Matthew Reilly - Area 7

"rods" very clearly. They weren't rods at all.

They were combat boots--sticking out from underneath

heat-deflecting covers.

The second satellite scan came through. Caesar grabbed

it. It was more recent than the first. Only a minute old.

It showed the same image as the first scan: the Emergency

Exit Vent and the desert floor around it.

Only now the cluster of combat boots surrounding the

Vent was nowhere in sight.

They were gone.

"Mmmm, very clever, Gunther," Caesar said softly.

"You brought the Reccondos with you."

there were bodies everywhere.

Christ, Schofield thought. It looks like a war has been

fought down here.

He wasn't far wrong.

Level 6 resembled a subway station—with a central elevated

concrete platform, flanked on either side by train

tracks. Like a regular train station, at both ends of the extremely

elongated space were a pair of train tunnels that disappeared

into darkness. Unlike a regular train station,

however, three of those four tunnels were sealed off by

heavy gray-steel blast doors.

On the central platform lay nine corpses, all dressed in

suits.

The nine members of the Secret Service's Primary Advance

Team.

Their bodies lay at all angles, bathed in blood, their

suits ripped to shreds by the penetration of countless bullets.

Beyond them, however, lay another set of bodies ... ten

of them—all dressed in black combat clothing.

7th Squadron men.

All dead.

Three of them lay spread-eagled on the platform, with

enormous star-shaped holes in their chests. Exit wounds. It

seemed that these men had been shot in their backs as they'd

clambered up onto the platform from the right-hand railway

track, their rib cages exploding outwards with the sudden

gaseous expansion of the hollow-pointed bullets that had hit

them.

More 7th Squadron men lay sprawled on the track itself,

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in various states of bloodiness. Three of them, Schofield

saw, bore very precise bullet holes in their foreheads.

Four of the 7th Squadron commandos, however, had not

been shot.

They lay slumped next to a steel door sunk into the wall

of the right-hand track--the entrance to the Emergency Exit

Vent.

Their throats had been slit from ear to ear.

They had been the first to die, Schofield thought, when

their assailants had emerged from the Vent behind them.

Schofield stepped out from the stairwell doorway, onto

the platform.

The underground station was empty.

It was then that he saw them.

They sat on either side of the central platform, one to

each track: X-rail engines.

"Whoa," he breathed.

X-rail systems are high-speed underground railway systems

used by the U.S. military for equipment delivery and

transport. X-rail engines--or "railcars" as they are known--

move so fast that they require four railway tracks for stability:

two tracks on the ground and two fastened to the ceiling

above the railcar.

The X-railcars that Schofield saw now exuded power

and speed.

They were about sixty feet long--about the size of regular

subway carriages--but their sleek curves and sharp

pointed noses were quite clearly designed for one purpose:

to slice through the air at tremendous speed.

Each train's design was based on that of the most well

known high-speed train in the world, the Japanese Bullet

Train. A steeply slanted nose, aerodynamically grooved

sides, even a couple of winglike canards jutting out from the

bow of each train were all included as part of the relentless

pursuit of speed.

The X-rail train to Schofield's left was actually made up

of two carriages connected by way of an accordion-like passageway.

The two railcars were positioned back-to-back,

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Matthew Reilly

their sharpened noses pointed in opposite directions. Both

engines were painted glistening white, so that they looked

like a pair of space shuttles connected tail-to-tail.

It was only when Schofield saw their struts, however,

that he realized why the system was called an "X"-rail.

Jutting out from both the front and rear edges of each

engine, swept back like the wings of a fast-flying bird, were

four elongated struts, which when seen from head-on would

look like an "X." The lower struts reached down to the wide

railway-like tracks beneath the railcar, while the upper

struts reached up to an identical pair of tracks attached to

the ceiling of the tunnel. All the struts, top and bottom,

were contoured like airplane wings to allow for maximum

speed.

Nestled up against the blast door behind the double

engined train was a smaller type of X-rail vehicle--a kind of

miniature car that was barely a third the size of the longer

engines. It was little more than a round two-person cockpit

mounted in the center of a set of four struts.

"Maintenance vehicle," Herbie said. "Used for tunnel

upkeep and cleaning. Faster than the bigger engines, but it

only holds two."

"Now why don't they have these on the New York subway?"

Elvis said, eyeing the double-engined X-rail train.

"Hey, over there," Brainiac said, pointing at the open

tunnel door at the far end of the left-hand railway track. It

was the only tunnel that wasn't sealed off by a blast door.

"That's door 62-West," Herbie Franklin said. "That's

how they got out."

"Then that's where we're going," Schofield said.

They all hurried for the twin-engined X-rail train, dashing

out into the open, halfway down the length of the station's

platform.

Schofield reached the forward engine's side door and

hit a button. With a soft shoosh, all the side doors of the two

rail cars--two doors per car--slid open.

Schofield stood inside the lead rail car's forward doorway,

the Football hanging from his waist, as he ushered the

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others inside. Book II dashed in first, headed straight for the

driver's cabin, Herbie close behind him.

The President and Juliet came next, rushing in through

the lead car's rear doorway. They were flanked by Gant and

Mother, and followed by Hot Rod Hagerty and Nick Tate--

always keen to stay close to the President.

Trailing last of all, still making their way across the

platform, were Elvis and Brainiac with the wounded Love

Machine draped between them.

"Elvis! Brainiac! Pick it up! Come on!"

Schofield looked back into the interior of the rail car.

The inside of the car looked like a cross between a standard

subway carriage and a freight car. It had a few rows of passenger

seats near the back, and a wide open empty space

near the front for cargo boxes and the like to be stored.

Schofield saw the President over by the rear door, about

forty feet away, slumping into a passenger seat in exhaustion.

And then it happened.

Completely without warning.

One moment, Schofield was looking down the interior

of the rail car, looking at the seated figure of the President;

the next, every single window on the platform side of the

rail car just exploded, glass spraying inwards under the

weight of a shocking amount of automatic gunfire, blasting

tiny shards of glass all over the inside of the carriage.

More gunfire followed--loud, relentless, booming. It

impacted hard against the right-hand flank of the X-rail engine,

so hard in fact that it caused the entire carriage to shudder

violently.

Schofield ducked, shielding his face from the rain of