A few minutes later, as they cautiously navigated the narrow, crowded streets, the colonels, Torres and Briteis, got their first view of the monster.

"What the h.e.l.l is that?" Colonel Briteis exclaimed, looking up at the creature, which was fortunately still a good distance away. The thing looked like a big bug with two pointed metal drills for hands. As he watched, the monster slammed its foreclaws together. Sparks flew, and a clanging peal echoed over the city.

"Bad news, Colonel Briteis," Colonel Torres told the U.S. Army officer in Spanish. "That diablo is between us and the flying ship!"

Sunday, December 10, 2000, 8:10 P.M.

Outskirts of Leninsk.

Near Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The Russian tanks reached the suburbs of Leninsk at about the same time that Gigan reached the opposite end of the town. General Borodin would have preferred to confront the monster on the steppes, or even in the vast cosmodrome itself, which had plenty of empty s.p.a.ce for his tanks to maneuver.

But the flood of refugees fleeing the town had slowed the progress of the defense troops. The tanks - fifty-five T-72s and twenty-five T-80s - had arrived more than an hour late.

Worse still, Borodin had no artillery - and artillery was the backbone of all Russian military tactics.

"Without artillery, you cannot fight a battle." Borodin heard these words all during his decades of military training. But in this case, he did not have the luxury of time. The general had been ordered by the prime minister himself to destroy the creature right here at Baikonur.

And it would be another two hours before the artillery was in position.

Anyway, his former military instructors had fought n.a.z.is in the Great Patriotic War - not monsters in an age of monsters.

Borodin found little comfort in that knowledge. The general cursed the inefficiency of the new Russian Army and the chaotic political situation in the region. Baikonur, which had once had its own division of troops to guard it from internal and external threats in the days of the Soviet Union, now shared civil defense troops with the independent government of Kazakhstan.

General Borodin pulled off his oversized hat and rubbed his right hand through the dirty-gray stubble on his head. A short, bulky sixty-eight-year-old man with an even temperament, Leonid Borodin projected an aura of power and authority.

He paced around the command trailer for a few moments, considering his options. Then he stooped over a map table. The illuminated surface displayed a detailed map of the city.

Already, Borodin had sent scouts into the area, and they were constantly reporting on the creature's whereabouts. According to the latest report, the monster had reached the heart of Leninsk. The creature's position was marked with a blip on his map display.

Not that Borodin had to look far to find the creature - he only had to look for fires on the horizon.

His decision made, the general crossed the command trailer and tapped his communications officer on the shoulder. The man, who sat in front of a huge communications console, removed his bulky earphones and looked up at his commander.

"The attack will commence in twenty minutes," General Borodin announced. "The tanks will enter Leninsk from three directions, as planned. The tank commanders are to use concentrated fire to destroy the creature upon contact."

As the general spoke, the communications officer scribbled notes on a piece of blank paper.

"Even if that attack fails, it will buy us time," the general continued in a rare moment of candor. "In two hours the artillery will be in position to finish off the monster."

Hull of the Destiny Explorer.

Over Lima, Peru.

"Up here," Ned cried to Peter, who was still climbing the narrow ladder far beneath him. When the older teen reached the top, his progress was blocked by a round aluminum hatch. Ned studied the latch mechanism for a moment, then threw it. Fresh air gushed into the narrow, claustrophobic tunnel they'd been climbing through. Ned pushed again, and the hatch clanged open.

Scrambling to the top of the ladder, Ned pulled himself out of the tunnel and onto the top of the Destiny Explorer's hull. Winds blasted him, throwing his long blond hair over his eyes. Ned brushed it aside and helped Peter out of the tunnel. But when the Native American teenager crawled onto the hull, he clutched the handhold and wouldn't stand up. His raven-black shoulder-length hair whipped around in the wind.

Ned rose unsteadily, but immediately dropped down again when the airship lurched. Both he and Peter could feel the Explorer swaying beneath them. Ned was ready to go back down the ladder when Peter spotted a yellow sign. He pulled on Ned's arm and pointed.

PULL HERE TO DEPLOY SAFETY RAIL, the sign read.

Ned Landson reached out, grasped the metal handle, and pulled. Silently, a stretch of railing rose up from the hull. The railing was low, but it formed a path all along the top of the airship. With a pop, a square metal door opened next to the hatch. Inside, Ned saw coiled safety belts and harnesses. He grabbed two of them.

The teenagers put the harnesses around their waists, and then clipped their individual safety lines to the rail. They could now move back and forth along the hull without fear of falling. Even if they did, the safety line would catch them before they could slip off the rounded sides of the airship.

As they got to their feet, the two teens heard an explosion from below. They looked out over a panoramic view of the city.

