Skyfire (13 page)

Then he ran out of ammunition for good.

A second later, one of the invaders was successful in ripping the spent rifle from his hands. Then he realized that three of the enemy were grabbing onto the edges of the fence section itself and lifting it. For one terrifying moment, all he could see was the gleam of the enemy's axe heads.

With a fair amount of effort, the men managed to pull the piece of wood off him, and for a frightening half-second, all three of them peered down at him, cruel grins on their faces. The mechanical roar out to sea was even louder now, providing strange accompaniment for what should have been the last few seconds of Goldstein's life. The invaders raised their axes and screamed in unison, generating the psychic energy needed to chop 111

Goldstein into pieces. He closed his eyes and waited for the first blow.

But it never came.

Instead, all three of the invaders were suddenly blown away in a great stream of wind and gunfire. Goldstein barely saw them through the slits in his eyelids as their bodies were swept away by a long tongue of tracer fire.

Two more invaders appeared right above him, but they, too, were dispatched by a burst of fire. All the while the mechanical noise was screeching in his eardrums. What the hell was it? The noise, which now drowned out all the screams and sounds of gunfire, seemed familiar, but Goldstein's reasoning process was skewed as he was close to going into a state of shock.

For the next two minutes all he heard was the earsplit-ting mechanical noise and the roar of what sounded like one, solitary cannon that was sweeping fire up and down the beach. And then, after a while, this gunfire stopped, too.

With great effort, Goldstein lifted himself out from the rubble and tangled bodies and was astonished at what he saw.

There wasn't a enemy soldier left standing. The shoreline was covered with their bodies, cut down like so many blades of grass, some of them rolling in the heavy surf. Parts of the barricade were smoking, and several fires were raging at the north end. Many of the LISDF militiamen around him were dead.

It seemed to him the only thing left was the terrifying blackness of the night and this strange roar. It took a few confused moments, but by looking straight up, Goldstein finally discovered the source of the sound: Hovering right over his position was a Harrier jumpjet.

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When the Commander of the LISDF militia awakened, it was morning.

He was flat on his back and it seemed as if every bone in his body was aching.

The sky overhead was cloudless and clear except for a single jet-black raver that was circling high above. The first sound the officei heard was the gentle crashing of the waves. He felt 2 warm breeze on his face. Then he realized that tears were running out of his eyes.

He couldn't believe it-he was still alive.

"How are you feeling, sir?"

The Commander blinked once and saw he was starinj into the face of Sergeant Goldstein.

"What . . . what happened?"

Goldstein managed a grin even though his face am shoulder were covered with bloody bandages. "You go hit on the head, sir . . ."

"And the enemy?" the Commander asked, gingerl; rubbing the large gash on his forehead.

"They were stopped, sir," Goldstein said, his voic choking back the emotion.

"Finally . .."

With Goldstein's help, the commander managed t raise himself up on his right elbow. Then, for the firs time, he saw the devastation on Montauk Beach.

The barricade was gone for the most part, burned o blown away. Hundreds of sand-caked weapons-guns t mortars to axes and swords-were strewn all aroun him. The smell of gunpowder was as thick as that c 113

the sea. And everywhere were bodies, stretching for at least a mile along the shore, some lying in the wet sand, others perversely tossed about by the incoming tide. Off to his left, his men were calmly separating the corpses; one pile for the invaders, another for the militia's KIA's.

"How many?" he asked Goldstein, wiping a stream of blood from his lips.

"Seventy-eight of our guys confirmed," Goldstein told him. "At least three hundred of them . . ."

The Commander shook his head and found it painful. "But how?" he asked. "All I can remember is that they were coming at us from all sides . .."

Goldstein pointed down to the southern end of the beach. "Over there, sir," he said. "That's the reason we're still alive."

The Commander looked south and saw a man dressed in a flight suit and a white helmet, sitting on the top of a sand dune a hundred feet away.

"He saved us," Goldstein said. "Him and his jumpjet. Got here just in time.

