“Well, there’s never been a shortage of mercenaries,” Hunter said. “The world can get along without another one.”
“Oh, major, this is no time to stick to your lofty ideals,” Lard said. “Do you realize that when this war starts up again, half the troops on both sides will be paid mercenaries? Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, millions of dollars. You, Hunter, alone could make millions, probably hundreds of millions. If you’re worth a billion dollars to The New Order, you’re worth at least half that to whoever wants to win the most when the war kicks back up.”
Hunter reached inside his flight suit and pulled out the picture of Viktor. He passed it to Lard.
“Who is this guy?” he asked.
Lard produced a monocle and examined the photo. “Ah, Hunter,” he said, handing it back to him. “Don’t tell me you’ve got yourself tangled up with the almighty ‘Lucifer’?”
“Forget this ‘Lucifer’ bullshit,” Hunter told him. “I know this man as Viktor Robotov. I’m damn sure he’s a Russian agent. He was recently in America engineering a war that set us back four to five years. He’s a master terrorist.”
“Terrorist? Oh, but he is also a ‘god,’ this Lucifer,” Lard said mockingly.
Hunter was getting aggravated. “Look, I know he’s a manipulator and a genius for brainwashing the masses. But pumping this guy up like he’s a god—it’s a joke. Who the hell can believe it?”
Lard laughed again, and gulped down the rest of the martini. “Major Hunter, get with it. This is The New Order. Look at yourself. You’re sitting in a movie set that people have turned into a real thing. They believe it. So it’s real. They’ll believe anything. People want to follow gods, major. ‘Lucifer’ makes sense to half of them. And he’s paying the other half.”
Hunter didn’t want to waste any more time. “Where is he?” he said. “Where’s his HQ?”
Lard opened his mouth as if to say something, but only one word came out. It sounded like “Algiers.” Then a bloody foam flowed up from his throat and out his mouth. His eyes turned up and his head slammed down on the table in front of him with a loud “wham!”
Lard was dead. Poisoned. Probably by the martini. Luckily Hunter had never cared for the petrol-tasting gin bombs, and he had left his untouched.
The sound of Lard’s head cracking on the table had been loud enough to stop the singer singing and the piano-player playing. Two soldiers—undoubtably Lard’s hired security people—appeared and helplessly shook the body. They knew they’d fucked up. Someone should have been testing the drinks.
More soldiers appeared. Guns were being drawn. All of a sudden it seemed as if everyone in the place was carrying a piece. Hunter turned around and tried to catch sight of el-Fauzi, but the man was long gone. He immediately had the sinking feeling that either he or the big fat slob on the table in front of him had been set up.
Hunter knew it was time to leave. A dangerous tension ripped through the cafe. Suddenly the lights went out, and that’s when the lead started flying. Women screamed, men yelled as there was a mad dash for the darkened door. Guns were going off all around him, though he never figured out who was shooting at whom, or why. He had dropped down to the floor at the sound of the first gunshot, glad he was carrying his flight helmet. He quickly put it on and checked the clip in his M-16. As usual it was filled with tracer rounds.
He made his way along the line of tables, feeling in front of him with the snout of the M-16. The only light around him was coming from the many gun flashes erupting all over the club. Soon the place was thick with the smell of spent gunpowder.
He spied the front door and noticed that most of the crowd had made good their escape. However, an unhealthy barrage of pistol fire was coming from very close to the exit. It was concentrating on some unseen enemy located at the back of the room. Bullets were pinging and ricocheting around the darkened cafe, sometimes accompanied by a groan or a scream when one of them found flesh. This was no place to be, he thought. Still, he couldn’t help thinking that this sort of thing must apparently happen quite often at the cafe.
He decided to create a distraction, something that would cause everyone to take cover and give him the precious four or five seconds he would need to make a break for the front door.
He raised the M-16’s nose until it was pointing at the ceiling, then ripped off a long burst of tracers. The bright trails of white-hot phosphorous illuminators lit up the interior of the cafe brilliantly. The bullets scraped the plastered ceiling, causing a rain of cracked and sparkling material to fall. The chatter of the automatic weapon filled the walls with a loud, echoing, dangerous sound. Immediately all the gunmen dove for cover.
