“Akio?! Akio!”
On the platform, the boy’s parents were looking around anxiously, having obviously misplaced their child. They cried out as they saw that the little boy, whose name was obviously Akio, had darted onto the train when they weren’t looking. Drawn by the toy soldier, Akio approached Ford. He pointed a pudgy finger at the miniature Navy man.
“Ban-ban,” he chirped.
Oh, shit, Ford thought, realizing what was happening. He leapt up to return the boy to his parents, but he was too late. The doors slid shut with a whoosh and the train began to pull away from the platform. Through the windows, Ford saw Akio’s parents reacting in consternation. They dashed frantically to the edge of the platform, shouting and throwing out their arms. The father grabbed onto his wife, as though half-afraid that she would rush onto the tracks. She sobbed hysterically.
“Stay there!” he shouted. “I’ll bring him back!”
The platform dropped from view as the train glided away on the elevated track. Exiting the terminal, the train cruised above the tarmac, where parked and taxiing jets could be seen through the train’s windows. A departing plane took off from a runway as Ford inspected a posted map of the monorail system. According to the map, the train would make a complete circuit of the airport before returning to the station they had just left. He hoped that Akio’s parents had heard him and would stay put long enough for him to get the boy back to them. They’d looked Japanese. Did they even speak English? Had they understood what he’d shouted?
Ford looked down at Akio, who had suddenly become his responsibility. He gave the boy a playfully stern expression.
“You’re under arrest, bud.” He glanced again at his watch, while keeping one eye on his new charge. “I better not miss my flight.”
It was going to be close.
* * *
The young petty officer led Serizawa and Graham across the CDC to another work station, where Admiral Stenz awaited them, a grim expression on his weathered features. He wasted no time bringing the two scientists up to speed on the latest development.
“We’ve lost all comms with a Russian Borei in the North Pacific,” he said, referring to a class of nuclear submarine. He turned toward the young analyst manning the console. “Martinez?”
An impressive array of data and video screens faced Martinez, an alert young officer in her early twenties. She was focused on various screens displaying what appeared to be night-vision helicopter feeds of a platoon of U.S. Special Forces soldiers trekking through a dense jungle. A spectral green glow tinted a view of dense bamboo groves and underbrush.
“Aye, sir,” Martinez reported. “Sparta One is picking up a distress signal northwest of Diamond Head.” Disbelief registered on her face as she confirmed the location. “In the midst of Oahu.”
Serizawa inhaled sharply. Oahu was no ghost town or remote mining camp. It was the most populous island in Hawaii.
The MUTO and humanity were on a collision course.
* * *
The Green Berets advanced through the nocturnal jungle, kitted out with hazard gas masks and night-vision goggles. The dense bamboo forest was lush and fragrant, abloom with wild orchids, hibiscus, and plumeria. Hidden waterfalls cascaded in the background, but any wildlife was unusually silent, as though the local fauna had made themselves scarce. They were only miles away from lively beaches and night life of Waikiki, but, from the looks of things, they might as well as have been deep in the Amazon rain forest. The dense underbrush made for hard slogging, but the soldiers maintained a brisk pace. They hacked their way through the jungle with machetes.
The leader of the team, Captain Bill Cozzone, was a combat veteran who had taken part in a wide variety of missions over the years, ranging from counter-terrorism to humanitarian assistance, but this assignment was a new one. Nothing in his extensive training and experience had involved tracking down a “Massive Unknown Terrestrial Organism,” let alone a missing nuclear submarine. He used a Geiger counter to guide them through the jungle. It clicked faster and faster as they zeroed in on their objective. Spotting something ahead, through the green-tinted view of his goggles, he raised his hand to signal a halt.
Whoa, he thought. There’s something you don’t see every day.
The Alexander Nevsky, a fourth-generation nuclear submarine, was standing upright among the trees, as though dropped from above. Nearly six hundred feet tall and more than forty feet across, the sub was encrusted with a hardening resinous secretion that dripped slowly down its side. It nose was buried deeply in the earth, amidst smashed and pulverized greenery. In theory, the submarine housed a crew of 130 officers and men. Cozzone found it hard to imagine that any of them could have survived the drop. They were almost certainly crushed to a pulp inside the towering metal shell.
