A thin residual mist hung over the area, the lingering cloud of the Sinovirus.
Juliet came out of the pit, and with a shout, she saw them: Seth Grimshaw and the giant Goliath disappearing inside the personnel elevator. And Grimshaw was still holding the Football.
'Over there!' she pointed. 'They're going for the exit in the elevator shaft. That Air Force guy Harper gave Grimshaw the exit code.'
'Do you know the code?' Book II asked.
'Do I ever,' Juliet leapt to her feet. 'I was there when Harper said it. Come on.'
Libby Gant was on her own.
She was standing in a dark hallway inside the command building at the eastern end of the hangar, at the base of a set of stairs — unarmed but alert as hell.
In the hangar outside, the Sinovirus was loose, and she didn't have a gas mask.
Okay, she thought, surely in a facility like this, there would have to be some…
She found them in a cupboard underneath the stairs: biohazard suits. Great big yellow Chemturions — with large, baggy plastic helmets, balloonlike yellow coveralls, and self contained air packs.
In the same cupboard, Gant also found a chunky Maglite flashlight. Very handy.
She slipped into one of the Chemturion suits as fast as she could, pulling its Ziploc zipper shut, turning on its self contained air supply. The suit immediately inflated and she started hearing her own breathing as a Darth Vader-like wheeze.
Now safe from the Sinovirus, she had something else she wanted to do.
She recalled her previous plan: find Caesar Russell's command center — get the initiate / terminate unit that he'd used to start the transmitter on the President's heart — then use the black box that she'd taken from the AWACS plane earlier to impersonate the President's radio signal.
The black box.
So far as she knew, it was still on the floor of the main hangar, in the spot where she had kicked it away from the mini elevator.
She decided to search the command center for the I/T unit first. Then she'd go back for the black box.
Guided by the light of her newfound flashlight, she climbed the stairs, came to the command room's doorway.
The door was ajar.
Slowly, Gant pushed it open, to reveal a very battered looking room.
It looked like a war had been fought in there.
The room's plasterboard walls were shredded with bullet holes. The slanted windows overlooking the main hangar were cracked or completely shattered. Several computer consoles bore fat round holes in their monitors. Others just sat there blank, lacking a power source.
Dressed in her yellow biohazard suit, Gant entered the room, stepping over a pair of dead 7th Squadron men lying all shot up on the floor. Their weapons were gone, presumably taken by the inmates who had stormed through here.
Through the faceplate of her airtight suit, Gant's eyes swept the control room, searching for the…
Yes.
It was sitting on top of one of the computer monitors and it was just as the President had described it: a small red hand held unit, with a black stub antenna sticking out of its top.
The initiate / terminate unit.
Gant picked it up, examined it. It looked like a miniature mobile phone.
She saw two switches on its face. Beneath each switch was a crude length of tape marked with a handwritten '1' and '2'.
Gant frowned. Why would Caesar need…?
She shook the thought away, stuffed the IT unit into the chest pocket of her biohazard suit.
As she did so, she peered out over the darkened hangar to see if she could spot the black box down by the pit.
The vast hangar floor stretched away from her, veiled by the unearthly mist of the Sinovirus.
Except for the flickering flames of the prisoners' discarded torches, nothing moved.
The area was awash with irregularly shaped objects: slumped bodies, Marine One, a crashed cockroach, one battered helicopter, even Bravo Unit's busted-open barricade of crates and boxes.
Gant's flashlight had a powerful beam, and in the middle of some bodies and debris on the near side of the pit, it illuminated the bright-orange outline of the AWACS's black box. Excellent…
Gant made to leave, when abruptly, a glint of pale-blue light caught her eye.
She paused. It seemed that not every monitor in the control room had been shot or lost power.
Hidden underneath a fallen piece of shredded plasterboard, a lone screen was still glowing.
Gant frowned.
The complex's power was out — which meant this system must be operating on an independent power source. Which meant it must be pretty important…
She lifted the broken piece of wall off the screen. The screen read:
LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL S.A.(R) 7-A
FAILSAFE SYSTEM HISTORY
7-3-468201103
TIME
KEY ACTION
SYSTEM RESPONSE
0658
AUTHORIZED LOCKDOWN INITIATE CODE ENTERED
LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL ENABLED
0801
AUTHORIZED LOCKDOWN EXTENSION CODE ENTERED
LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL CONTINUED
0900
AUTHORIZED LOCKDOWN EXTENSION CODE ENTERED
LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL CONTINUED
1005
NO AUTHORIZED CODE ENTERED
FACILITY SELF-DESTRUCT MECHANISM ARMED
1005
*********WARNING*********
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.
IF YOU DO NOT ENTER AN AUTHORIZED LOCKDOWN EXTENSION OR TERMINATION CODE BY 1105 HOURS, FACILITY SELFDESTRUCT SEQUENCE WILL BE ACTIVATED.
SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE DURATION: 10:00 MINUTES.
*********WARNING*********
Gant's eyes went wide.
Facility self-destruct sequence…
No wonder this system operated on an independent power source.
But for whatever reason — presumably the sudden intrusion of the inmates — Caesar Russell's people had failed to enter the appropriate lockdown extension code during the window period after 10:00 a.m.
