles.

The Uzi's might have fired at 600 rounds per minute. But the P-90, made by the FN Herstal company in Belgium, fired at an astonishing 900 rounds per minute. Indeed, with its rounded hand guard, internal blowback system, and incredible hundred-round magazine mounted above the barrel, it looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

"Down the stairs! Now!" Frank Cutler yelled as bullets slammed into the other side of the firedoor. "Head for the alternate exit!"

The President and what was left of his Detail flew down the stairs, taking them four at a time, hurling themselves around every turn. Every one of them had a weapon in his or her hand now — Uzi's, SIG-Sauers, anything…

The President himself could do nothing but run with them, so tightly was he flanked by his bodyguards.

"Advance Team One! Come in!" Cutler yelled into his wrist microphone as he ran.

No reply.

"Advance Team One! Come in! We are approaching Exit Point One with Patriot and we need to know if it is open!" He received no reply.

Up in the main hangar, Book II was in hell.

Bullets strafed the floor all around him, glass rained down on his head.

He was tucked up against the outside of the northern office with Elvis — in the tiny gap between it and the hangar's armored door — the two of them having dived out through the office's bullet-shattered windows a moment before it had been blasted to smithereens by the Predator missile.

The three ten-man teams of 7th Squadron men were everywhere, moving with precision and speed, racing around the helicopters, leaping over dead men, their guns pressed against their shoulders, eyes looking straight down the barrels.

On the other side of the hangar, Book saw the White House people come streaming out of the southern glass walled office — about ten people in total — screaming, looking about themselves, only to be met by the 7th Squadron unit that had been stationed on the eastern side of the floor.

The White House men and women were cut down where they stood, hit head-on by a wave of merciless fire. Their bodies convulsed and shuddered under the weight of the brutal onslaught.

And then suddenly Book II heard a shout and he looked up and saw Gunman Grier burst out of the remains of the northern office, yelling with rage, his nickel-plated Beretta up and firing.

No sooner had he appeared, however, than Grier's chest literally exploded in a gout of red as two 7th Squadron troopers blasted him at the same time.

The force of their fire pummeled Grier's body, keeping him standing long after he was dead — sending him staggering backwards, reeling with each impact, until he slammed into a wall and fell to the ground in a heap.

"This is a real fucked-up situation!" Elvis yelled above the gunfire. "There's no way out of here!"

"Over there!" Book II pointed at the regular elevator on the northern side of the hangar.

"That's the only way out I can see!"

"But how do we get there?"

"We drive!" Book n shouted, nodding at one of the big towing vehicles attached to the tail boom of Nighthawk. Two, ten yards away.

The four radio men inside the control room spoke rapidly into their headsets.

"…Bravo Unit, close down all remaining hostile agents inside that northern office…"

"…Alpha Unit is in pursuit of Presidential Detail down the eastern fire stairs…"

"…Charlie Unit, break off from the main hangar, I have visual on four Marines heading down the primary air vent…"

"…Delta Unit, be patient, maintain your position…"

"What do you mean, they attached a radio transmitter to his heart?" Schofield said as he made his way down the vertical ventilation shaft, his feet splayed wide, pressed against its silver steel walls.

Gant and Brainiac were farther down, shimmying their way quickly down the vent, a seemingly bottomless drop beneath them.

"If his heart stops, the bombs go off, in every major airport, in every major city," Mother said.

"Jesus," Schofield said.

"And he's got to report in every ninety minutes, to reset a timer on the Football. Again, if he doesn't, boom!"

"Every ninety minutes?" Schofield pressed a button on his old digital watch, starting a timer of his own. He gave it a few minutes head-start. It started ticking down from 85:00 minutes — 85:00…84:59…84:58 — when abruptly, he heard a clattering noise from somewhere above him and he snapped his head up…

Bullets sprayed everywhere.

Peppering the metal walls all around him and Mother. Schofield saw a P-90 rifle sticking over the rim of the ventilation shaft — held by someone out of sight — firing wildly down into it.

"Scarecrow!" Gant called from ten feet below them. She was crouched inside a small horizontal tunnel that branched off the main vertical shaft. "Down here!"

"Go, Mother! Go!" Schofield yelled.

Both he and Mother released their footholds on the shaft's walls and let themselves slide down the vertical vent.

Whooosh!

They shot down the narrow vertical tunnel, sizzling-hot bullets impacting all around them, before — reeeech! — they dug their heels into the shaft's walls just short of the horizontal tunnel.

Mother came to a perfect halt right in front of it. Schofield, however, overshot the cross-vent, but somehow managed to throw his hands out and grip it with his fingertips, a split second before he would have fallen several hundred feet to his death.

Mother stepped inside the cross-vent first, then hauled Schofield into it after her, not a moment before a long abseiling rope dropped down the vertical shaft above them.

The 7th Squadron was coming.

Up ahead, Gant ran in the lead, closely followed by Brainiac. The silver-walled tunnel was about five feet square, so they all had to crouch slightly to run through it.

Gant came around a slight bend on the tunnel and saw light up ahead. She sped up — and then lurched to a sudden halt, clutching desperately for a handhold.

She stopped so suddenly that Brainiac almost bowledright into her. It was lucky he pulled up in time. A collision would have sent both of them falling a hundred and eighty feet straight down.

"Fuck me…" Brainiac said.

"What's the holdup…?" Mother said as she and Schofield arrived on the scene. "Oh…"

Their tunnel ended at the main elevator shaft.

The giant concrete-walled chasm, two hundred feet across, yawned before them.

On the other side of it, directly opposite them, they saw an enormous heavy steel door with a black-painted "I" on it. It looked like a hangar door of some sort.

And nearly two hundred feet below them — parked at the fourth underground level — they saw the wide hydraulic elevator platform.

"You know, it's at times like this I wish I had a Maghook," Schofield said. A Maghook was a combined grappling hook and high-powered magnet — the signature weapon of Marine Recon Units.

"There are a couple upstairs in Nighthawk Two," Mother said.

"Wouldn't do us any good," Gant said. "Distance is too far. A Maghook has a maximum rope length of a hundred and fifty feet. This is at least two hundred."

"Well, we better think of something," Brainiac said, looking back down the cross-vent, listening to the whizzing sounds of the 7th Squadron men abseiling down the main vertical shaft beyond it. Schofield looked at the wide concrete chasm in front of them. It was clearly well used — covered in grime and grease.

Indented at regular intervals on its walls, however, were a series of thin rectangular conduits — small horizontal gutters cut into the shaft's concrete walls. Each gutter was about six inches deep and ran right around the enormous elevator shaft, circling it. They were designed, it seemed, to house wires and cabling without hindering the elevator platform's upward and downward movement.

But right now, they afforded Schofield no escape.

Boom!

He spun. It was the sound of heavy boots clanging on metal.

The 7th Squadron men had arrived at the other end of the horizontal tunnel.

The air force men moved fast, racing half-crouched down the cross-vent, guns up.

There were four of them — all wearing black combat gear: helmets, gas masks, body armor.

Unsure of which cross-tunnel Schofield's group had taken, the others in their unit had gone farther down the vertical vent to check the other levels.

The two lead men rounded the bend in the tunnel — and stopped.

They had come to the end of the horizontal cross-vent, to the point where it met the massive elevator shaft. But there was no one there. The end of the tunnel was empty.

When the President of the United States visits a certain venue, the Secret Service has always plotted in advance at least three alternate exit routes, in case of emergency.

In big-city hotels, this usually comprises a back entrance, a service entrance — say, through the kitchen — and the roof, for lift-out via helicopter.

At Area 7, the Secret Service had sent two advance teams to secure and then guard the alternate exit points that they had chosen.

Alternate Exit Point 1 was on the lowest level of Area 7 — Level 6. The exit itself was the eight-hundred-yard-long Emergency Exit Vent that opened onto the desert floor about half a mile from the low mountain that covered the base. The first Secret Service advance team was stationed down on Level 6, the second up at the Vent's exit on the desert floor itself.

The President and his five-man Detail charged down the fire stairs, a hailstorm of bullets sizzling past their cheeks, shooting right through their flailing coats. The 7th Squadron's first unit — Alpha Unit, led by Major Kurt Logan — was close behind them.

They came to a firedoor that read: level 4: laboratory facilities. Dashed past it.

More stairs, another landing, another door. This one had a larger sign on it:

The President ran right past it.

They arrived at the bottom of the stairwell — at a door marked: Level 6: X-Rail station.

Frank Cutler was running in the lead. He came to the door, yanked it open — and was immediately assaulted by a ferocious barrage of automatic gunfire.

Cutler's face and chest became a ragged bloody mess as a relentless wave of bullets rammed into it. The Chief of the Detail went flying back into the stairwell, skidding across the floor, the man immediately behind him also going down.

Another agent — a young female named Juliet Janson — dived forward and slammed the door shut again, but before she did she got a fleeting, horrifying glimpse of the area beyond it.

The sixth and lowest level of Area 7 looked like an underground subway station — with a flat, raised platform sitting in between two sets of extra-wide railway tracks. The door to the Emergency Exit Vent — their goal — lay buried in the concrete wall of the right-hand track.