The twelve-man team spread out around the base of the misplaced sub, gazing up at the surreal sight. Cozzone didn’t like the look of this. Submarines belonged in the ocean depths, not perched upside-down in the Hawaiian jungle, only a short hop from Diamond Head. This was wrong with a capital W.
“Guardian 3, this is Sparta 1,” he reported via radio. “We’ve located the Russian sub. Break—”
Something stirred above the jungle canopy high overhead. Craning his head back, Cozzone spied the MUTO itself, crouched above the upright sub. Despite his earlier briefing, the soldier was taken aback by the sheer size and freakishness of the winged monstrosity, which looked like a cross between a giant bug and a dinosaur. Its shiny black wings were folded in behind it like an ominous dark cloak. A thick orange secretion oozed from the creature’s segmented underside. The photos he’d been shown before had failed to capture how truly monstrous this “organism” was.
Holy mother of—
“Guardian 3, we also have eyes on your bogey.”
The command center aboard the Saratoga immediately responded. “Sparta 1, Guardian 3. Six Actual requests a sit-rep, over.”
To Cozzone’s relief, the MUTO ignored the stunned Green Berets down on the forest floor. Instead it had torn open the hull of the Alexander Nevsky and was gorging on the glowing plutonium core of the nuclear reactor, gobbling down the red-hot fuel rods like a pelican downing a fish. Cozzone was suddenly very thankful that the MUTO supposedly consumed nuclear radiation. Otherwise he and his men would be fried for sure, gas masks or no gas masks.
He tried to convey to Command what he was seeing.
“Guardian 3, tell the Six it’s… uh… well, it appears to be eating the reactor.”
* * *
Of course, Serizawa thought. Just as it fed on the nuclear fuel at Janjira before.
A momentary hush fell over the CDC. Admiral Stenz looked at Serizawa, who nodded grimly in confirmation of the Green Berets’ on-site assessment of the situation. Stenz absorbed this new intel with admirable calm and efficiency. He stepped briskly to the center of the war room and raised his voice to be heard above the general hubbub.
“Cat’s out of the bag, people,” he declared. “New protocol is safety, not secrecy. Get me eyes in the air. Notify Coast Guard District Fourteen and Hawaii Civil Defense. There are a million people on that island.”
Serizawa recalled the devastation at the M.U.T.O. base and in the Philippines years ago. He could only imagine the consequences of the creature invading a major population center. They were looking at a catastrophe in the making.
“General quarters, please, skipper,” the admiral instructed Captain Hampton. “Set condition one.”
The order spurred the entire naval strike group into action. Crews reported to battle stations as the carrier’s various support ships rotated their huge artillery guns toward the shore. Seeking fresh air, Serizawa stepped out onto the busy flight deck in time to observe the commotion. Flight crews scrambled as several F-35 jet fighters screamed off the runway amidst loud blasts of blistering exhaust. The Lightnings were one-seat, supersonic aircraft capable of reaching the island in seconds. Catapults hurled them into the air at a breathtaking
pace.
Covering his ears, Serizawa turned his attention away from the runway to the nearby island. The strike group was positioned off the shore of Oahu in response to the distress signal from the Russian sub. He could see the sparkling lights of Honolulu and Waikiki, as well as the lush green mountains rising up beyond the beaches and resorts. The landmark volcanic cone of Diamond Head dominated the southeastern tip of the island, overlooking the most popular tourist spots. Only a few miles of ocean separated the fleet from the island. Serizawa gazed out over the moonlit waves and the white caps churned up by the coursing battleships. The slumbering Pacific struck him as deceptively placid, hiding an entire undersea ecology with its own unplumbed secrets, such as…
His eyes widened as he spied a large, dark object slicing through the ocean toward the islands. At first he thought that maybe his eyes were deceiving him, that it was just an illusion born of darkness and the restless motion of the waves, but the huge shape began to rise from the water, growing higher and higher with each passing moment, like the fin of some enormous beast.
