Sky Ghost (31 page)

He popped the brakes and the strange airplane screeched out of the hangar and into the wind and snow. Hunter fought the foot pedals and finessed the brakes to keep the thing pointing straight while taxiing as fast as he could go.

Meanwhile he was looking over the instrument panel. It was so old—or new, or whatever the word was that he needed to describe things in this place—that the panel-backing was made of highly polished wood, like that found in a luxury car. The seat was lambswool, the knobs and buttons all polished chrome. There was even a little name plate at the bottom. It read: XF-55/4, “SuperAscender” manufactured by Curtiss-Wright/McDonnell-Douglas company.

Hunter’s head was filling with so much stuff now, it was getting hard to think straight. But the odd airplane’s name rang another minor chord in his blocked memory bank. This airplane looked like a mutated combination of a World War II test plane and a funny-looking but venerable jet fighter the design of which he could just barely frame in his head. Funny nose, tail wings that pointed down while the wingtips pointed up. As if someone had closed the hangar doors on it. It was big. Fast, named after a jungle animal. The Rhino? Or was it called a Phantom? Or both? But why would an airplane share two names like that?

Hunter didn’t have time to puzzle it out—he was approaching the main runway and now all his thoughts had to concentrate on the matter at hand.

If some kind of German weapons strike
was
coming, it was simply against his nature to just leave and not attempt to do anything about it. That’s why he’d stayed behind, that’s why he was lucky—so incredibly lucky—to find this airplane, gassed and armed to the teeth.

If something was incoming, Hunter intended to meet it—head-on if necessary. Why? Because the sad fact was this: while everyone at Dreamland might have been able to get out, there were still seven other active bases in the Circle and all of them were bigger, had more planes, and more people. The chances of all of them getting off the ground in time was small. By trying to affect the enemy’s incoming, even just a little, Hunter believed he might be able to save some lives.

So these were his thoughts as he brought the Super Ascender out to the runway and ran up the engine. It was snowing hard of course, but he was able to get one last look at this place, the place that had been his home for what seemed like a century or so. The polar camo buildings, the rows of hangars and barracks, the blowing snow, the ice and the OC.

Damn, he surprised himself by thinking, he was actually going to miss the place.

He gunned the engine and felt the odd little fighter push its way down the runway. He reached takeoff speed in an astounding five seconds—the plane was incredibly fast for a turboprop. He yanked back on the control column and up he went. Nearly straight up and at an amazing speed.

“Super Ascender?” Hunter thought. “The perfect name…”

It was now 1300 hours.

A huge storm was brewing up north. The winds and the snow and ice were heading south like a tidal wave.

The Super Ascender reached 45,000 feet in less than 90 seconds, without losing its breath. Hunter was amazed at the airplane’s technology, despite the fact it looked in many ways like an antique.

Still the words “Phantom” and “Rhino” kept going through his mind, though he would never be quite sure why. Not for a long time, anyway.

He passed through 50-angels, and the tiny little fighter still wanted to climb some more. Trouble was, Hunter had had so little time, and had moved so high so fast, he was still figuring out oxygen levels, the heating systems, and other settings. So he finally leveled out, did some yard work, then came back to the matter at hand.

The huge storm over his left shoulder looked like it was about to devour him at any moment—yet it was still 200 miles away. On the southern horizon, the bare wisp of smoke rising from enemy territory. He could just barely make it out, sooty and black against the bluish white clouds far, far away.

He turned the Ascender over and looked below. He could see planes taking off from the handful of Circle bases remaining. How much longer would it take them? Five more minutes? Five more hours? He didn’t know. This made his mission even more difficult. What to do? He would begin a square holding pattern, loitering over the island, waiting for what he was certain would come at any moment.

But then a very dampening thought hit him: how foolish was this? How could he expect to find something if he didn’t even know what he was looking for? In all this sky? With the perpetual gloom of dusk and a gigantic storm just over his shoulder?

