Area 7 by Matthew Reilly
Python Willis spoke into his helmet mike. "Control, this is Charlie Leader. They're going for the Football."
* * *
The gigantic aircraft elevator groaned loudly as it lumbered up the wide concrete shaft.
It moved slowly, carrying the crumpled remains of the crashed AWACS plane on its back.
The plane lay tilted forward, like a wounded bird, its nose lower than its destroyed rear section, its broken wings splayed wide. The plane's rotodome - still intact – towered high above the whole sorry image.
The massive elevator rumbled up the greasy concrete shaft.
As it passed the open doorway to the level 1 hangar bay, however, three tiny figures quickly leapt off it, hustling into the underground hangar.
It was Mother and Brainiac and, puffing along behind them, Herbie Franklin.
They were heading for the central junction box that Franklin had said was located in the Level 1 hangar bay, to disable Area 7's camera system.
The hangar was deserted now, the 7th Squadron men long gone. The two stealth bombers and the lone SR-71 Blackbird still stood silently in the cavernous space, like a trio of sleeping sentinels.
Mother checked her watch as she skirted the left-hand wall of the hangar.
8:20.
Ten minutes to get the President to the Football.
As she moved along the concrete wall, watchful for enemy soldiers, she saw a large box shaped compartment at the far end of it. The compartment's ten-foot-tall steel door was twisted and bent, partially destroyed.
"Oh, yeah," she said.
"What?" Herbie asked from behind her.
"Our little run-in with the 7th Squadron up here earlier," Mother said. "They got a couple of Stingers off - one hit that compartment, the other punctured some water tanks inside the wall over by the personnel elevator."
"Oh," Herbie said.
"Let's see what's left," Mother said.
Upstairs, the giant elevator platform rose slowly into the main hangar.
The remains of the AWACS plane appeared first, rising above the rim of the square-shaped shaft.
Then the exploded rear section of the fuselage...
...followed by the intact rotodome...
...then the snapped wings...
The rest of the battered plane rose slowly into view and then, with a loud boom!, the platform came level with the hangar floor and stopped.
There was a long silence.
The ground-level hangar bore the scars of the battle that had taken place there nearly an hour and a half before.
Marine One - still attached to its towing vehicle – stood on the western side of the elevator platform, while its semi destroyed sister chopper, Nighthawk Two, and its cockroach stood on the northern side of the platform, over by the personnel elevator.
On the eastern side of the AWACS plane, however, stood something entirely new: a team of ten 7th Squadron commandos - Bravo Unit - positioned in between the elevator platform and the internal building, standing inside a semicircular barricade of wooden crates and Samsonite containers.
On a chair in the center of the barricade sat a familiar stainless-steel briefcase, folded open, revealing a series of red and green lights, a keypad, and a flat-glass analyzer plate.
The Football.
Captain Bruno "Boa" McConnell - the gray-eyed leader of Bravo Unit - gazed at the crumpled AWACS plane suspiciously.
The broken plane just sat there in the center of the enormous hangar - silent, unmoving - a great big pile of junk.
More silence.
* * *
"How's it gogin down there, Mother?" Schofield's voice whispered in Mother's earpiece, borrowed from one of the dead Secret Service agents.
Down on Level 1, Mother surveyed the damaged electricity junction box in front of her. Fully half the switchboard had been destroyed by the missile impact. The other half was a mixed bag - some parts were intact, others were just mounds of melted wires. At the moment, Herbie Franklin was tapping the keys on a computer terminal that had survived the impact.
"Just a second," she said into her wrist microphone. "Yo, Poindexter. What's the story?"
Franklin frowned. "It doesn't make sense. Somebody's been here already, about twenty minutes ago at eight o'clock. They cut the main power. The whole base is running on auxiliary power..."
"Can you cut the cameras?" Mother asked.
"Don't have to. They were shut down when the main power was disabled." Herbie turned to face Mother. "They're already off."
