At the very rear of the President's office, behind a small pressure-sealed door, was one final feature of Marine One which was reserved for use in only the most dire of circumstances - a small one-man ejection unit, the Presidential escape pod.
Schofield waved his spectrum analyzer over the seats in the first-class section, searching for bugs.
Seated there were Frank Cutler and five of his Secret Service people. They peered out the windows, ignoring Schofield as he did his sweep around them.
Also there were a couple of the President's advisers - his Deputy Chief of Staff, his Communications Director - both of whom flicked through thick manila folders.
Standing above them, manning the two exit doors at either end of the main cabin, were a pair of straight-backed United States Marines.
There was one more person seated in the main cabin.
A stocky no-necked man dressed in an olive U.S. Army uniform, sitting quietly at the back of the cabin, in the first class seat closest to the President's office.
To look at him, with his carrot-red hair and bushy orange mustache, he didn't seem like anyone special, and truth be told, he wasn't anyone special.
He was an Army warrant officer named Carl Webster, and he followed the President wherever he went - not because of any special expertise or knowledge he possessed, but because of the extremely important object handcuffed to his right wrist: a stainless-steel briefcase that contained the codes and the activation switches to America's nuclear arsenal, a briefcase known as "the Football."
Schofield finished his sweep, including a short "excuse me" check of the President's office.
Nothing.
There was not a single bug to be found on the helicopter.
He returned to the cockpit, just in time to hear Gunman Grier say into his mike: "Copy that, Nighthawk Three, thank you. Continue on to the vent."
Grier turned to his copilot. "Air Force One's back on deck. It was just a valve leak. It'll stay at Area 8. We'll bring the Boss back after our little visit to Area 7. Scarecrow?"
"Nothing," Schofield said. "The helicopter's clean."
Grier shrugged. "Must have been the radiosphere. Thanks, Scarecrow."
Suddenly Grier touched his helmet as another message came through. He sighed wearily as the voice at the other end nattered into his ear.
"We'll do our best, Colonel," he said, "but I make no promises." Grier switched off his mike and shook his head. "Fucking Ramrod."
He turned to Schofield and Dallas. "Ladies and gentlemen, our esteemed White House Liaison Officer has asked us to pick up the pace a little. Apparently, the Boss has an afternoon tea with the Washington Ladies' Auxiliary to get to, and Liaison Officer Hagerty thinks we're not going fast enough to meet his schedule."
Dallas snuffed a laugh. "Good ol' Ramrod."
When it came to the use of Marine One, all White House-Marine Corps correspondence went through a Marine colonel called the White House Liaison Officer, a position which for the last three years had been held by Colonel Rodney Hagerty, USMC.
Unfortunately, Hagerty, forty-one years old, tall and lanky, with a pencil-thin mustache and a far too proper manner, was regarded by many in HMX-1 as the worst kind of soldier - a ladder climber, but also a ruthless expert in office politics, someone more interested in getting stars on his shoulders than actually being a United States Marine. But as so often happens, the upper echelons of the Corps didn't see this and kept promoting him nonetheless.
Even Schofield disliked him. Hagerty was a bureaucrat - a bureaucrat who had obviously come to enjoy his proximity to power. Although his official call-sign was "Hot Rod," his rigid adherence to procedure and protocol, even when it was patently impractical, had earned him an alternate call-sign among the troops: "Ramrod."
* * *
At that very same moment, the lone Super Stallion chopper that was Nighthawk Three was landing in a cloud of dust on the sandy desert plain. About half a mile to the west stood the low rocky mountain that housed Area 7.
As the big chopper's tires hit the ground, four Marines dressed in full combat attire leaped out from it and ran over to a small trench carved into the rock-hard desert floor.
The trench housed Area 7's EEV - Emergency Escape Vent - the well-concealed exit point of a long underground tunnel that provided emergency egress from Area 7. Today it was the primary escape route from the complex, in the unlikely event that the President encountered any trouble there.
