Then he was through the door and gone.
Chapter Thirty-Six
At midnight, a sound was heard high above New York City.
It was so distinct that no matter what people were doing, they naturally looked up at the sky.
Those with extraordinary eyesight or night-vision goggles saw something all too familiar cruising over Manhattan.
A tiny aircraft with a noisy engine and very big wheels.
The ghost plane was back.
Pitch-black. Absolutely opaque. A night sky without any stars.
That was what it was like to fly in a tunnel. And that’s what Hunter was doing at the moment.
A passenger was squeezed into the clown plane with him—Colonel Donnie Kurjan of the United American Army, the large, well-organized quasi-militia that came together in national emergencies. Kurjan had cheated death several times in the conflicts that had followed the Big War, earning the nickname Lazarus.
His specialty—or at least one of them—was an expert knowledge of electricity. And while he and Hunter had fought together more times than they could count and were old friends, Kurjan might have been the most important person in New York City at the moment.
They were both wearing gas masks, which helped as they flew along in the darkness. They were also wearing night-vision goggles—but they were practically useless. Their sensors were so devoid of light that the illuminating gear could only provide crackling, indistinct images.
This was such a dangerous mission that, at first, Hunter had been determined to do it himself. Journey into the deepest part of the tunnels and do what he needed to do without getting caught. How could he ask anyone to join him?
But he was not an expert on everything, and there could be no guesswork here. That’s why Kurjan was with him. He knew a lot about certain things that could be found deep in this abyss.
No surprise, then, that before heading out from Nantucket, they’d had a few shots of Dozer’s brutal whiskey.
They’d performed the noisy flyover of the city earlier for a reason. Hunter wanted to see if the Russian SAM batteries would paint him with their radars. If they did, the city’s air-raid sirens would go off. As for making the already jumpy city a little more on edge? Another part of the plan.
They’d found the tunnel entrance up around 168th Street in North Harlem. It was a very isolated place and about a mile north of the Russians’ twenty-foot high barbed-wire outer defense line.
Hunter had done this very same thing back during his adventure at Area 51 not two months ago. But that had been in a more stable jet fighter, and the tunnel had been huge—and well lit. There was not a hint of any light or even the dimmest glow down here, and the tunnel was much narrower. Nor was it all one straight shot. The tunnels were full of twists and turns, and Hunter had to rely on Kurjan to cry out a warning to get them safely around every corner. They were both pros, but this was stressful.
Deeper and deeper into the blackness they flew. They kept track of how far they were going by silently counting the seconds. Thirty seconds should equal a mile; a minute equaled two.
They had to go in at least three miles. Ninety seconds, the longest seconds either of them had experienced in their lives.
Landing was virtually blind and bumpy. The big tires allowed the plane to come down on the rails and not the rock bed, meaning they should be able to take off again, but it was a painful touchdown.
They got out of the plane and grabbed their M-16s. As they alked slowly to their left, their hands out in front of them, their night-vision goggles showed just about a blank screen. They were mostly walking over sharp gravel and broken bottles, but also the occasional skeleton. The dead had lain here in the pitch-darkness for fifteen years, maybe more.
Kurgan finally found a wall; this is what they wanted. They began feeling along its base and even below it, trying to find something other than bones.
But it was not to be. They gave their best, five minutes of looking around for something that just wasn’t there. They had to move on.
Takeoff was rough. They almost slammed into the ceiling. There was no wind in the tunnels and that actually made for a hairier ride. Once they’d counted off another three miles, they landed again, crawled to the wall, and felt around. But once again, they found nothing.
Six miles in. Two crap-outs.
Near the junction of two tunnels, Hunter landed again in another extremely rough touchdown. Still wearing his duct-taped crash helmet, he hit the top of the canopy so hard he put another large crack in it.
They crawled and groped and tried to sweep the bones and dust away—and finally Kurjan found it: a thick cable running along the base of the wall. It led them to a large metal box affixed to a pole nearby. They studied its insides. Up very close with their night-vision goggles, struggling, Hunter saw a panel of industrial-size circuit breakers and one large switch.
The switch was what they came here for.
“You’re sure this is the right one, right location, and so on?” Hunter asked, whispering for some reason in the absolute blackness.
“I think so,” Kurjan replied. “I was into trains big-time as a kid—then I got into what made them run. The NYC Transit Authority put junction boxes every three to nine miles along their subway routes. It was a safety thing, in case the third rail had to be turned off in an emergency. At most, only nine miles of the line would go down. But if you switched just one of them back on, the entire line would be back up and running.”
Hunter took a breath and put his hand on the switch—but Kurjan brushed it away.
“Do you have a license to handle electrical equipment in the City of New York, Major Hunter?” he asked.
“No—I don’t.”
“And I don’t have a pilot’s license,” Kurjan said. “So this one is on me.”
He put his hand on the switch, drew a deep breath, and pulled.
There was a huge flash, followed by a storm of electrical sparks. In the same instant, ten thousand volts went right up Kurjan’s arm, throwing him high in the air.
