Lieutenant Takado nodded. "I rented it myself. I did not want to trust the military to get us out of here if... things fell apart."
"You"re quite a gal, Emiko!" Nick said, his admiration real.
She accepted the compliment with a nod. "We have fifteen minutes to get as far away from here as possible."
CHAPTER 17.
"LAUNCH THE ROCKETS!".
June 8, 1998, 8:01 A.M.
j.a.panese field command post
Somewhere on the San-yo plain
"The tanks have been driven back, commander," the officer informed General Shuji Kamata grimly. "The forward wave of the attack has sustained heavy losses. Much of the First Battalion has been disabled or destroyed."
The general"s eyes narrowed. So many men gone, he thought sadly, and no time to honor them now. The general remembered that his first duty was to protect the living.
The general spoke. "Warn the field commanders that a rocket attack will begin in fifteen minutes."
Captain Honda, his second-in-command, saluted, then ran off to carry out the commander"s orders.
Glancing at the map spread out in front of him, General Kamata considered his options. At least I can cover the First Battalion"s retreat, he told himself. But if the rockets don"t halt Gojira"s advance, then there is nothing that will stop him from reaching the nuclear power plant in the next twenty-four hours.
General Kamata rubbed his tired eyes and planned his retreat.
Fifty yards from the command center, a line of unusual trucks waited under camouflage netting. The vehicles resembled ordinary trucks with green canvas tents mounted on the back, but these tents hid a deadly cargo.
At Captain Honda"s command, soldiers pulled away the canvas covering from each truck, revealing two lethal-looking rockets mounted on rail launchers. The rockets, called Type 68s, had two hundred-pound high-explosive warheads.
Engines began coughing to life, and the air was filled with the smell of diesel fuel. The launchers slowly tilted upward, pointing their rockets at the overcast sky. There were twenty-five trucks, carrying a total of fifty Type 68 rockets, which were now being aimed at G.o.dzilla.
The monster was thirteen miles away.
As the minutes ticked away, the rockets were readied for firing.
Two miles south of the industrial tower where Lieutenant Takado, Nick, and Yoshi were packing up their gear and preparing to flee, three tanks of the First Battalion were racing through the countryside.
They were in full retreat.
Having been fortunate enough to escape G.o.dzilla"s attack, the Type 75 tanks sped over the rugged terrain as fast as they could go - about twenty-five miles per hour.
The turret hatch on the lead tank popped open, and Sergeant Tsuburaya, the tank commander, stuck his head out warily. He looked behind him.
d.a.m.n! he thought. He could still see G.o.dzilla. The monster"s head towered above a line of factory buildings. Sergeant Tsuburaya wasn"t sure what the range of G.o.dzilla"s fire was - and he didn"t want to find out.
"Drive faster!" he barked to the driver.
The man looked up at his commander. His face was dripping with sweat - the tanks air conditioner had failed hours before. He fought the controls. "I could only drive faster over a paved highway!" the driver declared with more than a touch of insubordination.
Sergeant Tsuburaya sneered at the man. "Then I"ll find you one!" he cried. Sitting up in the hatch, the sergeant scanned the horizon. There! he said to himself.
Behind a wall of trees and bushes, Sergeant Tsuburaya spotted a ribbon of roadway. "Turn right!" he screamed to his driver. Then he repeated the command to the other tank commanders. The three Type 75 tanks swung right. But when they neared the highway, they could find no opening in the tree line through which to drive.
"Crash through!" Sergeant Tsuburaya commanded the driver. The treads skidded in the dirt as the fifty-ton tank slammed into the tree line.
Suddenly, there was a flash of blue fire and a shower of sparks. Sergeant Tsuburaya ducked down into the tank as burning hot sparks rained down through the hatch and onto the crew.
"What happened?" the gunner asked the sergeant as he brushed ashes off his uniform. Sergeant Tsuburaya shook his head.
"I"m not sure," he said breathlessly. "I think we hit a telephone pole or something."
Sergeant Tsuburaya"s guess was close. His tank had actually hit an electrical transformer - a vital part of the power grid in the area. The collision had done minimal damage to the tank, which now sped down the highway with two others following behind. But much damage had been done to the transformer. In less than a second, the power had been knocked out in a ten-mile radius - a radius that included the factory tower.
Just as Nick, Yoshi, and Lieutenant Takado were about to leave the tiny hut, the bare overhead bulb suddenly went out. Nick looked up at it.
"The power must have gone out," he remarked casually. Then he paled and looked at Lieutenant Takado. She had a horrified expression on her face.
Yoshi looked up. He sensed something was wrong. Then it dawned on him, too. The elevator wouldn"t work without electric power.
"Are we trapped up here?" Nick immediately asked.
Lieutenant Takado shook her head uncertainly. "There is a ladder," she said. "But I don"t think it is very good... or very easy to get to."
"Let"s go see!" Nick said, rushing out the door and onto the catwalk.
A minute later, they were at the ladder. It seemed to reach all the way to the bottom of the tower, all right. But the problem was that the ladder was on the other end of a missing catwalk. The railing for the catwalk was there, but there was no platform.
