Matthew Reilly - Area 7

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Matthew Reilly

67,000 feet--the height at which the 747 would release the

space shuttle on its back.

At the bottom of the screen, however, were the words:

AUTOPILOT ENGAGED.

TO DISABLE AUTOPILOT OR ALTER SET COURSE

ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE.

Authorization code? Schofield thought.

Shit.

He couldn't switch off the autopilot. Which meant he

couldn't bring the plane down ...

So what could he do?

He looked about himself, saw the clouds outside, saw

the unconscious body of the pilot named Coleman lying on

the floor just outside the cockpit.

And as his eyes fell on the pilot's body, he got an idea.

schofield came back down to the president, hauling

the unconscious Coleman on his shoulder.

He nodded toward the other knocked-out pilot at the

President's feet. "Put on his flight suit," Schofield said as he

dropped Coleman's body to the floor and started undressing it.

Within minutes, Schofield and the President were wearing

the two pilots' bright-orange pressure suits--with SIG Sauer pistols concealed in their thigh pockets.

"Where to now?" the President asked.

Schofield gave him a serious look. "Where no man has

gone before."

the X-38 space shuttle was connected to the launch

jumbo by a cylindrical umbilical. Half a dozen titanium

struts actually mounted the shuttle onto the back of the 747,

but it was the umbilical that allowed human access to and

from the spacecraft.

Basically, the umbilical looked like a long vertical tube

that stretched upward from the back of the jumbo into the

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underside of the shuttle. Its entrance was at the midpoint of

the jumbo, halfway along its lower deck.

Schofield and the President hurried toward it.

On the way, they found gear that had been waiting for

the two Echo Unit pilots: two white briefcase-like life support systems--small self-contained air-conditioners just

like those carried by the shuttle astronauts--and a pair of

spherical gold-tinted space helmets that clicked onto the

neck rings of their pressure suits.

The reflective gold tint of the helmets' dome-shaped

visors--a feature designed to protect the wearer from the

brutal quantities of ultraviolet radiation one experiences at

extremely high altitudes--completely hid their faces.

They came to the umbilical's entrance: a tubular vertical

tunnel that disappeared into the ceiling. A thin steel ladder

rose up through its core.

Now dressed completely in his space suit, his face hidden

by his reflective gold visor, Schofield peered up into it.

At the top end of the tube, about thirty yards straight up,

he could see the illuminated interior of the X-38 shuttle.

He turned to the President and signaled with his finger: up.

they climbed the ladder slowly, weighed down by their

cumbersome space suits and life-support briefcases.

After about a minute of climbing, Schofield's helmeted

head rose up through a circular hatch in the floor of the

shuttle.

Schofield froze.

The rear cargo compartment of the space shuttle looked

like the interior of a high-tech bus.

It was only a small space, compact, designed to hold

anything from men to weapons to small satellites. It had

pristine white walls that were lined with life-support sockets,

keypads and tie-down equipment studs. At the moment,

however, the cabin was in personnel-carrying mode: about a

dozen heavy-looking flight seats faced forward, grouped in

pairs.

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Matthew Reilly

And strapped into those seats, Schofield saw, were the

men of Echo Unit and their Chinese conspirators.

There were five of them inside the cargo cabin, and they

all wore identical space suits--gold-tinted helmets and

baggy orange pressure suits with small U.S. flags sewn onto

the shoulders.

How ironic, Schofield thought.

They were also strapped tightly into their flight seats, in

readiness for the high-G transit into orbit.

Through the cockpit door at the front of the cargo compartment,

he saw three more space-suited individuals--the shuttle's flight team. Beyond them he could see the clear open sky.

As he stood there, sticking half out of the shuttle's floor

hatch, Schofield felt his adrenaline surge.

He knew that their reflective gold helmets prevented

him and the President from being recognized. But still he

felt self-conscious, certain that he looked like an impostor

stepping into the heart of enemy territory.

Near the front end of the compartment, there were several

empty seats--waiting, presumably, for the two 747 pilots,

and the five Echo commandos who had been cut off down in the hangar.

Slowly, Schofield raised himself up and out of the umbilical

tunnel.

No one paid him any special attention.

He searched the cabin for Kevin, and at first, to his horror, didn't see him.

No ...

But then he noticed that one of the five space-suited figures

seated inside the cabin didn't quite seem to fill out his

oversized suit.

In fact, it looked almost comical. The suit's gloved arms

hung limply on this figure, its booted leggings dangled

clumsily to the floor. It appeared that the wearer of this suit

was way too small for it ...

It had to be.

Rather than bunching up the space suit to allow Kevin's

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hands to reach into its gloves, the Echo men had made sure

that the little boy was receiving the full benefit of the pressure

suit's blood-regulating cuffs, even if that meant he

looked like Charlie Chaplin wearing an oversized outfit.

All right, Schofield thought as he stepped out of the umbilical's hatch. How am I going to do this?

Why not just grab Kevin before anyone has a chance to

unbuckle themselves, then dive down into the umbilical and

get back into the 747 and--

Just then a hand seized Schofield's arm, and a voice exploded

in his ear.

"Yo, Coleman"

It was one of the shuttle's pilots, faceless behind his

gold visor. He had stepped back into the personnel cabin and

grabbed Schofield's arm. His tinny voice came in over

Schofield's helmet intercom.

"Just you two? What happened to the others?"

Schofield just shook his head sadly.

"Aw, well," the faceless astronaut said. He pointed with

two fingers to a pair of flight seats close to the cockpit door. "Take a seat and strap in"

Then, with casual efficiency, the astronaut crouched

down, helped the President out of the umbilical, and shut the

entry hatch behind him!

Then he just strode forward to the cockpit, speaking

into his intercom as he did so: "All personnel, prepare for

separation from the launch vehicle in thirty seconds"

The cockpit door slid firmly shut behind the pilot, sealing

it off, and Schofield was left standing in the middle of

the cabin, staring at the closed pressure hatch in the floor beneath

him.

Holy shit ... .

They were about to go into orbit.

With the president behind him, Schofield made his way

forward, to two empty seats near the cockpit door.

As he did so, he observed how the Echo men had attached

themselves to the shuttle's centralized life-support

system and strapped themselves into their seats.

He arrived at his seat, and plugged a secondary hose

from his life-support briefcase into a socket in the seat's

arm. Then he sat down and started securing his seat harness.

The President, watching him, did the same, strapping