In the main cabin of the AWACS plane, Mother sat at a computer console.
She pulled up the screen showing the microwave signal coming into Area 7 from the low orbit satellite. It was the same screen Brainiac had found inside the other AWACS plane earlier, depicting a twenty-five-second rebounding signature.
Gant came up from the cargo hold with the orange colored black box. She plugged a cable into a socket on its side, connecting it to Mother's terminal. Immediately, the spike graph appeared on a small illuminated LCD screen on the black box's top.
'Okay,' Gant said to Mother, 'see that search signal, the upward spike? I want you to set it as the 'find' frequency on the black box.'
When crash investigators search for a black box, they use a radio transmitter to emit a pre-set microwave signal called the 'find' frequency. When the black box's transponder detects that signal, it sends out a return signal, revealing its location.
'Okay…' Mother said, typing. 'Done.'
'Good,' Gant said. 'Now set that rebounding frequency — the downward spike — as the return signal.'
'Okay, just a minute.'
'Will the signal strength from the black box be powerful enough to reach all the way up to the satellite?' the President asked.
'I think it'll work. They used microwave signals to talk to Armstrong on the moon, and SETI uses them to send messages into outer space.' Gant smiled. 'It's not the size that matters, it's the quality of the signal.'
'All right, done,' Mother said. She turned to Gant. 'So, Fearless Leader, what exactly have I just created?'
'Mother, if you've done it right, when we activate the transmitter inside this black box, we'll be mimicking the signal coming out of the President's heart.'
'So what now?' the President asked.
'Yes,' Hagerty said meanly. 'Do we just switch it on?'
'Definitely not. If we turn it on, the satellite will pick up two identical signals, and that might cause it to detonate the bombs. We can't risk that. No, we've just laid the groundwork. Now it's time for the hard part. Now we have to substitute the black box's signal for the President's.'
'And how do we do that?' Hagerty asked. 'Please don't tell me that you're going to perform open-heart surgery on the President of the United States with a pocket knife?'
'Do I look like MacGyver to you?' Gant asked. 'No. My theory is this: somehow Caesar Russell got that transmitter onto the President's heart…'
'That's right. He did it during an operation I had a few years ago,' the President said.
'But I'm figuring he didn't turn it on until today,' Gant said. 'The White House's scanners would have picked up an unauthorized signal as soon as it was turned on.'
'Yes, so…' Hagerty said.
'So,' Gant said, 'somewhere in this complex, Caesar Russell has a unit that turns the President's transmitter on and off. I'm guessing that that unit — probably just a handheld initiate/terminate unit of some kind — is sitting in the same room as Caesar himself.'
'It is,' the President said, recalling the small unit that Caesar Russell had turned on at the very start of the challenge. 'He had it when he appeared on the television sets before, at the beginning of all this. It's red, handheld, with a black stub antenna.'
'Right then,' Gant said. 'Now all we have to do is find his command center.' She turned to Juliet. 'Your people have checked out this place. Any ideas?'
Juliet said, 'The main hangar. In the building overlooking the floor. There's a whole command-and-control room up there.'
'Then that's where we're going,' Gant said. 'So what we do now is simple. First, we take Caesar Russell's command center. Then, in between the search signals sent down from the satellite, we use his initiate/terminate unit to turn off the transmitter attached to the President's heart, while a second later, we turn on the black box.'
She gave the President a wry smile. 'Like I said. Simple.'
The five remaining members of Charlie Unit were moving quickly through a low concrete tunnel, all running in a half-crouch.
Trotting along with them — and because of his height, not needing to crouch — was Kevin.
Charlie Unit had just returned from Lake Powell, after killing Botha, retrieving Kevin, and watching Schofield's chopper drown.
They had parked their two Penetrators outside and were now reentering the complex through an entrance that connected the main facility with one of the outside hangars, an entrance known as the 'top door.'
The top door's tunnel opened onto the rear of the personnel elevator shaft, at ground level, by virtue of a foot thick titanium door.
Charlie Unit came to the heavy silver door.
Python Willis punched in the appropriate override code. The top door was a special entrance to Area 7 — if you were senior enough to know the override code, you could open it anytime, even during a lockdown.
The thick titanium door swung open — and Python froze.
He saw the roof of the personnel elevator parked just below his feet, sitting right there in front of him.
And standing on top of it, was Cobra Carney and four members of Echo Unit.
The other half of Echo, Python saw through the hatch in the elevator's roof, were down in the car itself.
'Jesus, Cobra,' Python said, 'you scared the shit out of me. Wasn't expecting to see you guys here…'
'Caesar told us to come get you,' Cobra drawled. 'Make sure you all got in okay.'
Python shoved Kevin forward, onto the roof of the stopped elevator. 'We lost five, but we got him.'
'Good,' Cobra said. 'Very good.'
It was then that — through the roof hatch of the elevator — Python saw four more men standing in the elevator car with the Echo men.
Four Asian men.
Python frowned.
They were the four men who had been inside the decompression chamber earlier that morning — 7th Squadron Captain Robert Wu and Lieutenant Chet Li, and the two Chinese lab workers. The men who had brought the latest strain of the Sinovirus back to Area 7.
'Cobra, what's going on?' Python said suddenly, looking up.
'Sorry, Python,' Cobra said.
And with that he gave a short nod to his men.
In a flash, the four members of Echo Unit on the elevator's roof raised their P-90's and unleashed a withering storm of fire on Charlie Unit.
Python Willis was hit by about a million rounds. His face and chest were turned instantly to mush. The four Charlie men behind him also dropped like flailing marionettes, one after the other, until the only figure left standing on that side of the elevator's roof was the wide-eyed and terrified Kevin.
Cobra Carney strode forward and grabbed the little boy roughly by the arm.
'Smile, kid, you're coming with me now.'
The control room overlooking the main hangar was quiet.
Boa McConnell and the four other surviving members of Bravo Unit sat slumped in the corner, looking bloodied and dirty. Two of Boa's men were seriously wounded. Colonel Jerome T. Harper — the ostensible CO of Area 7, but in reality a minion of Caesar Russell — tended to their wounds.
Another figure sat at the back of the room, shrouded in shadow — he had been sitting inside the control room for the whole morning, never uttering a word. He just watched silently.
Major Kurt Logan and the remainder of Alpha Unit were also in the control room. Logan now stood with Caesar, whispering in hushed tones. His Alpha Unit had fared little better than Bravo Unit: of his original team of ten men, including himself, there were only four left.
