Tomorrow War

by Maloney, Mack;

  The rockets served as a massive and sudden air brake, counteracting the AirCat’s forward speed and giving the big fighter bomber just enough of a kick in the ass to slow it down to a reasonable landing speed. The airplane hit the carrier deck a second later, bounced once, then came down hard again. At this point four more, small but brilliant, explosions went off—the rocket bottles were firing again, this time straight forward, serving as a ground brake for the aircraft. By the time the smoke cleared from these flashes, the bouncing aircraft had come to a stop, not far from where the deck gang had gathered. In all, the huge fighter needed but 175 yards in which to land safely. With the scream of its engines and the flash of its rocket bottles, it was made for a very impressive entrance.

  Serving as the makeshift deck crew, the Unit 167 members ran out to push the expended scout plane out of the way. It was a good thing they hustled, because sure enough, another Cat was coming in right on its tail. And there was another one behind that. And another behind that.

  It went on like this for the next half hour. The thirty-six airplanes touched down at forty-five-second intervals, and it was all the deck crew could do to push each one out of the way before the next one banged in. It was a hectic operation but in the end, a successful one. The huge HellJets came in last. Landing in the same manner as the smaller brothers, there was just enough room left on the deck for the last bomber to come down.

  Then all was quiet again.

  Per Y’s previously issued order, as soon as the last AirCat was aboard and secured, word was radioed ahead to the huge Bro-Bird. Within seconds the big seaplane’s engines began turning and its towlines became taut.

  Then the order went out to the accompanying tugboats. Those with lines began moving forward, flanking the monstrous seaplane. Those on the ass end nuzzled their noses up against the carrier’s rear. Slowly but surely, the whole conglomeration began to move.

  Awake now, and somewhat coherent, Y watched this operation from the bridge. Their course was due south. In front of him was the map with the burned hole put there by Vogel the ghost. Y shivered every time he looked at it, but he knew that another map just wouldn’t do. Not that he felt this map was lucky or blessed in any way. Rather, he thought it would be very unlucky to get rid of it.

  So here it was.

  They were under way only twenty minutes before there was a knock on the bridge door.

  Y called out to come in, and the twin commanders of the AirCats stepped through the door.

  They surprised Y by saluting him. He returned it quickly, then shook hands with both men, though a bit nervously.

  After receiving a brief report stating that all of their airplanes had come aboard safely and that they were looking forward to the journey, Y told the pair to sit down. They did, taking the navigator’s and engineer’s chairs, respectively.

  Y studied them for a moment. In the daylight it was his first chance to get a good look at their mugs. Both men were in their early fifties, and their faces were full of previously unseen character. The lines and wrinkles on their cheeks and brows told of many air battles fought and won. The wrinkles around their mouths told of many glasses of liquor drunk and laughs that resulted. Their eyes also had a slight but identical twinkle to them.

  “I just realized we’ve never been properly introduced,” Y told them. “I’m sure you know I work for the OSS, but we can dispense with formalities out here. My friends call me Yaz.”

  “Jones,” the first pilot said, holding out his hand. “Seth Jones. This is my brother, Dave.”

  Once again Y shook hands with both of them, but his head was spinning so fast now, he barely knew what he was doing.

  These two guys—these two brothers. Both were generals. Both were pilots. Like everything else around him lately, they seemed so damned familiar to him.

  Yet Y was sure he’d never met them before.

  At least, not in this lifetime.

  CHAPTER 15

  West Falkland Island

  IT WAS A LONG RIDE down.

  The elevator door was actually behind a false panel on the other side of a cupboard in the kitchen of the small farmhouse. The lift itself was very cramped, and there was no light inside. Just a dull red glow from the elevator controls, and the slow methodical clicking as the elevator passed down through sixteen separate levels, descending slowly into the middle of the earth.

  The two men did not speak on the long journey down. The man who lived in the farmhouse was still in a slight case of shock. He had come so close to losing his wife of many years that he was still shaking from head to toe. In fact, he believed now that she had actually passed away only to be brought back to life. Snatched somehow from whoever calls the living to the other side. Snatched back by the man now standing beside him in this dark lift.

  Who was he?

  That was the question that had been going through the Man’s mind ever since the miraculous incident in the living room the day before.

  A man washes up on a beach during a titanic storm, saving the lives of dozens of children in the process—and yet he can barely remember his name? The Man’s wife drops dead on their living room floor, and this same character lays hands on her and steals her back from death itself?

  The Man had seen many things since coming to this world. Since dropping in himself. Strange wars. Strange potions. Strange theories proved. Fear conquered in the strangest of ways. He knew roads that no other man knew. He knew this place was just one of trillions, some almost identical to this one.

  But never, not in his wildest dreams or his most fantastic waking moment, had he seen what had happened on his living room floor the day before—made even more astonishing that it was his wife who had been pulled back from the grave.

  All by this man who could barely remember his name.

  That’s why he was taking him down to the Sixteenth Level.

