Stumbling to his knees, Kelly searched for the oars. Suddenly, two forms dived into the water next to the lifeboat. A second later, Singh and China Bill poked their heads to the surface, spitting water. As they clambered aboard, a bullet whizzed by Kelly's head.

Kelly heard the sound of an engine. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the North Korean patrol boat pulling away from the freighter and the approaching monster.

Kelly ducked down into the lifeboat again, still searching for the oars. Another bullet rushed past him, missing Kelly but striking Singh. The Indian's head exploded in a shower of red. His suddenly limp body fell backward into the ocean and sank.

Surprised, Kelly fell onto his back again, and stared up at the deck of the Dingo's Luck. The North Korean officer glared down at him. Smiling thinly, the soldier took careful aim at Kelly.

Then the American gasped as a shadow fell over them all. Behind the North Korean officer, towering over him and the ship he was on, G.o.dzilla rose out of the water. The gigantic creature stood waist-deep in the sea. His wet hide was shiny black, and torrents of seawater poured off his colossal torso.

Kelly heard someone aboard the freighter scream.

Then G.o.dzilla slammed his full weight against the Australian ship. As he struck the freighter with his forepaws, the sea crested in a gigantic wave that pushed the lifeboat clear of the ship.

Bobbing like a cork in a tsunami, the lifeboat was carried along. Inside, Kelly and China Bill clutched the handholds helplessly. Miraculously, the boat did not capsize, despite the towering wake from G.o.dzilla's destruction.

As Kelly watched, wide-eyed, G.o.dzilla slammed against the Dingo's Luck. With deafening sounds of ripping metal and snarling beast beating against their ears, the old man and the youth watched as their ship broke apart under the monstrous a.s.sault.

G.o.dzilla grappled like a wrestler with the remains of the ship. One or two men could be seen leaping into the ocean, but they were immediately dragged under by G.o.dzilla's wake. Suddenly, electric-blue fire danced across the monster's three rows of dorsal fins.

Kelly caught a strong smell, like a combination of salty fish and burning electrical wires.

Then G.o.dzilla opened his tooth-lined maw and spat out a stream of searing, blue-white radioactive fire. The rays arced over the lifeboat and struck the ocean. Kelly could hear the seawater sizzle and boil.

Then cold water rushed into the hull of the Australian freighter and collided with the hot diesel engines. An explosion shuddered the doomed ship. G.o.dzilla thrust the wreckage aside as the freighter split in two.

The Dingo's luck had finally run out. Silently, the two halves of the ship slid below the surface and vanished.

The lifeboat twisted violently as G.o.dzilla moved past it. The tiny boat almost capsized from the force of the creature's tremendous wake. Kelly heard China Bill moaning in fear, but he made no move to help the man. The rocking motion of the boat was so violent that Kelly feared that if he let go, he'd be thrown overboard instantly.

Finally, G.o.dzilla moved past the lifeboat, nearly capsizing it again with his long tail. Kelly saw the creature's back, and blue lightning flashing there. Another beam of energy spewed from the monster's mouth. This time, it struck its target.

On the horizon, the North Korean patrol boat exploded in a scarlet ball of fire and billowing black smoke.

With a grunt of satisfaction, G.o.dzilla vanished beneath the waves once again - searching, no doubt, for traces of the now-scattered plutonium.

The ocean calmed, and the lifeboat steadied. Kelly and China Bill sat up in the boat, scanning the horizon.

But there was no sign of G.o.dzilla, or of the two ships he had destroyed. It was as if the monster had never been there at all.

8.

TERROR AND TERRORISM.

Thursday, December 7, 2000, 0145 hours.

Above a cl.u.s.ter of Wari ruins.

26 kilometers northeast of Ayacucho.

Central highlands of Peru.

Sean Brennan shifted the M-16A1 a.s.sault rifle in his grip as he peered into the dark rock-strewn valley below. His pa.s.sive infrared night-vision goggles were fastened securely onto his Kevlar helmet, which in turn was covered with camouflage brush gathered from the local terrain hours earlier, before the sun set.

In the harsh daylight, Sean had been sweating in his BDUs - battle-dress uniform. Now, waiting in the pitch-dark night, he was freezing cold. As he watched for movement in the valley, he suppressed the urge to shiver. Brennan heard a whisper to his left. Jim Cirelli shifted nervously and rubbed his cold hands together.

