Schofield immediately saw Kevin among them, surrounded by four men of Asian extraction.
'What is this?' Book II whispered.
Schofield stared at the four men flanking Kevin.
They were the four men he had seen inside the decompression chamber earlier, the ones who had brought the Sinovirus back from China.
His mind raced.
What was going on?
Kevin had only just been returned to Area 7 on the Penetrators. Yet now he was being moved again. Had Caesar instructed this team of commandos to take him to another, more secure location?
And yet again the question nagged Schofield: What did Caesar Russell care for Kevin? Wasn't he after the President?
Cobra and his men leapt down onto the tracks on the other side of the platform, moving with purpose.
It was then — by the light of Echo Unit's flashlights — that Schofield saw that the blast doors sealing the X- rail tunnel on the other side of the platform were open. They were the doors that sealed off the tunnel that led to Area 8.
Cobra and his men, with Kevin and the four Asian men among them, disappeared inside the eastern tunnel, looking behind themselves as they went.
Looking behind themselves… Schofield thought.
And then he saw Cobra Carney take one last anxious glance over his shoulder before he entered the tunnel, and suddenly Schofield knew.
These men were stealing Kevin… from Caesar.
Up in the darkened hangar on Level 2 Gant looked nervously at her watch.
9:55 a.m.
Five minutes until the President had to place his palm on the Football's analyzer plate.
And still no word from Scarecrow.
Shit.
If he didn't come back soon, this show was over.
Gant and Mother — with Juliet, the President, Hagerty and Tate — had left the AWACS plane on Level 2, and guided by the flashlights on their gun barrels, had made their way across the underground hangar toward the wide aircraft elevator shaft.
Still carrying the black box that she had pilfered from the AWACS's belly, Gant was heading for Caesar Russell's command center up on ground level to carry out her plan.
But if Schofield didn't get back with the Football soon, any plan she had would become academic.
The complex was eerily silent.
When combined with the pitch darkness that now shrouded the underground facility, it made for a very haunting atmosphere
For a moment, Gant thought she heard her earpiece crackle: '…ox?…ead me?'
Juliet heard it, too. 'Did you hear that…?'
And then so suddenly that it made them all jump, a gunshot echoed up through the elevator shaft.
Loud and booming.
The blast of a pump-action shotgun.
What followed the gunshot, however, was infinitely more terrifying.
A cackle of laughter.
An insane cackle that floated up the shaft, cutting through the air like a scythe.
'Nah-ha-haaaaaaaah! Hellooooo everybody! We're coming to get you!'
This was followed by a man's voice howling like a wolf. 'Arrooooo!'
Even Mother gulped. 'The prisoners…'
'They must have found the arms cabinet down in the cell bay,' Juliet said.
Abruptly, a loud mechanical clanking noise reverberated up through the elevator shaft.
Gant looked out over the edge.
The giant aircraft elevator platform lay at the bottom of the shaft on Level 5, the remains of the destroyed AWACS plane on its back half-submerged in a wide body of water.
At various places on the elevator platform, Gant saw torches — flaming torches, about twenty of them — moving all around, flickering in the darkness. Torches held aloft by men.
The escaped prisoners.
'How many do you see?' Juliet asked.
'I don't know,' Gant said. 'Thirty-five, forty. Why, how many are there?'
'Forty-two.'
'Oh, perfect.'
Then, abruptly, with a great groaning lurch, the elevator platform lifted up out of the lake at the base of the shaft, dripping water.
'I thought the power…' Mother began.
Juliet shook her head. 'It has a stand-alone hydraulic engine, for use in a power blackout like this.'
The elevator lumbered up the shaft, its massive form moving steadily through the darkness.
'Quickly. Away from the edge.' Gant pushed the President back behind the landing gear of one of the AWACS planes nearby. She and Mother and Juliet clicked off their barrel-mounted flashlights.
The gigantic elevator platform rumbled past the open doorway of Level 2, continued slowly upward. As it did so, Gant peered around the landing gear of the AWACS.
The scene looked like something out of a horror movie.
They were standing on the rising elevator platform — holding flaming torches above their heads; shotguns and pistols in their spare hands — and they howled like animals, whooping it up, their shrill calls grating like fingernails on a chalkboard in the dark silence of the complex.
The prisoners from the Level 5 cell block.
Half of them were not wearing shirts — their bare chests shone in the firelight of their torches.
Others wore bandannas wrapped around their heads and biceps.
All of them, however, wore soaking-wet trousers, caused by the rising water on Level 5.
Then the elevator rose out of Gant's view, and she emerged from her hiding spot to watch its underside climb and climb until it arrived at the main hangar with an ominous, thunderous boom.
Caesar Russell strode purposefully across the control room overlooking the main hangar.
He had just seen the aircraft elevator platform — with its cargo of howling and shotgun-firing prisoners — rise into view. No sooner had it stopped than prisoners bolted off it, scattering in every direction.
'Get on the handhelds,' Caesar ordered coolly. 'Tell Charlie to wait at the top door and prepare for evacuation to the secondary command post. We'll come to them. Where's Echo?'
'I can't raise them, sir,' the nearest radioman replied.
'Never mind. We'll contact them later. Let's go.'
Everyone started moving. Logan and his three Alpha men. Boa McConnell and his four Bravo men.
Caesar used a keypad to unlock a small pressure door set into the northern wall of the control room, hurled it open.
A smooth concrete passageway stretched away from him, sloping down and to the left, where it would ultimately connect with the top door's passageway.
The three Alpha men led the way. They charged into the passageway, guns first. Caesar himself went next, followed by Logan.
Colonel Jerome Harper was next in line, but he never got the chance.
For just as Logan disappeared inside the passageway's entrance, the regular door on the other side of the control room flew open, revealing five shotgun-toting prisoners!
Boom!
An entire console was blasted to pieces.
