Ghost War (39 page)

Hunter smiled and nodded. He’d never really thought of it in that way before, but he
did
love the airplane.

“Like a woman,” Timmy said. “Break your heart, and you go crawling back.”

“Amen,” Hunter replied.

The Z-men stayed and chatted for another few minutes. Hunter liked them both—it seemed as if he’d known them for years, and not simply a couple weeks. He knew they were virtually fearless, yet he’d never met anyone as down to earth as they were. Had they not been mercenaries, they would probably have been farmers or cattlemen. They were Hunter’s kind of people, he could talk with them for hours.

They made plans to meet at JT’s palace bar in an hour for a bottle of beer, and then the two New Zealanders ambled on, their baggy camouflage uniforms whipping in the hot wind, their weapons slung over their shoulders like fishing poles.

“Good guys,” Hunter thought, returning to avionics package.

Suddenly he felt the hair on the back of his head go straight up. He froze, trying to ascertain from his psyche what was wrong.

Then he heard it.

The distinct sound of a mortar tube pop, echoing from the jungle beyond the end of the runway. He heard the whine and then the screech as the mortar shell rocketed out of its trajectory and came streaking back down. His computerlike brain was able to input the changes in the acoustics of the shell and tell him it was going to come crashing down very close by.

He jumped off the XL and ran to the front of the airplane. The screech was getting louder. He knew it was going to hit in about three seconds, and approximately forty feet away.

“
Damn, no
…” he screamed.

The huge mortar shell came down exactly three seconds later, exploding just beyond a line of ancient Huey choppers. As everyone around him was running away from the blast, heading for cover, Hunter was running full tilt towards the impact point.

When he finally got there, his worst fears had come true. There was a huge crater in the middle of the tarmac, still smoking, with sparks popping out.

Beside the smoldering hole, riddled and bleeding beyond recognition, were the bodies of Timmy and Terry.

Y
ET ANOTHER WAR FOR
Vietnam had begun.

With the opening round, the base at Da Nang came under a massive mortar and rocket bombardment. There were suddenly fires everywhere; smoke was obscuring the midday sun. Alarms bells and sirens were ringing; people were scrambling to the system of hardened shelters. Long range artillery was booming all over, the chatter of gunfire filled the air.

And in amongst it all, the angry sound of a jet engine screeching to life.

Not two minutes after the firing had commenced, Hunter’s F-16XL was screaming down the main runway at Da Nang. Lifting off with a burst of power, he pulled the futuristic fighter back up on its tail, booted in the afterburner and shot straight up until he was out of sight.

He was loaded for bear. There were four points along the bottom of each of his wings, and each held some kind of exotic weapon.

On his right side inner he’d attached one KMU-351 Paveway smart bomb; next to it was a Durandal runway buster bomb. Third over on the right was an AGM-65A Maverick; beside it was a Mk-83 GP 1000-pound bomb. The tip of the wing held one of his two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.

On the left side he had stacked from the inside out, a CBU-528 bomblet dispenser, a larger CBU Rockeye dispenser carrying napalm globets, a Mk-117 750-pound GP bomb and a Mk 82 Snakeye bomb.

He was also packing a full house of ammo for his four M-61 nose cannons.

He screeched the F-16XL up to 15,000 feet in under ten seconds and then slowly flipped the fighter over. The war had started just as JT said it would—without warning, by mortar and rocket attack, as a prelude to a massive ground assault. Just as he was taxiing out for takeoff he heard the Da Nang tower confirm that fighting had also broken out down in Cam Rahn Bay, at Hue, at Bien Hoa, at Nha Trang, and inside New Saigon. He knew there were at least a dozen more coastal cities that were also probably under attack and had yet to report in. Just as advertised, the Viet Minx had paid of all their soldiers and were now trying to take all of Vietnam in a single bloody offensive—only the various mercenary armies and a small Vietnamese defense corps stood in their way. Caught in the middle were about two million Vietnamese citizens, who once again, had to stand by and watch others determine the fate of their country.

