Sky Ghost (30 page)

It seemed more personal than that…

Was he looking for a picture of a loved one? Was that it? Why would that interest Hunter? Why would he care what this guy’s widow and kids looked like? Well, maybe the picture wasn’t of the pilot’s loved one, but of someone in Hunter’s past. He stopped in mid chip, trying to make some sense of this thought. How weird was that? Why would a picture of someone close to Hunter be in this guy’s pocket?

He resumed chipping away at the ice and blood and finally was able to unclasp the button and get the flap open.

But the dead man’s pocket was empty.

A second later, he heard footsteps coming up towards him. It was Zoltan. He didn’t even have to say anything to the psychic, the man already knew.

“Is this familiar to you in some way too?” he asked Hunter.

Hunter just shook his head. “In some way, yes,” he replied.

They both studied the cockpit for a moment, Hunter bringing his senses back to the matter at hand.

Payne crawled up to join them. He was astonished at the height of the flight deck. “This is a real high-rise, isn’t it?” he commented.

“This is a seaplane,” Hunter was saying. “It was probably meant to land off the beach. Then I guess they intended to off-load the horses and the hay and…”

“Yeah, and what?” Payne asked for all of them.

“That’s a lot of hay for two dozen horses,” Hunter observed.

“So maybe there were more horses?” Payne continued the thread. “Brought here earlier, maybe still nearby?”

“If this was just a dropping-off point, where were they going?” Hunter asked.

“They went thataway,” Zoltan suddenly said.

Payne looked over at Hunter. “You mean he really does have psychic powers?”

But Zoltan was shaking his head. “No, look, you can see them, tracks in the snow, see?”

They pressed their noses against the glass and sure enough, from this height, it was obvious that a 10-foot-wide track had been made in the snow, leading away from the beach. From ground level it had all blended in with the frozen background. They would never have seen it if Hunter hadn’t crawled up to the fight deck in the first place.

Then came shouts from behind them. The Guards had found something too. Hunter and company made their way back to the gory hold. Among the broken bodies and the hay, the young soldiers had found another strange item: a gigantic roll of bright red fabric. It seemed like woven plastic. It was about 12 feet wide and the roll was big enough to contain thousands of feet of the stuff, maybe up to half a mile in length.

Again Hunter was nearly knocked off his feet.

“This,” he whispered loud enough only for Zoltan to hear, “This stuff, this tape. It’s familiar too.”

Zoltan just shook his head and did another quick sign of the cross.

“Well, you’ve finally done it, Hawk,” he said. “You’re finally giving
me
the creeps.”

The Beater had some trouble getting airborne as the wind and snow had intensified since they’d landed at the crash site. But somehow, the octocopter got about 100 feet of air underneath it and with all eyes pressed against its many observation bubbles, they began to follow the tracks in the snow.

They went on for miles. The tracks led them over hills, through frozen valleys, across icy streams, and over more snowcaps. The trail was littered with dead horses, some hacked to pieces, their frozen bodies and legs sticking up through the snow drifts. Strands of yellow hay could be seen too, most of it plastered up on bare rock faces, the amber color very alien against the frozen waste.

They flew along like this for nearly 45 minutes, the winds buffeting the Beater’s rotors, and causing metallic screams that shuddered throughout the aircraft. The trail led back toward the circle of American bases. It was soon evident that the Germans—with their horses and their hay—were heading for someplace close to the airfields. But again the question was, why?

They finally found their answer on a frozen plain that, when they would do their rough calculations, was located in a spot exactly equidistant from all the bases.

Here they found the people who had made the first tracks through the snow. They were all dead too. Men and animals, frozen together. They had huddled for warmth, possibly waiting for the relief column that had never come.

The Beater landed and Hunter and the others got out to see it all up close.

Hunter pulled Zoltan aside. “This stuff, or a lot of it, is familiar too.”

Zoltan pulled his collar closer to his neck. “A plane full of horses. Soldiers carrying red tape? None of this makes any sense. How can it be familiar?”

