It disappeared over the horizon seconds later.
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The day passed and night fell and still Mike Fitzgerald was sitting on the edge of the Jacksonville Beach wall, looking out to sea.
The stench that had permeated the air during the day was long gone now. The rising tide had washed many of the dead bodies away, cleansing the sand as it did so. Now the place was absolutely quiet-eerily so. Not so much like a field of battle, Fitzgerald thought, more like a cemetery.
He had been waiting all day for Hunter to return. But now, as the night grew darker, he knew the chances were decreasing that he would ever see his friend again.
Even by the most optimistic calculations, the Harrier's fuel would have run out by midafternoon, four and a half hours ago. And as far as Fitzgerald knew, the jumpjet did not carry any air-sea rescue provisions, such as an inflatable life raft or flare guns.
Still, he spent every second scanning the horizon. And just a few minutes after sunset, he spotted a light way off in the distance, coming right for him.
His hopes alternately rose and sank as he watched the light approach. Although it was moving slow enough to be attached to a hovering aircraft, its color was bright white, almost fluorescent in nature.
He knew the Harrier carried no such light.
Still, the light came straight for him, and within another minute, he heard the distinctive sound of its loud engines. It was at that moment Fitzgerald gave up any hope that it was Hunter. These were not jet engines he heard.
Rather,
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they powered a helicopter.
The light was attached to the snout of a LAMPS ocean-recon helo. As Fitzgerald watched, the aircraft turned over the shoreline and slowly moved up and down the beach, its occupants obviously observing the now-silent battlefield.
After a few moments, the copter went into a hover close by Fitzgerald, and at one point caught him in its searchlight beam.
A minute later, it landed with a roar on the boardwalk next to the breakwater.
Three men alighted from the chopper. All were dressed very strangely. Two of them were wearing a sort of green, yellow, and red costume that would have looked more at home in a comic book. The third was wearing a long black cape over a black uniform and hat.
As the gaudily uniformed men began inspecting something underneath the chopper, the man in the black cape walked over to Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald knew the people in the chopper were not unfriendly. They would have attempted to shoot him had they been. Now as the lone man walked closer to him in the gathering doom, he saw he was not only wearing a cape but also a black mask over his eyes.
"My name is Wolf," the man called out to Fitzgerald from about fifteen feet away. "Are you with the United Americans?"
Fitzgerald replied that he was.
"My name is Mike Fitzgerald," he said, walking over to the man. "I talked over the radio with your intelligence officer aboard the New Jersey just before the battle."
Wolf immediately recognized Fitzgerald's name. "You spoke with Commander Bjordson," he told the Irishman. "He was killed in the closing moments of the battle."
The two men stood and stared at each other for a long moment. Finally Wolf asked: "Are you the only one who survived the air raids?"
Fitzgerald slowly shook his head. "No, there are some others," he said soberly.
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Wolf let out a long, troubled sigh. "We saw those airplanes on our radar screen," he said. "We got a warning off to your base . . ."
Fitzgerald nodded. "Yes, I know," he said. "And because of that, and two other warnings, we were able to save many of our men. But all our airplanes are gone, as is all of our fuel. They put us out of action inside of five minutes."
"We tried to locate them after it happened," Wolf told him, his words deep and clear, despite the thick Scandinavian accent. "We sailed out off the coast all day, looking for anything large enough on our radar screens that might be an aircraft carrier. But we found nothing."
"You weren't the only one looking," Fitzgerald replied.
He quickly told him about Hunter's last mission. Wolf was silent for several long moments after hearing the news.
"It's hard to believe that he's gone, too," he said finally, wrapping his cape around him. "We only met a few days ago, and then only for less than a day.
Yet I felt like I had known him all my life."
"From what I hear, you and he were very similar," Fitzgerald replied. "You both had the same calling in life, you might say . . ."
Wolf just shrugged and nervously tugged at the corners of his mask. "You've heard of me then?" he asked.
Fitz just nodded.
"The Wingman and I were alike in many ways, yes," he said, embarrassed to admit the secret of his notoriety. "Europe is my home and I love it as much as he did America. We are similar in that we wanted to change things for the good in what is inherently an evil world. That's all. It's really what all men should strive for. Some people just depend on me to do it for them."
Fitzgerald turned and looked out to sea. "Well, we always depended on him . .
." he began sadly. "We always counted on him to come through. And he never failed us. Even when he went up to that farm-'Skyfire' was the name, I think-and finally got back with his woman, we had to drag him out and get him involved in all of this
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madness."
Fitzgerald had to pause for a moment. Suddenly his words were having a hard time coming out.
"And now, if he is gone," he went on, "then me and my colleagues are the ones to blame, really. We knew he loved his country more than anything else and we used that to such an advantage that he couldn't ever shut it out. He could never escape it. He could never put a barrier between us and himself. It may have finally been the death of him."
At this point, Wolf also looked out on to the empty, darkening sea. Then in a deeply sad tone, he said: "Now you know why I wear a mask . . ."
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