Ghost War (50 page)

It was this man who spoke.

“English?” he asked the police officer, “or French?”

“English,” the cop replied.

“You are not regular Minx troops,” the man with the pilot’s helmet said. “This is why we can make a deal, right?”

The policeman nodded stoically. “We are businessmen, yes,” he replied.

Hunter looked over at JT, who, though battered, looked none the worse for the wear.

“We have the money,” Hunter told the enemy officer. “Give us our man.”

The policeman turned back to his officers and gave a grunt. JT was led forward.

Hunter motioned back to the chopper and Frost and Ben appeared carrying a wooden box full of bags of gold coins.

The ransom—nearly $1 million—was raised in a matter of five hours from the defenders up and down the Vietnamese coast. Once more, they knew they owed the Americans a lot for the recent turn of events.

There was a tense moment of silence, and then the Hanoi cops let JT go. He walked a little unsteadily past Hunter, and over towards Ben and Frost. Hunter gave another signal, and two enemy policemen came forward and took the box containing the gold bags.

The exchange thus over, the American troopers began falling back into the chopper, Ben and Frost helping JT climb aboard.

Hunter took a long look at the police officer.

“Doesn’t it bother you, trading with the enemy?” he asked the man.

The cop smiled for the first time. “Anything for a buck,” he said, in grinning, broken English.

Hunter just shook his head. “You’ll learn…” he said.

He motioned for Dong to get on the helicopter, and then backed up himself, never taking his eye off the policemen or their weapons.

“See you in another thirty years, guys,” he said, climbing into the open bay door.

With that, the pilots gunned the chopper’s idling engines and it slowly rose into the sky.

All of the Hanoi policemen resisted the urge to wave goodbye.

Thirty minutes later

Once again, Dong was on the ground, breathing in gravel and dirt.

There were no boots on his back this time. Rather the only thing weighing him down were the two bags of gold in the crotch of his uniform pants.

He was lying down to avoid the worst of the downwash from the ascending helicopter. His temporary captors had dropped him here, on a rise near his shit truck, still shaking but still alive.

His life had been twisted by fate again, Dong thought as he heard the helicopter slowly fly away. The Americans were a very strange bunch, of this he was now sure. They were fierce, obviously well-trained and determined, yet all in all, for the most part, Dong knew they were not out to harm him. They just wanted to retrieve their friend, that’s all. In their faces he saw the looks of men who had seen too much war, too much death. So much of both, they were weary of it, and thus not inclined to do so frivolously.

But never,
ever
, did Dong expect them to pay him for his help.

However they did, with the two bags of gold they’d taken from the original ransom collection. Just why they decided to compensate him would puzzle him for the rest of his life. After all, he was certain that some of these Americans were the same men he’d faced at Khe Sanh, though he was equally sure they had no idea who he was. All he remembered was the American soldiers speaking in their unintelligible staccato sentences soon after the big helicopter had taken off, obviously discussing what they should do with him. Then one of them—the one with the pilot’s helmet—threw the two bags of gold to him, cryptically adding French: “Go buy enough rope to hang yourself.”

Then they dropped him off, bidding him a silent, gruff farewell. Now, as their helicopter was slowly flying away, Dong felt a jolt of excitement run through him. He realized that next to the squad of Hanoi policemen, he was now probably one of the richest men in North Vietnam.

He looked up and watched the helicopter pass over the southern horizon and then he sat up and took out the pair of gold bags. He opened both and stared in at the dozens of gold coins.

He bit his lip and wondered,
What should I do with it this time?

Da Nang Air Base

I
T WAS THE C-5
known as
Football City Two
that rolled out onto the main runway at Da Nang just before dawn the next morning.

A crew of 100 men—most of them being Geraci engineers—had worked for the past twenty-four hours stripping the huge Galaxy of all unnecessary weight. Gone were the plane’s heavier loading systems, such as the motors in its huge cargo doors, both front and back. Its huge interior hold was torn away and now contained dozens of inflatable bladders, each filled with 500 gallons of jet fuel. An intricate network of hoses and plastic tubing rose up from the bladders, pumping JP-8 into the airplane’s auxiliary fuel system, where it fed into the airplane’s main fuel supply. With the Galaxy’s regular tanks also full of fuel,
Football Two
now had enough gas to carry it at least 15,000 nautical miles, probably much more.

