Matthew Reilly - Area 7

simple fact that they cannot talk about their greatest victories.

And so it was with Dave Fairfax. He might have

cracked PGP, but he could never talk about it, and in the

great maze of government work, he had simply been given a

small pay raise and then moved on to the next job.

AND SO HERE HE WAS IN SPACE DIVISION, ANALYZING A SERIES

of unauthorized phone transmissions coming into and out of

some remote Air Force base in Utah.

In a similarly isolated room across the hall from him,

however, was where all the good stuff was happening today.

A joint taskforce of DIA and NSA cryptanalysts were tracking

the encrypted signals coming out of the Chinese space

shuttle that had launched from Xichang a few days earlier.

Now that was interesting, Fairfax thought. Better than

decrypting some phone calls from a stupid Air Force base in

the desert.

The recorded phone calls appeared on Fairfax's computer

screen as a waterfall of cascading numbers--the

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mathematical representation of a series of telephone conversations

that had taken place in Utah over the last couple of

months.

A huge pair of headphones covered Fairfax's ears, emitting

a steady stream of garbled static. His eyes were fixed on

the screen.

One thing was clear: whoever had made these calls had

encrypted them well. Fairfax had been at this for the last two

days.

He tried a few older algorithms.

Nothing.

He tried a few newer ones.

Nothing.

He could do this all month if he had to.

He tried a program he had developed to crack Vodafone's

newest encryption system--

--"Kan bevestig dot in-enting plaasvind--"

For a brief second, a strange guttural language materialized

in his ears.

Fairfax's eyes glowed to life.

Gotcha ...

He tried the program on some of the other telephone

conversations.

And in a miraculous instant, formless static suddenly

became clear voices speaking in a foreign tongue, interspersed

with the odd sentence of English.

"--Toetse op laaste paging word op die vier-entwientigste

verwag. Wat van die onttrekkings eenheid?--"

"--Reccondo span is alreeds weggestuur--"

"--Voorbereidings onderweg. Vroeg oggend. Beste tyd

vir onttrekking--"

"--everything is in place. Confirm that it's the third--"

"--Ontrekking kan 'n probleem wees. Gestel ons ge

bruik die Hoeb land hier naby. Verstaan hy is 'n lid van Die

Organisasie-- "

"--Sal die instruksies oordra--"

"--mission is a go--"

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"--Die Reccondos is gereed. Verwagte aankoms by be

plande bestemming binne nege dae--"

Fairfax's eyes gleamed as he gazed at the screen. No code is unbreakable. He reached for his phone.

after the short battle in the decompression area,

Schofield and the others retreated to the opposite side of

Level 4, to the observation lab overlooking the giant cube ... locking the doors behind them and then blasting the security

keypads with gunshots.

Of all the places Schofield had seen so far, this area was

the most easily defended.

Barring the regular personnel elevator, it had only two

entrances: the short ramp leading back to the aircraft elevator

and the doorway leading to the staircase that went down

to the cube.

Juliet Janson flopped to the floor of the lab, exhausted.

The President did the same.

The Marines ... Book II, Elvis, Love Machine, Mother

and Brainiac—formed a huddle and quickly told each other

of their respective adventures inside flooding elevator shafts

and runaway AWACS planes.

The last member of their rag-tag group ... the lab

coat-wearing scientist, Herbert Franklin ... took a seat in the

corner.

Schofield and Gant remained standing.

They had a few weapons now, gear that they had scavenged

from the bodies of the 7th Squadron men in the decompression

area ... guns, a few radio headsets, three

extremely high-powered grenades made of RDX compound,

and two thumbtack-sized lock-destroying explosives known

as Lock-Blasters.

Logan's men, however, had spoiled well.

The brutal gunfire that they had directed at their own

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fallen men hadn't been intended as kill shots--it had been

intended to destroy any weapons the dead men might offer

their enemy. Consequently, only one P-90 assault rifle had

been salvaged from the battlefield. All the others had been

shattered, as had many of the fallen men's semiautomatic

pistols.

"Mother," Schofield said, tossing the P-90 to her, "keep

an eye on the ramp entrance. Elvis, the stairs going down to

the cube."

Mother and Elvis dashed off.

Although just about everyone else in the world would

have gone straight over to the President at that time,

Schofield didn't. He could see that the President hadn't been

injured--still had all his fingers and toes--and so long as his

heart was still beating, he was all right.

Instead, Schofield went over to Juliet Janson.

"Update," was all he said.

Janson glanced up at Schofield, looked into the reflective

silver lenses of his wraparound antiflash glasses.

She'd seen him around the Presidential helicopters before,

but had never really talked to him. She'd heard about

him from the other agents, though. He was the one from that

thing in Antarctica.

"They ambushed us in the Level 3 common room, just

after the message came over the Emergency Broadcast System,"

she said. "Been right on our tails ever since. We hit the

stairwell, made for the Emergency Exit Vent down on Level

6, but they were waiting for us. We came back up the

stairs--they were waiting for us again. We diverted through

5 and came up the ramp to 4--and they were waiting for us

again."

"Casualties?"

"Eight agents from the President's Personal Detail

killed. Plus the whole Advance Team down on Level 6. That

makes seventeen in total."

"Frank Cutler?"

"Gone."

"Anything else?"

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Janson nodded at the little lab-coated man. "We picked

him up on 5, before we walked into that ambush in the decompression

room. Says he's a scientist working here."

Schofield glanced over at Herbert Franklin. Small and

bespectacled, the little man just bowed his head in silence.

"What about you?" Janson asked.

Schofield shrugged. "We were up in the main hangar

when it went down. Scrambled down the ventilation shaft,

arrived in one of the underground hangars, destroyed a

Humvee, crashed an AWACS plane."

"The usual," Gant added.

"How did you know about the ambush next door?" Janson

asked.

Schofield shrugged. "We were down next to the cube

when the lights went out in the decompression area. We

were hoping it was someone friendly, trying to hide from

the security cameras. So we checked it out from above, from

the catwalks. When we saw who it was, saw them surrounding

that ramp in the middle of the room, we figured they

were waiting for the big score"--he nodded at the President --"so we set up a little counter-ambush of our own."

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM, BRAINIAC SAT DOWN NEXT

to the President.

"Mr. President," he said with deference.

"Hello," the President replied.

"How you feelin', sir?"

"Well, I'm still alive, which is a good start, considering

the circumstances. What's your name, son?"

"Gorman, sir. Corporal Gus Gorman, but most of the

guys just call me Brainiac."