Even now, Lucifer Leary looked like the picture of evil. The entire left-hand side of his face was covered by a black tattoo depicting five vertical claw marks, as if Freddy Krueger himself had slashed his razor-tipped fingers viciously down Leary's cheek. The tattooed slash marks were impressive in their detail - torn ragged skin, imitation blood - designed to evoke maximum revulsion.
At that moment, to the President's horror, Leary smiled at the observation window, revealing hideous yellow teeth.
It was then that it hit the President.
Even though his gas mask was off, Leary didn't seem to be affected by the airborne virus.
"As you will see," Botha said proudly, "even when the virus is inhaled directly into the lungs from the air, an orally administered vaccine delivered in serum-hydrate form is effective in preventing infection. The vaccine neutralizes the invading virus by restricting the release of the protein diethylpropanase by the virus, a protein which attacks the pigmentation enzyme metahydrogenase and the blood group protein, DB..."
"In English, please," the President said tersely.
Botha said, "Mr. President, what you have just seen is a quantum leap forward in biotechnological warfare. It is the world's first genetically engineered biological weapon, a completely synthetic agent, so there are no natural cures. And it works with a degree of efficiency the likes of which I have never seen before. It is a purely constructed virus, and make no mistake, it has been constructed in a very particular way."
"It is an ethnic bullet, designed to kill only certain races of people, people possessed of certain ethnically exclusive genes. In this case, it attacks only those people who are possessed of the enzyme metahydrogenase and DB blood protein. These are the enzymes which cause white skin pigmentation, the characteristic enzymes of Caucasian people."
"Mr. President, the same enzyme that makes our skin white makes us susceptible to this virus. It is extraordinary. I don't know how the Chinese did it. My government in South Africa tried for years to develop a virus that it could put in the water supply which would make only black people sterile, but we never succeeded."
"But from the look of this agent, it would not be difficult to adapt the genetic makeup of the virus so that it would also attack African Americans, since their pigmentation enzyme is a variant of metahydrogenase..."
"Bottom line," the President said.
"The bottom line is simple, Mr. President," Botha said. "The only people safe from this virus are people of Asian origin, because they do not possess these pigmentation enzymes at all. As such, they would be immune from the agent while Caucasians and African Americans everywhere would die."
"Mr. President. Allow me to introduce you to the latest Chinese biological weapon. Meet the Sinovirus."
* * *
"I'm telling you, there's something not right here", Schofield said.
"Bullshit, Captain." Ramrod Hagerty waved his hand dismissively. "You've been reading too many comic books."
"What about Webster, then? I can't find him anywhere. He's not allowed to just disappear."
"Probably in the John."
"No, I checked there," Schofield said. "And Nighthawk Three? Where are they? Why hasn't Hendricks called in?"
Hagerty just stared at him blankly.
Schofield said, "Sir, with all due respect, if you would just look at where these 7th Squadron guys are standing..."
Hagerty turned in his chair. He, Schofield and Gant were in the southern office of the main hangar, with the small group of White House people. Hagerty casually looked out through the office's windows at the 7th Squadron commandos spaced around the hangar outside.
"Looks like they're guarding every entrance." Hagerty shrugged. "To stop us going into areas we're not supposed to."
"No, sir, they're not. Look closely. The group to the north are guarding the regular elevator. The middle group are guarding the aircraft elevator. They're both fine. But look at the group over by the control building, the group in front of the door."
"Yeah, so..."
"Sir, they're guarding a storage closet."
Hagerty looked from Schofield to the Air Force commandos. It was true. They were standing in front of a door marked 'storage'.
"That's very nice, Captain. I'll put your observations in my report." Hagerty resumed his paperwork.
"But sir..."
"I said, I'll put your observations in my report, Captain Schofield. That will be all."
Schofield straightened. "With respect, sir, have you ever been in combat?" he said.
Hagerty froze, looked up. "I'm not sure if I like your tone, Captain."
"Have you ever been in combat?"
"I was in Saudi during Desert Storm."
"Fighting?"
"No. Embassy staff."
"Sir, if you'd ever been in combat, you'd know that those three groups of Air Force commandos are not standing in defensive positions. Those are offensive positions. More than that, those men are perfectly placed to rout these two offices..."
"Rubbish."
Schofield grabbed the sheet of paper Hagerty had been writing on and scribbled a quick map of the hangar.
"This is where they are now," Schofield tapped the three big black dots on the diagram.
"Twelve o'clock, ten o'clock and four o'clock. But when they move like this..." Schofield added some arrows to his diagram.
"...We've got serious trouble. All the Marines and Secret Service people over in the northern office will face the full force of the attack, while the White House people here in the southern office will naturally run the other way – right into the third unit of 7th Squadron soldiers."
Hagerty looked at Schofield's diagram for a long moment. Then he said, "That has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard, Captain. These are American servicemen."
"For Christ's sake, just listen to me..."