The lead Marine, a lieutenant named Corbin "Colt" Hendricks, approached the dusty earthen hole, accompanied by his three subordinates, MP-5/10 - sometimes called the MP-10, they were 10 mm versions of the Heckler & Koch MP-5 - in hand.
A steady beep-pause-beep warbled in Hendricks's earpiece: Advance Team 2's All-Clear beacon. The A-C beacon couldn't transmit voice messages, but its powerful digital signal still provided a worthwhile service: if Advance Team 2 encountered any kind of ambush or disturbance, its lead agent simply flicked off the All-Clear beacon and everyone else in the presidential entourage would know that danger was afoot. Its presence now was reassuring.
Hendricks and his squad came to the edge of the trench and looked down into it.
"Oh shit..." Hendricks breathed.
* * *
The other two presidential helicopters raced toward Restricted Area 7.
"Hey, Scarecrow?" Gunman Grier turned in his seat to face Schofield. "Where's your harem?"
Through his reflective silver sunglasses, Schofield offered a crooked smile to the Presidential helicopter pilot.
"They're over on Nighthawk Two today, sir," he said.
Grier was referring to the two female members of Schofield's former unit who had joined him on his tour on board Marine Helicopter Squadron-1 - Staff Sergeant Elizabeth "Fox" Gant and Gunnery Sergeant Gena "Mother" Newman.
As a former commander of a Marine Force Reconnaissance Unit, Schofield was something of a rarity on board Marine One.
Owing to the largely ceremonial duties associated with working on the President's helicopter and to the fact that time spent on board the helicopter is not counted as "active deployed airtime," many Marines choose to avoid HMX-1 duty. Indeed, with few exceptions, most of the troops assigned to HMX-1 are relatively junior soldiers who won't miss any promotional opportunities.
So to have a former Recon commander on board was highly unusual, but something which Gunman Grier welcomed.
He liked Schofield. He'd heard on the grapevine that he was a gifted field commander - a man who looked out for his men, and as a result, got the very best out of them.
Grier had also heard about what had happened to Schofield on his last mission and he respected the young captain for it.
He also liked both Mother and Gant - admired their attitudes to their work and their fierce loyalty to their former commander - and his labeling of them as Schofield's "harem" was a sign of affection from a man who rarely showed it.
Schofield, however, was used to being considered unusual.
Indeed, that was why he was stationed aboard Marine One.
About eighteen months previously, as a lieutenant, he'd been in command of a Marine Reconnaissance Unit that had been sent to a remote ice station in Antarctica, to investigate the discovery of a possible alien spacecraft.
In a word, the mission had gone to hell on an express elevator.
Including himself, only four of his twelve Marines had survived the nightmare, during which they had been forced to defend the station against two foreign military forces and infiltrators from within their own unit. To top it off, Schofield himself had been declared dead by some corrupt members of the Marine Corps hierarchy, men who had been prepared to make that lie a reality.
His eventual return to America - alive and well – had sparked a media frenzy.
His face appeared on every major newspaper in the nation. Wherever he went, even after the initial frenzy, tabloid journalists and photographers tried to snap his picture or coax information out of him. Afte
r all, he was a walking talking monument to the corruption of the United States military - the good soldier who had been targeted for extermination by the faceless generals of his own military leadership.
Which left the Marine Corps with a serious problem: where to put him?
In the end, the answer had been rather inventive.
The safest place to hide Schofield was right in front of the world's media, but in the one place where they wouldn't be able to touch him.
He would be assigned to Marine One.
The chopper was based at the Marine Corps Air Facility at Quantico, Virginia, so Schofield could live on the base, making access to him all but impossible. And he would work on board the President's VH-60N, which was only really ever seen landing at the White House, and even then, always at a safe distance from the press.
When the transfer was made, Mother and Gant had elected to go with Schofield. The fourth survivor of their Antarctic disaster, a private named Rebound Simmons, had decided to leave the Marine Corps after their ill-fated mission.
That had been a year ago.