"This sucks," said Nick. "What do we do now?"
Yoshi dropped his gear and examined the problem. His eyes traced the maze of girders, pipes, and cables.
"Look," he said after a moment. "I think we can climb up to that pipe there, swing over that girder there, then follow that thin pipe on the left... it leads right up to the ladder."
Nick and Lieutenant Takado listened again as he repeated his instructions.
"I can do it," the woman said at last.
Nick swallowed hard. I hate heights, he moaned. Then he nodded. "Yeah, I can do it, too." He looked down at his wrist.w.a.tch. "But we"d better abandon anything we can"t carry and get started right now. We"ve only got eleven minutes!"
The five-man crews of each of the rocket launchers were completing their final preparations. There was less than three minutes remaining before launch time.
Captain Honda circled the camp, making final preparations, too. As the moments ticked by, he readied the radio for final orders. With less than a minute left, he returned to the command center and approached General Kamata.
"All is in readiness," he informed the general.
"And the area - is it clear?" the general asked.
"The order to evacuate has been given to all field commanders, sir," he answered. "They have had fifteen minutes - and we are running out of time. G.o.dzilla is closing in."
"Has the observation aircraft reported in?" General Kamata asked.
"Hai," Captain Honda said. "He reports no tanks or armored personnel carriers in the area."
The general paused. Then he nodded his head grimly.
"Launch the rockets!" he commanded.
The order was forwarded to the vehicle commanders instantly. Within seconds, the roar of rocket engines filled the area as the first Type 68 solid-fuel rockets left their rail launchers and climbed into the gray skies.
Despite their fancy footwork, it had taken Nick, Yoshi, and Lieutenant Takado five minutes to reach the ladder, and another two minutes to climb to the bottom. Yoshi had reluctantly left behind his satellite link and the bigger of his two cameras. He had kept the small camera and all of his videoca.s.settes strapped on his back as he made the precarious climb down the tower.
Nick, too, had managed to keep his tape recorder and tapes.
When they were all on the ground again, Nick checked his watch. "The rocket attack is supposed to take place in less than four minutes," he said ominously.
"Let"s go," Lieutenant Takado replied, taking off at a run. The three of them crossed the factory floor, running past huge machines and a maze of pipes and tubes, bins and vats. Once, as they ran past a window, Nick pointed.
G.o.dzilla was very close to the factory. They could hear the sound of explosions and the collapse of buildings in the monster"s wake. Yoshi and Nick exchanged glances.
They reached a huge doorway made of corrugated steel. Lieutenant Takado swung the door open.
"The rental car is on the other side of that building," she said, pointing to another factory structure fifty yards across a paved, open area that looked like a parking lot.
"Let"s go -" Nick cried, but was interrupted when Lieutenant Takado grabbed his arm.
"Listen!" she hissed.
Nick and Yoshi paused. Then they heard it. A high-pitched whistling sound. It was getting louder - and closer.
"The rocket attack has begun!" Lieutenant Takado cried. "Get down on the ground! Over there!" She pointed to a huge piece of heavy machinery. The three of them dived under the metal structure just as the first rocket struck the earth outside.
"Cover your heads!" Lieutenant Takado cried as a terrible explosion rocked the entire factory complex. Another explosion followed, showering dust down on the cowering trio.
Boom! Boom! BOOM! BOOM! BAMMMMMM!
Blast after blast shook the building. One rocket struck the opposite end of the complex, blowing the roof right off it. After the blast, Nick could see the tower they once occupied through the hole in the roof. It was burning.
Then another rocket struck the factory. More dirt and debris rained down on them. The burning tower twisted, then slowly fell like a giant tree chopped down by a lumberjack. In the noise of the rocket attack, Nick couldn"t hear the sound of the tower striking the earth.
Outside, G.o.dzilla howled as rockets rained down on him. Explosions tore up the earth all around the creature. Some of the rockets struck G.o.dzilla directly, bringing more roars of rage.
G.o.dzilla was knocked off his mighty feet by the power of high-explosive sh.e.l.ls that kept on coming, and coming, and coming.
In the skies above the terrible killing field, the two-man crew of a small military scout aircraft observed the destruction. As the plane circled the sky, the pilot and co-pilot tried to see through the billowing smoke and blazing fires.
"G.o.dzilla is down!" the man in the observer"s position said. The pilot strained his eyes, but all he could see was the mighty beasts flashing tail. Suddenly, a blue-white jet of radioactive fire shot up into the sky from the chaos below them. The blast was undirected, but it startled the two men.
"There is a factory down there," the observer noted after he regained his composure. "Some of the rockets are hitting it."
"It"s a good thing there"s no one inside," the pilot remarked.
After an eternity of explosions, of choking smoke, of dust and dirt, the attack subsided.
Warily, Nick opened his eyes and raised his head. Smoke billowed through the factory, which was mostly shattered now. He saw Yoshi, who was bending over Lieutenant Takado. She was not moving.
Nick jumped up and crawled to her side. He looked at her.
"Is she okay?" he asked urgently.
Yoshi nodded. "She was. .h.i.t on the head by debris," he told Nick. "I have stopped the bleeding."