Matthew Reilly - Area 7

the length of the narrow tunnel at almost a hundred miles an

hour, the dark wet walls of the passageway streaking past

them in a blur, like some ultrafast indoor roller-coaster ride.

Schofield concentrated hard as he drove.

It was so fast!

The tunnel itself was about twenty feet wide and

roughly cylindrical in shape, with its walls curving slightly

as they touched the shallow water surface. About two hundred

yards ahead of him, he saw a small point of light--the

end of the tunnel.

Suddenly Book II yelled, "It's closing!"

"What!"

"That other torpedo!"

Schofield spun.

The torpedo behind them was indeed moving in

quickly, closing the gap fast.

He snapped to look forward--saw the water-blasting jet

engines of the South African bipod five yards in front of

him. Damn it. Since each bipod was about thirteen feet

wide, the tunnel wasn't wide enough to pass.

Schofield gunned it left--but the South African bipod

cut him off. Tried right. Same deal.

"What do we do?" Book II called.

"I don't--" Schofield cut himself off. "Hang on!"

"What?"

"Just hold on tight!"

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The torpedo weaved its way under the surface of the

shallow water like a slithering snake, edging dangerously

close to Schofield's stern.

Schofield hit his thrusters, pulled closer to the South

African bipod in front of him--so that now the two sleek

twin-hulled boats were whipping along at a hundred miles

an hour in the tightly enclosed space barely afoot apart.

Schofield saw the South African driver turn quickly in

his seat and see them.

"Hello!" Schofield gave the man a wave. "Goodbye!"

And with that, just as the torpedo began to disappear

underneath the stern of Schofield's boat, Schofield jammed

his thrusters as far forward as they would go and yanked his

steering yoke hard to the right.

His speeding bipod swung quickly right, the whole

twin-hulled boat lifting completely out of the water as it ran up the curving right-hand wall of the tunnel. The bipod

bounced so high up the wall that for a moment it was actually

traveling at right angles to the earth.

The torpedo didn't care. With its original target lost, it

quickly overtook Schofield's wall-skimming boat and zeroed

in on the only other object in the vicinity--the South

African bipod.

The explosion in the narrow confines of the tunnel was

huge.

The South African bipod was blasted to bits--bits that

were flung all around the tunnel, followed by a rolling, roaring

fireball that filled the narrow cylindrical passageway.

Still moving fast, Schofield's twin-hulled boat swooped

down off the sloping wall and blasted right through the

charred remains of the South African bipod, exploding

through the billowing wall of fire that now filled the tunnel

before--suddenly, gloriously--it burst into the bright open

space of the awaiting canyon at the end of the passageway.

SCHOFIELD EASED BACK ON THE THROTTLE AND HIS BIPOD

ground to a halt in the middle of this new canyon.

His face and body were soaking wet, covered in spray.

Book II was the same.

He looked at this new high-walled canyon around them,

trying to get a bearing on where they were, and quickly realized

that this wasn't a new canyon at all—it was the same

subcanyon he had taken earlier when he and Book II had

separated from Brainiac. Indeed, as he now saw, he and

Book weren't far from the fork in the canyon where they had

split up from Brainiac.

Schofield revved the engine, started to swing around, to

continue his pursuit of the rogue South African bipod, when

suddenly he heard a strange thumping noise to his right.

He snapped around.

And saw another helicopter ... a fourth helicopter ... half-obscured by the vertical wall of the canyon, hovering

fifty feet above the water at the fork of the two subcanyons.

One thing about this helicopter struck him straight

away.

It wasn't a Penetrator. It was far too chunky, not nearly

sleek enough.

As he saw it swing around in midair, Schofield recognized

the chopper to be a CH-53E Super Stallion, a powerful heavy-lift transport bird like the two that usually accompanied Marine One. The Super Stallion was renowned for its toughness and strength—with its lowerable rear loading ramp, it could hold fifty-five fully equipped men and carry them into hell and back.

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The Air Force men must have brought this Super Stallion

along to carry the boy back in, as the attack-configured

Penetrators only had room for three crew members.

Judging by the way it hovered at the fork of the two

canyons, however, slowly turning laterally, Schofield figured

that this chopper was more than just a prisoner transport--it

was providing support of some kind.

Schofield spun his bipod around, headed slowly and

cautiously toward the Super Stallion.

"What are you doing?" Book II asked. "The kid is that way."

"I know," Schofield said, "but the way I see it, we're not

going to catch that boy on the water. It's time we got into the air."

the three 7th squadron commandos inside the super

Stallion all wore headsets. One flew the chopper while the

other two spoke into microphones, speaking quickly amid

the roar of the helicopter's rotor noise.

They, too, were searching for the rogue South African

bipod that had slipped away after the near collision in the

X-intersection.

"--Penetrator One, this is Looking Glass," one of them

said. "There's a canyon coming up on your right, take that. It

might have gone down that way--"

The other radioman said, "Penetrator Two. Cut back to

the north and check that slot canyon on your left--"

Matthew Reilly

A map of the canyon system glowed green on each of

the men's computer screens.

REAL TIME GEOSAT IMAGE

SATELLITE: xs-0356-070

TARGET AREA: Powell (lake) ct.

GPS GRID: 114°U"I2"W; 23*>45'11"N

OVERLAY: KILE usavsa (u) ?>W\v

The three illuminated dots on the left--P-1, P-2 and

P-3--indicated the three Penetrators prowling the canyons

for the rogue bipod. The stationary dot near the mesa crater,

"L-G," depicted the Super Stallion, call-sign "Looking

Glass." The black line indicated the path of the chase so far.

While the two radiomen continued to issue instructions,

the pilot peered forward through the bubblelike canopy of the

helicopter, his eyes searching the canyon in front of them.

Amid the roar of the rotor blades and the sound of their

own voices in their headsets, none of the crew heard the dull thunk! of a Maghook hitting the underside of their mighty

chopper.

Schofield's bipod sat in the water directly beneath the

Super Stallion--bucking and bouncing on the churning

wash generated by the helicopter's downdraft--having approached

the big transport bird from behind.

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A thin threadlike rope connected the bipod to the underside

of the Super Stallion fifty feet above it--the black

Kevlar fiber rope of Schofield's Maghook.

And then suddenly a tiny figure whizzed up into the air

toward the chopper, reeled upward by the Maghook's internal

spooler.

Schofield.

In a second, he was hanging from the Super Stallion's

underbelly--fifty feet above the water's surface, right next

to an emergency access hatch built into the big helicopter's

floor--gripping the Maghook as it clung to the helicopter's

underside by virtue of its bulbous magnetic head.