Ghost War (34 page)

Her name was Ala.

She’d just turned sixteen by her calendar. She was born on the island of Fiji, and most of her family still lived there. Two years before, the Asian Mercenary Cult invaded the island and killed off most of its male population; those who were spared were sold into slavery.

From the beginning, the Cult had considered the main island of Fiji as a sacred place, though none of the residents knew why. The actual military presence on the island was very small; if any Cult soldiers came at all, they tended to be high officers and their staffs. Typically, they used the most beautiful women on the island for sex; “comfort girls,” they called them. The unattractive ones were put to work doing the menial domestic tasks.

Several months before, a man named Soho came to the island. He was flying a strange jet—the Me-262, as it turned out. He had come to Fiji from Okinawa, while it was being attacked by “white men in ships and planes,” an obvious reference to the United American Task Force which first attacked Japan and then Okinawa, before taking part in the final defeat of the Cult land forces at Pearl Harbor.

Soho was immediately set up as a god on Fiji. The high Cult officers were very quick to kowtow to him and fell over themselves to get him anything he desired, from drugs, to booze, to girls for sex. As a result, Soho was intoxicated round the clock, making it very hard for the Cult officers to get him to make the decisions they needed him to make.

One day, Soho spotted Ala as she was placing flowers on the Me-262 which had been set up as a shrine to Soho, worshipping the “bird of his arrival.” Soho immediately developed a liking to Ala; he told her it was because she was the only female on the island who had red hair. They spent much time together, mostly taking long walks along the island’s miles of beaches.

During these times, Soho told Ala many stories about the Asian Mercenary Cult, and especially about its succession of divine leaders. One was a man named Hashi-Pushi; when he was killed, his “spirit” passed control of the huge Cult to a woman named Aja, via the sex act. She in turn passed the crown to Soho in the final hours of the battle on Okinawa by way of a similar coupling. It was Aja who told Soho to fly to Fiji.

Although Soho more or less respected her during their time together, Ala saw that he was gradually getting sicker, both in mind and body. During their last meeting, he was a bag of bones, his consumption of alcohol and drugs had withered him away. He explained to her that it was his turn to pass on the crown of the Asian Mercenary Cult and that he had selected her to be his receptor. The next day, Soho called a celebration at the island’s airport. In front of a large assembled crowd, including her parents, Soho raped Ala, and then put her aboard the Me-262. Terrified, she was helpless as the airplane took off on its own.

Thus began a very long odyssey. With the plane’s flight controls being manipulated by the black box, Ala flew from base to base, all over the South Pacific, absolutely terrified. Each place she landed was under some kind of Cult control, either directly or through allies like the Minx.

Though she was treated like a goddess where ever she arrived, her hosts were very obvious in their haste to get her fed, washed, the plane fueled up and on its way again.

She’d been taking this remote-control trip for nearly a month when she finally set down at a small airstrip outside of Son Tay, the small port city which was now the calling place for Cult battleships. She and her hosts believed that this was just one more step on her trip to an unknown destination; like the others, the Minx officers at Son Tay were anxious to see her go. But something had happened to the airplane by this time—when she took off, she flew for about 40 miles and then inexplicably returned to Son Tay. Startled, her hosts sent her up again the next day, and the same thing happened. The next day it was the same, and on and on.

Each time she returned, her hosts would wring their hands and pray—literally
pray
—that the reputed supernatural powers behind the Cult would soon take the goddess-in-waiting off their hands, lest something happen to her on their watch.

She was on her eighteenth circuit when Hunter shot her down.

He sat and listened to her story, equally baffled and fascinated. What the hell did it all mean? Passing the crown of Cult leadership from person to person, via forced sex? It was crazy.

But then again, so were many of the people in the Cult.

Hunter asked Ala if she had any idea who she was supposed to meet at the end of her journey. She thought a moment; her only guess would be a man that Soho told her about once.

