Sky Ghost (12 page)

When he awoke, his ears detected a slowdown in the huge chopper’s power plants. The man who’d spoken to him was still beside him, cold and not moving. The temperature inside the passenger cabin was below freezing. He was convinced the man was dead.

But now the helicopter was descending rapidly and the screech of the huge engines began waking up the other passengers. Eventually the man on his right stirred too.

Hunter wished he hadn’t. He would have preferred the man stay dead. Because if he wasn’t, then Hunter would be certain that this strange place in which he’d landed was indeed hell, or some kind of hell, where the dead come back and your life is a succession of idiots, old men, prison cells, and flying on airplanes you are certain are going to crash.

Yes, at that moment he thought he finally had his answer. He had died and gone to Hell.

What had he done to deserve this, he wondered as the chopper simply fell out of the sky, quickly and not under any kind of control. What had he done in his previous life to wind up in eternal damnation?

He didn’t know.

Somewhere in among these gloomy thoughts, he heard a voice come over the cracked intercom speaker. The voice was unintelligible, but the others took the message to mean they should fasten their seat belts—quickly. The aircraft engines were screaming like banshees now, and the thick clouds outside gave no clue as to how high they still were or how fast they were actually falling.

Hunter grabbed for his seat belt and redoubled the clasp, and in the next second there was a huge boom! The chopper shuddered from top to bottom—-and each man’s head hit the ceiling, seat belts or not.

A second later, they were down.

The incredible down wash from the big chopper’s blades had created a huge snow squall. That’s why it looked as if they’d been flying at 10,000 feet when in reality, they’d been about 10 feet from the hard surface.

“Did we crash?” someone asked.

Hunter thought, maybe we did. He forced the door open and jumped out. The others followed him. He rolled and scrambled as far and as fast as he could.

When he looked back at the helicopter, he saw the top rotor assembly was smoking heavily. A pair of smaller helicopters were buzzing about it, spewing purple-K foam from nose-mounted nozzles onto the hot engines. Finally the Beater’s blades stopped spinning and the whirlwind died down, and Hunter realized they’d landed at a huge air base out in the middle of a very frozen, cold forest.

Gander. Newfoundland.

Somehow he knew that’s where he was.

Two trucks appeared out of the last of the snow squall. They stopped, turned around, and backed up to where Hunter and his fellow passengers stood, shivering in the freezing temperatures. Two men jumped out. Hunter’s fellow passengers were given uniform packs that were clearly marked: Tropical Combat Issue. Each man was handed a flight helmet and a pair of gloves. Then they climbed into the first truck. As the drove away, the last man on board, the one who’d said his name was Mike Fitzgerald, gave Hunter a ghostly salute.

Now it was Hunter’s turn. He was given a pack that read: Polar Combat Issue. Then he was put into the back of the second truck, alone.

The truck drove to the opposite side of the base and stopped outside a barracks. An officer appeared from within. He was wearing so many layers of clothing his face was all but obscured. He checked Hunter’s pack and then took a long time just staring at Hunter’s long hair and beard.

“No one had a chance to shave you up?” he asked him. “Or give you a buzz?”

Hunter just shrugged.

“No sir,” he replied.

“Well, there’s no time now either,” the man said.

Outside the truck a slow rumbling began. Hunter’s ears began to hurt, the dissonance was so extreme. This was not some monster helicopter he was hearing. These were airplane engines winding up. But it sounded as if an entire squadron of aircraft had suddenly turned on their engines all at once.

The noise became so loud, so quickly, it became impossible to talk, impossible to think.

“That’s your ride now!” the officer managed to yell above the growing din. “Go!”

Hunter climbed down from the back of the truck to find the sun was brightening ever so slightly on the horizon.

But then it became dark again. Something in the snow and the wind was moving in between him and the horizon. It took a few moments for him to realize that it was another airplane. This one larger and more frightening than the chopper which had brought him here.

