Just as she reached the bottom of the steps, a fierce roar trumpeted across the city. The riveting growl was even louder and more intimidating than the strident howls of the MUTOs. Despite her desperate quest for shelter, Elle turned toward the source of the bellowing roar, as did all the Guards and awestruck citizens around her. Eyes bulged and jaws dropped as Elle and the others stared up the stairs at the riveting sight above. Oh my God, Elle thought.
Godzilla rose from the bay and stepped onto the land. His thunderous tread shook the earth as he stomped through industrial shipyards and piers. Office buildings and warehouses were reduced to splinters beneath him. A cable car was crushed beneath a great, clawed foot. His tail whipped behind him, toppling entire buildings. Smoke and flames and billowing clouds of dust and pulverized concrete obscured some details of his appearance, but his overwhelming size and power rendered Elle speechless and made her feel like a minuscule insect by comparison. Godzilla’s pitiless eyes fixed on the MUTOs, his ancestral foes. A furious roar shattered windows across the city and left Elle’s ears ringing. Everyone around stared up at the raging behemoth in awe and terror.
A giant now strode the earth, terrible in his wrath.
Elle had only a moment to absorb this humbling realization before the Guards pulled her all the way into the station and slammed the corrugated steel doors shut behind her. Impenetrable blackness replaced her view of Godzilla, but his footsteps still shook the station. Petrified people clung to each other in the dark, but Elle was alone with her fears.
She could only pray that, somewhere, the rest of her family was safe.
* * *
General alarm sirens wailed from loudspeakers at the refugee camp in the hills. Holding Sam’s hand, Ford frowned as groups of soldiers rushed past them. An announcement issued from the speakers:
“All U.S. Military and Emergency Response personnel, report immediately for duty—”
Ford didn’t like the sound of that. Stepping away from Laura Watkins and the other children from the school bus, he called out to the troops.
“Hey! What’s happening?!”
“All hands on deck!” an Army soldier shouted back at him. “Those things dragged the nuke downtown! It goes off, so does the city!”
“They need a crew down on the ground to disarm it!” another soldier said.
Ford couldn’t believe his ears. He remembered the warhead the helicopters had rescued from the wreckage in the mountains. The plan had been to lure all three monsters out to sea, then detonate the warhead. How the hell had it ended up downtown—where Elle was?
Sam picked up on the heightened anxiety in the air. “Daddy?”
Damn it. Ford hated what he was about to say, but there was no other choice. “Sam, buddy, you need to wait here with these nice people.”
Understanding, Laura came forward to take the little boy’s hand. “It’s okay, Sam—”
“NO!” Sam yelped. Fear contorted his childish features. “DADDY, WAIT!” He broke away from the nurse and rushed frantically toward his father. “I want to stay with you!”
His son’s plea hit Ford right in the gut. He couldn’t remember Sam ever saying that before, which only made what he had to do that much harder. His throat tightened and his eyes misted over as he knelt down to face the tearful child, while keeping one eye on the departing troops. Ford didn’t have long, but he owed his son more than just another abrupt disappearance. There had been too many of those already.
“Alright, squid, listen I—” He realized that this was no time to be glib. He dug deeper, speaking from his heart. “I’m going back to find your mom. That’s why I need you to stay here, where it’s safe. Can you do that for me?”
Sam absorbed his father’s words. It took him a moment, but he wiped his eyes and nodded. He was only four, but he seemed to understand. They both knew how important Elle was. Ford felt incredibly proud of his little boy—and grateful for his courage.
“Daddy loves you so much. You and Mommy are all I’ve got in this world. I love you more than anything. So I need you to be a brave boy, okay?” Ford’s voice cracked as he thought of his own father, who had sacrificed everything to save him so many years ago. Joe Brody had lost the love of his life and the mother of his child. Ford wasn’t about to let history repeat itself. “No matter what happens, just know—” He choked up, tears leaking from his eyes. “I’m gonna do everything I can.”
