War of the Sun (13 page)

He took a deep breath of night air and let it out slowly. Something was bothering him, something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

What was it?

Everything that could have been done was done, he told himself. Their mission had been a complete success. No loose ends, no cards unplayed. Hashi Pushi was dead, and it had been done in such a way that Hunter would be able to sleep peacefully again. The Cult was bereft of their long-range communications.

And though the
Fitz
’s tiny air squadron was battered almost beyond recognition, all of the pilots had made it back in one piece.

Yet something wasn’t ringing true, and
this
was what Hunter could feel. Deep in his inner psyche, a small vibration was telling him:
It is not yet over.

“Hey, Hawk, my man …”

Hunter looked up to see Toomey weaving across the rolling flight deck toward him, a freshly-opened bottle of
sake
in his hand.

“What the hell are you doing out here, buddy? Everyone’s looking for you.”

He sat down next to Hunter and offered him the bottle. When Hunter declined, Toomey instantly went sober.

“What’s eating you, pal? Shouldn’t you be celebrating more than anyone else?”

Hunter just shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

Toomey rolled his eyes and took another swig of the rice wine.

“I’ve seen this before,” he half-laughed. “You think it went
too
easy. Is that it? Hey, Hawk—we kicked their butts. They know it. You know it. And soon
everyone
will know it. For once it was quick and easy. And I, for one, am damned glad it’s over.”

“But maybe it’s
not
over,” Hunter half-muttered.

Toomey was speechless for a moment, just long enough for Hunter to stand up and brush himself off.

“Where’s Yaz?”

Toomey was up and standing beside him now. “Last I saw him, he was up in the CIC, writing out the detailed ‘mission-accomplished’ report to send back to the general. And when word gets out about this in D.C.,
then
there’ll be a party so big, I wish …”

But Hunter wasn’t listening. He was sprinting back down the flight deck, heading for the carrier’s island.

“Hey, Hawk, where the hell you going?” Toomey called after him.

Hunter never broke stride. “I’ve got to stop Yaz from sending that message,” came the hurried reply.

Fifteen minutes later, Yaz and JT were on the bridge, nervously filling their inebriated bodies with thick black coffee.

Below them, Hunter’s F-16XL was rising up from the hangar deck on elevator two. A skeleton flight deck crew was arming the Sidewinders and Sparrows under the ’XL’s wing. An even smaller crew was filling the high-powered array of recon cameras in the airplane’s nose with fresh videotape and film.

Yaz took a weary sip of the hot java.

“Jonesie isn’t going to like this,” he told Toomey. “We’re already three hours late sending him the Mission Detail burst. He must be chewing on a whiskey bottle by this time.”

“Better to have him wait than to send back a false message,” Toomey replied. “Besides, he knows what it’s like when Hawk thinks he’s on to something.”

“That’s just it,” Yaz said, worriedly. “Why is he going up at this hour? What’s he looking for?”

“This may sound crazy,” Toomey said, “but he told me he honestly doesn’t know. He says he feels that something is not right, but he couldn’t tell me just what that is. Hey, it may be nothing, but you know how he is. He’ll go nuts unless he can check it out.”

The pair watched in silence now as the deck crew finished preflight on the exotic F-16XL. The stillness of the bridge was punctuated only by the repetition of the three electronic bleeps coming from the sweep of the radar screen and indicating the
New Jersey
and the two accompanying supply ships.

Finally the deck crew finished and scattered to their assigned positions. Clouds of white mist began rising up from the deck’s catapult channel, the distinct whooshing sound telling them that steam pressure was quickly rising beneath the airplane.

Then, with a wave and a salute from Hunter, the futuristic fighter plane rocketed off the deck and into the night.

“Damn,” Yaz muttered under his breath, watching the tail lights of the ’XL climb nearly straight up. “For his sake, I hope he finds something.”

“For our sake,” JT replied, “I hope he doesn’t.”

Hunter brought the F-16XL back to 80 percent of full power and leveled off at 20,000 feet.

