Skyfire (25 page)

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For the first time Hunter noticed a brightening in the captain's demeanor.

"You are familiar with these systems, Major Hunter?"

"I could be," Hunter replied wryly. "But we've got to get a few things straight first."

He turned and looked Wolf straight in the eye.

"Our goals seem to be the same," he told him. "I am pursuing these Norsemen, and it's obvious now that you are, too."

Wolf nodded, though somewhat grimly.

"And aside from these electronics, this vessel looks to be in A-l condition,"

he continued. "Your crew is well trained and obviously hard-working. And I'm sure that there are enough troubles over in Europe for you to hire this battlewagon out for months at a time. Just seagoing escort duty alone could mean a fortune for you."

Again, Wolf nodded.

"As far as the mask . . ." Hunter said. "Well, I figure that's your business."

"True," Wolf replied.

Hunter took a breath and let it out slowly. "If I teach you how to run all this equipment, and you do so properly," he said, "then you must realize that I am providing you not only with a wealth of information but also with a means to make this ship more efficient, more protected, more powerful than it is at this moment.

"But before I do this, you have to level with me. I must insist on your telling me of your true motives."

Hunter fell silent for a moment and tried to figure out whether his words were having any effect on Wolf. But once again, the mask was effective in hiding the man's true emotions.

"In other words," Hunter concluded, "why are you over here, fighting our battles?"

At that moment, Wolf lowered his eyes and shook his head. Then it was his turn to take a deep breath.

"You're a famous man, Major," he said after a pause.

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"A smart man, and a respected one. But you know very little about who these raiders are and why they have come here."

Hunter pulled over one of the C-Three chairs and settled down into it.

"Well, Captain . . ." he said, folding his arms behind his head and stretching his legs in indication that he was ready to sit for the long haul, "I guess you'll just have to educate me."

Wolf shrugged and sat down, too.

For the next ten minutes, the mysterious masked man went into depth on the origins of the raiders, confirming some of the information that Hunter had learned from the interrogation of the Norsemen captured off Montauk. Wolf also told Hunter the unusual story behind the construction of the submarines.

But it was the information -about the Fire Bats-the four ultrasophisticated subs that were capable of launching nuclear missiles-that sent a chill up Hunter's spine.

"Devious forces are at work behind the scenes, Major Hunter," Wolf said. "Ones that won't settle for anything less than total victory."

Hunter could only shake his head in grim agreement.

"From what you say, then I'd have to guess that a central figure is behind all this," he told Wolf. "Yet, the raiders we questioned insisted that there is no main plan, that they were acting independently."

"And in their minds, they were correct," Wolf replied. "They are clan members, recruited from some of the most barren sections of Scandinavia. For many of them, the world ends with their second or third cousin. They know no more about military strategy than we do about how to operate all these electronics.

All they know is war and raiding. The idea that someone might be behind it all isn't so much beyond their comprehension as it is of no concern to them."

"But someone has to have the guiding hand here,"

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Hunter told him. "Someone scoped out and attacked my country's major oil refineries. Someone did the advance spy work for the raids along New England and in Delaware. And someone must be masterminding these Four Boats you spoke about-and their nuclear delivery capabilities."

"You are correct, Major," Wolf said. "In many ways, I believe the raiding submarines are a smokescreen for the Fire Bats, just like the campaign to disrupt your country's fuel supplies. The plan, I think, was for the raiders to hold your attention while the people aboard the Fire Bats went about the real mission, which is to secure several nuclear missiles, and thus increase their chances of holding your country in the grip of ... well, how shall I say it?"

"Nuclear blackmail?" Hunter filled in for him.

"Exactly," the masked man replied, nodding.

Hunter took a moment to consider all of Wolfs information.

It wouldn't be the first time that enemies of America had attempted to destroy the country's inherent democracy by way of the nuclear menace. The terrorist organization called The Circle had fought two wars and had practically devastated the eastern part of the American continent for a policy based in part on that very threat. So had the Nazi-backed Twisted Cross. But though these enemies had access to nuclear devices, they attempted to carry out their doctrine by somewhat more conventional methods, on the battlefield, armies against armies.

Now it appeared as if the subraiders-or more accurately, the people behind them-were trying to overthrow America by much more insidious means. By creating the aura of a brutal, yet in tactical terms, "localized" threat such as the Norse raiders, the masterminds were apparently planning on sneaking in the back door.

But another important question remained.

"Where do they expect to get these nuclear missiles?" Hunter asked Wolf. "I'm sure nuclear bombs can be had

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on the weapons black market. But nuclear warheads, with targeting capability and so on, would be a completely different matter."

Again Wolf took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Major, more than a year ago, the Red Star clique launched and detonated an air-burst nuclear missile over one of your cities, correct?"

Hunter nodded soberly. It was true, the cultish, anti-glasnost Soviet military clique that had ignited World War III hi the first place had exploded a small nuclear bomb over the city of Syracuse in an attempt to disrupt the ongoing trial of the traitorous ex-vice president of the United States, who had been one of their agents.

"Shortly after that I understand that your forces destroyed the Red Star headquarters in Central Asia," Wolf went on.

Again, Hunter nodded. It was he who actually flew the specially equipped B-l bomber against the hardened Red Star fortress located at Krasnoyarsk, very close to the Siberian border.

"Well, Major, did you know that just before their headquarters was destroyed, Red Star launched six ICBM's at your country?" Wolf asked.

Hunter was speechless. This was frightening news to him.

"We tracked them from the moment of launch," Wolf continued matter-of-factly.

"They were fired from sites near Moscow. Our sensors picked them up the moment they left the pad."

"But none of us here knew anything about this," Hunter said, plainly astonished.

