Billowing clouds of sand flew everywhere.
Schofield turned to the President and yelled: 'Okay! I grab the ladder! You grab me!'
'What!'
'You'll understand!'
And with that, Schofield charged across the flat roof of the cockroach and leapt off its forward edge… and flew through the air, reaching up with his outstretched arms… and caught the bottom rung of the dangling rope ladder.
He waved for the President to follow. 'Now you grab me!'
With a doubtful shake of his head, the President said, 'Okay…'
And he ran forward and jumped — just as the silver 747 shot forward, its engines engaging.
The President flew through the short space of air in front of the speeding cockroach before his body slammed into Schofield's, and he threw his arms around the young captain's waist, clasping his hips tightly while Schofield himself held on grimly to the bottom rung of the rope ladder with both of his hands!
Mother's cockroach instantly peeled away behind them, unable to keep up. The two Penetrators also gave up the chase, wheeling to a halt in midair above the runway.
Hanging from the rope ladder — and traveling at close to a hundred miles an hour, with the wind whipping all around him and the President of the United States hanging from his waist — Schofield watched in horror as one of the Penetrators loosed a missile at Mother's nowunprotected cockroach.
The missile hit the cockroach's tail and detonated hard, lifting the rear end of the still speeding towing vehicle a clear five feet off the ground.
With the missile impact, the cockroach fishtailed wildly — and shot off the runway, onto the sand, kicking up an enormous billowing dust cloud — and then it flipped — and tumbled — and rolled — once, twice, three times — before it came to a thumping crashing crushing halt, right on its cockpit, surrounded by falling sand.
And as he hung from the doorway of the accelerating 747, Schofield could only stare at the dust-covered wreck and pray that Mother had died quickly.
But right now he had other things to do.
The 747 continued to rush down the runway.
As it did so, the two tiny figures of Schofield and the President could be seen dangling from its forward left- hand doorway.
The 747 picked up speed. With the extra weight of the X-38 on its back, it required an unusually long take-off run.
Wind whipped all around Schofield and the President as they hung from the rope ladder.
'You go first!' Schofield yelled. 'Climb up my body and then go up the ladder!'
The President did as he was told.
With the runway rushing by beneath them, he first climbed up Schofield's body, using his combat webbing for hand- and footholds. Then he stepped off Schofield's shoulders onto the rope ladder itself and began to climb it.
As soon as the President was on the ladder, Schofield began to haul himself up, using only his arms.
The ground continued to whip by beneath them as they ascended the rope ladder, the wind slamming into their bodies.
And then, all of a sudden, as they reached the doorway at the top of the ladder, the speeding runway beneath them just dropped away — dropped dramatically away — and receded rapidly into obscurity.
Schofield swallowed.
They were now in the air.
Caesar Russell's helicopter landed softly on the runway far beneath the rising 747, twenty yards away from Mother's crashed cockroach.
Caesar stepped out of the chopper and just gazed up after the plane.
Kurt Logan walked over to the torpedoed cockroach. It was a battered, tangled wreck.
Mangled steel lay everywhere.
Its driver's compartment was completely flattened, its windshield and roof struts bent shockingly inward. It looked like an aluminum can that had been crumpled flat.
And then he saw the body. It lay facedown in the sand in front of the smashed towing vehicle — twisted and broken. Only the torso and limbs were visible, the head was not. Mother's head lay somewhere underneath the cockroach's lowered front bumper, crushed flat against the ground. Her left pants leg ended abruptly at the knee — her lower leg wrenched off by the force of the impact.
Logan returned to Russell's side. Caesar hadn't taken his eyes off the rising silver plane.
'Echo has the boy,' Logan said. 'And the Marines have the President.'
'Yes,' Caesar said, staring up at the fleeing jumbo. 'Yes. So now, regrettably, we move to the alternate plan. Which means we head back to Area 7.'
The President landed with a heavy thump inside the open doorway of the 747, absolutely breathless.
Schofield followed a few seconds later, also breathing hard. He managed to stagger to his knees and pull the door shut behind him. It sealed with a loud whump!
Both men were lying on the floor, still wearing their protective goggles, when one of the pilots of the 747 — a commando from Echo Unit — came down the stairwell from the upper deck.
The pilot was wearing a baggy bright-orange flight suit which Schofield immediately recognized as a pressure suit.
Pressure suits were mandatory on all high-altitude or low-orbital flights. Although baggy on the outside, they were actually quite figure-hugging on the inside, with elasticized cuffs that ran down the wearer's arms and legs. The cuffs squeezed its wearer's limbs to regulate blood flow through the body and to stop blood draining from the head.
This man's suit had a metal ring around its neck, to which could be attached a space-flight helmet, and a plug-in hose socket on its waist, to which one connected a life support unit.
'Ah, you made it,' the Echo pilot said as he approached them, obviously not seeing beyond their 7th Squadron outfits and filthy sand-covered goggles. 'Sorry, but we couldn't wait for you any longer. Cobra made the call. Come on, it's only Coleman and me left. Everyone else is already up in the shutt…'
Smack!
Schofield stood quickly and punched him hard in the face, dropping him with one hit.
'Apology not accepted,' Schofield said. Then he turned to the President. 'Wait here.'
'Okay,' the Chief Executive replied quickly.
The 747 soared into the sky. Inside it, the world was tilted crazily, at an almost 45-degree angle.
Schofield hurried up the stairs that led to the 747's upper deck and cockpit. He held his P-90 poised in front of him, searching for the second pilot, the man named Coleman.
He found him as he was emerging from the cockpit. Another sharp blow later — this time with the butt of his P-90 — and Coleman was also out cold.
Schofield rushed into the empty cockpit, scanned it quickly.
He'd been hoping to seize the controls and bring the plane down…
No dice.
A screen on the cockpit's display revealed that the plane was flying on autopilot, and heading for an altitude of 67,000 feet — the height at which the 747 would release the space shuttle on its back.
At the bottom of the screen, however, were the words:
AUTOPILOT ENGAGED.
TO DISABLE AUTOPILOT OR ALTER SET COURSE
ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE.
Authorization code? Schofield thought.
Shit.
