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 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-
