Of course the President had seen the file - the peculiarities of the ex-senator's death had demanded it.
At the exact moment that Jeremiah Woolf had died in Alaska, his home in Washington, D.C., had exploded. No culprit - for either incident - had ever been found. It was a coincidence too bizarre to ignore, but in the absence of any evidence to explain it, to the mass media it had remained simply that, a tragic coincidence.
As the President knew, however, one particular aspect of the ex-senator's death had never been made public: namely, the elevated levels of red blood cell production in his bloodstream, plus extremely low alveolar and arterial phosphate pressures. All of these symptoms indicated a prolonged period of hyperventilation before Woolf had been shot - a period during which the ex-senator had experienced a heightened state of "fight or flight" physiology.
In other words, the ex-senator had been running from someone when he'd been shot. He had been hunted.
And now it made sense.
Woolf had been implanted with a transmitter... and then in Alaska he had been hunted and shot, and when, finally, his heart had stopped, his home on the other side of the country had been destroyed.
Caesar Russell's voice invaded his thoughts. "Former Senator Woolf's unexpected retirement from government left me with an extra transmitting device. And so he became a guinea pig, a test run. A test run for today."
The President exchanged a look with Frank Cutler.
Caesar said, "Oh, and just in case you're harboring ambitions of escaping this facility..." He lifted an object into view.
It was a stainless steel briefcase.
Warrant Officer Carl Webster's steel briefcase.
The case's handle still had the pair of handcuffs attached to it - only now the open-ended cuff was no longer attached to anything. It was splattered all over with blood.
It was the Football.
And it was open.
The President saw the briefcase's flat-glass palm-print analyzer and keypad. The palm-print analyzer was an identification feature programmed to recognize the President's palm print, so that only he could activate - and deactivate - America's thermonuclear arsenal.
Somehow, though, Russell had managed to falsify the President's palm print and enter the arming codes. But how could he have gotten a copy of the President's hand print?
"In addition to the transmitter on your heart, Mr. President," Russell said, "all the devices in the airports have been networked to a recycling timer of exactly ninety minutes, as is shown on the Football's display screen. Only the application of your palm print to the analyzer - once every ninety minutes - will reset that timer and stop the plasma warheads from going off, so don't think of leaving. The Football, for your information, will be kept up here in the main hangar."
"This is a great day in the history of the nation, Mr. President, a day of reckoning. Come the dawn of tomorrow, the glorious Fourth of July, we shall see if we all awake in a new, reborn America. Good luck, Mr. President, and may God have mercy on your soul."
At that moment, as if right on cue, the main doors to the common room burst open and a team of 7th Squadron commandos - led by Major Kurt Logan and wearing their fearsome ERG-6 gas masks - rushed into the room, their devastating P-90 machine guns blazing.
The challenge had begun.
SECOND CONFRONTATION
3 July, 0700 Hours
The main hangar had become a battlefield.
Bullet holes raked the floor at Shane Schofield's feet as he raced for the doorway to the northern glass-walled office.
He poked his head around the doorway: "Marines! Scatter!"
But that was all he could say before the window next to him shattered into a thousand fragments and he dived away, crawling for the cover of the two Presidential helicopters and their towing vehicles.
He looked back just in time to see a couple of full dress-uniformed Marines burst out through the windows of the office a moment before the small structure was hit by a Predator shoulderlaunched missile and its walls blasted outwards in a shower of glass and billowing fire.
Schofield slid under Marine One, and found himself lying next to Libby Gant and Brainiac.
Gunfire echoed out all around them. And then bizarrely, above the gunshots, Schofield heard a voice booming out from the hangar's loudspeaker system: "Good luck, Mr. President, and may God have mercy on your soul."
"Holy shit!" Brainiac yelled.
"This way!" Schofield said, crawling on his stomach underneath the big helicopter.
He arrived at a wide grille in the floor. It came away easily. An air vent opened up beneath it.
The steel-walled vent plunged down into the earth, disappearing into darkness.
"Let's go!" Schofield yelled above the gunfire.
Abruptly, a metal panel in the bottom of Marine One burst open - almost decapitating Schofield - and a figure with an M-16 dropped down behind him, the gun leveled at his forehead.
"Fuck! It's you," Mother said as she lowered herself out of the helicopter's emergency escape hatch onto the ground.
"Here, happy birthday," she said, tossing an MP-10 machine pistol to Gant. "Sorry, Scarecrow, nothing for you. That was all I could find in the basic arms cabinet on board. There's more in the forward armory, but Gunman's got the key to that."
"Never mind," Schofield said, "the first thing we've got to do is get out of here and regroup. Then we have to figure out a way of taking these bastards down. This way."
"Did you catch any of that shit on the television?" Mother said as she crawled over to the vent.
Gant and Brainiac climbed down into the vent first, bracing their legs against its walls, shimmying themselves down into it.
"No," Schofield said, "I was too busy dodging bullets."
"Then I've got a lot to tell you," Mother said as they lowered themselves into the shaft.
* * *
The President of the United States was moving faster than he had ever moved before. In fact, his feet barely even touched the ground.
At the first sight of the 7th Squadron commandos storming the common room, his nine-man Protective Detail had thrown itself into action.
Four men immediately took up defensive positions in between the President and the oncoming assault troops, throwing their coats open to reveal Uzi submachine guns. The Uzi's buzzed as they unleashed a brutal wave of gunfire at a crushing 600 rounds per minute.
The other five members of the Detail crash-tackled the President out into the nearby fire escape, practically lifting him off his feet as they gang-rushed him out of the room, covering his body with their own.
The door to the fire stairs slammed shut behind them, but not before they saw the 7th Squadron troops clinically take up covering positions behind couches, doors and cupboards and leap-frog each other and tear to shreds the four Secret Service men who had remained behind – drowning out the buzz of their Uzi's with the whirring drone of their P-90 assault rifles.
The Uzi's might have fired at 600 rounds per minute. But the P-90, made by the FN Herstal company in Belgium, fired at an astonishing 900 rounds per minute. Indeed, with its rounded hand guard, internal blowback system, and incredible hundred-round magazine mounted above the barrel, it looked like something out of a science fiction movie.
"Down the stairs! Now!" Frank Cutler yelled as bullets slammed into the other side of the firedoor. "Head for the alternate exit!"
The President and what was left of his Detail flew down the stairs, taking them four at a time, hurling themselves around every turn. Every one of them had a weapon in his or her hand now - Uzi's, SIG-Sauers, anything...
The President himself could do nothing but run with them, so tightly was he flanked by his bodyguards.
"Advance Team One! Come in!" Cutler yelled into his wrist microphone as he ran.
No reply.
"Advance Team One! Come in! We are approaching Exit Point One with Patriot and we need to know if it is open!" He received no reply.
&nbs
p; * * *
Up in the main hangar, Book II was in hell.
Bullets strafed the floor all around him, glass rained down on his head.
He was tucked up against the outside of the northern office with Elvis - in the tiny gap between it and the hangar's armored door - the two of them having dived out through the office's bullet-shattered windows a moment before it had been blasted to smithereens by the Predator missile.
The three ten-man teams of 7th Squadron men were everywhere, moving with precision and speed, racing around the helicopters, leaping over dead men, their guns pressed against their shoulders, eyes looking straight down the barrels.
On the other side of the hangar, Book saw the White House people come streaming out of the southern glass walled office - about ten people in total - screaming, looking 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..."
"...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!
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 bowledright 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 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 other levels.
The two lead men rounded the bend in the tunnel – and stopped.
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 Se
cret 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
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.