Battle for America

by Maloney, Mack;

  The team leader looked over at Dozer, who just shrugged. The security man raised his hand and gave a thumbs-up, the signal to the nearby runway crews to close the camo dome. Then he turned back to the intruder.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Some asshole shot at me over Poughkeepsie,” the pilot replied hurriedly. “I sprang a fuel leak. I was running out of gas and saw these planes, so I followed them down.”

  But Dozer didn’t believe him. Any pilot with such amazing flying skill these days would hardly be running numbers. He’d be leading a freelance air merc squadron or flying for the air pirates.

  Dozer walked up to the front of the crashed airplane. “Pretty ballsy flying, Worm,” he said to the trembling pilot.

  “But I didn’t know what I was doing,” the man insisted, once again nervously looking over his shoulder. “I was scared to death.”

  “Scared of what?” Dozer asked him. “Scared of landing here?”

  The man turned and pointed up toward the rapidly closing camo dome.

  “Shit no, man!” he cried. “Scared of him! That nut behind me.”

  Dozer and his men looked skyward and were astonished to see yet another airplane coming down at them. It was moving very fast, but sideways, just barely squeezing through the small opening that remained in the rapidly closing camo cover. Its wing was on fire, its tail section was falling away, and its very noisy engine was belching black smoke. It was painted in garish circus colors—swirling yellows, greens, and blues—and for some reason, it had gigantic wheels for landing gear.

  Everyone scattered—Dozer, the security men, the numbers runner—all runing for their lives. The burning plane went over them a second later, just inches above their heads, dropping a trail of fiery debris in its wake. Dozer couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This thing was flying way too fast to land. He was sure it was going to bounce off the end of the runway and crash into the woods beyond.

  But then, incredibly, the little plane went straight up, did an impossibly tight 360-degree loop under the completely closed camo cover and then nosed down again, all in three seconds. With some speed drained off, the burning plane hit about fifty feet farther up the runway and, with a screech of scorched metal, skidded to a violent halt right next to the numbers runner’s plane.

  Dozer and his men quickly recovered and ran toward the second plane, weapons raised again. The pilot had already lifted the canopy and, surrounded by smoke and steam, was taking off his scratched and dented crash helmet. He finally stood up.

  He was tall and handsome with rock-star looks. His long brown hair almost touching his shoulders, he was wearing an old-style black USAF flight suit. His helmet had images of two lightning bolts on it.

  Dozer couldn’t believe it.

  It was his old friend Hawk Hunter.

  The Wingman.

  But there was just one problem. …

  Hawk Hunter was dead.

  Chapter Ten

  Many people believed the Wingman had died ten years ago.

  He’d been killed deploying a string of nuclear munitions in space in hopes of deflecting a comet heading for Earth. The plan had worked, Earth was spared, and a grateful planet mourned the loss of a true American hero.

  But in the past few weeks, rumors had been circulating that maybe Hunter wasn’t dead after all. He’d been spotted in Football City, supposedly after crash landing the space shuttle nearby. He’d helped take down some Mafia thugs who’d been running Detroit, then he’d busted up an Asian Mercenary Cult genocide program out in Nevada. All this, the rumormongers said, happened in a matter of days.

  But it was almost too much to believe, especially for Bull Dozer.

  He and Hunter went way back. After the end of the Big War, Hunter had traveled home from devastated Europe on the aircraft carrier JFK, the same ship carrying Dozer and the 7CAV. In the years that followed, Hunter had fought with them, got drunk with them, and joined them in their efforts to fulfill the dream of rebuilding America, or at least keeping it from disappearing forever.

  They were brothers-in-arms, and when the 7CAV heard Hunter had died, it had taken the whole unit a long time to recover.

  But now, apparently, here he was.

  The hair, the helmet, the rock-star pilot himself.

  A crash team made up of the base’s civilian techs quickly extinguished the fire on the little plane with the big wheels. They also doused the numbers runner’s plane.

