"Wait!" Captain Dolan commanded. "I need your help here on the bridge."

Sh.e.l.ly pointed to the teenager in the wheelchair. "Michael will help you. He's a smart kid and he knows what's what!"

Then Sh.e.l.ly was gone, headed for the loading dock and the elevator to the surface.

Michael looked up at the captain. "What do you want me to do, sir?" he asked.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the river that divided the city, and behind a wall of fire and destruction, the military column led by Colonel Briteis was trapped. The destruction ahead of them was so ma.s.sive that they could not get around it.

Furthermore, their limited progress was hindered by fleeing crowds of panicked people. Colonel Torres halted the Hummer. Behind him the other trucks in the column stopped, too. Colonel Briteis jumped down from the pa.s.senger side of the HMV and looked around.

Dozens of people were lying in the streets. Some of them were not moving, but most were trying to free themselves from under heaps of debris; others were crawling with wounded limbs, trying to escape the wall of fire that consumed the buildings nearby and moved inexorably toward them.

Suddenly, Simon Townsend appeared at Colonel Briteis's shoulder. "We've got to get to the airship!" the designer shouted urgently over the noise and screams. "The Explorer could be destroyed by the monster at any moment!"

Colonel Briteis looked at the airship designer. Simon Townsend's eyes were bright, and his pony-tail whipped sharply around his head in the hot gusts of winds churned up by the fires. Then the U.S. Army officer turned toward the injured people scattered, crushed, and trapped in the streets and the buildings all around them.

After a long silence, the soldier turned back and looked Simon Townsend in the eye. "I'm sorry, Simon," Colonel Briteis said. "We're never going to get you to your airship now. But we can do some good. Let's help these people."

Simon Townsend was about to argue when Dr. Max Birchwood placed a hand on his shoulder. "Come on," the kaijuologist said. "These people need us."

Leninsk.

Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The artillery rained down on the ruins of the city of Leninsk for an hour. Tons of explosives detonated inside the city limits, demolishing the few structures that remained standing.

Because the radios in some of the tanks had failed to pick up the recall code, a few remained behind and were caught in the holocaust. Many Russian soldiers died from sh.e.l.ls fired by their countrymen.

After the artillery bombardment, Kapustin Yar launched an attack by ballistic missiles fitted with conventional, non-nuclear warheads.

Far away from the blazing city, the few tankers who survived the Battle of Leninsk stuck their heads out of their hatches and gulped fresh air as they watched the missiles arc over their heads and descend on the target area.

But when the horizon had been lit up by millions of tons of explosives - reducing Leninsk, Baikonur, and everything around it to dust - a figure rose, phoenixlike, from the ashes.

Gigan had survived.

The creature scanned the area. Its cyclopean eye glowing in the half-light of the burning city. There was nothing left to destroy, so the cyborg, as per its programming, calculated the trajectory of the missiles that had attacked it.

When Gigan calculated the position from which the rocket attack originated, it spread its wings and took off into the night sky.

Gigan was heading for the cosmodrome at Kapustin Yar at Mach 4 ...

Parque Molinas, Miraflores.

Lima, Peru.

"I don't like the look of that crowd," Bob Bodusky said nervously, shifting the M-16 in his grip.

Corporal Brennan scanned the crowds fleeing through the streets around the park. So far, the boundaries of the park itself were secure. Since they arrived, it had been guarded by Peruvian paramilitary policemen. But as the insect monster continued its rampage, those policemen were looking plenty nervous as the minutes pa.s.sed.

"I think they're going to head for the hills any second now," Johnny Rocco announced, eyeing the Peruvians warily.

"Just like those other b.u.ms," Tucker Guyson added, referring to the members of the airship's ground crew who had slipped off into the crowd a few minutes before.

Sean Brennan nodded thoughtfully, but said nothing. What should I do? the young man wondered, his mind in turmoil. Should I abandon my post and protect my men, or stay here and risk being killed by the monster - or the mob?

As he ran the options through his head, Sean Brennan saw that the crowds in the streets were beginning to swell. Some of the people were pointing at the airship, no doubt figuring it was a fast way out of town and away from the monster.

"What do we do, boss?" Jim Cirelli asked. Brennan faced his comrade. He noticed that the rest of the squad, along with others on guard duty with them, were looking to him for leadership.