In that time, Schofield - quiet at the best of times and not given to small talk - had made only a handful of friends in the White House: mainly people among the Secret Service and the domestic staff; the ordinary people. With his reflective silver antiflash glasses, however, he was popular with the President's playful grandkids. As such, to their delight, he was nearly always assigned to guard them whenever they visited. And yet, despite this, he had never actually spoken conversationally with the President.
Area 7 loomed large in front of Marine One. Schofield could see the massive doors of the complex's enormous hangar slowly opening, revealing bright electric lighting inside.
Grier spoke into his helmet mike: "Nighthawk Two, this is Nighthawk One, beginning descent now."
* * *
In the belly of Nighthawk Two, Sergeant Elizabeth "Fox" Gant sat hunched in a canvas jumpseat, trying vainly to read from a folder perched on her knees.
Unlike Marine One, the rotor noise inside Nighthawk Two was absolutely deafening. And since it never carried the President, its interior decor was about a thousand times more utilitarian. No upholstered seats or embroidered armrests here.
Now a staff sergeant, Libby Gant was twenty-eight years old, well, as of six hours ago.
Compact and fit, she had short blonde hair and sky-blue eyes, and in regular battle dress - fatigues, body armor and MP-10 - she cut a smart figure. In full dress uniform - peaked hat, dress coat and trousers - she looked spectacular.
Since they were flying in restricted Air Force airspace, the mood on board Nighthawk Two was relaxed. The usual tensions of coordinating Marine One's flight path with those of civilian air traffic weren't an issue, so Gant – studying part-time for entry into Officer Candidate School - took the opportunity to brush up on some of her notes.
She was just getting to Course 9405, Advanced Tactical Command, when a soft voice invaded her consciousness.
"Happy birthday to you...
Happy birthday to you...
Happy birthday, dear Staff Sergeant Ga-ant...
Happy birthday to you."
She looked up from her work and sighed.
Sliding into the empty seat beside her was Nicholas Tate III, the President's Domestic Policy Adviser. Tate was handsome in a European sort of way - with dark eyebrows, olive skin and a male model's jawline - and confident in the extreme. Today he wore a three-thousand-dollar Armani suit and matching Armani cologne. Apparently it was the latest thing.
Tate held out a small neatly wrapped package for Gant to take.
"Twenty-eight, if I'm not mistaken," he said.
"That's right, sir," Gant said.
"Please, call me Nick." He nodded at the gift. "Well, go on. Open it."
Reluctantly, Gant unwrapped the small package, unveiling an aqua-green box. She popped the lid, revealing an absolutely gorgeous silver necklace.
Small and thin, it looked like a length of the finest silver thread, its polished surface sparkling.
A small but stylish diamond dangled like a teardrop from the front of the necklace.
"It's from Tiffany's," Tate said.
Gant looked up at him. "I'm not allowed to wear jewelery in uniform, Mr. Tate."
"I know. I was hoping you could wear it when I took you to dinner at Nino's next Saturday."
Nino's was a restaurant in Georgetown, popular among Washington socialites and arguably the most expensive eatery in town.
Gant sighed. "I'm seeing someone."
It was kind of true. Only last weekend, after a tentative start, she and Shane Schofield had gone out on something resembling a date.
"Now, now, now," Tate said, "I heard about that. One date does not a relationship make."
This was getting difficult. Gant held the necklace up to the light of the window. "You know, this looks a lot like a necklace I saw in Paris once."
"Oh, really?"
At Gant's mention of the word "Paris," however, one of the other Marines sitting nearby cocked her head to the side. Tate never saw it.
"Yes," Gant said. "We were there a couple of months ago with the Boss, and I had a day off, so I…"
"Jesus H. Christ, would you take a look at that!" a lusty woman's voice cut Gant off.
"Hey there, Mother," Gant said, as Gunnery Sergeant Gena "Mother" Newman appeared in the narrow aisle next to her.
"How you doin' there, Birthday Babe?" Mother said with a knowing smile.
The "Paris" code was one they had used several times before. When either of them encountered an unwanted male admirer, she would slip the word "Paris" into the conversation and the other, hearing the signal, would come to the rescue. It was a common trick used by girlfriends worldwide.
