knew then that the President would get away — at least away from the Level 6 station. And he knew that Gant and Mother would see it, too.
And with that, he made his decision to go after Kevin.
A second later, Schofield's view of the X-Rail station — the image of the ten 7th Squadron commandos leapfrogging their way down the platform toward the President of the United States and his last few guardians — was replaced with that of the impenetrable black wall of the tunnel.
Gant ducked, covering her head from the chunks of concrete that were raining down all around her.
They were screwed.
The 7th Squadron had them.
There was nowhere they could go, nowhere they could run. They were stuck out in the very middle of the platform, outnumbered, outgunned and out of goddamned luck.
And then she saw Elvis.
Walking like a robot — an automaton, completely out in the open — toward the advancing 7th Squadron men, despite the raging gunbattle going on all around him.
He had no weapon in his hands. Indeed, his massive fists were clenched firmly on either side of his body as he walked. His face was entirely devoid of emotion — his eyes fixed, his jaw set.
Elvis, it seemed, had his own mission now.
'Oh, Jesus,' Gant breathed. 'Take care, Elvis.'
Then she turned to the others, 'Get ready, people. We're leaving.'
'What?' Hot Rod Hagerty blurted. 'How?'
'Elvis is going to buy us some time. Take cover and get ready to move.'
Sergeant Wendall 'Elvis' Haynes, USMC, strode purposefully toward the oncoming 7th Squadron commandos, in between them and the President's group.
The 7th Squadron men slowed slightly, if only because this was such an odd thing for Elvis to do. He was quite obviously unarmed and yet he just kept moving slowly forward — twenty yards from them, twenty yards from the President — completely calm.
The 7th Squadron commandos never heard the mantra he was repeating softly to himself as he walked. 'You killed my friend. You killed my friend. You killed my friend…'
Quickly and efficiently, one of the 7th Squadron men raised his P-90 and fired a short burst. The volley ripped Elvis's chest to shreds and he fell, and the 7th Squadron men resumed their advance.
It was only when they reached Elvis that they heard him speaking, gurgling through his own blood: 'You killed my friend…'
And then they saw his bearlike right hand open like a flower — to reveal, resting in his palm, a high-powered RDX hand grenade.
'You killed my…'
Elvis drew his final breath.
And his hand relaxed completely — releasing the grenade's spoon — and to the utter horror of the men of Bravo Unit standing close around it, the powerful RDX grenade went off with all its terrible force.
The X-Rail train rocketed through the tunnel system.
Sleek and streamlined, with its bullet-shaped nose and its flat X-framed fuselage, the twin carriage train whipped through the wide tunnel at a cool two hundred miles per hour — and this despite its blasted-out windows and bullet battered walls.
It moved with little noise and surprising smoothness. This was because it was propelled not by an engine, but rather by a state-of-the-art magnetic propulsion system that had been developed to replace the aging steam- operated catapults on the Navy's aircraft carriers. Magnetic propulsion required few moving parts yet yielded phenomenal ground speeds, making it very popular among engineers who lived by the rule that the more parts a piece of machinery has, the more parts it has that can break.
Book II sat in the driver's compartment, hands on the controls. Herbie sat beside him. The driver's compartment was the only part of the X-Rail car that hadn't had all its windows blasted to pieces.
'Aw, shit!' Schofield's voice yelled from behind them. 'Shit! Shit! Shit!'
Schofield strode into the driver's compartment.
'What's wrong?' Book II asked.
'This is what's wrong,' Schofield said, indicating the silver Samsonite briefcase dangling from his combat webbing. The Football. 'Damn it! Everything was happening too fast. I never even thought about it when the President dived off the train. What time is it?'
It was 8:55.
'Great,' he said. 'We now have just over an hour to get this suitcase back to the President.'
'Should we turn around?' Book II asked.
Schofield paused, thinking fast, a thousand thoughts swirling through his head.
Then he said decisively: 'No. I'm not leaving that boy. We can get back in time.'
'Uh, but what about the country?' Book II said.
Schofield offered him a crooked smile. 'I've never lost to a countdown yet, and I'm not about to start today.' He turned to Herbie. 'All right, Herbie. Twenty-five words or less: tell me about this X-Rail system. Where does it go?'
'Well, it's not exactly my area of expertise,' Herbie said, 'but I've traveled on it a few times. So far as I know, it's actually made up of two systems. One heads west from Area 7, taking you to Lake Powell. The other heads east, taking you to Area 8.'
As Herbie explained, they were on the system that extended forty miles to the west, out to Lake Powell.
Schofield had heard of Lake Powell before. Truth be told, it was not so much a lake as a vast one-hundred- and-ninety-mile-long mazelike network of twisting water-filled canyons.
Situated right on the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell had once looked like the Grand Canyon, an enormous system of gorges and canyons that had been carved into the earth by the mighty Colorado River, the same river that would create the Grand Canyon farther downstream.
Unlike the Grand Canyon, however, Lake Powell had been dammed by the U.S. government in 1963 to generate hydroelectric power — thus backing up the river, creating the lake, and turning what was already a striking vista of rock formations into a spectacular desert canyonland that was half-filled with water.
Now giant sand-yellow mesas rose majestically out of the lake's sparkling blue waters, while towering templelike buttes lorded over its flat blue horizon. And, of course, there were the chasms and canyons, now with canals at their bases instead of dusty rocky paths.
Kind of like a cross between the Grand Canyon and Venice, really.
Like any large project, the damming of the Colorado River in 1963 had raised howls of protest. Environmentalists claimed that the dam raised silt levels and threatened the ecosystem of a two-centimeter-long variety of tadpole. This seemed like nothing, however, to the owner of a tiny rest stop gas station, who would see his store — built on the site of an old western trading post — covered by a hundred feet of water. He was compensated by the government.
In any case, with its ninety-three named gorges and God-only-knew how many others, for a few years Lake Powell became a popular tourist destination for house boaters. But times had changed, and the tourist trade had slackened off. Now it lay largely silent, a ghostlike network of winding chasms and ultra-narrow 'slot canyons,' in which there was to be found no flat ground, only sheer vertical rock and water, endless water.
'This X-Rail tunnel meets the lake at an underground loading bay,' Herbie said. 'The system was built for two reasons. First, so that the construction of Areas 7 and 8 could be kept absolutely secret. Materials would be hauled on barges up the lake and then delivered forty miles underground to the building site. We still use it occasionally as a back-door entrance for supplies and prisoner delivery.'
'Okay,' Schofield said. 'And the second reason?'
'To act as an escape route in the event of an emergency,' Herbie said.
Schofield looked forward.
X-Rail tracks rushed by beneath him — and above him — at incredible speed. The wide rectangular tunnel in front of the train bent away into darkness.