  Two flatbed trucks roared onto the runway, and the techs picked up what was left of both planes and loaded them into their bays. The camo net was finally closed and secured; the runway’s lights were turned off. While the Worm was sped to the infirmary under heavy guard, Dozer hustled the second pilot into the 7CAV’s Quonset hut ops center.

  Dozer locked the door behind them and then studied the man. The pilot stared blankly back at him. He was sweaty, unshaven, and rough around the edges, whoever he was.

  “You certainly look like you,” Dozer said finally. “But I still feel like I’m looking at a ghost.”

  “So do I,” the man said. “Maybe … that means we’re both ghosts?”

  The look in the man’s eyes told Dozer he hadn’t used those words lightly. There was an awkward silence between them. Finally, Dozer said, “Hey, there’s a lot of crazy shit going on out there these days. How can we really know who’s who?”

  The pilot reached into his breast pocket and took out a small American flag. “Remember Saul Wackerman?” he asked.

  The marine officer nodded. When the carrier JFK dumped the Seventh Cavalry, Hunter, and thousands of other defeated US soldiers onto the streets of postwar New York City, a brutal turf battle between rival National Guard units had just been fought, leaving entire neighborhoods in ruins. It was their first glimpse of how much America had changed since the end of global hostilities. While walking through the city, they’d witnessed the shooting of an elderly man by a sniper for doing nothing more than waving a small American flag. That man was Saul Wackerman.

  “I think about him almost every day,” Dozer replied.

  “Then you’ll recognize this,” the pilot said, handing him the flag. “You’ve seen it before. And you know it’s been with me ever since that day.”

  Dozer studied the flag. Frayed and worn, it had a few bloodstains around the edges, yet its colors were still surprisingly bright. He wiped his eyes. The man was right. Dozer had seen this little flag many times. No one could fake this hallowed piece of cloth.

  Dozer stuck out his hand; they shook.

  But the pilot still looked uncertain.

  “Now you don’t believe me?” Dozer asked incredulously. “You don’t think I’m real? That’s an insult.”

  Dozer led him to the unit’s canteen, twenty steps away. A huge pot was simmering on the stove. The marine officer scooped a little of its contents out with a spoon and gave it to him.

  “Taste this,” he said.

  The pilot did as asked, taking just a bit on the tip of his tongue. He started nodding, and then finally, he smiled. “Freaking whiskey stew, Bull,” he said. “Even worse than your coffee.”

  They embraced, a massive bro-hug between very old friends.

  “Have we convinced each other we’re not ghosts?” Dozer asked him once the backslapping was over.

  “Well, ghosts don’t drink, do they?” his friend replied.

  Dozer just shook his head and lit a cigar. “They can’t,” he said between puffs. “Unless they bring a mop.”

  They sat at Dozer’s ops desk, where the 7CAV commander produced a bottle of nasty-looking whiskey and two glasses. He filled both to the brim.

  Hunter downed his in two gulps. It was awful, but he’d never tasted anything so good. He felt warm for the first time in a long time.

  “Jesus—that’s great stuff,” he said, coughing harsh
ly.

  “Why not the best?” Dozer replied, downing his as well.

  He refilled their glasses, clinked his with Hunter’s, and said, “Okay—tell me everything.”

  * * *

  It was the same story Hunter had been telling people since he’d returned from space a few weeks ago.

  He remembered blasting off in the shuttle and carrying out the mission to divert the comet but nothing after that. While he knew that some time had passed, the next thing he recalled clearly was being pulled from the wreck of the space shuttle just outside Football City. His saviors were two mutual friends and fellow pilots, JT Toomey and Ben Wa. They took Hunter to Football City, capital of the Free Missouri Territory, which had once been his home. A little later, they helped him clean up some mob business in Detroit. After that, they’d all gone out west, to the old Groom Lake secret base to break up an Asian Mercenary Cult human extermination program.

  So, basically, the rumors were all true.