Now what?
he thought.

He wasn’t quite sure where he was going; all he knew was that he didn’t have much time.

Hunter also knew the choice of which direction to take would not be a logical one. The reason? This was not a logical mission. This whole thing was being flown on little more than a premonition. A feeling deep in the gut.

How do I get there?

To find out, he knew he would have to go blank, to suspend his intellectual faculties and tap into the deep psychic river that coursed through him. He would have to attempt to reach the state of mind that he thought of simply as
the feeling.

This was his most precious gift, this mindset that could infallibly clue him in on what was about to happen in the future—either minutes or seconds before, or sometimes hours or even days.
The feeling.
Was there a better name for it? Was it some kind of super-ESP? Some kind of ultra-clairvoyance? Divine intervention? Predestination? Synchronicity?

Or was it all just incredible dumb luck?

He didn’t know. He’d been studied, tested, poked at. Some of the behavioral scientists doing the poking tried to describe his extraordinary ESP talents as normal electrical/neurological impulses that were simply miscoded or misdirected. Purely a “chemical” reaction, they would say.

But Hunter knew that this, just like many other equally vague explanations, never even came close to reality. Misdirected neurological impulses be damned—whatever it was, it had saved his life and soul too many times for anything to be
misdirected
about it.

He’d experimented many times on his own, trying to tap deeper into this psychic pool in order to understand it better. For if he did, he believed, it would be possible for him to realize its full potential.

And now was the ideal time to try once again, to let the otherworldly current take him along to a destination that only it knew—and do it at close to the speed of sound.

He took a deep gulp of oxygen from his mask and patted the American flag he always kept folded in his breast pocket. Then, with a surge of both excitement and trepidation, he began shutting down the ’XL’s flight systems. Off went his radio, the early warning radar, the CRT displays, the HUD, and all the other noncrucial avionic displays in his cockpit. He wanted nothing to distract him as he prepared himself for a descent into deep meditation.

Lightly holding the side stick controller as one would do with the disc of a ouija board, he took ten deep breaths, letting each one out with slow precision. Immediately he felt his pulse rate drop. His breathing continued to become deeper and clearer. A sudden calm came over him.

Then he closed his eyes.

Colors were suddenly floating past him, as if they were being holographically projected on the insides of his eyelids. Gradually they began to take shape, going from a blur to a sharp image. The first vision was of Dominique, as beautiful as ever, standing nearly naked on a deserted stretch of beautiful white sandy beach. The wind was flowing through her blond hair, the surf pounding all around her; she stood, her arms stretched out, wanting, aching to hold him.

At least she is alive
…

Hunter suddenly felt the F-16XL lurch up. For a moment, he almost broke his concentration to follow his heart, as if putting the jet fighter into an interminable climb into the heavens would somehow bring him closer to her again. But he stopped himself just as quickly. That was not why he was here. Someday he would return to her. And then he would forever lose himself in her arms.

But that time is not now.

Eyes still closed, he concentrated once again on his breathing, taking long, slow gulps from his oxygen mask. He pushed his thoughts of Dominique away and forced himself deeper and deeper into the pure, Zenlike state. More and more startling images began to float by: scenes from the battles that he’d fought. Faces of the enemies he’d defeated. The faces of his friends that had been lost: Bull… the pilot named Elvis … his old friend Fitz …

With each of these images, the ’XL beneath him would twist and turn in different directions, guided now not so much by electrons, wing flaps, and computers, but by his own psychic vibrations.

Hunter knew that this part of
the feeling
would pass; he’d learned long ago that he must first exorcise his past before he could see into the future. And no matter what pain it caused, he knew he must ride it out, taking himself further and further toward his goal.

Minutes went by. Events were flashing before him much faster now: the bizarre death of Hashi Pushi, the air strike against Japan, the victory celebration, his gloomy conversation with JT.

The closer his self-imaging got to the present, the more rapidly the pictures in his mind’s eye flew by, and conversely, the more erratic the flight of his F-16 became.