But then, beside the dead, one of the guards found something. It was the beginning of a long line of the same bright red tape. It was partially hidden underneath the snow. But it turned out it stretched for nearly one half mile, east to west.

It didn’t take long to figure out this strip of red tape was actually part of what would have been a huge cross. The second column had been carrying the second half mile of fabric—and the horses had been used to pull the huge wad of tape across the frozen waste—and provide food for the troops.

But two long strips of plastic in the middle of the ice and snow? Why?

But Hunter knew exactly what was going on.

Two strips, crossed. Bright red against the white terrain, to be hidden under the snow until the last possible moment?

“It’s a target,” Hunter told them. “A cross, to be hit. A huge aiming point.”

Payne and Zoltan just looked at Hunter then at each other.

“A target?” Payne said, yelling to be heard against the howling wind. “A half mile long? Why that big?”

Hunter felt the blood freeze inside his veins again. Then his body started vibrating.

“Because,” he said, “whatever is coming down on this thing is big too…”

E
VERY AIRPLANE AT DREAMLAND
was either out on the runway or taxiing up to it by the time the Beater made it back to base.

Hunter was surprised at the number of aircraft. Not just the several dozen Mustang fighters, but a couple huge Boxcar cargo jets that had been hiding somewhere in the hangars way out back.

In all, there was at least 65 airplanes waiting to take off; even then some would probably be left behind.

They were bugging out. Payne had ordered it, via radio from the Beater. Every base around the Circle was evacuating. And doing so as quickly as possible.

There was no doubt in Hunter’s mind that some kind of German weapons strike was coming. The partially constructed big X in the snow had been the bull’s-eye—and the German military had gone to great lengths, and wasted some valuable troops, in its attempt to set it up.

It was also obviously an aiming point, and one whose location was not just a guess in the wind. If the point was equidistant from all the Circle bases, the middle of the necklace as it were, that meant to Hunter that something big was coming—something that could hit in the middle of nowhere and wipe out 12 airfields with its 20-mile radius.

Something very big…

Payne needed no convincing of this. That’s why he sent out a general order to all active bases to pack up everyone and everything they could and get airborne. And do it all in 45 minutes.

This was the shrinking time frame Hunter had figured out on the ride back. He reached this number by back-guessing when the Germans expected the second load of men and red tape to arrive at the target site if their plane hadn’t been shot down.

In many ways it would have been better had they discovered the big X without shooting down the seajet. That way they would have had the window of opportunity to work with as the Germans were attaching the fourth arm of the X.

But now, once the Germans realized their plane was gone, and their intentions somewhat uncovered, they would probably accelerate their plans and send whatever they were going to send anyway, hoping the partially-constructed cross would suffice as the aiming point.

These thoughts and his gut were telling Hunter they had no time to lose, no time to sit around and figure out what to do and when.

Something big was coming, there wasn’t really much they could do about it and so the prudent thing was to get the hell out—damn quick.

The Beater dropped them in front of the Dreamland ops building then its crew hurried back to Base Two to gather its own stuff, pick up some comrades, and bug out.

The Air Guards scrambled to grab a few personal items and then ran out to one of the big Flying Boxcars waiting out on the runway.

Meanwhile Hunter and Payne hurried into the ops building and began unloading as many of secret documents they could stuff into a duffle bag. Then Payne grabbed pictures of his wife and kids, took his baseball glove and ball and his last bottle of scotch, and ran back out again. By the book to the end, he actually locked the door behind him as he left.

People were running all over the base now, most of them heading out to the waiting Boxcars. Calls had gone down to Atlantic Wartime Command about the bug out, but there was no indication they’d been decoded and read as yet—and the people on the active Circle bases had no time to hang around and wait for the official order to evacuate.

Even details of where everyone was going hadn’t been worked out. The main thing was for everyone to get into the air and as far away from the Circle as possible. Just where to put down would have to be divined later.

