Matthew Reilly - Area 7

opposite rim.

Ka-chunk.

Sealed. Shut.

Lucifer grunted a laugh as he heard Schofield's fists

banging on the underside of the sliding door, heard the

sloshing of water underneath the closed door--the sound of

the dragons mauling the foolish Marine.

Area 7 443

Lucifer smiled.

Then he headed back toward the other side of Level 4,

where the pleasure of carving up the pretty female soldier

awaited him.

libby gant gasped in horror as lucifer leary returned

alone to the observation area of Level 4.

No.

Lucifer couldn't have ...

No ...

The giant serial killer strode confidently across the wide

hall-like room, his head lowered, his eyes locked on Gant's.

He dropped to his knees in front of her, pushed his face

close to hers. His breath was foul--it reeked of eaten human flesh.

He stroked her hair.

"Such a shame, such a shame," he trilled, "that your

knight in shining armor was not the brave warrior he thought

himself to be. Which only leaves us, now, to get ... better acquainted."

"Not likely," said a voice from behind Lucifer.

The giant spun.

And there, in the doorway that led to the decompression

area, his whole body dripping with water, stood Shane

Schofield.

"YOU'LL HAVE TO GET RID OF ME," HE SAID GRIMLY, "BEFORE

you lay a finger on her."

Lucifer roared, snatched up Schofield's P-90 and let rip

with an extended burst.

Schofield just stepped behind the doorway, out of sight,

as the dividing wall all around the door was shredded by the

hailstorm of gunfire.

Within seconds, however, the gun ran dry and Lucifer

Area 7 445

discarded it and stormed across the observation area, into

the decompression area.

The horizontal door in its floor now lay open, wavelets

still lapping against its rims. The large outlines of the Komodo dragons were still visible beneath the pool's rippling

surface.

But, somehow, they hadn't killed Schofield.

And then Lucifer saw him, standing over by the decompression

chamber, to the right of the pool.

He charged at Schofield, lashed out with a ferocious

right.

Schofield ducked, walked under the punch. He was

calmer now, collected. Not so caught-by-surprise. He had

Lucifer's measure.

Lucifer spun, swung again. Another miss. Schofield

punished the error with a crisp hit to Lucifer's face.

Crack.

Instantly broken nose.

Lucifer seemed more stunned than injured. He touched

the blood that ran down from his nose as if it were an alien

substance, as if no one had ever hurt him before.

And then Schofield hit him again, a great powerful

blow, and for the first time, the big man staggered slightly.

Again, harder this time, and Lucifer took an unsteady

step backwards.

Again, another step backwards.

Again--the most violent punch Schofield had ever

thrown--and Lucifer's back foot touched the rim of the

pool. He turned slightly---just as Schofield nailed him in the

nose, causing the big man to lose his footing completely and

fall backwards ...

... into the Komodo-infested pool.

There was a great splash as Lucifer entered the water,

and as the foam subsided, the Komodos rushed him, swarming

all over his body, turning it into a writhing mass of black

reptilian skin, claws and tails, and in the middle of it all, Lucifer's kicking feet and agonized screams.

Then, abruptly, the pool turned a sickening shade of red

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Matthew Reilly

and Lucifer's legs went still. The Komodos just continued to

eat his body.

Schofield winced at the sight, but then, if anyone deserved

to die such a horrific painful death, Lucifer Leary did.

Then Schofield hit the button that closed the floor door,

obliterating the foul sight, and hurried back to get Gant.

10:59.

Within a minute, Gant was unbound and standing next

to Schofield as he freed the bleary-eyed Hot Rod Hagerty.

Gant said, "You know, this birthday really has sucked." She nodded toward the decompression area. "What happened

in there? I thought Leary had ..."

"He did," Schofield said. "Bastard dropped me in a pool

filled with Komodo dragons."

"So how'd you get out?"

Schofield pulled out his Maghook. "Apparently reptiles

are exceptionally sensitive to magnetic discharges. I only

learned that little fact this morning, from a little boy named

Kevin. So I just flicked on my Maghook and they didn't

want to come near me. Then I opened the floor door up again

from below and came back for you. Sadly, Lucifer didn't

have a supercharged magnetic grappling hook on him when he fell in."

"Nice," Gant said. "Very nice. So where's the President,

and Kevin?"

"They're safe. They're outside the complex."

"So why are you back in here?"

Schofield looked at his watch.

It was exactly 11:00 a.m.

"Two reasons. One, because in exactly five minutes this

facility's self-destruct mechanism will be activated. Ten

minutes after that, this whole place will be vaporized, and

we can't allow that to happen while Caesar Russell is inside

it. So we either stop it from going off, or, if we can't do that,

we get Caesar Russell out of here before it does."

"Wait a second," Gant said, "we have to save Caesar?"

"It seems our host decided to put a radio chip on his

Area 7 447

own heart as well as the President's. So if he dies, so does

the country."

"Son of a bitch," Gant said. "So what was the second

reason?"

Schofield's face reddened slightly. "I wanted to find you."

Gant's face lit up, but she spoke matter-of-factly: "You

know, we can talk about this later."

"I think that would be good," Schofield said as Hagerty

came free of his bonds, blinking out of his stupor. "What do

you say we do it on another date?"

Gant broke out in a grin. "You bet."

11:01.

Schofield and Gant rode the detachable mini-elevator

swiftly up the main shaft, now armed only with Schofield's pistols ... Gant with the M9, Schofield with the Desert Eagle.

Schofield had sent Hagerty down to Level 6, to escape

via the Emergency Exit Vent. When he'd seen the hacked-up

half-body of Colonel Harper, Hagerty hadn't argued. He was

happy to get out of Area 7 as quickly as possible.

"I don't know if we'll be able to disarm the self-destruct

system," Gant said as Schofield gave her a shot of the

Sinovirus vaccine to protect her against the contaminated

hangar. "You have to enter a lockdown code by 11:05 to call

it off, and we don't know any of the codes."

"I've been working on that," Schofield said, pulling out

his cell phone. He hit redial and Fairfax's voice came on the

line straight away.

"Mr. Fairfax, how goes it?"

"The lockdown termination code is 10502," Fairfax

said. "Hacked into the system from behind, from the source

code. Got it that way. Turns out it's the operator number of

the head dude there, an Air Force colonel named Harper."

"I don't think he'll be needing it anymore," Schofield

said. "Thank you, Mr. Fairfax. If I get out of this alive, I'll

buy you a beer sometime."

He hung up and turned to Gant.

"Okay. Time to turn off this nuclear time bomb. Then all

we have to do is capture Caesar alive."

area 7 449

they rose up the side of the darkened shaft.

Its great square-shaped opening up at ground level

loomed above them, backlit by orange firelight.

It turned out that Lucifer Leary had indeed brought the