Positioned on the train tracks in front of that door, however, and covered by the station's chest-high platform, was a whole other unit of 7th Squadron soldiers, all with their P-90's trained on the fire escape.

In front of the 7th Squadron men, lying facedown in their own blood, lay the bullet-riddled bodies of the nine members of the Secret Service's Advance Team One.

The door slammed shut and Special Agent Juliet Janson turned.

"Quickly!" she shouted. "Back up the stairs! Now!"

"…All units, be aware, Delta unit has engaged the enemy…" One of the radio men in the control room said. "Repeat, Delta Unit has engaged the enemy…"

Shane Schofield tried not to breathe, tried not to make a sound.

All they had to do was look over the edge.

He was hanging by his fingertips from one of the horizontal cabling gutters carved into the concrete wall of the elevator shaft, a bare three feet below the mouth of the cross-vent he had been standing in only moments before.

Standing in that cross-vent right now were the four heavily armed 7th Squadron men who had stormed it only seconds earlier.

Beside him, Mother, Gant and Brainiac were also clinging to the cabling gutter with their fingers.

Above them, they could hear one of the 7th Squadron men speaking into his helmet mike.

"Charlie Six, this is Charlie One, they're not in the Level 1 cross-vent. Copy that, we're on our way."

Heavy footsteps, then nothing.

Schofield sighed with relief.

"Where to now?" Brainiac asked.

"There," Schofield said, jerking his chin at the giant steel hangar door on the opposite side of the wide elevator shaft.

"You ready?" Book II yelled to Elvis.

"Ready!" Elvis shouted back.

Book II looked out at the big white-painted Volvo towing vehicle attached to the tail boom of Nighthawk Two ten yards away. With its oversized tires, low-slung body and small two-man driver's cabin, it looked like either a brick on wheels or a giant cockroach. Indeed, it was this resemblance that had earned the towing vehicle the nickname "cockroach" among airport workers around the world.

At the moment, Nighthawk Two's cockroach was facing outwards, pointed at the armor-plated titanium door that had thundered down into place only minutes earlier, sealing the hangar.

Book II was now holding two nickel-plated Berettas in his hands, one his own, the other pilfered from a dead Marine nearby. He shouted to Elvis, "You take the wheel! I'll go for the other side!"

"You got it!"

"Okay! Now."

The two of them leapt to their feet and dashed out into the open together, their legs moving in time.

Almost instantly, a line of bullets raced across the ground behind them, nipping at their heels.

Elvis flung himself into the driver's seat, slammed the door shut behind him. Book II made for the passenger side, but he was met with a brutal volley of gunfire, so instead he just dived onto the towing vehicle's flat steel roof and yelled, "Elvis! Punch it!"

Elvis keyed the ignition. The Volvo's big 600 horsepower engine roared to life. Then Elvis jammed it into gear and floored it.

The towing vehicle's tires squealed as they shot off the mark, heading straight for the armored door that cut the hangar off from the outside world, taking Nighthawk Two, a full-sized CH53E Super Stallion transport helicopter, with it!

The two remaining units of 7th Squadron men in the hangar — twenty men in total — swept across the hangar on foot, pursuing the speeding cockroach with their guns. A wave of supercharged bullets pummeled the big Volvo's sides.

Elvis yanked on the steering wheel and the big cockroach swung around, rocketing toward the southern glass walled office.

On its roof, Book II raised himself on one knee and fired both his pistols at the oncoming 7th Squadron commandos.

It didn't do much good — the Air Force assassins had him outgunned. It was like attacking a battery of Patriot missiles with a peashooter. He ducked back behind the cockroach's cabin amid a flurry of return fire.

"Oh, crap!" Elvis shouted from the driver's cabin.

Book II looked up.

A lone 7th Squadron commando stood about thirty yards in front of them — right in their path — on the southern side of the central elevator shaft, with a Predator antitank rocket launcher hefted onto his shoulder!

The commando pulled the trigger. There was a puff of smoke before a small cylindrical object came blasting out of the launcher, shooting toward the speeding cockroach at phenomenal speed, leaving a dead-straight vapor trail in the air behind it.

Elvis reacted quickly, did the only thing he could think to do.

He yanked his steering wheel hard to the left.

The massive Volvo towing vehicle rose onto two wheels as it swung violently left — and for a moment it looked like it was going to drive straight into the yawning chasm that was the elevator shaft.

But it just kept turning… turning… wheels screeching… until suddenly it was heading north, along the narrow section of floor in between Marine One and the elevator shaft.

Nighthawk Two wasn't so lucky.

Since it was bouncing along — in reverse — behind the runaway cockroach, Elvis's sudden turn had brought it directly into the missile's line of fire.

The Predator hit it, slamming into Nighthawk Two's reinforced glass cockpit at tremendous speed.

The result was nothing short of spectacular.

The whole front section of the CH-53E Super Stallion exploded magnificently — blasting out in an instant, showering the area behind the quickly moving helicopter with glass and twisted metal, leaving the chopper with a jagged metal hole where the glass bubble of its cockpit was supposed to be!

The impact of the missile had also destroyed the landing wheels under the nose of the chopper. So now the giant helicopter was being hauled behind Elvis's towing vehicle with its nose — or what was left of it — dragging wildly on the floor, kicking up sparks.

"Elvis!" Book II yelled. "Go for the elevator! The regular elevator!"

The 7th Squadron soldiers dived out of the way as the speeding cockroach thundered in among them, wildly out of control.

Elvis saw the elevator doors off to his right, and yanked the steering wheel hard over. The cockroach responded, swinging right, cutting the corner of the aircraft elevator shaft — so that for the briefest of moments, Book II, partially hanging off the roof of the vehicle, saw nothing but a wide chasm of emptiness falling away beneath him.

Three seconds later, the cockroach — with the semidestroyed helicopter behind it — skidded to a squealing halt right in front of the elevator doors on the northern side of the hangar.

Book II leapt off the top of the big Volvo and hit the call button, Elvis joining him, when suddenly two armed men leapt over the big towing vehicle behind them.

Book II spun, snapping his guns up, triggers half-pulled.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" one of the armed men said, holding his pistol up.

"Easy, Sergeant," the other one said calmly. "We're with you."

Book II eased back on his triggers.

They were Marines.

The first was Sergeant Ashley Lewicky, an extraordinarily ugly career sergeant with a thick monobrow, battered pug nose, and mile-wide grin. Short and stout, his call-sign was a slam dunk: "Love Machine." Of roughly equal age and rank, he and Elvis had been buddies for years.

The second Marine, however, couldn't have been more different from Love Machine. Tall and handsome in a clean cut kind of way, he was a twenty-nine-year-old captain named Tom Reeves. A promising young officer, he'd been tagged for rapid promotion. Indeed, he'd already been promoted over several more-experienced lieutenants. Despite his obvious skills, the men called him "Calvin," because he looked like a Calvin Klein underwear model.

"Jesus H. Christ, Elvis," Love Machine said, "where the hell did you learn to drive! A demolition derby?"

"Why? Where have you two been?" Elvis asked.

"Where do you think, knucklehead? Inside Nighthawk Two. We both dived in there when the shit hit the fan. And we were kinda happy there until you guys drove us into the sights of that rocket laun…"

Just then, a volley of bullets smacked into the wall above their heads.

Ten 7th Squadron men — Bravo Unit — were charging across the wide hangar after them.

"I presume you had a plan when you drove over here, Sergeant," Calvin Reeves said to Book II.

At that moment, the elevator pinged and its metal doors slid open. Thankfully, it was empty.

"This was it, sir," Book II said.

"I approve," Calvin said and they all rushed inside. Book II went straight to the control panel and hit "door close."

The doors began to close. A bullet sizzled inside, smacked against the back wall of the lift.

"Hurry up…" Elvis urged.

The doors kept closing. They heard boots thud onto the roof of the cockroach outside, heard machine-gun bolts cock…

The doors came together… a bare second before they erupted with domelike welts from the barrage of bullets outside.

It had taken them a while, but moving hand over hand, hanging by their fingertips from the cabling gutter that ran all the way around the elevator shaft, they had eventually made it to the wide hangar door on the other side.

Hanging one-handed from the horizontal gutter, Schofield hit a button on a control panel beside the hangar door. Instantly, the massive steel door began to rumble upward.

Schofield climbed up onto level ground first, made sure there were no enemy troops around, then turned to help the others up behind him.

When they were all up, they gazed at the area before them.

"Whoa, mama…" Mother breathed.

A cavernous — completely underground — aircraft hangar stretched away from them.

In the control room overlooking the main grund level hangar, the wall of black-and-white television monitors flashed an array of images from the underground complex:

Juliet Janson and the President running up the stairwell.

Book II, Calvin Reeves, Elvis and Love Machine inside the regular elevator, punching out the ceiling hatch and climbing up through it.

Schofield and the others stepping up into the doorway of the underground hangar.

