The simple answer: He just didn’t know.
Night fell and the sounds of the war got even louder. There’d been no slacking off with the sunset today. The Blues knew they would soon have a vast advantage over the Reds—what Von Baron told them notwithstanding. If the Blues were to make their move soon, it would have to come tonight. Only an attack on the Reds could solve both their problems; in effect, only that could work to defeat both their enemies.
Hunter walked out of his tent and looked back at the city. The night sky was already afire with the ongoing artillery duel. Sirens were blaring, smoke was rising up in many places along the war-torn landscape. What secret lay for him inside that place? Would he ever know?
He walked over to the volunteer officers’ billet. The first person he saw was Y. Slouched over a map table, he was drunk again. The Jones boys were there. Hunter approached them. He was sure of very few things these days, but when it came to these two, there really was no question: he’d known them both Back There. And like now, they had been valiant, heroic, brave, and loyal soldiers. It was on those attributes that Hunter now had to make a request—one that had to be fulfilled if the Red Army on the southern flank had any hope of escape.
The conversation with the Jones boys lasted but five minutes. The two pilots agreed to perform their part in Hunter’s bold plan to save as many Red Army soldiers’ lives as possible. They all saluted each other and then the two pilots ran out to the base auxiliary hangar, dragged out the last working Bug copter, and immediately took off. They disappeared over the southeastern horizon.
Hunter watched them go, hoping against hope that they could find exactly and quickly what he had asked them to look for.
Next he walked over to the intell hut where Kurjan and his men were still poring over maps of the battlefield.
Hunter laid out two of the maps he’d been studying all afternoon. One showed the Red Army’s western flank, the other its eastern. Hunter’s suggestion was that both flanks start withdrawing immediately. Under the cover of night, the western flank soldiers could move up into the mountains west of Kabul Downs, the eastern lines could move into the relative safety of Pakistan. If the timing was right and the Blues were otherwise occupied, the withdrawal could go smoothly and nearly ninety thousand men would be spared. But that still left about five thousand inside what Hunter had termed the “southern pocket.” With the expected advance of the Black Army from the south, and the anticipated offensive from the Blue Army to the north, there would be little room left for these troops to maneuver once the battle began in earnest. That’s where Hunter would have to become the most creative.
Kurjan agreed to send the withdrawal plans up to his high command, where he was confident they would be put into action. As to the fate of those left inside the pocket, Hunter knew that small groups of soldiers would be able to get away while the big fight to come was going on—but there would always be some leftover soldiers who would have to take the brunt of the combat while allowing these comrades to slip away.
What fate these men would face was impossible to say. At this point, only the Cosmos knew, and at the moment, no one from that place was doing any talking.
Finally Hunter walked over to the flight line. Fitz, JT, and Ben were waiting for him here, just as he had asked them to be earlier. The two VTOL jets and the pair of Bantams were also waiting, fueled up and guns chock-full of ammo. The Red Army ground personnel had just completed a tentative inspection of the four unusual jet fighters. They had pronounced them ready for combat.
“Everyone ready?” Hunter asked his three friends.
There were three solemn nods in reply.
But there was one thing they needed before they all took off: adequate head protection. There were no crash helmets in the jets. The four men finally had to settle for battle helmets of the type worn by Red Army soldiers.
They were more reminiscent of a German Army helmet from Hunter’s version of World War One, a kind of oversized Fritz helmet, bright red with thick netting inside and out.
“We won’t win any fashion awards with these,” Hunter said, trying on several helmets before finding one that fit. “But they should do the job.”
With that, they all prepared to climb into their respective airplanes—Hunter and Fitz in the VTOLs; Ben and JT in the Bantams.
Seeing this gave Hunter pause. He actually felt a lump grow in his throat
Been awhile since we’ve all flown together, he thought to himself, watching as Fitz, Ben, and JT climbed into their airplanes.
What were the chances, he thought, that his three closest friends in his previous life, would also be pilots in this one, even though one was a family-man hobbyist, one a professor, and one a near-retirement reservist?