Sam responded by throwing his arms around his dad and hugging him tightly. Caught by surprise, and moved more than he would have ever thought possible, Ford squeezed the little boy back for as long as he could spare, which, sadly, wasn’t very long at all. More soldiers ran past them, answering the general alarm, and Ford reluctantly let go of his son. Ford started to stand up, then remembered something. He fished a small item from his pocket and placed it in Sam’s hand. The boy’s eyes widened as he saw what it was.
A toy Navy man, as promised.
He looked up at his dad and their eyes met, truly seeing each other for perhaps the first time. And possibly the last. Wiping his eyes, Ford climbed to his feet and sprinted off after the other troops, while Laura Watkins came forward to comfort Sam. Ford felt confident the boy was in good hands.
Now he just had to save Elle, too.
TWENTY-FOUR
Chinatown was ground zero. Concentric circles spread out on the paper map from the current known location of the stolen ICBM. Stenz grimly contemplated the chart as his analysts pored over what data they could access with the power down. He listened as they formulated a desperate, last-ditch attempt to get troops in place to disarm the warhead before it took out the whole city.
“Thirty thousand feet should be right above the sphere of influence,” an analyst estimated.
A more skeptical analyst shook his head. “Even if they survive the jump, we’re talking a Hail Mary.”
Stenz understood the odds against them, but didn’t see any other choice. They could hardly stand by and watch the clock tick down to a thermonuclear explosion in the center of San Francisco. A hundred thousand lives were at risk. If there was even a chance of disarming the warhead, they had to take it, or there wouldn’t be a city left to defend.
Racing footsteps rushed past the trailer. Through the windows at the rear of the command center, Stenz saw dozens of soldiers reporting for duty. He took a deep breath and went out to address them. They needed to know what was at stake and how much was expected of them.
He didn’t envy them the daunting task ahead.
* * *
Captain Hampton presented the plan to Admiral Stenz and the troops inside the command center, which was now crammed with fresh volunteers like Ford. Video feeds from the city showed nothing but static. Computers tried and failed to reboot. Paper charts and satellite photos were mounted behind Hampton, while the admiral stood off to one side. Milling among the other soldiers, Ford spotted Doctors Serizawa and Graham with the brass. He listened attentively.
“The male delivered the warhead here, at the center of downtown,” Hampton said, pointing to a table map of the city. An “X” marked the last known location of the nuclear weapon. “Putting more than a hundred thousand citizens in the blast radius. We can’t stop it remotely.”
Low mutters and whispered remarks rippled among the gathered soldiers. Ford wondered how many of the troops had friends or family in San Francisco. Everyone seemed appropriately disturbed by the prospect of the warhead going off in the city, on top of the unprecedented threat posed by Godzilla and the MUTOs. On top of the nuclear blast, the city also faced the danger of lingering radiation as well. He was gratified that none of his comrades-in-arms even suggested sacrificing the city to get rid of the monsters.
An Army Captain, who identified himself as Quinn, took over the presentation.
“An analog initiator has been installed. And the MUTOs are frying electronics within a five-mile bubble. Approaching overhead is not an option.” He placed a transparent plastic dome over the “X” on the map
to represent the MUTOs sphere of influence. “That’s why we’ll be conducting a HALO jump insertion. Jump altitude is thirty thousand feet. Skate just over the top and drop here and here.” He indicated two spots atop the plastic dome. “And if you don’t eat a skyscraper, we’ll rally here and find the bomb.”
A bomb technician raised his hand. “Doctor Serizawa, any guesses where to look?”
“Underground,” the scientist said. “If the MUTOs have spawned, they’ll be building a nest.”
“In which case,” Graham added, “the bomb going off would only be the beginning. Its fallout would catalyze their eggs. We’d have hundreds of them, annihilating everything.”
A hush fell over the command center as that nightmarish possibility sank in. Ford tried to imagine hundreds of creatures like the ones he’d encountered before. He couldn’t imagine how civilization—or even humanity—could even survive an onslaught of that magnitude. Sam’s future would be utterly wiped out, along with that of every other human being on the planet.
