Skyfire (28 page)

Once they were gone, Verden turned back toward Elizabeth.

"If you were a man I would have killed you myself," he told her, his voice steaming with rage.

"If / were a man," Elizabeth replied, completely unruffled, "I would have killed you first. . ."

Verden shook his head and slumped back into his throne.

He knew there was no point in verbally sparring with the woman. She was a witch-a true, authentic witch-and as such, she drew her powers from a higher plateau than he.

"Why have you come here?" he asked her wearily.

"It concerns the upcoming attacks, my Lord," she said. "They are our most ambitious to date, yet your son is guilty of shedding preparedness."

"In what respect?" Verden demanded.

"He has not made any provisions should the enemy have air support," she told him. "It could prove disastrous for the clans even if they have only a few aircraft on hand."

Verden shook his head. "But I was told that all of the enemy's warplanes were grounded. Frozen in place, due to the fuel situation. After all, it was you who suggested we send our men to destroy their fuel dumps and you who suggested this ambitious attack. Are you now saying that your divine plan won't work?"

"No," she replied forcefully. "What I'm saying is that the United Americans obviously have some fuel on hand at their bases. True, they have not been moving their air squadrons around to counter us so far, but this is a strategy based on saving fuel, not a complete lack of it."

Verden scratched his hairy chin in thought for a moment. Of all the people aboard the Great Ship, only three-Thorgils, Elizabeth and himself-knew that the real direction behind the seemingly free-wheeling Norse campaign came from those aboard the Fire Bats.

Now this woman-this witch-was contradicting the very plans she had delivered from the Fire Bats in the first

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place. What did it mean?

Verden wrapped a heavy wool robe around his ample body and then formulated what he thought was a prudent reply.

"What is the worst that can happen?" he asked. "Their few airplanes show up and some of our men are lost. We lost many men on Long Island; many more in Delaware. So what is the difference? We are not seeking to hold ground. We are not an occupying force. Some of our men will be killed, but all of them won't be. Just as long as most of them make it back to their boats with slaves and booty, then the operation will be a success."

"And what happens the next time?" Elizabeth barked back at him. "And the next and the next? The United Americans' warplanes carry weapons that can easily wipe out thousands of men in a matter of minutes. I know. I have seen them in operation. You don't have an endless supply of manpower to draw on. If your casualties are high, then it will affect everything-including the operation of toe Fin Bats."

Verden cringed at the mention of the mysterious Four Boats. The very words were verboten.

"Say no more about that!" he boomed at her. "I dont want to know ..."

Elizabeth didn't even try to suppress her smile. "And what happens if the battleship intervenes again?" she asked. "What happens if your other son decides to step in?"

Verden's face first drained of color, then quickly became flushed again.

"You are a spiteful and cruel woman," he told Elizabeth. "And I know you are trying to trick me and my son, Thorgils. But I refuse to be a party to your mad games."

Elizabeth laughed right in his face. "You may regret saying that, My Lord ..."

Verden was too weak to lash out at her. Instead, he slumped into the throne and mumbled, "The only thing that I regret was the day I agreed to cooperate with you."

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Elizabeth simply glowered back at him with her dark, hypnotic eyes.

"Believe what you want," she said. "But history will remember that it was /

who agreed to cooperate with you and not the other way around."

"That is of no matter now," Verden said, reviving slightly. "You have no right to talk of history or speak ill of my family. You have no idea what kinship means to our culture . . ."

At this point, Verden slumped even further into his seat, his right hand just barely supporting his head.

"You have no idea what it means to lose one's son," he said, his voice shaky and low and on the verge of tears.

Despite Verden's obvious distress, Elizabeth pressed on.

"This is not Europe, My Lord," she told the chieftain. "This is not as simple as raiding the Channel Islands or pillaging undefended French coastal villages. We are about to assault a large part of the East Coast of Florida.

More than a hundred and fifty miles in all. But Thorgils is treating it all as if we were simply attacking Nova Scotia or Cape Cod. He just doesn't realize the magnitude of the operation or the reaction we may get from the United Americans."

