Ghost War (45 page)

“That has to be it,” he yelled to the jeep driver. The man immediately kicked the vehicle into high gear, at the same time radioing the information back to the second jeep. In seconds, both vehicles were roaring across the tarmac, their headlights flashing in an attempt to get the attention of the pilots of the bottle-nosed Boeing.

It took some rather perilous maneuvering by the lead jeep driver to finally accomplish this, cutting in front of the big airliner just as it was beginning to taxi out onto the main runway.

It engines screaming, the 707 lurched to halt, the confused and stern faces of the pilots clearly visible in the blue light of the cockpit. The jeep rolled around to the 707’s left side, just as the forward cabin door was opening. One of the pilots appeared at the opening and, even over the roar of the engines, Yaz could hear him scream:
“What the hell are you guys doing?”

Yaz jumped out of the jeep and ran up underneath the door. Holding his UAAF Command Staff ID high above his head, he yelled up to the pilot: “I must come aboard. It’s a matter of upmost urgency.”

The pilot shone a flashlight down on the ID and convinced it was real, called ahead to his colleague in the cockpit to kill the airliner’s four big engines. As these turbines were winding down, a pickup truck bearing a loading ramp appeared. Yaz waited for it to get into place, then he bolted up the steps, his ID still in plain view.

The two pilots were both in the entranceway now, and they studied his ID card closely. Finally they just looked at him and asked, “What can we do for you?”

Yaz took a deep breath. He looked around the small antecabin and into the cockpit itself and nothing looked unusual—certainly nothing that matched the strange color scheme on the outside of the airplane. But he knew behind the door to his right, things were probably very different.

“I must talk to your passenger,” Yaz told the pilots.

The two men shook their heads. “You know we are on a tight schedule here,” one said. “This guy wants to get across the pond by daylight tomorrow.”

Yaz didn’t have much time for discussion. “He’s not going,” Yaz replied definitively. “He’s coming with me.”

The pilots were slightly astounded. “Do you realize what this guy’s got tied up back there?” one asked, pointing to the rear compartment.

Yaz just shook his head. “I have to see him, immediately,” he replied.

The pilots just shrugged again, then one produced a key which opened the rear compartment door.

“OK,” one of the pilots told him. “But you have to tell him …”

Yaz walked into the rear compartment and discovered it looked just like he’d expected. The cargo hold held a huge water tank made of welded-in glass and surrounded by air-filled cushion bladders. Inside the tank were two dolphins, now both staring at him.

Beside the tank was a small balding man, not quite into middle age. He was dressed in a lab coat and holding a small computer, which somehow was taking the water temperature of the tank. He seemed oblivious to the fact that the airplane had yet to take off.

He turned around a few moments after Yaz entered, and stared at him over the tops of his eyeglasses.

“Do I know you?” he asked Yaz.

Yaz shook his head. Their only thing in common was their mutual friend, Hawk Hunter.

“No—we’ve never met,” Yaz replied. “But you are The Ironman, I presume?”

New Chicago

Two hours later

The bar known as Big Daddy Crabb’s was full as usual.

The regular crowd was there—gun dealers, hookers, bookies, off-duty soldiers and militiamen. They had all gathered at the Loop watering hole to hear the best jazz—some said the
only
jazz—the Windy City had to offer.

Big Daddy himself was watching the door. An imposing man of six-foot-six height and offensive-lineman weight, his sheer size was enough to discourage any potential troublemaker from walking through his doors. Though famous for its entertainment and good, if expensive booze, fisticuffs or even occasional gunplay was not exactly unknown at Big Daddy’s. And this usually meant a visit from local constables.

But even Big Daddy was surprised when the UAAF armored personnel carrier pulled up in front of his place.

Big Daddy’s eyes went wide as he watched a squad of soldiers pour out of the back of the APC. These weren’t the local cops—their uniforms were that of the 1st American Airborne Division.

Crabb gently lifted the young Chinese hooker from his knee and pushed a hidden button next to the door. This warned his more regular clients in the club’s back rooms that the law—or some extension of it—was on the way.

The soldiers were quickly at the door, a young officer walking in and standing before Big Daddy.

“Everyone’s cool here, my man,” Big Daddy told the officer. “No problems. No troubles.”

