Matthew Reilly - Area 7

righting themselves without any loss of speed. They

thundered over Schofield and his team, powering toward the

South African boats as they disappeared inside the slot

canyon to the west.

area 7 245

The choppers just shot into the narrow canyon after

them.

Schofield's jaw dropped.

In a word, the three helicopters looked awesome. Sleek

and mean and fast. They looked like nothing he had ever

seen before.

They were each painted gunmetal black and looked like

a cross between an attack helicopter and a fighter jet. Each

helicopter had a regular helicopter rotor and a sharply

pointed nose, but they were also possessed of downwardly

canted wings that extended out from their frames.

They were AH-77 Penetrators--medium-sized attack

choppers; a new kind of fighter-chopper hybrid that combined

the hovering mobility of a helicopter with the superior

straight-line speed of a fighter jet. With their black radar

absorbent paint, swept-back wings and severe-looking cockpits,

they looked like a pack of angry airborne sharks.

The three Penetrators shot forward, banking into the

narrow canyon after the four South African speedboats,

completely ignoring Schofield and his men.

And in a fleeting instant, Schofield had a strange

thought. What the hell were the Air Force people doing out

here? Weren't they after the President? What did they care

about Kevin?

In any case, this was now a three-way chase.

"Sir!" Brainiac's voice came in. "What do we do?"

Schofield paused. Decision time. A tornado of thoughts

whizzed through his mind--Kevin, Botha, the Air Force, the

President, and the unstoppable countdown on the Football

that at some point would force him to give up on this chase

and turn back ...

He made the call.

"We go in after them," he said.

schofield's bipod roared into the canyon the south

Africans and the Penetrators had taken, Brainiac and Herbie's bipod close behind it.

It was a particularly winding canyon, this one--left then right, twisting and turning--but, thankfully, sheltered

from the sandstorm.

About a hundred yards in, however, it forked into two

subcanyons, one heading left, the other right. Little did any of them know that the subcanyons of Lake Powell have a

habit of swinging back on each other, like interweaving

pieces of string, forming multiple intersections ...

Schofield saw the three Air Force choppers split up at

the fork--one going left, two going right. The four South

African rivercraft up ahead of them must have already split

up.

"Brainiac!" he yelled. "Go left! We'll take the right! Remember, all we want is the boy! We get him and then we high-tail it out of here, okay?"

"Got it, Scarecrow."

The two bipods parted--taking separate canyons--Schofield peeling right, Brainiac banking left.

for schofield, it was like entering a fireworks show-- a spectacular display of tracer bullets, missiles and dangerously

exploding rock.

He saw the two black choppers eighty yards up ahead-- trailing the lead hydrofoil and one of the South African

bipods. The two speeding helicopters stayed below the

canyon's rim--the raging sandstorm above the canyon system

area 7 24,

preventing them from going any higher--banking an<

turning with the bends of the winding canyon, their roto

blades thumping.

Tracer bullets streamed out from their nose-mounted

Vulcan cannons. Air-to-ground missiles streaked out from

their wings and blasted into the rocky walls of the canyon all

around the two South African speedboats.

For their part, the South Africans weren't exactly

either.

The men in the bipod had come prepared to protect the

lead hydrofoil--they had a shoulder-mounted Stinger missile launcher. While one man drove the bipod, the gunner

thrust the Stinger onto his shoulder and fired it up at the

trailing Penetrators.

But the Penetrators must have had the same ultrapowerful

electronic countermeasures that the AWACs planes inside

Area 7 had, because the Stingers just shot past them

spiraling wildly, careering into the walls of the canyon

where they detonated, sending showers of car-sized boulders

splashing down into the canal below--boulders which

Schofield had to swerve to avoid.

And then suddenly Schofield saw a long, white object

drop out of a hatch in the belly of one of the black choppers

and, dangling from a small drogue parachute, splash down

into the water.

A second later, the water beneath the chopper churned

into a froth and he saw a finger of bubbles stretch out from

the roiling section of water, heading straight for the South

African bipod.

It was a torpedo!

Five seconds later, completely without warning, the

speeding bipod exploded violently.

The force of the blast was so strong that it lifted the fast

moving bipod clear off the water's surface. Indeed, such was

the bipod's velocity that it tumbled end over end, totally out

of control, bouncing across the water's surface like a skimming

stone until it slammed--top-first--into the hard rock

wall of the canyon and blew apart.

248

Matthew Reilly

Schofield drove hard, closing in, now fifty yards behind

the action. He needed to catch up, but the South Africans

had had too much of a head-start.

And then abruptly the canyon turned ...

... and intersected with its twin from the left--the subcanyon that Brainiac and Herbie had taken in pursuit of the

other two South African bipods--so that now the two

canyons formed a giant X-shaped junction.

And it happened.

the white south african hydrofoil shot into the intersection

from the top-right-hand corner of the X--at exactly

the same time as one of its own bipods entered the junction

from the bottom-right.

Speeding rivercraft shot every which way.

The hydrofoil and the bipod swerved to avoid each

other. Both fishtailed wildly on the water, sending a wall of

spray flying into the air--and losing all of their forward momentum

in an instant.

The second South African bipod from Brainiac's

canyon never even had a chance to slow down.

It just shot straight through the X-shaped junction like a

bullet--between the two boats that had been forced to stop,

blasting spectacularly through their spray--before zooming

off down the canyon ahead of it, heading west.

The three Air Force Penetrators--two from Schofield's

canyon, one from the other canyon--were also thrown into

chaos. One managed to haul itself to a halt, while the other

two whipped through the airspace above the junction, crossing

paths, missing each other by inches, and overshooting

the momentarily stalled boats below.

It was all Schofield needed.

Now he could catch up.

in his bipod, brainiac was still eighty yards short of

the X-junction.

He saw the mayhem in front of him--saw the restarting

hydrofoil, and the stalled South African bipod.

area 7 249

His gaze fell instantly on the hydrofoil, which was now

rotating laterally in the water, preparing to resume its run

down the canyon to the bottom-left of the X.

Brainiac cut a beeline for it.

SCHOFIELD ARRIVED AT THE JUNCTION JUST AS THE HYDROFOIL

peeled away to the south and Brainiac's bipod swooped into

the narrow canyon fast behind it.

"I'm going after the hydrofoil, sir!"

"I see you!" Schofield yelled.

He was about to follow when some movement to his