He looked up at her and realized she was wearing nothing but a short silk robe. The aide was smart enough to make a hasty exit. Zmeya leaned back in his chair and turned his attention to her.
“I passed your test, didn’t I?” she asked him sweetly.
“Yes, at the expense of five of my best gunmen,” he replied with bemusement.
“I told you they panicked,” she explained. “They got spooked by something and started shooting in the dark. It was unavoidable that they all hit one another.”
“Five perfect shots, one each to the forehead?” he said with a cruel laugh. “My kingdom for some truth serum!”
She sat on his desk, very close to him, and pulled up her robe so he could see all of her bare legs.
“But I did what you wanted me to do,” she insisted softly. “Wasn’t that the whole point? Others came and retrieved the box, but you entrusted me to get the key. And without that key, the Magilla is useless, right? I had a chance to get away with it—especially when I was left alone after those boobs all shot each other. But I came back to you with it. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Before he could reply, his radiophone rang. He shooed her off the desk.
He listened to the phone for a few seconds, and then his face went red. He immediately turned on the AM radio on his desk.
It came on in the middle of a Red Radio News broadcast, but not a typical one. Speaking in English, a person was saying that the firebombing of the MMZ was an NKVD plot so they could take over the Okupatsi from the military.
“Look at the facts, Comrades,” the mysterious speaker said. “Thousands of our military brothers died in the fires. Thousands more were injured and burned. Our four military headquarters buildings were destroyed. A large part of the MMZ was wiped out. It will take us years to recover.
“Meanwhile, the NKVD has moved into the two tallest buildings in the world, as if nothing has happened. They had everything to gain by staging the firebombing and manufacturing this crisis. So listen up, all loyal soldiers and sailors of Mother Russia. Think about it for just a few minutes, Comrades, and you’ll figure it out. The NKVD are the ones who firebombed the MMZ.”
Zmeya was absolutely livid.
“Goddamn lies,” he seethed, the volcano rumbling. “That’s not how it is at all. …”
He was quickly on the radiophone again. “Bomb that radio station if you have to, but I want it off the air now! And then collect those three idiots with all the medals. I think they need a little reeducation when it comes to their communications skills.”
Dominique watched his face turn crimson while his eyes went absolutely black and searing. In another instance, she might have urged him to take his meds.
But not now.
Instead, she went back to her unfinished bedroom and locked the door.
The black Cadillac pulled up to the temporary hospital on the corner of Park Avenue and East Fifty-Eigth Street, stopping with a screech.
Four men in black coats, dark glasses, and fedoras got out and barged through the front door, brushing aside two army guards.
There were close to a thousand patients in the hospital, all of them injured in the firestorm. The NKVD was looking for one of them.
All activity inside the building’s lobby came to a stop when they walked in. One was carrying a red striped pouch.
The head nurse greeted them nervously. One man spoke for the four. “You know who we are?”
The trembling nurse nodded twice.
“We are looking for this man,” he said, holding up a photo for her. “His name is Colonel Sergei Gagarin, Russian Army.”
The nurse checked a haphazard box of files then dialed a number on the nursing station’s radiophone. It was a short conversation.
“Room thirteen,” she told the men. “Down the hall to your left. I just talked to him. He is awake and waiting for you.”
Nurses, patients, and doctors cleared a path for the four men as they walked down the corridor. They got to Room 13 and without bothering to knock let themselves in.
But the room was empty.
Gagarin was not there; his belongings were gone as well.
The only movement came from the curtains, which rustled in the breeze coming through the open window.
The large green helicopter circled the secret base in the Pine Barrens twice before coming in for a landing.
It was a Mi-8 Hip, a cargo-carrier by design, and was still wearing its Russian red-star markings, camo, and tail number.
The people below melted into the pines at the first sight of it. The woods were haunted; they all knew that by now. But at this point, no precaution was a stupid one.
Completely spooked, the Cobra brothers waited in the trees about thirty feet from the runway. Others had arrived after them. The JAWS team was here. Jim Cook, Clancy Miller, Shawn Higgens, Mark Snyder, Warren Maas, and Neil Luck, specialists in combat explosives who had been called sappers in the old days. Also on hand was NJ104, Frank Geraci’s crew. They were a special ops group that had evolved from the 104th Battalion, New Jersey National Guard, and after the Big War, they’d specialized in all aspects of urban warfare.
Captain Crunch of the famous Ace Wrecking Company fighter-bomber team; Louie St. Louis from Football City; JT “Socket” Toomey and Ben Wa, two of the country’s top fighter pilots; Colonel Don Kurjan from the United American Army; and Catfish Johnson of the Righteous Brothers Special Ops group—they were all here. All the people Dozer had tried so hard to contact for so long. They were all answering the rallying cry to fight back against the Red occupiers of New York City.
But if this was going to be like other adventures they’d had in the past, it was already off to a disastrous start.
The Mi-8 Hip copter bounced in. The arrival of the Russian aircraft was surprising enough for the men hiding in the woods, but even more surprising was seeing Hawk Hunter climb out of it.
