'…Control, this is Bravo Leader. We have suffered serious casualties on the X-rail platform. Five dead, two wounded. One of their guys had an RDX grenade and did a fucking kamikaze…'
'…What about the President?' the radio man cut in.
'…The President is still in the complex. I repeat: The President is still in the complex. Last seen heading back up the fire stairs. Some of his Marine bodyguards, though, took off down the tunnel in the second X-rail train…'
'…And the Football?'
'…No longer with the President. One of my boys swears that he saw that Schofield guy with it on the train…'
'…Thank you, Bravo Leader. Bring your wounded up to the main hangar for treatment. We'll get Echo to flush the lower floors for the President now…'
'Gunther Botha used to be a colonel in south africa's Medical Battalion,' Herbie said, as the X-Rail car hurtled down the tunnel toward the desert lake.
'The Meds,' Schofield said distastefully.
'You've heard of them?'
'Yes. Not a very nice group to be involved with. They were an offensive bio-medical unit, a specialized subdivision of the Reccondos. Elite troops who used biological weapons in the field.'
'That's right,' Herbie said. 'See, before Mandela, the South Africans were the world leaders in biowarfare. And, boy, did we love them. Ever wondered why we didn't do all that much about defeating apartheid? Do you know who brought us the Soviet flesh-eating bug, necrotizing fasciitis? The South Africans.'
'But as good as they were, one thing still eluded them. They'd been trying for years to develop a virus that would kill blacks but not whites, but they never found it. Botha was one of their leading lights and apparently he was on the verge of a breakthrough when the apartheid regime was overthrown.'
'As it turned out,' Herbie said, 'Botha's core research could be adapted for use on something the American government was working on — a vaccine against the Sinovirus, a virus that distinguishes between races.'
'So we brought him here,' Schofield said.
'That's right,' Herbie said.
'And now it seems we're discovering that Professor Botha isn't all that trustworthy.'
'It would seem so.'
Schofield paused for a moment, thinking.
'And he's not working alone,' he said.
'How do you know?'
Schofield said, 'All those dead 7th Squadron men we saw when we arrived on Level 6 earlier. I've never met Gunther Botha before, but I'm pretty sure he couldn't wipe out an entire 7th Squadron unit all by himself. Remember, Botha opened three doors, the two X-Rail doors and the Emergency Escape Vent — which opens onto Level 6.'
'He let a team of men in through that vent. They were the ones who killed the 7th Squadron men there. Judging by the bullet wounds in their backs and the amount of slashed throats, I presume Botha's friends caught the 7th Squadron men from behind.' Schofield bit his lip. 'But that still doesn't tell me what I want to know.'
'And what is that?'
Schofield looked up. 'If Botha is selling us out, what I want to know is: who is he selling us out to?'
'It was a security risk from the start, but we couldn't have done it without him,' the President said.
He and the others were sitting in the observation lab overlooking the smashed glass cube on Level 4, catching their breath.
When they'd arrived moments earlier, they'd been confronted by the sight of a thick circular ceiling hatch lying on the floor of the lab.
The 7th Squadron had been through here.
Which hopefully meant they wouldn't be coming back soon. It would be a good place to hide, for a while.
Libby Gant was the only one who stood — still on edge — gazing down at the destroyed cube. The underground complex had grown strangely silent since Caesar's last update, as if the 7th Squadron weren't prowling around it anymore, as if they had stopped hounding the President, at least for the moment.
Gant didn't like it.
It meant something was up.
And so she had just asked the President about Gunther Botha, the man who had taken Kevin.
'Botha knew more about racially targeted viruses than all of our scientists put together,' the President went on. 'But he had a history.'
'With the apartheid regime?'
'Yes, and beyond that. What we feared the most were his links with a group called Die Organisasie, or the Organisation. It's an underground network comprising former apartheid ministers, wealthy South African landowners, former elite troops from the South African armed forces, and ousted military leaders who fled the country when apartheid collapsed, rightfully fearing that the new government would have their heads for past crimes. Most intelligence agencies believe that Die Organisasie only wants to retake South Africa, but we're not so sure.'
'What do you mean?' Gant asked.
The President sighed. 'You have to realize what's at stake here. Ethnically selective bioweapons like the Sinovirus are like no other weapon in the history of mankind. They are the ultimate bargaining tool, because they have the power to sentence a defined population to death while absolutely, without question, protecting another.'
'Our fears about Die Organisasie don't just relate to what they'd do to the Republic of South Africa. It's what they'd do to the entire African continent that frightens us.'
'Yes…'
'Die Organisasie is a racist organization, pure and simple. They actually believe white people are genetically superior to black people. They believe that black people should be slaves to whites. They don't just hate South African black people, they hate all black people.
'Now, if Die Organisasie has the Sinovirus and the vaccine to it, they could release it Africa wide, and give the cure only to those white groups who supported them. Black Africa would die, and the rest of the world wouldn't be able to do a thing about it, because we wouldn't have the vaccine to the Sinovirus.
'Do you remember in 1999 when Ghaddafi spoke of uniting Africa like never before? He spoke of creating 'the United States of Africa,' but it was regarded as a joke. Ghaddafi could never have made that happen. There are far too many tribal issues to overcome to unite the various black African nations. But,' the President said, 'an organization that had the Sinovirus and its cure in its possession could rule Africa with an iron fist. It could turn Africa — resource rich Africa, complete with a billion-strong black slave workforce — into its own private empire.'
Schofield's battered X-Rail car raced through the underground tunnel.
They had been traveling for ten minutes now and Schofield was beginning to feel anxious.
They would be arriving at the loading dock adjoining the lake soon and he didn't know what to expect.
One question about Area 7, however, was still bothering him. 'Herbie, how did the Air Force get a sample of the Sinovirus?'
'Good question,' Herbie said, nodding. 'It took a while, but eventually we managed to turn two Chinese lab workers at the biowarfare facility in Changchun. In return for a one-way trip to America and twenty million U.S. dollars each, they agreed to smuggle several vials of the virus out of China.'
'The guys in the decompression chamber,' Schofield said, recalling the Asian faces he had seen inside the chamber on Level 4 earlier.
'Yes.'
'But there were four men inside the chamber.'
'That's right,' Herbie said. 'As you'd probably understand, in China, top-secret government lab workers can't
