Ghost War (51 page)

He circled this airport once, and was not surprised to see it was totally abandoned. Ten minutes later, he was down and climbing out of the C-5.

The sun was beginning to come up, and to the north of the city, he could see the tops of the launch platforms formerly used by the Russian space programs. His heart pounding, a heavy parka wrapped around his body, he loaded his M-16 and set out for the towers.

It took him more than an hour of walking through the monolithic, abandoned city in subzero temperatures before he reached the edge of the rocket base.

And it was here that he got one of the biggest surprises of his life.

Unlike the rest of Star City, the base was very much alive.

He could see technicians hastily moving around the base’s largest launching pad, attending to something hidden under a huge plastic cover. Fuel trucks were scurrying about, announcements in many languages were blaring out of the unsophisticated loud speaker system. It seemed the people at the rocket base were so busy with the object under the tarp they hadn’t even detected his approach in the C-5.

The sunrise was about thirty minutes away now. He was huddled in a doorway of a deserted building with a clear sight into the base. His immediate plan was to observe, take as many mental notes on the situation as possible, and then figure out what he should do about it all—if anything. That the Pink Jet’s autocontrol should bring him to what he thought was a long-abandoned space launch facility did not surprise him a whit. His many years of battling the forces of evil had taught him never to be surprised by anything an enemy did.

But just how was Victor connected to all this? And what was under the plastic covering that was getting so much attention? Could it be an ICBM? One aimed at America, to be launched in retribution for the inglorious defeat of the undemocratic forces in Southeast Asia?

Hunter just didn’t know—and he felt he’d have to wait until morning’s first light to find out.

But, as it turned out, it would not take nearly that long.

He figured it was about 0600 hours when it happened.

The dawn was just making its appearance. He was just munching the last MRE candy bar, biding his time, when suddenly, it sounded as if a hundred klaxons went off at once.

He had to hold his ears the noise was so intense. Through squinting eyes he saw a long black car emerge from a building way off to his left. This car—it was actually a Cadillac superstretch limo—roared right past him, and headed towards the launch tower. The scurrying technicians had all stopped by now and were standing at attention when the limo finally arrived. As the klaxons died away, more than six individuals reached for the limo’s rear door. After a brief scuffle, it was finally opened and a tall dark figure stepped out.

Hunter felt his breath catch in his throat. Suddenly it seemed as if a bomb had gone off in his brain. He recognized the man emerging from the car right away. Tall, dark, wearing all black, long slick hair, and a sharp goatee.

It was Victor.

Or at least someone who looked exactly like him.

Hunter didn’t hesitate an instant. He raised his M-16 and quickly sighted Victor’s head in his crosshairs. But before he could squeeze off a shot, the supercriminal ducked behind an opening made for him in the immense plastic covering. He was followed through this hole by no less than six people dressed in what looked like very old-fashioned spacesuits.

What the hell is going on here?
Hunter thought, his mind racing.
Could it be…?

That’s when the klaxons started blaring again. Then suddenly, a mobile crane appeared and in one, swift maneuver, yanked the huge plastic sheet from the launch platform.

That’s when Hunter saw the space shuttle.

He was astonished—so much so he couldn’t move.

It was an American space shuttle—there was no doubt about it. Hunter was an expert of the craft—he was, at one time, slated to be the youngest pilot ever to fly the shuttle for NASA, an appointment in outer space which was cruelly cancelled by the start of the Big War.

Now he was staring at one of the authentic items, and realizing much to his horror that it had somehow fallen into the hands of his archenemy, Victor.

So stunned was he, he didn’t know how much time passed, but now people were running everywhere. Suddenly Hunter could feel the ground shaking beneath his feet. There was then a tremendous roar, and a burst of flame so intense, it nearly blinded him.

Then the shuttle began to rise.

He was out in the street against the fence in a heartbeat. His M-16 was up and firing, a long stream of tracers reaching out towards the ascending shuttle, carving their way through the flames and smoke.

But it was useless. In his rage Hunter knew he was way beyond the range of an effective shot.

But he kept firing anyway—over the noise, over the storm of smoke, over the billowing flame, firing nonstop even as the shuttle disappeared into the low clouds and climbed towards outer space.

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F
IVE YEARS HAVE PASSED
since the end of the Big War.

The American continent, once fractured and steeped in anarchy, has been recivilized. A central government is now firmly in place in Washington, both coasts have been reconnected and cleanup of the country’s devastated midsection has begun. Many citizens who had fled to Free Canada in the times of trouble have now returned, re-populating the cities and the countryside.

Once again, a strong military establishment is in place to protect the liberties that had been lost and then won back at great cost.

The revival of American freedom was, for the most part, the work of a small group of modern-day patriots, professional soldiers who’d planned the campaigns, fought the wars and apprehended the criminals and terrorists responsible for so much misery in postwar America. These men, and the armed forces they still command, are known as the United Americans.

But just because America is now stable and free, this doesn’t mean the struggle is over. Major battles have been fought against America’s enemies in the Pacific and most recently in Southeast Asia, brutal campaigns which the United Americans won through a combination of strength, cunning and the knowledge that their purpose was right and just.

Once again, a new, more dangerous menace is emerging, one that threatens the renewed America more than any other in the past five years.

One which will present the United Americans with their most serious challenge yet.

Da Nang Air Base

New Republic of Vietnam

I
T WAS HOT.

Broiling hot. So hot the air was thick with scorching vapors, rising and falling across the lush, devastated tropical landscape.

It was midmorning now and the sun was its usual merciless self. Off to the west was a swift-moving, high, dark bank of clouds that stretched from one horizon to the other.