Hunter was out the door in three seconds …
He found the jeep unattended outside the cafe. El-Fauzi was nowhere to be seen. Despite the gunplay in the club, the people in the streets of the movie set town seemed unaffected. Hunter started the jeep and headed back for the airport, glad to be out of the strange place.
The airport was even more crowded, more confused, more desperate than before. The F-16 was sitting untouched. He resisted the temptation to go looking for el-Fauzi; whatever the man’s motives had been, Hunter was sure he would be impossible to find. Besides, with the situation at the airport deteriorating rapidly, he wanted to get off as quickly as possible. His search for clues to Viktor’s whereabouts would have to continue in some other place.
He climbed aboard the F-16 and started to warm up the avionics. A wave of a bag of silver was all that was needed to flag down a passing fuel truck, and soon his tanks were full. Without bothering to contact the control tower, he taxied out onto the runway and took off on the tail of a battered Brazilian 707.
Minutes later, he turned northeast. Lard’s last word had been “Algiers,” and Hunter figured that was as good a place as any to resume his search for Viktor.
Chapter 4
HUNTER WAS GLAD TO get away from Casablanca. The place was just too weird for him. Movie-set towns. The airborne evacuation. El-Fauzi. Lard. The gun battle at the cafe. All the talk of war and armies of mercenaries waiting to go at it was particularly disturbing. So was the billion-dollar bounty on his head. He’d have to be extra careful about watching his tail. That poisoned drink could very well have been meant for him instead of Lard. And he was sure that word would spread quickly that he was in the area. It all had such an unreal atmosphere about it.
And he couldn’t help thinking that the spectre of Viktor—or Lucifer—was lurking behind it all.
He set a course low over the Moroccan desert, heading for Algeria and the unknown. He had to expect the unexpected. Play it smart. If war were about to break out in the region, he’d have to assume that any population center would be equipped with SAMs, maybe interceptors. Both of which he wanted to avoid. The sand-skimming course over the desert seemed to be his best choice.
Suddenly he felt trouble. His well-developed sixth sense—particularly attuned to nearby hostile aircraft—had his body tingling. He checked his long-range radar, which soon confirmed his feelings. There were two fighters approaching him from the northwest. They were moving fast and they were heavily armed.
He instinctively checked his instruments. Everything looked good until he went to test-fire his specially designed “Six Pack” of M-61 Vulcan cannons in the nose of the F-16. To his surprise, a push of the trigger produced nothing. Another push, still nothing. According to his panel lights, everything was in order. Strange … He quickly rerouted the fire command through his flight computer. Still nothing.
Someone had tampered with the airplane while it was parked at Casablanca, he knew it. He punched up his air-to-air missile-arming program. It too was drawing a blank. Sabotage! He should have expected it, although the electrically charged alarm system had never failed him before. An expert had done the dirty deed. But he’d have to figure out who the culprit was later. Right now, he needed to concentrate on the approaching interceptors.
He booted the 16 up to full m
ilitary speed and was glad to feel the afterburner kick in so smoothly. The saboteur had apparently only tinkered with his armaments and not the airplane’s power plant. He stayed down low, hoping to skirt the look-down radar the interceptors might be carrying. His pursuers were just twenty miles behind him. He was sure he could outrun them to Algiers, but what would happen then?
“F-16, F-16.” His radio suddenly burst to life. “This is the Gibraltar Defense Force. You are in an unauthorized air zone. Prepare for interception.”
He was “unauthorized” again. Yet he didn’t feel threatened. The voice on the radio was British. Oddly, it did not sound hostile. Just serious. Hunter felt instinctively drawn to trust it.
“Gibraltar Defense,” he radioed back. “This is Major Hawk Hunter of the Pacific American Air Corps. I was unaware this was restricted air space. Request permission to leave the area at once.”