Hunter was in the pilot’s seat of the sports-scrolled C-5—he was, in fact, the only crew member of the modified flying gas hog. In front of him was the black box he’d taken from the Pink Jet, it still being wired to the remains of
Crunchtime
’s autopilot. He had hooked this contraption into
Football Two
’s main controls and set up a crude flashing fight warning system. If everything worked right, the flashing of the red light would determine which way the captured black box wanted to go.

Hunter had received some good news shortly before climbing into the C-5. A subsequent and intensive search of the Gulf of Tonkin by the Sky High Spies and their SR-71 Blackbird had failed to find any definite sign of the Cult battleship fleet. However, oil slicks and heat spots
had
been detected by the Blackbird’s infrared cameras some 750 miles off Cam Ranh, indicating that a large force of ships had passed that way sometime within the past twenty-four hours, heading due east, away from Vietnam.

The report that the battleships were likely moving out of the area added to the fifth straight day in which there was no Minx activity anywhere in South Vietnam—the doors were closed and the Chapter 11 sign was just about hung out now as far as the Viet Minx was concerned. They were finished—absolutely
kaput
—as a military entity.

So Hunter was doubly grateful for the favorable turn of events. Now he had the time to pursue his own agenda.

He started powering up
Football Two
’s systems when he heard someone climbing up the access ladder. Hunter turned to see it was JT.

His friend handed him a sealed blue pouch.

“Got maps in there for everything but the North Pole,” he told Hunter. “Call if you need more.”

Hunter took the pouch and put it under the pilot’s seat.

“You’ve got your radio codes and the list of accessible friendly bases,” JT continued. “Don’t be afraid to call on these guys. Crunchie knows them all.”

“How are the wounds?” Hunter asked him.

JT patted his head bandage and winced. “I won’t be diving for anything, anytime soon,” he replied.

“Go lay out on the beach,” Hunter prescribed. “And talk to the
Li-Chi-chi.
They have their ways of treating such things.”

Well …” JT said, his voice trailing off. “I guess I’ll see you when you get back.”

Hunter nodded and yanked on his crash helmet. “See if you can get a card game together,” he said, tightening his worn strap. “I haven’t played poker in a while.”

“Consider it done,” JT assured him.

They shook hands and then JT started back down the access ladder. But then he suddenly reappeared again.

“Hey, Hawk,” he said, his voice a little lower than usual. “Just one more thing.”

“What? You need money?” Hunter asked him, only half-joking.

“No,” JT replied, looking straight at him. “I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks for coming and getting me.”

Hunter just shrugged. “No way we would leave you behind, old buddy. No one deserves to be left behind in this place.”

“Amen to that brother,” JT replied, his confident, cocky grin returning to his face.

They shook hands again, this time longer, then JT gave him a quick salute and departed for good.

It took another five minutes for Hunter to get all of the C-5’s computers talking civilly to each other, and then he wound up its four big engines to full power. He began taxing, past the F-20s, past the other C-5s, past the deployment of 12 B-52s, past his own beloved F-16XL.

He felt a chill go through him as he rolled by the makeshift flag pole at the end of the main taxiway. There was a ripped Stars and Stripes flying from it, whipping, tattered but proud in the brisk morning breeze. They’d started out with nine C-5s, full of brave men, and lost some. The Galaxy fleet was now as tattered as the flag; there was no more
Bozo,
no more
Nozo,
no more
Crunchtime
or
NJJ104. JAWS
had been lost, the Cobra Brothers’
Big Snake
was still missing.

But still, the air fleet had prevailed. Freedom was safe in South Vietnam—at least for the time being. And that, after all, had been the original purpose. They’d fulfilled their mission; no soldier could ask for better validation.