Caught the enemy right on the tideline, and rolled them up to our barricades.

I still don't know how he did it, but he was able to shoot them without hitting any one of us . . ."

The commander tried to get to his feet but fell back almost immediately.

"I ... must talk to him," he said, trying again to get up.

"Hang on, sir," Goldstein replied. "There's something else you should know."

This time he pointed out to sea. At first all the commander could make out was a long black plume of smoke, rising straight up into the sky. But as he was able to focus his teary eyes, he saw that there was actually a ship of some kind, burning about a half mile off shore.

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"That pilot also solved the big mystery for us, sir," Goldstein told the senior officer. "He found out how the raiders were able to attack so quickly .

. ."

The commander somehow found his binoculars, and with help from Goldstein was able to focus them on the burning wreck.

"My God," the senior officer exclaimed after examining the burning ship for a few moments. "Is that a submarine?"

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Not only had Sergeant Goldstein never been aboard a submarine before, he had never even seen one up close.

But now, as he steered the motorboat at full speed toward the smoking hulk of the raiders' vessel, he realized all of that was about to change.

His "Monster Johnson" speedster was in the vanguard of a fleet made up of two dozen yachts, fishing boats, powerboats, and motorized catamarans that had been hastily appropriated from the Montauk Point Yacht Club. More than a hundred and fifty militiamen were crowded onto the vessels, many hanging on for dear life as the makeshift flotilla raced through the choppy waters off Montauk. A quarter mile ahead was their prize-the raiders' submarine. Their intention was to board it, overcome anyone still left alive on board, and then inspect the vessel for clues as to the origin of the raiders.

But now, as Goldstein drew closer to the vessel, it was becoming very clear that this particular submarine was many times larger than he ever imagined it would be.

"It's enormous," the militia commander said, focusing his spyglasses on the vessel. "Much bigger than any old US Navy boat, wouldn't you think, Major Hunter?"

Standing on the rail next to the commander, Hunter had to agree that this was no typical submarine they

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were approaching.

"I've only seen drawings of subs like this," he told the commander, borrowing the man's spyglasses. "Years ago, before they built the Alaskan pipeline, someone proposed constructing a bunch of huge subs-submerged supertankers really-to carry the oil drilled up in Prudhoe Bay down to the refineries in the lower states. They claimed it would have been much safer, cheaper, and better for the environment than pumping the stuff through pipes down the middle of the state.

"I don't think any of them were actually built, but this boat looks to be designed along the same general idea-in size anyway."

As he spoke, Hunter calculated the length of the huge sub to be at least nine hundred feet, almost twice as long as the US Navy's gigantic Ohio-class Trident sub. It was also much wider, probably a good eighty feet across the beam, with a stout yet bulbous conning tower to match. And it was not entirely tubular like prewar subs-rather its overall shape was flattened-oul and squat.

By further adjusting the binoculars, Hunter coulc also clearly see the spot on the ass end of the sut where he had delivered a thousand pound bomb during the height of the battle the night before. A tanglec mass of burnt and twisted metal was all that was lefi of the two huge propellers that once propelled th< ship. The impact of the GPU bomb-he had eyeballec it in from a height of fifty feet-had caused the af end of the vessel to stick up about fifteen feet in th< air. Correspondingly, the bow of the sub was sub merged by approximately the same amount.

"It's quite a unique design," Hunter concluded handing the binoculars back to the commander. "An< if I had to guess, I'd say it was built overseas some 117

where after the Big War, not before."

"God damn," the commander exclaimed, immediately realizing the implications of Hunter's statement. "Do you really think that it's possible?"

Hunter could only shake his head. When he considered what he knew about the panic sweeping the continent, added in the destruction of nearly half of the country's gasoline and jet fuel reserves and the totally bizarre battle the night before, the appearance of a gigantic submarine almost seemed like a piece of comic relief to him.

In fact, the last two days had been so strange, he was at a point where he'd believe just about anything was possible.