"…Okay, Charlie Unit, I have them. The ones who were in the ventilation shaft. Level 1 hangar bay. Four Marines: two male, two female. They're all yours…"

"…Bravo Unit, your targets have just exited the personnel elevator through the ceiling hatch. About to lose visual contact. But they're in the shaft. Sealing all elevator shaft doors except yours. Okay, they're shut in. Take them out…"

"…Sir, Echo Unit has cleaned out the rest of the main hangar. Awaiting further instructions…"

"Send them to help Charlie," Caesar Russell said, eyeing the monitor with Shane Schofield on it.

"…Echo, this is Control, proceed to Level 1 hangar bay for rendezvous with Charlie Unit…"

"…Alpha Unit, Presidential Detail is climbing the stairs. Coming right for you. Delta Unit, the Level 6 fire door is unguarded. You are free to enter the stairwell and engage…"

It was absolutely gigantic.

An enormous subterranean hangar, roughly the same size as the one up at ground level, perhaps even larger.

It had several aircraft in it, too.

One converted Boeing 707 AWACS plane, with the characteristic flying-saucer-like rotodome mounted on its back. Two sinister-looking B-2 stealth bombers, with their black radar absorbent paint, futuristic flying-wing design, and angry furrowed-brow cockpit windows. And parked directly in front of the stealth bombers, one Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the world's fastest operational aircraft, with its sleek super-elongated fuselage and twin rear thrusters.

The massive airplanes towered above Schofield and his team, dominating the cavernous space.

"What do we do now?" Mother asked.

Schofield was momentarily silent.

He was staring intently at the AWACS plane. It just stood there silently, pointing toward the wide aircraft elevator shaft.

Then he said, "We find out if what they're saying about the President's heart is true."

The air in the fire stairs was filles with flying bullets.

The Presidential Detail, down to three now, guided their charge up the stairs, leading with their guns, a makeshift array of Uzis, SIG-Sauers and spare ankle revolvers.

A young male agent named Julio Ramondo led the way, spraying the stairs above them with his Uzi, despite a bullet wound to his shoulder.

Special Agent Juliet Janson came after him, having assumed command of the Detail more by action than protocol. She guided the President along behind her.

The third and last surviving agent of the Detail — his name was Curtis — covered their rear, firing down the stairs behind them as they moved.

At twenty-eight, Juliet Janson was the most junior member of the President's Detail, but that didn't seem to matter now.

She had degrees in criminology and psychology, could run a hundred meters in 13.8 seconds and was an excellent marksman. The daughter of an American businessman father and a Taiwanese university lecturer mother, she had a flawless Eurasian complexion — smooth olive skin, a sharply defined jawline, beautiful almond-brown eyes and shoulder length jet-black hair.

"Ramondo! Can you see it!" she shouted above the gunfire.

After the horror of their attempt to get to Level 6 and the bloody death of Frank Cutler, the President and his Detail had been left in the middle of a 7th Squadron sandwich.

The unit down on Level 6 was coming up after them, while the unit that had chased them out of the common room on Level 3 was closing in on them from above.

What that had left them with was a race — a race to get to one of the floors in between Level 6 and Level 3 before they faced fire from both above and below.

"Yes! I see it!" Ramondo yelled back. "Come on!"

Juliet Janson arrived on the landing next to Ramondo, with the President beside her.

Thumping footfalls echoed down the stairwell above them, bullets ripped apart the walls all around them.

Janson saw the nearest door, saw the sign on it:

"I think this qualifies as an emergency," she said, before blasting the door's locks with three shots from her SIG-Sauer.

Then she kicked open the door and hauled the President into Level 5.

Book II looked up into the darkness of the regular elevator shaft, saw the outer doors that led to the ground-level hangar about fifty feet above him.

He was standing on top of the personnel elevator — now stopped midway down the shaft — with Calvin, Elvis and Love Machine. A few widely spaced fluorescent lights illuminated the enclosed concrete elevator well.

"Why did we have to get out of the elevator?" Elvis asked.

"Cameras," Book II said. "We couldn't stay…"

"We'd have been sitting ducks if we'd stayed inside it," Calvin Reeves said, cutting in.

"Gentlemen, as the ranking officer here, I am taking command."

"So what's the plan then, Captain America?" Love Machine asked.

"We keep moving…" Calvin began, but that was all he got out, because at that moment, the outer doors above them burst open and almost immediately three P-90 gunbarrels appeared, bright yellow flashes bursting forth from their muzzles.

A flurry of ricochets impacted all around the elevator.

Book II ducked and spun — and saw a series of vertical counterweight cables running down the wall of the shaft, disappearing down the side of the stationary elevator.

"The cables!" he yelled, scampering over to the wall, not caring for the chain of command.

"Everybody down! Now!"

Shane Schofield burst into the forward cabin of the AWACS plane in the hangar on Level 1.

"Brainiac"

"Already on it," Brainiac headed aft, disappearing inside the main cabin of the aircraft.

"Close the door," Schofield said to Mother, who had come in last.

Schofield charged aft. The interior of the AWACS was very similar to that of a commercial airliner — albeit a commercial airliner that had had all its seats ripped out and replaced by large flat-topped surveillance consoles.

Brainiac was already at one of the consoles. It was whirring to life as Schofield took a seat beside him. Mother and Gant went straight for the plane's two door-windows, peered out through them.

Brainiac started typing at the console.

"Mother said it was a microwave signal," Schofield said. "The satellite beams it down and then the radio chip on the President's heart bounces the signal back up."

Brainiac typed some more. "Makes sense. Only a microwave signal could penetrate the radiosphere over this base… and then only if it knew the trapdoor frequency."

"Trapdoor frequency?"

Brainiac kept typing. "The radiosphere over this base is like an umbrella, a giant hemispherical dome of scrambled electromagnetic energy. Basically, this umbrella of garbled energy stops all unauthorized signals from either entering or escaping the base. But, like all good jamming systems, it has a designated frequency for use by authorized transmissions. This is the trapdoor frequency — a microwave bandwidth that wends its way through the radiosphere, avoiding the jamming signatures. Kind of like a secret path through a minefield."

"So this satellite signal is coming in on the trapdoor frequency?" Schofield said.

"That's my guess," Brainiac said. "What I'm doing now is using the AWACS's rotodome to search all the microwave frequencies inside this base. These birds have the best bandwidth detection systems around, so it shouldn't take — bingo. Got it."

He slammed his finger down on the enter key and a new screen came up.

"Okay, you looking at this?" Brainiac printed out the screen. "It's a standard rebounding signature. The satellite sends down a search signal — they're the tall spikes on the positive side, about 10 gigahertz — and then, soon after, the receiver on the ground, the President, bounces that signal back. Those are the deep spikes on the negative side."

Brainiac circled the spikes on the printout.

"Search and return," he said. "Interference aside, the rebounding signature seems to repeat itself once every twenty-five seconds. Captain, that Air Force general ain't lying. There's something down here bouncing back a secure satellite microwave signal."

"How do we know it isn't just a beacon or something?" Schofield said.

"The irregularity of it," Brainiac said. "See how it isn't quite a perfectly replicating sequence? See how, every now and then, there's a medium-sized spike in between the search and the return signals?" Brainiac tapped the midsized spikes inside two of the circles.

"So what does that mean?"

"It's an interference signature. It means that the source of the return signal is moving."

"Jesus," Schofield said. "It's real."

"And it just got worse," Gant said from the window set into the escape door on the left-hand side of the cabin. "Have a look at this."

Schofield came over to the small window, looked out through it.

And his blood went cold.

There must have been at least twenty of them.

Twenty 7th Squadron soldiers running quickly across the hangar outside — P-90 assault rifles in their hands, ERG-6 masks covering their faces — forming a wide circle around the AWACS plane, surrounding it.

It was the smell that hit them first.

It smelled like a zoo — that peculiar mix of animal excrement and sawdust in a confined space.

Juliet Janson led the way into Level 5, pulling the President along behind her. The other two Secret Service agents hurried in after them, jamming the stairwell door shut behind them.

They were standing in a wide, dark room, lined on three sides with grim-looking cages — forged steel bars set into walls of solid concrete. On the fourth side of the room were some more modern-looking cages: these cages had clear, floor-to-ceiling fiberglass walls and were filled with inky black water. Janson couldn't see what lurked inside the sloshing opaque water.

A sudden grunting sound made her spin.

There was something very large inside one of the steel cages to her right. In the dim light of the dungeon, she could make out a big, hairy, lumbering shape moving behind the thick black bars.

There came an ominous scratching sound from the cage — like someone dragging a fingernail slowly and deliberately down a chalkboard.

Special Agent Curtis went over to the cell, peered into the darkness beyond the bars.

"Don't get too close," Janson warned.

Too late.

A hideous bloodcurdling roar filled the dungeon as an enormous black head — a blurred combination of matted hair, wild eyes and flashing six-inch teeth — burst out from behind the bars and lunged at the hapless agent.

Curtis fell back from the cage, landing on his butt as the animal — enraged, ferocious, frenzied — reached in vain for him with a long hairy claw, held back only by the super strong bars of the cell.

The would-be ambush over, Janson now got a better look at the creature.

It was huge, at least nine feet tall, and covered in shaggy black fur — and it looked completely out of place in a concrete underground cell.

Janson couldn't believe it.

It was a bear.

