Area 7 by Matthew Reilly
Then suddenly - shockingly - the left-hand South African bipod exploded.
It just blew out of the water, consumed in a geyser of spray. One second it was there, the next it was replaced by a ring of foaming water and a rain of falling fiberglass.
For its part, the right-hand South African bipod just wheeled around instantly, abandoning this confrontation, and took off after the other South African boats.
Schofield spun. What the...?
SHOOOOOMU
Without warning, three black helicopters came bursting out of the sandstorm above the crater and plunged into the canyon system from behind him!
The three choppers swung into the relative shelter of the crater like World War II dive bombers, banking sharply before righting themselves without any loss of speed. They thundered over Schofield and his team, powering toward the South African boats as they disappeared inside the slot canyon to the west.
The choppers just shot into the narrow canyon after them.
Schofield's jaw dropped.
In a word, the three helicopters looked awesome. Sleek and mean and fast. They looked like nothing he had ever seen before.
They were each painted gunmetal black and looked like a cross between an attack helicopter and a fighter jet. Each helicopter had a regular helicopter rotor and a sharply pointed nose, but they were also possessed of downwardly canted wings that extended out from their frames.
They were AH-77 Penetrators - medium-sized attack choppers; a new kind of fighter-chopper hybrid that combined the hovering mobility of a helicopter with the superior straight-line speed of a fighter jet. With their black radar absorbent paint, swept-back wings and severelooking cockpits, they looked like a pack of angry airborne sharks.
The three Penetrators shot forward, banking into the narrow canyon after the four South African speedboats, completely ignoring Schofield and his men.
And in a fleeting instant, Schofield had a strange thought. What the hell were the Air Force people doing out here? Weren't they after the President? What did they care about Kevin?
In any case, this was now a three-way chase.
"Sir!" Brainiac's voice came in. "What do we do?"
Schofield paused. Decision time. A tornado of thoughts whizzed through his mind - Kevin, Botha, the Air Force, the President, and the unstoppable countdown on the Football that at some point would force him to give up on this chase and turn back...
He made the call.
"We go in after them," he said.
Schofield's bipod roared into the canyon the South Africans and the Penetrators had taken, Brainiac and Herbie's bipod close behind it.
It was a particularly winding canyon, this one - left then right, twisting and turning - but, thankfully, sheltered from the sandstorm.
About a hundred yards in, however, it forked into two subcanyons, one heading left, the other right. Little did any of them know that the subcanyons of Lake Powell have a habit of swinging back on each other, like interweaving pieces of string, forming multiple intersections...
Schofield saw the three Air Force choppers split up at the fork - one going left, two going right. The four South African rivercraft up ahead of them must have already split up.
"Brainiac!" he yelled. "Go left! We'll take the right! Remember, all we want is the boy! We get him and then we high-tail it out of here, okay?"
"Got it, Scarecrow."
The two bipods parted - taking separate canyons - Schofield peeling right, Brainiac banking left.
For Schofield, it was like entering a fireworks show - a spectacular display of tracer bullets, missiles and dangerously exploding rock.
He saw the two black choppers eighty yards up ahead - trailing the lead hydrofoil and one of the South African bipods. The two speeding helicopters stayed below the canyon's rim - the raging sandstorm above the canyon system preventing them from going any higher - banking and turning with the bends of the winding canyon, their roto blades thumping.
Tracer bullets streamed out from their nose-mounted Vulcan cannons. Air-to-ground missiles streaked out from their wings and blasted into the rocky walls of the canyon all around the two South African speedboats.
For their part, the South Africans weren't exactly either.
The men in the bipod had come prepared to protect the lead hydrofoil - they had a shoulder mounted Stinger missile launcher. While one man drove the bipod, the gunner thrust the Stinger onto his shoulder and fired it up at the trailing Penetrators.
But the Penetrators must have had the same ultrapowerful electronic countermeasures that the AWACs planes inside Area 7 had, because the Stingers just shot past them spiraling wildly, careering into the walls of the canyon where they detonated, sending showers of car-sized boulders splashing down into the canal below - boulders which Schofield had to swerve to avoid.
And then suddenly Schofield saw a long, white object drop out of a hatch in the belly of one of the black choppers and, dangling from a small drogue parachute, splash down into the water.
A second later, the water beneath the chopper churned into a froth and he saw a finger of bubbles stretch out from the roiling section of water, heading straight for the South African bipod.
It was a torpedo!
Five seconds later, completely without warning, the speeding bipod exploded violently.
The force of the blast was so strong that it lifted the fast moving bipod clear off the water's surface. Indeed, such was the bipod's velocity that it tumbled end over end, totally out of control, bouncing across the water's surface like a skimming stone until it slammed - top-first - into the hard rock wall of the canyon and blew apart.
Schofield drove hard, closing in, now fifty yards behind the action. He needed to catch up, but the South Africans had had too much of a head-start.
And then abruptly the canyon turned... and intersected with its twin from the left - the subcanyon that Brainiac and Herbie had taken in pursuit of the other two South African bipods - so that now the two canyons formed a giant X-shaped junction.
And it happened.