Hunter put the XL into a tight orbit and began studying the ground below. Just the smoke and flame spots alone gave away the enemy’s previously hidden mortar positions; some of them were very near the wire at the Da Nang airbase, others as far as a half mile away from the perimeter. Behind the mortars were the 140-mm and 155-mm artillery and the Katuysha rocket emplacements. And somewhere in between, Hunter knew, was a huge enemy ground assault, poised for launch.

He was still shaking with rage over the deaths of the Z-Men. It was savagely ironic that the first shot of the war would kill the two happy-go-lucky New Zealanders, two soldiers who were far away from home, fighting on a foreign soil just so others they didn’t know could remain free. Hunter had seen a lot of combat—and a lot of death. There was only one way to deal with it: try to forget it. But he knew it would be some time before he would lose the memory of the two bodies of Terry and Timmy, perforated by Minx mortar fragments.

One of the cardinal sins of combat was to turn the fight personal; when a soldier’s emotion got in the way, it opened up all kinds of possibilities for mistakes—and mistakes usually meant either getting very hurt or getting very dead.

But Hunter had stopped playing by the rules years ago, way back in the days of ZAP, when he was fighting the likes of the Mid-Aks and the Family. It got very personal way back then, and many times since, he’d followed his nose, not his brain.

Today would be no different.

The mortar that hit Timmy and Terry had been a heavy-duty job, maybe a dime-and-a-half or bigger. Judging by the way he heard it pop and how it came down, Hunter figured it was located about 1,000 meters beyond the edge of the main runway, and maybe 100 meters to the south. Sure enough, when he keyed his ground mapping radar on those coordinates, he could clearly see a staccato line of heat sources, the unmistakable glow of mortars being launched. He locked the image into the weapons control computer and then turned the XL over.

He was instantly into a screaming dive, booting in the afterburner at a heart-stopping 5,500 feet, cracking the sound barrier and issuing a mechanical scream that he was sure could be heard for miles. That was the whole idea—he
wanted
these bastards to know he was coming.

On the way down he saw that the jungles surrounding Da Nang were just lousy with Minx—big guns, tanks, mobile artillery, troops and mortars everywhere. In an instant he saw why it would have been unwise to launch preemptive strikes on this gang—the weapons and men had been so solidly dug in and hidden, it
would
have been a waste of precious ammunition and ordnance.

Beside, the only way to kill rats was to wait until they came out into the light.

He was down to 1,500 feet now and below he could see the hundred or so Minx mortar men scatter in panic at his supersonic approach. That was fine with him—he was giving them the opportunity Timmy and Terry never had, a chance to contemplate life before they lost it.

He finally pulled up at 400 feet, applying his airbrakes even as he began to level off. He lined up the long string of heavy mortars concealed on a ridge a few football fields away from the end of the main runway and quickly called up his weapons available readout screen. He touched the symbol for the CBU Rockeye dispenser, the one carrying 100 napalm globets.

The decision was thus made: Death by jellied fire would be the retribution for the killing of his New Zealander friends.

His bomb release light flashing like crazy, Hunter eased back on the throttles and squeezed the weapons’ lever. Instantly he felt the right wing buck a little as the big dispenser dropped off and began its preguided path down to the mortar emplacements. Once the weapon computer checked off the Rockeye as dead on path, Hunter banked hard to the right, and then went into a screaming 180.

The Rockeye hit just as he was coming around. He saw it dispense inside two seconds, spraying the area with 100 baseball-sized, compressed napalm bomblets. The effect was like a wave of blue flame, washing over the line of heavy mortars. When the wave broke, it turned first red, then yellow, then bright, bright orange. He could see figures running through the inferno, clothes, skin, hair on fire—but his heart was hardened to all this by now.

When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left. No trees, no shrubs, no mortars. No Minx.

“Fuck you guys,” Hunter muttered. “Hope you cashed your checks.”

Beyond the now-scorched mortar line was a nest of 144-mm long-range artillery pieces. Like years before, this gun was favorite of the Vietnamese aggressors. The Minx had set up six guns in a rough semicircle, for the best in concentrated fire. It also made for a perfect aerial target—perfect for Hunter’s 1000-pound GP bomb.