Again, he didn’t know—but he was certain that he was supposed to be in this place, at this time. His consciousness wouldn’t allow him to be anywhere else, and from that perspective, he knew he was doing the right thing.

But what tidal wave of emotion inside him could control his very being so much? Every day since being picked up in the Atlantic he had learned just a little bit more about who he was before he came to this place. What was a rather more frightening thought—frightening in the sense of trying to know the unknown—was
what
was he before all this? He’d seen no evidence that other men he’d met along the way had these forces twisting, turning, pushing them in all directions at once. Who was he? That answer was getting simpler everyday. What was he? That was still locked in black, still way too deep in the back of his skull.

And just as he was thinking these thoughts—and wondering if there was any chance in a zillion that he really was an angel—his body began vibrating with unbelievable intensity. His breath caught in his throat—the sensation had startled him so.

“Jeesuzz—what is this?” he whispered, knowing trouble was on the way.

He got his answer just two seconds later.

It was a missile. Nose cone, first stage, second stage, steering fins, long fiery trail of exhaust coming from its tail.

It was way up there, probably at 100,000 feet or more, but it was coming down too, and an incredible rate of speed.

This thing was simply colossal, and its true size still was not apparent because it was growing bigger with each blink of the eye.

Hunter guessed correctly that it was at least as tall as the Empire State Building—the newer,
taller
one—and at least the same girth. He could only stare at it for what seemed to be the longest time, as if he was standing still and it was moving at twice the speed of sound.

Pictures flashed through his head and before his eyes. A V-2 rocket, he believed, was used in his version of World War II. This thing looked like that. But there was also something called a Saturn 5 rocket that was stuck in his memory banks too. Much larger, much more powerful than the V-2—but both had something in common. What was it?

Had they been designed by the same man maybe?

Hunter had no idea, but something in his brain was telling him that this thing coming right for him, this enormous stick of metal and fuel and fire, and no doubt high explosives in its nosecone, looked like both a V-2
and
a Saturn-5. Just a dozen or so times bigger.

And now the reason for the big X became very clear. This giant had a TV camera in its nose, Hunter was sure, and the people controlling it back in Germany were steering it to its target—and looking for the X, or at least a partially complete one.

Had they had more time they could have dug out the miles of red tape from the ice—but Hunter knew it was useless to worry about that now. The flying monster would find the ragged target and if the people steering it were good and if something this big, and moving this fast was at all accurate, it would slam into the middle of the Circle within the next two minutes. And there really wasn’t much Hunter or anyone else could do about it.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

He pushed his throttle forward, his steering yoke back and he was soon climbing again. Lining up the nose of the Ascender with the nose of the approaching giant, he test fired his cannons and was amazed at the kick as all four fired at once. And unlike his old Mustang-5’s nose mounted noisemaker, these cannons were lively, accurate, responsive.

The missile was now passing down through 85,000 feet just as Hunter was climbing through 60-angels. He knew he really only had once chance: that was to try and hit the TV camera in the monster’s nose and maybe affect its impact point—but at the same time realized this was just a crazy notion. The missile was coming down and the unfinished big X was just a matter of convenience now for the unseen controllers.

Still, as Hunter closed to within 5000 feet of the missile he pressed the firing button for all four cannons and a long stream of fiery sparks came pouring out of his gun ports. The stream filled the empty sky between him and the missile but only for a few seconds and not to much good.

But at least he’d accomplished one thing: whoever was controlling the big missile had undoubtedly seen him. Seen the defiance in his desperate attack.

So Hunter just kept firing and firing and thinking that knocking done the big seajet had been a breeze compared to this impossible task. Plus, he knew that in a million to one shot he actually hit something in the nose cone that ignited it, he and the missile would be blown in a million different directions—and his stay in this strange place would be a very short one.

And just as that thought was processing through his head, something very strange happened. He felt his hand go up to his left breast pocket, and pat it, as if his brain expected something to be in there, some kind of good-luck symbol. But his pocket was empty, just as the German’s seajet pilot’s had been.