* * *
Up in the main hangar. The regular elevator's doors opened.
Out of the lift stepped Kurt Logan and the three other survivors from Alpha Unit. They met up with Boa McConnell and the men of Bravo Unit.
"What's happening?" Logan asked.
"Nothing..." Boa replied. "Yet."
"...Control, this is Charlie leader" Python Willis's voice said over the control room's speakers.
"There's no one down here on Level 4."
"...Copy, Charlie Leader. Bring your team up to the main hangar in the personnel lift. Echo, stay down there. Caesar wants you roving around the lower levels. We've lost all camera visuals and we need some eyes down there..."
* * *
On Level 1, Mother keyed her wrist mike. "Scarecrow, this is Mother. Cameras are down. Repeat: Cameras are down. We're heading for the aircraft elevator shaft."
"Thanks, Mother."
"All right, we're in business," Schofield said, turning to the President, Book II and Juliet.
They were in a dark place.
He looked at his watch:
8:25:59.
8:26:00.
This was going to be close.
"Fox, Elvis, Love Machine, get ready. On my mark. In three..."
The main hangar was silent.
"Two..."
Marine One stood about thirty feet away from the wreck of the AWACS plane, shining in the harsh artificial light.
"One..."
The men of Bravo Unit eyed the shattered AWACS bird cautiously, guns up, trigger fingers tensed.
"...Mark."
Schofield pressed a button on a small handheld unit – it was the remote detonation switch for one of the RDX-based grenades that he had found on the 7th Squadron men in the decompression room. Pound for pound, aluminized RDX is about six times more powerful than C4 - it blows big and it blows wide, a superblasting charge.
As soon as he hit the button, the RDX charge that he had left in the cockpit of the AWACS plane exploded - blasting outwards, showering the hangar with a star-shaped rain of glass and shrapnel.
And then everything happened at once.
The men of Bravo Unit dived away from the explosion.
Sizzling-hot pieces of the plane's cockpit shot low over their heads, lodging in the barricade all around them like darts smacking into a corkboard.
As they clambered back to their feet, they saw movement, saw three shadows climb out from the air vent underneath Marine One.
"There!" Boa pointed.
One of the shadows ran out from beneath the President's helicopter, while the other two slithered up through a hatch in its underbelly.
A moment later, Marine One's engines roared to life.
Its tail boom folded into place from its stowed position, as did its rotor blades. No sooner were the rotor blades extended than they began to rotate, despite the fact that the President's helicopter was still attached to its towing vehicle.
Gunfire erupted as the lone Marine who had dashed out from underneath the chopper - Love Machine – disengaged the cockroach attached to its tail and climbed inside the towing vehicle's tiny driver's cabin.
"What the fuck...?" Kurt Logan said as the cockroach skidded out from behind Marine One and swung around the elevator platform, heading directly for the 7th Squadron men guarding the Football.
"Open fire," Logan said to Boa and his men. "Open fire now."
They did.
A barrage of P-90 fire
Inside the driver's cabin, Love Machine ducked below the dashboard. Bullets tore into the seatback behind him, sending the fluffy innards of the seat showering everywhere.
The cockroach careened across the hangar, bouncing wildly, taking fire.
Then suddenly, behind it, Marine One rose into the air - inside the hangar - the deafening thump-thump-thump of its rotor blades reverberating off the walls, drowning out all other sound.
Inside its cockpit, Gant worked the controls while Elvis hit switches everywhere.
"Elvis! Give me missiles!" she shouted. "And whatever you do, don't hit the Football, okay!"
Elvis slammed his finger down on a launch button.
Shoom!
A Hellfire missile shot out from a pod mounted on the side of the Presidential helicopter, a finger of smoke extending through the air behind it, the missile shooting at tremendous speed toward the internal building on the eastern side of the hangar.
The missile hit the exact center of the building – right above the Bravo troops guarding the Football - and detonated.
