She glanced over at the nurse’s station, expecting to see the boy where he belonged.
But Sam was gone.
Sam followed the soldiers through the hospital lobby to outside, where he was surprised and scared by the chaotic scene before him. Soldiers were busily loading patients, many in wheelchairs, into a fleet of bright orange school buses, while harried nurses and paramedics struggled to care for the displaced patients, many of whom looked too sick or hurt to travel. Empty gurneys were rushed back indoors to get still more patients before it was too late. Announcements blared from loudspeakers:
“This is not a test. A mandatory evacuation has been issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the San Francisco Bay Area…”
Confused and disoriented by all the frantic activity, Sam lost sight of the soldiers he’d been trailing. The little boy wandered randomly toward the buses, overlooked in the general tumult. He wasn’t sure where he was supposed to go now. Back to the nurse’s desk?
A thunderous racket overhead made him tilt his head back. He stared upward as two military helicopters — a big one and a smaller one — thundered across the cloudy sky. A great big bomb, carried in a sling, dangled from cables beneath the larger chopper. All the grownups around him reacted in shock and fear to the sight of the bomb. Sam heard one of the soldiers call it a “warhead.”
Bloodied, muddied, and dazed, Ford rode with the Air Force response team aboard the escort chopper. A heavy wool blanket was slung around his shoulders. Fresh water and black coffee, in that order, had helped restore him to a degree, but he still felt like death warmed over. He figured he was lucky he was alive at all, considering.
Tre and the others hadn’t made it.
Tucked in among the airmen, Ford watched as the heavy-lift transport chopper peeled away from its escort, flying toward San Francisco Bay with the recovered warhead. Ford wondered if it was one of the bombs he’d replaced the detonator on.
“Where are they taking it?” he asked, referring to the warhead.
“Twenty miles out to sea,” an airman explained. “Convergence point. We’re going to lure them there. Three birds, one stone!”
The escort ‘copter banked away toward Sausalito to the north. Ford shuddered beneath the blanket as the chopper bearing the 300-kiloton warhead made its way toward San Francisco.
His home. His family.
TWENTY
A makeshift command center had been established on a mountain overlook to the north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The scenic location offered a workable view of San Francisco Bay and the city proper. Mobile trailers and temporary structures were swarming with military personnel, who hustled to make sure everything was in readiness for the next, and possibly final, stage of the defense operations. Sunlight filtered through gray clouds. An overcast sky threatened to rain.
Airlifted to the site, Serizawa and Graham accompanied Admiral Stenz, Captain Hampton, and key personnel from the Saratoga as they hurried across the grounds to their new tactical operations center. Hampton updated the admiral on the move.
“We only found one warhead, sir,” he reported, “but it’s intact and already prepped with a manual timer and detonation mechanism. Should be immune to those things.”
Stenz nodded. “Where is it right now?”
“En route, sir. There’s a transport vessel waiting in the bay. The warhead should be there any minute.”
Serizawa paused to look south, where he spied a heavy-lift military helicopter carrying the nuclear warhead toward the bay. The sight of the chopper’s lethal cargo filled his soul with dread. His fingers found the antique watch in his pocket. He thought of mushroom clouds rising over a devastated atoll in the Pacific.
History, he feared, was repeating itself.
The Air Force helicopter touched down in the foothills overlooking the bay. As Ford exited the chopper, civilian relief workers rushed up to treat his injuries. He brushed them off impatiently, anxious to get to Elle and Sam somehow. It was maddening to be so close, to actually be within sight of the city, and still be separated from his family.
Hang, on Elle, he thought. I’m almost there.
He surveyed his surroundings. A parking lot in the hills was jammed with vehicles: some military, but also plenty of school buses and ambulances. Hundreds of anxious people milled about an emergency staging area and shelter, hastily assembled on the outskirts of the city north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Trying to make sense of the situation, he buttonholed a passing relief worker bearing an armload of first aid supplies.
“Is the city evacuated?” Ford asked.
The other man shook his head. “Only schools and hospitals. Everyone else is still inside.”
Including Elle and Sam? Or were they among those evacuated? Ford flashed back to that nightmarish morning fifteen years ago when he and the other children had been hurriedly evacuated from Miss Okada’s classroom. He knew exactly how scared Sam must be right now, but he had no way of knowing where his family was. For all he knew, Sam was on one of those crowded buses in the parking lot.
He ran toward the vehicles, desperate to find out.
“Hey!” the puzzled relief worker said. “Where are you going?”
The USNS Yakima, a fast combat support ship, was docked at Fisherman’s Wharf. A skycrane helicopter hovered above the ship as the recovered nuclear warhead was lowered via winches onto the Yakima’s deck. Office workers being evacuated from nearby buildings glanced nervously at the nuclear warhead as they were hustled into waiting vans and buses. Jeff Lewis, one of the missile techs assigned to the operation, didn’t blame the spectators for looking askance at the warhead. To be honest, it made him uncomfortable, too. Nuclear bombs belonged in silos or submarines, not heading out into San Francisco Bay.
But what other choice did they have? Nothing else seemed to be stopping the monsters.
Running out of the hospital, Elle searched frantically for her son.
A full-scale evacuation was underway in front of San Francisco General. EMTs and orderlies assisted in loading critical patients into waiting ambulances, monitoring vitals as they did so. Many of the patients could not walk on their own and had to be wheeled to the vehicles and physically lifted inside. Moving them at all would be a bad idea under most circumstances, but these were definitely not normal conditions. Better to transport them now than leave them helpless in the path of the creatures that were reportedly converging on the city. Unlike more able-bodied people, these patients wouldn’t be able to make their own escape.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the loading and unloading area, National Guard troops were ushering more children onto school buses. Could Sam have accidentally been swept up in the mass evacuation? Standing atop the front steps of the hospital, she peered at the buses, hoping she wasn’t already too late. Panic threatened as one bus after another drove away from the hospital, heading toward God knew where. What if Sam was already on one of those buses? How on Earth would she ever find him again?
No, I can’t lose him, too!
Then, through the bustling confusion, she glimpsed Sam tottering about in the chaos, looking lost and confused. Numerous strangers jostled the little boy, too caught up in the overall emergency to pay attention to a single unattended child on the verge of tears. Sam looked about anxiously, searching for a familiar face. Elle’s heart nearly burst from her chest.