Johnny Rocco, on Brennan's right, motioned him to keep quiet.

Not ten meters below the ridge where Brennan and his two mates waited, the rest of his squad was hidden among a tumble of carved square stones - part of an ancient Wari archaeological site. Such ruins dotted the rugged Andean landscape in this region of Peru.

Just a few klicks away, a whole ruined city - called Wari, after the mysterious pre-Columbian culture that built it - had sat empty for nearly 1,000 years.

Tonight, if all went according to plan, this tiny valley filled with ancient stone relics would become a battlefield.

Peering over the rocks, Private Brennan could make out the heat signature of his squad leader, Corporal Franks. Only the high-tech goggles made it possible to see anyone or anything in the blackness of the Andean highlands.

Brennan again focused his attention past the others and at the floor of the valley. He had detected some movement, but immediately established that it was one of the soldiers under the command of Colonel Torres. These Peruvian regulars waited in ambush among the tumbled stones of the Wari ruins, their weapons ready.

Sean easily recognized their commander. Colonel Torres was a tall man with a stiff, military bearing. He carried no weapon beyond a service revolver, and he was crouched over a PAS-7 pa.s.sive infrared system mounted on a tripod. Like the Americans on the ridge above them, the Peruvian soldiers scanned the valley in nervous antic.i.p.ation.

Brennan flicked a toggle on the side of his goggles, and a digital display built into the lenses flashed the time. Almost 0200 hours. Any minute now, at least according to Peruvian military intelligence, the enemy should walk into the ambush waiting for them.

The enemy were members of Peru's most powerful and feared terrorist group, the Maoist Sendero Luminoso - the infamous Shining Path. Since taking root among the poverty-stricken natives of the Ayacucho region thirty years before, the Shining Path had fought the forces of the democratically elected government of this tiny South American nation. Along with an urban terrorist group called MRTA, the Shining Path a.s.sa.s.sinated government officials, planted bombs, attacked emba.s.sies, and kidnapped political hostages.

The Shining Path was all but broken in 1992, when the leader and founder was captured and imprisoned. But then, in December 1996, Shining Path terrorists and MRTA members seized the j.a.panese emba.s.sy in Lima in a bold attack during a Christmas party. The hostage crisis ended months later when Peru's president, Alberto Fujimori, ordered a paramilitary a.s.sault. All of the terrorists were killed by Peru's crack ant.i.terrorist strike force in a meticulously planned and executed raid.

Colonel Torres, who commanded the men down in the valley this very night, had partic.i.p.ated in that successful hostage rescue.

After that, the Shining Path went underground, only to reemerge in 1999, in the chaos that followed G.o.dzilla's arrival in North America. The new and improved Sendero Luminoso groups were well equipped and had more militant, better-trained leadership. Some of the new members of the Shining Path were taught the art of terrorism at camps in Libya and Syria.

Already, bombings and carefully planned attacks had killed a number of prominent politicians and foreign diplomats. The political violence hurt Peru's economy and domestic stability.

Many villages in the central highlands were suspected of harboring Sendero Luminoso members. Things were so unstable in the rural areas that bands of terrorists were attacking trucks and military vehicles on Highway 3 - a vital roadway that connected the towns of Ayacucho and Huancayo - with increasing frequency.

The result was that instead of training alongside the Peruvian military in a nice, comfortable South American boot camp outside a civilized metropolitan area like Lima, Sean and his friends ended up "humping the boonies" with Peruvian regulars. The boonies, in this case, were the Andean highlands.

On tonight's mission they were led by Colonel Torres and a U.S. Army officer named Colonel Briteis - nicknamed, naturally enough, "Bright Eyes" by the American GIs.

As mandated by Washington, the Americans' role in South America was strictly that of observers. According to their commanders, the soldiers were in Peru to learn "ant.i.terrorist and paramilitary tactics," along with the Spanish language. But even after three language lessons a week and a lot of practical experience with the natives, only Tucker Guyson was fluent in Spanish. He had even learned some words and phrases in Quechua - the language of Peru's native population. Sean and the others still relied on Bright Eyes to translate for them.

The Americans were allowed to shoot only if they were shot at. So far, that hadn't happened, but there had been several close calls.