And it didn't seem to be a very happy bear either. Its fur was matted and stringy, sweat stained, growing in clumps. The animal's own feces clung to the fur on its hindquarters, making the world's largest living land carnivore look like some deranged horror movie monster.

The three other cages on the northern side of the dungeon held more bears — four females and two cubs.

"Jesus…" the President breathed.

"What the hell is going on in this place?" Julio Ramondo whispered.

"I don't care," Janson said, pulling the President toward a heavy-looking door on the far side of the dungeon. "Whatever it is, we can't stay here."

The hangar bay on Level 1 was silent.

The giant AWACS plane stood in the center of the vast hangar, surrounded by the ring of 7th Squadron commandos.

"This isn't the situation I was hoping for," Schofield said.

"How do they keep knowing where we are?" Mother asked.

Gant looked at Schofield. "I would imagine a base like this is wired up the kazoo."

"Agreed," Schofield said.

"What are you talking about?" Mother said.

"Cameras," Schofield said. "Surveillance cameras. Somewhere in this base, someone's in a room watching a bank of monitors and telling these guys where we…"

Whump!

There came a heavy thump from somewhere outside.

Gant peered out through the window in the escape door. "Shit! They're on the wing!"

"Oh, Christ!" Schofield said, "they're going for the doors…"

He exchanged a look with Gant.

"They're going to storm the plane," he said.

They looked like ants crawling over a toy airplane. Eight 7th Squadron men — four to each side — stalking along the wings of the giant Boeing 707.

Captain Luther "Python" Willis, commander of the 7th Squadron's third sub-unit, Charlie Unit, stood on the hangar floor, watching his men move along the wings of the stationary plane.

"The Avengers are on the way up," his master sergeant said.

Python said nothing, just nodded coldly.

Inside the AWACS plane, Schofield was charging down the central aisle, checking the plane's rear entry points. Gant and Brainiac manned the two side windows.

"There's nobody back here!" Schofield called from the aft section of the plane, where there were two emergency doors. "Fox!"

"I got four on the left wing!" Gant yelled.

"I got four on the right!" Brainiac said.

"Mother!" Schofield called.

No answer.

"Mother!"

Schofield strode quickly through the main cabin, moving forward.

There was no sign of Mother anywhere. She was supposed to be checking the plane's forward entrances — the bail-out door in the floor of the forward cabin, and the roof hatches in the cockpit above the pilots' ejection seats.

As he hurried forward, Schofield looked out through the nearest window, saw the armed commandos on the left-hand wing.

He frowned. What were they doing out there?

They couldn't just burst in through the wing doors. Even with their nickel-plated pistols, Schofield and his Marines could easily repel a single-file entry through such a small entrance.

It was at that moment, however — out through the window in the side door of the Boeing 707 — that he saw the Avengers.

There were two of them and they entered the hangar bay from the vehicle access ramp at the far eastern end of the floor.

The Avenger air-defense vehicle is a modified Humvee. It has the basic wide-bodied chassis of a Humvee, but mounted on its back are two square-shaped pods, which each hold four Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Attached to the underside of these missile launchers is a pair of powerful fifty-caliber machine guns. It is basically a highly efficient, highly mobile airplane killer.

"Okay, now I know what they're going to do," Schofield said aloud.

They were going to blast the plane with the Stingers and then, in the smoke and confusion that followed, make a forced entry.

Good plan, Schofield thought. And very painful for him and his three Marines.

The two Avengers split up as they raced across the wide-open floor of the hangar, one heading for the right flank of the AWACS, the other heading for the left.

Schofield saw them go, disappearing from his limited field of vision. Shit. He had to do something, and fast…VROOOM!

The wing-mounted engines of the AWACS plane thundered to life. In the enclosed space of the hangar, their roar was positively deafening.

Schofield spun where he stood. "Mother," he said.

The avengers skidded to a halt on either side of the AWACS plane just as the massive Boeing 707 began to roll forward, its engines filling the hangar with the thunderous roar of blasting air.

At the sudden movement of the plane, the eight men on its wings were jolted off balance.

Schofield charged into the cockpit of the AWACS.

Mother was sitting in the captain's seat.

"Hey there, Scarecrow!" she yelled above the din. "Want to join me for a Sunday drive!"

"You ever driven a plane before, Mother?"

"I saw Kurt Russell drive one in a movie once! Hell, it can't be much different from driving Ralph's eighteen wheel…"

Whack-whack whack whack-whack!

A volley of bullets assaulted the windshield of the cockpit, shattering it, sending glass flying all over Mother and Schofield, the upwardly directed shots punching into the ceiling.

And then Schofield saw one of the Avengers skid to a halt off to the left of the AWACS plane, saw its twin missile pods tilt upward on their hinges, getting ready to fire at the cockpit.

"Mother! Quickly! Go left!" he shouted.

"What?" Going left would put them on a collision course with the Avenger.

"Just do it!" Schofield leapt into the right-hand co-pilot's seat and using the plane's pedal operated steering controls, brought her hard to port, at the same time as he pushed forward on the plane's thrusters.

The giant AWACS plane responded immediately.

It picked up speed, moving quickly inside the confines of the enormous hangar, swinging sharply to the left — heading directly for the Avenger.

The 7th Squadron men on the Avenger saw what was going to happen.

Abandoning their efforts to get a lock on the plane with their Stingers, they dived from the missile-mounted Humvee a bare second before the enormous forward wheels of the Boeing thundered right over the top of the Avenger, crushing it like a tin can, rolling over its crumpled remains like a monster truck at a car rally.

"Yee-hah!" Mother yelled as the airplane bounced wildly over what was left of the Humvee.

"It's not over yet," Schofield said. "There's still another one out there. Fox! Where's that other Avenger!"

Gant and Brainiac were still in the main cabin of the AWACS, covering the wing-entry doors on either side of the plane — Gant with her MP-10, Brainiac with his Beretta.

"It's behind us to the left!" Gant yelled. Out her window, she saw the Humvee on the hangar floor outside, over by the northern wall, its missile pods raised and ready. Then, without warning, there came a puff of smoke from one of the pods.

"Bracing positions!" she called. "Missile away!"

There came a sudden monstrous explosion and abruptly the whole AWACS plane shuddered violently as its rear wheels were lifted clear off the ground.

Billowing smoke rushed into the main cabin, shooting forward from the rear as the giant plane came back down to earth, jouncing on its suspension.

"They've hit our tail!" Gant yelled.

It was worse than that.

The second Avenger had reduced the entire tail section of their 707 to a smoking, gaping hole.

The high tail fin of the plane lay bent and broken on the floor of the hangar, completely detached from the plane.

The AWACS continued to turn in a wide circle, its massive wheels rolling quickly, at the same time as it was pummelled by a continuous rain of fire from the 7th Squadron soldiers on the ground.

In the enormous space of the underground hangar, the plane's movement seemed almost comical — for something so big and so heavy to move so quickly and so recklessly was a sight to behold.

The plane came around 180 degrees — the tip of its right wing bouncing off the flank of the parked SR-71 Blackbird — so that now it was facing the opposite direction from which it had started, its open rear end now exposed to the withering fire of the 7th Squadron men on the ground.

Bullets raked the interior of the central cabin, smashing into the ceiling and walls. Gant and Brainiac hit the deck as fragments of plastic and plaster rained down all around them.

"Fuck!" Brainiac yelled. "They don't teach this at Parris Island!"

Book II was also moving fast.

He slid quickly down one of the vertical counterweight cables that ran up the side of the regular elevator shaft. Calvin, Elvis and Love Machine slid down the cables after him, lowering themselves down the shaft.

After avoiding the barrage of fire up on the roof of the elevator, they now had to find a way out of the shaft, before the 7th Squadron men up there got around the elevator that now formed an obstacle between them.

Book II stopped at a pair of outer doors marked with a large black-painted "I," and immediately heard the muffled sounds of a firefight — clattering automatic gunfire, booming explosions, squealing tires.

"Not this one," Calvin Reeves said as he came alongside Book II. "Let's try the next one."

They slid farther down the shaft.

Inside the hangar bay, Python Willis watched the AWACS plane as it sped in a wild circle around the enormous hangar.

He spoke without emotion into his headset mike: "Avenger Two. Go for the cockpit. Two missiles."

In the cockpit of the AWACS plane, Schofield pumped on the steering pedals.

"Mother!" he yelled. "Get back in the main cabin! Cover the tail! Make sure no one gets in through there! I'll take care of the driving up here!"

Mother grabbed her M-16 and headed aft.

As she left, Schofield saw the second Humvee appear in front of him, over by the northern wall. It swung around quickly, taking up a new position, getting ready to fire again.

He keyed the plane's intercom.

"Brainiac!" Schofield's voice boomed over the plane's speaker system. "Engage electronic countermeasures!"

Back in the main cabin, Brainiac looked up at the sound of Schofield's voice. "Oh, yeah. Of course!"

"What is he talking about?" Gant yelled as Mother joined them in the main cabin.

But Brainiac was already clambering toward one of the consoles. He slid into the seat, began typing quickly.

