please!'
'Warning. Nine minutes to facility self-destruct…'
Up on the wooden crate, Logan kneeled astride Schofield, hit him hard in the face.
'You've made today a lot harder than it had to be, Captain.'
His face gleamed with anger in the strobelike red light.
Another punch.
Hard. Schofield's head slammed back against the crate, his nose gushing with blood.
Logan then grabbed the control unit above his head and hit a button.
With a jolt and a sway and the clanking of mechanical gears, the crate began to move out across the hangar, toward the open aircraft elevator shaft. It was petrol powered, so it hadn't been affected by the complex's power loss.
As the crate began to glide out over the hangar, Logan kept pounding Schofield, talking as he did so.
'You know, I remember…'
Punch.
'…taking out you Marine pussies at the annual war games…'
Punch.
'…Too fucking easy. You're a disgrace…'
Punch.
'…to the country, to the flag, and to your fucking bitch whore mothers.'
Punch.
Schofield could barely keep his eyes open.
Christ, he was getting his ass kicked…
And then the crate swung out over the four-hundredfoot-deep aircraft elevator shaft and Logan pressed a button on the control unit, stopping it.
The big crate swung to a halt directly above the wide, yawning shaft.
'Warning. Eight minutes to facility self-destruct…'
Schofield peered over the edge of the crate, saw the shaft's concrete walls, now lined with revolving red lights, plummeting like four matching vertical cliffs down into bottomless black.
'Good-bye, Captain Schofield,' Logan said, as he lifted Schofield by his lapels and stood him at the edge of the crate.
Schofield — battered, bloody, bruised and exhausted — couldn't resist. He stood unsteadily at the edge of the crate, the great hole of the elevator shaft yawning wide beneath him.
He thought about the Maghook on his back, but then saw the ceiling. It was made of sheer flat fiberglass. The Maghook wouldn't stick to it with its magnet, nor could it get a purchase on it with its hook.
In any case, he didn't have any energy left to fight.
No more guns.
No more Maghooks.
No more ejection seats.
He had nothing that Logan didn't have more of.
And then, just as Logan was about to push him off the edge of the crate, Schofield saw Gant — a shadow amid the redness — saw her taking cover behind some bodies next to the eastern rim of the elevator shaft.
Except friends…
He turned suddenly to face Logan… and to Logan's complete surprise, he smiled, and raised his open palm, revealing his Secret Service microphone.
Schofield then looked Logan deep in the eye and said, 'Sydney Harbour Bridge, Gant. You take the negative.'
Logan frowned. 'Huh?'
And then before Logan could even think to do anything, with his last ounce of strength, Schofield reached over Logan's shoulder and unlatched the spring-loaded ring mechanism holding the crate to the overhead rail system.
The result was instantaneous.
In a kind of hellish slow motion that was only accentuated by the strobing red lighting, the crate — with both Schofield and Logan on it — just fell away from its ceiling mounted rails, spilling the two combatants off its back… and the three of them — Schofield, Logan and the crate itself — dropped together into the four-hundred-foot abyss of the elevator shaft.
Schofiled fell through the air.
Fast.
At first he saw the red-lit hangar rushing past him, swinging upwards — then suddenly that image was replaced by the rim of the elevator shaft, swooshing by him as he dropped into the shaft itself. Then all he saw were rapidly rushing concrete walls speeding by in a blur of gray and he glanced up and saw the wide square up at the top of the shaft shrinking very, very quickly above him.
He saw Logan falling beside him, a look of absolute terror on his face. It looked as if Logan couldn't believe what Schofield had just done.
He'd just dropped both of them into the shaft, crate and all!
Schofield, however, just prayed that Gant had heard him.
And as he fell through the air, surrounded by red light, he coolly unslung his Maghook, initiated its magnet, selected a positive charge, and looked up in search of his only hope.
Gant had heard his call.
Now she lay on her stomach on the rim of the shaft, aiming her own Maghook — now charged negatively — down into it.
'Scarecrow,' she said into her radio mike, 'you fire first. I'll make the shot.'
As he fell down the elevator shaft, Schofield fired his positively charged Maghook into the air.
It rocketed up the shaft — flying perfectly vertical — its tail rope wobbling through the air behind it.
Kurt Logan, falling alongside Schofield, saw what he was doing and yelled, 'No…!'
'Come on, Fox,' Schofield whispered. 'Don't let me die.'
Libby Gant's eyes narrowed as she gazed down the barrel of her Maghook.
Despite all the distractions around her — the flashing red lights, the klaxons, the droning electronic warning voice — she drew a bead on Schofield's flying Maghook: an arcing dot of glinting metal shooting up out of the blackness of the shaft, coming toward her.
'Nothing's impossible,' she whispered to herself.
Then, cool as ice, she pulled the trigger on her own Maghook.
Whump!
The bulbous magnetic head of her Maghook shot out of its launcher, rushed down into the shaft, trailing its own length of rope.
Schofield's maghook shot up the shaft.
Gant's Maghook shot down the shaft.
Schofield fell, with Logan and the crate beside him.
Gant rode her Maghook all the way down. 'Come on, baby. Come on…' Since they were oppositely charged, they'd only have to pass by close to each other to — Clang!
The two Maghooks hit — in midair — like twin missiles slamming into each other in the sky!
The Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Their powerful magnetic charges held them firmly together, and up in the hangar, Gant quickly hooked her launcher into a grate in the floor.
Two maghooks equals three hundred feet of rope.
And a three-hundred-foot fall means one hell of a jolt.
When he saw Gant's flying magnetic hook connect with his own, Schofield — still falling fast — slung his launcher under his shoulders and around his chest. Then he tensed his arms around the rope, bracing himself for the impending jolt.
This was going to hurt.
