The pool of water at the far end of the loading bay had indeed led out to the lake, a tight, dark, winding cave whose exterior door — a brilliantly camouflaged plate-steel gate designed to look like a wall of rock — had been left open by the escaping thieves.
Schofield and his men had emerged from the cave at the end of a dead-end canyon and powered off not a moment before the entire wall of rock behind them had been blasted outward by the monstrous AFX explosion.
The two bipods sped around a wide bend in the water filled canyon.
When viewed from above, this canyon resembled a race-car track, a never-ending series of twists, turns and full 180-degree bends.
That wasn't so bad.
The trouble started when it met up with all the other narrow canyons of Lake Powell — then the canyon system resembled a giant high-walled maze of interconnecting natural canals.
They came to an intersection of three canyons, arriving at it from the northeast.
At first Schofield didn't know what to do.
Two rock-walled canals stretched away from him — a fork in the watery road. And he didn't know where Botha was going. Presumably the South African scientist had a plan — but what?
And then Schofield saw the waves. Saw a collection of ripples lapping against the sheer stone walls of the canyon branching away to the left — barely perceptible, but definitely there — the residual waves of a motorboat's wash.
Schofield gunned it, swinging left, heading south.
As he traveled down the canyonways, banking with the bends, he looked upward. The rocky walls of these canyons rose at least two hundred feet above the water level. At their rims, Schofield saw clouds of billowing sand, blowing viciously, offering sporadic relief from the blazing sun.
It was the sandstorm.
The sandstorm that had been forecast to occur that morning, but which the members of HMX 1 had expected to miss.
It was absolutely raging up there, Schofield saw, but down here, in the shelter of the canyons, it was relatively calm — a kind of meteorological haven below the canyon system's high rocky rim.
Relatively calm, Schofield emphasized.
Because at that moment, he rounded a final corner and, completely unexpectedly, burst out into wide open space — into an enormous craterlike formation with a giant flat topped mesa rising out of the water in its center.
Although the crater was bounded by magnificent sheer rock walls, it was too wide to offer total protection from the wild sandstorm above. Flurries of sand whipped down into the vast expanse of open water, swirling maniacally.
It was then that through the veil of wind-hurled sand, Schofield saw them.
They were rounding the right-hand base of the mesa, speeding away.
Five boats.
One large white powerboat that looked like a hydrofoil, and four nimble bipods, also painted sand- yellow.
To Schofield's horror, at least a half-dozen slot canyons branched out from the walls of this circular crater, like the points on a clock, offering a multitude of escape routes.
He hit the gas, charged into the sandstorm, heading for the southern end of the central mesa, hoping to take the South Africans by surprise on the other side.
His bipod skipped over the water at incredible speed, propelled by its powerful minijet engines. Brainiac and Herbie's bipod bounced along beside it, kicking up spray, jouncing wildly through the horizontal rain of flying sand.
They rounded the left-hand end of the mesa — and saw the five South African boats heading for a wide vertical canyon that burrowed into the western wall of the crater.
They gave chase.
The South Africans must have seen them, because right then two of their bipods peeled away from the main hydrofoil, turning in a wide 180-degree arc, angling menacingly toward Schofield's boats, their 7.62 mm machine guns flaring to life.
Then suddenly — shockingly — the left-hand South African bipod exploded.
It just blew out of the water, consumed in a geyser of spray. One second it was there, the next it was replaced by a ring of foaming water and a rain of falling fiberglass.
For its part, the right-hand South African bipod just wheeled around instantly, abandoning this confrontation, and took off after the other South African boats.
Schofield spun. What the…?
SHOOOOOMU
Without warning, three black helicopters came bursting out of the sandstorm above the crater and plunged into the canyon system from behind him!
The three choppers swung into the relative shelter of the crater like World War II dive bombers, banking sharply before righting themselves without any loss of speed. They thundered over Schofield and his team, powering toward the South African boats as they disappeared inside the slot canyon to the west.
The choppers just shot into the narrow canyon after them.
Schofield's jaw dropped.
In a word, the three helicopters looked awesome. Sleek and mean and fast. They looked like nothing he had ever seen before.
They were each painted gunmetal black and looked like a cross between an attack helicopter and a fighter jet. Each helicopter had a regular helicopter rotor and a sharply pointed nose, but they were also possessed of downwardly canted wings that extended out from their frames.
They were AH-77 Penetrators — medium-sized attack choppers; a new kind of fighter-chopper hybrid that combined the hovering mobility of a helicopter with the superior straight-line speed of a fighter jet. With their black radar absorbent paint, swept-back wings and severelooking cockpits, they looked like a pack of angry airborne sharks.
The three Penetrators shot forward, banking into the narrow canyon after the four South African speedboats, completely ignoring Schofield and his men.
And in a fleeting instant, Schofield had a strange thought. What the hell were the Air Force people doing out here? Weren't they after the President? What did they care about Kevin?
In any case, this was now a three-way chase.
'Sir!' Brainiac's voice came in. 'What do we do?'
Schofield paused. Decision time. A tornado of thoughts whizzed through his mind — Kevin, Botha, the Air Force, the President, and the unstoppable countdown on the Football that at some point would force him to give up on this chase and turn back…
He made the call.
'We go in after them,' he said.
Schofield's bipod roared into the canyon the South Africans and the Penetrators had taken, Brainiac and Herbie's bipod close behind it.
It was a particularly winding canyon, this one — left then right, twisting and turning — but, thankfully, sheltered from the sandstorm.
About a hundred yards in, however, it forked into two subcanyons, one heading left, the other right. Little did any of them know that the subcanyons of Lake Powell have a habit of swinging back on each other, like interweaving pieces of string, forming multiple intersections…
Schofield saw the three Air Force choppers split up at the fork — one going left, two going right. The four South African rivercraft up ahead of them must have already split up.
'Brainiac!' he yelled. 'Go left! We'll take the right! Remember, all we want is the boy! We get him and then we high-tail it out of here, okay?'
'Got it, Scarecrow.'