Gant peered out her door-window — saw the walls of the hangar streaking by outside — saw the surviving Humvee skid to a halt over by the wall, preparing to fire another of its missiles.

"It's going to hit us again!" she called.

"Brainiac…" Schofield's voice said expectantly over the speakers.

Brainiac typed fast. The words "engage mf scrambler" appeared on his screen.

"Bracing positions!" Gant yelled.

Two clouds of smoke puffed out from the Humvee's missile pods — at exactly the same moment as Brainiac slammed his finger down on the enter key.

A pair of Stinger missiles shot out from the pods on the back of the Humvee, twin smoke trails zooming out behind them. They were heading directly for the forward section of the AWACS plane, flying in perfect formation.

And then, all of a sudden, the Stingers went crazy.

Despite the fact that the missiles were heat-seekers, the AWACS's powerful antimissile countermeasures still affected them — disrupting their chip-to-chip electronics, scrambling their internal-logic systems. It was as if a tidal wave of electronic noise, blasting invisibly outward from the AWACS's enormous rotodome, had slammed into the two Stingers.

The two missiles responded accordingly.

They went haywire.

They broke formation in an instant, parting in a looping Y-shape — one rolling wildly to the right, the other swinging left. The right-hand one shot quickly underneath the rolling AWACS plane, while the left-hand one sailed clear over it.

From the cockpit of the AWACS Schofield watched in amazement as one of the missiles shot across his bow and then — bizarrely — headed back toward the Humvee that had launched it!

A second later the missile slammed into the concrete wall above the Humvee — thundering at tremendous speed right into a ten-foot-high box-shaped compartment mounted above the floor of the hangar.

The missile detonated — sending an enormous gout of concrete spraying out from the wall all around the compartment. The compartment's wide steel door was blasted off its hinges by the stunning impact and went bouncing across the hangar, a twisted metal wreck. Large chunks of concrete rained down on the very Humvee that had fired the missile.

Whatever that compartment was, Schofield thought, it was toast now.

But there was still one more out-of-control missile swooping around the hangar.

This second missile swung around the destroyed rear section of the moving AWACS plane, rolling wildly through the air, before it too doubled back and hit the hangar's northern wall, right alongside the regular elevator's doors.

A hailstorm of concrete blasted out from the wall, showering chunks everywhere.

This blast of concrete, however, was followed by a most peculiar sight.

A shockingly powerful geyser of water — yes, water — began to shoot out from the newly formed hole in the wall, jetting outward with tremendous force.

Schofield frowned. "What the hell…?"

An ominous explosion shook the walls of the regular elevator shaft.

Book II, now hanging with his group next to the outer doors of Level 3 — the doors to Level 2 had also been locked, so they'd moved down to the next floor — looked up sharply at the sound.

The sight that met him was as terrifying as it was unexpected.

A whole section of the concrete wall alongside the Level 1 doorway sixty feet above them just blasted outward, showering the shaft with chunks of concrete.

And then, right behind the concrete, came the water.

It rained down on Book II and the others like spray from a goddamned firehose.

Torrents and torrents of pouring water, roaring like a waterfall down the narrow elevator shaft, gushing out of the hole in the wall on Level 1, pounding down against their bodies.

It was all they could do to hold on to their cables.

But as soon as he felt the surging weight of the waterfall, Book II saw the future: the wall of water was just too strong.

They were going to fall.

"…All units, be aware. We have rupture of the long term water tanks on Level 1. Repeat: integrity of water tanks on Level 1 has been broken…"

"…Water from the tanks is entering the regular elevator shaft…"

"Initiate airtight countermeasures," Caesar Russell said calmly. "Seal off the shaft. Keep that water contained. Let it flood the shaft."

"Yes, sir."

Love Machine fell first.

In the face of the powerful waterfall, he lost his grip on the counterweight cable and dropped straight past Book.

He fell fast — falling away from Book II in a kind of nightmarish slow motion; eyes wide, mouth open, his shout drowned out by the roar of the waterfall — before he disappeared into the inky darkness of the shaft.

Book II swore. "Damn it!"

And then he did the only thing he could think to do.

"Sergeant! No!" Calvin yelled, but it was too late.

Book II loosened his grip on his cable and slid like a bullet down the shaft after Love Machine, disappearing into the darkness.

Book II dropped into blackness.

He slid for a long time, whizzing down the counterweight cable, sliding fast, the heat from the cable burning through his white formal gloves.

Then suddenly, with a splash, he entered water — deep water — at the bottom of the shaft.

Just as he had hoped.

The elevator shaft was approximately ten feet square and if all its exit doors were sealed, then with the monumental quantities of water rushing out of the hole on Level 1, he'd figured it wouldn't take long for it to accumulate at the bottom and fill to a reasonable depth.

Sure enough, Love Machine hovered in the pool of water next to him, gasping for air, coughing water. But alive.

"You okay?" Book II yelled.

"Uh-huh!"

Calvin and Elvis arrived at the base of the shaft a few moments later, sliding down the counterweight cables. The roaring waterfall thundered into the pool all around them, kicking up spray.

"Okay, Captain Fantastic," Elvis said to Calvin, "our nice safe elevator shaft is now filling with water! What do you suggest we do now?"

Calvin hesitated.

Book II didn't. He nodded at the pair of outer doors a few feet above them. "Simple. We bust out!"

"Motherfucker…" Brainiac said as he peered out from the rear of the AWACS plane's main cabin.

A high-pressure geyser of water was now shooting out of the hole in the wall over by the personnel elevator, throwing a carpet of water all over the concrete floor of the hangar. "What the hell is this ride?"

"Just another day of mayhem and destruction with the Scarecrow," Mother said.

"Hey," Gant said, looking out through her door-window. "What happened to the guys on the wings?"

Mother and Brainiac spun to look out at the plane's wings.

The AWACS's wings were bare.

The 7th Squadron men who had been out there before were nowhere to be seen.

It was only then that they heard the ominous sound of thumping footsteps on the roof.

The AWACS plane continued on its rampaging circuit of the hangar, now traveling through a layer of water one inch deep.

It had almost come full circle — so that now it was facing the empty section of the hangar that led to the wide-open doorway of the aircraft elevator shaft.

Schofield pumped on the steering pedals, trying to keep the enormous surveillance plane under control.

He saw the doorway to the aircraft elevator shaft directly in front of him. At the moment, a shallow film of water cascaded over it like Niagara Falls, dropping out of sight into the shaft.

The big hydraulic elevator platform was almost certainly the best way out of this jam", but the last he had seen, it was stopped down on one of the lower levels…

And then, more suddenly than Schofield could possibly have anticipated, the roof above him exploded in a shower of sparks.

In actual fact, it wasn't the roof — it was one of the blast hatches set into the roof of the cockpit, one of the hatches that blew open when the pilot's ejection seat was activated.

No sooner had the hatch blasted open than a veritable hailstorm of gunfire flooded down through it, smashing into the airplane's dashboard, shattering all its gauges and dials.

This torrent of bullets was quickly followed by a second volley which ripped through the empty pilot's seat — the lefthand seat; the seat Mother had been sitting in before — tearing it to shreds.

Schofield saw what was going to happen next and he quickly dived out of his seat, rolling forward into the tiny section of floor space in front of it.

Not a moment later, a pair of combat boots landed with a thump on the pilot's seat — boots that belonged to a fearsome-looking 7th Squadron commando.

The masked commando spun quickly, his P-90 assault rifle pressed firmly against his shoulder, searching for enemies at the rear of the cockpit. Then he turned to look forward, and downward — where, to his complete surprise, he saw Schofield lying curled up on the floor.

Gunless and defenseless, Schofield saw the masked commando's black-gloved trigger finger begin to squeeze — and so he lashed out with his foot.

Not at the man's legs, but at the lever that ran alongside the flight seat underneath him — the ejection lever.

Schofield's kick connected.

The lever snapped backward.

And with a loud, blasting whoosh! the pilot's ejection seat shot up through the hole in the cockpit's roof — taking the 7th Squadron commando with it!

Python Willis watched in complete and utter astonishment as one of his men went rocketing up at incredible speed out of the cockpit of the AWACS and past his shocked colleagues on the roof of the plane, on top of an ejection seat!

The man shot into the air like a bullet, before smashing — violently, concussively — into the concrete ceiling of the hangar.

The crack of the man's neck echoed sickeningly throughout the underground hangar bay — it was distinct even above the roar of the AWACS's engines, so hard did his body hit the ceiling. He was killed instantly, the force of the three-hundred-pound ejection seat snapping his spine like a twig as it squashed him against the concrete roof.

In the meantime, Schofield had gotten his own Beretta pistol out and, sliding on his back onto the floor behind the pilots' seats, was firing it up at the roof of the cockpit — trying to deter anyone else from following their comrade into the flight deck.

In seconds, his gun went dry and he stood up and looked out through the forward windshield — and saw that the plane was heading directly for the massive doorway leading to the elevator shaft!

"Oh, this just keeps getting better and better," he said.

In a fleeting second, he tried to find a solution to the situation.

The plane was heading for the shaft.

The 7th Squadron were all over its roof — all over the hangar for that matter.

And he and Gant and Mother and Brainiac were stuck inside the plane.

