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about themselves, only to be met by the 7th Squadron

  unit that had been stationed on the eastern side of the floor.

  The White House men and women were cut down

  where they stood, hit head-on by a wave of merciless fire.

  Their bodies convulsed and shuddered under the weight of

  the brutal onslaught.

  And then suddenly Book II heard a shout and he looked

  up and saw Gunman Grier burst out of the remains of the

  northern office, yelling with rage, his nickel-plated Beretta

  up and firing.

  No sooner had he appeared, however, than Grier's chest

  literally exploded in a gout of red as two 7th Squadron

  troopers blasted him at the same time.

  The force of their fire pummeled Grier's body, keeping

  him standing long after he was dead--sending him staggering

  backwards, reeling with each impact, until he slammed

  into a wall and fell to the ground in a heap.

  "This is a real fucked-up situation!" Elvis yelled above

  the gunfire. "There's no way out of here!"

  "Over there!" Book II pointed at the regular elevator on

  the northern side of the hangar. "That's the only way out I

  can see!"

  "But how do we get there?"

  "We drive!" Book n shouted, nodding at one of the big

  towing vehicles attached to the tail boom of Nighthawk

  Two, ten yards away.

  THE FOUR RADIO MEN INSIDE THE CONTROL ROOM SPOKE rapidly

  into their headsets.

  "--Bravo Unit, close down all remaining hostile agents

  inside that northern office--"

  Area 7

  "--Alpha Unit is in pursuit of Presidential Detail down

  the eastern fire stairs--"

  "--Charlie Unit, break off from the main hangar, I

  have visual on four Marines heading down the primary air

  vent--"

  "--Delta Unit, be patient, maintain your position--"

  "what do you mean, they attached a radio transmitter

  to his heart?" Schofield said as he made his way down the

  vertical ventilation shaft, his feet splayed wide, pressed

  against its silver steel walls.

  Gant and Brainiac were farther down, shimmying their

  way quickly down the vent, a seemingly bottomless drop beneath

  them.

  "If his heart stops, the bombs go off, in every major airport,

  in every major city," Mother said.

  "Jesus," Schofield said.

  "And he's got to report in every ninety minutes, to reset

  a timer on the Football. Again, if he doesn't, boom"

  "Every ninety minutes?" Schofield pressed a button on

  his old digital watch, starting a timer of his own. He gave it

  a few minutes head-start. It started ticking down from 85:00

  minutes--85:00 ... 84:59 ... 84:58--when abruptly, he

  heard a clattering noise from somewhere above him and he

  snapped his head up--

  Bullets sprayed everywhere.

  Peppering the metal walls all around him and Mother.

  Schofield saw a P-90 rifle sticking over the rim of the

  ventilation shaft--held by someone out of sight--firing

  wildly down into it.

  "Scarecrow!" Gant called from ten feet below them.

  She was crouched inside a small horizontal tunnel that

  branched off the main vertical shaft. "Down here!"

  "Go, Mother! Go!" Schofield yelled.

  Both he and Mother released their footholds on the

  shaft's walls and let themselves slide down the vertical vent.

  Whooosh!

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  Matthew Reilly

  They shot down the narrow vertical tunnel, sizzling-hot

  bullets impacting all around them, before--reeeech!--they

  dug their heels into the shaft's walls just short of the horizontal

  tunnel.

  Mother came to a perfect halt right in front of it.

  Schofield, however, overshot the cross-vent, but somehow

  managed to throw his hands out and grip it with his fingertips,

  a split second before he would have fallen several hundred feet to his death.

  Mother stepped inside the cross-vent first, then hauled

  Schofield into it after her, not a moment before a long abseiling

  rope dropped down the vertical shaft above them.

  The 7th Squadron was coming.

  Up ahead, Gant ran in the lead, closely followed by

  Brainiac. The silver-walled tunnel was about five feet

  square, so they all had to crouch slightly to run through it.

  Gant came around a slight bend on the tunnel and saw

  light up ahead. She sped up--and then lurched to a sudden

  halt, clutching desperately for a handhold.

  She stopped so suddenly that Brainiac almost bowled

  right into her. It was lucky he pulled up in time. A collision

  would have sent both of them falling a hundred and eighty

  feet straight down.

  "Fuck me ..." Brainiac said.

  "What's the holdup--?" Mother said as she and

  Schofield arrived on the scene. "Oh ..."

  Their tunnel ended at the main elevator shaft.

  The giant concrete-walled chasm, two hundred feet

  across, yawned before them.

  On the other side of it, directly opposite them, they saw

  an enormous heavy steel door with a black-painted "I" on it.

  It looked like a hangar door of some sort.

  And nearly two hundred feet below them--parked at

  the fourth underground level--they saw the wide hydraulic

  elevator platform.

  "You know, it's at times like this I wish I had a

  Maghook," Schofield said. A Maghook was a combined

  Area 7 89

  grappling hook and high-powered magnet--the signature

  weapon of Marine Recon Units.

