The Ultimate Aphrodisiac

by Robert G. Barrett

‘Have a look what’s coming across the surface at eleven o’clock,’ said Milne.

  Brian looked and saw a swirl of dorsal fins fast approaching the survivors. ‘Oh shit!’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think we need to see what happens next,’ said Milne. ‘Let’s get the sub.’

  ‘Yeah,’ answered Brian. ‘Let’s.’

  ‘Keep about one hundred and fifty metres to my left,’ said Milne. ‘Nice and steady.’

  ‘Okay.’ Brian had a last look at the surviving SEALS and the dorsal fins fast approaching, closed his eyes for a moment, then followed Milne down into the ocean.

  The water was quite clear as they slipped beneath the surface. Brian moved away a little then they dove down and started searching for the submarine. It was deeper than Brian imagined and massive reefs and chasms loomed up in the gloom. Several big marlin swam past and they went through a huge school of jellyfish shaped like thick blue ferns that quickly turned opaque in the white light from the discs.

  ‘Nothing so far,’ said Brian.

  ‘It’s here somewhere,’ answered Milne.

  ‘Hey wait a minute,’ said Brian. ‘What’s that over there? Two o’clock.’

  Back from an undersea cliff a huge black shape was barely discernible against the dark blue background. Brian moved a little closer. It was side on with its nose to the left.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Milne. ‘Well done, Brian.’

  ‘Shit. It’s a big bastard.’

  ‘Yeah. Probably nuclear. Okay,’ said Milne. ‘Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll go to the stern and shoot out the propeller. You take the conning tower off and run a few holes along the stern. And we’ll just let it sink. That way we won’t contaminate my lovely territorial waters.’

  ‘And drown everyone inside,’ said Brian.

  ‘Well, put it this way,’ said Milne, ‘if any of the crew escapes, and the sharks don’t get them, I won’t strafe them on the surface.’

  ‘You’re a big man, Ron. Did you ever sign the Geneva convention?’

  ‘No one ever asked me. Okay, Takatau. Here we go. AMI on one.’

  Milne moved towards the submarine’s stern while Brian approached the conning tower. The submarine must have picked them up on its sonar, as it started taking evasive action by diving to the right. Brian could hear the frenzied whine of its huge propeller and as he got closer made out the name across the bow: Marvin J. Schwartz. Brian turned to his right and saw Milne near the submarine’s tail, then they both opened up.

  There were no explosions. Just huge silver air bubbles pouring from the submarine as the propeller got torn to pieces and the conning tower was blown away. Milne gave the stern another burst and Brian opened up along the hull. The giant submarine shuddered in a great cloud of escaping air then spun around and went into a death dive. Brian and Milne followed it down and saw it thump into the sandy bottom still intact. They watched the clouds of bubbles coming from the stricken submarine, then Milne spoke.

  ‘Well, I don’t think they’re going anywhere,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ agreed Brian.

  ‘But we are. Edwards Air Force Base,’ said Milne, heading for the surface.

  ‘Righto.’

  When they got to the surface, Milne hovered alongside Brian. ‘About five hundred clicks out of LA, we’ll slow down,’ said Milne. ‘I want them to pick us up on radar. So they’ll be waiting for us when we get there.’

  ‘Like a reception committee,’ said Brian.

  ‘Yeah. Welcome to America, Ron and Brian. Okay. California, here we come.’ Milne took them to maximum and they sped towards the United States.

  North-east of Johnston Island Brian noticed two US warships below. Milne saw them, too, but said not to worry. They’d check them out on the way back. Hawaii looked normal as they flew overhead and all the fires were out. Then it wasn’t long and they were reducing speed over Santa Catalina and the almost endless spread of Los Angeles, heading towards the Mojave Desert. They lowered altitude again and there it was, just like in the movie Top Gun. A huge airbase surrounded by desert, arid plains and mountains. There were bombers on the tarmacs and more in hangars, and on the outskirts of the airfield were rows of mothballed planes. Lights started flashing and trucks began rumbling across the tarmacs.

  ‘I can’t see too many jets, Sawi,’ said Brian, scouring the airfields.

  ‘Hey Brian,’ said Milne. ‘Have a look. Twelve o’clock high.’

  Brian looked up. ‘Oh shit!’ he said.

