"Well, Murph, you done good." Hunter told him. "Hang in there."
"But where are you going, sir?" the sailor asked, nervous that the man rallied the small but effective defense was now heading off. Other defenders started to air the same view.
"Don't worry, guys," Hunter said, "I'll be back."
With that, he was sprinting for the base's main gate, the precious black box firmly in his grasp.
It was close to noon when the second wave of 12 Skyraiders appeared over the western horizon and bore down on the base again. But things would be different this time.
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The A-l flight leader looked over his shoulder and caught a glint of reflection coming out of the sun. It was moving too fast to be one of his Skyraiders. In fact, it was moving too fast to be any other kind of prop airplane. It must be ...
Before the pilot could get his thought out, his airplane exploded into a thousand flaming pieces, the victim of one of the three Sidewinder missiles heading toward his formation. As soon as the other A-l pilots saw the explosion they began to react. But just as quickly, two more of their number fell victim to air-to-air missiles.
Before the Skyraider pilots knew it, a red-white-and-blue F-16 was spinning wildly through their formation. It came out of nowhere. A thick, steady cough of flame was coming out of its nose. Pieces of Skyraiders were flying everywhere. Not one of the A-1 pilots thought of shooting back. The F-16 pilot was acting like a wild man behind the controls. Every time the jet fired, its cannons hit something.
The would-be attackers tried to scatter. The F-16 launched another Sidewinder.
The heatseeking missile was attracted to a hot-running Skyraider piston-driven engine, slamming home just below the pilot compartment. The A-l flipped over and went down. Another Sidewinder clipped the tail portion of an A-1, splitting it in two before carrying on and impacting on another luckless Skyraider nearby. A third missile managed to lodge itself into the underbelly of another airplane, pausing a few frightful seconds before exploding.
Its six missiles spent, the F-16 roared after a group 173
of three retreating A-ls, cannons blazing. One by one the airplanes dropped into the sea. By the time it was over, only two of the 12 Skyraiders escaped, and that was only because the F-16 broke off the attack. The last they saw of the jet it was streaking off to the east and climbing. Whoever the hell the crazy man in the F-16 was, he had singlehandedly prevented the second wave of attackers from going in and finishing off the targeted base and harbor.
The A-l pilots knew their employers were not going like the story they would have to tell them . . .
Back on the ground at Pearl, a combined sailor-tribe gunmen force had watched the spectacular air battle off in the distance. They cheered as the surviving A-ls scurried away. They would not have to fight off another attack. Then, they saw a lone airplane was criss-crossing the sky high above them, leaving behind long, white contrails that eventually took the shape of a huge "W."
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Hunter returned to his base in Oregon only long enough to turn over the black box to Jones, get a quick briefing and make preparations to take off again.
This time, he was flying the captured Yak. His destination: Devil's Tower, Wyoming.
Jones had filled him in on the situation in the Badlands. Another convoy had been attacked; this time 31 airliners were shot down passing over the northern top of South Dakota. This was the last convoy to attempt to fly over the middle of the continent. By now, every convoy jockey knew that someone was shooting at them from the Badlands. It would still be a matter of days before they knew just who it was.
Jones told Hunter he had ordered both PAAC-Oregon and PAAC-San Diego on to a First Class Red Alert. The Texans had taken the same action. Dozer and some of his airborne troops were at the moment flying in the Crazy Eights and scouring the western edge of the Badlands, looking for an acceptably large place where the PAAC jet fighters and other aircraft could set down. Once this forward base of operations
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was found, Jones planned to start sending elements of PAAC aircraft east.
On the other side of the Badlands, St. Louie was organizing an airlift evacuation of Football City. Huge C-5 transports, courtesy of the Texas Air Force, began shuttling in and out, their routes being covered by Texas jet fighters. It was a strategic and intelligent retreat. The two Circle army divisions closing in on the city were too big and too well-equipped to try to fight off, especially since Football City was still recovering from its massive war against The Family. Instead, St. Louie sent his squadron of elite F-20 jet fighters to harass the advancing enemy, giving him enough time to lift out his small civilian population and his well-equipped army.