The middle section of the internal building blasted outwards in a shower of glass and plasterboard. A section of the glassed-in upper level collapsed to the ground behind the Bravo men guarding the Football.
The 7th Squadron commandos leapt clear of the falling debris - only to have to roll again a split second later to avoid a second source of danger: the oncoming cockroach driven by Love Machine.
It was chaos.
Mayhem.
Pandemonium.
Exactly as Schofield had planned.
Schofield watched the confusion from his position inside the destroyed AWACS plane. His watch read:
8:27:50.
8:27:51.
Two minutes left.
"Okay, Book, let's go." He turned to Juliet and the President. "You two stay here until we've checked the status of the Football. If we can get it, we'll bring it back to you. If not, you'll have to come out."
And with that Schofield and Book II leapt down from the gaping hole at the rear of the AWACS plane and ran out into the open.
At exactly the same moment, a six-barreled Vulcan minigun popped out from a compartment underneath the nose of Marine One and began spewing out a devastating stream of supermachine-gun fire.
The 7th Squadron men - already scattered everywhere - were dispersed even more. Some dived behind their barricade for cover, others found shelter among the ruins of the AWACS plane and fired up at the President's helicopter.
Gant sat at the controls of Marine One as her enemy's bullets left scratches on the Lexan windshield. And the armor-plated walls of the big Sikorsky were built to withstand missile impacts, so gunfire wasn't a problem.
Beside her, Elvis was yelling, "Yee-ha!" as he rained hell on the 7th Squadron men with the minigun.
Schofield and Book II ran eastward, sidestepping quickly toward the 7th Squadron men guarding the Football.
They moved in tandem, guns up, firing - bizarrely – at Love Machine's runaway cockroach and up at Marine One.
The fact that they were firing at their own people was probably best explained by the fact that they were dressed in the black fatigues, black body armor and half-face gas masks of the 7th Squadron - slightly damaged uniforms they had pilfered from the dead Air Force commandos in the decompression area down on Level 4.
Schofield and Book danced sideways, edging toward the barricade in front of the Football, firing hard at their own men - but missing woefully.
They reached the barricade, and Schofield immediately saw the Football on the chair.
Then he saw the tether.
"Damn it!"
The presidential briefcase was anchored to a tie-down stud on the floor by a thick metal cord.
It looked like titanium thread.
Watch.
8:28:59.
8:29:00.
"Shit," Schofield keyed his wrist mike. "Janson! The Football's tethered to the floor. We can't move it. You're going to have to bring the President out into the open."
"Okay," came the reply.
"Fox! Love Machine! I need another thirty seconds of mayhem! Then you know what to do."
Fox's voice: "Whatever you say, Scarecrow!"
Love Machine: "Roger that, Boss!"
And then Schofield saw Janson and the President leap out from the rear section of the AWACS plane - also dressed in full 7th Squadron attire and brandishing pistols, which they fired determinedly at Love Machine's cockroach.
Janson fired her SIG-Sauer with a firm two-handed grip. The President wasn't as fluid, but he did all right for a guy who'd never served in the military.
Marine One banked in a wide circle around the enormous hangar, drawing fire, the roar of its speed-blurred rotor blades thunderous in the enclosed space.
Love Machine's towing vehicle swung past the barricade protecting the Football, then veered left, heading north, smashing through some broken pieces of the AWACS plane and then disappearing behind it.
* * *
From the first-floor control room of the internal building, Caesar Russell watched the chaos unfolding below him.
He saw the Presidential helicopter performing death defying passes inside the enclosed hangar. He saw the speeding cockroach blasting through the remains of the AWACS plane on the elevator platform.
And he saw his own men - scattered and dispersed - firing wildly at both of these two crazy threats, as if they had been prepared for any ordered attack but not a totally insane one.
"Goddamn it!" he roared. "Where is Charlie?"
"Still coming up in the personnel elevator, sir."