  The sky above was thick with jet fighters. F–15 Eagles, F–14 Tomcats, FA–18 Hornets. EF–111 Ravens. Radar Jammers, A–6 Intruders and Marine Corps AV 8B 111 Harriers. There were GR1 Tornados and GR1 Jaguars visiting from the Royal Air Force. There was even a squadron of the MiG 25 Foxbats and Sukhoi Su–24 Fencers the United States Air Force used for combat training.

  Milne snapped straight into action. ‘Okay. No fuckin around,’ he said. ‘I’ll split them up. You pick off the stragglers.’

  The sight of all the planes had Brian’s adrenalin pumping too. ‘Copy that, Sawi. Let’s give ’em the old one-two.’

  Milne tore through the swarms of fighters like a bullet, spraying DVs all over the sky with Brian bringing up the rear. Same as the previous dogfight, planes and missiles were going everywhere. Only this time the spent rockets and burning planes weren’t splashing into the sea, they were crashing into the mountains and surrounding desert, exploding in fireballs of burning metal, high explosives and aviation fuel. Brian picked off one jet fighter after another as missiles and thousands of rounds of cannon fire filled the air only to skid harmlessly off the MeG 21s. Most of the pilots managed to eject from their crippled aircraft only to be torn to pieces by their own pilots spraying cannon fire all over the sky. It was a slaughter. Brian lost count of how many planes he shot down. Close to a hundred. Milne would have easily accounted for the same number. The desert below was dotted with black smudges burning in the sun and parachutes fluttering in the wind. Finally there was one plane left, an A6 Intruder hightailing it for safer ground. Milne and Brian took off after the lone jet and caught it in seconds.

  ‘Hey Brian,’ said Milne. ‘Let him go. We’ll fly up alongside him and do a few loop-the-loops. And let him get a good look at us.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Brian. ‘I’ll take a photo.’

  They flew either side of the cabin and Brian could feel the sweat on the pilot’s brow as he was watching them behind his sunvisor. They leap-frogged him, flew above and below him and manoeuvred within inches of his cabin. The pilot’s head was going round in circles. Brian flew right up to the cabin, waved to the nerve-wracked pilot and took a photo.

  ‘Okay. We’ve had our fun,’ said Milne. ‘Let’s go back and put Edwards Air Force Base to the torch. You do the planes. I’ll start on the hangars.’

  ‘Righto,’ said Brian. Brian spun straight around alongside Milne and they barrel-rolled down to the air base.

  Brian set AMI on two and destroyed planes and everything around them. Men were running for their lives or fleeing in trucks. AAA was pouring up from the ground till either Brian or Milne took it out. AMI on two was overkill, so Brian went to one and simply strafed everything in sight. Beside him, Milne was flattening the buildings. Gasoline storage tanks were going up in huge red fireballs, ammunition dumps were disintegrating in clouds of smoke and flames and spiralling white plumes of exploding phosphorous bombs. It was a spectacular sight of utter destruction. Finally there was nothing left except smoke, burning buildings and wrecked planes.

  ‘Well, Takatau,’ said Milne. ‘I think they’ve about had it. What do you say?’

  ‘Had it?’ said Brian, peering down at the carnage below. ‘Christ! There’s not a brick upon a brick.’

  ‘No. I’d say we did a fairly reasonable job.’

  ‘Where to now?’

  ‘Straight up the coast to Oregon. And we’ll sort out that naval shipyard I was telling you about. The one with the Trident submarines.’

  ‘S
ilverdale.’

  ‘Daht’s de one, mon. Let’s go.’

  ‘I … I … I …’

  ‘Don’t tell me you watch that silly fuckin Ali G, too, Brian.’

  ‘Hey. Bit of respect, mon. Dis ain’t abou’ drugs ’n all. Dis abou’ respect.’

  They flew up the coast at a moderate speed and altitude over long dark beaches and forests full of tall trees pushing against mountains. Rivers and streams cut through the valleys and gorges and tumbled into sparkling waterfalls.

  ‘It’s not a bad-looking place, America,’ said Brian.

  ‘Ohh mate. It’s beautiful in parts,’ said Milne. ‘And Yanks are okay. They’ll always do you a favour if they can. It’s just that they just keep electing boofhead politicians.’

  ‘Some of their generals are a bit weird, too,’ added Brian.

  ‘Tell me about it, mate. I was in Vietnam.’