Actually, knowing a bit now about transuniverse movement, Hunter realized the chances for these stars to be so aligned were pretty good.
Hunter and Fitz waited for the two Bantams to taxi over to the runway and take off. The small fighters seemed to be going fast even while standing still. In flight they were so small and so swift, they looked more like large insects than small jet airplanes.
Once the Bantams were up, Fitz and Hunter started their own power plants. The VTOLs were noisy aircraft, but their overloaded engines made up for the racket with pure flying power. Hunter watched the critical systems run up to snuff on his control panels, an exercise resulting in five green lights popping on. A weapons check proved his systems were also in good shape. He looked over at Fitz, who was waving thumbs-up back to him.
“Time to shake things up,” Hunter said to himself, applying power and allowing the VTOL to begin rising slowly into the air. “While we still have the chance.”
So began a very strange night in the battle for Kabul Downs.
In the next few hours, events would suddenly begin moving more quickly than anyone could have imagined—including Hunter. Even he could not foresee what would take place before the sun rose again.
Once airborne, the four pilots discussed a rather loose strategy.
The Blue Forces would soon attack the Reds’ southern flank—that was a given. The southern flank represented the piece of terrain closest to where the Black Army troops would be advancing, so clearing a path for their paid “allies” would be the most likely move by the Blues. This meant an all-out land assault by the blue bloods was inevitable.
But while Hunter and his colleagues were carrying substantial weapons stores, they knew they couldn’t make a dent in the number of Blue troops that would be involved in such an assault. Four jets against one hundred thousand troops was not an even match. Bombing and strafing a few barracks would do little to alter the course of what was to come.
No, what they had to do was disrupt the Blues’ lines of communications. For if a large number of Blue troops were soon to be on their way to attack the Reds’ southern line, the Red Forces would be in better shape if the pilots somehow made it as difficult as possible for those troops to get to the battlefield and know what they should be doing once they got there.
But how to do this? The simplest way would have been to somehow knock out the Blues’ central command station, a place Hunter suspected was hidden beneath a block of several unassuming buildings in the middle of Kabul Downs. But attacking such a hardened target would have been simply unreasonable. It simply was not an option.
Not yet anyway …
Another, simpler way had to be found. And in one respect, the four pilots were lucky. Kabul Downs was crisscrossed with canals. This was especially true on the outer limits of the city. Canals meant bridges to cross, and there were many of them, too.
So it really came down to basic military doctrine. The term “lines of communications” didn’t mean just radio lines; it meant the lifeline of an enemy from its rear areas to its forward positions. Any way that one could make it difficult for his adversary to move men, ammo, supplies, and fuel via his lines of communications, meant one more advantage you had on him.
That’s w
hy the mission of this night was for the four jets to take out as many bridges as they could inside Kabul Downs.
They decided to split into pairs. Hunter and Ben went east; Fitz and JT went west.
After studying the maps of the city all day, Hunter knew there was a set of bridges on the east side of Kabul Downs, which ran right up to the truck park he’d attacked earlier that day.
Within two minutes, he and Ben were orbiting high above these bridges. While most of the residents of the embattled city were already awake due to the nonstop artillery battle, the sound of the two jet fighters suddenly arriving overhead only added to the substantial racket. This gave them the cover they needed.
Ben went in first. He peeled off in a classic manner, and put the first bridge in his sights. It was a forty-foot span made of wood and iron. He launched six air-to-ground missiles from his speedy little Bantam jet, directing them right into the bridge’s center truss. There were six simultaneous explosions, and the bridge went down in a cloud of smoke, fire, and water.
Hunter went in next. The second bridge was all-steel, about sixty feet in length. He let go a long burst from the VTOL huge cannon and neatly sliced the center span in half.
Now it was Ben’s turn again. The next target was a drawbridge, holding four lanes of traffic. He put two rockets into the control house and another two into the bridge itself. The twin explosions lifted the crucial gear works twenty feet in the air destroying them utterly.
