Ghost War
Authors: Mack Maloney
The Ghost War
Mack Maloney
ContentsPART ONE
Chapter One
C
APTAIN “CRUNCH” O’MALLEY WAS
exhausted.
For the last ten hours, he had been flying his RF-4X Super Phantom in a wide search pattern over the eastern sector of the Philippine Sea. Under normal circumstances, he would have quit for the day a long time ago.
But there was nothing normal about today’s recon.
What Crunch was looking for, what he was actually hoping
not
to find, was nowhere to be seen. Except for the occasional green dot of some obscure, uncharted island, all that stretched before him were thousands of square miles of empty ocean. Water, water everywhere.
“But not a drop to drink,” O’Malley muttered.
A quick glance at his control panel’s fuel quantity indicator told him that the Super Phantom was getting critically low on gas.
He banked to the left and set a new course.
“Time to head for the barn,” he thought.
His new destination was a place called Xmas Island. Located approximately 400 miles southeast of Luzon, Xmas Island had nothing to do with Santa Claus or Divine Birth. Just the opposite, in fact.
Xmas was owned and operated by the Triad Holding Corporation, a collection of some of the most greedy and cutthroat wheeler-dealers on the planet. Absolutely anything could be had for a price on Xmas—it was capitalism gone amok. Any kind of operation was allowed on the twenty-square-mile island: prostitution, drug manufacturing, weapons running, money laundering … and jet refueling. Just as long as Triad got its cut—usually 50 percent—anyone could do business there. It was all strictly cash and carry. If the payment was short one penny, justice was swift. No trial, no jury of peers, no appeals—only execution. Sometimes as many as ten a day. All in all, it was definitely not a place for the faint of heart.
O’Malley had been to Xmas Island dozens of times over the past few years and knew it well. None of the squalor, fifth, and disease that was rampant in this part of the world existed on Xmas. The reason was simple: despite their econo-authoritarian ways, the Triad Holding Corporation poured a substantial amount of their profits back into development and maintenance of the island. So, oddly, Xmas boasted the best living conditions in the Pacific Rim—a nice place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit there.
The island itself was beautiful. Except for the harbor, where much of the importing and exporting went on, the entire coastline was covered by gorgeous beaches of pearl white sand. Fishing was ideal and plentiful, wild fruits and vegetables grew everywhere, cattle and exotic game hunting provided the meat, five state-run distilleries provided the booze. And it was said that the power surfing there was better than any other place in the world outside of Hawaii.
But Crunch wasn’t going there to fish or eat or surf or get drunk. This time is was simply a fuel-up stop for a tank of JP-8 and maybe a bottle or two of scotch. Then it would be up and out again for another 2500-mile loop, this time south, skirting northeast New Guinea, continuing his search for a nightmare.
He activated his radio and set it to the regular hailing frequency for the control tower on Xmas Island.
“Triad One, Triad One, this is Phantom Zebra-Adam. Over.”
Crunch continued to eyeball his fuel status while waiting for a reply. But none came. He radioed again.
“Triad One, Triad One, this is United American Air Force Phantom Zebra-Adam. Are you receiving me?”
Nothing. The island was just appearing through the haze on his southern horizon. Crunch dialed over to the Xmas tower’s emergency frequency.
“Triad One, I am approaching at 28,000 feet, about sixty-four miles east of you. Request permission to land and purchase refueling services. Over.”
All that came back was an earful of static.
“What the hell is going on?” he thought. “These guys go out of business?”
He brought the RF-4X down to 10,000 feet, tried the radio again, and got the same results. He quickly double checked his own UHF set system—maybe something was busted on his end. But everything came back green. The island was now looming in the distance about forty miles away.
Gradually reducing his airspeed, Crunch descended through the cloud cover preparing for a visual fly-by over the island. He also armed his weapon systems—just in case.
He was down to an ass-scrapping 1,000 feet when he streaked over the island’s outlying barrier reef and immediately headed inland. A bad feeling began to rise in his stomach. His gut was telling him that something was
very
wrong on Xmas—a correct assumption as it turned out.
He broke through the last cloud cover about a mile in. He wouldn’t soon forget what he saw.
Gone was the lush green vegetation that had covered the island. Now the landscape below consisted of nothing but hundreds of smoking craters. No buildings. No roadways. What few trees remained were only charred stumps.