Stenz addressed Quinn. “Captain, once you find the warhead, how long to defuse it?”
“Without having seen the analog mod, sir, I couldn’t say, but—”
“Sixty seconds,” Ford interrupted. “If I can access it.”
All eyes turned toward Ford. Captain Hampton nodded, acknowledging him. “Lieutenant Brody was the only EOD to survive the train attack.”
“I retrofitted that device myself,” Ford said.
Quinn deferred to Ford’s expertise. “Then we’ll say sixty seconds, sir, if he can access it. If for whatever reason we can’t defuse the device, we go to Plan B.” He indicated a pier on the map. “The waterfront should be no more than one click downhill. We get it to the pier, onto a boat, and as far away from the city as possible before it detonates.”
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, Ford thought.
“Lieutenant,” Hampton said to Ford. “To be clear, we have no extraction plan. If you don’t walk out, you don’t come back at all.”
Ford nodded, as did the other men around him.
“My wife is in the city, sir. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
That’s what Dad asked me to do, Ford recalled, with his dying breath. I’m not going to let him down… or the rest of my family.
Serizawa smiled in approval. Ford liked to think Joe Brody would have done the same.
* * *
Admiral Stenz watched the men file out, on their way to their mission. With any luck, they would defuse the warhead before it went off, or at least get it safely away from the city. But even if the bomb squad succeeded, that was hardly the end of their worries.
“So they take care of the bomb,” he murmured. “Who takes care of the monsters?”
He looked for Serizawa and found that the scientist had stepped outside the command center. Serizawa was gazing out across the water at the city with a pensive expression on his face. The admiral could guess who and what Serizawa was thinking about.
Godzilla.
* * *
In no time at all, Ford was getting suited up for the HALO jump. Along with a durable green jump suit and a packed parachute, he had also been supplied with a helmet, oxygen mask, gloves, new boots, a heavy-duty altimeter, and a bulging combat pack. As he and dozens of other soldiers prepared to board the C-17 that would drop them from a high altitude into the city, he watched a violent electrical storm brewing over San Francisco. Thunder and lightning added to the tumult battering the city and wasn’t going to make the coming jump any safer. Just bad timing, he wondered, or were the MUTOs peculiar auras stirring up the atmosphere somehow? He was no scientist, like those doctors on the Saratoga, but he suspected the latter.
“Lieutenant Brody!”
A voice from behind him shouted over the revving plane engines. He turned to see Dr. Serizawa hurrying across the tarmac toward him. Ford had noticed the Japanese scientist with Admiral Stenz earlier. Serizawa must have had spotted him among the troops listening to the admiral’s pep talk.
“I believe this belongs to you,” the scientist said.
He handed Ford a photo that must have been confiscated from Joe back in Japan. It was a family portrait of the Brody family in happier days. Joe, Sandra, and little Ford beamed at the camera. Ford couldn’t believe how young and happy they all looked.
Little did we know…
A bittersweet tide of emotion washed over Ford, who didn’t know what to say. He stared at the photo seeing not just the unsuspecting family from long ago, but also, superimposed over the portrait, he and Elle and Sam. A second generation of Brodys facing the same catastrophic forces.
“Time to load up!” an Air Force loadmaster shouted. “Move it out!”
Ford accepted the photo gratefully and tucked it into a Velcro pocket on his jump suit. He nodded at Serizawa, too choked up to speak, and turned toward the waiting aircraft. His fellow soldiers were already boarding the plane. They had to move quickly if they wanted to get to that warhead in time.
Assuming they could get past the monsters, that is.
“Lieutenant!” Serizawa called again. “He would be proud!”
I hope so, Ford thought. He glanced back at Serizawa. Ford hoped he could be half as determined as his father had been. Joe Brody had never given up trying to find the truth and warn the world. Ford wasn’t going to let his dad’s sacrifices be in vain.
He boarded the plane.