His hand tried again, patted his heart three times, like some unseen force was moving it. This was a very frightening thing for him—more frightening than thousands of tons of explosive and missile bearing down on him.

An instant later, his guns ran out. The missile was no more than a half mile away now and he fought a sudden urge just to ride the little plane right into it—knowing in the same breath that it would be as futile as a gnat trying to stop an eagle.

So, in a final defiant act, he turned off right in front of the rocket and raised his middle finger—a last message to the evil hands controlling it. Then he finally banked hard and got the hell out of the way.

As far as Hunter could tell, the huge missile hit the partially completed X dead center.

The blast was yellow at first, quickly growing into an orange ball and then finally a brilliant balloon of blood-red crimson. It lit up the perpetual dusk for hundreds of miles around; its brilliant colors reflected off the snow and ice, intensifying its frightening beauty.

Hunter had put the Super Ascender on its tail and had climbed to escape the effects of the huge blast, but still, even at 55-angels, the shock waves buffeted the small plane for one long, terrifying minute. They were strong enough to send him toppling, head over tail, while still going straight up! He lost all power, lost his engine feed, lost all control. But he stayed conscious, knowing this tempest had to be a temporary one.

And finally, the world outside did calm down and Hunter regained control of his airplane. He leveled off, turned over, and looked down at what was once the island that held the Circle of 12 American air bases and saw that nothing was left. It was crater—melted snow, smoking chunks of ice, the seawater already pouring in.

In less than 60 seconds, the landscape had completely changed. Where just an hour before there were hundreds of planes and thousands of men and miles of runways and buildings and life was now little more than a new polar lake.

Hunter’s heart fell to his feet. His toes became so numb, he couldn’t work the airplane’s pedals. The same was true for his fingers and the control stick.

There one minute, gone the next. Did everyone get out in time?

How would he ever know?

He turned the Ascender over again and pointed the nose south. He scanned the sky in all directions and saw nothing but cold dark clouds and the huge plume of smoke still rising from the titanic blast. He went through all the channels on the plane’s rudimentary radio and heard nothing but static.

Then the question flashed through his mind.

“What now?”

He throttled back to 300 knots—he’d have to watch his fuel; it was dangerously low and the Ascender held only about one-third the gas the Mustang-5 had lugged around. And a lot of that had been burned up trying to get altitude on the big missile.

So now there was the possibility that he would find no place to land—and yet the circumstance didn’t frighten him in the least. At that moment, all he could think about was how an entity like the Circle could simply be vaporized like that. Add the possibility that hundreds, maybe thousands of men he’d come to admire greatly were no longer alive…well, the idea of just running out of fuel wasn’t that bad. Maybe this was the way it was supposed to end…

But then again, maybe not.

His radio crackled to life just a few seconds later.

“Dreamland One, do you read?”

The call surprised Hunter so much he began fumbling with the odd dials and levers, trying to find the way to respond.

“Dreamland One? Are you out there?”

Hunter finally found the send button and keyed the old fashioned hand-held microphone.

“Dreamland One here,” Hunter replied.

“Dreamland, switch to course one-seven-three,” the ghostly voice told him. “Maintain 20,000 feet for 25 minutes and await further instructions.”

Hunter did a quick calculation as to where this course would bring him. It took him just a few seconds to realize that it would carry him about 150 miles out into the North Atlantic.

He rogered the call and repeated the instructions back to the mysterious dispatcher.

“And then what?” he asked the echoing voice.

But he got no reply.

The radio had gone dead.

T
HE
USS CAPE COD
rose like a phantom city out of the mists of the sea.

It was a megacarrier, one of the last built by the American Shipworks Corporation. It was a mile long and almost a quarter of a mile high. Its deck was more than 2000 feet wide. Its crew numbered 23,000, not counting some recent unexpected arrivals.