Matthew Reilly - Area 7

Gant rode her Maghook all the way down. "Come on, baby. Come on ..." Since they were oppositely charged, they'd only have to pass by close to each other to--

Clang!

The two Maghooks hit--in midair--like twin missiles

slamming into each other in the sky!

The Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Their powerful magnetic charges held them firmly together,

and up in the hangar, Gant quickly hooked her

launcher into a grate in the floor.

Two maghooks equals three hundred feet of rope.

And a three-hundred-foot fall means one hell of a jolt.

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Matthew Reilly

When he saw Gant's flying magnetic hook connect with

his own, Schofield--still falling fast--slung his launcher

under his shoulders and around his chest. Then he tensed his

arms around the rope, bracing himself for the impending

jolt.

This was going to hurt.

it hurt.

With an outrageous snap, the ropes of the two

Maghooks went taut and Schofield bounced up into the air,

yanked upward like a skydiver opening his parachute-- while below him, Kurt Logan and the wooden crate just kept

on falling, and slammed into the aircraft platform below

them.

The wooden crate just exploded, its walls shattering

into splinters as it hit the platform.

Logan met a similar fate.

He landed hard--screaming--on the jagged remains of

the AWACS plane that still littered the elevator platform. His

head was separated from his shoulders as his throat hit an

upwardly pointed piece of wing. The rest of his body just flattened with the phenomenal impact, splatting like a

tomato when it hit the platform.

As for Schofield, after he was snapped upwards by the

ropes of the two Maghooks, he swung in toward the side

wall of the shaft. He slammed into it heavily, bounced off it,

and was left hanging next to the sheer concrete wall a bare

eighty feet above the elevator platform, breathing hard, his

shoulders and arms aching from the jolt, but alive.

the two maghooks reeled schofield up the shaft

quickly.

"Warning. Six minutes to facility self-destruct."

It was 11:09 when Gant hauled him up over the rim of

the great pit.

"I thought you said the Harbour Bridge was impossible,"

she said dryly.

"Believe me, that was a very nice way to be proved

wrong," Schofield said.

Gant smiled. "Yeah, well I only did it because I wanted

another ..."

She was interrupted by a thunderous line of gunfire cutting

through the air all around them, ripping across both

their bodies.

A ragged bullet wound burst open near Gant's right

foot—shattering her ankle—while another two appeared on

Schofield's left shoulder. More bullets passed so close to his

face he felt their air trails swoosh past his nose.

Both Marines dropped, gritting their teeth, as Caesar

Russell came charging out of the internal building nearby,

his P-90 pressed against his shoulder, firing wildly, his eyes

gleaming with madness.

Schofield—hurt for sure, but far more mobile than

Gant—pushed Gant behind the remains of Bravo Unit's

crate barricade.

Then he grabbed her Beretta and made a loping dash the

other way, through the strobing red-on-black world, toward

the remains of Nighthawk Two over by the personnel elevator,

trying to draw Caesar's fire away from Gant.

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Matthew Reilly

The massive Marine Corps Super Stallion was still

parked in front of the regular elevator's doors--battered and

dented, its entire cockpit section blasted wide open.

Caesar's stream of bullets chewed up the ground at his

heels, but it was loose fire, and in the flashing red light, Caesar

missed wide.

Schofield made it to the Super Stallion, dived into its

exploded-open cockpit, just as the chopper's walls erupted

with bullet holes.

"Come on, hero!" Caesar yelled. "What's the matter? Can't shoot back? What're you afraid of? Go on! Find a gun

and shoot back!"

That, however, was the one thing Schofield couldn't do.

If he killed Caesar, he killed every major city in northern

America.

Goddamnit! he thought.

It was the worst possible situation.

He was being fired upon by a man he couldn't fire back at!

"Fox!" he yelled into his wrist mike. "You okay?"

A stifled grimace over his earpiece. "Yeah ..."

Schofield yelled, "We have to grab him and get him out

of here! Any ideas?"

Gant's reply was drowned out by the complex's electronic

voice.

"Warning. Five minutes to facility self-destruct ..."

Through a small door-window, Schofield saw Caesar

approaching the semi-destroyed helicopter from the side,

pummeling its flanks with his fire.

"You like that, hero?" the Air Force general yelled.

"You like that!"

Inside the blasted-open cockpit, everything was shuddering

and shaking under the weight of Caesar's fire.

Schofield clenched his teeth, gripped his gun. The two bullet

holes in his shoulder hurt like hell, but adrenaline was keeping

him going.

Through the cracked door-window of the Super Stallion

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he saw Caesar--crazed and deranged--firing like a yee-ha

cowboy at the chopper, striding cockily around it, heading

toward its open cockpit.

Caesar would have him in about four seconds ...

Then suddenly Gant's voice exploded through his earpiece.

"Scarecrow! Get ready to shoot. There might be another

way ..."

"But I can't shoot!" Schofield yelled.

"Just give me a second here!"

OVER BY THE ELEVATOR SHAFT, GANT WAS CROUCHED OVER

the object she had been searching for earlier--the black box

that she had pilfered from the AWACS plane down on Level

2 ninety minutes earlier, the black box that she had surreptitiously

kicked away from the mini-elevator when she and

the President had arrived in the main hangar before.

In the flashing light of the complex, she pulled a small

red unit with a black stub antenna from the thigh pocket of

her baggy biohazard suit.

It was Russell's initiate/terminate unit--with its two

on-off switches marked "1" and "2."

It was only now that Gant understood why there were two switches on the unit.

This unit not only started and stopped the radio transmitter

on the President's heart, it also started and stopped

the transmitter on Caesar's heart.

caesar was almost at the blasted-open cockpit of the

chopper, his P-90 raised.

In a few seconds, he would have a clear shot at Schofield.

"I'm coming ...!" he cackled.

Schofield lay slumped on the floor inside the Super

Stallion, pinned down, looking out through its exposed forward

section.

Trapped.

"Fox--" he said into his mike.

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Matthew Reilly

"--WHATEVER YOU'RE GOING TO DO ... PLEASE DO IT SOON."

Gant was sweating, the world around her flashing red.

Her ankle throbbed painfully, but she had to concentrate--

"Warning. Four minutes to facility self-destruct ..."

She'd brought up the familiar spike pattern on the black

box's small LCD screen. Now she turned to the I/T unit.

The only question was which switch on the unit controlled

the President's transmitter and which controlled

Caesar's--1 or 2?

Gant had no doubt.

Caesar would make himself Number 1.

Then--in time with the spike screen on the black box,

in between its recurring search and return signals--she flicked the switch marked "1" on the initiate/terminate unit, switching off Caesar's microwave signal.

As soon as she did that, she switched on the black box's