Area 7 ss-2 Read online

  for you inside. We're honored to have you, sir. Welcome to

  Area 7."

  "Thank you, Colonel," the President replied. "It's a

  pleasure to be here. Lead the way."

  AS SOON AS THE PRESIDENT WAS TAKEN AWAY, DISAPPEARING

  inside the enormous main hangar with his highest-level entourage

  in tow, the major in charge of the 7th Squadron detachment

  came up to Schofield.

  Major Kurt Logan was about six-one, with closely

  shaved hair and heavily pockmarked skin. Schofield had actually

  met him before, although he doubted Logan would remember

  him.

  It had been at a special command and leadership course

  run by the Navy at their SEAL compound in Fort Lauderdale in 1997. Through a combination of smart tactics and

  ruthless follow-through, the softly spoken Logan had come

  first in the class by a clear forty points. He could assess any

  battlefield situation in an instant, and when it came to engaging"

  the enemy, he was uncompromising. Schofield, then

  just a budding Recon Unit commander, had come tenth in a

  class of sixteen.

  From the looks of things, Logan hadn't changed much.

  His whole bearing--hands clasped firmly behind his back,

  steely level gaze--indicated a powerful, confident inner

  strength. Battle-hardened strength.

  "Excuse me, Captain," Logan said in a soft Southern

  drawl. He offered Schofield a sheet of paper. "Our personnel

  list for your records."

  Schofield took the list, then gave one of his own to Logan

  in return.

  It was common practice at presidential inspections for

  both sides to swap personnel lists, since the President's people

  wanted to know who was at the base they were inspecting,

  Matthew Reilly

  and the base people wanted to know exactly who was in

  the presidential convoy.

  Schofield glanced at the Area 7 list. Columns of meaningless

  names ran down it.

  UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

  SPECIAL AREA (RESTRICTED) 07

  ON-SITE PERSONNEL

  CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET

  NAME

  NAME

  COMMAND UNIT

  Harper, JT (CO)

  7TH SQUADRON

  Alvarez, MJ A Frommer, SN E

  Arthurs, RT C Gale, A D

  Atlock, FD B Giggs, RE B

  Baines, AW A Golding, DK D

  Bennett, B E Goldman, WE A

  Biggs, NM C Grayson, SR E

  Boland, CS B Hughes, R A

  Boyce, LW D Ingliss, WA B

  Calvert, ET E Johnson, SW D

  Carney, LE E Jones, M D

  Christian, FC A Kincaid, R B

  Coleman, GK E Littleton, SO E

  Coles, M B Logan, (MAJ) KW A

  Crick, DT D McConnell, BA B

  Criece, TW A Messick, K E

  Davis, AM E Milbourn, SK D

  Dayton, AM E Morton, IN C

  Dillan, ST D Nance, GF D

  Doheny, FG A Nystrom, JJ D

  Egan, RR B Oliver, PK E

  Fraser, MS C Price, AL C

  Fredericks, GH A Rawson, MJ C

  NAME UNIT Area 7 NAME 45 UNIT

  Sayles, MT Sommers, SR Stone, JK B C C Taylor, AS Willis, IS Wolfson, HT B C A

  CIVILIAN STAFF

  Botha, GW MED

  Franklin, HS MED

  Shaw, DE MED

  He did notice something, though.

  There were more names here than there were 7th

  Squadron men on the tarmac. While there had been forty

  commandos out on the tarmac, there were fifty 7th Squadron

  members on the list. He figured there must be another ten

  man unit inside the base somewhere.

  As Schofield looked at the list, Logan said, "Captain, if

  you wouldn't mind, we'd like you to move your--"

  "What appears to be the problem, Major?" a voice said

  from behind Schofield. "Don't bother with Captain

  Schofield. I am in command here."

  It was Ramrod Hagerty, the White House Liaison Officer.

  With his Englishman's mustache and distinctly battle-hardened posture, Hagerty was everything Kurt Logan was

  not.

  Before he answered him, Logan looked Hagerty up and

  down. What he saw obviously didn't impress him.

  "I was led to believe that Colonel drier was in ultimate

  command of Marine One," Logan said coolly--and correctly.

  "Well, ah, yes ... yes, technically, he is," Hagerty said.

  "But, as White House Liaison, anything to do with the

  movement of these helicopters must go through me first."

  Logan looked at Hagerty in stony silence.

  Then he said, "I was about to ask the captain here if he

  wouldn't mind rolling your helicopters into the main hangar

  while the President is at the base. We wouldn't want enemy

  satellites knowing that we had the Boss visiting, now would

  we?"

  46

  Matthew Reilly

  "No, no, of course not. Of course not," Ramrod said.

  "Schofield. Make it happen."

  "Yes, sir," Schofield said dryly.

  THE GIANT DOUBLE DOORS OF THE HANGAR CLOSED WITH A resounding

  boom.

  The two lead helicopters of Marine Helicopter

  Squadron-1 were now parked inside the main hangar of Area

  7, their rotors and tail booms folded into their stowed positions.