Mike Fitzgerald of the Syracuse Aerodrome was also forced to bug out. He knew it was a matter of hours before The Circle would be at his southern flank.
Although his famous F-105 fighter-bombers could have inflicted much damage on the advancing army, he agreed with Jones, in a scrambled conversation they had had the night before, that the splendid Aerodrome Defense Force would be needed in the effort to take out the Soviet SAMs in the Badlands. Early that morning, a long convoy of Free Canadian army trucks and buses arrived at the Aerodrome and started loading on anyone at the outpost who wanted to get to the relative safety of the country to the north. Most of the people at Syracuse took advantage of the offer. As soon as the non-combatants were evacuated, Fitzgerald ordered his regiment-sized ADF armored unit to head out in their own trucks,
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driving east toward Lake Erie, warning and picking up civilians along the way before diverting into Free Canada by way of Buffalo. A contingent of Fitzgerald's ground troops —the World War II GI-clad Border Guardsmen — were the last to go. As ordered, they had destroyed anything valuable they couldn't carry, burned all the left-behind food and poisoned the water and liquor supply. After detonating huge blockbuster bombs along the center of the Aerodrome's runways, the soldiers jumped in their big Chinook helicopters and flew away. When The Circle Army reached the Aerodrome less than a day later, they found the place smoking and empty.
Long before he evacuated Syracuse, however, Fitzgerald had dispatched a large contingent of his undercover agents into areas coming under control of The Circle. These spies would be the eyes and ears of the democracies — first-hand witnesses to the madness that was sweeping the,continent east of the Mississippi.
Already their reports were filtering in ...
All across the eastern half of the continent, they said, regular army units loyal to The Circle were sweeping through small towns and villages, signing up eager recruits and impressing the not-so-enthusiastic, to fight in "The War Against the West." It was a road show rivaling the fervor of a religious revival. Walls and billboards were painted and posters plastered up anywhere and everywhere —all proclaiming the righteousness of attacking the governments of Texas and west of the Rockies. "Manifest Destiny!" one poster read,
"Recover our profitable lands! The
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oil of Texas, the mineral rich mountains of Colorado, the beachfront property of California are being held unfairly by the greedy governments of the West."
Only by war could the people of the East claim what was "rightfully" theirs.
The rallying cry was all that was needed for the thousands of rogue soldiers who had been wandering the countryside, especially in the south ever since the break-up of the Mid-Aks and the destruction of The Family. Making war was their trade. Most of them carried a festering hatred for the forces that now made up the armies of the West, for it was these same warriors who had defeated them in the Northeast and at Football City. Along in the ranks with these veterans were the raiders, bandits and outlaws who knew it was more profitable to fight with an army than on their own. Many grounded air pirates—no longer able to keep a working jet fighter in order—joined up too, a number of whom became officers in the ever-expanding army.
But it was the raw youth of the East —teenagers who were too young to fight in the big war and had grown older in New Order America —who filled the infantry ranks of The Circle Army. Living a hand-to-mouth existence for several years made these recruits particularly vulnerable to Viktor's brand of adolescent propaganda. It was widely rumored that, per Viktor's orders, the chow at the recruiting camps was liberally sprinkled with feel-good drugs. Long hours of indoctrination followed for a new recruit, along with rudimentary military training and a promise of a bag of gold once The Circle captured California.
In
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six weeks, The Circle had its "perfect grunt": drug-addicted, brainwashed, armed and foaming at the mouth.
So with this unhealthy mixture of cynical battle-hardened veterans, whipped-up teenage fodder and many freed prisoners, habitual criminals, psychotic murderers thrown in, the Circle Army could boast close to 180,000 men under arms. All under the tight control of the minions of the mysterious Viktor—a man they had never laid eyes on in the flesh.
And conveniently unmentioned in all the hoopla was that the Russians would be providing air defense cover over the frontline in the catastrophic war to come
. . .