He pulled
Football Two
out on the main strip, and after a brief conversation with the control tower, gunned its engines and started an extra long take-off roll. Slowly, almost impossibly, the red-white-and-blue C-5 rose into the air. Nose pointing almost straight up, the airplane climbed steeply, gradually disappearing into the thin morning overcast, banking to the left as it did so.

It was gone from view in less than a minute.

Fifteen minutes later, the radar screens inside the Da Nang control tower started buzzing.

The operators quickly picked up a large airborne target flying in from the northeast—the indication was the size usually identified with a C-5. At first, all they could think of was that Hunter had turned back and was returning to the base for some reason. But as the blip came closer to the base, the tower officers knew Hunter was not at the controls of this plane. It was behaving too erratically. Plus, all attempts to raise it on the radio had failed.

The air raid alarm sirens stunned the base. In seconds soldiers were running everywhere, to shelters, to AA guns, to the armed and ready-to-go F-20s. But no sooner had the alarms died down, when the soldiers were actually coming away from their positions. They were staring up at a C-5 that was coming in from the due east, its engines smoking, flame spilling out from under its wings.

Ben and JT were out of the ops building, studying the incoming C-5.

“Who the hell is this?”
JT roared over the din.

They knew less than a minute later. The wounded Galaxy fell out of the sky at a too-fast speed, its engines nearly exploding in flames. It hit the runway hard, bounced once, came back down, flattening its entire landing gear, and then skidded crazily, raising a tidal wave of sparks behind it. It screeched to a painful stop a full half mile down the runway.

Those that were there would later swear they didn’t believe anyone on board the ship could have survived the crash, but miraculously, all of the crewmembers did. Even more astonishing was the plane itself. Obviously shot up before approaching the base, its airframe was now mortally twisted and broken. Still the Da Nang personnel who were running top speed towards the crashed and smoking jet could clearly see the large print letters adorning the airplane’s bent left wing.

They read:
JAWS.

The first group of base personnel to reach the crash site found all thirty passengers staggering out of the wreck. Ben and JT were at the head of that group, and to them it looked like a ghost ship had just crashed. Walking a little stiff, but briskly from the wrecked airplane was Cook, Maas, Clancy, Snyder, Higgens and the rest of the
JAWS
gang. It was all very spooky, as if it was a dream.
JAWS
was thought to have gone down in the sea weeks ago after the big MiG attack. Now it had just dropped out of the sky.

Cook was the first one JT and Ben reached. They didn’t quite know what to do. It was as if they were looking at a spirit

“I know, I know,” Cook was telling them, instantly identifying their confusion. “But we made it …”

Ben, JT and the rest were simply dumfounded.

Cook looked at them all and smiled wearily. “And have we got a story to tell you…”

H
UNTER FLEW FOR TWENTY
hours straight.

Over the border of North Vietnam into China, high across the Forbidden Kingdom, up into Mongolia, and then turning over Siberia itself.

All the while he kept his eye on the red light mounted on the control panel. The intensity of its flashing was guiding him perfectly, taking the huge C-5 where it was originally meant for the Pink Jet to go.

Throughout the long flight, day passed into night and began back to day again. His body and mind well-adapted to going long periods without sleep, he passed the time eating MRE candy bars, thinking of Dominique and wondering exactly where the flashing red light would bring him.

He had his answer at 4:00
AM
on the second day.

He had passed over many miles of Siberian tundra and was now flying due east. Suddenly the red light began blinking madly, and after two minutes of this, it simply stayed on.

Hunter quickly checked the dark terrain ahead of him. Sure enough, on the far eastern horizon, almost hidden in the waning night, he could see the outline of a city.

He had already determined that he was deep inside what was once known as Russia. Now, after some quick, intensive calculations, he knew that specifically, he was approaching a place known as Baikonur or more specifically, “Star City.”

This was once the Russians’ version of Cape Canaveral. It was from here that Russian governments long ago past had launched their crude copy of America’s space shuttle.

The red light still burning continuous and bright, Hunter knew Baikonur was his goal. He could see a huge airport on the edge of the city, one with a runway stretching six miles in length, more than enough to set down the big Galaxy.