  "There are a couple upstairs in Nighthawk Two,"

  Mother said.

  "Wouldn't do us any good," Gant said. "Distance is too

  far. A Maghook has a maximum rope length of a hundred

  and fifty feet. This is at least two hundred."

  "Well, we better think of something," Brainiac said,

  looking back down the cross-vent, listening to the whizzing

  sounds of the 7th Squadron men abseiling down the main

  vertical shaft beyond it.

  Schofield looked at the wide concrete chasm in front of

  them. It was clearly well used--covered in grime and

  grease.

  Indented at regular intervals on its walls, however, were

  a series of thin rectangular conduits--small horizontal gutters

  cut into the shaft's concrete walls. Each gutter was

  about six inches deep and ran right around the enormous elevator

  shaft, circling it. They were designed, it seemed, to

  house wires and cabling without hindering the elevator platform's

  upward and downward movement.

  But right now, they afforded Schofield no escape.

  Boom!

  He spun. It was the sound of heavy boots clanging on

  metal.

  The 7th Squadron men had arrived at the other end of

  the horizontal tunnel.

  the air force men moved fast, racing half-crouched

  down the cross-vent, guns up.

  There were four of them--all wearing black combat

  gear: helmets, gas masks, body armor. Unsure of which

  cross-tunnel Schofield's group had taken, the others in their

  unit had gone farther down the vertical vent to check the
<
br />   other levels.

  The two lead men rounded the bend in the tunnel--and

  stopped.

  Matthew Reilly

  They had come to the end of the horizontal cross-vent,

  to the point where it met the massive elevator shaft.

  But there was no one there.

  The end of the tunnel was empty.

  when the president of the united states visits a certain

  venue, the Secret Service has always plotted in advance at

  least three alternate exit routes, in case of emergency.

  In big-city hotels, this usually comprises a back entrance,

  a service entrance--say, through the kitchen--and

  the roof, for lift-out via helicopter.

  At Area 7, the Secret Service had sent two advance

  teams to secure and then guard the alternate exit points that

  they had chosen.

  Alternate Exit Point 1 was on the lowest level of Area 7--

  Level 6. The exit itself was the eight-hundred-yard-long Emergency

  Exit Vent that opened onto the desert floor about half a

  mile from the low mountain that covered the base. The first Secret

  Service advance team was stationed down on Level 6, the

  second up at the Vent's exit on the desert floor itself.

  The President and his five-man Detail charged down the

  fire stairs, a hailstorm of bullets sizzling past their cheeks,

  shooting right through their flailing coats. The 7th Squadron's

  first unit--Alpha Unit, led by Major Kurt Logan--was close

  behind them.

  They came to a firedoor that read: level 4: laboratory

  facilities. Dashed past it.

  More stairs, another landing, another door. This one had

  a larger sign on it:

  LEVEL 5: ANIMAL CONTAINMENT AREA

  NO ENTRY

  THIS DOOR FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY

  ENTER VIA ELEVATORS AT OTHER END OF FLOOR

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  Matthew Reilly

  The President ran right past it.

  They arrived at the bottom of the stairwell--at a door

  marked: level 6: x-rail station.

  Frank Cutler was running in the lead. He came to the

  door, yanked it open--

  --and was immediately assaulted by a ferocious barrage

  of automatic gunfire.

  Cutler's face and chest became a ragged bloody mess

  as a relentless wave of bullets rammed into it. The Chief of

  the Detail went flying back into the stairwell, skidding

  across the floor, the man immediately behind him also going

  down.

  Another agent--a young female named Juliet Janson-- dived forward and slammed the door shut again, but before

  she did she got a fleeting, horrifying glimpse of the area beyond

  it.

  The sixth and lowest level of Area 7 looked like an underground

  subway station--with a flat, raised platform sitting

  in between two sets of extra-wide railway tracks. The

  door to the Emergency Exit Vent--their goal--lay buried in

  the concrete wall of the right-hand track.

  Positioned on the train tracks in front of that door, however,

  and covered by the station's chest-high platform, was a

  whole other unit of 7th Squadron soldiers, all with their

  P-90's trained on the fire escape.

  In front of the 7th Squadron men, lying facedown in

  their own blood, lay the bullet-riddled bodies of the nine

  members of the Secret Service's Advance Team One.

  The door slammed shut and Special Agent Juliet Janson

  turned.

  "Quickly!" she shouted. "Back up the stairs! Now!"

  "--ALL UNITS, BE AWARE, DELTA UNIT HAS ENGAGED THE

  enemy--" one of the radio men in the control room said.

  "Repeat, Delta Unit has engaged the enemy--"

  shane schofield tried not to breathe, tried not to make a sound.

  Area 7 93

  All they had to do was look over the edge.

  He was hanging by his fingertips from one of the horizontal

  cabling gutters carved into the concrete wall of the elevator

  shaft, a bare three feet below the mouth of the

  cross-vent he had been standing in only moments before.