  Brian looked down and they were over a wide emerald-green bay, surrounded by forests of pine trees. The bay was all trees on the seaward side, on the other were jetties and piers and a massive triangular dock lined with warehouses, loading facilities and monstrous steel cranes. Berthed at the dock were two huge grey submarines bigger than the one Brian helped to sink earlier. Cutters and tugboats motored around the dock and trucks drove past the warehouses and cranes while men and sailors went about their work on the submarines. Fluttering over the bay was a flock of seagulls and a white civilian helicopter.

  ‘Holy shit!’ said Brian. ‘Look at the size of those submarines.’

  ‘Yeah. They’re whoppers, aren’t they,’ said Milne.

  ‘They look like two big fat pigs in a sty,’ joked Brian.

  ‘They do a bit,’ agreed Milne. He gave Brian a thumbs up. ‘All right, Takatau. Let’s start makin’ bacon. You take the one on the right. I’ll sort out the other one. Then we’ll rubbish what’s left.’

  ‘I can do that,’ said Brian, priming AMI on three.

  Brian watched Milne peel off then flew down above the bay and positioned the MeG 21 back from the huge grey Trident submarine on the right. Directly behind it a massive red crane stood above the dock with a long, shiny torpedo dangling from the hook. Brian watched the red dots and pulled the trigger. The DV smashed into the submarine like a sledgehammer hitting a rockmelon. There was a mighty explosion and the vessel was lifted completely out of the water as it was blown to pieces, taking the red crane with it. The crane toppled onto the dock and the torpedo was torn from the cable and sent flying into a warehouse where it exploded, blowing the building to bits and setting the one next to it on fire. Brian glanced over and saw Milne had fired at the same time Brian did, so the two explosions fused into each other, turning the air into a blizzard of red hot metal, lumps of concrete and burning wreckage. The torpedo bays on both submarines were torn apart as if they were made from alfoil and Brian watched fascinated as more torpedos flew through the air like beer bottles, landing and exploding on the dock or amongst the warehouses like high explosive bombs.

  The smoke cleared for a moment and Brian snapped off a few photos. Then he clicked AMI on two. Like a kid in a fun parlour, Brian pumped round after round into the docks, warehouses and cranes, decimating them and sending them crashing into the bay. The onslaught was horrendous. Fuel tanks exploded, spraying burning petrol all over the docks, trucks got blown to atoms, screaming men leapt into the harbour with their clothes on fire. Brian pumped another dozen DVs into the dock then clicked AMI back to one and strafed what was left. Finally he stopped to take a few more photos. Through the viewfinder the desolation appeared even worse. Between the two of them they’d levelled the entire dockyard. What was once a massive naval facility and two huge submarines was now just a flattened mess of blazing wreckage and bodies, floating on a bay of burning oil.

  ‘Well, what do you reckon, Takatau?’ Milne’s voice came over the radio. ‘You think they’ve been rubbished enough?’

  ‘Looking around,’ answered Brian. ‘I’d say they’ve been rubbished to buggery.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s head for Umatilla.’

  They took off inland and soon the lush pine forests changed to mountains, then scrubby, barren plains and semi-desert. Milne dropped altitude and speed, then in the middle of a plain they came to an area several kilometres square fenced off with double chainlink topped with razor wire. Sealed roads led into the area and spread neatly around, but kept well away from each other were numerous white concrete bunkers with thick metal doors.

  ‘May as well go in the front gate,’ said Milne.

  ‘Yeah. Why not,’ said Brian.

  They flew down to just a few metres above the ground and went over a metal arch with ‘US Army Umatilla Chemical Depot’ on it. Set near some trees on either side were two decommissioned ballistic missiles painted white with red nose cones. A little further on was a guardhouse and security gate. Several military vehicles were parked on the roadways. But the whole complex appeared to be deserted. Milne took them to one of the bunkers and hovered above the metal door. Brian could read the bunker’s number: K–1856.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Brian.

  ‘Nothing. Just sit here for a few minutes,’ said Milne. ‘There’s a couple of cameras on us. Take a few photos yourself,’ he suggested.

  ‘We going to do a little low-level strafing? I wouldn’t mind taking out a few kilometres of cyclone-wire fence.’

  ‘No. I don’t think we’ll bother. We’ll just leave it to their imagination. But when we leave, we’ll take off flat out. That’ll give them something else to think about.’

  ‘Righto,’ said Brian, focussing his camera on bunker K–1856.