“F-16.” The voice came back. “You are not only in a restricted airspace, you are also traveling at illegally high rate of speed. You must be cited. We are tracking you with long-range missiles. We will fire if we have to. Please reduce speed and prepare for interception.”
High speed? Cited? What the hell was this?
Hunter decided to slow down and let the interceptors catch up to him. He was unarmed, and although he knew he could have outran the long-range air-to-airs, with all the twisting and turning required more than half his fuel would be burned up uselessly. Anyway, the interceptor pilots didn’t sound menacing.
They were Tornados. Impressive fighters that had been made back in the old days by a group of European companies. Hunter had seen many of them during the air battles over France. They were a rugged, versatile, even-flying aircraft, one of the best in the world.
They came up on either side of him. They were definitely British—both airplanes had Union Jacks painted on their tail sections. One moved in closer to his port wing and gave a gentlemanly wave.
“Sorry, F-16, but you’ll have to follow us,” he radioed over. “Course seven-two-niner Tango. Our base is thirty-four kilos northwest.”
Hunter waved back. Something about the British. No matter what, they always sounded so civilized.
The Tornados pulled ahead and turned northwest. Hunter followed.
The air base was actually a small, straight stretch of abandoned highway with a half-dozen large tents on either side. A long fuel truck sat off on the edge of the makeshift runway jeeps and personnel carriers moved about. Several Rapier antiaircraft missile batteries ringed the base. Two other Tornados were parked on metal plates that served as temporary parking stations on the highway shoulder.
The two British interceptors landed in formation and Hunter came in right after them. They taxied to their assigned metal plates, while Hunter rolled along to the center of the base. Several men waited there. A ground mechanic directed him in with a pair of red flags and gave him the thumbs-up when he was in the correct parking position. He shut down the engine, popped the canopy, and climbed out to meet the men.
They were all officers of the Royal Air Force, dressed in the correct desert fatigues. As one, they snapped to a perfect opened-palmed salute. Hunter returned it as best he could. One officer stepped forward—a man with bright red hair and an enormous mustache to match. He walked over and shook Hunter’s hand.
“Captain Stewart Heath,” he said in a slight Cockney accent. “Sorry about all this, Major Hunter.”
“Well, it’s been a hell of a long time since I’ve got a speeding ticket,” Hunter said.
Heath pointed to the two taxiing pilots. “They’re just young bucks, major,” Heath said. “Just a tad, shall we say, ‘enthusiastic’?”
Hunter smiled for the first time. “They’re just doing their job,” he said.
“I’m glad you see it that way, major,” Heath said with a grin. “Now there will be a smallish fine. But not too much. Say, a quarter bag of silver. And if you pay it up right now, I can invite you to have breakfast with us with a clear conscience.”
Hunter reached into his flight-suit pocket and came up with a small bag of coins. A lieutenant appeared, and Hunter handed him the bag. He returned the gesture with a salute.
Heath clapped his hands once loudly. “Smashing,” he said, beaming. “Now, major, please. Will you join us?”
Although it seemed as if he had just finished his roasted lamb feast at the cafe, Hunter found himself hungry again. Plus he genuinely liked the Brits.
“Okay,” he agreed. “Could always use a little more chow.”
The entire group of officers, along with the two intercepting pilots, adjourned to a large tent where a meal of scrambled eggs, rolls, and tea was already waiting for them. Everyone helped themselves and settled down at the cafeteria-style benches to eat. Heath sat next to Hunter.
“We’ve heard of you, of course, Major Hunter,” Heath told him. “When our boys radioed in they were tracking an F-16, well, there’s only one F-16 flying these days, so we’re told.”
“What are you guys doing way out here?” Hunter asked him.
“It’s a long story,” Heath said, sipping his tea. “After the war cooled down, we—our wing of the RAF, that is—came into possession of the land on both sides of Gibraltar. We must patrol this far, to watch our southern flank. The speed-limit rule is simply one more way we can control the airspace. It keeps the troublemakers out, plus if we see anything coming our way at full boot, well, we’ll know he’s an enemy, won’t we?”
