Like a whisper.
He lifted himself up and looked off to the clouds in the west and way, way out there, he saw the outline of an airplane. Long flat wing, jumbo-booted landing gear, plowing its way through the air, as opposed to flying through it. Zebra stripes on the tail wing and fuselage.
It was the Lysander!
Hunter was astonished. How could this be? He’d seen the airplane tumble by him a second after the dam broke. Even then it had been breaking apart and the two crewmen just seconds away from death. But now there it was, about two miles off to his left, just flying along as if it were on a pleasure flight, same zebra-striping, same 333 tail numbers. Hunter watched it go, wondering if this would be finally, the last unsolved mystery of his strange life.
The gunfire got his attention again and a peek over the bow found him not 50 feet away from the battle. Some of the German soldiers were up to the waists in water now, shooting at their comrades across the gap of 40 yards or so. Others were throwing rocks. The Germans on the left had a small cannon, a single-shot affair they were using with mixed results. The gun had a loud whoomp! for a report, followed by the scream of the shell and then the dull explosion of the impact
This was now mixed in with the machine gun fire and the rifle shots and even the sound of rocks hitting the water. Hunter got as low as he could inside the boat. What should he do? He couldn’t jump out now—he was much too close. He couldn’t fight both sides—he didn’t have enough ammunition for that.
The boat drifted closer and the sounds of the battle got louder and louder. Hunter loaded the gun and just waited for whatever was going to happen.
And what happened was…nothing.
The boat simply drifted through the gap. He could see the German soldiers right above him, on either side, their faces locked in a grip of madness, firing away at each other. But it was like they didn’t see him. He floated right by them, unnoticed. As if he were invisible.
As if he were a ghost.
It was a long time before the sounds of the gun battle finally faded from Hunter’s ears.
His boat meandered along, occasionally being bumped by driftwood and debris, pushing it this way and that. He knew he couldn’t drift like this forever, as much as he would have liked to. At some point, he had to get to a piece of reasonably dry land. Then he would have to find a working aerodrome, steal a plane, and fly away, to somewhere.
After a while, these thoughts were interrupted by the sound of water rushing. He looked up and oddly enough, saw his piece of reasonably dry land just ahead of him. It was a large, pastoral valley, surrounded by mountains covered with pine trees. It looked very odd to him. In this land of water, why was this place so suddenly dry?
The answer was in the noise he’d heard. Water, rushing forward. Water, going through narrows, turning itself into foam and spray.
Water, going over the side of a cliff.
It was the strange physics of water that had created the enormous waterfall. A lot of the water from the busted dam had stayed tucked in these mountains, seeking its own level. But eventually it reached a point where it began to pour out again. No wonder the water had been moving so swiftly the three days he’d been in the boat.
He saw the top of the falls and the great splash of German countryside beyond and knew immediately he was in big trouble. Funny then that in the four or five seconds he had left, he grabbed the bottle of Schnapps and the chocolate first, then the gun, his backpack, and the ammunition second.
Paddling was useless; this he knew.
So he just held on and…and it became very strange. Time did stand still. Not the tired expression he had apparently read in many bad books and seen in many bad movies. No, to him, to his consciousness, things really did go into a sort of slow-freeze.
He started going over the falls. He could really see the countryside beyond now. And he was able to look down and see that the drop he was about to take was steeper than the side of the dam he’d blown up. This waterfall, newly created by the flood he had started three days before, was probably close to 3500 feet high. A mammoth drop.
Out beyond, taking in everything as things moved slowly forward, he could see a few villages, bombed-out, true, but still dry and safe from the flood waters. He also saw a wide highway and many roads running off of it. And then, several miles from the heart-stopping falls, he saw the most interesting thing of all: it was an air base. Or at least two runways with a few buildings nearby. Even in this split second, he got the impression that the base was not used regularly, abandoned. Oddly, he thought it might even be a top secret place, where not much activity happened, at least in broad daylight.
Now, as if this wasn’t enough for him to observe, in this frozen moment in time, he also saw two other things in the sky. First, just as the front of the boat was tipping over the top of the gigantic plume, he saw a million contrails suddenly flash overhead. They were American bombers on their way to targets again. Had they been there all along? Or was he just noticing them now, in this dire split second? He didn’t know. All that was certain was the huge bomber formation was going right over his head, and heading even deeper into the heart of Germany.
And he was sure that their holds were filled with incendiaries again. In an instant within an instant, he felt a hot flash sear his face.
Now the boat was almost completely over the top of the falls, and he was just beginning to go over when he saw one last thing—possibly the most bizarre, and in the end, the most startling.
Way off in the distance, flying very low and somewhat erratically, was the Lysander again. Wings battered, smoke pouring from its power plant, the whisper-engine sounded just a bit louder than the last time. It was flying over a small woods about two miles to his left and within a second or two disappeared behind the tall trees.
In Hunter’s last conscious moment, just as he started on that very long plunge down, he got the feeling that the two pilots inside were looking for something.
Chapter 30
THERE WERE NO DREAMS this time.