He was ragged-looking, unshaven, his uniform still wet from the adventure on the Isakov earlier. After what had happened on the carrier, especially being knocked out by Dominique at the bottom of the boat, and then the strange ending to the sea battle, he was running purely on adrenaline and nothing else. Everything still seemed surreal.
Only St. Louie, Ben, and JT had seen Hunter since his return, so there were a lot of bro-hugs all around. But they had to be quick, because Hunter knew something was wrong here.
The Cobra Brothers finally walked him over to the grisly drawing left in the middle of the runway. Before Hunter could even ask where the base’s personnel were, they pointed to a drainage ditch nearby.
It was filled with bound and gagged bodies. All their throats had been cut.
“Five 7CAV guys,” Phil Cobra told Hunter. “Twenty civilian techs. …”
Minutes passed with Hunter unable to speak. He’d flown here expecting the base to be business as usual, to see his friends and allies.
Instead, he found this. …
He returned to the morbid bloody drawing on the runway. He recalled the Trashman talking about an NKVD officer with a brutal facial scar executing homeless New Yorkers in the middle of the street. The bloody image on the tarmac reminded Hunter of what he thought that man looked like.
But he just didn’t know what to say. He was still reeling from the hideous slaughter.
“The Reds know we’re here,” he said at last. “But we still have to bury our men. …”
Both Cobras nodded grimly.
“We’ve already found some shovels,” Phil said.
The job was done in just ten awful minutes, everyone chipping in to dig a hole next to the ditch and then lay the dead in it with as much dignity as possible.
St. Louis led a quick prayer. The grimness of the moment was almost overwhelming, especially for Hunter. He was the one who would have to tell Dozer.
Two seconds after the last shovel full of dirt was thrown on the mass grave, there came an earsplitting roar. Three rockets trailing smoke and flame went right over their heads. They crashed about a mile away, causing an explosion that shook the ground beneath their feet. No sooner had that sound faded away than three more rockets screamed overhead.
“Those are BM-30 Rockets,” St. Louis said, coolly lighting a cigarette. “Long range, usually very accurate.”
These three rockets exploded only a half mile from the base. They were zeroing in on them. That was enough for Hunter.
“Time to go,” he said.
No one needed any prompting. They all scrambled aboard the Russian-built copter as Hunter rushed to get the rotors spinning and the Cobra Brothers flicked on all the systems needed for flight. They’d all fought Russian choppers in the past, but none of them had ever been inside one. It was big and thick and heavily armored, more like a flying tank.
Following his instincts, Hunter pulled up on the collective even before all his control lights were green.
They lifted off and went straight up through the open camo cover.
A fifteen-rocket barrage landed on the base just a few seconds later. The combined explosions actually pushed the helicopter up faster than its own engines, spinning it crazily. Only with the Cobras’ help did Hunter get the Mi-20 under control.
Those aboard looked down at the base and saw flames enveloping it, with more rockets landing every few seconds.
They all knew there was a plan afoot to attack the Reds in New York City. But the Mi-8 Hip aside, they also knew such an attack was going to be a huge undertaking.
“Were you guys planning to run this mission from here, from the haunted forest?” Phil Cobra asked Hunter.
The Wingman shook his head no.
“We moved the HQ yesterday,” he said sadly. “I just wish we’d been able to do it sooner.”
He circled the base one more time, allowing those on board to give a final salute to their fallen brethren.
Then he turned the copter northeast and pushed the throttles to full power.
Chapter Thirty-One
They flew out over the Atlantic for the next half hour. The full moon rising on the horizon guided their way.
It was a gloomy flight, but Hunter went ahead and filled everyone in on what had happened over the past two days—the firebombing of Manhattan and the recent assault on Convoy 56.
But even with these two fairly successful actions, they—the Allies—still had a huge problem on their hands: the sixty-five thousand Russian troops occupying New York City, plus the nine thousand horrific NKVD policemen.
“That’s who cut up our boys back there,” Hunter told them. “And the rocket barrage, too. Their way of telling us they’re in reprisal mode.”
They finally spotted their destination, the once quaint island of Nantucket, just south of Cape Cod. Though largely abandoned since the Big War, it hadn’t changed much in appearance. It was still picturesque, with weathered shingle-style houses and high-steepled churches. All lit up, from above, it was like a photo in a New England travel brochure.
Except now, an enormous, listing, smoldering aircraft carrier was anchored in its harbor—and taking up every last inch of it.
“Holy crap,” JT gasped on seeing the gargantuan ship. “You really did capture Moby Dick.”
“Yes, we did,” Hunter said. “We captured the hell out of it. If anyone has any ideas on where to hide the thing, now’s the time to speak up.”
Everyone involved was hoping the Russians would eventually come to believe their mighty Isakov had sunk during the sea battle, just like their two battle cruisers and the Chekski troop carrier.
But an eleven-hundred-foot ship would be hard to keep under wraps for very long. Someone would spot it eventually, and the jig would be up. Then there was the added problem of the five Russian destroyers still out there. As far as anyone on the American side could tell, all five had survived, despite their shooting at one another during Hunter’s Exocet attack.