He came down hard, at least thirty feet away from Hunter. The Wingman frantically ran over to him, tripping and stumbling in the dark. Yet, incredibly, when he arrived, Kurjan was already standing up, all in one piece, dusting himself off.
Judging by the jolt he’d been hit with, he should have been dead.
“Mission accomplished, no?” he asked Hunter. They could barely see each other in the faint emerald night-vision glow. “The juice still works way down here in the tunnels.”
Hunter was still speechless.
Finally, he said, “I guess that’s why they call you Lazarus.”
Kurjan was the first to hear them coming.
He and Hunter were still in absolute darkness, sitting now, backs against a wall from which they’d cleared any human remains. It had been about an hour since they got the electricity running again.
It came as a rumble at first; Kurjan actually felt it before he heard it. Hunter was aware of it an instant later.
It was incredibly loud. The squealing alone was enough to bust eardrums, the awful roar of something big and fast coming that might not be able to slow down. The noise of something unstoppable.
They were up in an instant, flattening themselves against the wall. They saw the light a moment later. Cutting through the black to their right, far off but still seemingly as bright as the sun.
The noise got louder. Everything around them began to shake, including the post holding the electrical panel and all those bones.
Kurjan tried to yell something to Hunter, but it was lost immediately, buried in the absolute shrieking going on around them.
The train went by them a moment later.
It had a dozen cars and each one was packed with United American soldiers, all in classic UA dark green fatigues, heavily armed and hea
ding south.
The train was visible for just a few seconds before it disappeared to their left, vanishing into the tunnel as if it was plunging into the blackness of space itself. But the awful noise remained.
Another train went roaring by. This one was twice as long and carrying members of the Football City Special Forces, unmistakable in their black-and-gold combat suits.
A third train sped by. It was filled with soldiers in unmarked uniforms, but by their maroon battle hats, it was obvious they were members of the Free Canadian Special Forces. Sometimes not wearing a flag was the best way to let your feelings be known.
A fourth train was carrying the 101st Airborne Regiment of the PAAF—the Pacific American Armed Forces. They’d parachuted into Yonkers less than an hour ago and walked down to Manhattan. After them, more trains came. Some were loaded with local militia companies, some with mercs from as far away as Mudtown, Free Pennsylvania. Some were even carrying battlefield weapons—anything that could fit on board a typical New York City subway car. Recoilless rifles, small rocket launchers, small artillery pieces—and lots of ammunition.
There were thirteen trains in all. When the last one came screaming down the track, it actually hit its brakes and came to an earsplitting stop, the last car ending up right in front of Hunter and Kurjan.
The rear door opened and Bull Dozer stepped out. “We have a passenger to pick up?” he yelled.
Kurjan turned to Hunter and said, “Don’t stay down here any longer than you have to, Hawk. You never know what’s living down here these days.”
Hunter was mildly shocked. “Now you tell me?”
They shook hands.
“See you on the other side,” Kurjan said.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
All the trains were rushing to the same place.
Pre–Big War, its official name was Cortlandt Street 1 stop, Level 2, New York Transit Authority. But most people had called it the One and the Two. The subway station below the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.
As Hunter had told the Allies at the Nantucket war council: “Just because the New York City subway system hasn’t run since the Big War doesn’t mean it’s broken. If we can turn the power back on, we can commute to the battle underground. Avoid all opposition topside.” And that’s exactly what was happening.
“Hawk is scary sometimes,” Kurjan said to Dozer as their train rushed headlong down the tunnel. “He always hits a home run when it comes to stuff like this.”
Dozer checked his watch as they sped through one of many dark, long-abandoned stations. Time was an important element here.
“I hear you, Lazz,” he replied. “And he’s done it enough times to prove it ain’t no fluke.”
They could see the final station coming up. Though the power was back on, the station’s lightbulbs had burned out long ago, so the platform was lit by thousands of candles of all different shapes and sizes brought in by the first troop train to reach the station. They gave off an otherworldly glow.
There were eighty members of 7CAV on the train, plus Dozer. They were already up and waiting at the doors, ready for a fight. All that time awaiting word from their fellow warriors in the haunted forest, and they lose thirteen of their guys in just a few hours? There was no question who would lead the impending assault.
The train squealed to a halt and 7CAV piled out. The platform was already crowded with more than two thousand raiders. Gathered under the direction of Geraci’s NJ104, they’d been brought by boat to North Harlem from New Jersey to take the long train ride downtown. Different uniforms, different weapons, different kinds of soldiers, everyone wending his way through the sea of candles, but they all had one thing in common: the small American-flag patches on their left shoulders. That was the reason they were here.
More trains would be coming later, carrying reinforcements and ammo and returning to North Harlem with the wounded and dead. But for now, this was it. Two thousand against almost ten thousand—and possibly sixty-five thousand more.
“Another war,” Dozer said to Kurjan as they were disembarking. “Does it ever end?”
