Ghost War (52 page)

Cook held up the first shot. It showed the twenty-square-mile Lolita Island from a height of forty thousand feet. It looked like a postal stamp surrounded by water. It was as close to being nowhere as one could get.

“As you can see, in this first photo we have a flat piece of rock,” Cook explained. “Barren. No trees. No vegetation. No people.”

He held the second photo.

“Same place, a week later. Still flat. Still barren. But notice the dark spot right in the middle.”

The photo was passed around. In the exact middle of the square island, a dark shape had begun to form.

“Same place, a week later,” Cook said, distributing a third photo. This one showed the dark spot had grown bigger.

“Here’s four and five,” Cook continued, holding up two photos which showed the dark spot now expanded to nearly half the island. “And six and seven…”

These last two showed the island nearly covered by the shadowy spot. Everyone agreed that it looked like vegetation had filled in the island’s formerly bare terrain—but had done so in an incredibly short amount of time.

“According to the Tommies, that island hasn’t sprouted vegetation in thousands of years,” Cook explained. “Yet now, in less than two months, it’s suddenly a jungle.”

It was a rather tantalizing mystery—but then Cook revealed an even more, sinister angle.

“The Tommies have noticed some Asian Cult activity in the region lately, too,” he said, his voice raspy with anger.

This news did not surprise anyone around the table.

The Asian Mercenary Cult was the Number One troublemaker in the Pacific Rim. Sailing a fleet of some three dozen battleships, they’d been terrorizing the helpless people of the islands stretching from Japan, their home base, all the way to Indonesia and beyond. The Cult had been major supporters of CAPCOM in this latest Indochina war—until CAPCOM began losing, that is.

“The Tommies know that if the Cult is involved in this, no matter how minor their role,” Cook explained, “then something foul is afoot.”

There was a round of grim agreement from those gathered.

“So what do the Tommies want from us?” Ben Wa, one of the top United American officers asked.

Cook just shrugged. “Well, they’re a small outfit,” he told them. “And the trouble is, they don’t have the projection needed to check out what’s going on on that island. They’ve got a couple Tornado jets and a converted destroyer. But their airplanes can’t land there—and if the destroyer is spotted anywhere near Lolita, their cover will be blown. That would be disastrous. Their whole reason for being is their secrecy.”

There was a wave of troubled looks around the table.

“So they want us to do it for them?” Ben Wa asked.

Cook nodded gravely. “If not us, who?”

A silence descended on the room. Outside the monsoon continued to roar. Every man involved knew that in saving JAWS, the Tommies had rescued one of their own family. There was no way they could turn down their request for aid. From a contingency standpoint, getting some eyes and ears on the ground on Lolita Island wouldn’t be that hard. The C-5 fleet had many options to turn to for such a long-range spy mission.

The problem was that, though the men sitting around the table were well-known for the countless acts of bravery and gallantry in the name of liberty, the group was not complete. Their key member was not among them. Hawk Hunter, AKA the Wingman, had taken off, alone, from Da Nang a little more than seventy-two hours earlier—and no one had heard from him since. They didn’t know where he was or even if he was still alive. This cast a disturbing pall over the proceedings.

But, like always, the group pressed on. They discussed the situation with the Tommies and Lolita Island further and decided they would lend a hand and send a spy team to the isolated island.

But in approving the mission, each man knew that this type of thing always went better when Hunter was involved.

And each man couldn’t help but wonder exactly where their friend was at the moment….

Mack Maloney is the author of numerous fiction series, including Wingman, Chopper Ops, Starhawk, and Pirate Hunters, as well as
UFOs in Wartime: What They Didn’t Want You to Know
. A native Bostonian, Maloney received a bachelor of science degree in journalism at Suffolk University and a master of arts degree in film at Emerson College. He is the host of a national radio show,
Mack Maloney’s Military X-Files
.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1993 by Mack Maloney

Cover design by Michael Vrana

978-1-4804-0676-6

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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