What was the solution?

Simple.

Get out of the hangar.

But there is no way out. We're stuck in this plane, and if we leave it, we're dead.

Unless, of course, we get out of the hangar while we're still on board the plane…

Oh, yeah…

And with that, Schofield climbed back into the co-pilot's seat and took control of the plane again. Despite the bullet damage, the controls still worked.

He pushed forward on the collective, speeding up the big Boeing 707, keeping it pointed directly at the enormous steel doorway that led out to the elevator shaft.

"What the hell is he doing…?" Python said.

The giant AWACS plane was picking up speed, rumbling across the wide expanse of the hangar, heading straight for the open elevator doorway.

The commandos on the roof of the plane felt it surge forward, gaining momentum.

They looked forward, saw where it was heading, and their eyes widened.

"He can't be serious," Python breathed, as he watched his men leap off the roof of the moving airplane as it careered toward the open doorway.

In the cockpit of the speeding plane, Schofield was strapping on his seat belt. As he did so, he keyed the intercom switch.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Find a chair and buckle up tight, because we're about to take off."

Back in the main cabin, Gant and the other two Marines spun to look forward.

Through the AWACS's cabin, they could see all the way through to the cockpit — could see the open elevator shaft looming ahead of them, rapidly approaching.

"Is he thinking what I think he's thinking?" Gant said to Mother.

Mother paused before she spoke. "Yes, he is."

They leapt as one for the nearest available seats and clutched desperately for the seat belts.

The converted boeing 707 — deprived of its entire tail section — thundered across the wide subterranean hangar bay, the wet concrete floor rushing by beneath it, heading straight for the open elevator shaft.

And then, before anyone could even hope to stop it, the plane shot through the doorway and tipped off the edge and fell down into the shaft, disappearing from view.

The AWACS plane soared down the elevator shaft fast — nose-first — looking like a crazed kamikaze fighter.

Down the wide concrete shaft it went — down, down, down — before it crashed, loudly, on the massive hydraulic elevator platform resting on Level 4, one hundred and eighty feet below.

The nose of the AWACS plane crumpled instantly as it thundered into the elevator platform. Loose parts flew everywhere, blasting outward like shrapnel. Two of the plane's jet engines bounced high into the air as they smashed into the platform.

The plane itself, however, seemed to teeter on its broken nose for an eternity. And then, with a loud metal-on-metal groan, like a slow-falling California redwood, it fell, landing with a colossal thump on its left-hand wing, snapping the wing in an instant, before the whole ruined aircraft slammed down against the elevator platform with a resounding boom.

Inside the AWACS plane, the world was tilted forty-five degrees to the left.

Mother, Gant and Brainiac all sat comically in their seats, strapped in, but hanging dramatically to the side. They were starting to unbuckle themselves from their seat belts when Schofield hurried into the main cabin from the cockpit.

"Come on," he said, helping Mother with her belt, "we can't stay here. They'll be down soon."

"Where are we going?" Gant asked, as she dropped out of her seat and stood up.

Schofield pursed his lips. "We have to find the President."

"…Jesus! He just drove the plane off the fucking edge…"

"…Charlie and Echo Units, initiate pursuit…"

"…President is on Level 5, heading into the confinement area. Delta Unit, you are free to enter the animal quarters…"

"…Copy that, Bravo leader. Yes, they're in the water at the bottom of the shaft. Good idea…"

"What's Boa doing?" Caesar Russell asked. Captain Bruno "Boa" McConnell was in command of Bravo Unit, one of the Five Snakes.

"He's on top of the personnel elevator, sir. He's going to lower the elevator down the shaft.

Drown the bastards. And if they try to crawl up the sides, shoot them dead."

Book II and the others hovered in the ever-deepening pool of water at the base of the regular elevator shaft.

The super-heavy rain of water blasted down all around them. It showed no sign of stopping and the elevator shaft was flooding rapidly, the water level rising fast, lifting them to the nearest pair of outer doors.

And then abruptly, above the roar of falling water, a loud clunking noise echoed down the shaft, followed by the hum of mechanical movement.

Book II looked upwards — just as the rain of water stopped.

Well, sort of stopped. Now it started raining down the sides of the shaft, covering the counterweight cables with a curtain of gushing water.

"What's happening?" Love Machine said.

And then Book II saw it.

Saw a shadow superimposed on the darkness above them — a box-shaped shadow, growing larger and larger as it came closer and closer.

"What is that?" Calvin Reeves said.

"Oh, damn…" Book II breathed. "It's the elevator."

The personnel elevator edged its way down the shaft, water pounding onto its roof and cascading off its sides.

High above it, in the open doorway up on ground level, two 7th Squadron snipers lay with night-scoped rifles at the ready, aimed down into the shaft.

Their guns were trained on the roof of the elevator, waiting for anyone to emerge from the gaps on either side of the lift, the only points where the enemy could climb out from underneath the downward-moving elevator.

"Not nice," Book II said flatly. "Not nice."

Either they drowned as the elevator pushed them under the surface, or they climbed up the sides of the lift, where no doubt, the bad guys would be waiting…

He looked quickly at the pair of outer doors two feet above him. They had a large "5" painted on them.

Level 5.

He wondered what was on this level, then decided he didn't care. These doors were the only way out. Period.

He hauled himself out of the water, stood on his toes on the edge of the doorway. A curtain of water poured down onto his head.

Like all the other outer doors in this elevator shaft, he saw, these two were closed tight, air sealed.

The elevator above him continued its descent, moving slowly and steadily downward.

The rising water reached the base of the doorway, splashed against his boots, moving equally steadily upward.

Calvin Reeves appeared at his side. "How the hell do we open these doors, Sergeant?"

Book guessed that the doors' release mechanism was contained somewhere within the wall.

"I can't see it!" he shouted back. "It must be hidden inside the wall!"

The elevator was close now, looming one floor above them, grinding inexorably downward.

Water continued to pour.

And then Book II saw it — a thick insulated cable running out from the concrete wall to the right of the doors and down into the pool of water beneath him.

"Of course!" he yelled. An emergency release lever wouldn't be on this level. It would be situated either above or below the floor, so that the doors could be opened when the elevator was stopped here.

Without so much as a second thought, Book II took a deep breath and dropped into the pool of water beneath him.

Silence.

The eerie quiet of the underwater world.

Book II swam downwards, his fingers feeling their way along the thick black cable attached to the concrete wall.

After about nine feet, he came to a steel utility box sunk into the wall. He opened it, felt for a lever, found a row of six, and yanked the fifth one.

He immediately heard a sharp shoosh! from somewhere above him — the sound of a pressure door being released.

He swam upward, fast. Came to the surface, broke it…

"…Book! Quickly! Come on!" were the first words he heard.

He'd come up a few feet away from the now-opened doors and immediately saw Calvin Reeves and Elvis standing up on level ground. Love Machine clung to the edge of the doorway, reaching out for Book II with an outstretched hand.

Then Book II looked up.

The descending elevator was barely three feet above his head and coming down fast!

He threw out a hand and Love Machine grabbed it, and hauled him over to the doorway, pulling him through the water. Then Elvis and Calvin grabbed them both and yanked them out of the water, just as the elevator slid past the edge of the doorway and abruptly came to a halt — right in front of the doorway.

Everybody froze.

Water began to ooze up around the floor of the lift, rising up from beneath it, hungrily searching for an escape from the shaft. It immediately began to spread out across the concrete floor of Level 5.

Book II waited tensely for the elevator's doors to open — waited for a phalanx of 7th Squadron men to burst out from it with their guns blazing.

But none did.

The lift was empty.

They were safe, for the moment.

Book II turned to face the room around him. A layer of expanding water had already started filling it.

It was a wide anteroom of some sort. Some wooden desks, a Lexan glass cabinet full of shotguns and riot gear. Plus a couple of holding cells.

Book II frowned.

It was almost as if he were standing in the reception room of a jail.

"What in God's name is this place?" he said aloud.

At that very same moment, on the other side of level 5, Juliet Janson and the President of the United States found themselves standing in a whole new kind of hell.

Juliet had thought the animal cage room had been bad.

This was worse.

After bursting through the heavy-looking door on the western side of the animal cage room, she now found herself staring at a far more frightening part of Area 7.

A wide, dark, low-ceilinged room stretched away from her. It was sparsely lit, with only one in every three lights turned on, a policy which had the effect of leaving small patches of the vast room hidden in perfect blackness.

But the low light couldn't hide the true nature of this level.

It was filled with cells.

Old rusty concrete cages — thick-walled, with anodized black bars sunk deep into concrete dividers. The cells were quite obviously aged, and in the half-light of Level 5, they took on a positively Gothic appearance.

It was, however, the groans and hoarse whispers coming from the darkness behind the bars that betrayed the nature of their occupants.

These were not animal cells, Juliet realized in horror.

They were human cells.

The prisoners heard the heavy door burst open — heard Juliet and the President and the other two Secret Service agents charge through it — and they rushed as one to the doors of their cells to see what the commotion was.

"Oh, hey, baby!" one toothless individual cried as Juliet, striking and purposeful as she held her silver SIG Sauer pistol in her hand, charged past his cell, pulling the President behind her.

