Kurtz looks at Pepper, who rolls his eyes. ‘Rookies.’

A lieutenant exits from the station, stun gun held high. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘He’s packing a high-energy taser, sir.’

The lieutenant recognizes the limo and its passengers.

‘Watkins, did you bother to check his clearance?’ The guard looks down at his computer pad. ‘Fubishit, he’s MAJESTIC-12.’

‘Which means I can march into the goddam White House with any weapon short of a neutron bomb,’ Kurtz says. ‘Now get that toy out of my face before I vaporize you.’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

The other guard approaches Sam with the portable DNA scanner. ‘Place your palm against the scanner, please.’

‘Wrong.’ Beck steps in between them. ‘The kid’s exempt from DNA protocol.’

‘Sorry, big fella,’ the lieutenant says. ‘Nobody’s exempt from DNA protocol, not even President Zwawa.’

‘Check your orders again, Lieutenant.’ The imposing African-American moves closer, eyeballing the overmatched officer.

‘There’s nothing in my orders about a DNA exemption.’ The lieutenant nervously fingers his stun gun, not sure what setting short of DEATH could stop the bear-sized man.

Dominique sees the expression on Kurtz’s face and knows he is seconds away from activating his taser. ‘Salt, wait! Lieutenant, contact Dr. David Mohr in Hangar 13. He’ll verify everything.’

The lieutenant hesitates, then touches the comm link on his forearm. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Dr. Mohr, but I have four guests at the gate, a Yolanda Rodriguez, two bodyguards, and a male adolescent who refuses to submit to a DNA scan.’

Mohr’s face appears on the tiny screen. ‘Let them through, Lieutenant.’

‘But sir—’

‘Immediately, Lieutenant. Mohr out.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Hangar 13, referred to by NASA personnel as ‘the fortress,’ is a twenty-two-storey steel-and-concrete structure situated on the southernmost tip of Cape Canaveral. As wide and as long as three football fields, the building contains two monstrous bay doors, each 297 feet high. Within the complex (the third largest structure in the world), are thirty-one cranes, two 227-metric-ton bridge cranes, and twenty-three of the latest hover-lifts. Cooled by nineteen thousand metric tons of air-conditioning, the facility has its own power plant, cafeteria, and security force. The exterior is surrounded by a series of electromagnetic and electrostatic dampeners, making it the largest Faraday chamber in the world. The site is also protected by an electrically charged forty-foot-high perimeter fence, with gun towers positioned along each corner, two more by the adjacent beach, one more along the shoreline of the Banana River.

No one gets in or out of Hangar 13 unless authorized.

The limo follows a two-lane bridge to the island complex, then turns left into a parking lot. Three more armed guards appear, escorting Dominique’s entourage from the limousine into the windowless front entrance. Salt and Pepper head off to the eatery while Sam and his mother are led down a plush magenta-carpeted hallway, past another checkpoint, then to a large alcove, dead-ending at an immense titanium vault door.