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  to their work and their fierce loyalty to their former

  commander--and his labeling of them as Schofield's

  "harem" was a sign of affection from a man who rarely

  showed it.

  Schofield, however, was used to being considered unusual.

  Indeed, that was why he was stationed aboard Marine One.

  About eighteen months previously, as a lieutenant, he'd

  been in command of a Marine Reconnaissance Unit that had

  been sent to a remote ice station in Antarctica, to investigate

  the discovery of a possible alien spacecraft.

  In a word, the mission had gone to hell on an express

  elevator.

  Including himself, only four of his twelve Marines had

  survived the nightmare, during which they had been forced

  to defend the station against two foreign military forces and

  infiltrators from within their own unit. To top it off,

  Schofield himself had been declared dead by some corrupt

  members of the Marine Corps hierarchy, men who had been

  prepared to make that lie a reality.

  His eventual return to America--alive and well--had

  sparked a media frenzy.

  His face appeared on every major newspaper in the nation.

  Wherever he went, even after the initial frenzy, tabloid

  journalists and photographers tried to snap his picture or

  coax information out of him. After all, he was a walking

  talking monument to the corruption of the United States

  military--the good soldier who had been targeted for extermination

  by the faceless generals of his own military leadership.

  Which left the Marine Corps with a serious problem: where to put him?

  In the end, the answer had been rather inventive.

  The safest place to hide Schofield was right in front of

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  the world's media, but in the one place where they wouldn't

  be able to touch him.

  He would be assigned to Marine One.

  The chopper was based at the Marine Corps Air Facility

  at Quantico, Virginia, so Schofield could live on the base,

  making access to him all but impossible. And he would work

  on board the President's VH-60N, which was only really

  ever seen landing at the White House, and even then, always

  at a safe distance from the press.

  When the transfer was made, Mother and Gant had

  elected to go with Schofield. The fourth survivor of their

  Antarctic disaster, a private named Rebound Simmons, had

  decided to leave the Marine Corps after their ill-fated mission.

  That had been a year ago.

  In that time, Schofield--quiet at the best of times and

  not given to small talk--had made only a handful of friends

  in the White House: mainly people among the Secret Service

  and the domestic staff; the ordinary people. With his reflective

  silver antiflash glasses, however, he was popular

  with the President's playful grandkids. As such, to their delight,

  he was nearly always assigned to guard them whenever

  they visited. And yet, despite this, he had never actually

  spoken conversationally with the President.

  Area 7 loomed large in front of Marine One. Schofield

  could see the massive doors of the complex's enormous

  hangar slowly opening, revealing bright electric lighting inside.

  Grier spoke into his helmet mike: "Nighthawk Two, this

  is Nighthawk One, beginning descent now."

  IN THE BELLY OF NIGHTHAWK TWO, SERGEANT ELIZABETH

  "Fox" Gant sat hunched in a canvas jumpseat, trying vainly

  to read from a folder perched on her knees.

  Unlike Marine One, the rotor noise inside Nighthawk

  Two was absolutely deafening. And since it never carried the

  President, its interior decor was about a thousand times

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  more utilitarian. No upholstered seats or embroidered armrests

  here.

  Now a staff sergeant, Libby Gant was twenty-eight

  years old, well, as of six hours ago.

  Compact and fit, she had short blonde hair and sky-blue

  eyes, and in regular battle dress--fatigues, body armor and

  MP-10--she cut a smart figure. In full dress uniform--

  peaked hat, dress coat and trousers--she looked spectacular.

  Since they were flying in restricted Air Force airspace,

  the mood on board Nighthawk Two was relaxed. The usual

  tensions of coordinating Marine One's flight path with those

  of civilian air traffic weren't an issue, so Gant--studying

  part-time for entry into Officer Candidate School--took the

  opportunity to brush up on some of her notes.

  She was just getting to Course 9405, Advanced Tactical

  Command, when a soft voice invaded her consciousness.

  "Happy birthday to you ...

  Happy birthday to you ...

  Happy birthday, dear Staff Sergeant Ga-ant ...

  Happy birthday to you."

  She looked up from her work and sighed.

  Sliding into the empty seat beside her was Nicholas

  Tate III, the President's Domestic Policy Adviser. Tate was

  handsome in a European sort of way--with dark eyebrows,

  olive skin and a male model's jawline--and confident in the

  extreme. Today he wore a three-thousand-dollar Armani suit

  and matching Armani cologne. Apparently it was the latest

  thing.

  Tate held out a small neatly wrapped package for Gant

  to take.

  "Twenty-eight, if I'm not mistaken," he said.

  "That's right, sir," Gant said.

  "Please, call me Nick." He nodded at the gift. "Well, go

  on. Open it."

  Reluctantly, Gant unwrapped the small package, unveiling

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  an aqua-green box. She popped the lid, revealing an absolutely

  gorgeous silver necklace.

  Small and thin, it looked like a length of the finest silver

  thread, its polished surface sparkling. A small but stylish diamond

  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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  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

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  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

  achievements, though, were far more spectacular.

  Masterminding the defection of five senior Soviet nuclear

  missile specialists from a secret base in the Ukraine

  mountains. The assassination of KGB operations chief

  Vladimir Nakov in Moscow in 1990, before Nakov could

  himself assassinate Mikhail Gorbachev. And, finally, in

  1997, the daring rescue of the CIA's captured Far Eastern

  Bureau Chief, Fred Conway, from the dreaded Xiangi

  Prison--the all but impregnable maze of grim cells and torture

  chambers belonging to the notorious Chinese External


  Intelligence Service.

  Each man in the formation wore a special combat mask

  around his throat--an ERG-6 gas mask. Black and hard, it

  looked like the lower half of a hockey mask, and it covered

  its wearer's mouth and nose in much the same way Jesse

  James's mask had covered his face in the old days.

  Three other men stood out in front of the detachment of

  7th Squadron members on the deserted runway. All three

  wore starched white lab coats. Scientists.

  Once the Marine and Secret Service people from

  Nighthawk Two were in place, a set of Airstairs folded down

  from the forward left-hand side of Marine One.

  Two Marines emerged from the helicopter first and took

  up their positions at the base of the stairs, backs straight,

  eyes forward.

  A moment later, Special Agent Frank Cutler stepped out

  of the chopper, hand on his holster, eyes watchful. The Secret

  Service trusts nobody. Not even the United States Air

  Force. Even it could have a disgruntled soldier who might

  take a shot at the President.

  The President came out next, followed by his staff.

  Schofield and a young Marine corporal emerged last of

  all.

  As usual, Marine One's two pilots, Gunman and Dallas,

  stayed on board just in case a rapid departure was called for.

  The two parties faced each other on the runway in the

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  early morning light--the Air Force detachment stationed at

  the complex; the President and his entourage.

  Twisting coils of windswept sand swirled around their

  bodies. A sandstorm was due later in the day.

  A young Air Force captain guided the President over to

  the colonel at the head of the Air Force formation--a severe

  looking man with gray hair and eyebrows. As the President

  came closer, the colonel stepped forward and crisply saluted

  his Commander-in-Chief.

  "Good morning, Mr. President," he said. "My name is

  Colonel Jerome T. Harper, United States Air Force Medical

  and Surgical Command, and commanding officer of United

  States Air Force Special Area (Restricted) 7. This is Major

  Kurt Logan, commander of the 7th Squadron forces here at

  the base. Your two Secret Service advance teams are waiting