Matthew Reilly - Area 7

marked with an enormous black-painted "4."

The wide concrete elevator shaft stretched up into the

air above the President and his Secret Service Detail like an

oversized vertical tunnel. The bright artificial light of the

ground-level hangar was but a small square of white now-- three hundred feet straight up.

No sooner had the elevator stopped than the massive

steel door in front of it rumbled upward. Colonel Jerome

Harper led the way, walking and talking quickly:

"This facility was once the headquarters for the North

American Air Defense Command--NORAD--before

NORAD was moved to a more modern facility built underneath

Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado in 1975.

"The complex is surrounded by a two-foot-thick titanium

outer wall, which is itself buried beneath one hundred

feet of solid granite. Like the Cheyenne Mountain complex,

it is designed to withstand a direct hit from a thermonuclear

missile."

Harper handed the President a sheet of paper, on which

was a schematic diagram of the subterranean structure.

The hangar appeared at the top of the diagram--at

ground level, capped by the low mountain--then the wide

aircraft elevator shaft led downwards, until it met a multileveled

structure built deep within the earth.

Harper said, "The underground complex contains six

levels, the first two of which--Levels 1 and 2--are storage

hangars for high-risk aircraft, much like the ones you saw at

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Matthew Reilly

Area 8 earlier this morning. Level 3 houses communications

and staff living quarters. Level 5 is confinement. And Level

6 is the X-Rail system.

"Each level is completely scalable to both radiation and

airborne contagions, and the whole facility, if locked down,

is capable of living off a self-contained supply of oxygen for

thirty days. Food supplies are kept in a storage Area on Level

3. Water supply is kept in a 100-million-gallon tank in the

Level 1 hangar."

Their group came to a short upwardly sloping corridor,

at the end of which sat a squat solid-looking door that

looked like a gigantic safe. An Air Force man hurriedly began

opening it.

"Project Fortune was stationed here four years ago, after

the first viable embryo reached maturity," Harper said.

"Now, at last, it has reached a stage where it can be put to

use."

The President waited patiently while the three-foot

thick door was pulled open.

Frank Cutler and the eight other members of the President's

personal Detail stood behind him--silent, impassive,

invisible. At three-minute intervals, Cutler would silently

check his earpiece for the All-Clear beacons from both of

his advance teams. The beacons came in loud and clear.

Then, finally, the door swung open, and the President

looked casually beyond it.

And his jaw dropped.

"Oh ... my ... God ..."

"MY MONEY'S ON THE SUPERBOMB," ELVIS HAYNES SAID AS HE

leaned back in his chair.

Elvis, Schofield, Gant and Mother were sitting in one of

the glass-walled offices by the main doors of the hangar.

With them were Colonels Grier and Dallas, all the other

Marines stationed on board the Presidential helicopters, as

well as the three remaining Secret Service agents.

In a not-so-subtle division of management and labor, all

the White House people who had remained up in the hangar

either sat in the other glass-walled office on the southern

side of the hangar or worked inside their helicopters, which,

they said, were more suited to their rank than the spartan Air

Force offices.

They also—so Nicholas Tate had said to Gant when he

had invited her to stay on Marine One with him—had better

coffee, plunger stuff.

Gant went with Schofield and the others.

Ramrod Hagerty, on the other hand, sat over with the

White House people.

"No way, man," a small bespectacled corporal named

Gus Gorman said. "The superbomb doesn't exist."

Gorman was a thin, nerdy looking individual, with thick

glasses, a big nose and a narrow scrawny neck. Not even full

dress uniform could make him look sexy. Popular with the

other troops for his almost-photographic memory and sharp

wit, his call-sign "Brainiac" was a compliment, not an insult.

"Bullshit," Elvis said, "DARPA made it in the nineties,

in conjunction with the Navy ..."

"But they could never make it work. Thing depended on

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Matthew Reilly

some element only found in meteorites and they could never

find a live specimen of it"

"You guys'll believe anything," a softly spoken voice

said from the other side of the office.

Everybody turned, Schofield included.

The speaker was a new sergeant to the unit--an intense

young man with a heavy-browed face, pug nose and deep

brown eyes. He didn't talk much, so when he did it was

something of a special occasion for the team. At first, it had

been a trait which some had mistaken for contempt. But

soon it was discovered that Sergeant Buck Riley Jr. just

didn't like to talk unnecessarily.

Riley Jr. was the son of a highly regarded Marine staff

sergeant. His father, Buck Riley Sr., had also been a man

Shane Schofield had known better than most.

They had met under fire--back when Schofield had

been in a god-almighty mess in Bosnia and Riley Sr. had

been on the rescue team. They had become good friends and

Riley Sr. had become Schofield's loyal staff sergeant. Sadly,

he had also been on that fateful mission to Antarctica-- where he had been murdered in the most brutal fashion by

an enemy whose name Schofield had been forbidden to

mention by the Official Secrets Act.

Sergeant Buck Riley Jr.--silent, intense and serious-- bore his father's call-sign with pride. He was known

throughout the unit simply as "Book II"

Book II looked at Elvis and Brainiac. "Do you guys seriously

believe that DARPA has built a bomb that can destroy

a third of the earth's mass?"

"Yes," Elvis said.

"No," Brainiac said.

"Well, they haven't The superbomb is an urban

myth," Book II said, "designed to keep the conspiracy theorists

on the Internet and the gossipy old women in the

United States Marine Corps happy. Want me to give you a

couple more examples? That the FBI sends agents into

prisons as deep cover operatives. That the United States

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Air Force has nuclear bombers stationed in commercial

hangars at every major airport in the United States for use

in the event of a sudden outbreak of war. That USAMRIID

has developed a cure for AIDS but hasn't been allowed to

release it. That the Air Force has developed a magnetic

propulsion system that allows vehicles to float on air. That

the losing tenderer in the bid to build the stealth bomber

proposed a supersonic plane that could attain complete invisibility

through the use of nuclear-powered air refraction

--and built the plane anyway, even after they lost the

bid. Heard any of those?"

"No," Elvis said, "but they're way cool"

"What about you, Captain?" Book II turned to

Schofield. "You heard any of those before?"

Schofield held the young sergeant's gaze. "I've heard

about the last one, but not the others."

He turned away from the debate, scanning the office

around him.

He frowned. Someone was missing.

And then it hit him.

"Hey, where's Warrant Officer Webster?" he said.

the president of the united states stared out through

the slanted observation windows, his mouth agape.