Scissure was gaining ground and regular missiles caused little to no damage, the only viable option was a nuclear airstrike and it needed to be done quick. Air Vice Marshal Steven Roberton and Warrant Officer Robert Swanwick finally gave the order and issued that the people living in Downtown had about an hour to evacuate, as the blast radius would eradicate most of the zone. Air command issued all fighter pilots to return to base at the same time as the evacuation alarm was sounded over the city. Everybody was supposed to get out of there.
Her breath got caught in her throat and there was a not-so-funny feeling tightening in her guts. For a moment she just sat there, motionless, trying to wrap her mind around what she had just heard. One hour…who could evacuate in one hour? Was the military helping at all? From the information that had been relayed by the Air Vice Marshall, no military ground personnel were to enter the perimeter, only fighter jet pilots. No one would be getting those who couldn't get out of their own – like her parents.
Kylie had used the car to get to work, her parents hadn't had a car ever since they moved into the red brick house in Lindfield, with public transportation just around the corner and shops a couple of blocks away. So there was no car they could take to get out. Maybe there were some helpful neighbors, offering them a ride out of the danger zone.
It was easy for the fighter pilots to get out on time, they had fast and strong engines. Kylie couldn't believe that the government just gave everybody 60 minutes to clear out of the danger zone. They should have known earlier, they must have known earlier! Nobody could just come up with an idea of such a magnitude and shoot a nuclear missile only 5 minutes later. The nuclear strike had always been on the table, it had been discussed in length by her team and among her superiors, and it should have been possible to start evacuation much sooner.
After contemplating for what seemed like an eternity – but it was really just a couple of seconds since time was not something she had to spare – she finally breathed in harshly and drew herself up from the chair. She took the satellite phone and her laptop and made for the parking lot. She could already see her car, pushed the remote control button to open it almost hysterically and had to focus to catch her breath and still her shaking hand in order to jam the key in the ignition. She had to close her eyes for a second and bite back the desperation until she managed to turn it on. Quickly, she reversed out of her parking spot and made for the main entrance. When she had to stop while the gate was being opened, she plugged in the satellite phone and dialed home. There was no answer. She dialed again – and again – and again. Still, there was no answer.
She sped dangerously – desperate as she was – driving as fast as she could back to Lindfield, back to where her parents lived. With moderate traffic, it was normally a 45-minute drive, so even if she somehow got there in time, she had absolutely no clue of how to make it back out of the radiation radius before the shockwave hit. Yet, she decided it was not something to worry about just now, and buried the uncomfortable thought deep in a corner of her mind.
Suddenly, the comm link she had forgotten to turn off in all the haste went crazy. Static, loud white noise, intermittent transmissions. She had just left the Towra Point Peninsula, which harbored the base compound and was now speeding along Captain Cook Drive.
"… need to get … zone of destruction …"
"… orders are … base immediately … no delay accepted …"
"… am at base! Need to return … urgently!
She fumbled at the buttons on the little black box hanging from her belt to identify the frequency until she found the active transmission.
"You are to remain at base!" The static slowly receded when the channel settled.
"Fuck you!" That, in turn, was very clear.
Kylie was almost sure that this was 149, Hansen, cursing. She had gotten quite used to his tone of voice over the last 30 hours. She had no idea however who the other person was, she supposed it was an operator of one of the four military bases.
"Get me a chopper!" She heard Hansen screaming. "I need a damn chopper!"
"Your orders are to remain at base!" The male voice on the other side was surprisingly calm and almost bored, he had most likely repeated that order over a thousand times now – which he probably had. "You need to follow evacuation protocol instructions!"
An impressively long string of old-fashioned and modern swearwords could be heard from Hansen's comm but the other person did not engage back.
Suddenly, the connection cracked and broken white noise set in for a second. Then, Hansen was in her ear. Had he just changed to a private frequency? How could he even know her frequency?
"Towra Base! Come in!"
The shock of being called out like that made her gasp and she realized that she had given herself away. He knew that she was listening.
She sighed. "149, go for Towra Base."
"What is your name?" he asked – once, then again when she didn't answer. His changing tone of voice showed that he was getting impatient when he had to ask for a third time. "What is your name?"
What would it be to him, anyway? She gritted her teeth in frustration but answered nevertheless. "Kylie, Kylie McLeod."
"Ok, Kylie. My name's Herc Hansen, and I need you to listen to me!" Kylie had almost expected a much harsher reply from the man on the other end of the comm, and was taken aback by the desperation she could detect in his words. "I need you to tell me where I can find a chopper, like right about now!" There was a short pause and Kylie wanted to laugh at herself for ever believing that he could find it in himself to say anything nice.
However, when Hansen came back on, his voice had an even more distressed tinge to it. "Can you please do that for me?"
"I am in my car, I don't have access to that type of information!"
"Yes, you do. You're in on the tactical, you know which aircrafts did not get called in for this. They sent all the big guns, but I just need a chopper."
There was silence. "Why?" was all Kylie could say.
"You're wasting my time, Kylie. Don't ask stupid questions, just get me a fucking chopper." He sounded more desperate than ever, but seemed to be back to his usual insulting behavior for a moment. "Please!"