"Ramondo!" she yelled. "Block that door behind us!"

A row of steel lockers lined the wall near the door leading back to the animal cage room.

Ramondo yanked the first three of them down from their upright positions, strewing the lockers in front of the door.

The prisoners began to shout and cry out.

Like all lifers, they could sense fear instantly, and they took pleasure in heightening it. Some yelled obscenities, others rattled their bars with enamel drinking mugs, others still just wailed a constant ear-piercing "Ahhhhhhhhh!"

Juliet bolted through the nightmare, grim-faced and determined.

She saw a gently-sloping ramp off to her right — fenced off by a big barred gate. The ramp seemed to lead up to the next level. She made for it.

"Hey, baby! You wanna go for a spin…on top of my flagpole!"

The President stared wide-eyed at the chaos all around him. Prisoners in blue denim uniforms, unshaven and crazed, leaned out from their cages, trying to grab him.

"Hey, old man. I bet you got a nice soft marshmallow ass…"

"Come on," Juliet yanked the President away from the voices.

They came to the barred gate.

As one would expect on a cell block, its lock was thick and strong. They couldn't shoot through it.

"Curtis," Juliet said crisply. "Lock."

Special Agent Curtis slid to his knees in front of the gate and pulled a high-tech-looking lock picking device from his coat pocket.

As Curtis unfolded his lock-picker, Janson scanned the area around them.

There was movement and noise everywhere. Arms flailed out of cell doors. Snarling faces tried to squeeze through the bars. And the shouting, the constant shouting.

"Ahhhhhhhh!"

None of the prisoners seemed to recognize the President.

They all just seemed to enjoy making noise, inciting fear…

Then abruptly, there came a loud boom from somewhere behind them.

Juliet spun, pistol up.

She was met by the sight of a Marine, his full dress uniform completely saturated, charging toward her with a Remington pump-action shotgun raised.

Behind the first man were three more Marines, also soaked to the skin.

The lead Marine lowered his shotgun when he saw Juliet and the President.

"It's okay! It's okay!" Book II said, coming closer, lowering the shotgun he had pilfered from the arms cabinet in the anteroom. "It's us!"

Calvin Reeves stepped forward, spoke seriously. "What's happened down here?"

Juliet said, "We've lost six people already, and those Air Force bastards are in the next room, right on our asses."

Behind her, Special Agent Curtis inserted his lock picker into the gate's lock, pressed a button.

Zzzzzzzzz!

The lock-picking device emitted a shrill dentist-drill like buzz. The lock clicked loudly and the gate swung open.

"What's your plan from here, Agent Janson?" Calvin asked.

"To be where the bad guys aren't," Juliet said. "First of all, by going up this ramp. Let's move."

Special Agents Curtis and Ramondo headed up the ramp first, followed by Calvin. Juliet pushed the President after them. Love Machine and Elvis went next. Book II fell into step beside Juliet, covering the rear.

Just as they were about to head up the ramp, however, they both heard a voice above the din.

"…Not a prisoner — a scientist! — know this facility — can help you!"

Juliet and Book II spun.

It took them a second to locate the owner of the voice.

Three cells down from the ramp, in the cell closest to the animal cage room.

The owner of the voice was standing up against the bars of his cell — which in the surrounding chaos had only made him look just like all the other prisoners.

But upon closer inspection, he looked considerably different from the others. He wasn't wearing a blue denim inmate uniform. Rather, he wore a white lab coat over shirtsleeves and a loosened tie.

Nor did he look deranged or menacing. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was short, with glasses and thinning blond hair that looked like it had been combed every day of his life.

Juliet and Book came to his cell.

"Who are you?" Juliet shouted above the din.

"My name is Herbert Franklin!" he replied quickly. "I'm a doctor, an immunologist! Until this morning, I was working on the vaccine! But then the Air Force people locked me in here!"

"You know this facility?" Book II yelled. Beside him, Juliet stole a glance at the heavy door leading back to the animal cage room. It was banging from the other side.

"Yes!" the man named Franklin said.

"What do you think?" Book II asked Juliet.

She pondered it for a moment.

Then she shouted up the ramp: "Curtis! Quickly! Get back here! I got another lock I need opened!"

Two minutes later, they were all heading up the ramp, now with a new member added to their group.

As they raced up the sloping walkway, however, making for the next floor, none of them noticed the layer of expanding water that lapped up against the bottom of the ramp.

When Schofield's runaway AWACS plane had crashed down onto it, the massive aircraft elevator platform had been parked on Level 4 — at the spot where the President's entourage had left it nearly an hour earlier.

Now, the crumpled remains of the Boeing 707 lay sprawled across the width of the elevator platform.

Gnarled pieces of metal lay everywhere. A couple of tires had been thrown clear with the impact. The plane itself lay pointed downwards, tilted over on its side, its nose dented sharply inwards, its left-hand wing broken in half, crushed beneath the plane's tremendous weight. Miraculously, the AWACS plane's thirty-foot flying-saucer-like rotodome had survived the fall completely intact.

Shane Schofield stepped out of the wreck of the plane, followed by Gant, Mother and Brainiac. They jumped over the debris as they ran for the giant steel door that led to Level 4.

A smaller door set into the base of the gigantic door opened easily.

No sooner had they opened it than Schofield raised his gun and fired. The shot smashed into a wall-mounted security camera, blasting it to oblivion in a shower of sparks.

"No cameras," he said as he walked. "That's how they're following us."

The four of them made their way up a short upwardly sloping corridor. A squat solid-looking door loomed at the end of it.

Mother spun the flywheel on it and the big door swung open.

Schofield stepped through the doorway first, his nickel plated pistol leading the way.

He emerged inside a laboratory of some sort. Supercomputers lined the walls, their lights blinking. Keyboard terminals and data screens and clear-plastic experiment boxes occupied the remaining bench space.

Otherwise, the lab was deserted…

Blam!

Gunshot.

Blam!

Another.

It was Gant, exterminating a couple of security cameras.

Schofield continued to scan the wide room.

The most dominant feature of the laboratory was a line of slanted glass windows that lay directly opposite the entrance.

He stepped up to the observation windows and peered out through them — and found himself looking out over a wide, high ceilinged room, in the center of which stood a gigantic glass cube.

The cube was freestanding, occupying the center of the hall-like room, but without touching its ceiling or walls.

The wall on the far side of the cube — a wall which divided this level in two — didn't quite reach the ceiling. Rather, it stopped about seven feet short of it, replaced by thick glass. Through that glass, Schofield saw a series of crisscrossing catwalks suspended above whatever was on the other side of the floor.

But it was the cube in front of him that held his immediate attention.

It was about the size of a large living room. Such a conclusion was easy to come to, given that the glass cube was filled with regular household furniture — a couch, a table, chairs, a TV with PlayStation 2 and, most strangely of all, a single bed draped with a Jar Jar Binks doona cover.

Some toys lay strewn about the glass-enclosed living room. Matchbox cars. A bright yellow Episode I spaceship. Some picture books.

Schofield shook his head.

It looked like the bedroom of a little boy.

It was at that precise moment that the occupant of the glass cube ambled casually out from a discreetly curtained off corner of the cube — the toilet.

Schofield's jaw dropped.

"What on earth is going on here?" he breathed.

There was a set of stairs on the northern side of the elevated lab leading down to the cube.

When he reached the base of the stairs, Schofield walked alongside the dividing wall that sealed this section off from the eastern side of the floor. Gant walked with him. Mother and Brainiac stayed up in the observation lab.

Schofield and Gant came to a halt before the giant freestanding cube, gazed into it.

The occupant of the glass cube saw them coming, and casually walked over to the edge of the completely sealed structure.

The occupant arrived at the clear glass barrier in front of Schofield, cocked his head to one side.

"Hey, mister," the little boy said.

"…Sir, I have complete visual blackout in the labs on Level 4. They've started shooting the surveillance cameras…"

"I'm surprised it took them this long," Caesar Russell said. "Where is the President?"

"Level 5, moving up the ramp to Level 4."

"And our people?"

"Alpha Unit is in position, waiting in the decompression area on Level 4. Delta Unit has been stopped in the animal containment area on Level 5."

Caesar smiled.

Although Delta was momentarily halted, the theory behind its movements was sound. Delta was forcing the President up through the complex — to where Alpha was waiting…

"Tell Delta to get through that doorway and push up the ramp, and cut off the President's retreat."

He couldn't have been more than six years old.

And with a bowl-shaped shock of brown hair that came down to his eyes, Disneyland T-shirt and Converse sneakers, he looked like any of a million American kids.

Only this kid lived inside a glass cube, in the belly of a top-secret United States Air Force base.

"Hey there," Schofield said warily.

"Why are you frightened?" the boy asked suddenly.

"Frightened?"

"Yes, you're frightened. What are you scared of?"

"How do you know I'm frightened?"

"I just know," the boy said cryptically. He spoke with such a serene, even voice that Schofield felt like he was in some kind of dream. "What's your name?" the boy asked.

"Shane. But most people call me Scarecrow."

