Godzilla 2000 Read Free

"I'll go notify the Intelligence team," he announced.
    The colonel turned to leave but paused. "When do you want to meet him?" Krupp asked.
    Taggart sighed. "Give me ten minutes or so to look over his evaluation."
    Krupp nodded, then saluted.
    Taggart returned the salute, then sat down into his chair as the other officer departed, leaving the general alone in his tiny office, with his troubled thoughts. As he slumped in his chair, he gathered the scattered pages on his desk. The Project was everything right now. He'd given the past year to it - a year that should have been spent in quiet retirement.
    But my country called, and I answered, one last time, he thought bitterly.
    Taggart sighed. The problem wasn't in serving his country, the problem was the mission itself.
    I spent my life training to defend America from foreign enemies , he reasoned. I trained to fight men, not monsters.
    The Soviet threat was gone. In its place was a new menace and a new mission. Now the combined might of the armed services of these United States was retooling - to go into the pest-control business.
    General Taggart snorted with contempt as he thought back to the events surrounding the reappearance of Godzilla months before, and how an obscure article he wrote in the 1980s for a strategic studies journal had returned to haunt him.
    Taggart had boldly written how certain weapon systems could be modified to defend against the unlikely reappearance of Godzilla, or another monster like him.
    Of course, Taggart reminded himself, nobody really expected Godzilla to show up again.
    But Godzilla did show up again, just ten years later. And just when Taggart was ready to retire to his house in California, some pencil-necked adviser to the President of the United States remembered his obscure little article.
    "Well," Taggart reminded himself, repeating the familiar words - his personal mantra - "you knew the job was dangerous when you took it." And Taggart had taken it. Truth to tell, he had jumped at it.
    He was bored after the first six months of retirement, and the call from the Pentagon sounded awfully good.
    Taggart recalled the uphill battle he had fought through the corridors of power in the nation's capital. It had been tough convincing his superiors that his crazy plan was sound and sensible. His reputation convinced the military men of his ability to find and lead the perfect team to accomplish the difficult - some said impossible - assignment.
    After three months of working on the project, General Taggart was beginning to envy Colonel Krupp. Nobody would blame the colonel if things went wrong. And right now, it seemed, everything was going wrong.
    Their weapons weren't ready. Their aircraft weren't ready. Their budget wasn't approved. Hell, they didn't even have office space. Well , Taggart reminded himself, what did you expect? Catered meals and a cheery fireplace?
    The President of the United States and the boys up on Capitol Hill wanted Taggart to get the job done, but nobody wanted to spend more of the taxpayers' money doing it, even though the public was clamoring for protection against monsters - or kaiju , the Japanese term for "giant monsters," which the scientists were calling the creatures.
    So, after they took the trouble to hire him for the job, General Taggart was forced to go to the Oval Office personally to negotiate a budget with a president he didn't like, and hadn't even voted for.
    "And why should the nation invest even a tiny percentage of defense spending to fight monsters?" the president asked.
    Taggart supplied all the stock answers. We're the only superpower left. If we don't do it, who will? ... It's our duty to be prepared for any threat against the people of this nation. Who knows what type of creature might yet emerge?
    They were all sound arguments, and Taggart almost believed them. In the end, though, the president needed a photo op, and the guys building Raptor-One and Raptor-Two were good, card-carrying union men