Two days ago, oh a dusty dirt road near a tiny campesino farming village, Sean, Tucker Guyson, and Colonel Bright Eyes suddenly heard the distinctive staccato bark of an AK-47 - the weapon of choice for modern terrorist groups. Bullets began to fly, hitting the rocks around Sean and his friends.

The Americans later learned that members of Peru's elite Republican Guard had rooted out a nest of Sendero Luminoso guerrillas hiding in a stone farmhouse. The bullets coming from that fire-fight had been so close that Sean could feel them whizzing by.

Three terrorists were killed by the paramilitary troopers in a hail of return fire. Sean didn't even see the battle - he only heard it and ducked its fire.

It's as if we're getting our baptism by fire in slow, frustrating stages, Sean thought bitterly. The first week in Peru comprised long stretches of boredom and grueling forced marches with full combat gear - punctuated by moments of pure terror. He had been shot at and almost blown to bits. To his surprise, he was getting used to it.

At his side, Johnny Rocco readjusted his weapon in his hands. "I want some payback," he whispered to Sean.

Rocco, like the rest of the Americans, was tired of being a target. They were all itching for the chance to shoot back. Less than a month ago, they'd all been teenagers just out of boot camp. Now they were experiencing combat almost firsthand.

Sean's thoughts were interrupted when he saw Colonel Torres slowly draw his handgun from its holster. Then the sound the Peruvian officer must have heard floated up to the ridge where the Americans were watching.

Voices.

Voices speaking Quechua and a smattering of Spanish. And the distinctive clank of metal on metal - which probably indicated that the men coming down the trail on the opposite side of the valley were armed. Sean hoped they would stumble right into the ambush that awaited them.

That way it would be over quickly.

Through his night-vision goggles, Sean saw three terrorists cautiously climb down into the valley. The men were wearing dirty pants and thick woolen serapes. Their faces were covered by woolen scarves.

Two of them clutched Kalashnikov AK-47 a.s.sault rifles - Sean recognized the weapon's distinctive banana clip. The third man clutched a more formidable weapon; Sean searched his memory and soon remembered the type. It was a Russian-built Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyrev light machine gun - commonly known as an RPD. Brennan recognized the round ammunition clip attached to the weapon's stock.

The three advance scouts scanned the valley quickly and quite ineffectually before signaling the other terrorists that it was safe to proceed. Soon ten more men, all heavily armed, stumbled down into the rock-strewn valley, their steps uncertain in the darkness.

Sean tensed, waiting for the explosion of violence. Despite the briskness of the Andean night, sweat suddenly trickled down his spine.

The wait was not a long one.

Thursday, December 7, 2000, 2:34 A.M.

74 south lat.i.tude, 114 east longitude.

Wilkes Land, East Antarctica.

The Chinook helicopter descended on a barren area in the middle of the temporary camp, kicking up dust and a hail of ice. With his back to the mysterious crater that had swallowed many of his colleagues and friends, Dr. Stanley Wendell felt his scalp p.r.i.c.kle. As the bright orange research helo landed on the ice, the geologist turned and faced the awesome and so far unexplained pit that yawned open in the ancient Antarctic ice covering.

Though he'd examined the hole innumerable times and from every angle since he returned to the camp fifteen hours before, he could not shake his sense of awe and primal fear. Cautiously, he moved toward the temporary rope fence erected around the crater. From the ropes, which were set up quite a distance from the edge of the pit, it was difficult to see too far into the stark white abyss. Unfortunately, to get any closer on foot was dangerous - the walls of the pit were unstable. Every few minutes, chunks of ice pack broke off and dropped into the hole.

No one had yet heard those chunks of ice strike bottom. Cameras had been lowered deep into the pit, but the bottom was still lost in the distance. Dr. Wendell wondered if there was a bottom.

He recalled his grandmother's stories about h.e.l.l. Funny, Dr. Wendell realized. Since the ancient Greeks, and maybe before, h.e.l.l was always thought to be at the center of the Earth ...

Dr. Wendell, one of only two survivors of Dyer base camp, was the only expert available. Since he had returned to the site, Dr. Wendell had worked hard, monitoring the seismological instruments he and his colleagues from McMurdo had erected in the field. They were trying to measure the depth of the pit.

Dr. Wendell was as stumped as anybody. And now, no doubt, the government wants answers, he thought.

But Dr. Wendell, still traumatized by his experience when the pit first opened, had no answers for the government men who were about to emerge from that helicopter - though he'd been searching for clues for fifteen hours straight. And he'd been awake a lot longer.