Serizawa swallowed hard. He remembered the colossal skeleton they’d discovered in the Philippines fifteen years ago, as well as the decades-old photos on his desk below, the ones he’d been studying his entire career. The ominous silhouette of that long-unseen leviathan remained burned into his memory, even though they were taken before he was born.
Could it truly be him?
THIRTEEN
Jenny was enjoying her family’s vacation in Hawaii. A blond, six-year-old girl from Seattle, she kept close to her parents as they strolled along the beach at Waikiki, along with dozens of other people. Palm trees swayed above the shore. Tiki torches lit up the night while the mouth-watering aroma of roast pig wafted on a balmy breeze from a nearby luau. Hula dancers in grass skirts put on a show for the tourists. A busy beachfront bar offered drinks, both grown-up and otherwise. The rolling surf lapped at the shore, while the white sand was cool and squishy beneath Jenny’s bare feet. Rows of multi-story hotels, condos, and resorts faced the water, while thickly forested hills rose up further inland, beyond the shops and nightclubs. Laughter and music filled the warm night air. An ocean breeze had a salty flavor. It was past Jenny’s bedtime, but her parents didn’t seem to mind. They were on vacation after all.
The festive scene was suddenly disturbed by a flight of fighter jets zooming overhead, heading inland from somewhere out at sea. Sonic booms shook the night. The jets came in so fast and so low that their passage whipped up the sand on the beach. Startled tourists looked up in surprise. Even the hula dancers stopped swaying and stared up at the jets. Contrails of exhaust streaked the night sky. Bartenders stopped serving drinks.
Wow, Jenny thought. Nobody told me there was going to be an air show!
The jets were just the beginning. Police helicopters arrived next, swooping in from downtown. SWAT team members, equipped with rifles and body armor, belayed down on ropes from the hovering choppers to the hotel rooftops, staking out sniper positions. They aimed their weapons at the wooded slopes of the Koolau Mountains, almost as though they expected something bad to attack from the hills at any moment. The helicopters buzzed above Waikiki.
Jenny was captivated by all the excitement, until her mom grabbed her and hugged her tight. Her parents exchanged worried looks and whispered anxiously to each other, as did the many others vacationers frozen in place upon the beach. People pointed and stared at the unexpected invasion. Jenny heard someone speculate about “terrorists.” Despite her tender years, she felt the mood changing all around her. Grownups were acting confused and scared, which scared her, too.
Suddenly it didn’t feel like a fun vacation anymore.
* * *
The train glided toward the next terminal along the elevated track, which ran approximately thirty feet above the tarmac below. Rows of jetliners were parked wing to wing away from the runways. Ford lifted Akio onto a seat to await their stop. He wondered what would be faster and more efficient: getting off at the next stop and trying to catch another train heading in the opposite direction, or staying on this train until its circuit brought it back to their starting place, where, hopefully, the little boy’s parents were waiting anxiously for his return? Ford could just imagine how frightened they must be right now. He’d once lost sight of Sam at the mall; it had only been for a few minutes, but he still remembered how panicked he’d been at the time, all the terrifying scenarios that had flashed through his head before Sam had turned up over at the food court, perfectly fine. Those had been some of the longest minutes of his life, including his time on the front. He knew exactly what sort of hell Akio’s parents were going through right now. The sooner he got their child back to them, the better.
Akio sat quietly, watching the planes taxi below, until he suddenly sat up and pointed in excitement at a flight of military jet fighters roaring past the airport toward the densely forested hills beyond. Ford held onto him tightly, alarmed by the sight. Those had looked like F-35 Lightnings, probably launched from the Saratoga offshore. He could think of no reason why the supersonic fighters would be zooming inland at full speed.
Unless…
* * *
Streaking through the sky, the Lightnings flew in formation toward the mountain range overlooking Honolulu. The lead pilot, Captain Douglas Lang, readied himself for combat against an entirely new type of threat. As the jets crested a rocky jungle ridge, the MUTO came into view, crouching above the bamboo trees like the world’s biggest praying mantis. Despite being prepped for this mission, Douglas gulped at the sight of the enormous winged monster. It was hard to believe that such a creature actually existed outside of science-fiction movies or comic books. Yet there it was: right in front of them, rippling with some sort of eerie bioluminescence.