What the hell happened here?
He banked towards the main town and was over it four seconds later. It was a pile of rubble and smoking debris. The high rises, the casinos, the barrooms, and the brothels were all gone. All that was left were thousands of bodies and body parts lying everywhere. It was astonishing—Crunch had never seen such utter devastation. The entire twenty square miles of the island had been completely leveled.
It was the Bingo Bell that snapped Crunch out of the shock of viewing the hellish vision below. Reality returned. He was running out of fuel—fast. He needed gas, and he needed it now.
He nosed the RF-4X toward the airfield, located at the island’s southern tip. It too was completely devastated. All that was left of the control tower was its foundation. Every other major structure around it was little more than a pile of twisted steel and busted concrete.
Suddenly Crunch got lucky: Most of the auxiliary runway still looked serviceable. That was the good news. The bad news was that right smack in the middle of the usable part was an airport maintenance truck, laying on its side, burning wildly.
Crunch quickly assessed the situation. His fuel gauge was buried past bust—he was flying strictly on fumes. He had to put the Rhino down before it put itself down, and he had only once chance to do it.
He roared back around, this time at a right angle to the runway, lined up dead on with the overturned truck. His weapons control system up and running, he let loose his single offensive weapon, a Maverick air-to-ground munition. The missile shot out from under his right wing and Crunch banked hard starboard as soon as it cleared. Twisting in his cockpit, he turned to see the AGM hit the truck square. Its warhead exploded as advertised, scattering chunks of the burning vehicle everywhere.
The runway was now as clear as it was going to get.
He came around a third time, even as he heard his last fuel reserve tank click off. The Phantom hit the runway with a bone-jarring thud. Crunch immediately deployed his drag chute, but the landing proved to be like driving through an obstacle course. He fought with the stick, careening the big jet away from chunks of concrete, steel, and debris scattered across the concrete ribbon. Finally he got passed most of the wreckage and gradually brought the Phantom to a halt.
He popped the canopy and slowly climbed out of the cockpit, his 9-mm pistol in hand. The devastated landscape was like something from a science fiction movie. And absolutely quiet. He jumped from the plane and cautiously began to reconnoiter the immediate area. It wasn’t long before he was convinced that not a single soul had survived whatever the hell had happened. He slipped his sidearm back into its holster. Except for the occasional squawking of a couple of vultures fighting over a piece of flesh, the silence was deafening. It was so eerie Crunch started to get a major case of the creeps. He had to find some fuel—quick.
The gas storage tank area was destroyed and still burning—he knew he’d find no usable fuel there. However, through the smoke and haze, he could see the remains of two of the island’s defensive fighters still burning further up the runway. They had crashed, apparently on takeoff. Acting on a desperate hunch, he began walking along the edge of the strip, and in less than a minute, he found what he was looking for. The fighters had obviously scrambled at the onset of the disaster, letting go of their drop tanks in the process, just to get the hell off the ground as quickly as possible. Buried nose down about three feet into the mud in front of him was a 1300-liter drop tank from an old French-built Jaguar. O’Malley rapped it with his knuckles. It was full.
It took one hour and forty-five back-breaking minutes, but Crunch finally managed to get the fuel out of the drop tank and into his fighter. But while scrounging around in what was left of the hangers nearby for rubber hoses and the makings of a hand pump, he discovered some intriguing evidence. There was almost nothing of any value left inside these bombed-out shells of buildings. Just about anything that was not tied down had been cleared out; sinks, toilets, electrical wiring, doorknobs, pipes, windows. As strange as it seemed, it looked like everything had been taken
before
the buildings were destroyed, including, he was sure, any usable weapons and ammunition. This told him something he didn’t know before. The place had been stripped clean first. And
then
it was leveled.
Xmas Island did not die a natural death. No hurricane, earthquake or tsunami could have caused such complete and utter destruction. No—he was convinced the island had been attacked, and attacked so ruthlessly that it defied comprehension. In all his years of combat, he had never witnessed such total and wanton devastation. The big question was: Who was responsible?
He was afraid that he already knew the answer.
He climbed back into the fighter and quickly took off, overflying the island twice, the cameras in his nose cone working frantically to capture the entire ghastly scene below. Then he kicked in his afterburner and rocketed away to the east.
He’d found his nightmare.
San Diego Harbor