  Despite their own considerable size, the two Presidential

  helicopters were dwarfed by the cavernous hangar.

  Having supervised the roll-in of the choppers, Schofield

  now stood in the middle of the massive interior space, alone,

  scanning it silently.

  The rest of the Marine,
  contingent--those who hadn't been senior enough to go

  with the President, about twenty people--variously milled

  about the helicopters or drank coffee in the two glass-walled

  offices that flanked the main doors.

  The size of the hangar stunned Schofield.

  It was gigantic.

  Completely illuminated by brilliant white halogen

  lights, it must have stretched at least a hundred yards into the

  mountain. A ceiling-mounted rail system ran for its entire

  length. At the moment, two large wooden crates hung from

  the rails at either end of the hangar.

  At the far end of the vast space--facing the doors that

  led out to the runway--stood a two-story, completely internal building that ran for the full width of the hangar. This

  building's upper floor had angled glass windows that looked

  out over the hangar floor.

  A small unobtrusive personnel elevator sat quietly underneath

  the overhang created by the building's upper level,

  sunk in the hangar's northern wall.

  Apart from the Presidential helicopters, there were no

  other aircraft in the hangar at present. Some large white

  painted towing vehicles not unlike those seen at airports lay

  Area 7 47

  scattered around the hangar floor--indeed, Schofield had

  used two of them to bring in the choppers.

  By far the most striking feature of the immense hangar,

  however, was the massive aircraft elevator platform that lay

  in its center.

  It was huge, unbelievably huge, like the enormous hydraulic

  elevators that hang off the sides of aircraft carriers--

&nb
sp; a giant square-shaped platform in the very center of the

  hangar.

  At 200 feet by 200 feet, the platform was large enough

  to hold an entire AWACS Boeing 707--the Air- Force's famous

  radar-detecting airplanes, known for the thirty-foot

  flying-saucer-like rotodomes mounted on their backs.

  Supported by an unseen hydraulic lift system, the giant

  platform took up nearly the whole of the central Area of the

  hangar. As with similar aircraft elevators, to maximize efficiency,

  on the northeastern corner of the platform was a small detachable section which was itself a working elevator, capable

  of operating independently of the larger platform. To do

  this it ran on rails attached to the wall of the elevator shaft

  rather than on the main platform's telescoping hydraulic

  strut--a kind of "platform within a platform," so to speak.

  Today, however, the Air Force personnel at Area 7 were

  putting on the whole show.

  As he stood at the edge of the enormous elevator shaft,

  Schofield could see the President--with his nine-man Secret

  Service Detail and his high-ranking Air Force tour guides--

  standing on the full-sized platform, getting smaller and

  smaller as they descended the wide concrete shaft on it.

  AT THAT VERY SAME MOMENT, AS SHANE SCHOFIELD STOOD IN

  the center of the vast hangar bay, looking down into the wide

  elevator shaft, someone else was watching him.

  The watcher stood in Area 7's darkened control room,

  on the upper floor of the internal building that formed the

  eastern wall of the hangar. Around him, four uniformed radio

  operators spoke softly into headset microphones:

  48

  Matthew Reilly

  "--Alpha Unit, cover the Level 3 common room--"

  "--Echo Unit advises that the Marine investigatory

  team from Nighthawk Three had to be neutralized out at the

  EEV. They found the secondary advance team. Echo is parking

  their chopper in one of the outside hangars now. Returning

  to the main hangar when they're done--"

  "--Bravo and Charlie Units are to remain in main

  hangar--"

  "--Delta Unit reports that it is now in position--"

  "--the Secret Service are trying to contact their primary

  advance team on Level 6. The simulated All-Clear signal,

  however, appears to be working--"

  Major Kurt Logan arrived at the side of the shadowy

  figure. "Sir. The President and his Detail just arrived on

  Level 4. All units are in position."

  "Good."

  "Shall we move now?"

  "No. Let him take the tour," the faceless man said.

  "There is still one more thing that has to be taken care of before

  we can begin."

  "GOOD MORNING."

  Schofield turned, and saw the smiling faces of Libby

  Gant and Mother Newman.

  "Hey there," he said.

  "Ralph's still pissed at you," Mother said. "He wants a

  rematch."

  Ralph was Mother's husband. A short nugget of a man

  with a moon-shaped smiling face and a limitless ability to

  put up with Mother's eccentricities, he was a trucker, owning

  his own Mack eighteen-wheeler. It had a painting of an

  arrow-struck heart on its side with the word "Mother" flowing

  over it. With his short stature and ready smile, Ralph was

  widely regarded in the Marine community as a bona fide

  legend.

  He was also the proud owner of a new barbecue, and at

  the obligatory Sunday afternoon lunch at Mother's place a

  few weeks ago, he'd challenged Schofield to a shoot-off on

  the garage basketball hoop. Schofield had let him win and

  Ralph knew it.

  "Maybe next weekend?" Schofield said. "How about

  you? How'd that checkup on the leg go yesterday?"

