through the hangar's open doorway, shredding the ground at their feet.
Two of the men fell, hit, their bodies erupting in a thousand explosions of red. The other three made it to the Humvee, clambered inside, started her up. The big car peeled off the mark, turning in a wide circle — Shoooooom!
A missile rocketed in through the open hangar doors, heading straight for the skidding Humvee.
The Humvee's life was short.
The missile hit it square on the nose — so hard that the wide-bodied jeep was sent flailing back across the slippery hangar floor, before it slammed against a wall and filled with light and blasted outwards in a shower of metal.
'Holy exploding Humvees, Batman!' Mother said.
'Quickly!' Schofield said. 'This way!'
'What are we doing?' the President asked.
Schofield pointed at the moving jumbo outside. 'We're getting on that plane.'
As with many desert bases, Area 8's elongated runway was roughly L-shaped, with the shorter arm of the 'L' meeting the open doorway of the complex's main hangar.
Aircraft took off and landed on the longer arm of the 'L' but to get out to that runway, all planes had to taxi along the shorter strip first. While the main runway was over five thousand yards long, the shorter runway — or taxiway — was only about four hundred yards in length.
The silver 747 — with the glistening white X-38 space shuttle on its back — rumbled along the taxiway, flanked by the two black Air Force Penetrators.
Windblown sand whistled all around it, the brutal desert sun glinted off its sides.
The big jumbo had reached the halfway point of the taxiway when a speeding vehicle came blasting out of the main hangar behind it.
It was a cockroach.
One of the white flat-bodied towing vehicles that had been parked inside the hangar. Looking like a brick with wheels, it thundered along the taxiway, chasing after the big plane.
In the cramped driver's compartment of the cockroach, Mother drove. Schofield and the President shared the passenger seat.
'Come on, Mother, pick it up!' Schofield urged. 'We've got to catch it before it gets to the main runway! Once it gets there and starts on its flight run, we're screwed.'
Mother jammed the cockroach into third, its highest gear. The towing vehicle's V8 engine roared as it leapt forward, accelerating through the shimmering desert heat.
The cockroach whipped across the taxiway, closed in on the shuttle-carrying 747.
The Penetrators opened fire on it, but Schofield kicked open the passenger-side window and unleashed a burst from both his and Mother's P-90 assault rifles, hitting the nose mounted Vulcan cannon on one of the Penetrators, causing it to bank away. But the other chopper kept firing hard, kicking up sparks all around the speeding cockroach.
'Mother! Get us under the plane! We need its countermeasures!' Mother hit the gas and the cockroach surged forward, hit its top speed. It reeled in the lumbering 747 — inch by painful inch — until at last the speeding towing vehicle sped underneath the silver jumbo's high tail section.
It was like entering an air bubble.
The bullets from the second Penetrator no longer hit the ground all around them. The fireworks display of their impact sparks ended abruptly.
The cockroach kept rushing forward — now speeding along in the shadow of the shuttle carrying 747 — pushing past its rear landing gear while still remaining in the shelter of its massive body.
The cockroach weaved under the left-hand wing of the 747, the tarmac rushing by beneath it, heading for the rope ladder that dangled from the plane's still-open left-hand door.
The cockroach came to the rope ladder — just as the entire 747 abruptly swung right.
'Goddamn it!' Mother yelled as the cockroach swung out from the shelter of the jumbo into glaring sunlight.
'It's turning onto the main runway!' Schofield shouted.
Like a giant, slow-moving bird, the silver 747 — with the X-38 shuttle on its back — turned onto Area 8's elongated runway.
'Get to that ladder, Mother!' Schofield called.
Mother gunned it, yanked the steering wheel hard-right, directing the cockroach — now momentarily deprived of the jumbo's electromagnetic protection — back in toward the flailing rope ladder, but not before one of the Penetrators swung quickly around in front of the turning 747 and opened fire.
A devastating line of tracer bullets impacted against the tarmac in front of the cockroach, kicking up sparks that ricocheted everywhere.
Several bullets smacked against the cockroach's windscreen, cracking it. Many more, however, bounced up underneath the towing vehicle's speeding front bumper and impacted against the underside of the cockroach — three of them hitting the vehicle's steering column.
The response was instantaneous.
The steering wheel in Mother's hands went haywire.
The cockroach fishtailed wildly, lurching sideways as it sped along the runway under the wing of the 747, swinging left and right.
Mother had to use all her strength just to keep a grip on the steering wheel, to keep the cockroach under control.
The 747 finished its turn, began to straighten up.
The runway in front of it stretched away into the distance — a long, straight ribbon of black that disappeared into the shimmering desert horizon.
'Mother…!' Schofield yelled.
'I know!' Mother shouted. 'You go! Get up on the roof! I'll bring us under the ladder! And take the Prez here with you!'
'But what about you…?'
'Scarecrow! In about twelve seconds, that jumbo is going to take off and if you aren't on it, we lose that kid! I have to stay at the wheel of this thing, otherwise it'll spin out!'
'But those Penetrators will kill you once we're gone…!'
'That's why you have to take him with you!' Mother said, nodding at the President. 'Don't mind me, Scarecrow. You know it'll take more than a bunch of Air Force cocksuckers to get rid of me'
Schofield wasn't so sure.
But he saw the look in her eye, and he knew that she was prepared to keep driving the cockroach — to her almost certain death — so long as he and the President got on board that plane.
He turned to the President. 'Come on. You're coming with me.'
The cockroach raced alongside the 747, once again shielded by its electronic countermeasures, swung in underneath its forward left-hand entry door — the door from which the rope ladder dangled.
The two tiny figures of Schofield and the President — still dressed in their black combat uniforms — climbed up onto the roof of the speeding towing vehicle. Conveniently, their 7th Squadron uniforms came with protective goggles, so they put them on to protect their eyes against the storm of sand blowing all around them.
Down in the driver's compartment, Mother continued to grapple with the steering wheel of the cockroach, trying with all her might to keep the rampaging vehicle on a straight course.
On the roof of the cockroach — in the face of the battering wind — Schofield reached for the flailing rope ladder. It fluttered and swayed just out of his reach…
Then suddenly a deafening roar filled his ears.
The 747's four wing-mounted jet engines were coming to life.
Schofield's blood ran cold.
The plane was powering up for take-off, starting its run down the airstrip. Any second now, it would accelerate considerably and pull away from the cockroach.
The rope ladder continued to flutter in the raging wind, a few feet in front of the speeding cockroach.