These destroyers were armed with Styx missiles, massive antiship weapons that were easily adapted to strike land targets. One ship’s barrage would destroy Nantucket Harbor and kill everyone in it. A full barrage from all five ships would most likely sink the Isakov for good, condemning it to foul the historic seaport for the next few hundred years.
“You could always put a camouflaged roof over it,” St. Louis said wryly. “Better be a big one, though.”
They flew over the seaport village next to the harbor. It was buzzing with activity. Members of the 7CAVwere hurrying everywhere. Weapons and munitions were being moved about. Things were being welded, both onshore and aboard the carrier. The combined arc lights bathed the harborside in a cool blue glow.
Hunter explained that they were doing everything possible to get the mammoth, heavily damaged Isakov back to some kind of operational status as quickly as possible. And he meant hours, not days.
“And what about your XL?” Ben Wa asked him, spotting the wreckage of Hunter’s superplane still smoldering on the carrier’s debris-strewn deck. “Can you put it back together?”
Hunter unexpectedly choked up. “Not this time,” he replied quietly.
They touched down at a small field just outside the seaport. The group of allies climbed out of the Mi-8 Hip and stretched. A row of Russian-built Mi-28 Kamov attack helicopters was nearby. The Cobra Brothers went to them like moths to a flame.
Mi-28s were absolutely fierce aerial weapons. Loaded with wire-guided missiles, a nose cannon, and twin rocket launchers, they were also fast, highly maneuverable, and so ugly they were almost pretty. And, as these were naval variants, they were equipped to carry torpedoes.
Hunter explained to the Cobras the gunships had come from the Isakov.
Phil smiled. “I hope this is why you told us not to bring our own rigs.”
Hunter nodded. “We just flew out here in a Russian tank. Now—can you guys fly a couple of Russian Ferraris?”
A quarter mile away, across the beach and near the harbor jetty, stood an old lighthouse.
It was sixty feet high, and on clear nights, its powerful hundred-year-old revolving beacon could be seen as far north as Boston and as far south as New York City.
Atop the lighthouse now, though, something was spinning that was not anywhere as old: a Zhanya-616 kolectrya satellite dish. Taken from a NKVD storage bin on the Isakov, its name said it all. This dish could collect virtually any kind of radio signal from around the world and record it clearly and static free. It was the ultimate eavesdropping device.
Finding the 616 aboard the carrier was a dream come true for Dozer. He was at the top of the lighthouse now with two of his 7CAV troopers. Once they had realized they’d won the naval battle and actually captured the gigantic carrier, he’d gotten the 616 loaded on the first chopper off their new prize and had it brought here.
They’d been up here ever since getting it to work. Even when the Isakov limped into the harbor, Dozer hardly noticed. He was concentrating on his newfound toys.
He was surrounded by gear at the top of the lighthouse. To his left, his old but reliable shortwave radio set. To his right, no less than a ton of other NKVD communications equipment taken from the Isakov. Not just radio transmitters, but also override modules, signal-intercept generators, even a remote-controlled radiophone-tapping option. Typical Russian spy equipment. But Dozer had been a communications officer in the marines long before the 7CAV ever existed, and he had a few novel ideas on what to do with it.
When, on a hunch, he jump-crossed circuits between the Zhanya-616’s enormous computer hard drive—it alone weighed three hundred pounds—and the Isakov’s frequency modulators, he discovered he could get into the same weighty hard drives that the NKVD used to control their radiophone traffic—and do so without them knowing it.
“We can hack into their computers—and they have no idea we’re in there,” Dozer told his men once he’d proved what he’d done. “We can hear and read everything they’re doing and saying, and they don’t have a clue.”
“Breaking into someone’s computer?” one of his men said. “That’s freaking amazing. Imagine if something like that catches on.”
Among other things, the new unexpected power allowed Dozer to create false signals—radio messages and telex—and put them out as originating from the NKVD. They’d already done it once. They’d broken into the Red Radio station’s computer earlier and forced their own recorded piece onto the air. The three of them couldn’t stop laughing as they heard the anti-NKVD conspiracy message broadcast and then watched the secret police network light up like a Christmas tree with NKVD bigwigs wanting to know what the hell was going on. It was called disinformation—and Dozer loved throwing it back at the Reds.
They finished installing the last of the Russian equipment, backup generators to keep everything going should the primary power source fail, and suddenly Dozer had one of the most advanced spy stations ever created.
From his little, battered radio set in the old shaky Pine Barrens tower to all this in under a week?
Sometimes crazy does work, he thought, truly in his glory.
Then Hunter walked in.
Chapter Thirty-Two
May 9
It was 1:00 a.m. on Sunday morning.
Commissar Zmeya looked out on Manhattan from the new 110th floor of Tower Two, and like every other time he took in the view, he let out a long sigh.
In Russia, it was called Krakh. When things go to shit pretty quickly. The false broadcast on Red Radio being the latest setback.
They’d had it all, including the greatest city in the world, but for such a short time. And it all started to go downhill when that accursed clown plane showed up.
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