  They hovered for almost five minutes. Brian still didn’t see anybody and nobody fired rockets or guns at them. No planes or helicopters came near. He surmised whoever was down there would be absolutely shitting themselves and not wishing to antagonise the intruders. If the depot went up they wouldn’t stand a chance, and the end result would be too dreadful even to contemplate.

  ‘All right,’ said Milne. ‘That’ll do. Let’s take it on the toe.’

  ‘We going home?’

  ‘We sure are. Hit it, Takatau.’

  ‘Warp ten, Captain.’

  Behind the blast doors in the White House War Room it was organised confusion bordering on panic around the Command Balcony. Men in uniforms or civilian clothes were shouting at each other and running everywhere. Radar screens, maps, satellite link-ups, hotlines, control panels, computer screens, every board in the huge room was flashing and blinking on and off like the neon lights in Times Square. In the middle was a large oblong table packed with military men, Pentagon advisers and the President’s Cabinet. Clooney was seated at one end, unshaven and drawn, wearing a pair of dark blue trousers and a leather bomber jacket with the presidential seal on the front. Earlier he’d been reading lists of casualties and damage reports. Four aircraft-carriers, two cruisers, eight submarines, twelve destroyers, frigates, minesweepers, tankers. Two hundred planes and over fifty pilots. Casualties were thirty thousand and rising. The list seemed endless. The air force had tracked the discs approaching California and set a trap for them above Edwards Air Force Base. Everyone in the room had just listened to the battle over the air base in silence and when it was all over a state of pandemonium reigned again.

  Seated nearest Clooney was his inner Cabinet plus the Vice President, Firmin Asenstorfer, just back from prostate surgery. Overweight, with thin grey hair and badly in need of a shave and rest, Firmin looked as crumpled as the old grey tracksuit he was wearing.

  Clooney looked up tiredly from a sheaf of statistics in front of him. ‘All right,’ he said, his voice rising angrily. ‘Just put fuckin Edwards behind us for the time being. And tell me again what we know so far.’ Clooney folded his arms as admirals and generals and bright young men from the Pentagon all started yelling at once.

  ‘Sir. Casualties are now approaching forty thousand, sir.’

  ‘Sir. Radar has tracked the
craft moving in excess of a hundred thousand miles an hour, sir. When it can track them, sir.’

  ‘Sir. Satellites can’t get a clear picture on Lan Laroi. Some kind of interference, sir.’

  ‘Sir. We’ve fired twenty Cruise and twenty Tomahawk missiles at Lan Laroi over a two-hour period. Not one got through, sir.’

  ‘Sir. We sent six stealth bombers over the island. The bombs went off almost as soon as they left the aircraft. We lost three bombers. And the pilots, sir.’

  ‘Sir. The craft’s firepower is like nothing we know, sir. They can take out a nuclear carrier with one shot, sir.’

  One general held up a piece of paper. ‘Sir. We’ve lost the Marvin J. Schwartz. And thirty-six SEALS, sir.’

  ‘Sir. I agree with Admiral Machonicie, sir. We should consider a nuclear option.’

  ‘Sir …’

  Clooney unfolded his arms and threw up his hands. ‘Ohh for Christ’s sake. That’s fuckin it. I need everybody hollering at once like Dolly Parton needs a third tit.’ The President glowered at the men around him. ‘Just what the fuck are these things?’

  ‘Sir. UFOs, sir.’

  Clooney buried his face in his hands. ‘God! That’s all I fuckin need.’

  A marine guard snapped to attention as another General came through the door. He walked up to the President and pointed to a radar screen. ‘Sir. The craft are at Silverdale Naval Base hovering above the Trident submarines, sir.’

  Clooney looked at him wearily and stood up. ‘I don’t give a fuck if they’re at Disneyland riding the water slide. I’m going to my office.’ He pointed to the members of his inner Cabinet and another man. ‘You men, come with me. Firmin, you stay here and keep a lid on things.’

  ‘Yes, Mr President.’

  With his Cabinet in tow, a rocket scientist from NASA in a seersucker suit and several secret service men wearing sunglasses and ear pieces, Clooney stormed out of the room and retreated to the Oval Office. To compound things, the blast doors jammed and so did the lift. By the time Clooney got his backside down behind his desk in the Oval Office he was in a rotten mood as well as a basket case. He ordered coffee then turned to the shocked men around him; the message they had considered a joke was no laughing matter now. The President was about to speak when the Secretary for Defense, Jack Werner, looked up grimly from over his cell phone.