The Spaniards had built mobile launching platforms for the missiles and were shoehorning their weapons anywhere and everywhere possible around the carrier. Meanwhile, the ship’s superstructure was crawling with Italian radar and communications experts. They were installing no less than four antennas: one air-search radar at the highest point on the conning tower, with a bulbous Mk-2 fire-control-system radar right beside it. They wired up a SLQ-32 radar-warning and electronic-countermeasures system to the island’s rear, next to a Separate Target Illumination Radar set that would help the French and Spanish gunners track multiple targets. The Italians were also working on setting up a long-range communications antenna which, when operating, would allow them to listen in on transmissions originating from the east end of the Med all the way deep into Lucifer’s Arabian Empire.
Once their equipment was installed, the Italians would join the rest of Yaz’s men in refurbishing the most important unit on the Saratoga—the Combat Information Center. It was in this CIC room that all the carrier’s communications, radar, and defensive systems were coordinated.
At the far end of the ship, most of the Australian Special Forces team were on deck, doing their midday calisthenics. Some of the Gurkha troops sat nearby, cleaning their famous machete-like long knives and watching the Aussies do jumping jacks.
Off the portside of the carrier, a large sea freighter was docked. This was the El Ka-Bongo, the ship that served as a ferry for the 7500 Moroccan desert fighters. It too would become part of the fleet, just as the oiler anchored beside it.
Watching it all from the highest point on the Saratoga’s superstructure was Hawk Hunter. The sun was now at its highest point in the sky. The blue-green waters of the Med were shimmering in the noontime radiance. He watched as the dozen tugs in front of the carrier simultaneously started their smoky diesel engines. The waters churning in their wake, the tugs fanned out until their thick towlines attached to the front of the carrier became taut. Hunter felt their pull. Then, from the rear of the carrier, he heard the familiar bump of the eight trailing tugs nudging against the rear of the ship. This was the push.
The carrier didn’t move for more than two minutes. But then, slowly, the combined forces working on the enormous ship started to take effect. Hunter could feel a light breeze on his face—a slight wind caused by the movement of the huge carrier. They were moving. The ship—like the small fleet of frigates and tugs around it—was alive. Breathing with adventure, sailing toward the east. Toward the unknown.
Chapter 19
HUNTER UNCORKED THE WINE bottle and poured out three glasses. He was sitting in the Saratoga’s CIC room, studying reams of transcripts just given to him by the head of the Italian communications group, Captain Giuseppe d’Salvo.
“So this is what our friend Lucifer is up to,” said Sir Neil as he reached for his wine glass. “I’m glad the long-range communications antenna is working so well. Giuseppe, your guys have done a great job.”
The Englishman raised his glass in a toast. “To our Italian compadres!”
Hunter and the Italian officer raised their glasses and each man downed the small glass of vino.
“This is invaluable information,” Sir Neil continued. “But it is also quite frightening. Lucifer is definitely on the move.”
It was fascinating stuff. Giuseppe’s men had been able to identify Lucifer’s main radio frequencies. Although the broadcasts were mostly in Arabic, Giuseppe’s men had had no problem translating them with help from the Moroccans. Within hours of setting up their long-range antenna, the Italians had come up with some extremely valuable intelligence.
Lucifer’s troops—close to fifty divisions in strength—were going through their last paces of training. The reports indicated that the madman was contracting ships of all types to sail to the port of Ashara, formerly part of South Yemen. From there the armada would sail up the Red Sea, through the Suez Canal, and break out into the Med. At that point they would link up with their local allies and start a sweep across both the northern and southern shores of the sea. It was a campaign that would rival everyone from Alexander to Rommel.
“It’s strange,” Hunter said, looking at the transcripts. “Lucifer is not much of a military leader. He made mistakes during The Circle War. Letting his troops move out in the open, not sending critical messages in code. Things like that. They gave us the breaks we needed to defeat him.”
“As we figured before,” Sir Neil said, “he’s more of a cult leader than a battlefield general. Sending messages like these, uncoded—I take it as an act of arrogance. I’m sure he knows what we are up to, although he probably doesn’t know where we are or what our exact plans may be. And I’m sure he also is aware of what The Modern Knights are doing—his spies are everywhere, after all.”
“So what he’s doing is underestimating us,” Hunter said, hoping at the same time that the Saratoga’s small force actually had something to be underestimated about.
“Let’s hope so,” Sir Neil said with a wink. “One thing is for sure, Lucifer will be moving his troops within a few weeks. Once they are aboard those ships and sailing, nothing will stop them. That’s why it’s imperative that we beat him to the Suez. And that we have enough weapons to fight them with when we get there.”
Hunter and Giuseppe nodded. The race for the canal was on …
The two friends of Emma, Chloe and Claudia, reached the outskirts of Cagliari and began taking off their clothes. Below them, down the road about a quarter-mile away, they could see the city streets were lit up and decorated with banners, streamers, and thousands of multicolored balloons. It reminded Chloe of the Mardi Gras she had once attended in Rio.
Quickly both women discarded their overalls and donned a toga-like garment that they had sewn together from bedsheets. They wore sandal-like shoes on their feet. Each woman was also carrying a small derringer-like gun, loaded with three bullets, to be used only in emergency.
