Matthew Reilly - Area 7

situation. And it certainly didn't help to watch him gloat.

So while Caesar spoke on the television and the others

watched him, Gant investigated the sliding door set into the

floor that led down to Level 5.

She could just make out muffled shouts coming from

the other side of it. People yelling.

She hit the door open switch, raised her gun. The horizontal

door slid away.

The shouts became screams as the prisoners down on

Level 5 heard the door grind open.

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Matthew Reilly

Gant peered down the ramp.

"Good God," she breathed.

She saw the water immediately, saw it lapping against

the ramp below her. In fact, the ramp simply disappeared

into it.

While Caesar's voice continued to boom, she edged

down the sloping walkway, until her spit-polished dress

shoes stepped ankle-deep into the water.

She crouched down on the ramp, looked out over Level 5.

What she saw shook her.

The entire level was flooded.

Easily to chest height.

It was terribly dark as well, which only served to make

the flooded cell block look all the more frightening.

The inky-black indoor lake stretched away from her, to

the far end of the floor, its liquid form slipping in through the

bars of all the cells--cells which held an assortment of the

most wretched-looking individuals Gant had ever seen.

And then the prisoners saw her.

Screams, shrieks, wails. They shook the bars of their

cells, cells that they would ultimately drown in if the water

level continued to rise.

Like Schofield, Gant hadn't seen the cell bay before. She had only heard the President talk about it when he'd told

them about the Sinovirus and its vaccine, Kevin.

"We'd better go." Juliet appeared at her shoulder. Caesar's

broadcast, it seemed, had concluded.

"They're going to drown ..." Gant said, as Janson

pulled her gently back up the ramp to Level 4.

"Believe me, drowning's too good for the likes of

them," the Secret Service agent said. "Come on. Let's find somewhere to hole up. I don't know about you, but I sure as

hell need a rest."

She hit the door close button and the horizontal door

slid shut, cutting off the prisoners' pained shouts.

Then, with the President and Mother and Hot Rod and

Tate in tow behind them, Gant and Juliet headed for the

western side of the floor.

area 7 229

None of them noticed the long decompression chamber

as they departed.

Although from a distance it appeared normal, had they

looked at it more closely, they would have seen that the

timer-activated lock on its pressurized door had timed out

and unlocked itself.

The door was no longer fully closed.

The decompression chamber was now empty.

It was 9:06 a.m.

"--bravo leader, come in. report--" one of the radio operators said into his microphone.

"--Control, this is Bravo Leader. We have suffered serious

casualties on the X-rail platform. Five dead, two

wounded. One of their guys had an RDX grenade and did a

fucking kamikaze--"

"--What about the President?" the radio man cut in.

"--The President is still in the complex. I repeat: The

President is still in the complex. Last seen heading back up

the fire stairs. Some of his Marine bodyguards, though, took

off down the tunnel in the second X-rail train--"

"--And the Football?"

"--No longer with the President. One of my boys

swears that he saw that Schofield guy with it on the train--"

"--Thank you, Bravo Leader. Bring your wounded up

to the main hangar for treatment. We'll get Echo to flush the

lower floors for the President now--"

"GUNTHER botha used to be a colonel in south africa's

Medical Battalion," Herbie said, as the X-rail car hurtled

down the tunnel toward the desert lake.

"The Meds," Schofield said distastefully.

"You've heard of them?"

"Yes. Not a very nice group to be involved with. They

were an offensive bio-medical unit, a specialized subdivision

of the Reccondos. Elite troops who used biological weapons

in the field."

"That's right," Herbie said. "See, before Mandela, the

South Africans were the world leaders in biowarfare. And,

area 7 237

boy, did we love them. Ever wondered why we didn't do all

that much about defeating apartheid? Do you know who

brought us the Soviet flesh-eating bug, necrotizing fasciitis?

The South Africans.

"But as good as they were, one thing still eluded them.

They'd been trying for years to develop a virus that would

kill blacks but not whites, but they never found it. Botha was

one of their leading lights and apparently he was on the

verge of a breakthrough when the apartheid regime was

overthrown.

"As it turned out," Herbie said, "Botha's core research

could be adapted for use on something the American government

was working on--a vaccine against the Sinovirus, a

virus that distinguishes between races."

"So we brought him here," Schofield said.

"That's right," Herbie said.

"And now it seems we're discovering that Professor

Botha isn't all that trustworthy."

"It would seem so."

Schofield paused for a moment, thinking.

"And he's not working alone," he said.

"How do you know?"

Schofield said, "All those dead 7th Squadron men we

saw when we arrived on Level 6 earlier. I've never met Gunther Botha before, but I'm pretty sure he couldn't wipe out

an entire 7th Squadron unit all by himself. Remember,

Botha opened three doors, the two X-rail doors and the

Emergency Escape Vent--which opens onto Level 6.

"He let a team of men in through that vent. They were

the ones who killed the 7th Squadron men there. Judging by

the bullet wounds in their backs and the amount of slashed

throats, I presume Botha's friends caught the 7th Squadron

men from behind." Schofield bit his lip. "But that still

doesn't tell me what I want to know."

"And what is that?"

Schofield looked up. "If Botha is selling us out, what I

want to know is: who is he selling us out to?"

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Matthew Reilly

"IT WAS A SECURITY RISK FROM THE START, BUT WE COULDN'T

have done it without him," the President said.

He and the others were sitting in the observation lab

overlooking the smashed glass cube on Level 4, catching

their breath.

When they'd arrived moments earlier, they'd been confronted

by the sight of a thick circular ceiling hatch lying on

the floor of the lab.

The 7th Squadron had been through here.

Which hopefully meant they wouldn't be coming back

soon. It would be a good place to hide, for a while.

Libby Gant was the only one who stood--still on edge--gazing down at the destroyed cube. The underground complex had grown strangely silent since Caesar's last update,

as if the 7th Squadron weren't prowling around it anymore,

as if they had stopped hounding the President, at least

for the moment.

Gant didn't like it.

It meant something was up.

And so she had just asked the President about Gunther

Botha, the man who had taken Kevin.

"Botha knew more about racially targeted viruses than

all of our scientists put together," the President went on.

"But he had a history."

"With the apartheid regime?"

"Yes, and beyond that. What we feared the most were

his links with a group called Die Organisasie, or the Organisation.

It's an underground network comprising former

apartheid ministers, wealthy South African landowners, former

elite troops from the South African armed forces, and