Matthew Reilly - Area 7

dangled like a teardrop from the front of the necklace.

"It's from Tiffany's," Tate said.

Gant looked up at him. "I'm not allowed to wear jewelery in uniform, Mr. Tate."

"I know. I was hoping you could wear it when I took

you to dinner at Nino's next Saturday."

Nino's was a restaurant in Georgetown, popular among

Washington socialites and arguably the most expensive

eatery in town.

Gant sighed. "I'm seeing someone."

It was kind of true. Only last weekend, after a tentative

start, she and Shane Schofield had gone out on something

resembling a date.

"Now, now, now," Tate said, "I heard about that. One

date does not a relationship make."

This was getting difficult. Gant held the necklace up to

the light of the window. "You know, this looks a lot like a

necklace I saw in Paris once."

"Oh, really?"

At Gant's mention of the word "Paris," however, one of

the other Marines sitting nearby cocked her head to the side.

Tate never saw it.

"Yes," Gant said. "We were there a couple of months

ago with the Boss, and I had a day off, so I--"

"Jesus H. Christ, would you take a look at that!" a lusty

woman's voice cut Gant off.

"Hey there, Mother," Gant said, as Gunnery Sergeant

Gena "Mother" Newman appeared in the narrow aisle next

to her.

"How you doin' there, Birthday Babe?" Mother said

with a knowing smile.

The "Paris" code was one they had used several times

before. When either of them encountered an unwanted male

admirer, she would slip the word "Paris" into the conversation

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and the other, hearing the signal, would come to the rescue.

It was a common trick used by girlfriends worldwide.

Granted, at six feet four inches and an even 200 pounds,

Mother rarely had to use it. With her dark, heavyset features,

fully shaved head and gruff no-nonsense manner, she was almost

the perfect antithesis of Libby Gant. Her call-sign,

"Mother," said it all, really. It wasn't indicative of any extraordinary maternal qualities. It was short for motherfucker.

A gifted warrior, adept at all kinds of heavy weaponry and

guncraft, she'd been promoted to the highly respected rank

of gunnery sergeant a year ago.

In addition to this--thanks to a close encounter with a

killer whale during the disastrous mission to Antarctica--

Mother had one other, highly unusual physical feature.

A prosthetic lower left leg.

The nasty incident with the killer whale had deprived

her of everything below the left knee. That said, she'd done

better than the killer had. It had received a bullet to its brain.

What Mother now had in place of her natural left foot

and shin was a state-of-the-art prosthetic limb which, so its

makers claimed, guaranteed total and undiminished body

movement. Featuring titanium-alloy "bones," fully rotating

joints and hydraulic muscle simulators, its operation was so

sophisticated--involving nerve impulse reception and automatic

weight-shifting--that it required an internal prologic

computer chip to control it.

Mother was gazing at the glistening Tiffany's necklace.

"Whoa, that is one mighty fine piece of jewelry," she

gawped. She turned to Nick Tate: "That piece of string must

have cost you a pretty penny, sonny Jim."

"It was within my price range," Tate said coolly.

"Probably cost more than I make in a year"

"Probably did."

Mother ignored him, turned to Gant. "Sorry to rain on

your parade, Birthday Babe, but the skipper sent me back to

get you. He wants you up front for the landing."

"Oh, okay."

Gant stood, and as she did, she handed Tate back his

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Matthew Reilly

necklace. "I'm sorry, Nicholas, but I can't accept this. I'm seeing someone else."

And with that she headed up front.

over at the emergency escape vent, colt hendricks

just stood with his mouth agape, staring down into the

trench.

The sight before him was nothing short of horrific.

All nine members of the Secret Service's secondary advance

team lay on the sand-covered floor of the trench, their bodies twisted at all angles, riddled with bullet holes. The

size of the wounds indicated hollow-point ammunition had

been used--bullets that expanded once they entered the

wound, guaranteeing a kill. A few of the agents had been

shot in the face--their heads had been all but blown off. Blood was everywhere, drying in the sand.

Hendricks saw the agent-in-charge of the Secret Service

team, a man named Baker--mouth open, eyes wide, bullet

hole in the forehead. In Agent Baker's outstretched hand

was the Advance Team's All-Clear beacon switch. The attack

must have happened so quickly that he hadn't even had

time to flick the switch.

Beyond Baker, Hendricks saw a solid-looking steel

door set into the dirt wall of the trench--the escape vent itself.

It just stood there, resolutely closed.

Hendricks spun on his heel, yanked out his radio, headed back toward Nighthawk Three.

"Nighthawk One!"

Radio static.

"Goddamn it! Nighthawk One! This is--"

It was as if the desert just came alive.

The dusty desert floor parted--sand falling off canvas

ambush covers--and suddenly, from both sides of Hendricks,

about a dozen man-sized shapes rose from the sand,

submachine guns raised and firing.

A second later, a 9-millimeter Silvertip bullet entered

Hendricks's brain from the side. The subsequent gaseous

Area 7 59

expansion of the hollow-pointed projectile caused his head to

explode.

Hendricks never saw the man who killed him.

Never saw the dark team of desert wraiths take down

the rest of his men with clinical, ruthless efficiency.

And he never saw them take his helicopter and fly it

back toward Area 7.

THE TWO REMAINING PRESIDENTIAL HELICOPTERS DESCENDED

together, landing in a whirlwind of sand in front of the massive

main hangar of United States Air Force Special Area

(Restricted) No. 7.

The giant hangar's enormous twin doors yawned wide,

its interior brightly illuminated. The low mountain into

which the hangar had been carved loomed over the squat

four-building complex.

No sooner had the two choppers touched the ground

than the Secret Service people from Nighthawk Two were

dashing to their positions around Marine One.

A welcoming party stood on the runway in front of the

hangar, standing silently in the cool morning air, silhouetted

by the hangar light behind them.

Two Air Force officers—one colonel and one major ... stood at the head of the welcoming unit.

Behind the two officers stood four rows of fully armed

commandos, ten men to a row. All of them were dressed in

full combat gear—black battle-dress uniforms, black body

armor, black helmets—and they all held high-tech Belgian made

P-90 assault rifles rigidly across their chests.

Looking out through Marine One's cockpit windshield,

Schofield recognized their insignia patches at once. They

were members of a unit rarely seen at U.S. military exercises,

a unit which was shrouded in secrecy, a unit which

many believed was used only in the most critical of missions.

It was the elite ground unit in the United States Air

Force, the famous 7th Special Operations Squadron.

Based in West Germany for much of the Cold War, its

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official task during that time was the defense of U.S. airfields

against the elite Soviet Spetsnaz units. Its unofficial