As Dr. Wendell waited for his guests to debark from the Chinook, he recalled how the mystery had begun more than a week before, when a strange new type of signal or solar event jammed all communications on the Antarctic continent.

For six days, every research station that was not hard-wired could not communicate with the outside world. Every type of wireless communication was jammed. After the first twenty-four hours of the blackout, the commander of "Mactown" - as McMurdo Station, the largest outpost in Antarctica, had been dubbed by longtime residents - decided to send out helicopters to make contact with other remote bases.

The first helicopter set down in the French base called Concorde. Twelve hours later, as a freak summer storm kicked up, Dr. Wendell and a graduate student arrived in a battered Hagglunds - the only survivors of Dyer base camp.

For the next six days, the Antarctic was in turmoil, with katabatic winds in excess of seventy-five miles an hour in some regions. All flights were grounded, and travel over land was out of the question.

Then, on the seventh day, the storm ended as abruptly as it had begun. Twelve hours later, the electronic jamming ended, too. Helicopters were immediately dispatched when it was discovered that another small temporary scientific settlement - the Waruga East Antarctica Camp, run by the Australians - could not be raised.

Searchers discovered that the Australian camp had been wiped away by the violence of the katabatic winds and the storm. All twenty scientists and support crew members were missing.

At the former location of the Dyer base camp, the rescue helicopter sent from McMurdo found this bottomless pit, an abyss that had never before existed and that should not be there.

Dr. Wendell stared at the Chinook. The doors had not yet opened. In the time he had left, Dr. Wendell reviewed what he already knew. Though no seismographic instruments at McMurdo had picked up any tremors that would indicate that such a pit had opened up on Wilkes Land through tectonic activity, Dr. Wendell had picked up some strange underground readings since arriving here.

During the storm, the seismographic device at Concorde had picked up activity deep beneath the ice, in the crust of the Antarctic continent itself. But it was not really tectonic activity - at least not as Dr. Wendell understood it. Rather, the noise resembled the sound a gigantic drill would make as it tunneled through the Earth. He suddenly recalled the young grad student, who referred to the mysterious sound he had heard as the noise of a "giant buzz saw."

There was a quality to the sound that suggested that something very large was moving inside the Earth, perhaps under its own power.

Just two hours ago, Dr. Wendell had finished a computer model that suggested that an object had tunneled through the Earth, starting from the area around this pit, underneath the South Pole itself, and across the continent to the Bellingshausen Sea. The object was moving incredibly fast - if there was indeed something there, and his data had not been generated by a crazy instrument failure.

Dr. Wendell, recalling how much data he lost at Dyer, had immediately sent his findings to McMurdo. He was informed an hour after the information arrived that a helicopter would be dispatched to Wilkes Land, and that it would be carrying U.S. government representatives.

Dr. Wendell glanced at the idling helicopter again. The doors finally slid open, and three men in thick parkas jumped out. Dr. Wendell recognized one of the men immediately - a Norwegian scientist named Gunnar Thorsen. Thorsen was a geologist working for Petramco Petroleum Company. Dr. Wendell remembered with a start that Dr. Thorsen had manned a research station near the coast of the Bellingshausen Sea.

A coincidence?

The other two men were strangers. But the youngest of them, a tall African-American with a wide, friendly smile, approached him.

"You must be Dr. Wendell," the black youth said, his voice surprisingly deep. The two men shook hands. "My name is Nelson ... Tobias Nelson, but please call me Toby," the young man said, then stepped aside and introduced the other two men.

"I think you know Dr. Gunnar Thorsen," the youth continued. "This other gentleman is Dr. Max Birchwood."

Dr. Wendell nodded to Dr. Thorsen, then faced the other scientist.

"Dr. Birchwood," he commented. "And what is your field of research?"

The skinny, bearded man was about to reply to Dr. Wendell's question, but Nelson interrupted him.

"Dr. Birchwood is a scientist," Toby Nelson replied. "Now if you could take us someplace where we could talk in private - someplace with a computer, if possible."

Still puzzled, Dr. Wendell nodded. "Sure," he replied hesitantly, pointing to the nearest tent. "This way."

Without preamble, Toby Nelson headed for the tent. Dr. Wendell followed, sidling up to Dr. Thorsen.