It happened during one of their first walks on the beach. Soho told her that it was important she know about this particular man. He came from a place in the Middle East, many years ago. He began preaching and soon gathered a small number of trusted followers. They traveled all over, and soon their number grew. This man had the ability to attract and influence ordinary people, and convince them that they could do extraordinary things.

Soon many people were talking about this man. They would walk miles just to hear him speak. Some people began praying to him—they were convinced this man had a vision for the world, one by which every person could live by.

Soho told Ala that this man’s vision for a new way for men to live brought him many enemies too. Many people disliked him. Many tried to kill him. Soon many were waging wars against him, wars of struggle over men’s souls. Soon these battles were raging out of control. This man knew that only by sacrificing himself could he really influence how others thought of him. So he was killed, murdered by those who disagreed with him.

But then, this man “came alive again,” Ala said Soho told her, and walked among his people again, “like a ghost.” And that he was still alive this day, possibly somewhere in the Middle East, possibly somewhere closer by.

And maybe that’s where she was heading, to meet this ethereal personage.

Hunter was astounded. He asked her what Soho said this man looked like. She replied the man was supposedly tall, very strong, with long hair and a short beard.

“And did he tell you this man’s name?” he asked the girl.

She nodded.

He stared at her for a long moment. “It’s not Jesus, is it?”

She shook her head slowly. “No,” she replied. “It’s Victor.”

Obsession takes many forms.

Love. Desire. Money. Drugs. Alcohol. Hate.
Revenge.

The common thread was that, if taken to the extreme, obsession will eventually drive a person to madness. And at that point, the madness itself becomes an obsession.

Hunter was now a man obsessed.

He was in the cockpit of Crunch’s crashed C-5, grabbing at wires, yanking at panels, tossing aside integrated circuit boards and LED switches—tearing out the heart of the cargo jet’s flight controls in order to get to the brain.

Crunch was there, as were the Z-men, watching him rip through the battered control panel, looking for the small microprocessor which controlled the airplane’s automatic pilot. The three men had given up trying to talk to Hunter—he’d answered all of their previous questions with little more than polite grunts, and sometimes uncharacteristic silence.

It was obvious that he was beyond conversation, and finally the three men just gave up trying to talk with him.

The match that lit the fuse for Hunter’s rage was the name spoken to him by the island girl, Ala. The name was
Victor.
When he had her spell it out for him, translating the Borneo pidgen language into English characters, the word came out V-I-C-T-O-R, a slight variation on
Viktor
, by which Hunter had always known the supercriminal—but this made no matter. However it was spelt, the name was synonomous with evil, a culmination of all that was despicable in the world.

Hunter finally found the autopilot microprocessor.

It was a small unit, about the size of a cheap paperback book, and weighed less than a pound. But Hunter was sure that if he could graft the lead wires from Me-262’s black box to the microprocessor, and then put the combined-unit into an adaptable airplane, then the coupled device would lead him right to the person who was now calling himself “Victor.”

Hunter backed himself out of the torn-apart flight panel and was halfway surprised to see his audience was still there.

“I’ve got the sucker,” he announced triumphantly. “Now, if I can just get a gap file, a micro-tandem wrench and some power, I can have this thing working in …”

He stopped in midsentence. Crunch was looking slightly askance at him.

“Hey, Hawk,” Crunch said. “Are we forgetting the big picture here?”

Hunter just shrugged. “I don’t know—am I?”

“We’ve a little problem right here, in this country?” Crunch went on. “Remember? We were going to swipe a battleship?”

Hunter stared at him for a moment, and then smiled.

“Oh, yeah,” he said in perfect self-mocking tone. “The battleship. Right.”

“First things first, mate,” Terry said with a laugh.

The understatement was met with smiles all around. But then Hunter’s expression turned dead serious again.

“But once we get this thing settled out,” he said, his voice actually raspy with anger, “then I’m going to hunt down whoever the hell this new ‘Victor’ guy is.

“And then I’m going to kill him.”

Four days later

T
HE MINX PATROL HAD
been walking for twenty-two hours straight.

