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.
The door slammed shut and Special Agent Juliet Janson turned.
'Quickly!' she shouted. 'Back up the stairs! Now!'
'…All units, be aware, Delta unit has engaged the enemy…' One of the radio men in the control room said. 'Repeat, Delta Unit has engaged the enemy…'
Shane Schofield tried not to breathe, tried not to make a sound.
All they had to do was look over the edge.
He was hanging by his fingertips from one of the horizontal cabling gutters carved into the concrete wall of the elevator shaft, a bare three feet below the mouth of the cross-vent he had been standing in only moments before.
Standing in that cross-vent right now were the four heavily armed 7th Squadron men who had stormed it only seconds earlier.
Beside him, Mother, Gant and Brainiac were also clinging to the cabling gutter with their fingers.
Above them, they could hear one of the 7th Squadron men speaking into his helmet mike.
'Charlie Six, this is Charlie One, they're not in the Level 1 cross-vent. Copy that, we're on our way.'
Heavy footsteps, then nothing.
Schofield sighed with relief.
'Where to now?' Brainiac asked.
'There,' Schofield said, jerking his chin at the giant steel hangar door on the opposite side of the wide elevator shaft.
'You ready?' Book II yelled to Elvis.
'Ready!' Elvis shouted back.
Book II looked out at the big white-painted Volvo towing vehicle attached to the tail boom of Nighthawk Two ten yards away. With its oversized tires, low-slung body and small two-man driver's cabin, it looked like either a brick on wheels or a giant cockroach. Indeed, it was this resemblance that had earned the towing vehicle the nickname 'cockroach' among airport workers around the world.
At the moment, Nighthawk Two's cockroach was facing outwards, pointed at the armor-plated titanium door that had thundered down into place only minutes earlier, sealing the hangar.
Book II was now holding two nickel-plated Berettas in his hands, one his own, the other pilfered from a dead Marine nearby. He shouted to Elvis, 'You take the wheel! I'll go for the other side!'
'You got it!'
'Okay! Now.'
The two of them leapt to their feet and dashed out into the open together, their legs moving in time.
Almost instantly, a line of bullets raced across the ground behind them, nipping at their heels.
Elvis flung himself into the driver's seat, slammed the door shut behind him. Book II made for the passenger side, but he was met with a brutal volley of gunfire, so instead he just dived onto the towing vehicle's flat steel roof and yelled, 'Elvis! Punch it!'
Elvis keyed the ignition. The Volvo's big 600 horsepower engine roared to life. Then Elvis jammed it into gear and floored it.
The towing vehicle's tires squealed as they shot off the mark, heading straight for the armored door that cut the hangar off from the outside world, taking Nighthawk Two, a full-sized CH53E Super Stallion transport helicopter, with it!
The two remaining units of 7th Squadron men in the hangar — twenty men in total — swept across the hangar on foot, pursuing the speeding cockroach with their guns. A wave of supercharged bullets pummeled the big Volvo's sides.
Elvis yanked on the steering wheel and the big cockroach swung around, rocketing toward the southern glass walled office.
On its roof, Book II raised himself on one knee and fired both his pistols at the oncoming 7th Squadron commandos.
It didn't do much good — the Air Force assassins had him outgunned. It was like attacking a battery of Patriot missiles with a peashooter. He ducked back behind the cockroach's cabin amid a flurry of return fire.
'Oh, crap!' Elvis shouted from the driver's cabin.
Book II looked up.
A lone 7th Squadron commando stood about thirty yards in front of them — right in their path — on the southern side of the central elevator shaft, with a Predator antitank rocket launcher hefted onto his shoulder!
The commando pulled the trigger. There was a puff of smoke before a small cylindrical object came blasting out of the launcher, shooting toward the speeding cockroach at phenomenal speed, leaving a dead-straight vapor trail in the air behind it.
Elvis reacted quickly, did the only thing he could think to do.
He yanked his steering wheel hard to the left.
The massive Volvo towing vehicle rose onto two wheels as it swung violently left — and for a moment it looked like it was going to drive straight into the yawning chasm that was the elevator shaft.
But it just kept turning… turning… wheels screeching… until suddenly it was heading north, along the narrow section of floor in between Marine One and the elevator shaft.
Nighthawk Two wasn't so lucky.
Since it was bouncing along — in reverse — behind the runaway cockroach, Elvis's sudden turn had brought it directly into the missile's line of fire.
The Predator hit it, slamming into Nighthawk Two's reinforced glass cockpit at tremendous speed.
