Matthew Reilly - Area 7

right caught his eye. He spun to look down the long high walled canyonway that stretched away from him to the west.

He saw one of the South African bipods disappearing

down the elongated canyonway--all on its own.

It was the bipod that had shot straight through the intersection,

from the bottom-right corner to the top-left. Curiously,

it was not even trying to return to give aid to the

hydrofoil.

Then, in a blink, the tiny bipod was gone, vanishing

down a narrow side canyon at the far end of the larger

canyonway.

And it hit Schofield.

The boy wasn't in the hydrofoil.

He was in the bipod.

That bipod.

"Oh, no," Schofield breathed as he snapped round and

saw Brainiac's speeding bipod disappear around a bend in

the southern canyon in pursuit of the hydrofoil.

"Brainiac ..."

brainiac's sand-colored bipod was moving fast.

Really, really fast.

It came alongside the speeding South African hydrofoil,

the two rivercraft hurtling down the narrow rock-walled

canal like a pair of runaway stock cars, with two of the Air

Force Penetrators firing wildly down on them as they did so.

"Brainiac, can--you hear--me--?" Schofield's garbled

250

Matthew Reilly

voice said in Brainiac's ears, but in the roar of bullets, engines

and helicopter rotors, the young Marine couldn't make

out Schofield's words.

Brainiac got Herbie to use his pod's controls and bring

the bipod in close to the speeding hydrofoil while Brainiac

himself climbed out of his seat.

He watched the hydrofoil as they sped alongside it--saw its two strutlike bow-mounted skids carving through the

water--but he couldn't see inside the big speedboat's

smoked-glass windows.

Then, with a deep breath, he jumped--across the gap

between the two speeding boats--landing on his feet, on the

foot-wide side decking of the moving hydrofoil.

"--ainiac--out--of there!-- "

Schofield's voice was a blur.

Brainiac grabbed a handhold on the roof of the speeding

hydrofoil. He wasn't sure what he expected to happen next.

Perhaps some resistance--like someone throwing open one

of the hydrofoil's side doors and firing on him. But no resistance

came.

Brainiac didn't care. He just dive-rolled onto the hydrofoil's

forward deck and blasted out the vehicle's windshield.

Glass flew everywhere and a second later, when the smoke

cleared, he saw the inside of the boat's cabin.

And he frowned.

The hydrofoil's cabin was empty.

Brainiac climbed inside--

--and saw the hydrofoil's steering controls moving of

their own accord, guided by some kind of computer

controlled navigation system, an anti-impedance system that

directed the vehicle away from all other objects, rock walls

and boats alike.

Then suddenly, in the silence of the cabin, Schofield's

voice was loud and alive in Brainiac's ear.

"For God's sake, Brainiac! Get out of there! The hydrofoil

is a decoy! The hydrofoil is a decoy! "

And at that moment, to his absolute horror, Brainiac heard a shrill beep that would signal the end of his life. [

area 7 251

A second later, the entire hydrofoil blew, its windows

blasting outwards in a shockingly violent explosion.

The force of the blast flipped Herbie's bipod, too, causing

the little speedboat to flip over onto its top and skid in a

gigantic spraying mess across the surface of the canal, before

it smashed into the wall of the canyon and stopped.

After the impact, the crumpled bipod just lay still,

droplets of water raining down all around it.

BACK AT THE X-INTERSECTION, SCHOFIELD WAS ABOUT TO

take off after the rogue South African bipod that had skulked

away from the fight when, from completely out of nowhere,

a line of bullet geysers shattered the water all around his

boat.

It was the fourth and last South African bipod firing on

him.

It had started up again and was now heading eastward, back into the canyon that led to the crater with the mesa in

its middle.

Before Schofield could even think of a response, two

parallel lines of much bigger bullet geysers erupted all

around his sand-colored bipod. They hit so close, their spray

spattered his face.

This barrage of fire came from the third Penetrator helicopter,

which still hovered above the X-shaped junction,

turning laterally in midair, searching for Kevin. The black

chopper's six-barreled Vulcan cannon roared loudly as it

spewed forth a long tongue of bright yellow flames.

Schofield gunned the engine of his bipod, wheeling it

around to the left, away from the Penetrator's gunfire--but

also, unfortunately, away from the rogue bipod that he was

sure contained Kevin--instead taking off after the other South African bipod that had headed back east, toward the

crater with the mesa in it.

The Penetrator gave chase, lowering its nose, powering

forward like a charging T-rex, its thrusters igniting.

Schofield's bipod skimmed across the surface of the

area 7 253

water, its hull barely even touching the waves, trailing the

South African bipod through the winding rock-walled

canyon, the sharklike Penetrator looming in the air behind it.

"Any ideas?" Book II yelled from the gunner's pod.

"Yeah!" Schofield called. "Don't die!"

The Penetrator opened fire and two more lines of geysers

hit the water all around their speeding bipod.

Schofield banked left--hard--so hard that the boat's

left-hand pod lifted clear out of the water, just as a line of

bullets ripped up the choppy surface beneath it.

And then, just then, two torpedoes dropped out of the

bottom of the Penetrator.

Schofield saw them and his eyes widened.

"Oh, man."

One after the other, the torpedoes splashed down into

the water and a second later two identical fingers of bubbles

took off after the two bipods, charging up the water-filled

canyon behind them.

One torpedo immediately zeroed in on Schofield's boat.

Schofield cut right, angling for an oddly shaped boulder

that jutted out from the right-hand wall of the canyon. The

gently sloping boulder looked remarkably like a ramp ...

The torpedo closed in.

Schofield's bipod whipped across the water. Book II

saw what Schofield was aiming for--the boulder ...

The bipod hit the rock ramp, just as the torpedo swung

in underneath its jet engines and--

--the bipod shot up out of the water, its exposed twin

hulls rocketing up the length of the rock--scratching,

shrieking, screeching--and then suddenly, whoosh!, like a

stunt car leaping up into the sky, it shot off the end of the

sloping boulder, just as the torpedo detonated against the

base of the ramp, shattering it into a thousand fragments that

went showering upwards in a glorious flower-shaped formation

behind the soaring bipod.

The double-hulled boat landed in the water with a

splash, still moving fast.

254

Matthew Reilly

Schofield looked forward just in time to see the South

African bipod up ahead of him veering left, heading for a

semicircular tunnel burrowed into the left-hand wall of the

canyon.

He took off after it, the remaining torpedo charging

through the water behind him like a hungry crocodile.

The South African bipod shot into the tunnel.

A second later, Schofield's twin-hulled boat whipped

into the darkness behind it.

The torpedo swung in after them.

their headlamps blazing, the two bipods zoomed down