For the hundredth time since he'd been given a temporary field promotion, Brennan regretted it. His mind flashed back to the moment he was given the rank. It was after the skirmish at the Wari ruins.

Colonel Briteis called Brennan into his tent and dropped the bomb in the young man's lap.

"Corporal Franks is going home," the colonel announced, referring to the American soldier who had been wounded. "I like the way you performed out there, Brennan, so you get his job and the temporary field promotion that goes with it," Colonel Briteis announced blandly.

"Sir, yes, sir," Brennan replied, fighting the urge to salute his commander - something you didn't do in the field.

Colonel Briteis locked eyes with the youth. "Don't screw up," he said, and then dismissed the brand-new corporal.

What Bright Eyes didn't tell me was how many chances I would get to do just that! Brennan thought bitterly.

"Corporal," Tucker Guyson said, interrupting his thoughts. "What should we do?"

Brennan could not make a decision. But salvation came from an unlikely source.

The elevator doors on the tower attached to the airship's cargo hold slid open. Two young women were standing inside the steel cage.

"Let's go, GI Joe," Robin Halliday said with a smile, motioning the men to board the elevator.

"Yeah," Sh.e.l.ly Townsend chimed in. "We're getting out of here."

"Wow!" blurted Jim Cirelli, who spent way too much time watching television. "You're Robin Halliday ... Wow! I'm a big fan of yours."

"Get in the elevator and I'll give you an autograph," she quipped, tugging his arm.

"Let's go, soldier!" Sh.e.l.ly said, looking out the door at the airship floating above them. She could hear the turbofan engines powering up. "We don't have much time."

"I ... I mean, we can't ... we can't go," Sean Brennan announced. "We've been ordered to stay at our post and guard this airship."

"Well," Sh.e.l.ly retorted, "your post is leaving ... Now, do you want to go with it, or stay here and say h.e.l.lo to the monster?"

Sean turned to his men, then looked out at the crowds surging around the park. Some of the Peruvian policemen had already melted into the stream of refugees. The others were getting ready to.

"Okay," Brennan decided, turning to the men he commanded. "Grab your gear and get in!"

The ten soldiers swiftly entered the huge cargo elevator and rode the steel car into the bowels of the Destiny Explorer.

In the streets of Lima ...

Simon Townsend was helping two American soldiers dig a woman out from under the rubble of a shattered structure. As they pulled her free of the wreckage, she kept shouting something in Spanish. Colonel Torres approached, and the American asked him to translate.

"She wants you to find her baby," the colonel announced before moving on.

Townsend swallowed hard and continued to dig through the ruins. He found the baby a few minutes later, trapped under its crib. Miraculously, the child was unharmed, though stunned. As soon as he picked up the infant, it began to cry.

After he placed the baby in its mother's arms, Simon stood erect and wiped away the sweat that streamed down his face. He pulled loose the wet cloth he had placed around his mouth and nose, but immediately began to cough from the smoke.

The heat was intense this close to the blaze, which was still consuming whole sections of Lima.

Belatedly, firefighting crews arrived at the scene, but there were too few of them. Far too few.

Then, as he prepared to go back to work, a shadow pa.s.sed over Simon Townsend. He looked up in time to see the Destiny Explorer cross the sky over the inferno. As the airship flew above the heart of the conflagration, the valves on the airship's hull were opened and the ballast was dumped. That maneuver was meant to lighten the ship so that it could rise higher into the sky.

But this time the maneuver had a beneficial effect. Thousands of gallons of water spilled down onto the burning buildings. It was not enough to extinguish the flames or even stop the firestorm from spreading, but it helped.

Then the airship turned lazily in the sky and flew off toward the Pacific Ocean, away from the destruction. Simon Townsend watched it go with little regret. He figured that he and Colonel Briteis could reestablish contact with the Explorer later and set up another rendezvous. But in the meantime people here in the streets needed his help.

"G.o.dspeed, Explorer," he muttered aloud before he went back to work.

12.

COMMUNICATIONS BREAKDOWN.

Sunday, December 10, 2000, 4:15 P.M.

Over the Pacific coast of Peru.