The white South African hydrofoil shot into the intersection from the top-right-hand corner of the X - at exactly the same time as one of its own bipods entered the junction from the bottom-right.
Speeding rivercraft shot every which way.
The hydrofoil and the bipod swerved to avoid each other. Both fishtailed wildly on the water, sending a wall of spray flying into the air - and losing all of their forward momentum in an instant.
The second South African bipod from Brainiac's canyon never even had a chance to slow down.
It just shot straight through the X-shaped junction like a bullet - between the two boats that had been forced to stop, blasting spectacularly through their spray - before zooming off down the canyon ahead of it, heading west.
The three Air Force Penetrators - two from Schofield's canyon, one from the other canyon - were also thrown into chaos. One managed to haul itself to a halt, while the other two whipped through the airspace above the junction, crossing paths, missing each other by inches, and overshooting the momentarily stalled boats below.
It was all Schofield needed.
Now he could catch up.
In his bipod, Brainiac was still eighty yards short of the X-junction.
He saw the mayhem in front of him - saw the restarting hydrofoil, and the stalled South African bipod.
His gaze fell instantly on the hydrofoil, which was now rotating laterally in the water, preparing to resume its run down the canyon to the bottom-left of the X.
Brainiac cut a beeline for it.
Schofield arrived at the junction just as the hydrofoil peeled away to the south and Brainiac's bipod swooped into the narrow canyon fast behind it.
"I'm going after the hydrofoil, sir!"
"I see you!" Schofield yelled.
He was about to follow when some movement to his right caught his eye. He spun to look down the long high walled canyonway that stretched away from him to the
He saw one of the South African bipods disappearing down the elongated canyonway - all on its own.
It was the bipod that had shot straight through the intersection, from the bottom-right corner to the top-left. Curiously, it was not even trying to return to give aid to the hydrofoil.
Then, in a blink, the tiny bipod was gone, vanishing down a narrow side canyon at the far end of the larger canyonway.
And it hit Schofield.
The boy wasn't in the hydrofoil.
He was in the bipod.
That bipod.
"Oh, no," Schofield breathed as he snapped round and saw Brainiac's speeding bipod disappear around a bend in the southern canyon in pursuit of the hydrofoil. "Brainiac..."
Brainiac's sand-colored bipod was moving fast.
Really, really fast.
It came alongside the speeding South African hydrofoil, the two rivercraft hurtling down the narrow rock-walled canal like a pair of runaway stock cars, with two of the Air Force Penetrators firing wildly down on them as they did so.
"Brainiac, can…you hear…me…?" Schofield's garbled voice said in Brainiac's ears, but in the roar of bullets, engines and helicopter rotors, the young Marine couldn't make out Schofield's words.
Brainiac got Herbie to use his pod's controls and bring the bipod in close to the speeding hydrofoil while Brainiac himself climbed out of his seat.
He watched the hydrofoil as they sped alongside it - saw its two strutlike bow-mounted skids carving through the water - but he couldn't see inside the big speedboat's smoked-glass windows.
Then, with a deep breath, he jumped - across the gap between the two speeding boats - landing on his feet, on the foot-wide side decking of the moving hydrofoil.
"...ainiac...out...of there!... "
Schofield's voice was a blur.
Brainiac grabbed a handhold on the roof of the speeding hydrofoil. He wasn't sure what he expected to happen next. Perhaps some resistance - like someone throwing open one of the hydrofoil's side doors and firing on him. But no resistance came.
Brainiac didn't care. He just dive-rolled onto the hydrofoil's forward deck and blasted out the vehicle's windshield. Glass flew everywhere and a second later, when the smoke cleared, he saw the inside of the boat's cabin.
And he frowned.
The hydrofoil's cabin was empty.
Brainiac climbed inside - and saw the hydrofoil's steering controls moving of their own accord, guided by some kind of computer controlled navigation system, an anti-impedance system that directed the vehicle away from all other objects, rock walls and boats alike.
Then suddenly, in the silence of the cabin, Schofield's voice was loud and alive in Brainiac's ear.
"For God's sake, Brainiac! Get out of there! The hydrofoil is a decoy! The hydrofoil is a decoy!"
And at that moment, to his absolute horror, Brainiac heard a shrill beep that would signal the end of his life.
A second later, the entire hydrofoil blew, its windows blasting outwards in a shockingly violent explosion.
The force of the blast flipped Herbie's bipod, too, causing the little speedboat to flip over onto its top and skid in a gigantic spraying mess across the surface of the canal, before it smashed into the wall of the canyon and stopped.
After the impact, the crumpled bipod just lay still, droplets of water raining down all around it.
Back at the X-Intersection, Schofield was about to take off after the rogue South African bipod that had skulked away from the fight when, from completely out of nowhere, a line of bullet geysers shattered the water all around his boat.
It was the fourth and last South African bipod firing on him.
It had started up again and was now heading eastward, back into the canyon that led to the crater with the mesa in its middle.
Before Schofield could even think of a response, two parallel lines of much bigger bullet geysers erupted all around his sand-colored bipod. They hit so close, their spray spattered his face.
