About eighteen months previously, as a lieutenant, he'd been in command of a Marine Reconnaissance Unit that had been sent to a remote ice station in Antarctica, to investigate the discovery of a possible alien spacecraft.
In a word, the mission had gone to hell on an express elevator.
Including himself, only four of his twelve Marines had survived the nightmare, during which they had been forced to defend the station against two foreign military forces and infiltrators from within their own unit. To top it off, Schofield himself had been declared dead by some corrupt members of the Marine Corps hierarchy, men who had been prepared to make that lie a reality.
His eventual return to America — alive and well — had sparked a media frenzy.
His face appeared on every major newspaper in the nation. Wherever he went, even after the initial frenzy, tabloid journalists and photographers tried to snap his picture or coax information out of him. After all, he was a walking talking monument to the corruption of the United States military — the good soldier who had been targeted for extermination by the faceless generals of his own military leadership.
Which left the Marine Corps with a serious problem: where to put him?
In the end, the answer had been rather inventive.
The safest place to hide Schofield was right in front of the world's media, but in the one place where they wouldn't be able to touch him.
He would be assigned to Marine One.
The chopper was based at the Marine Corps Air Facility at Quantico, Virginia, so Schofield could live on the base, making access to him all but impossible. And he would work on board the President's VH-60N, which was only really ever seen landing at the White House, and even then, always at a safe distance from the press.
When the transfer was made, Mother and Gant had elected to go with Schofield. The fourth survivor of their Antarctic disaster, a private named Rebound Simmons, had decided to leave the Marine Corps after their ill-fated mission.
That had been a year ago.
In that time, Schofield — quiet at the best of times and not given to small talk — had made only a handful of friends in the White House: mainly people among the Secret Service and the domestic staff; the ordinary people. With his reflective silver antiflash glasses, however, he was popular with the President's playful grandkids. As such, to their delight, he was nearly always assigned to guard them whenever they visited. And yet, despite this, he had never actually spoken conversationally with the President.
Area 7 loomed large in front of Marine One. Schofield could see the massive doors of the complex's enormous hangar slowly opening, revealing bright electric lighting inside.
Grier spoke into his helmet mike: 'Nighthawk Two, this is Nighthawk One, beginning descent now.'
In the belly of Nighthawk Two, Sergeant Elizabeth 'Fox' Gant sat hunched in a canvas jumpseat, trying vainly to read from a folder perched on her knees.
Unlike Marine One, the rotor noise inside Nighthawk Two was absolutely deafening. And since it never carried the President, its interior decor was about a thousand times more utilitarian. No upholstered seats or embroidered armrests here.
Now a staff sergeant, Libby Gant was twenty-eight years old, well, as of six hours ago.
Compact and fit, she had short blonde hair and sky-blue eyes, and in regular battle dress — fatigues, body armor and MP-10 — she cut a smart figure. In full dress uniform — peaked hat, dress coat and trousers — she looked spectacular.
Since they were flying in restricted Air Force airspace, the mood on board Nighthawk Two was relaxed. The usual tensions of coordinating Marine One's flight path with those of civilian air traffic weren't an issue, so Gant — studying part-time for entry into Officer Candidate School — took the opportunity to brush up on some of her notes.
She was just getting to Course 9405, Advanced Tactical Command, when a soft voice invaded her consciousness.
'Happy birthday to you…
Happy birthday to you…
Happy birthday, dear Staff Sergeant Ga-ant…
Happy birthday to you.'
She looked up from her work and sighed.
Sliding into the empty seat beside her was Nicholas Tate III, the President's Domestic Policy Adviser. Tate was handsome in a European sort of way — with dark eyebrows, olive skin and a male model's jawline — and confident in the extreme. Today he wore a three-thousand-dollar Armani suit and matching Armani cologne. Apparently it was the latest thing.
Tate held out a small neatly wrapped package for Gant to take.
'Twenty-eight, if I'm not mistaken,' he said.
'That's right, sir,' Gant said.
'Please, call me Nick.' He nodded at the gift. 'Well, go on. Open it.'
Reluctantly, Gant unwrapped the small package, unveiling an aqua-green box. She popped the lid, revealing an absolutely gorgeous silver necklace.
Small and thin, it looked like a length of the finest silver thread, its polished surface sparkling.
A small but stylish diamond dangled like a teardrop from the front of the necklace.
'It's from Tiffany's,' Tate said.
Gant looked up at him. 'I'm not allowed to wear jewelery in uniform, Mr. Tate.'
'I know. I was hoping you could wear it when I took you to dinner at Nino's next Saturday.'
Nino's was a restaurant in Georgetown, popular among Washington socialites and arguably the most expensive eatery in town.
Gant sighed. 'I'm seeing someone.'
It was kind of true. Only last weekend, after a tentative start, she and Shane Schofield had gone out on something resembling a date.
'Now, now, now,' Tate said, 'I heard about that. One date does not a relationship make.'
This was getting difficult. Gant held the necklace up to the light of the window. 'You know, this looks a lot like a necklace I saw in Paris once.'
'Oh, really?'
At Gant's mention of the word 'Paris,' however, one of the other Marines sitting nearby cocked her head to the side. Tate never saw it.
'Yes,' Gant said. 'We were there a couple of months ago with the Boss, and I had a day off, so I…'
'Jesus H. Christ, would you take a look at that!' a lusty woman's voice cut Gant off.
'Hey there, Mother,' Gant said, as Gunnery Sergeant Gena 'Mother' Newman appeared in the narrow aisle next to her.
'How you doin' there, Birthday Babe?' Mother said with a knowing smile.
The 'Paris' code was one they had used several times before. When either of them encountered an unwanted male admirer, she would slip the word 'Paris' into the conversation and the other, hearing the signal, would come to the rescue. It was a common trick used by girlfriends worldwide.
Granted, at six feet four inches and an even 200 pounds, Mother rarely had to use it. With her dark, heavyset features, fully shaved head and gruff no-nonsense manner, she was almost the perfect antithesis of Libby Gant. Her call-sign, 'Mother,' said it all, really. It wasn't indicative of any extraordinary maternal qualities. It was short for motherfucker. A gifted warrior, adept at all kinds of heavy weaponry and guncraft, she'd been promoted to the highly respected rank of gunnery sergeant a year ago.
In addition to this — thanks to a close encounter with a killer whale during the disastrous mission to Antarctica — Mother had one other, highly unusual physical feature.
A prosthetic lower left leg.
The nasty incident with the killer whale had deprived her of everything below the left knee.
That said, she'd done better than the killer had. It had received a bullet to its brain.
What Mother now had in place of her natural left foot and shin was a state-of-the-art prosthetic limb which,
