It hurt.
With an outrageous snap, the ropes of the two Maghooks went taut and Schofield bounced up into the air, yanked upward like a skydiver opening his parachute — while below him, Kurt Logan and the wooden crate just kept on falling, and slammed into the aircraft platform below them.
The wooden crate just exploded, its walls shattering into splinters as it hit the platform.
Logan met a similar fate.
He landed hard — screaming — on the jagged remains of the AWACS plane that still littered the elevator platform. His head was separated from his shoulders as his throat hit an upwardly pointed piece of wing. The rest of his body just flattened with the phenomenal impact, splatting like a tomato when it hit the platform.
As for Schofield, after he was snapped upwards by the ropes of the two Maghooks, he swung in toward the side wall of the shaft. He slammed into it heavily, bounced off it, and was left hanging next to the sheer concrete wall a bare eighty feet above the elevator platform, breathing hard, his shoulders and arms aching from the jolt, but alive.
The two maghooks reeled schofield up the shaft quickly.
'Warning. Six minutes to facility self-destruct.'
It was 11:09 when Gant hauled him up over the rim of the great pit.
'I thought you said the Harbour Bridge was impossible,' she said dryly.
'Believe me, that was a very nice way to be proved wrong,' Schofield said.
Gant smiled. 'Yeah, well I only did it because I wanted another…'
She was interrupted by a thunderous line of gunfire cutting through the air all around them, ripping across both their bodies.
A ragged bullet wound burst open near Gant's right foot — shattering her ankle — while another two appeared on Schofield's left shoulder. More bullets passed so close to his face he felt their air trails swoosh past his nose.
Both Marines dropped, gritting their teeth, as Caesar Russell came charging out of the internal building nearby, his P-90 pressed against his shoulder, firing wildly, his eyes gleaming with madness.
Schofield — hurt for sure, but far more mobile than Gant — pushed Gant behind the remains of Bravo Unit's crate barricade.
Then he grabbed her Beretta and made a loping dash the other way, through the strobing red on-black world, toward the remains of Nighthawk Two over by the personnel elevator, trying to draw Caesar's fire away from Gant.
The massive Marine Corps Super Stallion was still parked in front of the regular elevator's doors — battered and dented, its entire cockpit section blasted wide open.
Caesar's stream of bullets chewed up the ground at his heels, but it was loose fire, and in the flashing red light, Caesar missed wide.
Schofield made it to the Super Stallion, dived into its exploded-open cockpit, just as the chopper's walls erupted with bullet holes.
'Come on, hero!' Caesar yelled. 'What's the matter? Can't shoot back? What're you afraid of? Go on! Find a gun and shoot back!'
That, however, was the one thing Schofield couldn't do. If he killed Caesar, he killed every major city in northern America.
Goddamnit! he thought.
It was the worst possible situation.
He was being fired upon by a man he couldn't fire back at!
'Fox!' he yelled into his wrist mike. 'You okay?'
A stifled grimace over his earpiece. 'Yeah…'
Schofield yelled, 'We have to grab him and get him out of here! Any ideas?'
Gant's reply was drowned out by the complex's electronic voice.
'Warning. Five minutes to facility self-destruct…'
Through a small door-window, Schofield saw Caesar approaching the semi-destroyed helicopter from the side, pummeling its flanks with his fire.
'You like that, hero?' the Air Force general yelled. 'You like that!'
Inside the blasted-open cockpit, everything was shuddering and shaking under the weight of Caesar's fire. Schofield clenched his teeth, gripped his gun. The two bullet holes in his shoulder hurt like hell, but adrenaline was keeping him going.
Through the cracked door-window of the Super Stallion he saw Caesar — crazed and deranged — firing like a yee-ha cowboy at the chopper, striding cockily around it, heading toward its open cockpit.
Caesar would have him in about four seconds…
Then suddenly Gant's voice exploded through his earpiece.
'Scarecrow! Get ready to shoot. There might be another way…'
'But I can't shoot!' Schofield yelled.
'Just give me a second here!'
Over by the elevator shaft, Gant was crouched over the object she had been searching for earlier — the black box that she had pilfered from the AWACS plane down on Level 2 ninety minutes earlier, the black box that she had surreptitiously kicked away from the mini-elevator when she and the President had arrived in the main hangar before.
In the flashing light of the complex, she pulled a small red unit with a black stub antenna from the thigh pocket of her baggy biohazard suit.
It was Russell's initiate/terminate unit — with its two on-off switches marked '1' and '2'.
It was only now that Gant understood why there were two switches on the unit.
This unit not only started and stopped the radio transmitter on the President's heart, it also started and stopped the transmitter on Caesar's heart.
Caesar was almost at the blasted-open cockpit of the chopper, his P-90 raised.
In a few seconds, he would have a clear shot at Schofield.
'I'm coming…!' he cackled.
Schofield lay slumped on the floor inside the Super Stallion, pinned down, looking out through its exposed forward section.
Trapped.
'Fox…' he said into his mike.
'…Whatever you're going to do…please do it soon.'
Gant was sweating, the world around her flashing red. Her ankle throbbed painfully, but she had to concentrate -
'Warning. Four minutes to facility self-destruct…'
She'd brought up the familiar spike pattern on the black box's small LCD screen. Now she turned to the I/T unit.
The only question was which switch on the unit controlled the President's transmitter and which controlled Caesar's — 1 or 2?
Gant had no doubt.
Caesar would make himself Number 1.
Then — in time with the spike screen on the black box, in between its recurring search and return signals — she flicked the switch marked '1' on the initiate/terminate unit, switching off Caesar's microwave signal.
As soon as she did that, she switched on the black box's microwave signal — using it to impersonate Caesar's signal. If she'd done it right, the satellite in orbit above them wouldn't be able to tell that it was a new return signal coming back to it.
A tiny green strobe light on top of the black box started blinking.
Gant keyed her radio mike.
'Scarecrow! I just took care of the radio signal! Nail the bastard!'
As soon as Gant said it, Caesar came into Schofield's view.
The Air Force general smiled at the sight of Schofield, slumped in the cockpit of the destroyed Super Stallion,