Hunter had barely the clothes on his back to his name, so there was no packing for him. He’d hailed a big jeepster and loaded Payne and the secret documents into it. Zoltan appeared and Hunter stuffed him inside the jeep as well, along with Colonel Crabb and his eight lovelies. Each one was crying and hugged Hunter before loading into the vehicle.

Meanwhile the first of the squadron fighters was taking off. The roar of their combined engines made it nearly impossible to talk. One of them screamed right overhead, wagging its wings as it did so. Hunter knew it was Sarah, waving down to him. He felt a chill go through him. He really liked her. But when would he see her again, if ever?

He got the last of Crabb’s girls loaded into the jeepster and then told the driver to head directly for the front of the big Boxcar. They could all get access to the plane by the forward cargo door.

Just as the driver was about to speed off, Payne reached out and grabbed Hunter by the arm.

“What are you doing? Get in!”

Hunter just shook his head. “I’ll catch up with you,” he said hastily.

“Catch up with us?” Payne said, not getting it yet.
“How?”

Zoltan was catching on.

“Where are you going?” he asked Hunter.

Hunter looked down the long line of open hangars.

“I’m not sure yet,” he said.

With that he tapped the driver on the shoulder and the guy finally took off.

The last Hunter saw of Payne and Zoltan were their astonished faces in the rear window of the jeepster as it drove away.

Hunter now had 20 minutes.

He ran to the meteorologist’s station and quickly studied as many weather charts detailing local conditions as possible. He got as much information as he could absorb in about three minutes.

Then he ran back out to the street.

Dreamland was really like a ghost town now. The last plane was just leaving. Its engines whined unbearably as it ascended into the frigid clouds. After that, there was nothing but the wind.

It was closing in on 15 minutes to go. Hunter grabbed an abandoned snow cycle and began screeching up and down the base’s roadways, between the hangars, looking in each one.

It was lucky of course that just about every hangar door was open. The problem was just about all the hangars were empty. Hunter was beginning to wonder whether his gut had finally sent him the wrong message—and stranded him here just as the sky was about to cave in.

And that’s when he found it,

He’d always suspected that some of the stuff kept in the hangars out back of Dreamland was top secret. Outrageous prototypes sent north to be tested in the harsh conditions and left to rust once the war started going against the Americans.

But this thing…what was it?

Hunter found it in a hangar whose doors had not been open. He just felt compelled to screech to a halt in front of a black air barn at the very rear of the airbase. There were no less than five locks on the front door—a good sign of a top secret place. There was a window though and three bullets from his massive survival gun took care of it forthwith. He crawled inside and found the strange aircraft. It was sleek, it was small—and it had no rear end.

Its fuselage was cut off just a few feet from the end of the canopy. Here was a powerful pusher-type turbo-prop. The wings were swept way back. The nose was very long and sleek.

Hunter inspected the strange airplane anxiously. Maybe this was pushing the plot envelope a little; he had less than 10 minutes to get the hell out of here. Would he, could he, really expect to do so in a strange, rather bizarre looking aircraft, one that he had no idea how to fly, or even if it was airworthy? Or if it had gas in it—or any fuel around for him to load in, which alone would take more time than he had left on the ground.

And even if he was somehow able to get airborne, what he intended to do—what his gut was telling him to do—would require some weaponry.

This airplane was obviously a test model of some kind. The proper maintenance would call for it to have empty fuel tanks if it was in storage, and few test planes carried weapons.

But he checked its gas tanks and for some absolutely unknown reason, they were full. And then he checked for guns, and sure enough the plane was packing four cannons, two on each wing, an outrageous set of armament for a test platform, but installed nevertheless. Even more incredible, the guns were loaded and ready.

Hunter had no time to question the twists and turns which brought him here, to this place, and to the airplane that was exactly what he needed. He just whipped open the hangar doors, climbed into the airplane, and did a quick check of the instruments. They looked like they belonged in an alien spaceship. But he pushed the right buttons and threw the right levers and the engine started up, true and burning fine, on the first try.