Unlike the mortar teams, the artillery men didn’t hear him coming. Whether it was the booming of their guns, or possibly earplugs, they didn’t see the F-16XL until it was almost on top of them. A glint of silver falling from the delta wing airplane was the last thing many of them ever saw. The huge bomb hit with such an impact that the concussion alone bent the barrels of two of the guns. The other four were simply vaporized along with their crews.

A quick twist to the left and Hunter found a traffic jam of enemy 150-mm Koksan mobile guns. Again, in the quest for concentrated fire, the Minx had typically jammed the mobile weapons bumper-to-bumper.

“Idiots,” Hunter muttered, calling up the weapons available screen on his main computer. He touched the panel for the 750-pound Mk117 GP bomb, and then directed his laser sighting to the grille of the very first mobile battery.

A squeeze of the weapons release lever and the seven-five was on its way. Hunter pulled up and out—he didn’t even see the bomb hit. He didn’t have to. He knew the big 750 would not only destroy the first two mobile guns completely, but also the impact and exploding ammunition would kill the other four. He simply didn’t have time to hang around and watch the fire works.

He banked hard right and went down to tree top level. The Minx had gathered their forces on the flank of Da Nang in a triangular fashion; the rear area being at the slimmest point. Though there were few weapons firing back here, experience told him that any high ground in the area was probably being used for observation and gun targeting.

Sure enough, as he passed over a small stream which marked the rear areas, he spotted a hill approximately a klick to the east. It looked like nothing more than a pile of rocks, and was about 700 feet high.

On top was a Minx chopper with a mobile radio unit.

He didn’t hesitate a second. He simply swooped over the hill top his four cannons blazing, ripping into the radio set and Minx soldiers attending it. All it took was two passes. After that, everything on top of the rockpile—both human and electronic—was dead.

He twisted the XL over on its left wing and streaked back to the edge of the base’s western defense perimeter. The airfield was still being peppered with mortar rounds and Katy rockets, but the defense forces had swung into action. He could see the Football City Special Forces Scorpions pinging around the no man’s land separating the runway from the jungle, firing wide, interlocking barrages from their cannon and turret guns, and then dashing off to another position and repeating the process again. It was a tactic for which there was little defense; any Minx soldier or weapon caught in their cross fire was simply ripped to shreds.

The artillery units were also up and firing, their various sized guns working from behind the thick concrete barriers. Passing over the edge of the main runway, he could see the long streams of blue smoke which unmistakably marked the use of the late, great
Bozo
’s Gatling guns. Already the jungle at the end of the runway had been cut down as if a giant scythe had slashed through it. Actually, it was the combined fire of the Gatlings mowing down every tree, vine, shrub and Minx soldier within the quarter mile killing zone.

“Environmentally safe defoliation,” Hunter thought. “Should have used it last time.”

He banked back over the runway just in time to see the trio of Tigersharks moving out of the bunkers and onto the taxiway. His initial mission was now fairly complete. The Minx guns nearest to the runway had been silenced, at least long enough for the F-20s to take off.

He circled protectively overhead as the Tigersharks quickly edged out onto the runway and as one, lifted off in a burst of afterburner power. He immediately got on the radio with JT, who then patched him through to Ben and Frost. They quickly decided that the Sharks would go after targets immediately around the base perimeter.

Hunter meanwhile would head towards Da Nang city itself.

Da Nang City

G
ERACI WAS SLEEPING WHEN
the attack finally came.

He’d been up for thirty-six hours, putting the finishing touches on the 104th’s end of JT’s plan, a project which had come to be known as the “Jersey Tunnel.”

It was a mission which dwarfed all their other accomplishments. By comparison, the assembly of
Bozo 2
at Khe Sanh was puny, a walk in the park. Working in shifts, the combat engineers had literally turned the Earth over, moving tons of rocks, sand and soil. And Geraci and his officers—Matus, Cerbasi, McCaffrey, and Palma—had stayed awake for most of the two weeks of the project, sleeping only when rain prevented work from continuing or when they were on the verge of collapse.

In the end, the 104th had never worked so hard to accomplish so much, in such a short amount of time. As it turned out, they’d finished just in time. When the final emplacements were poured, and all of the defensive obstacles in place, Geraci finally ordered his officers and staff to stand down—and get some sleep.