"I'm not surprised," Wolf told him. "You see, these missiles were incorrectly fueled. They did not reach the critical suborbital altitude, and therefore their arming mechanisms didn't respond. They landed well short of then-intended targets and obviously did not explode. Thus your country was saved from a very catastrophic event."

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"To say the least. . ."

"However, while several undoubtedly fell into the ocean," Wolf went on,

"several more landed in remote places in eastern North America. The people behind this whole Norse invasion scenario became aware of the tracking of these missiles and from that have apparently located them.

"And it is these missiles-or more accurately their warheads-that they intend to install aboard the Fire Bats."

It was the story of his life, Hunter thought. Every time he assumed he had heard it all, something more devastating always popped up.

He felt a sickeningly familiar fire start to build in his gut. Had he been so foolish, sitting proud as wheat up on his hayfarm, to think that the world would suddenly become a civilized place just because he had retired?

"Who is behind all this?" Hunter asked, his voice rising in fury.

Wolf could only shrug. "Just who the overall masterminds are, I don't know,"

he said, "But I suspect at least one of them may be an American.

"As for the people behind the submarines and the plan to raid your East Coast-that is, those who are providing the smokescreen for the Fire Bats -then I'm afraid I know them all to well. . ."

Wolf lowered his head further, and for a third time let out a long, low breath.

"You see, it was my brother and my father who sent the submarines against you.

And that is why I am after them. . . ."

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Dominique had never looked so beautiful.

She was dressed in a flowing white, low-cut gown made of authentic satin and lace and fastened with clasps and buttons made of solid gold. Her luxurious long blonde hair had been expertly washed, curled, brushed and set, and was now held in place by a delicate strand of diamonds and pearls. Her skin had been gently washed in milk and beer, powdered twice, and then anointed with perfumes made from rosemary and myrrh.

Even her cleavage-substantially revealed in the low-cut gown-had been sprinkled with a fine, glittering dust made from real silver.

She was kneeling on a heart-shaped rug made from lamb's fur, and before her was a goblet made of gold, filled with the thick, mind-altering liquor the Norsemen called myx. Kneeling at a discreet distance on either side of her were two lovely female attendants, dressed only slightly less glamourously than she. They, too, had goblets filled with myx, though these were made of pewter and not gold.

All around her, the baniquet swelled. There were more than four hundred people in attendance, she would have guessed, with an even split between Norse clan members-dressed up as their crude exteriors would allow - and young women, some of whom were undoubtedly captured as slaves during the recent raids and forced into service.

The banquet hall itself was enormous, taking up more 228

than half of the promenade deck of the Stor Skute. Two long wooden tables ran through its center, both of them pointing to a third, gold-encrusted platform next to where Dominique now was. The wooden tables were crowded with Norsemen, gorging their way through slabs of beef in what was the fifth course of the night. Scattered amongst the men were the scores of semireluctant young women, any one of whom could be flung to the floor or onto the table itself at any moment for the purpose of satiating a Norsemen's whimsical sexual lust.

Through it all, the myx flowed freely.

Seated at the gold table, not ten feet away to Dominique's left, was the man they called Verden, which when translated literally from Norwegian meant

"world." But in Verden's case, she had come to learn, the name connoted nothing less than "the all-encompassing" or "the everything." It was an appropriate title for the person who, more than anyone else, could claim to be the leader of all the Norse clans.

In appearance, Verden looked the part. Despite the patch over his right eye, his long white hair and beard gave him an undeniable if slightly sinister Santa Claus look. His massive frame-still powerful and muscular despite his sixty-plus years-recalled that of a weight lifter, or perhaps a professional wrestler.

Verden was a strangely quiet and reserved man, Dominique had quickly come to realize, not at all the character she would have imagined would be the top chieftain of the wild and boisterous Norsemen. There was no mistaking that Verden was a man given to long periods of brooding and even depression. Even now, while his minions ate, drank, and molested the evening away, he sat alone at the gold table, his head in his hands, not touching his meal or drink, his only companions being his two enormous, coal-black pet ravens that never seemed to have the urge to simply fly away.

Dominique had been introduced to Verden shortly after 229

she and Yaz were transferred to the Great Ship after a brief three-hour trip in the sub. It was the Norse leader himself who had casually given her a tour of the vessel, explaining that at one time it had been a luxurious Carribbean cruise ship named, appropriately enough, The Royal Viking Queen.

Now it served as Verden's floating palace, an unarmed speck of gleaming white surrounded at all times by a protective phalanx of gray Norse destroyers, frigates, and, more often than not, a squad of raiding submarines.

Dominique also found out quickly that Verden was different from the rest of the Norsemen in his candor and outright honesty, though he doled it out in selective measures. Speaking in broken English, the man had explained to her during their tour that, yes, his raiders were intent on plundering the East Coast of America. But he insisted in the next breath that they were "entitled"

to do so because it had been the Norsemen who discovered the continent in the first place-many years before Columbus. Therefore the land, and its people, were theirs for the ravaging.

Beyond this highly disputable claim, Verden said little more about the motives of his clans. He did mention, however, that although he was the recognized leader of the clans, more often than not, the clan leaders fended for themselves.

"We Norse are like wolves," he told Dominique. "The leader can lead, find food and shelter for the pack. But he is usually not appreciated unless there is big trouble. When one of his brood decides to act independently, all he can do is bark."

Dominique had then asked the Norse leader why she had been transferred to the Great Ship. She would never forget the look that came over him as he held her gently by the shoulders, a slight glistening welling up in his good eye.

In a voice that might have come from a kindly grandfather, he had said to her:

"Because you have been selected as my Valkyrie . . ."

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And with that, he had left her standing all alone on the deck of the Great Ship.

Dominique knew full well what a Valkyrie was. . .