In minutes, it was overhead, obscuring the sun and turning everything dark. The first rain drops began to fall and in a heartbeat, they were coming down at a steady pace. After a half minute, the rain was a torrent. In forty-five seconds, it was like a hurricane. Within a minute, it was a full-blown monsoon.

Just like that, the heat of the morning was replaced by a deluge of hot steamy water. It was amazing to see, the best Nature could offer as proof that when things changed in this haunted part of the world, they usually did so very quickly.

On the main runway of the air base, the wreck of an airplane was still burning, some forty-eight hours after it had crashed. The monsoon rains would soon put an end to that—even now the plane’s hot metal was sizzling in the growing storm. Clouds of steam were rising above the burned and battered airplane, too. Like a dying breath, they ascended only a few hundred feet before fading away completely.

The airplane was a C-5—or it had been at one time. Still visible on its skeletal front section were the remains of the twenty-foot-high shark’s mouth, the signature nose art of the special operations group which had called the airplane home for the past month. Only this snout had remained intact in the crash and had remained unburned in the time since. This, too, was a sign from the ethers—a cosmic tweak that sometimes good does endure, if only in repose.

In the large building at the opposite end of the five thousand, four hundred foot runway, twenty-four men were sitting around a huge table. Their names were familiar to those privy to the United American command structure: Toomey, Wa, Crunch, Kurjan, Geraci. They were ignoring the tempest which had appeared so suddenly outside. This storm, as violent as it might be, was a daily occurrence in Da Nang. The monsoon arrived with such regularity, you would set your watch to it. Still, the men inside the building had ceased to be impressed by it long ago. They had other things on their minds.

Six of the two dozen people sitting around the table were heavily bandaged, sporting broken arms, legs, and fingers, along with many bruises, cuts, and minor burns. But they were all alive—and that was the most important thing. They, and twenty-two other men, had been inside the big JAWS C-5 when it crashed at Da Nang. It had been a spectacular wreck, all fire and smoke and dust, but in the end every man aboard the big airplane had made it out alive. That shark-toothed mouth on the wreck of their airplane wasn’t smiling for nothing.

The six men were Captain Jim Cook, his staff officers Warren Maas, Mark Snyder, Sean Higgens, Clancy Miller and Jack Norton, the top echelon of the JAWS group. Formerly of upstate New York, the JAWS team had evolved from a local police force into a crack special ops outfit which specialized in everything from mountain warfare to fighting in the desert. Battered and bruised as they were, this was a happy occasion. No one else in the room believed they’d ever see these men again. But they were here, alive, and with an astonishing tale to tell.

They had been part of the first legion of C-5s dispatched to Vietnam at the height of the emergency in Southeast Asia. Of all the first group of planes sent, the JAWS crew were the only ones who didn’t make it. Everyone feared they’d gone down in the South China Sea, either at the hands of enemy fighters or the harsh elements. They had been intercepted about forty miles off the coast, in the middle of a monsoon, by two fighter jets, who escorted them to a small island one hundred twenty miles away. It was only by cool piloting and massive energy conservation that the JAWS C-5 made the trip at all—its tanks were dry when it finally touched down on the island. As it turned out, the two interceptors had done them a favor. There had been a pack of MiG-25 jets hiding in the storm, just waiting to pick off stragglers in the United Americans’ C-5 fleet. The JAWS plane would have certainly fallen to them had the two mystery airplanes not shown up when they did.

But who were these benefactors? Crawling out of their empty plane that day, the JAWS team soon learned the people who ran the base on the secret island were a collection of mercenaries, tech people and strategists, all loyal to a command staff of British RAF pilots, known informally as the Tommies.

The Tommies were in Southeast Asia for the same reason the American C-5s were: to help the South Vietnamese fight off the threat of the enemy of the north, the quasi-communistic enterprise, known as CAPCOM. While literally thousands of mercenaries had helped the South Vietnamese recently prevail over the brutal CAPCOM, the Tommies and their small legion had been working behind the scenes, attacking CAPCOM ships in transit, intercepting and destroying CAPCOM aircraft and running naval covert actions.

They were a highly secret unit and they had to stay that way to be effective. This meant that, although JAWS had been saved from a certain doom, they had to stay put, on the secret island, and remain
incommunicato
until the war on the Vietnamese mainland played out.

Only when they heard that CAPCOM had lost the last key battle—more to their operations going bankrupt, than the outcome on the field—did JAWS attempt to rejoin the American Expeditionary Force. A nasty encounter with two rogue MiG-25s on the way back had resulted in a very shot-up C-5, thus the spectacular crash landing at Da Nang. But payback was a bitch—both MiGs fell to the guns sprouting out of the gigantic JAWS gunship before either fighter could deliver a killing blow.

So now JAWS was back—and the American Expeditionary Force was whole again. But they had brought with them word of an even-larger threat to the region, one that made the brutal shenanigans of CAPCOM pale by comparison. That’s why this meeting was called. The battered and burned JAWS team was briefing the United American command staff on what they’d discovered while everyone else was out fighting the Second Vietnam War.

Captain Cook, the overall leader of JAWS, displayed a series of high-altitude recon pictures. The photos were all of an island located some five hundred sixty miles southeast of Tommy Island, one of the Paracel Islands. The island in the photos bore the unlikely name of “Lolita.” Probably a bastardization of the name Loaita Island, this speck was located about five hundred miles west of the Philippines, almost equidistant between the Filipino city of Balabac and the Vietnamese coast. The photos had all been taken at weeklong intervals over the past six weeks.