All fourteen men were exhausted, tired, hungry, thirsty, hot and covered with bug bites of all shapes and sizes.

They’d left the Minx port stronghold of Son Tay almost three days before on a routine tax-collecting mission. They had been diverted to the small Delta village of Ko Lung by their regional commander: their orders were to contact the small garrison there and investigate if their radio gear was in proper working order.

What the regional commander didn’t tell the leader of the Minx patrol was that the garrison at Ko Lung hadn’t been heard from in nearly forty-eight hours.

The Minx patrol reached the outskirts of Ko Lung just before sunrise. The first thing they came upon was a small hut on the outlying edge of the village which had recently burned down. It was still smoking and its embers still glowing. The Minx patrol leader inspected the remains of the hut himself. There were a number of empty oil barrels thrown about as well as several lengths of singed, uncoiled electrical wire.

He ordered two of his soldiers to collect the wire—cleaned and properly coiled, the patrol leader was certain he could get more than 100
piestas
for it back at Son Tay.

The patrol moved on, passing several more abandoned huts, which were empty of booty, and entering the center of the village itself. It was eerily quiet—not that unusual for a fishing village, but strange nevertheless. The patrol leader sniffed the wind, and quickly reached up to hold his nose.

“
Luc qway son toe!
” he screamed, “something is a dead thing here—find it!”

Momentarily confused, the thirteen troopers quickly dispersed throughout the village, trying to find the leader’s “dead thing.”

They didn’t have to look very long.

At the edge of the river was a long low building, used in the past as a fishing cleaning center. The far wall of this building was adorned with a row of three dozen five-inch hooks; on these the carcasses of fish were hung to dry.

The two troopers who burst into this building found thirty-six dead Minx soldiers hanging from these hooks instead.

The patrol soldiers couldn’t believe it. The dead Minx had not just been killed, they’d literally been gutted. The contents of their stomachs—as well as the stomachs themselves—were spilled out on the floor in front of each corpse.

The patrol leader was called, and though he was a veteran of many battles, he immediately vomited all over his second-in-command. The rest of the patrol was almost as sick as their leader—they had heard the rumors of similar slaughterings further up in the Delta, brutal butcherings done by a mysterious band of flesh-eating “comfort girls.”

Now, here, was proof positive that these stories were indeed true. And the patrol was twenty-four hours from nowhere.

The patrol leader regained his composure and ordered his men to take the safeties off their weapons—it was an order that he hoped would make them a little less shaky, but it had mixed results. He found his own hands shaking as he hastily loaded his Koch pistol. It took all his self-control to not vomit again.

The rest of the village was searched, but nothing was found; no guns, no radios, no more bodies. Nor where there any villagers: the garrison at Ko Lung had ruled over at least two hundred inhabitants. Now they were all gone.

It was the patrol leader’s intention to get out of Ko Lung as quickly as possible—but his superiors at Son Tay had other ideas. When advised that the garrison had been graphically butchered, the regional commander ordered the patrol leader to cut down the bodies, go through them for personal effects, such as watches, rings or money and deliver such items personally to him.

Then, by orders of the regional commander, the patrol leader was to skin the bodies and bring the hides back to Son Tay. When dried, the skins would bring a good price on the exotic garment black market where they’d be sold falsely as “sharkskin.”

The patrol leader did not have enough money in his unit bank to buy his way out of the gruesome order, so he set his troopers to rending their departed comrades.

He spent the time vomiting down by the river.

There were only five motorboats left in the Minx southern occupation patrol fleet.

When the Minx first moved into the area in preparation for their upcoming assault on the major cities of Vietnam, their river patrol fleet was twenty craft. Three had been lost to accidents, two others to maintenance. Ten others had gone out on routine patrol up the Delta—and never came back.

Boat #6 left the dock at Son Tay early in the morning; its captain was hoping to make the village of Buk Sik by four that afternoon. His mission was to check on a radio transmitting station at the small village, which, their commanders had told them was not in correct working order.