And then, in an instant of total clarity, as he watched his men down on the hangar floor, Caesar saw him, and his jaw dropped.
"No..."
Caesar watched in stunned amazement as one of his own men raced over to the Football - which, of course, was still surrounded by a few men from Bravo Unit, all of them facing outwards - pulled off one of his black leather gloves, and under the watchful eye of three other black-clad impostors, moved his hand toward the palm-print analyzer inside the steel briefcase.
* * *
Schofield's watch ticked ever forward.
8:29:31.
8:29:32.
Amid the roar of the rampaging helicopter and the cacophony of gunfire all around him, and guarded by Schofield, Book II and Juliet Janson, the President stepped up to the Football.
He yanked off his glove, took a final look around himself, and then, as he strode past the Football, he inconspicuously placed his hand on the palm-print analyzer, just as the countdown timer on its display hit 0:24.
The briefcase beeped and the timer instantly ticked over from 0:24 to 90:00 and started counting down again.
When Schofield saw that the deed was done, he and Book II fell into step alongside Juliet and the President.
"Remember, guns up and firing," he said. He held his wrist mike to his lips, "Fox, Elvis, Love Machine: get out of here. We'll meet you downstairs. Mother, the platform. Now"
* * *
Mother stood inside the enormous hangar doorway down on Level 1, looking up into the elevator shaft.
Two hundred feet above her, she could see the underside of the massive aircraft platform, beyond which she could hear the sounds of the battle.
She hit the call button, and immediately the giant elevator platform high above her jolted sharply and slowly began to descend.
* * *
Up in the main hangar, the shattered remains of the AWACS plane - and the platform on which they stood - began to disappear into the floor.
The elevator was going down. Schofield, Book II, Juliet and the President charged toward it, firing up at Marine One as they did so - acting like good 7th Squadron soldiers.
* * *
In the control room overlooking the hangar, Caesar grabbed a microphone. "Boa! Logan! The President is there! He walked r
"The platform!" he yelled. "Bravo Unit! Converge on the platform! Alpha, take out the helicopter and kill that fucking cockroach!"
* * *
Marine One was already swooping toward the ground again - her diversionary mission accomplished.
Gant landed the big chopper right where she had found it - over the air vent in the floor on the western side of the elevator shaft - and with Elvis's help, she maneuvered the big bird around so that her floor hatch stopped directly above the ventilation shaft.
Once the helicopter was stopped, she leapt out of the pilot's seat and headed for the floor hatch, while Elvis dashed for the rear left-hand door and threw it open for Love Machine.
Love Machine was in a world of pain.
His Volvo towing vehicle wasn't as bulletproof as Marine One and he was taking all kinds of shit from the 7th Squadron men.
Tires squealed, bullets impacted, glass shattered.
And now he had to get over to Marine One.
His biggest problem, however, was that he had just swung his cockroach around for another pass at the 7th Squadron men on the eastern side of the platform when Schofield's call had come in.
He was now on the other side of the shaft from Marine One, heading northward, and the elevator platform – now sinking slowly into the shaft - was no longer there to drive on.
He'd have to go around.
More bullets hit his cockroach as three 7th Squadron commandos appeared right in front of him and assailed his vehicle with a harrowing wave of gunfire.
Bullets riddled the driver's compartment.
Two slugs slammed into Love Machine's left shoulder, spraying blood.
Love Machine roared.
A separate volley hit both of his front tires and they punctured loudly, and suddenly he was skidding out of control, sliding precariously close to the edge of the elevator shaft and the now ten-foot drop to the slowly descending platform.
Somehow, he didn't fall into the shaft. Instead, he bounced across the northeastern corner of the great square hole, shooting past the 7th Squadron men who had hammered him with gunfire, and slammed at tremendous speed into the remains of Nighthawk Two, which still sat near the northern wall of the hangar - attached to its own towing vehicle, its cockpit blasted open - right where Book II had left it ninety minutes earlier.