* * *
The sun was setting as the C-17 approached the city at an altitude of 35,000 feet, which was believed to be safely above the MUTOs’ sphere of influence. Seated in the cargo bay with the other troops, Ford assumed the brass had some evidence to support that assumption. Even so, he caught himself holding his breath as the plane came over the city. Crashing the Globemaster into the middle of downtown wasn’t going to do anyone any good.
The low bass hum of the plane’s engines continued uninterrupted, at least for the present. Ford chose to take that as a good sign as he peered out a window at their destination. Thick black smoke and heavy cloud cover largely hid the city below, but he could dimly make out immense shapes grappling in the haze. It appeared that the monsters were already locked in mortal combat. They charged at each other like divine beasts out of myth and legend.
Good, Ford thought. Maybe they’ll keep each other occupied while we deal with the warhead.
He removed the family portrait from his pocket and contemplated it one last time. The Brodys as they once were, as he and Elle and Sam could still be, if they survived the perilous hours ahead. It felt as though, one way or another, the unbearable trial that had tested his family for fifteen years was finally coming to a close. He hoped that, against all odds, they could still arrive at a happy ending somewhere down the line.
Glancing around, he saw that the other HALO jumpers were each preparing themselves in their own way. Photos of loved ones were cherished and heads were bowed in prayer or meditation. Everyone appeared deep in thought, searching for the courage and will to do what needed to be done, as well as remembering why exactly it mattered so very much. Across from Ford, a redheaded young soldier prayed softly to himself, reading aloud from a pocket Bible:
“… now as we leave one another, remember the comrades who are not with us today. ‘And He will send His angels with great trumpets.’”
The loadmaster’s booming voice roused everyone from their private thoughts.
“One minute, one more time!” he announced. “No comms at all down below. Use your flares to stay together!”
The rear bay doors opened and a ferocious rush of air drowned out any further discussion. Row by row, the HALO jumpers rose from their seats and headed briskly toward the ramp. The first in line ignited their flares and leapt out of the plane.
Here we go, Ford thought.
Ford returned the photo to his pocket and got his oxygen mask in place. HALO stood for High Altitude, Low Opening, which made the breathing apparatus a must. Joining the line, he made his way
toward the ramp. Despite his resolve, he felt more than a flicker of trepidation. He was a Navy bomb disposal tech, not a Special Forces guy. He didn’t have a lot of experience with HALO jumps.
He didn’t hesitate when his turn came, however. Sucking down a deep breath of O2, he threw himself out of the plane… for Elle’s sake.
The roaring in his ears went away, and the world went strangely quiet. All that could be heard was the thin air whistling faintly above the clouds. He extended his arms and legs to slow his fall, as he’d been instructed, while accelerating toward terminal velocity. Dozens of paratroopers free-fell through the darkening sky. Blood-red smoke trailed from the blazing flares strapped to their ankles as they descended toward the embattled city like falling angels, minus the trumpets. Lightning flashed in the turbulent clouds and smoke below. Thunder rumbled, but Ford had no idea if it was coming from the storm or the clashing monsters or some dreadful combination thereof. His own flare ignited as he plunged into the clouds.
Falling at nearly 125 miles per hour, he passed quickly through the clammy mist, somehow managing to avoid being electrocuted by a random bolt of lightning. The downtown area—or what was left of it—came into view. The devastation was staggering. Despite what he’d already witnessed overseas, Ford was shocked by what he saw.
A giant sinkhole, much like the one in Japan, had swallowed Chinatown. A wide path of destruction, like the one in Hawaii, had torn across The Embarcadero to Telegraph Hill, where Godzilla and the male MUTO could be glimpsed fighting amidst crumbling high-rises and residential buildings. Clouds of smoke and dust billowed up from the war zone. Fires blazed within the demolished buildings. As in Honolulu, Godzilla had the advantage of size over the other monster, but the male appeared in no hurry to retreat this time. The winged creature was standing its ground, with the surrounding neighborhoods paying the price. Angry snarls and screeches were punctuated by crashing buildings. Thunderclaps, reverberating overhead, provided a percussive soundtrack to the cataclysmic tussle, whose outcome seemed far from certain. It was survival of the fittest—on a grandiose scale.