This barrage of fire came from the third Penetrator helicopter, which still hovered above the X-shaped junction, turning laterally in midair, searching for Kevin. The black chopper's sixbarreled Vulcan cannon roared loudly as it spewed forth a long tongue of bright yellow flames.
Schofield gunned the engine of his bipod, wheeling it around to the left, away from the Penetrator's gunfire – but also, unfortunately, away from the rogue bipod that he was sure contained Kevin - instead taking off after the other South African bipod that had headed back east, toward the crater with the mesa in it.
The Penetrator gave chase, lowering its nose, powering forward like a charging T-rex, its thrusters igniting.
Schofield's bipod skimmed across the surface of the water, its hull barely even touching the waves, trailing the South African bipod through the winding rock-walled canyon, the sharklike Penetrator looming in the air behind it.
"Any ideas?" Book II yelled from the gunner's pod.
"Yeah!" Schofield called. "Don't die!"
The Penetrator opened fire and two more lines of geysers hit the water all around their speeding bipod.
Schofield banked left - hard - so hard that the boat's left-hand pod lifted clear out of the water, just as a line of bullets ripped up the choppy surface beneath it.
And then, just then, two torpedoes dropped out of the bottom of the Penetrator.
Schofield saw them and his eyes widened.
"Oh, man."
One after the other, the torpedoes splashed down into the water and a second later two identical fingers of bubbles took off after the two bipods, charging up the water-filled canyon behind them.
One torpedo immediately zeroed in on Schofield's boat.
Schofield cut right, angling for an oddly shaped boulder that jutted out from the right-hand wall of the canyon. The gently sloping boulder looked remarkably like a ramp...
The torpedo closed in.
Schofield's bipod whipped across the water. Book II saw what Schofield was aiming for - the boulder...
The bipod hit the rock ramp, just as the torpedo swung in underneath its jet engines and - the bipod shot up out of the water, its exposed twin hulls rocketing up the length of the rock - scratching, shrieking, screeching - and then suddenly, whoosh!, like a stunt car leaping up into the sky, it shot off the end of the sloping boulder, just as the torpedo detonated against the base of the ramp, shattering it into a thousand fragments that went showering upwards in a glorious flower-shaped formation behind the soaring bipod.
The double-hulled boat landed in the water with a splash, still moving fast.
Schofield looked forward just in time to see the South African bipod up ahead of him veering left, heading for a semicircular tunnel burrowed into the left-hand wall of the canyon.
He took off after it, the remaining torpedo charging through the water behind him like a hungry crocodile.
The South African bipod shot into the tunnel.
A second later, Schofield's twin-hulled boat whipped into the darkness behind it.
The torpedo swung in after them.
Their headlamps blazing, the two bipods zoomed down the length of the narrow tunnel at almost a hundred miles an hour, the dark wet walls of the passageway streaking past them in a blur, like some ultrafast indoor roller-coaster ride.
Schofield concentrated hard as he drove.
It was so fast!
The tunnel itself was about twenty feet wide and roughly cylindrical in shape, with its walls curving slightly as they touched the shallow water surface. About two hundred yards ahead of him, he saw a small point of light – the end of the tunnel.
Suddenly Book II yelled, "It's closing!"
"What!"
"That other torpedo!"
Schofield spun.
The torpedo behind them was indeed moving in quickly, closing the gap fast.
He snapped to look forward - saw the water-blasting jet engines of the South African bipod five yards in front of him. Damn it. Si
Schofield gunned it left - but the South African bipod cut him off. Tried right. Same deal.
"What do we do?" Book II called.
"I don't..." Schofield cut himself off. "Hang on!"
"What?"
"Just hold on tight!"
The torpedo weaved its way under the surface of the shallow water like a slithering snake, edging dangerously close to Schofield's stern.
Schofield hit his thrusters, pulled closer to the South African bipod in front of him - so that now the two sleek twin-hulled boats were whipping along at a hundred miles an hour in the tightly enclosed space barely afoot apart.
Schofield saw the South African driver turn quickly in his seat and see them.
"Hello!" Schofield gave the man a wave. "Goodbye!"
And with that, just as the torpedo began to disappear underneath the stern of Schofield's boat, Schofield jammed his thrusters as far forward as they would go and yanked his steering yoke hard to the right.
His speeding bipod swung quickly right, the whole twin-hulled boat lifting completely out of the water as it ran up the curving right-hand wall of the tunnel. The bipod bounced so high up the wall that for a moment it was actually traveling at right angles to the earth.
The torpedo didn't care. With its original target lost, it quickly overtook Schofield's wall skimming boat and zeroed in on the only other object in the vicinity - the South African bipod.
The explosion in the narrow confines of the tunnel was huge.
The South African bipod was blasted to bits - bits that were flung all around the tunnel, followed by a rolling, roaring fireball that filled the narrow cylindrical passageway.
Still moving fast, Schofield's twin-hulled boat swooped down off the sloping wall and blasted right through the charred remains of the South African bipod, exploding through the billowing wall of fire that now filled the tunnel before - suddenly, gloriously - it burst into the bright open space of the awaiting canyon at the end of the passageway.
Schofield eased back on the throttle an his bipod ground to a halt in the middle of this new canyon.