It was a fixed-wing aircraft, at least twice the size of the Beater. Its wings held eight propeller engines on each side. Its design looked vaguely familiar to him, especially its snout, which carried an extended radar dome that looked like a long black nose. C-124 Globemaster was the designation that suddenly popped into Hunter’s head—but this airplane was bigger than the vague memory he had of that airplane. Much bigger.

And the problem with this plane was it looked to be in worse condition that the aptly named Beater helicopter. Much worse.

First of all, the 16 piston engines were all smoking mightily, not a good sign at all. They were sparking flames and bits of flash and sparks too. The underside of the wings were soaked with aviation fuel. One spark in the wrong place might touch off a fuel line and then a fuel tank and then things at the base would get very warm very quickly.

What’s more, the plane itself looked horribly beat up. Its numbers and insignia were faded, some of the windows were cracked, one was even boarded up with a piece of plywood.

Hunter felt a very long chill go through him. The last thing he wanted to do was get on
this
flying piece of shit. But he was in the army now. And he would have no choice.

He hustled out onto the frozen tarmac, ran up the ramp and packed himself into the rear cargo hold along with boxes of Q-rations, bottled water, cases marked
AERIAL BOMBS,
and barrels of aviation fuel. A half dozen soldiers were thrown on board with him. They were wearing GI issue winter clothing and carrying enormous field packs. None of them looked over 16 years old. From their insignia, Hunter determined they were a unit of Air Guards, infantry soldiers attached to the Air Corps.

They sat inside the hold of the big plane for more than a half hour. Not talking, not moving, just waiting. This wasn’t a delay. It was simply the time it took for the airplane’s engines to warm up properly. Normally Hunter would have been concerned at the sight of the gas and the bombs—but at this point, he found it a morbid comfort. At least he knew that if the plane went down it would go down big and quick. The aviation fuel and the bombs would take care of that.

Hunter was near a cracked window and watched as the ground crew went to each of the engines on his side, staring up at the contra-rotating propellers for a few minutes with huge fire extinguishers in their hands. And just for comfort, a deicing crew in a cherry picker-type truck was washing down the enormous wing with what looked to be the most ineffective deicing agent imaginable.

Hunter was a betting man—or at least he thought he was. Looking out on these preflight operations, he figured the chances of this airplane ever getting into the air were slim. The chances of it actually arriving at its destination—wherever that might be—seemed infinitesimal.

But eventually all 16 engines were turning to someone’s satisfaction. The noise and the shaking were enough to make Hunter’s teeth rattle—and ironically, with all the pyrotechnics about, there was no heat in the cargo cabin.

In the end, there was no warning. The huge plane just rumbled once and started moving forward, very slowly.

Hunter sat back and held on, but kept his eyes out the cracked window. The airplane picked up speed; the interior rumbled even more; jostling the rations and the gasoline, the bombs and the passengers. Hunter wished he’d seen the runway they were about to use—he’d have been able to tell how long it would take for a plane this size to actually get airborne. He guessed it would have to be at least five miles long.

They started rolling faster.

He looked around the cabin. Concern was written all over the faces of the young Air Guards. He wondered what they saw on his.

It seemed to take forever, but finally, somehow, some way, the airplane began ascending. Yet no sooner had the wheels left the ground than two of the eight engines on Hunter’s side began spouting flames. Not smoke. Not exhaust. Flames!

Yet the big airplane just continued climbing. It went up steep and noisy, jostling the passengers and the gasoline even more severely. Hunter couldn’t take his eyes off the burning engines. In seconds, the innermost engine was literally engulfed in flames.

But still the airplane climbed higher and higher. Into the thick white clouds.

Climbing, like it was going up to Heaven itself.

S
OMEHOW, HUNTER FELL ASLEEP
during the long, perilous plane ride.

Head leaning against a barrel of gasoline, feet propped up on a case of aerial bombs, it was exhaustion, not bravado that sucked him down into a deep and disturbing slumber.