No peeks into other dimensions. No communing with angels or devils. No long tunnel. No bright light. No warm shining figure bidding him on.
No, this time Hunter simply came within a half pint of getting enough water in his lungs to drown. And die, forever.
He hit the water so hard that it dented his helmet. But it was the helmet that saved his life. Without it, the impact would have surely split his skull, a fracture he could never have recovered from.
As it was, the waterfall was so high and so powerful, it had in three days dug itself a hole at its base that went down several hundred feet. After hitting the water at about 80 miles an hour, Hunter plunged into this frightening pool, the boat and all its contents following him about half a second later.
He went into the water like a bullet, traveling so far down into the dark swirl, when he finally stopped, he could not see any light above him. It was pitch black, with only an occasional tree root, clump of dirt, and yes, even a few skulls floating around him.
For one very scary second—the one that followed the sheer astonishment that he was still alive—he almost started swimming in the wrong direction, thinking he was upside down. But he was smart enough to stop, calmly put his hands to his sides and let the air in his body do the rest. Slowly, but surely, he began rising.
How long it took for him to ascend just to the point where he could see light again, it was impossible to say. He was holding his breath with all his might and was thankful for the breathing exercises he’d done to stay awake during those long flights in and out of Iceland. His lungs were use to holding in a large amount of air for a long period of time, and again, this was the difference between Hunter’s living and dying.
His lungs finally did burst about 20 feet from the surface, though, and he did suck in a huge amount of water. But he popped up about two seconds later, and by the sheer action of his breaking the surface, was thrown up onto the shore, his backpack, still in place, cushioning t
he blow.
Like a big fish had just spit him there, he lay on the cold, slimy shoreline, throwing up water, phlegm, undigested chocolate and pieces of cracker, but no blood.
When his stomach was finally purged and his lungs empty of most of the water, he still did not move.
Instead, he remained motionless, drifting in and out of sleep and unconsciousness, knowing the difference only by the fact that in sleep, he dreamed of ice and not water.
The next day—his fifth inside Germany—it was raining and cold, but Hunter didn’t mind.
He woke with a mild headache, but happy if a little confused as to why he was still alive.
He looked up at the gigantic waterfall and winced. Shivers went down his spine. The thing looked unreal, it was so big. How could he have possibly survived such a fall?
He fooled himself by pretending to study the air currents at the bottom of the falls, weakly throwing pieces of grass into the raging mist and watching them quickly go sky-borne. Yes, he mused, maybe the air currents actually helped cushion his impact and thus helped him survive.
But he really didn’t buy it. It was not an act that would have been permitted by the ordinary laws of physics, not to the degree that it would actually save his life. But Hunter felt oddly comfortable believing it. In fact, he felt rather good. Strong. Ready to take on the world.
But there was a reason for this: He would later find out that for this day and the next few he would be suffering from what was called postimmersion narcosis, a condition caused by a shutoff of oxygen to the brain, but only for a second or two. Translation: he would remain at the mercy of a somewhat accidental “high” which could lead to spells of euphoria, hallucinations, fits of grandeur and the illusion of superhuman strength.
But in Hunter’s mind, nothing seemed changed. Everything was the same.
He finally got to his feet and miraculously—or not—found the box of crackers floating nearby. The contents were water-logged but Hunter ate the mush anyway. Then, even more amazing, he found the gun and his ammo imbedded in the river bank about 50 feet away. The gun was bent, but still usable; the bullets incredibly dry. Finally, he found the bottle of Schnapps bobbing in the turbulent water. He retrieved the bottle, took a huge swig, and felt the alcohol warm his entire system, one bone at a time.
Now brightened by two intoxicants, he resumed his strange journey.
It took him about an hour to get far enough away from the waterfall that he didn’t hear it anymore.
This time consisted of his climbing down the mountain of debris that had been spit out of the falls just as he had been.
At the bottom of this enormous pile of dirt, rocks, tree trunks, and the occasional human and animal body part, the bare if damp German countryside around him resumed unabated. He found a road by mid morning; he found the highway an hour after that.
It felt good to walk again, to be able to walk again. He swigged the Schnapps until the bottle ran dry, telling himself it contained vitamins he needed for strength and sugar he needed for energy. At this pace, he arrived, staggering slightly, at the gate of the small air base, just about noontime.
The place was deserted, just as he had thought while frozen on the precipice of water.
And actually, he’d been right on two counts about this place. It was abandoned, and it was a top-secret facility. Hunter could tell by its muted appearance. The lack of oil spillage on the tarmac. The unmarked buildings. The rows of barbed wire.
Obviously anyone who had been stationed here had gotten word about the oncoming flood in enough time to get out. Little did they know the great deluge would miss swamping this place by little more than a quirk of topography.
So, here it was—secret and abandoned. But what did it contain?
The soldier within Hunter told him it was his duty to find out.
It took him one hour, and more than a dozen cuts and scrapes, to make it over the tall barrier of concertina wire. Then he had to scale a 20-foot-high chain link fence that had been doused with oil. Only after this was he able to get inside the compound itself.