"Scarecrow? That's a funny name."

"What about you?" Schofield said. "What's your name?"

"Kevin."

"And your last name?"

"What's a last name?" the boy asked.

Schofield paused.

"Where are you from, Kevin?"

The boy shrugged. "Here, I guess. I've never been anywhere else. Hey, do you want to know something?"

"Sure."

"Did you know that Twinkies give kids half their daily glucose requirement as well as giving them a tasty snack?"

"Uh, no, I didn't know that," Schofield said.

"And that reptiles are so sensitive to variations in the earth's magnetic field that some scientists say they can predict earthquakes? Oh, and nobody knows news like NBC," the boy said earnestly.

"Is that so?" Schofield exchanged a glance with Gant.

Just then, a loud mechanical noise echoed out from the other side of the dividing wall.

Schofield and Gant spun, and through the glass section at the top of the wall, saw the lights on the other side of Level 4 suddenly and unexpectedly go out.

The president of the United States moved cautiously up the ramp that linked Level 5 to Level 4, surrounded by three Secret Service agents, four United States Marines and a lone bookish scientist.

At the top of the ramp was a large retractable grille — kind of like a garage door mounted horizontally.

Juliet Janson hit a switch on the wall and the horizontal door began to slide open, revealing ominous darkness above it.

"Ramp door is opening…" One of the Tenth Squadron commandos inside the Level 4 decompression area whispered into his radio mike.

The other nine members of Alpha Unit were arrayed around the eastern section of the floor in various hiding places — their guns focused on the ramp in the center of the room. With their half gas masks and night-vision goggles they looked like a gang of insects waiting for the kill.

The horizontal door slid slowly open, casting a wide beam of light up into the darkened room. The only other light in the area came through the section of glass at the top of the wall which divided this level in two.

"Stay out of sight until they're all up on level ground," Kurt Logan said from his position. "No one gets out alive."

The two secret service agents Curtis and Ramondo stepped up into the semi-darkness first, armed with their Uzis. They were followed by Calvin Reeves and Elvis.

The President came next, with Juliet Janson by his side. He held a small SIG-Sauer P-228 pistol awkwardly in his hand. Juliet had given it to him, just in case.

Behind them came the scientist, Herbert Franklin, and bringing up the rear, Book II and Love Machine, both armed with pump-action shotguns.

As soon as he stepped up into the semidarkness, Book II didn't like it.

Various structures loomed around them. To his immediate right, on the southern side of the enormous room, was a long hexagonal chamber. To his left, shrouded in deep shadow, he saw eight telephone-booth-sized chambers. In the hazy light filtering through from the other side of the floor, he could just make out a series of catwalks high up near the ceiling, twenty feet above the floor.

As soon as Book II stepped clear of the floor-level doorway, its horizontal door slid smoothly back into place near his feet, sealing the exit.

Calvin had hit a switch in the floor nearby, closing it.

Book II swallowed. He would have preferred to keep that door open.

He flicked on a heavy police flashlight he had taken from the Level 5 anteroom. Holding it under the barrel of his shotgun, he played its beam over the room around them.

Calvin Reeves assumed command of strategy.

"You two," he whispered to Curtis and Ramondo, "check behind those telephone booths, then take the stairwell door. Haynes, Lewicky, Riley" — he said, using Elvis's, Love Machine's and Book II's surnames — "the area behind this decompression chamber, then secure that other door," he pointed toward the dividing wall. "Janson. You and I stay with the Boss."

Curtis and Ramondo disappeared in among the test chambers, then, moments later, reappeared at the stairwell end.

"No one back there," Ramondo said.

Book II, Elvis and Love Machine entered the darkness behind the decompression chamber. A narrow, empty section of floor greeted them. Nothing.

"Clear back here," Book II said, as the three Marines emerged from behind the long hexagonal chamber. They headed for the door in the dividing wall.

Reeves was following standard tactics in close-quarter, indoor engagements — where there is no sign of the enemy, secure all exits, then consolidate your position.

It was his biggest mistake.

Not only because it limited his options for retreat, but because it was exactly what Kurt Logan — already inside the room — was expecting him to do.

While Elvis and Love Machine headed for the dividing wall, Book II played his flashlight over the thirty-foot-long decompression chamber. It was absolutely huge.

At the end of the elongated chamber, he found a small glass porthole, and shone his light in through it.

What he saw made him jump.

An Asian face stared back at him, a man's face, pressed up against the glass.

The Asian man was smiling cheerfully.

And then he pointed up — toward the roof of the decompression chamber.

Book II followed the man's finger with his flashlight and peered up at the top of the decompression chamber — and found himself staring into the mantislike face of a 7th Squadron commando wearing night-vision goggles and a gas mask!

The flashlight was the only thing that saved Book II's life.

Primarily because it blinded the man hiding on top of the decompression chamber, if only for a moment. The man shied away from the light as his night-vision goggles magnified its beam by a factor of 150.

That was all the time Book II needed.

His shotgun boomed, blasting the commando's goggles to pieces, sending him flying off the top of the chamber.

It was a small victory, for at that exact moment, gunfire erupted around the darkened room as a legion of dark figures emerged from their positions on top of the decompression chamber and inside the telephone-booth-like test chambers and rained hell on Book's hapless group in the center of the floor.

Over by the stairwell door, Curtis and Ramondo were assaulted by a barrage of P-90 gunfire from both flanks. They were cut down where they stood, their bodies riddled with bloody wounds.

Juliet Janson crash-tackled the President, hurling him to the floor at the base of the decompression chamber, just as a volley of rounds whistled past their heads.

Calvin Reeves wasn't so lucky.

The crossfire of bullets ripped into the back of his head, and he jolted suddenly upright, then dropped to his knees, a look of stunned dismay on his face — as though he had done everything right, and still lost. Then his face smacked down hard against the floor, right next to the spot where Herbert Franklin lay with his head in his hands.

Bullets sizzled through the air.

Juliet yanked the President to his feet, firing with her free hand, dragging him toward the cover of the lab benches over by the dividing wall, when suddenly she saw a 7th Squadron commando rise up from the roof of the decompression chamber and take aim at the President's head.

She brought her gun around. Not fast enough…

Blam!

The 7th Squadron man's head exploded, his neck snapping backwards. His body tumbled off the decompression chamber.

Juliet spun to see who had fired the killing shot, but strangely she saw no one.

Book II, elvis and love machine all dived together behind a lab bench just as the benchtop was raked with gunfire. They returned fire, aiming at three Air Force commandos taking cover among the test booths.

But it quickly became clear that the Marines' makeshift assortment of shotguns and pistols was going to be no match for the rapid-fire P-90 machine guns of the 7th Squadron troops. The shelves around them shattered and splintered under the phenomenal weight of enemy fire.

Elvis ducked for cover. "Goddamn!" he yelled. "This is seriously fucked up!"

"No kidding," Book II shouted. He shucked his pump action and snapped up to fire, but when he appeared above the benchtop and loosed a couple of shots, he saw a very strange thing happen: he saw all three of the shadowy 7th Squadron shooters get yanked clean off their feet from behind.

Their guns went silent, and Book II found himself staring at an empty area of the battlefield.

"What the…?"

From his own position near the stairwell door, Alpha Unit's leader, Kurt Logan, saw what was happening.

"Fuck! There's someone else in here!" he yelled angrily into his microphone. "Somebody's picking us off!"

Suddenly the trooper beside Logan took a hit to the side of the head and half his skull exploded, spraying blood and brains everywhere.

"Fuck!" Logan had expected to lose maybe two of his men in the Shootout — but now he had lost six. "Alpha Unit, pull out! Everybody back to the stairwell now! Take emergency evac measures!"

He threw open the stairwell door, just as a line of bullets punctured the wall all around it, almost taking his head off. His remaining men dashed past him, out through the door, into the shelter of the eastern stairwell — but not before they had brutally fired down at their fallen comrades' bodies, peppering the corpses and the floor all around them with bullets.

Logan himself mercilessly strafed the body of a dead 7th Squadron man on the ground beside him. Then, when he was done, he disappeared through the doorway after the others and abruptly there was silence.

Book II was still crouched behind his lab bench with Elvis and Love Machine, acrid gunsmoke rising into the air all around them.

Silence.

Deafening silence.

Juliet Janson and the President lay on the floor five feet away from Book and the others, shielded by another bench, covered in dust and broken bits of plastic. Juliet still had her gun raised…

Whump!

A pair of boots landed with a loud thud on the benchtop above them.

They all snapped to look up — and found themselves staring at Captain Shane M. Schofield, USMC, dressed in full dress uniform, with two nickel-plated Berettas gripped in his hands.

He smiled at them. "Hey there."

Meanwhile, in bars and offices and homes around America and the world, people sat glued to their television sets.

Because there was so little footage, CNN and the overseas news networks just kept broadcasting the existing few minutes' worth of tape over and over again. Experts were brought in to give their opinions.

Government people sprang into action, although no one could really do anything substantive, since the exact location of the nightmarish affair was known only to a select few.

In any case, in a few minutes it would be eight o'clock Mountain Daylight Time and the people of the world tensely awaited the next hourly update.