Before happening upon the battle at Montauk, he had spent most of the previous forty-eight hours sweeping up and down the waters of southern New England and Long Island Sound, looking for any signs of the raiders who had snatched Dominique and Yaz. The search had not only been unsuccessful, it had been incredibly frustrating to boot. Not only did he face the task of searching over hundreds of square miles of ocean, he also had to deal with the extra hassle of trying to get JP-8 fuel for the Harrier.

He had spent eight hours of precious time trying to convince the commanders of a reserve naval air station in old Rhode Island that he was, in fact, Major Hawk Hunter of the United American Armed Forces and that he needed as much of their jet fuel as they could spare. Trouble was, no one paid much attention to him-they were too worried about being overrun by the ghostly horde of axe-wielding cannibalistic rapists. Hunter tried everything, including offering a bribe to the fueling crew, but still, no one would budge.

Finally it took a direct order via telex from Commander in Chief General Dave Jones himself to con-118

vince the naval officers to fill the Harrier's tanks.

It was dark by the time he finally took off from the naval station, and he immediately resumed his search of the coastal waters around Block Island Sound. Then, around midnight, his extraordinary sixth sense had begun flashing. Although nothing had registered on his various cockpit instruments, somehow he just "knew" that the raiders were close by. It was only a few minutes later that he spotted the first shots of the battle between the militiamen and the raiders on Montauk Point. After that, all it took was one sweep of the shoreline to distinguish friend from foe.

Ten minutes was all that was needed for him to empty both his Aden cannons into the scores of invaders along the beach. Then he turned out to sea just as the submarine-little more than a glint of light in the pitch-black dark and a mass of interference on his cockpit's look-down radar-was submerging.

Although he could have destroyed it outright, he chose to deliver just the one well-aimed thousand-pound GPU bomb to the boat's rear end. Hitting the props dead-on, he disabled the vessel immediately. There were several reasons behind this somewhat measured response: in strictly military terms, he knew that capturing the vessel intact would provide many clues as to who the raiders were.

However, he also had an overriding personal reason for not sinking the boat on the spot: this was the possibility that Dominique and Yaz might be aboard.

And although his gut was telling him that Dominique and his friend were not anywhere nearby-and never yet had his sixth sense of his been wrong-there was still the chance that other kidnapped Americans were being held on the boat.

"Well, whenever the hell it was built, it's ours now," the Commander suddenly boasted, breaking into

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Hunter's thoughts. "It took these bastards to come to Long Island to finally get their asses whipped."

Hunter began to say something, but thought better of it. He knew the militia officer was assuming that this boat was the one and only vessel belonging to the raiders. Hunter doubted this, though. With the number of attacks reported in New England three days before, the numbers just didn't add up.

The Commander quickly radioed the other boats in his small fleet to stop and prepare for boarding.

"Just like we planned it," he said over and over into his radio microphone.

"We don't need any screw-ups at this point."

Hunter checked the ammunition in his M-16 and adjusted his crash helmet. There was a good chance that someone was still alive aboard the sub, and if they chose to fight, they would prove to be a troublesome adversary. For although more than three hundred raiders had died at Montauk Point, not all of them had been killed by the militiamen or by Hunter's cannons. Rather, more than one hundred of them had died by their own hand, killing themselves after realizing that, despite their ferocity and just plain dumb courage, their battle had been lost.

The very thought of that had been giving Hunter the creeps all morning. Only fanatics choose suicide over defeat, and from painful experience he knew the worst kind of enemy was a fanatical one.

After five minutes of shaky maneuvering, the small militia flotilla had finally surrounded the big sub. At that point, the Commander gave the word to board the vessel.

Hunter, Goldstein, and the Commander himself were among the first to climb up onto the boat's deck. Then a fishing boat pulled alongside and deposited twenty-five distinctive, green-uniformed soldiers on to 120

the sub. These men, all of them veterans of World War III as well as the various postwar continental campaigns, composed the militia's shock troop unit. They had volunteered to go into the sub first.