"But what can be done?" Verden asked, his patience finally wearing out. "You gave us these orders. We have been planning only to carry out your wishes, and the wishes of those aboard the Fire Bats."

Elizabeth just shook her head in defiance. "Any clan leader would have taken into consideration that the enemy would have some kind of air response."

"But how?" Verden asked, once again wearily shaking his head. "We have no warplanes of our own."

Elizabeth's next comment caught on her lips. She stopped herself from speaking, and then she smiled. She had heard the words she'd been waiting for.

"Leave that to me," she said.

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Elvis couldn't move any part of his tired body without hearing his joints crack in protest.

He had been flying for what seemed like forever. And because he was flying north and west, it seemed like the large red ball in front of him was in a state of perpetual sunset. The waning light did have its advantages: It made it much easier for him to visually sweep the miles of ocean beneath him, allowing him to shut down all but his critical cockpit controls, thus saving fuel.

But the red glare also gave the surface of the ocean a slightly surreal look.

So when he first spotted the group of islands way off in the distance, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.

It took his forward-looking surface-tracking radar device to convince him that what he was seeing was not an illusion.

Zim hadn't been lying. Anchored around the group of islands known as the Kures, some fifteen hundred miles northwest of Hawaii, there was a fleet-a gigantic fleet made up of warships and armed cargo shies.

Elvis immediately put the F-4X into a steep climb, leveling off at fifty-five thousand feet. Then, as he activated his nose cameras he tried to estimate the number of ships he saw below scattered in and around the small Pacific islands.

He stopped counting at six hundred.

Zim had claimed the fleet was carrying a huge army of mercenaries, Koreans and Chinese mostly, hired by un-250

known parties to attack America. Zim had heard about this plan only days before and that's why he'd tried so hard to "liquidate his assets" and get the hell off Hawaii. For he knew once this fleet began to sail it would be in Hawaiian waters within three days. His information told him that more than eighty thousand troops were being ferried in the hold of the ships, five times as many as would be needed to take over the Hawaiian Islands.

Elvis was all too aware that mercenary armies of such size, using fleets of such magnitude, were not unheard of in the postwar world. During the fight to liberate the eastern half of America from the hated Circle Army, an East European mercenary fleet of similar size had been stationed off the East Coast, hired by the Circle to join in the fight against the United Americans.

It was only after the leader of this mercenary fleet saw that the UA was in firm control of the lands east of the Mississippi that he declined to go through with his contract with the Circle, prudently sailing away without firing a shot. Another famous British mercenary fleet-known as the Modern Knights-had helped defeat the superterrorist Viktor Robotov when he tried to take over the Mediterranean.

And now, here was another huge floating army, hired by someone to attack America. If they did so-and Elvis knew that such gatherings of warships and men rarely did not go into action-they'd be able to sweep through the Hawaiian Islands without so much as a sneeze and hit the West Coast head-on. With the crisis on the East Coast at the breaking point, an attack on the west coast would be devastating.

Elvis did two complete sweeps over the islands, taking hundreds of photographs of the enormous fleet. Then, checking his fuel load, he determined that he had just enough to make it back to Oahu.

Suddenly he was struck by a very disturbing notion: Could the attacks on the East Coast and the assembling of this invasion force be somehow connected?

He shivered at the thought, and immediately turned east-251

ward, determined to get back to friendly territory and spread the warning about this new threat.

The surface-to-air missile slammed into his F-4 two seconds later . . .

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Mike Fitzgerald relit his cigar and checked his watch.

"Nineteen hundred hours-he's late," he said to General Dave Jones through a plume of smoke. "Not a good sign ..."

Jones checked his own watch and slowly shook his head.

"Everything has been so screwed up in the past week, I can't imagine anyone being punctual," he said. "Except him..."

As if to prove his statement correct, on the next breeze they heard the distant whine of an approaching jet engine.