They both checked their garments. After judging them to be authentic enough, they embraced, kissed each other’s cheek for luck, then began to walk into the city.
It wasn’t long before they saw just what kind of celebration The Day of Kings was meant to be. They came upon a roadblock, manned by six men carrying M-16 rifles. But the sentries didn’t even bother to give Chloe and Claudia a second look. They were too busy having sex with six women they had conveniently tied down on tables inside the guardpost building.
Chloe and Claudia moved on, occasionally passing similar scenes along the way—soldiers having their way with young girls and women, some of whom were actually enjoying it.
But these isolated instances were nothing compared to what the two call girls saw inside the city itself.
“My God,” Claudia said after walking through the unguarded city gates. “It looks like—”
“Sodom and Gomorrah,” Chloe finished for her.
It was true. The city was in the throes of a lust frenzy. Everywhere—on street corners, in open houses, in small parks that lined the roads—there were people committing sexual acts on each other. Even two people as worldly as Chloe and Claudia couldn’t believe the extent and the intensity of the orgy-like goings-on.
They saw men screwing one, two, three women at once. Women making love to other women. Two men on one woman. The variations went on and on. Age didn’t seem to matter—and the wine was flowing as if from an endless supply.
They neared the center of town, trying to take everything in. An arena of some kind had been set up and bleacher-style seats erected around it. They wandered up to the side of one of the seating galleries and peered inside. It was like a gladiator’s ring, but with one important difference. There were sexual games going on in the arena. At that moment, one man, armed with a net and a length of rope, was attempting to lasso one of five screaming young girls who had been placed in the ring with him. As Chloe and Claudia watched, the man finally netted one of the girls and instantly tied her up like a calf caught in a rodeo.
The
victim, just a teenager, was pleading with the man to let her go. But her captor only laughed. Each scream resulted in a great cheer from the crowd. More cheers erupted when the man ripped off his clothes and entered her, jamming her violently. The man was quickly spent. He stood up, raised his hands to the crowd for one last cheer, then slowly walked out of the arena. As soon as this happened, another man was let in to chase one of the four remaining girls.
Chloe and Claudia knew they had to move on. They walked around the side of the arena and toward the center of town. Here they saw the grandiose Roman-style structures the Holy Sardinians had built for themselves. Huge, pillar-supported affairs, all of white gleaming marble. In these buildings, and even on the buildings’ steps, they could hear and see people having sex. Occasionally they would come upon a still body—maybe dead, maybe just unconscious. But they never stopped to find out.
They were almost to the far edge of the town when the mob met them. There were about seventy men, walking toward the main celebration in the center of the city. They caught Chloe and Claudia unaware. The leader of the gang was a tall, burly, animal-like man wearing a long beard, a loin cloth, and nothing else.
“Ah, more pussy to join our party!” he said, grabbing Claudia. He instantly began stripping off her toga and fondling her breasts. Chloe was next. She was thrown into the crowd of men. Her clothes were also ripped off. Both women were then passed from man to man, each one fondling or sucking their breasts, or jamming their fingers into their privates. As soon as each man had had his due, he would rejoin the mob that was moving toward the center of the town.
Chloe felt as if she were in a dream. So many hands were on her at once, her senses were reeling. Most men tried to use their hands to penetrate every orifice, while some were trying to force her to her knees to perform oral sex on them. She was bouncing from man to man, and could see Claudia doing the same thing out of the corner of her eye.
It was absolute insanity. She wanted to cry, but at the same time she wanted to laugh. She was repulsed by the crude men, yet excited by the multitude of hands swarming all over her body. She felt as if something were going to explode inside her. Her head felt light, her eyes started to close, she gasped once, twice, then nearly fainted.
Then it was over. She and Claudia had passed through the crowd of men and now the crowd was gone. The women looked at each other in amazement for a few moments. They had never thought to use their small guns.
They quickly gathered up their clothes, what remained of them, and hurried out of town.
“Chloe!”
The young woman instantly recognized the voice as Hunter’s. She and Claudia had walked the mile and half from the city of Cagliari to the abandoned US air base and ammo depot. Now she knew that Hunter and a strike force from the Saratoga were hiding nearby, ready for the second phase of their operation to begin.
Hunter emerged from a large, long hedgerow and quickly embraced her. Chloe was Emma’s best friend, so Hunter felt a special attachment to her.
“Are you okay?” he asked with some anxiety in his voice. Her mission with Claudia to reconnoiter the strange Sardinian town had been extremely dangerous, but critical to the operation.
Hunter was relieved to see she had made it in one piece. In fact, he couldn’t help but notice the slightly blissful look she had about her.
“There are no soldiers that we could see in the city,” she reported as Hunter led her to the side of the dusty road near the base. “No SAMs either. It appears that anyone who is able to have sex is having it—plenty of it—in that city tonight.”
It was just what Hunter wanted to hear.
