War of the Sun (16 page)

Suddenly, there was a tremendous crack of lightning, the mother of all thunderbolts. It lit up the sky with an intensity brighter than the brightest daylight. The initial flash nearly blinded the Wingman—but he recovered quickly, and for a couple of seconds he was able to see the carrier quite clearly. It was practically below him, maybe a mile or two to the east.

He had only enough time to make one last adjustment with the stick, altering his direction by just a few degrees. He was now lined up with the flight deck center line. The carrier was lit up to the maximum, as were the three ships around it. Brightest of all was the amber light on the bow of the
Fitzgerald,
the so-called Meatball. It looked good to Hunter, not too high and not too low—but it was much too late to be delicate about this. He was coming down toward the deck too hard and too fast for him to use the Meatball to any effect.

He took a deep breath and patted his breast pocket.

At least it will be interesting,
he thought ruefully.

Five seconds later, the F-16XL hit the
Fitz
’s deck at approximately 175 miles per hour. Just as it touched down, the carrier pitched forward, its prow dropping thirty feet between two big rollers. Hunter’s tail hook missed the first, second, and then third arresting wires. He had to decide in less than a split second whether to put his nose down to catch the fourth and last arresting wire, or hope that the ship came back up to catch him. If he timed it wrong, he would slam into the rising deck, or worse, miss entirely and go off into the sea. Hunter decided to gamble—he pushed down on the stick and literally slammed on the brakes.

His tail hook caught the fourth wire and he was yanked to a halt within 350 feet. It was all over in less than two seconds.

A flight deck crew member instinctively signaled Hunter to cut power and Hunter just smiled. “What power?” he yelled back.

Dozens of deckhands appeared on the rolling, windswept deck and with sheer manpower steered the ’XL to the flight elevator. Hunter rode it down to the hangar deck. Waiting there for him were Yaz, JT, and Ben. Despite their brave faces, Hunter could not help but see the evident relief in their eyes.

“Welcome back, Major Hunter,” Yaz told him, finally breaking into a wide grin. “I hope you aren’t planning to make this sort of thing a habit…”

Okinawa

T
HE WOMAN WITH THE
cherry blossom hair had spent the last few hours lying on the floor of her subterranean living chamber, sensuously licking the blood off the long-bladed carving knife.

Now she finally gathered herself up to her knees and lit a candle from one of the dozens already burning around the photograph of Hashi Pushi. Then she dutifully placed the gleaming, clean knife back on the shrine, took two steps back, closed her eyes, and bowed.

“You have done well, my child,”
a voice whispered from behind her left ear.
“I am very proud of you.”

The woman bowed even lower.

“We must now join together again.”

She felt her face flush.

“Lie back, my dear. Reveal yourself…”

Following the eerie whispered commands, the woman slowly lay back, her silk gown bunching up around her waist.

“Lift up your knees, my darling…”

She obeyed and felt her eyes go up into her head. A rhythmic low roar now filled her ears, like that of the ocean surf washing up on a beach. Suddenly it seemed as if the water was upon her, crashing on top of her. Soaking her.
Cleansing
her.

Though her eyes were shut tight, she imagined she saw herself lying on a deserted beach. A bright sun was rising before her; it slowly began to burn her flesh. Inside her, the woman felt a welling-up of emotions, emotions impossible to describe, ones that shook her very being.

The surf began to sound louder and louder now, pounding her harder onto the beach. The waves were frothing and swirling around her, each wave receding and then returning upon itself, each growing bigger and louder and more powerful than the last. The heat of the sun was becoming both intolerable and pleasurable. The frequency of the waves suddenly increased and she felt the sun roast her flesh. She knew there could be no turning back now. Faster and faster, harder and harder, hotter and hotter, she felt it all until she could stand it no more …

Then she felt her body suddenly stiffen—as if a lightning bolt went through her. And then the beach and the waves and the sun were gone. Now she saw only the two eyes, the two beautiful, mystifying, captivating eyes drawing nearer to her. Did they belong to Hashi Pushi? She couldn’t tell. She began to lose consciousness once again, hearing only the strange voice saying
“We are one
…”

Then it was over.