The first place Hunter went was the chow hall. He knew many clues as to why no one was here, and when they might return, could be found where the food was served.
He found the place in the basement of one of the hangars. It was Goldilocks all over again. A meal was on the table, some kind of breakfast porridge. Coffee cups were still full, even little cups of some powdered orange drink. Everything looked to be about three days old.
The table was set for 15 people; Hunter assumed that like all places such as this, the occupants ate in shifts. Quick deduction had him estimating about 45 people had been assigned here.
But there was an odd thing about the mess hall. He could find no special section for the officers or pilots. There was no senior mess.
This told him something too. There probably were no officers or pilots assigned here permanently. Yet it was undoubtedly an air base. So what kind of air base has no pilots?
One that is being used as a storage facility for aircraft, he guessed correctly. Airplanes fly in and wait here for pilots to fly them back out again.
He went back up top and took a long look at the two runways. They were each about 10,000 feet long—fighter length, and maybe long enough to handle some cargo planes. But he doubted they kept heavy bombers here. The hangars weren’t big enough, besides.
He found what he believed to be the main hangar, the place where the goods probably were. It was bigger than the other buildings and painted all white.
He broke a rear window—and no alarm went off. In fact, there was no electricity at all at the base. That was obvious by now.
Hunter went in through the window and found it absolutely dark inside. He stood still and took a long deep sniff. Aviation fuel. Oil. A little bit of burnt rubber. No doubt about it, there were airplanes in here.
But what kind?
He started walking, slowly but surely, making sure he didn’t crack his head or his knees on anything sharp. Soon he could tell by the reverberations of his boot steps that he was in a big open area, the guts of the hangar itself. It was cold in here and all the smells were more intense. He took a moment to analyze the odor again and guessed there were at least a dozen airplanes in here.
Top-secret airplanes.
Still following his nose, he walked over to the first airplane, drawn there by its mass and smell. He put his hand on its nose and closed his eyes—and instantly his body began shaking. He saw red before his eyes, the vibrations were so intense. He drew a breath and tried to settle down. This was something very important here, he could feel it.
He ran his fingers down the plane’s long snout, past the belly-mounted air intake, past a couple of small strakes along a leading wing edge that flared out into a delta shape. There was a missile, wingtip-mounted, that was about seven feet long, and about eight inches around. Along the back edge of the wing he found steering surfaces, and clunked his ankle on what he supposed was a wing-mounted bomb or a reserve-fuel drop tank.
At the rear end, the strakes flared in to the exhaust tube. This itself was huge, with movable vanes. Hunter took a very deep sniff now. This engine had been fired up and flown only once in its life, he guessed. Probably just for the flight from its place of manufacture to here.
He noted all this and then walked to the next plane. It was exactly the same. So was the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth. All of them, 12 in number, were the same kind of airplane.
But the question was, what kind of airplane was that?
Throughout all this Hunter’s inner being was vibing to the max. He was shaking, the back of his skull was pounding, like many of the secrets and lost memories in there were ready to get flushed out. He took another sniff. Yes, this place, the smell. So familiar. He was sure he’d been in a place just like this one before—not in this time. But definitely in another one.
The sheer curiosity of it all finally got the better of him. Maybe where he was really
from, he would have handled it differently. But this version of him was still light-headed from his experience on the flood, from his experience of nearly drowning, and from his experience at the bottom of the bottle of Schnapps.
He wasn’t too good at the moment at not feeding an impulse—especially one as strong as this one.
He wanted to see these goddamn airplanes and he wanted to see them now! But to do that, he needed some light, and the only light available here would be daylight. And the only thing standing between him and some illumination was a row of big, thick-paned windows that had been painted black so as not to let the slightest bit of sun into this place.
Now the “other” Hunter might have taken the time to feel his way over to nearest window, somehow climb up to its sill, feel around until he would find some kind of locking mechanism, and then somehow solve it in the pitch dark, scrape away whatever paint buildup might be on it, and then, probably very slowly and painstakingly, get the window to open, maybe just a crack to allow in just enough light.
Well, he just didn’t have time or patience for any of that crap now. So he simply aimed his huge rifle about 35 degrees from the floor and pulled both barrels. The explosion was enormous, the cloud of cordite thick, the blast of the gun muzzle in the completely dark room almost blinding.
But the cloud of buckshot hit the window straight on, and punctured it in 274 locations.
Hunter reloaded and let another blast go. Then another, and another. Now there were more than a thousand points of light flooding into the hangar. And only then did he turn around. And only then did he see what kind of airplanes they were.
Long snout, cranked wing, high tail. Red, white, and blue color scheme. Sleek, dangerous-looking, and fast.
“Jesus Christ,” Hunter whispered, never more astonished in his life.
They were F-16s.
And that was it.
That was the moment when everything came rushing back. It came in a torrent greater than the flood he’d just survived. The feeling suddenly building up inside him felt hotter than the fires he had set on German cities.
Sky Ghost Page 29