Matthew Reilly - Area 7

in his hand.

334

Matthew Reilly

They'd done it. At least for another ninety minutes.

Now all he had to do was get himself and Book over to the

President. Then they'd be back in business.

Schofield reeled in his Maghook, then turned to head

back down the cross-vent to get Book--

Shuck-shuck

Three men were blocking his way--men wearing blue

jeans but no shirts. They also brandished pump-action Remingtons

and they variously had tattooed chests, bulging biceps,

or no front teeth.

"Reach for the sky, pardner," one of the shotgun-toting

prisoners said.

caesar russell charged through the low concrete Escape

tunnel.

The three remaining men from Alpha Unit ran in front

of him. Kurt Logan hurried along behind.

They'd just left Harper and the others in the control

room to be captured by the escaped inmates, and were now

bolting down the escape-passageway, racing for the point

where it met the top door exit.

They rounded a bend, came to a heavy steel door half buried

in concrete, keyed the code. The door opened.

The top door's exit tunnel appeared before them, heading

right and left.

To the right ... freedom, via the exit that opened onto one

of the exterior hangars here at Area 7.

To the left, around a bend, the regular elevator shaft,

and ...

... something else.

Caesar froze.

He saw a combat boot protruding around the corner that

led to the regular elevator shaft.

The black combat boot of a dead commando.

Caesar stepped closer.

And saw that the boot belonged to the horribly bloodied

body of Python Willis—the commanding officer of Charlie

Unit, the 7th Squadron unit that had been bringing Kevin

back to Area 7.

Caesar's face darkened.

Charlie Unit lay dead before him. And Kevin was

nowhere to be seen.

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Matthew Reilly

Then Caesar saw the mark on the wall next to Python

Willis's dead fingers, a symbol scrawled in blood, a final

gesture from Charlie Unit's commander before he'd died.

A single capital "E."

Caesar just stared at it, pursing his lips.

Logan came up beside him. "What is it?"

"Let's get to the secondary command post," Caesar said

flatly. "And when we get there, I want you to find out what's

happened to Echo Unit."

shane schofield emerged from the air vent hatch underneath

Marine One, flanked by the four heavily armed

prisoners. He no longer carried the Football. One of his captors

now held it like a new toy.

As he slid out from underneath the Presidential helicopter,

he thought he heard clapping and shouting ...

... and then suddenly--boom!--a gunshot made him

start. The shot was quickly followed by a loud roar of approval.

Then another booming gunshot--and more cheers and

applause.

Schofield felt his blood run cold.

What the hell was he walking into?

He emerged from beneath Marine One and immediately

saw about thirty prisoners, their backs to him, gathered

around the central aircraft elevator platform.

In the time since his capture in the air vent down below,

the massive platform--with the tangled remains of the destroyed

AWACS plane still on it--had been lowered about

ten feet below the floor-line of the hangar and halted, so that

now it formed a gigantic square-shaped pit in the center of

the hangar.

The mob of inmates was crowded around the makeshift

pit, looking intently down into it like gamblers at a cockfight,

shaking their fists, shouting and cat-calling. One

shaggy-looking individual was screaming, "Run, little man!

Run! Run! Ha-haaaaa.

area 7 337

They were the most motley crew Schofield had ever

seen.

Their angry faces were covered in scars and tattoos.

Each prisoner's uniform had been tailored to his own personal

tastes--some had ripped off their shirtsleeves and

turned them into headbands, others wore their shirts open,

others still, wore no shirts at all.

Schofield was marched over to the edge of the pit. He

looked down into it.

Amid the maze of AWACS plane pieces that littered the

square concrete hole, he saw two blue-uniformed Air Force

men--young men and, judging by their perfectly pressed

uniforms, office bunnies, radio operators probably--running

like frightened animals.

In the pit with them were five burly inmates--all armed

with shotguns--prowling through the maze, hunting the two

hapless radio operators.

Schofield saw the bodies of two more radiomen lying in

pools of blood in separate corners of the pit: the cause of the

cheers he had heard moments before.

It was then, however, that to Schofield's horror, a small

band of prisoners emerged from the other side of the hangar.

In the midst of this new group of inmates, Schofield saw

Gant, Mother, Juliet ... and the President of the United

States.

"Tell me this isn't happening," he breathed to himself.

DOWN IN THE DARKNESS OF THE LEVEL 1 HANGAR, NICHOLAS

Tate III, Domestic Policy Adviser to the President of the

United States, gazed nervously up into the elevator shaft.

The President and his three female protectors hadn't returned

from their trip up the shaft on the detachable minielevator,

and now Tate was worried.

"Do you think the inmates got them?" he asked Hot Rod Hagerty.

They could hear the shouts and gunshots from up in the

main hangar. It was like standing outside a stadium during a

football match.

"I hope not," Hagerty whispered.

Tate continued to stare up into the shaft, a thousand

thoughts flickering through his mind, most of them relating

to his own self-preservation. A minute passed.

"So what do you think we should do?" he said at last,

without turning around.

There was no reply.

Tate frowned, spun around. "I said ..." He froze.

Hagerty was nowhere to be seen.

The Level 1 hangar stretched away from him, shrouded

in darkness, the only presence, the shadows of the gigantic

planes inside it.

Tate's face went blank.

Hagerty was gone.

Vanished ... silently, instantly ... in the space of a single

minute.

It was as if he'd just been erased from existence.

A lightning bolt of fear shot through Nicholas Tate.

area 7 339

Now he was alone, down here, in a locked-down facility

filled with treacherous Air Force commandos and the nastiest

collection of murderers known to man.

And then he saw it.

Saw a glint of light on the floor a few yards away from

him, at the spot where he had last seen Hagerty standing. He

went over to it, picked it up.

It was a ring.

A gold officer's ring.

Hagerty's graduation ring from Annapolis.

THE LAST TWO RADIO OPERATORS DIDN'T LAST LONG.

As the final shots rang out from within the pit, Schofield

and Gant were shoved together, the others beside them.

"Hey there," Gant said.

"Hi," Schofield said.

After Schofield and the President's daring trapeze act,

Gant and her team hadn't fared any better than Schofield had.

No sooner had the President swung back onto the mini

elevator than the little platform had jolted suddenly and

whizzed up the shaft--called by someone up in the main

hangar.

They had risen up into the hangar and found themselves

in the middle of a whole new nightmare.

The prisoners--the former test subjects for Gunther

Botha's vaccine--were now in charge of Area 7.

Although there was no way she could have hidden their