She opened her eyes to find herself once again lying on the floor.

She lay prone for several minutes as the last of the strange experience drained out of her. Slowly, reality began to creep back in. Her head began to hurt, her body began to ache. She looked around the large living chamber and through bleary eyes began to recognize certain things: a painting, the vase of flowers, the simple bed and stove. The shrine.

“It’s so cold in here,” she thought, wrapping her arms around her waist. That’s when she realized that her hands and gown were covered with a sticky red substance.

Then she turned and saw the lifeless body of Lieutenant Fatungi on the floor next to her.

“What is happening to me?”
she screamed.

Her cry brought three guards immediately into her chamber. She stared at them for a long time, and they back at her. Gradually, they too began to look familiar to her.

“Please,”
she whispered in horror, pointing at the naked, gutted body. “Please get it out of here.”

The guards obediently dragged the corpse out of her quarters, closing the heavy oak doors behind them.

Hysterical now with fear and confusion, the woman took a sheet off her bed, got down on her hands and knees, and used it to scrub every last trace of blood off the floor. Then she retreated to her bed and pulled the remaining silk sheets over her trembling body.

I remember -when my name was Mizumi…
she thought. Then she softly cried herself to sleep.

Aboard the
Fitzgerald

“T
HE ONE GOOD THING
about that long flight home,” Hawk Hunter was saying, “is that I had plenty of time to think about what I saw. And I’m afraid it’s all going to be very bad news for us.”

He was speaking to a small audience of six men gathered around the large table in the conference room next to the
Fitzgerald’s
CIC. Yaz was sitting at the far end, drinking coffee nonstop. To his left sat Toomey and Ben Wa, to his right Wolf and the captains of the
Tennyson
and the
Cohen.
Everyone looked decidedly concerned—even Wolf, despite his imposing comic-book-style mask.

“First of all,” Hunter said, slipping the videotape of his flight into the room’s VCR unit, “when I finally got where I was going, I met up with some very interesting characters.”

He hit the VCR’s
PLAY
button. Within seconds the six men were riveted to the screen as Hunter’s bizarre dogfight off of cloud-enshrouded Okinawa played out. There was no need for Hunter to narrate the sequence; it was plain as day that he was in air-to-air combat with World War Two vintage fighters, and that they were no match for his F-16XL.

Hunter froze the tape just after the Zero pilot shot himself. His audience was astonished, to say the least.

Ben Wa was the first to speak. “Are those really
Zeros?”
he asked. “Who the hell would be flying those relics these days? And why?”

“I don’t know,” Hunter replied. “But keep watching.”

Hunter started the tape again, picking up with his pursuit of the last Zero and culminating with one long, extremely high pass he made over the mist-covered island.

“Where the hell did the Zero go?” the captain of the
Cohen
asked. “Even with all that fog, it looked like he just vanished into thin air.”

“Close,” Hunter said. “But I believe that just after he got down below the clouds he flew into an airfield hidden in the side of a mountain down there called Shuri.”

“Sounds pretty elaborate,” the captain of the
Tennyson
said.

Hunter smiled grimly. “We don’t know the half of it,” he said.

He quickly fast-forwarded the tape to a spot where the entire island was in view. Then he froze the frame and punched up the infrared enhancement system on the console.

Suddenly the entire island was lit up in a deep shade of red. Again, each man was astonished. The intensity of the red colors could mean only one thing: there was a tremendous amount of heat being thrown off by the island’s surface.

“My God,” Yaz said. “What could possibly cause all that heat under those clouds?”

“There’s only one possible explanation,” Hunter said. “There has to be some kind of activity going on
inside
that mountain, as well as
under
the ground all around the island, something that is so intense, it allows this much heat to reach the surface.”

“But what could it be?” Toomey asked. “A volcano?”

“We’re not that lucky, I’m afraid,” Hunter said gloomily. “Look at the pattern of those heat lines. They’re not exactly random.”