Suddenly, he “saw” a great burst of blinding white light. He imagined his brain was about to explode into a million incredibly thin laser beams, each point streaking out in a separate direction. But in the next sensation he felt these points of light suddenly reverse direction and begin racing backward, toward him, toward the center of his brain.

Then everything was calm again. A greater spiritual peace descended upon him. In the distance, he could “hear” a rhythmic pounding of machines. The mechanical racket got louder and louder as more ghostly images began to gently float before him. A laughing old woman with long white hair. Her corncob pipe. Human skulls on posts. Empty uniforms. Smoke in the air. Airplanes of a vague and indeterminable design.

Last, he saw three lightning bolts: the first two flashed out in the center of a rainstorm. The third appeared in the midst of a beautifully clear day.

What the hell does all this mean?

Try as he might, Hunter just couldn’t make sense of any of the visions. What was his inner being trying to tell him? The predestined images seemed to be both soothing
and
frightening to him, a sensation he’d never experienced before.

It was only then that he realized the F-16XL was finally flying a true and stable course, his light, almost-disembodied touch on the right-side control stick making slight adjustments in altitude and speed. He was tempted to open his eyes and do a quick check of his crucial instruments—but in an instant he knew he didn’t need to. He could
feel
that he was now on a true course with his destination.

A moment later, a surge of adrenaline raced through him. This was what he was waiting for, a reaction he’d felt before. Many times. It gave him his strength for whatever lay ahead, both mentally and physically. It was a wake-up call from the cosmos.

I’m ready
…

Now it was time for him to open his eyes.

The sun was just coming up over the far eastern horizon. Using this early light, he scanned the ocean below and spotted a large island thirty miles away to the southwest. Flipping back on all his avionics, he commanded his computer to run up built-in memory navigation charts that matched the sea below and then asked it to ID the island. The answer came back a few seconds later:
Okinawa.

Aboard the USS
Fitzgerald

Y
AZ SAT ON THE
bridge, staring out over the vast gray expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

It was now dawn, and the day had begun dreary and overcast. A half mile off to starboard, the two supply ships were keeping an even pace with the huge aircraft carrier, their bows plowing steadily through the increasingly-choppy seas. Far off to port, the outline of the USS
New Jersey
was barely visible. Typically, Wolf had the great ship on a course as isolated from the rest of the Task Force as tactically possible.

Far off to the northeast, he saw the beginnings of a storm system forming. A thin, dark line of angry clouds stretched almost across the horizon, the billowing winds making them look like a huge tidal wave heading toward the four ships in eerie slow motion.

“Not even the damn weather will cooperate,” Yaz thought gloomily.

The Task Force was steaming due east, back toward United America. But per Yaz’s latest orders, they were moving at a miserly pace of five knots, barely one-quarter as fast as its normal cruising speed. He knew this did not sit well with his crews. They were all understandably in a hurry to return home in one piece. Any delay could only mean trouble.

Yet there was only one reason why Yaz had given the order to cut back on the Task Force’s speed: Hawk Hunter was still out there somewhere. And he would soon be overdue.

As he continued to stare at the storm clouds to the north, Yaz slumped further down into the captain’s chair. His shoulders were feeling especially heavy now. He had not heard a word from Hunter since his sudden and unscheduled departure several hours before. All attempts to raise him on the radio proved futile, and there was no indication of the ’XL anywhere on the long-range radar screens. It was as if pilot and plane had simply vanished.

It was quickly becoming a question of time and numbers. The Task Force had to keep moving simply to keep up its defenses against attack, and it didn’t have the fuel to waste to go in any other direction except toward friendlier waters. Yet Yaz knew that if he maintained his current speed and course, Hunter would be out of fuel range of the carrier in little more than an hour. Then Yaz would have to balance the concerns for his close friend Hawk Hunter against the safety of the hundreds of men onboard the ships of the Task Force.

He knew it wasn’t going to be a pleasant decision.

Wearily he began to massage his temples—besides the situation with Hunter, there was another troubling factor weighing heavily on his mind.