"No, you listen to me," Hagerty spat. "Don't think for a moment that I don't know who you are. I know all about Wilkes Ice Station. I know what happened there. But just because you were some kind of hero once doesn't give you a license to spout out fucking conspiracy theories and expect to be believed. I've been in this Corps for twenty-two years and I have risen to where I am by..."
"...What? Pushing pencils?" Schofield said.
Hagerty fell silent. His face grew beet root red.
"That's it, Schofield. For the sake of the Corps, I won't make a scene here, but when we get back to Quantico, as soon as we touch down, you will be taken into custody and held for court martial on charges of gross insubordination. Now get the fuck out of my sight."
Schofield just shook his head in exasperation and left.
* * *
"And these, Sir, are the men who brought back the Sinovirus," Colonel Harper said, guiding the President around the test booths on Level 4.
A giant thirty-foot-long quarantine chamber stood before them. Through a small glass window set into the side of the reinforced chamber, the President saw four men, all seated on sofas watching a television and bathed in blue ultraviolet light. All of them, he noted, were of Asian extraction.
As soon as they saw the President, two of the men inside the chamber rose to their feet and stood to attention.
"Mr. President, meet Captain Robert Wu and Lieutenant Chet Li from the 7th Squadron..."
Just then Harper's cell phone buzzed.
The colonel excused himself and stepped away to take the call.
"It's a pleasure to meet you both, gentlemen," the President said, stepping forward. "Your country owes you a debt of gratitude."
"Thank you, sir."
"Thank you."
"How long do you have to stay in there for?" the President inquired, asking the obligatory personal question.
"Another couple of hours, I think, sir," the one named Wu said. "We got back yesterday with the new strain, but we have to stay in here for twenty-four hours. The chamber is operated on a time lock. Can't be opened until 0900 hours. So they can be sure there
are no other bugs on us."
"Well, I won't be here come nine o'clock," the President said, "but rest assured, you'll be receiving something from me in the very near future."
"Thank you, sir."
"Thank you, sir."
Having finished his call, Colonel Harper returned.
"And that concludes our tour, Mr. President," he said. "Now, if you'll come this way, I have one last thing to show you."
* * *
Schofield and Gant stood inside Marine One, behind Brainiac. Brainiac was seated at the helicopter's communications console, typing quickly on a keyboard.
"Anything from Nighthawk Three or the two advance teams?" Schofield asked. "Nada from Nighthawk Three," Brainiac said. "And just the beacons from the Secret Service teams."
Schofield thought for a moment. "Are we plugged into Area 7's local network?"
"Yep. So the President can collect secure transmissions by the landline."
"Okay then, can you bring up the complex's security camera system for me?"
"Sure."
* * *
The President was led up a set of stairs to level 3, the living quarters of Area 7. With his nine man Secret Service Detail he was brought into a wide low-ceilinged common room - couches, coffee tables, kitchenette and, taking pride of place over by the wall, a big-screen Panasonic TV.
"If you would just wait here for a moment, Mr. President," Colonel Harper said, "I'll send someone down in a minute."
And then he left the room, leaving the President and his Detail alone.
* * *
A series of black-and-white monitors flickered to life in the communications bay of Marine One.
Each monitor depicted a grid of views from the multitude of security cameras around Area 7.
"We have contact," Brainiac said.
From various angles, Schofield saw empty stairwells - the main hangar - something that looked like a subway station - the interiors of the glass-walled offices in the main hangar, one of them filled with Marines and Secret Service people, the other containing White House staff members - and, in grainy black-and-white, the inside of an elevator - Schofield froze at the final image.
The elevator was packed with ten fully armed 7th Squadron commandos.
And then suddenly movement from one of the other monitors caught his eye.
It was the view from one of the stairwell cameras.
A whole stream of armed 7th Squadron commandos was storming down the stairwell.
"This is going to be very painful," he said flatly.
Schofield stepped out of marine one onto the hangar floor, Gant and Brainiac close behind him.
Although nothing physical about it had changed, somehow the hangar now looked very different.
Now it looked menacing.
Dangerous.
Schofield saw the three groups of 7th Squadron commandos arrayed around the enormous interior space – saw the commander of one of the groups touch his ear as he caught a radio transmission.
"Stay here," Schofield said.
"Okay," Brainiac said.
"Hey," Gant said.
"What?"
"Try not to look so spooked."
"I'll do my best," Schofield said as he stepped out from the cover of Marine One and started walking casually across the hangar floor, toward the northern glass-walled office.
He was about halfway there when it happened.
Loud and sudden.
Boom! Like a curtain falling at the end of a stage show, a giant piston-driven titanium door thundered down in front of the hangar's main doors. Its leading edge - lined with nasty looking toothlike protrusions - lodged firmly into the series of boxlike indentations that ran across the entry to the hangar.
And with the falling of the massive armored door, Schofield gave up any pretense of trying to appear calm.
He broke into a run just as the two nearest groups of 7th Squadron commandos - the ones at twelve o'clock and ten o'clock - raised their P-90's and the air around him became awash with sizzling bullets.
