Matthew Reilly - Area 7

new lungful of air.

They headed straight for the vertical access shaft, used

its rung ladder to pull themselves up it.

The shaft was a tight cylinder, with earthen doorways

opening off it every ten feet or so. Climbing it was like

climbing up a very narrow sewer pipe.

Schofield led the way, moving quickly, counting the

rungs as he climbed, calculating one foot for every rung.

At fifty rungs, his lungs began to burn.

At seventy, he felt bile crawling up the back of his

throat.

At ninety, he still saw no sign of the surface, and he

started to worry that he had got it all wrong, that he had

made a fatal mistake, that this was the end, that he was about

to black out--

--THEN SUDDENLY, GLORIOUSLY, SCHOFIELD'S HEAD exploded

out of the water into beautiful cool air.

He immediately swung his body to the side to allow

Book II to surface next to him. Book burst out of the water

area 7

and both of them gulped in the fresh air as they hung from

the ladder in the tight vertical well.

The shaft still rose into darkness above them--only

now it was no longer filled with water.

Once he had regained his breath, Schofield climbed up

out of the water and stepped through the nearest earthen

doorway.

He emerged inside a wide flat-floored cavern, an old administration

chamber for the mine. What he saw inside the

chamber, however, stopped him cold.

He saw boxes of provisions--food, water, gas cookers,

powdered milk--hundreds of boxes.

Hundreds and hundreds of boxes.

A dozen fold-out cots lined the walls. A table covered

with fake passports and drivers' licenses stood in one corner.

It's a camp, Schofield thought. A base camp.

With enough food to last for weeks, months even--for

however long it would take for the United States government

to stop searching Lake Powell for the men who had

stolen the Sinovirus and its prized vaccine source: Kevin.

Then, once the coast was clear, Botha and his men

would leave the lake and make their way back to their homeland

at their leisure.

Schofield looked at the stacks of boxes. Whoever had

done this had been bringing stuff here for a long time.

"Geez." Book II joined Schofield in the chamber.

"Somebody came prepared."

Schofield looked at his watch.

9:31 a.m.

"Come on. We've got twenty-nine minutes to get this

briefcase back to the President," Schofield said. "I say we go

for the surface, and see if there's a way to get back to Area 7."

Schofield AND BOOK II CLIMBED.

As fast as they could. Up the vertical access shaft.

Schofield with Botha's small Samsonite container. Book II

with the Football.

Within a minute, they reached the top of the ladder and

stepped up into a wide aluminum building of some sort, kind

of like an oversized shed.

A set of mine-car tracks began over on the far side of

the shed, disappearing into the earth. They were flanked by a

collection of rusty loading trays and old conveyor belts.

Everything was covered in dust and cobwebs.

Schofield and Book raced for the external door, kicked

it open.

Brilliant sunlight assaulted their eyes, wind-blown sand

blasted their faces. The sandstorm was still raging.

The two tiny figures of Schofield and Book II stepped

out of the mine shed ...

... and they found themselves standing on a gigantic

flat-topped desert peninsula that stretched out into Lake

Powell. They looked like ants against the magnificent Utah

landscape—the magnitude of the earth around them dwarfing

even the large aluminum shed from which they had

emerged.

Strangely, though, there was another structure on this

vast flat-topped peninsula. It stood a bare fifty yards away

from the mine shed: a small farmhouse, with a barn attached

to its side.

Schofield and Book ran for it through the storm-tossed

sand.

area 7

THE LETTERBOX AT THE GATE READ: HOEG.

Schofield bolted past it, into the front yard.

He came to the side of the farmhouse, crouched underneath a window, peered inside, just as the wall beside him

exploded with automatic gunfire. He spun to see a man

dressed in denim overalls come charging around the corner

of the farmhouse with an AK-47 assault rifle in his hands.

Blam!

Another shot rang out above the sandstorm and the

farmer dropped to the dusty ground, dead.

Book II appeared at Schofield's side, his M9 pistol

smoking.

"What the hell is going on here?" he yelled.

"I'm guessing," Schofield said, "that if we live through

this, we'll find that Mr. Hoeg is a friend of Gunther Botha's

Come on."

Schofield ran for the barn, threw open its doors, hoping

against hope that he would find some kind of transportation

inside it ...

"Well, it's about time we had a bit of luck," he said

"Thank you, God. We deserved a break."

Standing there before him--glistening like a new car in

a showroom--was a vehicle common to the farms in these

parts: a beautiful lime-green biplane, a crop duster.

three minutes later, schofield and book were shooting

through the sky, soaring high over the snakelike canyons

of Lake Powell.

It was 9:38 a.m.

This is going to be close, Schofield thought.

The plane was a Tiger Moth--an old World War II biplane

often used for crop dusting in the dry southwest. It had

two parallel wings, one above the fuselage and one below,

that were joined by vertical struts and criss-crossing wires.

Two spindly landing wheels stretched down from the forward

end of its body, like the elongated legs of a mosquito,

and an insecticide sprayer was attached to its tail.

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Matthew Reilly

Like most biplanes, it was a two-seater--the pilot sitting

in the backseat, the co-pilot up front.

And it was a good plane, too, well looked after. Mr.

Hoeg, it seemed, in addition to being a goddamned spy, was

obviously an airplane enthusiast.

"What do you think?" Book said into his flight helmet's

microphone. "Do we go for the X-rail?"

"Not now," Schofield replied. "There's not enough time.

We head straight for Area 7. For the Emergency Exit Vent."

Dave Fairfax's heart was racing.

This had turned into quite an eventful day.

After he'd heard Dave's assessment of the situation at

Area 7 and the presence of a rogue unit there, the DIA assistant director in charge of surveilling the Chinese space shuttle had ordered a blanket tap of a one-hundred-mile circle

surrounding Areas 7 and 8. Now, any signal coming out of

that zone would be picked up by the DIA's surveillance

satellites.

Impressed by Fairfax's work on the matter thus far, the

assistant director also gave the young cryptanalyst free rein

to further pursue the case. "Do whatever you have to, young

man," he'd said. "You report directly to me now."

Fairfax, however, was still puzzled.

Perhaps he was just excited, but something still nagged

at him. The pieces still didn't quite add up.

The Chinese had a shuttle up in space, communicating

with a rogue unit at a U.S. Air Force base.

Okay.

So there was something at this base that the Chinese

wanted. Fairfax guessed it was the virus vaccine that kept

getting mentioned in all the decoded messages.

Okay ...

And the shuttle was the best way to communicate directly

with the men on the ground.

No.

That wasn't right. The Chinese could use any of a dozen

different satellites to communicate with men on the ground.