come in handy later.
He tapped Book II on the shoulder, handed him theother six. 'Just in case you catch a cold.'
Still sitting in the forward seat of the biplane, for the whole trip thus far Book II had been staring silently forward.
He took the ampules Schofield offered him, pocketed them in his stolen 7th Squadron uniform. Then he just resumed his brooding forward gaze.
'Why don't you like me?' Schofield asked suddenly, speaking into his helmet mike.
Book II's head cocked to the side.
A moment later, the young sergeant's voice came through Schofield's helmet. 'There's something I've been wanting to ask you for a long time, Captain.' His voice was low, cold.
'What's that?'
'My father was on that mission to Antarctica with you. But he never came back. How did he die?'
Schofield fell silent. Book II's father — Buck Riley Sr., the original 'Book' Riley — had died a horrific death during that terrible mission to Wilkes Ice Station. A murderous British SAS commander named Trevor Barnaby had fed him, live, to a pool of ferocious killer whales.
'He was captured by the enemy. And they killed him.'
'How?'
'You don't want to know.'
'How?' Schofield shut his eyes. 'They hung him upside-down over a pool of killer whales and lowered him in.'
'The Marine Corps never tells you how,' Book II said softly, his voice tinny over the radio. 'They just send you a letter, telling you what a patriot your dad was, and informing you that he was killed in action. Do you know, Captain, what happened to my family after my father died?'
Schofield bit his lip. 'No. I don't.'
'My mother used to live on the base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I was in basic training at Parris Island. You know what happens to a Marine's wife when her husband is killed in action, Captain?'
Schofield knew. But he said nothing.
'She gets moved off the base. Seems the wives of living soldiers don't like the presence of newly single widows on the base — widows who might go stealing their husbands.
'So my mother, after losing her husband, got moved out of her home. She tried to start over, tried to be strong, but it didn't work. Three months after she was moved off the base, they found her in the bathroom of her new shoebox apartment. She'd taken a whole bottle of sleeping pills.'
Book II turned in his seat, looked Schofield straight in the eye.
'That's why I was asking you about using risky strategies before. This isn't a game, you know. When someone dies, there are consequences. My father is dead, and my mother killed herself because she couldn't live without him. I just wanted to make sure my father didn't die because of some high-risk tactical maneuver of yours.'
Schofield was silent.
He'd never really known Book II's mother.
Book Sr. hadn't really socialized with his fellow Marines, preferring to spend his downtime with his family. Sure, Schofield had met Paula Riley at the odd lunch or dinner, but he'd never really gotten to know her. He'd heard about her death — and at the time he'd wished that he'd done more to help her.
'Your father was the bravest man I have ever known,' Schofield said. 'He died saving another person's life. A little girl fell out of a hovercraft and he dived out after her, shielded her from the fall. That's how they caught him. Then they took him back to the ice station and killed him. I tried to get back in time, but I…I didn't make it.'
'I thought you said you'd never lost to a countdown.'
Schofield said nothing.
'He talked about you, you know,' Book II said. 'Said you were one of the finest commanders he'd ever served under. Said he loved you like his own son, like me. I don't apologize for being a little cold toward you, Captain. I just had to get your measure, make my mind up for myself.'
'And your decision?'
'I'm still making up my mind.'
The plane swooped down toward the desert floor.
It was 9:51 when the lime-green Tiger Moth touched down on the dusty desert plain, kicking up a cloud of sand behind it, in the midst of the raging sandstorm.
As soon as the biplane skidded to a halt, Schofield and Book II were out of it — Schofield holding the Football and his Desert Eagle pistol, Book with two nickel-plated M9's… charging toward the trench carved into the earth that housed the entrance to the Emergency Exit Vent.
Bodies lay everywhere, half-covered in sand.
Nine Secret Service people, all dressed in suits. And all dead. Members of Advance Team 2.
Four dead Marines littered the ground as well. All in full dress uniform. Colt Hendricks and the men of Nighthawk Three, who had come out here to check on the Escape Vent.
Christ, Schofield thought as he and Book II hurdled the bodies, heading for the Vent's entrance.
All this death… and all of it will have consequences.
9:52 a.m.
Schofield and Book hit the entrance to the Emergency Exit Vent on the fly — it was still open from the Reccondos' entry before — and entered a narrow concrete tunnel and the cool shade of the Area 7 complex.
They came to a rung ladder that stretched down into darkness — grabbed it and slid down it for a full five hundred feet. There were no lights here, so they slid by the light of Schofield's small barrel-mounted flashlight. Armed with his two ornamental pistols, Book II didn't have a flashlight.
9:53 a.m.
They hit the bottom, and saw a long one-man-wide concrete tunnel stretching away from them, gradually sloping downward — again, no lights.
They took off down it, running hard.
Schofield spoke into his Secret Service wrist mike as he ran: 'Fox! Fox! Can you read me? We're back! We're back inside the complex!'
His earpiece fizzled and crackled.
No reply.
Maybe Secret Service radios weren't designed to withstand long underwater swims.
9:54.
After several hundred yards of running down the ultra narrow passageway, they burst out through the Emergency Exit Vent's door on Level 6, and found themselves standing on the northern tracks of the X-rail station.
The underground station was pitch-black.
Total darkness.
Frightening.
By the beam of his gunlight, Schofield could make out a score of dead bodies, plus a charred, blasted-open section in the middle of the central platform — the spot where Elvis's RDX grenade had gone off earlier.
'The stairs,' he said, pointing his beam at the door leading to the fire stairs on their left. They leapt up onto the platform, charged for the door.
'Fox! Fox! Can you read me?'
Fizzle. Crackle.
They came to the stairwell door. Schofield threw it open — and immediately heard the rapid clang-clang- clang of more than a dozen pairs of combat boots booming down the stairs… and getting louder.
'Quickly, this way,' he said, diving down onto the tracks on the southern side of the platform, taking cover underneath the struts of the small X-rail maintenance vehicle sitting there.
Schofield killed his flashlight as Book II landed on the tracks beside him — not a second before the stairwell door burst open and Cobra Carney and the men of Echo Unit came charging out of it, a gaggle of wobbling flashlight beams moving quickly through the darkness.
