Greg Cox - Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization

That’s what they came for . Ford’s hopes for rescue faded. The searchers weren’t looking for survivors at all. They’re after a working nuke.

Defeated and at the end of his rope, Ford slumped against the bottom chassis of a blackened Jeep that was lying sideways next to the river. He slid to the ground and watched numbly as the ten-foot-long re-entry vehicle was loaded aboard the larger of the helicopters. Once that was completed, the airmen took turns being hoisted back up into the smaller escort chopper. Just before he departed, the final man took one last look around. His eyes widened as he spotted Ford sagging upon the ground, next to the trashed Jeep.

“Hold it!” the airmen yelled. “We have a man down!”

The entire ward had become a triage unit. Doctors and nurses, just like Sam’s mom, were super-busy trying to take care of all the hurt people who kept pouring into the hospital, some of them from as far as Nevada. All the blood and confusion scared Sam, who wanted his mommy, but he stayed at the nurse’s desk like he had been told. A new coloring book rested on his lap, ignored and forgotten, while he stared in horrified fascination at the TV set on the wall.

“Military personnel are assisting in the evacuations,” a government lady said on the TV. “We’re urging civilians who have not already left to stay off the roads and make their way immediately to shelter.”

A group of soldiers marched through the ward. Their helmets and uniforms looked a lot like the ones his dad wore. Sam looked away from the TV hopefully.

“Daddy?”

He hopped off his seat and tottered after them.

Elle was at her wit’s end. Just when she thought they couldn’t possibly cope with one more patient, another batch of casualties arrived from the disaster zone, all requiring immediate attention. She’d been running herself ragged for nearly twenty-four hours now, with only short breaks for food and naps. She hadn’t even had a chance to go home yet. Poor Sam had practically been living at the nurse’s station. The only good thing about the ongoing crisis was that she wasn’t worrying every second about Ford and whatever danger he might be in at this very moment.

She glanced anxiously at her wristwatch. Ford had said he’d be here by now and yet there was no sign of him. And no word either.

“Ford, where are you?”

More National Guardsmen invaded the ward. To her dismay, they started rounding up children and critical patients and herding them toward the exits. She hurried toward them.

“Wait, wait!” she protested. “These patients are my responsibility. Where are you taking them?”

A Guardsman took a moment to a moment to answer her. “Across the bridges,” he said gruffly. “Critical and children only.”

Elle was caught off-guard. They were evacuating the hospital now? Did that mean the monsters were that close already?

Laura Watkins joined them, escorting another group of children. “The shelters are going to fill up fast, Elle,” she said. “Trust me, they’ll be much safer outside the city.” The older nurse revealed that she had been assigned to go along with the children and supervise their care at the emergency centers outside the city. “I can take Sam, too.”

Take Sam? Away from her?

Elle realized that Laura was offering as a friend, but she shook her head vehemently.

“No,” she said. “No way. My father-in-law’s dead. I have no idea where my husband is. The phones aren’t working, the roads are closed…” Elle couldn’t imagine not knowing where her son was, too. “I’m as spread out and freaked out right now as I can handle. Sam’s staying with me.”

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.

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.