The camera was picked up a few minutes later, focusing unsteadily on Kristen Skyy, running toward the playground in her radiation suit. “I’m okay, and I hope you can hear me,” she said via a wireless microphone. The radio connection was scratchy but still audible. “Paul will stay with the pilot in Swan Lake. I’m going to check to see if there are any survivors.” She checked the first body. “Oh God, it’s a teenage girl. She didn’t make it.” She rolled her over onto her face, exposing severe burns on her back. She went quickly to the next. “This one, thank God, is alive. Maybe her boyfriend or brother.” She dragged him to the edge of the lake, where others taking refuge there helped him into the relatively cooler water. Then she went back to check on another.
“She’s got guts, I’ll say that,” someone said.
“The ground feels very hot, like I’m walking on very hot sand,” Skyy said. “The air is very uncomfortable, like a sauna, but not moist—very dry, like a desert, like the Mojave Desert. I’ll go over to the bus and see if…hey, it looks like a rescue helicopter has arrived. Paul, can you see the helicopter coming? It looks like an army helicopter.”
“That was quick,” Chamberlain said. “Who is it, General?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Hanratty said. “I’ll try to get a confirmation.”
The photographer swung his camera up, and they could see a twin-rotor Chinook helicopter quickly approaching. It had a small device slung underneath the fuselage. “It’s carrying something under neath,” Skyy said, “like a raft or maybe a net of some kind of…well, I can’t make it out, but it’s coming toward us fast so we’ll find out in a moment. I wonder if he can land and take all of us out of here in that thing, it certainly looks big enough. We should… ” And then she paused, and then exclaimed, “What the heck is that?”
The officials in the Situation Room stared in amazement as the cameraman zoomed in. The object the helicopter had slung underneath looked like a man…no,ithadthefigureofaman,butit looked like a robot. “What the hell is that?” Chamberlain exclaimed.
“I have no idea, sir,” Hanratty responded. “It looks like someone in a protective suit, but I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s like some kind of high-tech deep-sea diving suit.”
Robert Chamberlain turned to a soldier in battle dress uniform standing behind him, calmly standing at parade rest while the action swirled around the room. He was of average height and build, and his pixilated camo BDUs were adorned with only a few badges—most notable were helicopter pilot’s wings, master parachutist’s wings, a Combat Infantry Badge, and a Ranger tab—but the man exuded an indefinable aura of power that prevented anyone in the room from locking eyes with him or even coming near him, even the three-and four-star generals. “Sergeant Major, get someone from the Pentagon to identify that…thing, whatever it is.”
“No need, sir—I know exactly what it is,” Army Command Sergeant Major Ray Jefferson responded. The blue-eyed, wiry Ranger looked at the monitor carefully, then nodded. “I didn’t know it was ready for the field, but if it is, sir, it might be the only thing that can save those people now.”
“We’re going to redline in about two minutes,” the Chinook pilot said. “Sorry, sir, but we’ve got to leave ASAP.”
“You copy that, Jason?” Ariadna Vega asked on their tactical communications frequency. “The chopper is going to melt in a few minutes. How are you doing down there?”
Jason Richter saw the temperature and radiation readouts in his electronic visor, and he couldn’t believe it. The outside temperature was over sixty degrees Centigrade, even suspended twenty meters under the Chinook by a cable, but inside the Cybernetic Infantry Device’s composite shell it was still a comfortable twenty degrees Celsius. “I feel okay,” he responded. “Everything seems to be working fine so far. Let me down and I’ll get to work.” The helicopter slowed and quickly descended. As soon as Jason’s feet touched the ground, he disengaged the cable. “You’re clear. Get out of here before your engine goes.”
“We’re outta here, Jason,” Vega said. “Good luck, dude—you’re gonna need it.”
God, Jason thought, am I nuts? I’m wearing a contraption that has hardly been tested, let alone ready for exposure in a nuclear environment. Oddly, Jason felt as if he was standing naked, although he was surrounded by forty kilos of composite material and electronics. He experimentally moved his arms and legs and found the limbs remarkably easy to move and control. Jogging was effortless. He saw the survivors down by the lake, about two kilometers away, and started to pick up the pace…
…before realizing he had hit fifty kilometers an hour, and was standing at the edge of Swan Lake in seconds. Kristen Skyy and her photographer stood before him, motionless—but the photographer was not stunned enough to stop filming. Jason scanned the radio bands from his suit’s communications system and found her wireless microphone’s FM frequency. “Can you hear me, Miss Skyy?”
“Who in hell is this?” Skyy asked. “How can you be on this channel?”
“My name is Major Jason Richter, U.S. Army.”
“Where did your helicopter go? Can’t it come back and take any people away?”
“The heat is damaging its engine, like your helicopter. I’m here to get you out.”
“How do you think you’ll do that—carry us out two by two? Most of these people can’t make it. If they leave the water, they’ll die—and if we stay here much longer, we’ll die.” Jason looked around, saw the school bus lying on its side, and went over to it. “Get your helicopter to come back,” she was saying, “and put a cable on…”
Jason simply reached down, grasped the edge of the roof of the bus, picked it up, and pushed with his legs. The bus flipped over onto its wheels, its springs bouncing wildly.
“Oh…my…God…” Skyy watched in pure amazement as the man…robot…whatever it was…as he walked to the front of the bus, picked it up with one arm, and walked it around until the back of the bus was facing the lake. Then he began to push…and in less than a minute had pushed the rear end of the bus into the lake.
“Let’s go, Kristen!” Jason shouted. “Get them on board now!” In moments, the survivors had waded through the water and were helped aboard. The inside of the bus was almost unbearably hot, but it was their last hope. Kristen sat down at the wheel and, after a few frantic moments, got the engine started. With Richter pulling from the front, the bus moved out of the lake. Kristen managed to drive it over the sand and grass until they reached the park road before the engine died, but by then Jason was able to push the bus with ease along the road. With Kristen steering, they reached the highway leading to the town of Bayou Vista a few minutes later, and five minutes after that reached the police roadblock outside the blast area.
Kristen Skyy’s photographer captured it all, live, to astonished television viewers around the world.
The men and women in the Situation Room were on their feet, stunned into complete silence, motionless, almost unable to breathe. Finally, Robert Chamberlain put his hands on the conference table as if unable to support himself otherwise. “What…did…we…just…see, Sergeant Major?” he asked, his head lowered in absolute disbelief. “What in hell is that thing?”