"That's him . . ." Jones said simply.

Tbrning their eyes eastward, they saw a single dim light way out on the horizon. With astonishing speed, the light grew larger and more intense as it came right for them. Within seconds they were able to distinguish the unique si-louette of the Harrier jumpjet. A second later the shadow took on a definite shape. Now they could see the navigation lights, the gleam of the cockpit, the red flare of the jet exhaust.

Ten seconds later, the VTOL airplane rocketed over then-heads, turned, and quickly slowed to hover. Then it slowly descended for a perfect landing.

Hunter had his cockpit open even before the Harrier's wheels touched the ground. Quickly shutting down all of the plane's systems, he leapt out of the airplane and directly to the tarmac below.

Jones was the first one to greet him. It was an odd re-253

union for the first few moments-the general had not seen Hunter in almost a year, not since the Wingman went into "retirement." But soon enough they were shaking lianas warmly.

"Not the best of circumstances to see an old friend," Jones told him.

Hunter just shrugged. "Duty calls, sir," he said.

Fitz quickly directed them toward the nearby mess hall. It was almost sundown, and the base was dark and strangely quiet-all by design.

"This place looks deserted," Hunter said. "Did you get everybody down here in time?"

"See for yourself," Fitz told him as they reached the mess hall.

Hunter had to smile when he opened the door and saw the place was nearly filled to capacity with United American pilots and support personnel.

"Well, this looks like a tough crowd," he said with a grin.

"You'd know as well as anyone else," Jones said as he grabbed a pot of coffee and three cups and sat down at an empty table. "They're just itching to get at these Viking bastards. Thanks to your message, they're all hoping this will be the opportunity to do just that."

Fitz poured put three cups of coffee, adding a dash of brandy from his ever-present hip flask to each one.

"Here's to luck," he said, putting his cup up to toast.

"To luck," Hunter and Jones intoned.

"OK, Hawk," Fitz said after taking a long sip of the liquor-spiked Java.

"Let's have it. How did you get tipped that this big attack was coming?"

Hunter took off his flight helmet and ran his hand through his overgrown head of hair.

"It's so strange, I'm having a hard time believing it myself," he said.

He took the next few minutes telling Fitz and Jones about his encounter and subsequent landing on the USS New Jersey.

"Good God, we knew you set down on a ship out there,"

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Jones exclaimed. "But a battleship? Really?"

"Hard to believe, I know," Hunter told them. "But not only is it floating, it's in A-One condition. Top crew. Top captain. A little weird around the edges, but that's OK. As it turns out, we're all fighting the same war."

Hunter explained that he had been able to get all of the sophisticated sensing equipment aboard the New Jersey up and running in a short amount of time. With things such as long-range radar and sonar, plus radio intercept equipment, he and Wolf were able to eavesdrop on the submarine captains as they prepared for the attack on the Florida coast.

"They're so backward, they never thought that anyone would be listening in on them," Hunter explained. "We could have written a book on all the stuff we heard them blabbing about. Times, location, escape routes. The works. That's when I called you guys to get some attack craft down here as quickly and quietly as possible. This way, we can hit them from the air while Wolf and his crew hit them out at sea. It's the perfect trap."

"So it was this Wolf and his ship who wiped out those raiders on Slaughter Beach," Fitz concluded.

"With one, very well-aimed shot," Hunter replied. "From a distance of twenty-seven miles."

"Incredible," Jones said. "I've heard those big battlewagon guns were accurate, but I'd never actually seen one in action before."

"They use the RPV as then* means of targeting," Hunter confirmed. "Then they're able to deliver as many as nine twenty-seven-hundred-pound shells on a dime."

"That's a lot of firepower to be floating around out there," Fitz observed.

Hunter took a healthy swig of his booze-ladened coffee. "To say the least," he replied. "And that's why we're lucky they're on our side, more or less."

"Well, that's my question," Fitz said, casually relighting his cigar. "How come this guy and his ship decided to join the good guys?"