Hunter couldn’t argue with the typically British logic.
“Are you here to join the war, major?” one of the other officers asked across the table.
Hunter shook his head. “Believe it or not, the answer is no,” he said. “In fact, up until a short time ago, I had no idea this war—or any other war—was going on.”
“Oh, but you are out of touch over in America,” Heath said. “It’s not the ‘quick jump over the pond’ that it used to be.”
“How true, captain,” Hunter agreed. “We are very isolated. And we’re embroiled in so many of our own problems, we don’t have time to catch up on what’s happening over here. But, by God, I would never have thought the big war was still going on.”
“Well, in fairness to you Americans, the war did calm down a bit for nearly two years,” Heath told him. “Became sort of a ‘phony war,’ actually. The Soviets were too weak to lift a gun right after … well, after the dirty bastards nuked you. Many countries had entire armed units still intact. Most settled where they stood. We were at the RAF base on Gibraltar when the armistice was declared. We sat there—on our base—for close to seven months. No one came to disarm us. Only then did we realize the Russians couldn’t throw together five working divisions in Europe on a bet. So we started, well, moving about a bit.”
He courteously refilled Hunter’s plate with eggs and his cup with tea. Then he continued.
“It was about a year ago when we realized that the Russians were suddenly desperately light on the surface-to-airs. That’s when we started flying long-range patrols. With nothing to shoot at us, we were flying as far north and east as Berlin. For the most part, we didn’t see any appreciable Russian strength anywhere.”
“You said they were short on SAMs,” Hunter said.
“Yes, it was the most curious thing,” Heath said. “We had our eyes on them, of course. And we were in contact with other RAF bases. And it seemed as if their SAM forces just dwindled overnight. It was such a strange thing for them to do, leave themselves open like that. They gave up whatever control they might have had over the European airspace. And there weren’t enough MIGs around to make much of a difference. Plus a lot of their men defected.”
“They withdrew their SAMs and sent them to America,” Hunter told him. “They tried to split the continent right in half. Came close to doing it too. We just got through with them. It was rough.”
“By God, major, are you serious?” Heath said. “We had no idea you were having a go with the Russkies over there
.”
Hunter settled back and told them the whole story. The formation of The Circle, the SAMs hidden in The Badlands, the ferocious battle between the democratic Western Forces and the fanatical, Soviet puppet armies of The Circle. The British officers were at once fascinated and flabbergasted by the tale.
“They took a huge risk,” Heath said at the end of the story. “They were so intent on keeping you Yanks down.”
“Well, they’ve set us back,” Hunter said with bitterness in his voice. “And that’s why I’m here.”
He reached inside his pocket and pulled out the picture of Viktor.
“I’ve been tracking this man,” he said, handing the photo to Heath. “He’s responsible for the whole Circle War.”
Heath looked at the photo. “Why, this is the Lucifer bloke,” he said. “The Madman of the Mediterranean. He’s behind all the war talk right now.”
“Well, he’s the one who formed The Circle,” Hunter said. “We know him as Viktor Robotov. He’s a Russian agent, obviously high up on the ladder. He’s the guy that got the Soviets to sneak in their SAMs.”
“Well, he’s quite dangerous,” Heath said. “He’s got almost a cult following. I’ve seen videotapes of him. Religious, socialist, anarchic rubbish. It’s all jibberish. But he’s pushing the right button in the lowest common denominator, if you will.”
“He did the same thing in America,” Hunter said. “That’s why I’m on his tail.”
Heath stroked his fiery red mustache. “Well, you’ve taken on quite a task for yourself, major,” he said. “I believe Lucifer is busy relighting World War Three right now. I’m not so sure he’ll have time for you.”
Hunter only smiled and said, “We’ll see.”
Chapter 5
HE ENJOYED TALKING TO the Brits. They offered to give him a look at one of their Tornados, an invitation Hunter readily accepted. He loved airplanes and airplane design. He’d go anywhere, anytime, and talk airplanes with just about anyone.
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