Earlier in the evening, a strike force made up mostly of Australian Special Forces troops and Spanish rocket teams had helicoptered into a remote part of the island from six Norwegian frigates offshore. Hunter was the strike force leader, while Sir Neil, itching for a bit of action, had come along as the overall commander. With the twenty-five tough Aussie troops at his disposal, Hunter hoped to locate and airlift out as many Sidewinders and other weapons that he could find in the Sardinians’ ammo bunkers. Sir Neil, along with a half-dozen Spanish rocketeers, would guard the strike force’s rear from any threat, whether it be on the ground or in the air.
Hunter knew that the mission had to be done quickly. While the two women provided a diversion for any guards at the base, he and the Aussies would sweep into the weapons bunkers, locate what they needed, then radio back a special code to the six helicopters waiting nearby. The choppers were already outfitted with cargo nets. The strike force would have to drag out as many cases of weapons as they could and load them onto the chopper nets. If things went very well, Hunter thought they might be able to load up four of the six choppers. Of course, he knew there would always be unpredictable elements to contend with.
The strike force, wearing black coveralls and old Marine guard helmets they had found on the carrier, advanced cautiously up the narrow road to the front gate of the weapons-storage site. A small guardhouse stood next to the entrance, a single light burning in its window. Off in the distance, the lusty revelers back in Cagliari had begun setting off fireworks, unintentionally adding to the strike force’s cover.
Hunter motioned for the Aussies to take cover on either side of the road, then called Chloe and Claudia to the front of the column. They quickly went over their prearranged plan. Then, checking their small guns once again, the two women headed for the guardhouse.
The five soldiers inside the guardhouse were surprised when they answered the knock on their door and found Chloe and Claudia standing there. Both women had expertly made themselves look disheveled. Claudia’s toga was nearly completely torn off, and both of Chloe’s breasts were exposed. Both women were wearing their best professional smiles, which, when mixed with the smell of the alcohol, made for a powerful combination.
“Parlez-vous francais?” Chloe asked the burly man who answered the door.
“Oui, madam,” the soldier answered, a strange look coming across his face.
“Your comrades in town sent us to you,” Claudia said, snuggling up against the man. “They felt bad that you were up here missing out on all the festivities.”
“Our comrades sent you?” another of the soldiers asked, getting up from the card game the men had been playing.
While Claudia was talking to the men, Chloe was taking in the equipment the soldiers had in the guardhouse. Several rifles were leaning in the corner. An elaborate radio set was off to one side. A large pane-less window opening dominated the rear of the house, allowing a clear view of the city a mile and a half away.
“Can we come in and join you?” Chloe asked.
Hidden in the bushes twenty feet away, Hunter and Sir Neil watched the two women go into the guardhouse, the door closing behind them. Hunter turned to the leader of the Aussie troopers and gave him the thumbs-up sign.
“Go to it, Hunter,” Sir Neil said, patting him on the back. “We got your asses covered.”
With that, Hunter and the Aussie force slipped passed the guardhouse and down into the depression that contained a large underground weapons-storage bunker and several smaller ones.
Staying in the shadows and moving silently, Hunter and the troopers inched their way toward the bunkers. Once he was sure that there were no guards patrolling the inside of the facility, he gave the Aussie leader a prearranged signal. Meanwhile, off in the distance, the Sardinians were continuing their fireworks display.
The strike force began splitting up. A dozen men took up positions around the facility’s perimeter. The remaining soldiers divided into two-man teams, each headed for a small bunker. Their task was to force open the door, get inside, quickly determine what weapons were on hand for the taking, and then report back to their group leader. Hunter and two Aussies, meanwhile, would head for the main storage building that dominated the facility. He was certain that the Sardinians kept most of their Sidewinders there.
That’s when the strange feeling came over Hunte
r. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it. Reaching the large housing, he quickly picked the simple lock and, together with the help of the Aussies, pried the huge iron door open. Clicking his flashlight on, Hunter and the two troopers entered the bunker.
Hunter took one look and swore, “Christ!” he whispered angrily. “After all this … ”
“Well I’ll be damned,” one of the Aussie soldiers said.
The bunker was empty …
Hunter ran outside and found the Aussie group leader coming towards him.
“Turning up negative all around, major,” the Aussie leader, a man named Dundee, told him. “None of my guys have found a bloody thing.”
“Nothing here,” Hunter said, bitterness in his voice. He was mad at himself. While this certainly wasn’t the only weapons-storage site on the island, it was the one furthest from the city, and therefore, in Hunter’s mind, the easiest target. But undertaking the dangerous operation for nothing was not good military planning.
So the Sardinians were smarter than he thought. For some reason they had moved all the weapons out of the storage facility, apparently some time ago.
Quickly and quietly, the Aussies began moving their way back toward the guardhouse. Hunter was hoping that Chloe and Claudia had already been able to knock out the guards. They would have to get the girls out and make their way back to the choppers waiting two miles away.
But now he felt a second strange feeling come over him. The fireworks in the town had stopped. For the first time since they had landed on the island, there was complete silence all around them.
Hunter knew that meant trouble.
They reached the guardhouse. While Dundee went on to tell Sir Neil of the empty bunkers, Hunter and two Aussies went to retrieve Chloe and Claudia.
Lucifer Crusade Page 14