Hunter started to get shivers about a hundred miles south of Devil's Tower.
The sun was just setting ,on the day he began in Hawaii. His body was pumping with adrenaline. The news of the frenzy sweeping the East was upsetting, but he couldn't let it get to him. The importance of the recovery mission had long ago overridden the less human concerns, such as peace of mind, eating a good meal or sleeping. His concentration had to remain focused on retrieving the second black box. The massacred convoys. The retreats from Syracuse and Football City. The Russian SAMs. The Circle. The slaughter that was about to begin. Dominique. Everything had to become secondary. Just get the box, he told himself.
Yet it was the spookiness of the landscape below 179
him that was nearly overwhelming. The fact that the rugged countryside of Wyoming was now supposedly the home to many renegade Indian gangs did nothing to lighten up the situation. If he believed just half the stories going around, then were he forced down here for any reason, his chances of getting out were just as bad —if not worse—than being stranded in the Badlands.
Devil's Tower was a conical mountain with a strangely flattened-out summit, located in the northeast corner of Wyoming. Theories ranging from a backfired volcano to an ancient landing site for UFOs were thrown out as explanations for its unusual shape. Whatever the reason, Hunter's own deep psyche and extraordinary senses all signaled that strange forces resided near the place.
Airline as well as service pilots avoided going near the remote area whenever possible, pointing to screwed up instruments and incorrect readings any time they had to overfly the place. And reports of strange lights in the skies had become routine over the years.
And once again, no one could ever accuse General Josephs of not having a vivid imagination: The second black box was reportedly hidden in "an altar-like stone at the very center of the Tower's flat peak." For Hunter, the whole thing was like something out of a science fiction movie.
He brought the Yak because he knew a vertical landing on the Tower's flat peak was the only way he could retrieve the black box quickly. But as the airplane drew closer to the place, it started acting up. At first he thought it was just the shitty Russian
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cockpit instruments. The airplane was so crude by American jet fighter standards, even he had a hard time figuring out just what every button and lever was really for.
But now everything seemed to be going haywire at once. Lights flashed on his panel simultaneously indicating that he was out of fuel, half full and at full fuel maximum. His altimeters —one electric, one pressure-driven — told him he was 10 feet off the ground or at 87,400 feet, take your pick. At one point, his "Missiles Away" indicator light came on, went off, came back on then started to blink as if to mock him.
He decided to ignore the airplane's wacky instruments and fly it on instinct.
He climbed to 30,000 feet and started to widely circle the mountain. Right away he knew there was trouble below. He could see lights —red, yellow, green
— ringing the top of the Tower. Some were blinking, others not. Immediately the "landing site" theory leaped into his mind. The way the lights were laid out, it did look as if whoever installed them expected something to come out of the sky and set down there.
He lowered down to 30,000 then 25,000. All the while he had the airplane on a portside bank, allowing him to focus in on the lights and the Tower below.
Down to 20,000, then 17,000. At 15,500, he flipped the switch which started the jet's thrust turning from the horizontal to the vertical. It allowed him to slow down and finally hover long enough to take photos with the infrared camera he brought along. The Russian fighter had nothing even approaching the 181
sophistication of an outside infrared camera mounting. This one he'd have to do the old-fashioned way —by hand.
He stayed hovering just long enough to snap a picture and then he sped away.
He realized it had been wishful thinking to expect the top of the Tower to be deserted. The lights meant people and he instinctively knew those people wouldn't provide him with a friendly welcoming committee.
Hunter set the airplane down at a remote location about five miles from the Tower. Using a flashlight and a small bag of chemicals he'd brought along, the pilot quickly developed the photo he'd taken. Just as he suspected, the picture revealed about 25 individuals on top of the Tower. They didn't have anything heavy—the photo showed no heat emissions indicating missiles or serious antiaircraft guns. But Hunter had to assume they were carrying personal arms; weapons that could damage the Yak.
He had no choice. He would have to climb the Tower and recon the top up close.