Matthew Reilly - Area 7

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!"

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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

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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."

50

75

100

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."

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100

"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

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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

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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.