On the far side of a ribbon of water, the city was ablaze. Along the riverfront, low buildings that housed small businesses and shops burst into flames as a bolt of electricity struck them. Ned and Peter followed the path of that flash of lightning and saw the monster towering over the center of town.

"What is that?" Peter cried. "A giant bug!"

"No," Ned replied quickly. "It has only four legs - well, two legs and two arms ... or are they arms?"

"They look more like drills," Peter replied.

Ned nodded in agreement. "That thing isn't a product of evolution, I'm sure of it," Ned stated. "It looks like something a mad geneticist would create."

The mysterious monster was about fifty-five meters tall and had a large, insectlike head - complete with two multifaceted eyes and waving antennae above them. In the middle of the creature's hideous face were mandibles, which opened and closed intermittently for no apparent reason.

On the crown of the monster's head was a horn topped by a star-shaped crest. From that star, flashes of what looked like lightning bolts burst forth, raining destruction down on the city.

The creature's green-hued body was protected by layers of thick, overlapping scales. On its back were beetlelike wings with slashes of bright colors. The lower legs were short and there was even an abbreviated tail.

But the most amazing things about the creature were the pointed metallic half-cones where hands or claws should have been. The creature waved its arms wildly, smashing anything within its reach.

As the teens watched, the creature's right claw clipped the bell tower of a centuries-old stone cathedral. The structure crumpled, spilling huge bells into the crowded streets below. A cloud of dust obscured the rest of this horrific vision, but Peter was sure people had been crushed under the rubble.

Ned watched in dread as people began to jump out of the burning buildings on the riverfront. They leaped from high windows into the murky waters below. One woman was on fire as she plunged into the water. Ned watched as her corpse bobbed to the surface a final time before sinking beneath the dark waters.

Suddenly, Ned didn't think what he was seeing was so "cool."

Through the din of crashing buildings and screaming, fleeing victims, the two teenagers heard a fusillade of small-arms fire. Since arriving in Lima, Ned had noticed uniformed and heavily armed police on the streets below. Now a bunch of those paramilitary police had formed a line; with clear plastic riot shields held in front of them, they approached the monster down a wide boulevard.

"Those guys are crazy!" Peter exclaimed, tensing for the horror to come.

For almost a minute, the police line fired round after round at the monster. The creature did not even notice them at first, but when an armored truck came up behind the police phalanx and fired several bursts from a turret-mounted heavy machine gun, the monster looked down at them.

Lightning danced along the star-shaped horn, and a red bolt of jagged energy arced downward, rippling across the line of policemen. Their riot shields were futile as death rained on them. The men fell with screams on their lips.

When the arc of energy danced to the armored car, the vehicle exploded. The force of the blast blew the doors and hatches off. A man was blasted out of the gun turret like a rag doll as the entire vehicle lifted off the street and flipped onto its side.

The police - what few of them were left alive - beat a hasty retreat.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning from the creature arced right over the two teens. Ned and Peter instantly dropped to the hull as the hairs on their heads stood on end from the proximity of so much electric energy.

They heard an explosion behind them. Ned turned and saw the target of the energy bolt. The flaming remains of some type of helicopter were dropping out of the sky. The aircraft crashed down in the middle of a crowded plaza as people scattered in all directions.

The realization hit Peter and Ned at the same time: This ship could be struck at any moment.

Streets of Leninsk.

Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Sergeant Yuri Chevakov's T-80 tank, along with the rest of the tanks in his division, had been playing cat and mouse with the monster through the city streets for more than an hour.

The sergeant decided he did not like that game anymore.

Soon after the vehicles reached the heart of the city, rubble and debris from fallen buildings blocked their progress. In the smoke and confusion, the various units became separated. A three-p.r.o.nged attack that was meant to surround the creature and drive it out of the town turned into chaos.

Soon, the battle was down to tank units of two or three vehicles. Some of the less-experienced men were so edgy that they fired at anything. Chevakov saw a T-72 near his heavier, more advanced tank destroyed by friendly fire.

He couldn't understand how a gunner could mistake a tank for a sixty-five-meter-tall monster!

The tanks were having a tough time hitting the monster as well. Though Leninsk was not a huge metropolis with towering skysc.r.a.pers, it was still difficult to get a clean shot at the gigantic blue-and-golden-scaled creature in the heart of the city.

Twice before, Sergei, his driver, had gotten them lost in the smoke and confusion of battle. They even drove down a dead end at one point. The street was so narrow that Sergei had to throw the T-80 in reverse and back out again.

A little while ago, they had gotten lucky. As the T-80 emerged onto a wide boulevard lined with shattered, burning buildings, Sergeant Chevakov spotted the monster in the crosshairs of his infrared targeting system.