  Standing in that cross-vent right now were the four

  heavily armed 7th Squadron men who had stormed it only

  seconds earlier.

  Beside him, Mother, Gant and Brainiac were also clinging

  to the cabling gutter with their fingers.

  Above them, they could hear one of the 7th Squadron

  men speaking into his helmet mike.

  "Charlie Six, this is Charlie One, they're not in the

  Level 1 cross-vent. Copy that, we're on our way."

  Heavy footsteps, then nothing.

  Schofield sighed with relief.

  "Where to now?" Brainiac asked.

  "There," Schofield said, jerking his chin at the giant

  steel hangar door on the opposite side of the wide elevator

  shaft.

  "YOU READY?" BOOK II YELLED TO ELVIS.

  "Ready!" Elvis shouted back.

  Book II looked out at the big white-painted Volvo towing

  vehicle attached to the tail boom of Nighthawk Two ten

  yards away. With its oversized tires, low-slung body and

  small two-man driver's cabin, it looked like either a brick on

  wheels or a giant cockroach. Indeed, it was this resemblance

  that had earned the towing vehicle the nickname "cockroach"

  among airport workers around the world.

  At the moment, Nighthawk Two's cockroach was facing

  outwards, pointed at the armor-plated titanium door that had

  thundered down into place only minutes earlier, sealing the

  hangar.

  Book II was now holding two nickel-plated Berettas in

  his hands, one his own, the other pilfered from a dead Marine

  nearby. He shouted to Elvis, "You take the wheel! I'll

  go for the other side!"

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  Matthew Reilly

  "You got it!"

  "Okay! Now."

  The two of them leapt to their feet and dashed out into

  the open together, their legs moving in time.

  Almost instantly, a line of bullets raced across the

  ground behind them, nipping at their heels.

  Elvis flung himself into the driver's seat, slammed the

  door shut behind him. Book II made for the passenger side,

  but he was met with a brutal volley of gunfire, so instead he

  just dived onto the towing vehicle's flat steel roof and yelled,

  "Elvis! Punch it!"

  Elvis keyed the ignition. The Volvo's big 600horsepower

  engine roared to life. Then Elvis jammed it into gear

  and floored it.

  The towing vehicle's tires squealed as they shot off the

  mark, heading straight for the armored door that cut the

  hangar off from the outside world, taking Nighthawk Two,

  a full-sized CH-53E Super Stallion transport helicopter,

  with it!

  The two remaining units of 7th Squadron men in the

  hangar--twenty men in total--swept across the hangar on

  foot, pursuing the speeding cockroach with their guns.

  A wave of supercharged bullets pummeled the big

  Volvo's sides.

  Elvis yanked on the steering wheel and the big cockroach

  swung around, rocketing toward the southern glass

  walled office.

  On its roof, Book II raised himself on one knee and fired

  both his pistols
at the oncoming 7th Squadron commandos.

  It didn't do much good--the Air Force assassins had

  him outgunned. It was like attacking a battery of Patriot missiles

  with a peashooter. He ducked back behind the cockroach's

  cabin amid a flurry of return fire.

  "Oh, crap!" Elvis shouted from the driver's cabin.

  Book II looked up.

  A lone 7th Squadron commando stood about thirty

  yards in front of them--right in their path--on the southern

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  side of the central elevator shaft, with a Predator antitank

  rocket launcher hefted onto his shoulder!

  The commando pulled the trigger.

  There was a puff of smoke before a small cylindrical

  object came blasting out of the launcher, shooting toward

  the speeding cockroach at phenomenal speed, leaving a

  dead-straight vapor trail in the air behind it.

  Elvis reacted quickly, did the only thing he could think

  to do.

  He yanked his steering wheel hard to the left.

  The massive Volvo towing vehicle rose onto two wheels

  as it swung violently left--and for a moment it looked like it

  was going to drive straight into the yawning chasm that was

  the elevator shaft.

  But it just kept turning ... turning ... wheels screeching

  ... until suddenly it was heading north, along the narrow

  section of floor in between Marine One and the elevator

  shaft.

  Nighthawk Two wasn't so lucky.

  Since it was bouncing along--in reverse--behind the

  runaway cockroach, Elvis's sudden turn had brought it directly

  into the missile's line of fire.

  The Predator hit it, slamming into Nighthawk Two's reinforced

  glass cockpit at tremendous speed.

  The result was nothing short of spectacular.

  The whole front section of the CH-53E Super Stallion

  exploded magnificently--blasting out in an instant, showering

  the area behind the quickly moving helicopter with glass

  and twisted metal, leaving the chopper with a jagged metal hole where the glass bubble of its cockpit was supposed to be!

  The impact of the missile had also destroyed the landing

  wheels under the nose of the chopper. So now the giant

  helicopter was being hauled behind Elvis's towing vehicle

  with its nose--or what was left of it--dragging wildly on