“Goddamn, I’m so sorry, Rebecca!” Griffin said as he helped me sit up. “We didn’t know it was you. We could only see a shape through the dust. We thought you were one of those things.”

I finally figured out I wasn’t shot, that the suit had protected me yet again. “Good thing I’m wearing the NBC suit,” I said. “Ironman, eat your heart out.”

Griffin and Smitty let out a nervous laugh.

I slowly regained my composure. But then I realized Ethan and Daniel were nowhere to be seen.

“Where are the others?” I asked. “Where’s Daniel?”

“They’ve taken up defensive positions around the Osprey,” Smitty answered. “Or what’s left of it. They’re on the other side of the park. We’ve called for backup. Ramirez is on her way. We’re trying to get an ETA, but we’re having some trouble getting in contact with her now. It seems the closer she gets to Sydney the worse the interference from the storm gets.”

They helped me to my feet and we made our way across the park to the twisted remains of the Osprey.

Daniel was near the cockpit. He was on the radio, trying to contact Ramirez. Ethan was next to him, keeping watch.

The radio seemed to be full of static. Daniel threw the speaker into the cockpit and swore. “It’s no use. Too much interference.”

He lowered his head, defeated.

“Got something to cheer you up,” Griffin said.

Daniel looked up and saw me. “Rebecca! Oh my God! You’re…”

“Alive?” I said.

“Yeah. And… and you’re OK?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I was able to pull my chute after I was sucked out of the Osprey. I hit the ground pretty hard, but the NBC suit must’ve absorbed most of the impact.”

I got the feeling that Daniel wanted to jump up and give me a hug or something. He couldn’t contain the smile on his face. But he held back. Maybe he didn’t want to show his emotions in front of the guys. Or maybe I was just reading into it too much.

Ethan moved over to me and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. He was smiling as well. “You’re a tough girl, Rebecca. Glad to have you back. Glad to have you on the team.”

I guess my fears of being left behind were completely unfounded.

I looked at the mangled, smoking remains of the Osprey. “So, what the hell hit us?”

“We don’t know.” Ethan answered.

“Did someone shoot us?” I asked. “Was it a missile or something?”

“We don’t know. There’s no evidence of artillery fire or anything like that. If we were hit by a missile there would be burn marks. But there’s nothing.”

I looked closely at the wreckage and noticed there were no bullet holes, no blackened scorch marks from any explosives. Maybe we collided with something? A communications tower? A crane?

Whatever it was, it did quite a number on the Osprey.

“All right, let’s get it together,” Ethan continued. “We can only assume Ramirez is on her way. We need to get to an extraction point. Our best chance is to make our way to one of the helipads in the city. The closest building is the Queen Victoria Building. It’s a long building with a large helipad on the roof. It’s only a few blocks from here. The sooner we get there, the better. We get to high ground; we can consolidate, gather ourselves, check our supplies and continue with the mission. Any questions?”

“No, sir,” the men said in unison.

Before we left the wreckage, the guys were able to salvage a few supplies. Mostly bandages and hand towels and other first aid supplies. But luckily we were able to make some improvised bandanas with the towels to cover our mouths and noses. They even found some protective goggles. The guys were pretty happy about that. Apparently prolonged exposure to this kind of dust was bad for your airways and could do permanent damage to your eyeballs if you were unlucky. And now that I thought about it, my mouth was a little dry and tasted gritty. I hadn’t noticed it before because I think I was just too damn terrified.

When everyone had their goggles on and their bandannas around their faces, I thought to myself that they kind of looked like modern day ninja. Heavily armed, futuristic ninja.

I was extremely glad I had found them. It was nice having the soldiers on my side instead of running for my life from them.

The guys did one more quick check of their rifles and their ammo before we set off for the Queen Victoria Building. We made our way slowly but purposefully through the city streets. We moved in pairs. Griffin and Ethan would run ahead about twenty yards or to the next point of cover. Then they would wave Daniel and myself forward as they provided cover for us. Smitty brought up the rear.

There was a few times where Ethan and Griffin disappeared completely from view when they ran ahead and we had to wait for them to whistle us up. It was a tense wait whenever they disappeared.

Apparently this method of moving was called, ‘leapfrogging’. It was slow going but we were deep behind enemy lines and we needed to take every precaution. To make matters worse the dust storm showed no signs of letting up, which slowed us down even more. Visibility was still only a few feet.

Luckily, the dust wasn’t radioactive. I had to admit, I hadn’t given it much thought since I crash landed. I guess I was a little distracted. But apparently Daniel had checked the radiation levels when we first flew into the city. He said there was no fallout from the nuclear warheads the military had used. It was possible that the prevailing winds had taken the fallout further out west, away from the city. From what he could tell this dust storm was natural. I asked him if a prolonged dust storm like this was normal and he said he’d never seen anything like it.

The hardest part of moving through the city streets was all the abandoned cars. On the one hand they provided pretty good cover. But on the other hand, anything could’ve been hiding inside them. All the windows were caked in dust so we couldn’t see inside. We just had to be ultra-careful.

After about thirty minutes of leapfrogging and slow going we had made it all the way into the middle of Sydney. We were standing directly opposite the Queen Victoria Building, right next to a giant bronze statue of Queen Victoria herself. She was sitting on her throne with a giant scepter. It was the most life like bronze statue I’d ever seen. I was sort of half expecting her to stand up and shout, ‘off with their heads!’ or, ‘who dares disturb my slumber!?’ Or something like that. I don’t know why I imagined her as being evil. Maybe I was starting to expect the worst in people.

We were standing in the middle of a main intersection. According to the street signs the roads that intersected were George Street and Park Street.

Ethan was looking up at the Queen Victoria Building. I could see why he’d chosen this building for the extraction point. It was extremely long, at least the length of an entire city block. It would be a nice big target for Ramirez to land on.

Ethan was trying to see if there was an easy way up on to the roof, when suddenly the red dust stopped swirling and the roar of the wind died down to a whisper.

We could hear the engines and the thumping of rotor blades. It had to be the backup Osprey.

Ramirez had made it.

And in world record time, I thought. The twin rotor blades were loud, the noise amplified by the buildings and skyscrapers. The sounds of the aircraft were bouncing and echoing off the concrete structures. But even though the Osprey sounded like it was right on top of us, we still couldn’t see it through the dust.

All we needed to do was get to the top of the Queen Victoria Building. Then we would be on board and off the streets.

“Come on,” Ethan said. “We need to get to the roof. We need to make sure Ramirez can see us.”

We were about to move when suddenly we heard what sounded like metal shrieking and breaking. It was the same awful sound we heard when we crashed, the same awful metallic sound I heard when the military blew up the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It was the piercing sound of metal moving and twisting unnaturally.

Then we heard an explosion. We could just make out a fireball through the thick red dust.

And then the Osprey appeared, hurtling towards us.

“Take cover!” Ethan shouted.

We dived out of the way as the awkward looking aircraft smashed into the gridlock of cars in the middle of the road, right in the middle of the intersection. Daniel pulled me down and I covered my head as the twin rotor blades chopped up great big chunks of the road.