The sergeant immediately pressed the fire-control trigger. The tank bucked with the recoil of the 125-millimeter cannon. But at that precise second, the creature ducked its head to swipe its curved claw at a T-72 tank that had emerged from another direction. Chevakov's shot went right over the creature's horned head.

The tank that the monster had struck flew apart. The turret slammed into a line of buildings even as the hull bounced down the wide boulevard like a toy thrown by a spoiled child.

Chevakov slapped the cannon, impatient for the automatic loader to spew the empty sh.e.l.l out of the chamber and feed a new high-explosive round in. When the operation was completed, he quickly put his eye to the sight again.

But the creature had moved on.

Too slow! Too slow! thought the tank commander, cursing the loader.

The automatic loader was the bane of the Russian tank corps. On the one hand, it saved vital resources. The tanks of the NATO armies all had crews of four. A Russian tank needed only three men to operate it in battle. The fourth crewman was replaced by the automatic loader. But the downside was that the loader was slow - much slower than a man performing the task. In T-72s the loader was p.r.o.ne to jamming, too. That was not the case with the improved gun of the T-80, but it was still slow. And in battle, speed was decisive.

Chevakov was suddenly glad he had never had to face the Western countries in a full-scale war.

Just then, bricks and debris rained down on the composite armor of the T-80. The driver, shocked into action by the noise, threw the tank into gear, and it leaped forward. Chevakov struck his head against the wall of the compartment.

As the T-80 jumped forward, crawling up and over a pile of debris, Sergeant Chevakov traversed the turret and elevated the gun.

There you are! he thought with deadly satisfaction as the single red eye of the monster filled his infrared gun sight. His breath hissed out of his mouth as he depressed the trigger.

Again, the T-80 bucked from the recoil. The interior of the tank filled with the smell of cordite. But Chevakov's eye never left the eyepiece. The high-explosive ant.i.tank round was designed to penetrate thick armor and detonate in the vulnerable interior of the target. But even through the hull of the tank, Chevakov heard a bell-like clang as his round bounced off the monster's armored scales.

Then Sergei gunned the engine, and the T-80 disappeared around a corner. The monster vanished from the view port's field of vision.

"Sergeant!" his radioman cried out. "I'm getting the recall code from headquarters."

"Retreat?" Chevakov said in disbelief. "The general wants us to retreat?"

But the radioman smiled. "Not exactly, Sergeant. The creature is about to be attacked by an artillery bombardment - and then a ballistic missile attack from Kapustin Yar!"

Sergeant Chevakov smiled. In the red-lit interior of the tank, he looked almost devilish with his drooping handlebar mustache. The sergeant knew all about Kapustin Yar. It was another cosmodrome, hundreds of miles away from here and close to the sh.o.r.es of the Caspian Sea.

That facility had huge missiles stored there - missiles capable of dealing with the monster, he was sure. Sergeant Chevakov realized that a missile attack probably meant that their generals were willing to destroy the Baikonur Cosmodrome as well.

But, the sergeant thought philosophically, there's not much left of it any way ... and better Baikonur than me and my men!

"All right, Sergei," the sergeant said, slapping the driver on the shoulder. "Get us out of here ..."

Bridge of the Destiny Explorer.

Over Lima, Peru.

As the jagged bolt of energy sizzled past the airship, Captain Jack Dolan made a decision.

"I'm getting the ship out of here," he announced.

At one of the observation windows, Sh.e.l.ly Townsend turned to face the captain, her mouth gaping in surprise.

"You can't just leave!" she cried. "What about Dad! What about the soldiers down there? And the ground crew?"

"Look out there, beyond that river," Captain Dolan said, pointing through the window. "Do you see that fire on the opposite sh.o.r.e?" Captain Dolan said, pointing. "That's where your father is. He's not going to make it back, Sh.e.l.ly, not now!"

As he spoke, the captain began his preflight checks. His words brought fear to Sh.e.l.ly's heart and tears to her eyes, but Dolan seemed oblivious to her emotional turmoil.

Michael Sullivan was visiting the bridge to say good-bye when the monster appeared. Now he reached out his hand and touched her arm.

"I'm sure your father is okay, Sh.e.l.ly," Michael stated with more confidence than he felt. "We can always make contact with him later - and pick him up somewhere else."

The girl looked at him and rubbed away the tears. She nodded weakly. Outside, an explosion from the city vibrated the windows of the bridge like drums. Sh.e.l.ly jumped from her chair.

"You never answered me, Jack!" she cried. "What about the soldiers down there at the base of the tower? We can't just leave them here."

Dolan turned and faced the teenager. "Do what you want to do," he replied, checking the instrument panel. "You've got five minutes to get them aboard before I move the Explorer out of harm's way."

"I'm going to the elevator," Sh.e.l.ly announced, rushing past Michael toward the exit.