After the short battle in the decompression area, Schofield and the others retreated to the opposite side of Level 4, to the observation lab overlooking the giant cube… locking the doors behind them and then blasting the security keypads with gunshots.
Of all the places Schofield had seen so far, this area was the most easily defended.
Barring the regular personnel elevator, it had only two entrances: the short ramp leading back to the aircraft elevator and the doorway leading to the staircase that went down to the cube.
Juliet Janson flopped to the floor of the lab, exhausted.
The President did the same.
The Marines — Book II, Elvis, Love Machine, Mother and Brainiac — formed a huddle and quickly told each other of their respective adventures inside flooding elevator shafts and runaway AWACS planes.
The last member of their rag-tag group — the lab coat-wearing scientist, Herbert Franklin — took a seat in the corner.
Schofield and Gant remained standing.
They had a few weapons now, gear that they had scavenged from the bodies of the 7th Squadron men in the decompression area… guns, a few radio headsets, three extremely high powered grenades made of RDX compound, and two thumbtack-sized lock-destroying explosives known as Lock-Blasters.
Logan's men, however, had spoiled well.
The brutal gunfire that they had directed at their own fallen men hadn't been intended as kill shots — it had been intended to destroy any weapons the dead men might offer their enemy. Consequently, only one P-90 assault rifle had been salvaged from the battlefield. All the others had been shattered, as had many of the fallen men's semiautomatic pistols.
'Mother,' Schofield said, tossing the P-90 to her, 'keep an eye on the ramp entrance. Elvis, the stairs going down to the cube.'
Mother and Elvis dashed off.
Although just about everyone else in the world would have gone straight over to the President at that time, Schofield didn't. He could see that the President hadn't been injured — still had all his fingers and toes — and so long as his heart was still beating, he was all right.
Instead, Schofield went over to Juliet Janson.
'Update,' was all he said.
Janson glanced up at Schofield, looked into the reflective silver lenses of his wraparound antiflash glasses.
She'd seen him around the Presidential helicopters before, but had never really talked to him. She'd heard about him from the other agents, though. He was the one from that thing in Antarctica.
'They ambushed us in the Level 3 common room, just after the message came over the Emergency Broadcast System,' she said. 'Been right on our tails ever since. We hit the stairwell, made for the Emergency Exit Vent down on Level 6, but they were waiting for us. We came back up the stairs — they were waiting for us again. We diverted through 5 and came up the ramp to 4 — and they were waiting for us again.'
'Casualties?'
'Eight agents from the President's Personal Detail killed. Plus the whole Advance Team down on Level 6. That makes seventeen in total.'
'Frank Cutler?'
'Gone.'
'Anything else?'
Janson nodded at the little lab-coated man. 'We picked him up on 5, before we walked into that ambush in the decompression room. Says he's a scientist working here.'
Schofield glanced over at Herbert Franklin. Small and bespectacled, the little man just bowed his head in silence.
'What about you?' Janson asked.
Schofield shrugged. 'We were up in the main hangar when it went down. Scrambled down the ventilation shaft, arrived in one of the underground hangars, destroyed a Humvee, crashed an AWACS plane.'
'The usual,' Gant added.
'How did you know about the ambush next door?' Janson asked.
Schofield shrugged. 'We were down next to the cube when the lights went out in the decompression area. We were hoping it was someone friendly, trying to hide from the security cameras. So we checked it out from above, from the catwalks. When we saw who it was, saw them surrounding that ramp in the middle of the room, we figured they were waiting for the big score' — he nodded at the President — 'so we set up a little counter- ambush of our own.'
On the other side of the room, Brainiac sat down next to the President.
'Mr. President,' he said with deference.
'Hello,' the President replied. 'How you feelin', sir?'
'Well, I'm still alive, which is a good start, considering the circumstances. What's your name, son?'
'Gorman, sir. Corporal Gus Gorman, but most of the guys just call me Brainiac.'
'Brainiac?'
'That's right, sir,' Brainiac hesitated. 'Sir, if you don't mind, I was wondering, if it wasn't too much trouble, if I could ask you a question.'
'Why not?' the President said.
'Okay, then. Okay. Well, you being' President and all, you'd know certain things, right?'
'Yes…'
'Right. Cool. Because what I always wanted to know was this: is Puerto Rico a United States protectorate because it has the highest number of UFO sightings in the world per annum?'
'What?'
'Well, think about it, why the hell else would we want to hold on to Puerto-fucking-Rico, there ain't nothing there…'
'Brainiac,' Schofield said from across the room. 'Leave the President alone. Mr. President, you better come and see this. It's almost eight o'clock and Caesar will be giving his hourly update any second.'
The President went over to join Schofield — but not before he gave Brainiac a strange look.
At the tick of eight o'clock, Caesar Russell's face appeared on every television set in Area 7.
'My fellow Americans,' he boomed, 'after one hour's play, the President is still alive. His cause, however, is not looking good.
'His personal Secret Service Detail has been decimated, with eight of its nine members already confirmed dead. Two more Secret Service units — advance teams, one stationed down in the lowest floor of this facility, another at one of the exterior exits, consisting of nine men each — were also eliminated, bringing the total of presidential losses to twenty-six men. On both occasions, no losses were sustained by my 7th Squadron men.'
'That said, some knights in shining armor have arrived on the scene. A small band of United States Marines — members of the President's ornamental helicopter crew, looking very pretty in their dress uniforms — have come to his defen…'
Just then, completely without warning, the television sets throughout Area 7 abruptly died, their screens shrinking to black.
At the same moment, all the lights in the complex blinked out, plunging Area 7 into darkness.
Inside the lab on Level 4, everybody looked up at the sudden loss of power.
'Uh-oh…' Gant said, eyeing the ceiling.
Then, a second later, the lights whirred back to life and the TV system rebooted, Caesar's face still looming large, still talking.
'…Which leaves us with five 7th Squadron units versus a handful of United States Marines. Such is the state of play at eight o'clock. I shall see you again for another update at 0900 hours.'
The TV screens cut to black.
'Liar,' Juliet Janson said. 'That son of a bitch is Distorting the truth. The advance team down on Level 6 was