  "In a word, Scarecrow, sen-sational," Mother

  said. "I got full movement and I can run just as fast as I used

  to. That seemed to satisfy the docs. Hell, I told 'em that just

  last week I bowled 275, but that didn't seem to mean much.

  Either way, since I'm now part machine, I want a new nickname:

  Darth Fucking Vader."

  Schofield laughed. "Okay, Darth."

  50

  Matthew Reilly

  "You having trouble with Ramrod again?" Gant asked

  seriously.

  "The usual," Schofield said. "Hey, happy birthday."

  Gant smiled. "Thanks."

  "I got you something." Schofield reached into his dress

  coat pocket. "It's not huge or anything, but ..." he frowned,

  patted his other pockets. "Damn, it's here somewhere.

  Maybe it's back on the chopper ..."

  "Don't worry about it."

  "Can I give it to you later?"

  "Sure."

  Mother gazed at the enormous hangar around them.

  "What the fuck is this place? Looks like Fort Knox."

  "More than that," Schofield said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look at the floor just inside the hangar doors."

  Mother and Gant did. A series of box-shaped indentations

  ran in a line across the concrete floor in front of the

  doors. Each indentation was at least a yard square and deep.

  "Now look up."

  They did, and saw a series of thick, toothlike metal

  protrusions--protrusions which, when lowered, would fit

  perfectly into the box-shaped indentations on the floor.

  "Piston-driven armored door," Schofield said, "like the

  ones they have on Nimitz-class carriers. They're used to divide

  the ship's hangar bays into self-contained zones in case

  of fire or explosion. But, you'll notice that there aren't any

  other armored doors in this hangar. That's the only one,

  which means it's the only exit."

  "So what are you saying?" Mother asked.

  "I'm saying," Schofield said, "that whatever they're doing

  in this complex is more important than you or I could

  possibly imagine."

  THE WIDE ELEVATOR PLATFORM HOLDING THE PRESIDENT OF the United States jolted to a halt in front of a giant steel door

  marked with an enormous black-painted "4."

  The wide concrete elevator shaft stretched up into the

  air above the President and his Secret Service Detail like an

  oversized vertical tunnel. The bright artificial light of the

  ground-level hangar was but a small square of white now-- three hundred feet straight up.

  No sooner had the elevator stopped than the massive

  steel door in front of it rumbled upward. Colonel Jerome

  Harper led the way, walking and talking quickly:

  "This facility was once the headquarters for the North

  American Air Defense Command--NORAD--before

  NORAD was moved to a more modern facility built underneath

  Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado in 1975.

  "The complex is surrounded by a two-foot-thick titanium

  outer wall, which is itself buried beneath one hundred

  feet of solid granite. Like the Cheyenne Mountain complex,

  it is designed to withstand a direct hit from a thermonuclear

  missile."

  Harper handed the President a sheet of paper, on which

  was a schematic diagram of the subterranean structure.

  The hangar appeared at the top of the diagram--at

&nb
sp; ground level, capped by the low mountain--then the wide

  aircraft elevator shaft led downwards, until it met a multileveled

  structure built deep within the earth.

  Harper said, "The underground complex contains six

  levels, the first two of which--Levels 1 and 2--are storage

  hangars for high-risk aircraft, much like the ones you saw at

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  Matthew Reilly

  Area 8 earlier this morning. Level 3 houses communications

  and staff living quarters. Level 5 is confinement. And Level

  6 is the X-Rail system.

  "Each level is completely scalable to both radiation and

  airborne contagions, and the whole facility, if locked down,

  is capable of living off a self-contained supply of oxygen for

  thirty days. Food supplies are kept in a storage Area on Level

  3. Water supply is kept in a 100-million-gallon tank in the

  Level 1 hangar."

  Their group came to a short upwardly sloping corridor,

  at the end of which sat a squat solid-looking door that

  looked like a gigantic safe. An Air Force man hurriedly began

  opening it.

  "Project Fortune was stationed here four years ago, after

  the first viable embryo reached maturity," Harper said.

  "Now, at last, it has reached a stage where it can be put to

  use."

  The President waited patiently while the three-foot

  thick door was pulled open.

  Frank Cutler and the eight other members of the President's

  personal Detail stood behind him--silent, impassive,

  invisible. At three-minute intervals, Cutler would silently

  check his earpiece for the All-Clear beacons from both of

  his advance teams. The beacons came in loud and clear.

  Then, finally, the door swung open, and the President

  looked casually beyond it.

  And his jaw dropped.

  "Oh ... my ... God ..."

  "MY MONEY'S ON THE SUPERBOMB," ELVIS HAYNES SAID AS HE

  leaned back in his chair.

  Elvis, Schofield, Gant and Mother were sitting in one of

  the glass-walled offices by the main doors of the hangar.

  With them were Colonels Grier and Dallas, all the other

  Marines stationed on board the Presidential helicopters, as

  well as the three remaining Secret Service agents.