It was true. On closer examination it was apparent that the intensity of heat was actually centered in places: at both ends of the island, as well as in the fog-shrouded mountain valley where the Zero had disappeared. Ringing each heat center was a series of extremely bright red shapes that looked like small funnels.

“There has to be some kind of industrial activity going on underground all over the island,” Hunter said. “And those aren’t clouds or mist we’re looking at. It’s smoke, or more accurately, smog. Super-pollution. And it’s being vented at all those funnel points which show up as the brightest red. They are, in fact, smokestacks.”

A leaden silence descended on the small room.

“I’d say someone’s building something on a grand scale inside and underneath that island,” Hunter said in grim conclusion. “With all that heat and all that pollution, it can’t be anything else.”

“But building what?” Yaz asked.

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” Hunter told them, turning back to the frozen heat frame of the island. “Whatever’s going on, it obviously linked to those Zeros. The one that got away didn’t disappear or crash. Let’s look at that big mountain. It looks like it’s got an old castle on top of it. Notice this dull hot spot on its side. I think that’s the entrance to a hidden airstrip. They could cover it, but they couldn’t prevent the heat from leaking out.”

Again, those gathered were speechless.

“Whatever the hell is going on, I think we have to assume it has to do with what is left of Hashi Pushi’s boys,” Hunter said, measuring each word carefully. “And if that’s the case, then I don’t think we can really call our recent mission a success until we find out.”

“How can that be done?” Wolf asked, speaking for the first time.

Hunter let out a long, troubled breath.

“It’s simple, really,” he said. “Even though it’s the last thing in the world that I want to do, I’ve got to go back there.”

Two hours later, Hunter was strapping into the Harrier.

The conditions outside were improving as the center of the storm moved off to the south. Still the seas were very high and the winds were blowing at gale force. It was not exactly ideal flying weather.

But it would have to do. Hunter was in a hurry. He had barely taken the time to shower and jump into a fresh flight suit. He was still eating a sandwich as he was climbing into the jumpjet. The reason for all the rush was simple. Theoretically, the sooner he left for Okinawa, the sooner he would return to the
Fitzgerald.
Then, again in theory, the Task Force could continue on its way home.

But now, as Hunter began clicking on his cockpit displays, his instincts were telling him it wasn’t going to be that easy.

The takeoff itself promised to be an adventure. The crosswinds on the flight deck were far too dangerous for any kind of normal launch, horizontal
or
vertical. So he had to improvise. His plan was to taxi out to the elevator platform and have it brought up about halfway to the deck level. Then he would do a close-to-true vertical ascent, using the leeward side of the carrier to protect him, if only momentarily, for the first crucial seconds of liftoff.

After he cleared the ship, however, it would be him against the storm-tossed elements.

As soon as all his critical systems came back green, he began the procedure to fire up the airplane’s powerplant. The four-man service crew stepped back, covering their faces as the slowly accelerating turbine began to churn out twin clouds of jet exhaust.

Suddenly Hunter was aware of a fifth person waving at him from below the cockpit. It was Ben.

With a hand signal from Hunter, the service crew chief wheeled an access ladder up to the side of the Harrier and Ben climbed up. Hunter cut his engine back to standby, lowering the engine’s volume enough so he could talk with his friend.

“Just dug some old information on Okinawa out of our computer,” he said. “It’s not too pretty.”

“I don’t expect it is,” Hunter told him. “Let’s hear it.”

“Apparently even the people living around here think it’s an extremely dangerous place to be these days,” Ben said, reciting from computer printout. “Many people fled there after the Big War, and even before Hashi Pushi came to power. Businessmen. Bankers. Stockbrokers. Crazy men. They stole everyone’s money and had to run. But some didn’t get very far. They say they live in the jungles on Okinawa now. They say they’ve turned wild by now. There are even a few reports of cannibalism, none confirmed.”

Hunter stared at him for a moment, and then smiled grimly. Businessmen?
Cannibals?

“I also hear it’s a bad place to breathe these days,” he said to Ben.

Ben had to grin back. “Can it get any crazier?”