Grupo 21 had first been alerted forty minutes before. They were scrambled from their new base near Iquitos, on the border with Ecuador. The squadron, made up of U.S.-built A-37A Dragonflys and British-built Canberra bombers, usually patrolled the disputed zone on the border. Interest in the area had heated up when some valuable and exploitable minerals were discovered there.

The timing couldn't have been worse for the squadron.

A Canberra bomber had crashed two days before, during a routine training mission. The rest of the Canberra fleet was ordered on a stand-down until extensive safety checks could be completed. The scramble alert came right in the middle of those safety checks.

Most of the Canberra bombers in Grupo 21 were all but dismantled. It would be days before they were ready for service. Not so the Cessna Dragonflys.

Built by the Kansas aeronautics firm famous for manufacturing light planes for civilian use, the Dragonfly was created by Cessna designers in the late 1960s for duty in the Vietnam War. The light COIN - counter-insurgency - aircraft was designed for bushfire wars and so was perfect for use in South and Central America.

The Dragonfly was short and squat and wide and klutzy-looking. On the ground, the belly of the aircraft was mere inches off the tarmac, and when fully loaded, the airplane lumbered down the runway like an overstuffed turkey. Its long, straight wings were tipped with sleek instrument pods reminiscent of warplanes built in the 1950s.

On eight hardpoints beneath the wings, the Dragonflys carried six high-explosive rockets and two 100-pound iron bombs. Each warplane was also armed with a GAU-2 six-barreled Minigun.

Inside the two-seater, the pilot and weapons officer sat in tandem within a large bubble canopy, which was not pressurized. The Dragonflys were low-level attack planes powered by twin General Electric turbofan engines with a top speed of 500 miles per hour. The Peruvian Air Force warplanes wore the tri-color markings of their nation and were painted a dull, misty gray with splotches of darker hues.

Commanding the eight Dragonflys of Grupo 21, Captain Salazar piloted the lead aircraft with his weapons officer, Lieutenant Abelle. The squadron had followed the Pacific coast down from the disputed zone, each crew wondering what they were about to encounter.

Fifteen kilometers away from Lima, they saw thick billows of black smoke rising from the city.

Captain Salazar also noticed a strange blot on the horizon. He squinted into the distance in an attempt to make out the details. Then he glanced at his "wizzo," who'd had the new search radar screen added to the c.o.c.kpit in a recent upgrade.

"It's the airship," Lieutenant Abelle announced presently.

Ah, Salazar recalled. The great Yankee airship. The elongated shape was moving away from Lima and out to sea.

Good, the squadron leader thought with relief. At least that lumbering thing won't get in the way ...

Presently, Captain Salazar tipped his wing, and the eight warplanes banked toward the city. The leader of Grupo 21 felt his pulse quicken. He was anxious to get a look at this "monster."

But as the Dragonflys approached Lima, the city was completely obscured by thick, rolling smoke from a thousand fires. The eight warplanes warily approached the dark, oily columns of dense smoke. Suddenly, out of that cauldron, a bolt of electric fire lanced out and struck the Dragonfly cruising on Salazar's port side.

The airplane detonated with a loud report that rocked the squadron leader's plane. The explosion, fed by fuel and high-explosive rockets, unfolded like an evil orange and scarlet flower. Secondary explosions rolled like thunder through the boiling black smoke as the aircraft and its two crewmen plunged into the streets below. Salazar's aircraft was buffeted by the powerful shock waves.

"Pull up! Pull up!" Salazar shouted into his command net. The Dragonflys rose as one, and then scattered in all directions as another bolt of energy stabbed at the sky. Out of the corner of his eye, Captain Salazar saw another bright flash in the smoky sky.

A few minutes later, clear of the city limits, Salazar ordered his men to regroup over the Pacific Ocean. When the squadron was reunited - minus two aircraft - they formed up and dived for the attack once again ...

Sunday, December 10, 2000, 6:21 P.M. EST.

The entire world.

The blackout was instantaneous and affected every corner of the globe. At the exact moment in time, every form of communication beyond human speech ceased to function. Phone lines went dead. Television and radio stations went off the air. Cable systems lost their ability to send or receive signals via satellite or hard-wiring. Computers connected to phone lines were scrambled, their memories fried.

If the signal was sent through the air, or over a wire - by electronic impulse or as a beam of light through a fiberoptic system - it simply stopped working.

The world was effectively rendered mute.