And with that, Schofield pressed a button and the mini elevator whizzed him, Mother and the President swiftly down the shaft.
As thes descended quickly, Mother touched Schofield on the shoulder, spoke through her gas mask.
'Area 8?'
Schofield turned to face her. 'That's right.'
No matter how he looked at it, his mind kept coming back to the same image: the image of the 7th Squadron unit down on the Level 6 platform taking Kevin into the X-rail tunnel, heading for Area 8.
Kevin…
The little boy was at the center of all of this.
Schofield said, 'I want to find out what this whole thing has been about. But to do that, I need two things.'
'What?'
He indicated the President. 'First: him.'
'And second?'
'Kevin,' Schofield said firmly. 'Which is why we have to get to Area 8 fast.'
Caesar Russell, Kurt Logan and the three surviving commandos from Logan's Alpha Unit charged across the runway of Area 7 in the glare of the blazing desert sun, raced into the four story airfield control tower that stood about a hundred yards from the main complex.
Having emerged from the top door exit inside a small side hangar, they'd made their way to the tower, which doubled as the base's secondary control room.
They hurried into the tower's command center — it was a replica of the one inside Area 7 — and started flicking switches. Television monitors came to life. Console lights flicked on.
Caesar said, 'Get me a fix on Echo Unit's personnel locators.'
It didn't take long for Logan to find Echo. Every 7th Squadron member had an electronic locator surgically implanted beneath the skin on his wrist.
'They're on the X-rail. Arriving at Area 8 right now.'
'Fire up the Penetrators,' Caesar said. 'We're going to Area 8.'
Down on Level 1 of the underground complex, Nicholas Tate was wandering around in a terrified daze.
After the sudden and mysterious disappearance of Hot Rod Hagerty, he didn't know what to do.
Flashlight in hand, he walked absently to the far end of the darkened hangar, searching for Hagerty. But he stopped twenty yards short of the ramp there when he saw something emerging from it. Already somewhat muddled, now his mind reeled at the sight that met him.
It was almost surreal.
A family of bears — yes, bears — stepped out from the ramp and onto the floor of Level 1.
One gigantic male, a smaller female, and three awkward-looking little cubs ambled out onto the hangar floor. They were all hunched forward, padding along on all fours, sniffing the petrol-soaked air all around them.
Tate wobbled unsteadily.
Then he turned and ran back toward the main elevator shaft.
The detached mini-elevator whipped down the aircraft elevator shaft in near total darkness, with Schofield, Mother and the President on its back, the orange glow from Schofield's torch the only light.
As they descended, Schofield yanked a couple of Gunther Botha's glass ampules from his thigh pocket — the small glass bulbs containing the antidote to the Sinovirus.
He turned to the President, spoke through his gas mask: 'How long do we have?'
'Half an hour till the first symptoms set in,' the President said, 'when it invades the body through the skin. Dermal infection is slower than direct inhalation. That antidote, however, will neutralize the virus in its tracks.'
Schofield handed a glass bulb to both Mother and the President, then pulled out another one for himself. 'We need to find some hypodermic needles before we head to Area 8,' he said.
They rode the mini-elevator down to Level 1.
When they arrived there, however, they were met by Nicholas Tate, bursting forth from the darkness wide- eyed and alarmed. He stepped straight onto the mini-elevator.
'I… er… don't think you want to go that way,' he said.
'Why not?' Schofield asked.
'Bears,' Tate said dramatically.
Schofield frowned, looked to the President. Clearly, Tate had lost it.
'Where's Ramrod?' Mother asked.
'Gone,' Tate said. 'Just — poof — disappeared. One minute he was standing here behind me, the next he was just missing. All he left was this.'
Tate held up Hagerty's Annapolis graduation ring.
Schofield didn't get it.
The President did.
'Oh, Jesus,' he said. 'He's out.'
'Who's out?' Mother asked.
'There's only one person in this complex who is known to leave a person's jewelry at the site of an abduction,' the President said. 'The serial killer, Lucifer Leary.'
'The Surgeon of Phoenix…' Schofield whispered, recalling the name and the horror that went along with it.
'Oh, super,' Mother spat. 'Just what we need. Another fucking wacko running around this place.'
The President turned to Schofield. 'Captain, we don't have time for this. If Caesar Russell's got that boy…'
Schofield bit his lip. He didn't like leaving anybody behind, even Ramrod Hagerty.
'Captain,' the President said, his face hard, 'as I said earlier this morning, sometimes in this job I have to make difficult decisions — and I'm going to make one now. If he's still alive, Colonel Hagerty is going to have to look after himself. We can't spend the next hour searching this facility for him. There's something bigger at stake here. Much bigger. We have to get that boy back.'
They took the mini-elevator to the second underground hangar, Level 2, and — now accompanied by the confused Nicholas Tate — dashed down its length.
Thankfully, there were no bears in this hangar.
They hit the fire stairwell at a run and rushed down it, guided by the light of Schofield's flaming torch. Since they had come direct from their fight in the pit, they had no weapons, no flashlights, no nothing.
They came to the bottom of the stairwell, and the door to Level 6.
Cautiously, Schofield opened it.
The Level 6 X-rail platform was completely dark.
No sound. No sign of life.
Schofield edged out onto the platform. Dark shapes littered the area — bodies from the three separate gunfights that had taken place down there over the course of the morning, the charred remains of Elvis's RDX explosion.
Schofield and Mother ran straight over to the bodies of some Bravo Unit men. They grabbed a P-90 assault rifle each, plus SIG-Sauer pistols. Schofield even found a first aid field kit on one of the men which contained four plastic wrapped hypodermic needles.
Perfect.
He tossed a SIG to the President, but didn't offer a gun to the unstable Tate.
'This way,' he said.
He hurried along the platform, heading for the X-rail engine that sat on the northern tracks of the underground railway station, pointing toward the open tunnel that led to Area 8.
Up in the main hangar, Book II was pulling Juliet Janson out of the ten-foot-deep pit that was the aircraft elevator platform. He was wearing his uniform's ERG-6 gas mask.