“I don’t know,” Kurjan replied. “But either way, history is going to be made here today.”
Suddenly, a loud, mechanical roar filled the station. Not the squealing and screeching of a train. This was a big, high-speed motor with no noise suppression gear. Something moving very fast and without a muffler.
It exploded from the tunnel a moment later. It wasn’t running on the tracks, it was flying above them. Lots of smoke, flames coming from its exhaust pipes, big wheels, covered with duct tape, it was the clown plane with Hunter at the controls.
He roared over the platform, banking the small plane slightly to fit above the idling trains. Without warning, he did an incredible roll right inside the station, a way of acknowledging the Allies’ presence. The soldiers let out a cheer. He straightened out and was gone in a flash, down the other end of the tunnel.
Then all was quiet. The only noise was the flickering of thousands of candles. It became like a church. Many of the fighters went down on one knee to await the next command.
Hanging above them, on a billboard over the tracks, was a faded tourist ad encouraging the use of rapid transit, reminding people, “Take the subway. It’s faster.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Neither JT nor Ben had ever flown a Russian fighter before.
They’d fought them, they’d shot them down, but they’d never gotten closer than the range of a Vulcan cannon.
But there are commonalities between airplanes. With all of them, you take off, you add power, you fly. It’s what you do once airborne that tells the tale.
At the moment, though, they were being used as test monkeys. They were scheduled to take off from the Admiral Isakov in two Su-34s just after 2100 hours. Thanks to the 7CAV guys, the carrier’s deck was clear and the stationary ship had just a 10 percent list to starboard.
The jets were armed and ready to go, but would the ship’s leaky, jimmy-rigged steam generators hold enough pressure to shoot them off the deck? If not, even a Su-34 couldn’t survive what would happen next.
The minutes ticked down; hasty, last-moment tests were done; and at precisely 2104 hours, JT went off the deck. Ben followed him two seconds later. Both Su-34s dipped precipitously after leaving the carrier’s bow, but recovered quickly. In seconds, they were climbing to five thousand feet, going nearly straight up.
Thirty seconds behind, another Su-34 took off, Captain Crunch at the stick. He flew a souped-up F-4 Phantom in his day job, a rugged but aged stallion. Never did he dream he’d be flying a Russian jet on a combat mission, never mind a Su-34.
They’d found a lot of really nasty ordnance aboard the Isakov, both conventional and otherwise. The three purloined fighters were now lugging some of the worst: RBK-250 cargo munitions, better known as cluster bombs. Once dropped, each bomb, a large container with hundreds of little bomblets inside it, would split open, and the diminutive bombs would explode a few feet off the ground, killing large numbers of personnel in a short amount of time. Each plane was carrying ten thousand pounds of them.
This would be a one-and-done air strike, though. The Isakov’s arresting cables were unfixable, so returning to the ship was out. There was a tiny airport on east Nantucket with a small runway, but a vast parking lot beyond it.
Before the mission, some 7CAV guys removed the fence separating the landing strip from the parking lot, hoping it was a way of stretching the runway so JT, Ben, and Captain Crunch could manage to land their Su-34s. It was the best they could do, because by the time the Su-34s even took off from Nantucket, most of the 7CAV planned to be otherwise engaged.
The three fighters formed up at five thousand feet over Nantucket Bay. Power plants checked and single-pilot configs entered and confirmed, they set their flight computers to mission-command and turned
southwest.
New York City was just a twenty-minute flight from here.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The strangest thing about Hunter’s plan was that he really wasn’t involved in it.
At least not at the moment.
He had another mission that was just as vital, but far from the action. Another lonely search over the ocean.
After exiting the subway tunnel near Chelsea Piers, he’d headed east, out over the water again. The real kink in his plan was the five Russian destroyers unaccounted for since the battle for the Isakov. The conditions out to sea had not improved much, which might be why the five ships had yet to reach New York City. But the danger they posed to the Allies could not be overemphasized. Everyone around the war-planning table had seen a Styx missile in action, and no one wanted any part of them. Especially while in the middle of trying to clean out Tower Two.
These ships had to be found. And because the clown plane could fly low and slow and had such a tiny radar signature, the job fell to Hunter.
Reaching the eastern shore of Long Island, Hunter turned northeast.
If the five destroyers were taking the shortest route to New York, then they’d be out here somewhere. It was puzzling, though, that nothing about the ships’ whereabouts had been picked up on Dozer’s 616 eavesdropping gear. Maybe even the NKVD didn’t know where they were. Or maybe they’d all just sunk.
But going radio silent was usually a preamble to an attack. And considering the circumstances, that attack would probably come somewhere in Lower Manhattan.
This was not like looking for Convoy 56 in his now-departed F-16XL. This meant flying at nearly wave-top level and hoping you saw them before they saw you. As he was passing by East Hampton, three contrails went overhead, cutting through the stars. The three Su-34s streaking in the opposite direction, toward New York City. Hunter felt odd flying away from the action, but that’s just how it was.
Battle for America Page 24