The officer looked around the crowded bar and saw the hep patrons were trying their best not to look his way. But he knew, as they did, that the appearance of an officer from the elite First Airborne in what appeared to be an official capacity was not a normal occurrance on the rough streets of New Chicago.

“I’m looking for this man,” the officer said, producing a photo of a middle-aged, short, squat individual with long black hair tied fashionably back in a ponytail.

Big Daddy recognized him right away. The man had once tried to sell him an airplane.

“He’s in trouble?” he asked the officer.

“Not exactly,” was the ambiguous reply. “Is he here?”

Big Daddy wasn’t really sure what to do. Chicago cops he would take on, maybe even the local militia. But First Airborne guys? The same people who kicked the Nazis out of America? No way. That kind of trouble no one wanted.

Big Daddy flashed the photo to one of his bouncers, and within a minute, the man in the photograph was being escorted through crowd.

He looked stunned—until he saw the Airborne officer. Then he simply rolled his eyes. “How the hell did you guys track me down?” he asked the soldier.

“That’s top secret,” the officer dead-panned.

“And what do you want me for
this
time?” the man asked.

“That is also top secret,” the officer told him.

With that he nodded to the bouncers who released the man. Instantly two Airborne troopers were guiding the man out of the bar and into the APC.

The young officer gave Big Daddy a half-mock salute and then turned and climbed into the APC himself. With the roar of an unmuffled engine, the armored car rumbled away.

Big Daddy resumed his seat at the door. The hooker was soon on his lap again. The bartender came over with a bill in his hand.

“Hey Boss, that guy left on a seventy five dollar bar bill …”

Big Daddy examined the bill. It was a list of no less than twenty-five drinks, all of them scotch and waters. Printed in bold letters at the top was the name: “Roy From Troy.”

“Put it on his tab,” he told the bartender. “He’ll be good for it.”

Washington

Six hours later

The man named Ironman was not surprised to find himself at the Pentagon again.

Though he’d worked as an analyst for the U.S. Navy in years gone by, he’d never made it to the real seat of power during his time of employment.

Now, he’d been here twice in the past half year.

It was 4:00
AM
, yet two sides of the five-sided gigantic building were ablaze with office lights. There was much activity going in and out of the building, and not a modest presence of United American military vehicles.

Ironman—his real name being Al Nolan—was escorted by the same UA officer who had fetched him from Logan Airport just moments before he and his beloved dolphins were due to take off. It was a quick Lear jet ride later, and here he was in Washington, in the middle of the night, still for reasons rather unclear.

Nolan was an accountant by trade, a number cruncher who had studied the Navy’s procurement books, looking for errors of pennies which could add up to millions. After the world war and subsequent collapse, Ironman retreated to the old state of Maine where he began what would become another magnificent obsession for him: the study of dolphins.

He been at it for years now, working at a small research lab named the New American Aquatic Institute and spending upward of twenty hours a day, simply watching the institute’s dolphins interact with each other. By sheer manhours alone, he was now probably the most learned expert in
Delphinus delphis
in America.

Nolan’s life changed one night a half year before when his phone rang at the institute. The voice on the other end sounded staticky and far away. But it was still very distinguishable. It was the voice of Hawk Hunter.

Hunter and he had been friends for years and The Wingman had called him to work a miracle. Whisked to Washington—this being the first time—Nolan used his computerlike mind to wheel and deal with dozens of independent cargo ship owners and come up with literally hundreds of ships which were then used as the “phantom navy” in the climatic battle against the Asian Mercenary Cult at Pearl Harbor.

For that successful mission, Hunter had arranged for Nolan to use the services of a mothballed Boeing 707 airliner in his rather esoteric dolphin research, thus fulfilling one half of a promise he’d made to The Ironman in return for his help.