* * *
It had been five minutes now and nobody had come for them and the President of the United States was not accustomed to waiting.
The President and his protective Detail just stood in the common room on Level 3, looking about themselves, waiting in the silence.
"Frank," the President said to the Chief of the Detail, "see what's going on..."
The big-screen television came on.
The President and his Detail whirled around.
"What the fuck..." somebody said.
On the screen, large and bold, was the bright yellow insignia of the Emergency Broadcast System - the special all spectrum broadcast network that was capable of cutting off regular broadcasting in the event of a national emergency.
Then, abruptly, the BBS symbol disappeared, and a face appeared in its place.
"What the hell..." this time it was the President who spoke.
The face on the screen was that of a dead man.
It was the face of Lieutenant General Charles Samson Russell, USAF, call-sign: "Caesar."
* * *
On every television screen in Area 7 – and, it appeared, every television in the United States - the round, heavy browed face of Charles Russell began to speak.
"Mr. President. People of America. Welcome to Area 7. My name is General Charles Russell, United States Air Force. For too long, I have watched this country eat itself. I will do so no longer." His tone was measured, his Louisiana accent thick.
"Our representatives at both federal and state levels are incapable of genuine leadership. Our free press is no longer the tool for controlling government that it was intended to be. To every man who has ever fought or died for this country, this state of affairs is a disgrace. It can no longer be allowed to continue."
* * *
In the common room, the President just stared at the big-screen television.
"And so I propose a challenge, Mr. President - both to you and to the system you represent.
"Implanted on your heart is a radio device. It was attached to the outer tissue of your cardiac muscle during an operation on your left lung four years ago."
Frank Cutler spun to face the President, a look of horror spreading across his face.
"I will initiate its signal now," Caesar said. He pressed some buttons on a small red unit that he held in his hand. The compact unit had a black stub antenna sticking out from its top.
Frank Cutler pulled a debugging wand from his coat - a spectrum analyzer used to detect any signal-emitting device - and waved it over the President's body.
Feet and legs... okay.
Waist and stomach... okay.
Chest...
The wand went crazy.
* * *
"My challenge to you, Mr. President, is simple." Russell's voice echoed throughout the underground base.
"As you well know, at every major airport in the United States there are at least three hangars devoted to the storage of United States Air Force bombers, fighters and ordnance."
"Right now, inside fourteen of those hangars, sit fourteen Type-240 blast plasma warheads. The airports include John F. Kennedy, Newark and La Guardia in New York, Dulles in Washington, O'Hare in Chicago, LAX in Los Angeles, and airports in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia and Detroit. Each plasma warhead, as you know, has a blast radius of sixteen miles and a detonation yield of ninety megatons. All are armed."
In the common room on Level 3, everyone was silent.
"The only thing that will stop the detonation of these warheads, Mr. President," Charles Russell said with a smile, "is the continued beating of your heart."
Russell went on. "All the devices at the airports are patched in to a single satellite in geosynchronous orbit above this base. That satellite, Mr. President, emits a high-powered microwave signal which is picked up and bounced back to it by the transmitter placed on your heart."
"But the radio transmit
ter on your heart, once started, is kinetically operated. If your heart should stop beating, the transmitter will cease to operate, and the satellite's signal will not be bounced back to it - in which case, the satellite will instruct the bombs in the airports to detonate."
"Mr. President. If your heart should stop, America as we know it dies. If your heart keeps beating, America lives."
"You are the symbol of a bankrupt culture, sir: a politician, a man who seeks power for power's sake, but, like the people you represent, one who lives safe in the knowledge that he will never ever be called upon to stand up and fight for the system that gives him that power."
"Well, you have lived safely for too long, Mr. President. Now you have been called to account. Now you have been called to fight."
"I, on the other hand, am a warrior. I have spilled my blood for this country. What blood have you spilled? What sacrifices have you made? None. Coward."
"But like an honest patriot, I will give you and the system you represent a final chance to prove your worth. For the people of this country need proof. They need to see you flounder - see you fall - see you sell them out to save your skin. They elected you to represent them. Now you shall do that - literally. If you die, they die with you."
"This facility has been completely sealed. It is designed to withstand the full force of a nuclear blast, so there is no way out of it. Inside it with you is a fifty-man detachment of the best ground force this country has to offer, the 7th Special Operations Squadron. These men have orders to kill you, Mr. President."
"With your Secret Service Detail, you will face them in a fight to the death. Whoever wins, gets the country. Whoever loses, dies."
"Of course, the American people must be kept apprised of the score in this challenge," Caesar said. "Therefore, every hour on the hour, I shall address them via the Emergency Broadcast System and give them an update on the pursuit."
The President looked up at the nearest security camera. "This is ridiculous! You couldn't possibly have put a..."
"Jeremiah K. Woolf, Mr. President," Caesar Russell said from the TV screen. The President immediately fell silent.
No one else spoke.
"I will assume from your silence that you have seen the FBI file."