Matthew Reilly - Area 7

Book, held up by his neck, grabbed the Maghook with

both hands, and despite his wounded arm, pushed it back toward

Goliath. The Maghook went vertical, but then to

Book's horror, it started to come back toward his face. Goliath

was going to win this arm wrestle, too.

Then suddenly Book saw the way out.

"Aw, what the hell," he said.

And so he reached forward, gripped the Maghook's

launcher and pressed the button marked "m" on it, initiating

the grappling hook's powerful magnetic charge.

The response was instantaneous.

The lights on the Maghook's magnetic head burst to

life, and the now-charged head began searching for a metallic

source nearby.

It found it in the steel plate inside Goliath's forehead.

With a powerful thud! the Maghook lodged itself

against the big man's brow. It stuck hard, as if it were being sucked against the prisoner's very skin.

Goliath roared with rage, tried to extract the Maghook

from his forehead, in doing so, releasing Book.

Book II dropped to the floor, gasping, clutching the

ragged red hole in his bicep.

Goliath was spinning around, wrestling like an idiot

with the Maghook attached to his face.

Book II kept his distance, at least until the staggering

Goliath had his back to the wall. Then Book just stepped forward,

grabbed the handgrip of the Maghook with his good

hand and, without mercy, pulled the trigger.

The Maghook discharged with a gaseous whump! and

Goliath's head was sent thundering backwards--his neck

snapping almost ninety degrees the wrong way--his skull

smashing against the wall behind him, creating a

basketball-sized crater in the concrete. For his part, Book II

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Matthew Reilly

was hurled several yards in the other direction, care of Newton's

Third Law.

Still, he fared far better than Goliath. The gigantic prisoner

now slid slowly to the floor, his eyes wide with shock

and his head cracked open like an egg, a foul soup of blood

and brains oozing out of it.

while book II had been fighting with goliath, the still

dazed Juliet had been trying to regather her pistol from the

floor nearby.

When at last she got it and stood up, she stopped dead.

He was just standing there. Twenty yards away. On the

other side of the hangar--Seth Grimshaw.

"I remember you now," Grimshaw said, stepping forward.

Janson said nothing, just stared at him. She saw that he

was still holding the Football ... and a P-90 assault rifle,

held low, one-handed, aimed right at her.

"You were at the Bonaventure when I tried to take out

His Majesty," Grimshaw said. "You're U-triple-S. One of

those chirpy little fucks who think that throwing their bodies

in front of a corrupt President is in some way honorable."

Janson said nothing.

She held her nickel Beretta by her side, down by her

thigh.

Grimshaw had his rifle leveled at her. He smiled.

"Try and stop this." He began to squeeze the trigger on

his P-90.

Janson was ice-cool. She had one chance, and she knew

it. Like all members of the Secret Service, she was an expert

marksman. Grimshaw, on the other hand--like nearly all

criminals--was shooting from the hip. The Secret Service

had actually done probability Scales on this sort of thing: in

all likelihood, Grimshaw would miss with at least his first

three shots.

Taking into account the time it would take for her to

raise her own gun, Janson would have to hit him with her

first.

area 7 375

Back the odds, she told herself. Back the odds.

And so as Grimshaw pulled his trigger, she whipped out her pistol.

She brought it up fast, superfast, and fired ... at exactly

the same time as Grimshaw loosed three short rounds

himself.

The odds, it seemed, were wrong.

BOTH SHOOTERS FELL--LIKE MIRROR IMAGES--SNAPPING

backwards on opposite sides of the hangar, dropping to the

ground in identical splashes of blood.

Janson lay on her back on the shiny polished floor of the

hangar--gasping, breathing fast, looking up at the ceiling--

a bloody red hole in her left shoulder.

Grimshaw, on the other hand, didn't move.

Didn't move at all.

He lay completely still, on his back.

Although Janson didn't know it yet, her single bullet

had punctured the bridge of Grimshaw's nose, breaking it,

creating a foul blood-splattered hole in his face. The exit

wound that had blasted out the back of his head, however,

was twice as big.

Seth Grimshaw was dead.

And the Football lay neatly at his side.

THE X-RAIL TRAIN SHOT THROUGH THE TUNNEL SYSTEM.

After his talk with the President, Schofield had moved

into the driver's compartment. They'd be arriving at Area 8

in a couple of minutes, and he wanted a short moment's

peace.

With a soft shooshing sound, the compartment's sliding

door opened and Mother entered.

"How you doing?" she said as she sat down beside him.

"To be honest," he said, "when I woke up this morning,

I didn't think the day would turn out like this."

"Scarecrow, why didn't you kiss her?" Mother asked

suddenly.

"What? Kiss who?"

"Fox. When you took her out to dinner and dropped her

home. Why didn't you kiss her?"

Schofield sighed. "You'll never make it in the diplomatic

corps, Mother."

"Blow me. If I'm going to die today, I'm sure as hell not

going to die wondering. Why didn't you kiss her? She

wanted you to."

"She did? Ah, damn it."

"So why didn't you?"

"Because I ..." he paused. "I guess I got scared."

"Scarecrow. What the fuck are you talking about? What

were you afraid of? The girl is crazy about you."

"And I'm crazy about her, too. I have been for a long

time. Do you remember when she joined the unit, when the

selection committee put on that barbecue at the base in

Hawaii? I knew it then—as soon as I saw her—but back then

area 7 381

I figured she could never be interested in me, not with

these ... things."

He touched the twin scars running vertically down his

eyelids.

He snuffed a laugh. "I didn't talk much at that lunch. ]

even think she caught me staring off into space at one point,

I wonder if she knows I was thinking about her"

"Scarecrow," Mother said. "You and I both know Fox

can see beyond your eyes."

"See, that's the thing. I know that," Schofield said. "I

know that. I just don't know what I was thinking last week.

We were finally going out on a date. We'd gotten along so

well all night. Everything was going great. And then we arrived

at her front door and suddenly I didn't want to screw

everything up by doing the wrong thing ... and well, I don't

know ... I guess ... I guess I just froze up."

Mother started nodding sagely--then she burst out

laughing.

"I'm glad you think this is funny," Schofield said.

Mother kept laughing, clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"Scarecrow, you know, every now and then, it's nice to see

that you're human. You can leap off ice cliffs and swing

across giant elevator shafts, but you still freeze up when it

comes to kissing the girl. You're beautiful."

"Thanks," Schofield said.

Mother stood up to go.

"Just promise me this," she said kindly. "When you see

Fox next, kiss the fucking girl, will you!"

While Schofield, mother and the president were shooting

through the X-rail tunnel under the desert floor toward

Area 8, Caesar Russell and his four remaining 7th Squadron