  While at Area 51, Hunter had somewhat miraculously found his old airplane, the F-16XL Cranked Arrow.

  “Seriously, after a few days with the Football City guys, it was like I’d never left,” Hunter told Dozer. “But there’s a big piece of my memory that’s just blank.”

  “You don’t mean ‘missing time’?” Dozer asked him. “Like what some of those UFO abductees claim?”

  Hunter shrugged. “Who knows? One astrophysics egghead I talked to thinks I might have crossed over to ‘another place,’ somewhere else.”

  Dozer’s brow furrowed. The old marine was trying to understand. “What does that mean?”

  Hunter sipped his drink. “Another universe, maybe? Another reality?”

  Dozer laughed. “That ‘expert’—liked to smoke weed, I’m guessing?”

  Hunter nodded. “But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. The theory is that there are an infinite number of universes and they all butt up against one another. This universe we’re in right now might be exactly like the one I originally came from, except maybe there’s one more grain of sand in a desert here, or one less drop of water in the ocean, but everything else is the same. Or almost the same. And somehow I passed from one place to another.”

  “If your intention is to creep me out,” Dozer said, “mission accomplished.”

  “Something happened to me, Bull,” Hunter said, draining the second glass of whiskey. “I went somewhere. I just have no idea where.”

  Dozer refilled their glasses. At that moment, the truck carrying Hunter’s little wrecked airplane rumbled by the ops building’s front window. The two big tires took up nearly half the truck’s cargo bed.

  They watched it go by, glowing weirdly in the subdued light of the halogen lamps that dotted the secret base.

  Dozer thought a moment, then leaned back in his chair and relit his cigar.

  “Well, this is amazing,” he said with a laugh. “Because I just realized what you’ve been doing in that plane. …”

  Hunter nearly spit out his drink. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

  Feet up on his desk, Dozer took a massive puff from his cigar and let it out slowly. The smoke went to the ceiling of the Quonset hut.

  “I just figured it out,” he said proudly. “That bizarre-ass airplane. A report I heard on Red Radio, them denying that something weird was cruising around up there. Circling their buildings? ‘Doing wonderfully strange flying things’ is how they translated it.”

  Hunter really didn’t want to talk about this.

  But Dozer persisted. “Were you trying to screw with the Commies or something, Hawk? Fuck with their heads with the strangest airplane ever built? Your way of striking a blow for the old USA?”

  Hunter stared at the floor. Doing wonderfully strange flying things? That’s what the Reds thought he’d been doing?

  Zooming around those buildings, dodging machine gun fire, missiles and Yaks—some of it could be described as strange. But wonderful?

  “It’s a really long story, Bull,” he finally said.

  Dozer held up the bottle of whiskey. It was still three quarters full.

  Hunter groaned. “Okay—I was looking for someone… .”

  Dozer was again relighting his cigar but stopped in mid-puff. “By flying over New York City?” he asked, surprised.

  “Yes,” Hunter admitted.

  Dozer finally got his stogie relit. “Well, there are easier ways,” he said, again leaning back in his chair. “This someone must be very special.”

  Hunter looked up at him. “You know who it is. …”

  Dozer thought a moment and then asked, “The blonde?”

  Hunter downed the rest of his drink and nodded, eyes glued to the floor again. “Yeah,” he said. “The blonde.”

  It would be impossible to keep this a secret forever, Hunter knew—and Dozer was an old friend. “Okay, pour us another,” he said finally. “I’ll start at the beginning. …”

  Chapter Eleven

  “I was flying back from our raid on Groom Lake,” Hunter began. “I was heading east—to Vermont, maybe later to Cape Cod. I wasn’t even sure.

  “About an hour east of Football City, I realize I’m running out of gas. I’d flown all the way from Nevada to the other side of the Mississippi on a single tank. The XL is fuel-efficient, but it doesn’t fly on pixie dust.

