Area 7 by Reilly Matthew

Author:Reilly, Matthew [Reilly, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thrillers, General Fiction, General, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9781429908177
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2003-02-17T08:00:00+00:00

FOURTH CONFRONTATION

3 July, 0912 Hours

The heat hit them like a blast furnace.

Blistering desert heat.

It was everywhere. In the air. In the rock. Against your skin. Enveloping you, surrounding you, as if you were standing in an oven. The complete opposite of the subterranean cool of Area 7 and the X-Rail tunnel.

Out here, the blazing desert sun ruled.

Shane Schofield sped down a narrow water-filled canyon at breakneck speed, blasting through the heat, sitting at the controls of a very odd-looking - but very fast - speedboat.

With him in the boat was Book II, while behind them, in a similar craft of their own, were Brainiac and Herbie.

Technically, Schofield's boat was called a PCR-2 - patrol-craft, river, two-man - but it was more commonly known as a "bipod," a small two-man jet-propelled rivercraft built by the Lockheed Shipbuilding Company for the U.S. Navy. The bipod was known for its unique design configuration. Basically, it looked as if someone had joined two small bullet-shaped jet boats with a thin seven-foot crossbeam, in effect creating a catamaran-type vehicle with two pods at either end of the beam. Since both open-topped pods were possessed of powerful twohundred-horsepower Yamaha pump-jet engines, it made for an extremely fast - and extremely stable - boat frame.

Schofield's bipod was painted in desert camouflage colors - brown blobs on a sandy yellow background - and it shot over the water at incredible speed, kicking up twin ten foot sprays of water behind it. Schofield sat in the left-hand pod, driving, while Book II sat in the right-hand one, manning the boat's sinister bow-mounted 7.62 mm machine gun.

The sun shone - burning hot.

It was already 100 degrees in the shade.

"How you guys doing over there?" Schofield said into his wrist mike as he looked back at the other bipod behind him - Brainiac was driving, Herbie sat in the gunner's pod.

Brainiac's voice: "I'm okay, but I think our scientist friend here is turning green."

They were speeding down a twenty-foot-wide slot canyon that wended its way southward, toward the main body of Lake Powell.

The pool of water at the far end of the loading bay had indeed led out to the lake, a tight, dark, winding cave whose exterior door - a brilliantly camouflaged plate-steel gate designed to look like a wall of rock - had been left open by the escaping thieves.

Schofield and his men had emerged from the cave at the end of a dead-end canyon and powered off not a moment before the entire wall of rock behind them had been blasted outward by the monstrous AFX explosion.

The two bipods sped around a wide bend in the water filled canyon.

When viewed from above, this canyon resembled a race-car track, a never-ending series of twists, turns and full 180-degree bends.

That wasn't so bad.

The trouble started when it met up with all the other narrow canyons of Lake Powell - then the canyon system resembled a giant high-walled maze of interconnecting natural canals.

They came to an intersection of three canyons, arriving at it from the northeast.

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