It’s still just an animal, he reminded himself, keeping his focus on his mission. And animals can be put down.
The F-35 was armed with both guns and missiles, which ought to be more than enough to take out the dangerous creature. “Niner-niner,” he reported over the radio built into his helmet. He aimed his cross-hairs at the MUTO, but, to his surprise, they bounced and wavered erratically, as though unable to lock onto the target. “What the--?”
The cross-hairs kept sliding off the target. It was like trying to thread a needle with a wobbly piece of thread.
“I’m getting all sorts of guidance errors,” he reported. “Switching to manual.”
He reached to flip the switch, just as the MUTO reared up on its hind legs and began glowing brighter than before. A rippling aurora charged the air around it, only a heartbeat before it slammed its upper limbs down, generating a visible electromagnetic pulse.
No! The captain’s entire cockpit display went black. He fought to maintain control of the plane even though all of its electrical systems had shorted out instantaneously. This can’t be happening. It’s just an animal…
Flaming out, the disabled aircraft spiraled down toward the jungle floor, where the Green Berets scrambled to get out of the way. The crashing fighter jet slammed into the earth with stupendous force. The impact knocked the fleeing soldiers off their feet.
Seconds later, a huge orange fireball billowed up above the trees.
* * *
All at once, the entire airport lost power.
Agitated voices filled the train as the overhead lights sputtered out, leaving the passengers in darkness. The train slowed to a stop upon the track, stalling between stations. Ford kept a tight grip on Akio as the boy pressed his face up against the window, looking out towards the mountain slopes none too far away. The hellish red glow of rising flames could be seen from the airport, lighting up the night. Confused passengers murmured anxiously as they spied the distant inferno. No one else seemed to know what was happening, but Ford had a likely idea. His memory instantly flashed back to the creature from the pit.
I think we found it, he thought.
* * *
Jenny and her family jumped as an
explosion went off in the hills. Thick black smoke rose from the dark jungle, followed by bright red flames. Her father swore under his breath while her mother stifled a frightened sob and scooped the little girl up into her arms. All around them, people were acting scared and confused. Nobody seemed to know what to do or even which way to run. Their hotels were even closer to the hills where the explosions were, so there was nowhere to run except into the ocean.
I don’t like this, Jenny thought, hugging her mom. I want to go home.
Looking away from the menacing flames and smoke up in the hills, she stared out at the sand and surf instead. Her eyes bulged as she spotted something peculiar. The tide appeared to be retreating rapidly from the shore, ebbing back into the bay, as though it, too, was afraid of all the scary noise and commotion on the island. Her brow wrinkled in confusion.
Was it supposed to do that?
She tugged on her dad’s arm, calling his attention to the fleeing waters. His sunburnt face went pale at the sight. Her mom turned around and gasped out loud. She thrust Jenny into her daddy’s arms and they took off running inland, away from the shore, as fast as they could. Her mom shouted at the other grownups and children on the beach. Jenny had never heard her so scared, not even that time Jenny had accidently stepped out in front of traffic.
“Run!” her mother yelled. “RUN!”
* * *
Aboard the Saratoga, Serizawa commandeered a pair of binoculars from a passing seaman. His heart racing, he placed the long-distance lenses to his eyes and searched the moonlit sea for the enigmatic shape he had spied before. He quickly relocated the mysterious object, only to discover that the jagged protrusion had been joined by two smaller points on either side. Recognition dawned in his eyes as he grasped what he was seeing: a row of gigantic dorsal fins.
Racing straight toward the fleet.
Warning sirens sounded as observers aboard the various ships spotted the oncoming threat and braced for impact. Serizawa suspected that few aboard the vessels, except perhaps Graham and a handful of others, knew exactly who or what was surging their way, but it was obvious that something very large and solid was on a collision course with the Saratoga and the other ships. Serizawa grabbed onto a safety rail, not that he expected it would do much good, not if this was indeed what he surmised.