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.