Granted, at six feet four inches and an even 200 pounds, Mother rarely had to use it. With her dark, heavyset features, fully shaved head and gruff no-nonsense manner, she was almost the perfect antithesis of Libby Gant. Her call-sign, "Mother," said it all, really. It wasn't indicative of any extraordinary maternal qualities. It was short for motherfucker. A gifted warrior, adept at all kinds of heavy weaponry and guncraft, she'd been promoted to the highly respected rank of gunnery sergeant a year ago.
In addition to this - thanks to a close encounter with a killer whale during the disastrous mission to Antarctica - Mother had one other, highly unusual physical feature.
A prosthetic lower left leg.
The nasty incident with the killer whale had deprived her of everything below the left knee.
That said, she'd done better than the killer had. It had received a bullet to its brain.
What Mother now had in place of her natural left foot and shin was a state-of-the-art prosthetic limb which, so its makers claimed, guaranteed total and undiminished body movement. Featuring titanium-alloy "bones," fully rotating joints and hydraulic muscle simulators, its operation was so sophisticated - involving nerve impulse reception and automatic weight-shifting - that it required an internal prologic computer chip to control it.
Mother was gazing at the glistening Tiffany's necklace.
"Whoa, that is one mighty fine piece of jewelry," she gawped. She turned to Nick Tate: "That piece of string must have cost you a pretty penny, sonny Jim."
"It was within my price range," Tate said coolly. "Probably cost more than I make in a year"
"Probably did."
Mother ignored him, turned to Gant. "Sorry to rain on your parade, Birthday Babe, but the skipper sent me back to get you. He wants you up front for the landing."
"Oh, okay." Gant stood, and as she did, she handed Tate back his necklace. "I'm sorry, Nicholas, but I can't accept this. I'm seeing someone else."
And with that she headed up front.
* * *
Over at the emergency escape vent, Colt Hendricks just stood with his mouth agape, staring down into the trench.
The sight before him was nothing short of horrific.
All nine m
embers of the Secret Service's secondary advance team lay on the sand-covered floor of the trench, their bodies twisted at all angles, riddled with bullet holes. The size of the wounds indicated hollow-point ammunition had been used - bullets that expanded once they entered the wound, guaranteeing a kill. A few of the agents had been shot in the face - their heads had been all but blown off. Blood was everywhere, drying in the sand.
Hendricks saw the agent-in-charge of the Secret Service team, a man named Baker - mouth open, eyes wide, bullet hole in the forehead. In Agent Baker's outstretched hand was the Advance Team's All-Clear beacon switch. The attack must have happened so quickly that he hadn't even had time to flick the switch.
Beyond Baker, Hendricks saw a solid-looking steel door set into the dirt wall of the trench - the escape vent itself. It just stood there, resolutely closed.
Hendricks spun on his heel, yanked out his radio, headed back toward Nighthawk Three.
"Nighthawk One!"
Radio static.
"Goddamn it! Nighthawk One! This is…"
It was as if the desert just came alive.
The dusty desert floor parted - sand falling off canvas ambush covers - and suddenly, from both sides of Hendricks, about a dozen man-sized shapes rose from the sand, submachine guns raised and firing.
A second later, a 9-millimeter Silvertip bullet entered Hendricks's brain from the side. The subsequent gaseous expansion of the hollow-pointed projectile caused his head to explode.
Hendricks never saw the man who killed him.
Never saw the dark team of desert wraiths take down the rest of his men with clinical, ruthless efficiency.
And he never saw them take his helicopter and fly it back toward Area 7.
* * *
The two remaining presidential helicopters descended together, landing in a whirlwind of sand in front of the massive main hangar of United States Air Force Special Area (Restricted) No. 7.
The giant hangar's enormous twin doors yawned wide, its interior brightly illuminated. The low mountain into which the hangar had been carved loomed over the squat four-building complex.
No sooner had the two choppers touched the ground than the Secret Service people from Nighthawk Two were dashing to their positions around Marine One.
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