He dreamed heavily while he was out—but there were no beautiful girls in these dreams. Instead, there was water. Tons of it, cold and surging. So much water it was rising above the mountaintops. An ocean in the middle of a forest. And he was riding a motorcycle through the air above it. And there were streaks of lightning all around him. And he was wearing someone else’s clothes, someone else’s boots, and eating someone else’s food. And there was an airplane and he had to get to it, but it was always just ahead of him and he couldn’t make the motorcycle go quick enough through the air, because he had foolishly attached bombs to it. Bombs a little girl had given him…

Who was she?

He was jolted awake before he could find out. A change in the engine noise and a sudden loss of air pressure both served to knock him back into consciousness.

Jessuzz, where was he?

Hunter hastily wiped the sleep from his eyes and some frost from the nearest window and peered down. Only then did he realize the plane was nearing its destination. Below he saw an island in the middle of a cold, cold sea. Lots of mountains, lots of snow, lots of ice. And once again, somehow he knew exactly where he was.

Iceland.

From 20,000 feet, the place looked very small and very, very dark. The plane began circling. Hunter sat back and held on. Scattered throughout the cabin, the Air Guards too were in various states of distress. The airplane sounded like it was literally coming apart at the seams now, all 16 engines screaming at once in the ice-cold air.

Then the plane began to fall. It rattled, it rolled. It stalled. It fell some more. At one point, Hunter thought he could actually hear screams coming from the cockpit.

Through some very high winds, through a blinding snowstorm, toward a pair of very faint lines of landing lights, the plane plummeted.

After 10 long minutes of horror, it finally hit the ground with the finesse of a boulder, bounced once, then came down again. Then it rolled and rolled and rolled. For four miles at least it rumbled along, as if it didn’t want to stop here. Everything inside the cargo bay shifted again, this time toward the front of the plane. Gasoline spilled, Q-rations were crushed. Air Guards were thrown about like rag dolls. Finally the right-side landing gear collapsed, blowing out 10 of the 18 tires. Only then did the gigantic plane finally skid to a halt.

The interior began filling with smoke. A fire truck materialized out of the darkness and its crew commenced foaming down the engines and the smoking landing gear. They did this in such a routine fashion, it looked like an hourly event. Someone opened the side cargo door and Hunter made a beeline down the access ramp, scrambling out with the battered and bruised Air Guards. It was a replay of his terrifying flight on the Beater. Everyone wanted to get as far away from this flying beast as possible, pilots and flight crew included.

Maybe this flying stuff ain’t that good,
he thought suddenly.

Only at a safe distance did Hunter stop and take stock of his new surroundings. He might as well have been standing at the North Pole itself. There was snow, snow, ice, and more snow. Even the runway was made of packed snow. And snow was falling in near blizzard conditions. The only indication of civilization that he could see was way,
way
across the frozen tarmac. It was a small clutch of buildings, each one with a chimney and steamy smoke pouring out of it. There seemed to be lights on in every window on every floor of every building—and even from this distance, Hunter thought he could smell food.

The Air Guards saw the same thing and formed up and started walking. Hunter tagged along, but soon lost the 12 soldiers in the blinding snow; they vanished like ghosts in the gale, even though they were only 20 feet or so ahead of him.

Alone, cold and weary, it took him nearly half an hour to reach the buildings. The wind was blowing very hard and it was not going his way. He was forced to walk backward most of the way.

When he finally reached the front door of the first building, he stopped and took a deep sniff. The scent of beef stew was on the wind. He also detected the smell of beer, whiskey, and maybe even a whiff of marijuana.

At least he’d chosen his destination well. Above the door was a sign that read:
2001ST FIGHTER SQUADRON
—
OFFICERS CLUB.
In papers contained in his Polar Combat Pack, it said he was to report to the 2001st. Now Hunter’s stomach began to rumble. He felt like he hadn’t eaten in days. Was this place open? How many people were actually inside? He could hear music, but no voices. He couldn’t see through the window; like everything else, it was frosted over. So he knocked once on the door and then went in.

The place was empty. There was music playing on a juke box, and there was booze and hot food steaming behind the bar. But the club was deserted.

The only person in evidence was the bartender. He looked up as soon as Hunter came in, but just as quickly looked away. Hunter dropped his bag in the corner and made for the bar. The bartender timidly washed an area in front of him.