  There were more than one hundred people working in this vast underground facility—this holiest place of secrets. Only the most trusted, the most brilliant, were allowed to visit the Sixteenth Level.

  Even fewer were allowed to work there. And no one but the Man himself was allowed to enter the chamber located at the far end of the place. This was not a self-imposed rule—it was actually an ethereal request, given to the Man by the spirit who had first showed him the hole in the sky many years ago.

  What would happen if more than one person knew?

  That was another question the Man had pondered ever since he and his wife suddenly found themselves flying their Piper Cub in a sky above a place that was not the same place from which they had taken off.

  That’s why the ghost had showed him the hole in the sky—that was the big secret. Only one person could know its location, its implications, and that person was now the Man, and it was he who would carry the weight of many worlds on his shoulders until … well, until he died. Then it would be up to him to come back to haunt someone of his choosing and pass the mantle onto them.

  Or at least that’s how he’d always felt, and that’s how he’d vowed it to be, in keeping with the spirit’s bargain.

  Until yesterday.

  Now there was another voice inside his head. Heard rarely since he and his wife landed here in this other universe, but relied on many times back in his former place, this other voice was telling him that this guy Viktor, this wayward seaman with the power to raise the dead, should be made aware of the hole in the sky.

  It was a big decision, and the Man supposed he would pay the penalty for making it some day.

  That is, if the original ghost ever found him again.

  The lift finally reached the bottom level, and the door opened very slowly.

  Viktor was visibly nervous. He’d said nothing on the way down, having no idea what waited for him so deep inside the earth. When the door opened, would he see fire and the burning souls of eternity? He didn’t know.

  But now they were here, and the Man brought him past the mystified British guards, down a very long da
rk corridor to a huge metal door that looked like something from a bad horror movie.

  The man punched in some kind of code and the door opened with the appropriate whoosh!

  Beyond was a blue-hued chamber, which again looked like something from a movie set. All pipes and wires, it was a madman’s dream of a laboratory—yet there seemed to be a queer sensibility to it all. In the faint light several other scientist types could be seen working in cubbyholes, or at messy desks, or within thickly glassed rooms.

  A few of these people looked up, and when they saw the Man, they nodded in a reverential way. The Man simply nodded back. He directed Viktor past many electrical things, until they reached another massive door.

  Another code, another twist of the lock, and now they were inside a very small vestibule and facing … yet another door.

  They both stepped inside, and the Man locked them in.

  Viktor looked around the small metal chamber and saw some strange things. There were straps fastened securely to the sides of the walls. Why would they be here? he thought. What could their purpose be? There was also an ordinary bucket filled to the brim with ordinary-looking rocks.

  Rocks? Why?

  But even odder, in one corner of the vault was a box containing typical military-issue parachutes.

  Parachutes?

  “You’ll find out in a moment,” the Man told Viktor, reading his mind.

  Then, without another word, he strapped Viktor into one of the harnesses and then did the same to himself. With a little flourish, he punched another code into the lock of this third door. The lock spun and clicked and then sprang open.

  The next thing Viktor knew, he was looking out at the clear blue sky.

  He was stunned. His mouth fell open. His eyes went wide. He felt a strange jolt of something go right through him.

  “How … how can this be?” he finally was able to mumble.

  The Man did not answer. He simply pointed down. And through the clouds that were sweeping by, Viktor could clearly see the ocean about a mile beneath them. It looked deep blue yet warm and inviting. A cruise liner was passing by. Viktor could see people on the deck of this ship, swimming in the pool, sunbathing, even shooting golf balls off the stern.

  He was simply astonished. It was unbelievable. This was not a hallucination, for he could feel the cold mist of the clouds wetting his face and lips. And the wind was blowing at such a clip, his harness was actually preventing him from being sucked down into the hole.

  “How …?” was all he was able to blurt out again.

  The Man just shook his head. “We don’t know,” he said, staring down at the liner, which was now just passing out of their visual range.

  “Is it a wormhole? A small one?” the Man asked rhetorically. “Some kind of portal created by a physics we don’t know anything about? Or simply a hole in the sky? Take your pick.”

  He allowed a short silence to pass between them. More clouds flowed into the vault. Viktor found himself suddenly soaked from head to toe.

  “All we know is what we are looking at, this place is Earth, but in a different … what? Dimension? Universe? Astral plane?” the Man went on. “We don’t even know what to call it. It seems impossible. We are sixteen hundred feet inside a mountain on West Falkland Island, yet we are looking down on a section of the Atlantic approximately fifty miles north of Bermuda. How can you explain such a thing? How can anyone’s mind even contemplate such a place exists? Yet, here it is.”

  Viktor simply couldn’t speak. For a long moment he wished he was back on his ship—the huge liner that had been moved by thousands of rowers. The place where he took care of the children on board. The vessel that had been his home for more than a year. Things were so much simpler back then.

  “Why … why did you bring me here?” he finally asked, his eyes glued to the absolutely impossible scene below him.