The other half was a pledge by The Wingman to help Nolan in his still-secret research project, the object of which was to find, of all things, the Loch Ness Monster. Where dozens of previous search efforts to locate the legendary creature had used everything from sonar, to radar waves, to submerged cameras, all to little result, Nolan had confided in Hunter another approach. Nolan had very quietly arranged to buy a pair of very rare Chinese river dolphins, animals adapted to living in muddy, fresh water. He’d been training these dolphins in endurance as well as other techniques for months, and it was these animals which were in the water tank aboard the Boeing 707. Nolan’s idea was simple: he planned to set the pair of highly trained, highly intelligent dolphins loose in Loch Ness with small, light-weight video cameras attached to their heads. If there was anything lurking in the famous lake, Nolan was convinced the dolphins would find it—and find it quickly. He had sold Hunter on the idea, and once the world settled down again, Hunter promised he would personally assist Ironman in the quest. He was leaving for Britain to try out the dolphins in a smaller, similar lake when his flight was preempted by Yaz.

So now the Ironman was back in Washington, at the Pentagon, his research project delayed again.

He was brought to a basement office and led in. Behind the rather proletarian desk sat the small wry frame of General Dave Jones, Commander-in-Chief of the United American Armed Forces.

Jones shook hands with him, and then introduced the other man sitting in the office. He was small, squat, dressed smartly and wearing a long ponytail. His name was Roy From Troy.

Ironman had known of Roy—he was an airplane broker with slightly checkered past. He was known for getting any airplane quickly and for fair price. He had been called on by the UA several times to come up with combat aircraft needed in their series of recent crisis-busting military campaigns. Most recently, Roy had provided the United Americans with a small air armada of carrier-adapted jets with which they carried out the daring raids on the Cult strongholds of Tokyo and Okinawa.

As it turned out Roy knew of Ironman, too. When they shook hands, Roy told him: “You’re a freaking genius with the books. A genius with numbers…”

Jones invited them both to sit, and then he got down to business.

“Gentlemen, the reason we’ve brought you here on such short notice is that we need you—again,” Jones began. “We need to tap your unique talents and we need to do it right away.”

Twenty minutes later, both Ironman and Roy felt their heads in a collective swim. Jones had just laid the bombshell of bombshells on them. He had given them an almost impossible task to perform within an incredibly short timetable. Yet, after he explained the grave situation in Vietnam—an action that for many reasons was not common public knowledge—both men knew they had to try their best to fulfill Jones’ critical request.

They stayed for four more hours working out the details. Then Jones had an armed escort bring them to their living quarters at a refurbished hotel about a half mile away. From here, Ironman and Roy would work their magic—or at least try to.

Jones had given them thirty-six hours to deliver. As their weapons, they had use of a bank of telephones, a massive Rolodex filed with secret coded phone—and radiophone numbers—and no less than 500 hundred bags of gold, supplied to them by Jones himself.

All that hung in the balance were the lives of more than 1,000 Americans in the First American Airborne Expeditionary Force, and the fate of the country of Vietnam itself.

North Vietnam

T
HE RADAR STATION AT DONG
Ha didn’t see them coming until it was too late.

When its radar screens did start flashing, the operators—newly paid and back on the job—thought they had picked up a single indication, about twenty miles due east, coming in very low. An automatic alert signal went out over the base. Ground crews began scrambling for their MiG aircraft, the pilots soon behind. The eighteen-plane MiG-25 Foxbat squadron at Dong Ha was regarded as better trained and more efficient than most bases under CapCom’s joint-subsidiary management. Being recently paid, the morale at the base was certainly on a high level too.

And one intruder would normally cause little problem for them.

But at ten miles out, the radar operators were stunned to see the single blip suddenly break into four smaller, speedier blips. In the blink of an eye, their intruder problem had just quadrupled.

The control tower senior official ordered the first four MiGs to initiate a “hot” take-off; no warm up, no instrument testing. Their sole task was to get the hell in the air—and quick.

But they would not be quick enough.

The Tigersharks came roaring over the base just as the lead flight of MiGs was lifting wheels off the runway. Flying
Shark One
, Frost had a tone on the first Foxbat before the enemy pilot even raised his landing gear. He launched his first Sidewinder and banked away just as the air-to-air missile impacted on the MiG’s twin engine exhaust pipe. Maybe it was because the tailpipe wasn’t hot enough yet, but the air-to-air just barely clipped the ass-end of the Bat, shearing off one of its tailfins. But the effect was the same as a direct hit. The MiG instantly went into an uncontrolled spin, careening into the jungle beyond the runway and exploding in a burst of flame and smoke.