There was something in his voice that nearly broke her heart and then she understood. He was trying to get someone out – just as she was.
"Where are you?" she asked in a hushed voice.
"I am close to Glenbrook Base."
Glenbrook, Glenbrook, she remembered that base.
"Do you think you can get in?" Kylie had no idea what she could do for him once he was in, but it was hard to think about much else, as she was going at a speed much too fast for the old car and consequently swerving in every bend along the way. She had hit the curb in more than one occasion and almost lost control over the vehicle just a couple of minutes ago.
"Yeah!"
"Go to Hangar 29, it's a small hangar to the left of the main entrance. There used to be an OH-58D Kiowa right behind it, but I'll be honest with you, I haven't been to Glenbrook so I have no idea if it is still there or if it is filled up." There was silence on the other end.
"I am sorry, Hansen, that's all I can do." she said, her voice almost a whisper.
Knuckles white in stark contrast to the black leather of the steering wheel, Kylie steered the speeding car along Captain Cook Drive, trying to think ahead and decide which way would be shortest to get out of the bay. There were only two options, it was either taking the three lane road through Taren Point and cross over Captain Cook Bridge or the much smaller Port Hacking Road, which would lead her through the Sylvania Waters. The latter was much more direct but she suspected the narrow streets cluttered with abandoned cars but as she got closer, she realized that the route across the bridge would not take her anywhere. The monumental bridge was all but ruins.
Frustrated, she jammed the car in reverse and raced back to the intersection that would take her to Sylvania and to her relief, found it not as clogged as she had feared and once she reached Prices Highway, the going turned surprisingly smooth and fast.
The comm startled her and she almost lost control over the car, when Hansen came back on the line, loud engine noise surrounding him, about 15 minutes after they last talked. She had just passed Blackhurst.
"Towra Base, come in!"
"149, go for Towra." She responded quickly this time.
"Kylie, I got the chopper."
Whow, he was fast, she thought.
"I am going in. Is there anything else I need to know. Anything you can tell me?"
"Are you serious?" She almost laughed. "Apart from there being a Kaiju on the loose and a thermonuclear bomb on its way to blow a good part of the city into oblivion?"
"Cut the sarcasm and tell me what you know. Were there any updates?"
Kylie outright hated him in that moment. "You are not in charge to give me any orders, you hear me?" Her voice had raised a couple of notches. "I helped you get a chopper which will most likely cost us both our careers and you're still bossing me around. I don't know if you are aware of it, but everybody has family in the area and they are all trying to hopefully get them out on time. So it's not only you! Do you think that I am out here driving recklessly just for the fun of it?"
Once again he was silent, but the comm stayed live. "My wife and son…" His voice was nothing more than a hoarse whisper. It was the first time Kylie felt Hansen's hard macho-exterior slip away, he was human after all. "They are in different parts of the city, so I need to know the ETA of the bomb. Please, Kylie…"
Her heart broke a little and she took her eyes off the road to train them on the small clock in the middle console of the car. Under her breath, she calculated the time until impact, trying desperately to remember at what time the bomb was to be launched. She remembered that she left the compound approximately 5 minutes after the countdown of the drop was given and judging from the distance she had covered at the high speed she was going, she must have been on the road for about 9-10 minutes. This was nowhere near exact, so she preferred to err on the short side.
She swallowed hard. "I have no way of confirming the exact time, but I guess that it's been somewhere between 15 to 20 minutes. I didn't really have a profound look at the clock when Marshall Roberton gave the order, so I'd say that it might been even a little over 20 minutes." Her voice trembled, and she didn't care if he knew. Any human being with a working set of feelings would probably have theirs in the same tangled mess as herself.
"That's good enough for me!" he said, his own voice also not back to its normal hard tone. "Thank you, Kylie, you have no idea how much this means to me."
"Hansen! NO!" She shouted while hanging onto the steering wheel hard when she sped too hard into a bend. "You cannot go in just like that with that little amount of Intel! What if I'm wrong about the time? Please! You cannot go in like that! You just can't!" WHAT ABOUT MY FAMILY? WHAT ABOUT MY CHILD? She wanted to yell at him. She wanted to tell him to go and also try and rescue her family so badly but the words just didn't come out. Whatever he was planning to do, he would probably die in the process anyway.
The snort was audible over the comm. "Watch me, precious!"
So that was that. Simple. "Good luck…" was all that she had left to say, and it came out broken and hoarse, while tears brimming in her eyes. She was sure that Hansen would perish in that undertaking she could only consider to be a suicide mission. It felt very much like saying goodbye. Absentmindedly, she drew the back of her hand across her eyes to wipe away the tears, sweat, and ultimately, the tension that was just too much to bear.
"Hansen!" she screamed again, hitting the curb hard. She had to swerve a gaping hole in the street, most likely caused by a stray missile that had hit the road and torn it open, but as she had not been entirely focused, her reactions were way too harsh. She hit the brakes hard as a last resort – what a stupid thing to do at over 70 mph/h – and skidded straight into a tree. Then the comm system went silent and the world faded into darkness.