  The Man just shook his head.

  “I’m not really sure myself,” he began haltingly. “But I know—from what you’ve told me about your amnesia, about your past and also what you did … well, with my wife yesterday. I know from these things that you are special. You are a very special individual. And if I might say, almost too special for this world. As a scientist I should have to try to find an explanation for you. And as someone once said, once all the untruths are swept away, whatever remains, however ridiculous, must be the real truth. You are special, this place is special—that’s why I brought you here.”

  Viktor felt a nudge on his elbow; the Man was handing him something. Viktor looked down and felt his eyes go even wider.

  It was a parachute …

  “I believe you belong back there,” the Man was saying. “It’s the only explanation I can come up with. As a scientist, I know I should keep you here, study you, dissect you like a bug—and maybe find out just what this thing is before us.”

  The Man took a deep breath. “But I can’t do that now,” he continued. “Not after what you did yesterday. I have to pay you back for that. For bringing her back to me. The only way I can think of to do that, is to give you this opportunity ….”

  He put the parachute into Viktor’s shaking hands.

  “You can put that thing on, wait for another ship to pass, and jump,” the Man explained simply. “If you do, I believe you will wind up where you came from. I also believe you will be your former self—whoever that might have been. After all, you seem to recall being picked up in this part of the Atlantic last year. Obviously, with this portal looking down on that same section of ocean, that indicates you belong … back there ….”

  Another very long pause.

  “That is the only thing I can offer you for what you did for me yesterday,” the Man finally concluded. “In my opinion—and maybe a few others if given the facts, I believe you are an angel. And you must be compensated. So I can give you your life back. Your old life …”

  Viktor just stared back at him. His mouth was still open, his eyes still the size of golf balls. He was silent for a very long time.

  “But … but,” he finally began stuttering. “S-supposing I was n-not an angel … back there?”

  The Man’s brow furrowed at the comment. Even with all his knowledge, it was something that had not occurred to him before.

  “It might be the chance you have to take,” he finally replied.

  Viktor began shaking his head slowly from side to side.

  “No,” he said. “No, this is not the time to do it.” He handed the parachute back to the Man.

  “It isn’t?” the Man asked. “When is the right time?”

  Viktor stared at a big black cloud passing by the Hole.

  “I seem to recall I fell into this world with two others,” he began slowly. “I know one is dead. That means one remains. This person, he would know who I was Back There.”

  “What are you proposing?” the Man wondered.

  Viktor just shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But maybe … well, maybe I should find this guy.”

  Another very long pause.

  “And when I do, maybe he and I should jump through this hole together ….”

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 16

  THE BOMBARDMENT HAD BEEN going on for twenty-six days.

  Every minute of every hour, twenty-four hours a day, more than a dozen high-explosive mortar shells rained down on the three-square-mile area known in another place as Khe Sanh, but in this world as Long Bat. That was more than 720 shells an hour, more than seventeen thousand explosions a day—for nearly three weeks.

  No wonder the place looked like a part of the moon.

  It was actually worse at night. That’s when the enemy in the hills launched dozens of star flares, lighting up the battered valley even brighter than the harsh daytime.

  When the siege began, the small force of surrounded mercenaries had numbered 1,202. Now less than seven hundred remained, and that was only because the earth was relatively soft in this awful place, allowing the doomed sold
iers to dig their trenches, their foxholes, and eventually their graves very deep.

  But they were trapped. There was no passage in and out of the valley that was not covered by the enemy in the hills. The force surrounding the mercs was estimated to be more than five thousand, and they were armed with not only high-powered mortars but also howitzer-style artillery, ultralong-range flame throwers, and more than two dozen mega-tanks.

  The only mystery about the siege at Long Bat was why the enemy in the hills just didn’t launch a ground attack and get it over with ….

  “What are those guys doing there anyway?”

  It was midnight. The small combat-planning room on the aircraft carrier seemed particularly cramped. There were thirteen people sitting around a huge TV monitor. Y was there, as was Zoltan, Crabb, Bro, and the Jones boys. Several of Emma’s friends were also in attendance, keeping the men fresh with beer or coffee and generally sitting around, looking both beautiful and bored.

  They were all watching a long-range video relay of the sad battle at Long Bat. The footage had been shot earlier in the day via a seven-aircraft linkup, which stretched for more than five hundred miles.

  It was the first recon target the Jones boys had selected for examination in Vietnam. It was at that exact spot on the map that the ghost named Vogel had burned his hole.

  The footage seemed unreal. This was not really a battle at all—that was soon apparent. It looked at first like the valley was actually a target range, a place for soldiers to drill in the art of lobbing antipersonnel artillery. Surely no one was on the receiving end of such a systematically overwhelming bombardment. But then, here and there, the TV cameras caught evidence of return fire. Long but scattered lines of purple and red tracer fire emanated from the center of this moonscape. This fire was symbolic, if anything—last bullets in a long ammo belt of defiance that was quickly coming to an end.