  “I was looking for someplace to land when the reserve tank went dry. So I started gliding and found a runway in far west Pennsylvania, about twenty miles from Kecksburg, a place they call Mudtown. It was all lit up and their radio landing frequency had a loop recording about stopping for ‘gas, grub, and girls. …’

  “I knew it was a honeypot. Looks like Vegas from the air, but some unsuspecting pilot lands, gets robbed at the rigged poker games or by hookers. The pigeon always gets separated from his billfold in those places.

  “But I had no choice. I was descending from 65-Angels and coming down fast. The closer I got, the more the place looked like Dodge City. Wooden buildings, lots of smoke, people in the streets. I could hear the noise coming up from below even as I was gliding in, including lots of gunfire. A real nice place.

  “Anyway, I landed with zero guidance from the airport tower. I could see people up there, but they weren’t paying attention to who was flying in. The fuel pumps were right next to the terminal and all lit up with neon signs and I was able to roll over to them. But that’s when it dawned on me I didn’t have any money. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d carried money. It didn’t matter, though, because no one was at the pumps. They were all padlocked. So I parked and climbed out.

  “The airport was funky. Lots of weird airplanes: old fighters, shit-box bombers, homemade stuff. Stuff that looked like it couldn’t get airborne on a bet. All fixed wing, too, no choppers. And a lot of this stuff looked abandoned.

  “I could hear yelling and cursing; there was a commotion nearby. I walked into the terminal, which was actually one huge casino, and there was a major brawl going on. Dozens of people throwing punches, breaking bottles, hitting each other with chairs. I could see at least five different kinds of uniforms involved and realized it was a handful of merc groups beating on each other. A five-sided gang fight.

  “Lots of people were on the sidelines watching and cheering them on. Hookies, druggies, the usual. I asked one of the girls what was going on. She said, ‘The rescue mission isn’t going anywhere, but these idiots still want to get paid.’

  “Turns out a private-hire copter had been shot down over Mudtown the night before. It had just taken off from the airport when a Stinger or something caught it. It crashed next to an old hotel in a rough part of town about two miles away. One of the passengers was carrying two suitcases full of pure silver. He wound up inside this broken-down hotel with a dozen private goons he’d hired as protection for the ride.

  “Me
anwhile, word gets around this guy is carrying silver worth three or four million at least. So a couple hundred of Mudtown’s meth heads get together and decide to relieve Moneybags of his luggage. You know how industrious those people can be, right? They surround the hotel and start blasting away with automatic weapons. And the only thing protecting this guy was his hired heat and that was becoming a little shaky.

  “Moneybags started radioing for help—but just about then, all the radios in the town began crapping out, including those at the airport. He was able to get word out on a walkie-talkie that any mercenary group who could mount a rescue mission to the hotel would get a half million pure.

  “Within an hour, local merc teams flooded Mudtown. No one big, just ten- to twelve-guy outfits. Freelancers. But by now the situation was very screwed up. No one’s radio worked, so these guys just went in helter-skelter, with no communications, no nothing. Most of them got chewed up after just a couple blocks, mainly because they were shooting at each other and didn’t know it.

  “Finally, they agreed to draw lots and take turns going in. As soon as one group became pinned down after a few blocks, another would advance, relieve the first group, and go another few blocks before getting stopped, with another team moving forward to take their place. The leapfrog approach to war. Not that it made a difference. The fistfight in the terminal was about how the half million should be split when someone finally reached Moneybags. Just about everyone had spilled some blood already, so everyone wanted a piece.

  “Meanwhile, no one can figure out a way to actually get to the money guy and haul him out. It was chaos. No one was in charge. No one was sober.

  “The bar girl told me the local cops were trying to run the show. They were up in the airport’s control tower—that’s why they weren’t paying attention to flight ops. So, I went up there to see if I could angle a little gas from them and get the hell out of there. I find these five guys standing around a planning table, arguing.

  “They barely looked up when I walked in. But then one of them did a double take and, you know, looked like he’d seen a ghost. He asked me, ‘Are you Hawk Hunter?’