The next target was much bigger: a 250-foot steel and girder bridge that led into the heart of the city. Hunter and Ben lined up side by side and went with cannons blazing. It took four passes, but their combined fusillade finally dropped the bridge with one big whomp!
The attack took about two minutes. The bridges were lined up like targets in a shooting gallery. The city defenders apparently were not yet hip to what was happening. That’s why Hunter and Ben had not run into any AAA fire as of yet.
Or so it seemed.
The same was true for Fitz and JT. They had dropped no less than ten smaller canal bridges on the other side of the city in five minutes—all without receiving so much as a single AAA shot back at them.
During all this, Hunter could not get rid of the feeling that he’d done this type of thing before. Back There. The entire memory wasn’t exactly clear, but the key points were.
He was fighting a battle for a city. Bridges were the key to a coming action. So he had to go out and destroy as many as he could. Where did that happen? Was it in a place called … Football City? Really?
He felt a cold chill go through him. Yes, he’d dropped some bridges at a place called Football City—-just as a huge army called the Family was moving into attack it.
But what happened after that?
He felt his hands tense on his steering column. He had a very bad feeling going through him right now, so much so, he pulled the VTOL straight up and gained one thousand feet in altitude in a matter of seconds.
It was such an abrupt maneuver, Ben called over to him.
“Hawk? You OK?” he asked, concerned. Hunter just clicked his microphone twice—an indicator that he was all right. But that wasn’t the truth. Not exactly. Because suddenly … everything just stood still.
The superbomb went off and he saw the bright light … and then he couldn’t see anything else … even though his eyes were wide open …. He was the only one who looked at the blast and he was the only one who saw the light … and now he was the only one who was blind ….
It was strange … everyone back at Bride Lake thought that the bomb blast would be too powerful for the airplane to get out of the way … but it didn’t happen like that at all.
The blast was widespread … but it only shook the plane. It did not destroy it … What a laugh! … All the worry about the biggest worry, and it never even happened. The superbomber held together … Mission accomplished … all hands on board remained safe.
But now he cannot see …
Ben and Fitz lead him back to the aircraft commander’s stateroom … JT puts a cool beer against his eyes, but this does no good … The Japanese are still firing at them … but the B-2000 Colossus is moving so fast, the Zeros can barely keep up with them … Fitz is saying don’t worry … the blindness will pass …
But it does not.
He was alone … in this small room, feeling every bump and shake of the plane … turbulence was a funny thing … it was invisible … you could not see …but it could be a killer.
The rest of the crew is busy … flying the plane … defending the plane … the noise of so many machine guns firing at once sounds like the drone of monks, chanting on a faraway Himalayan peak … How many Japanese Zeros does it take to shoot down a plane named Colossus? … Only the monks would know.
He is seeing white not black … but what does a blind man really see? Somewhere inside his brain, the Wingman sees faces. Women … smiling … laughing … crying. What is your favorite memory, one asked him … you know, back when you could see?
That’s easy, he replied … He is standing in front of a huge crowd of people and the place known as Football City is burning but free in the background … and he is holding up a small American flag taken from the body of a patriot named Saul Wackerman and he is chanting: USA! USA! USA!
He saw the Light that day, too.
“Hawk?”
Hunter shook his head and felt the heavy battle helmet joggle just about every fluid inside his cranium.
“Hawk? You with me, buddy?”
Hunter blinked and realized he was back flying above Kabul Downs. Ben was trying to get him to answer his radio call.
“Roger, Ben … I’m here,” he finally responded.
“I just got a weird call from base,” Ben said. Hunter noted a high degree of anxiety in the normally calm pilot’s voice.
“Weird as in …?”
“Weird as in they have a hot read on their ADR system,” Ben told him.
ADR system? As in air-defense radar? Hunter almost laughed. The Red Force had exactly two radar sets. One on the south side of their lines, the other over on the east side. They were positioned as close as possible to the main Blue Force air bases.
“What are they reading exactly?”
Ben hesitated. Hunter took the pause to get back down to the deck and blast another canal bridge with a surgical fusillade of just sixteen shells.
“Ben? Come in …”
“Well, this has to be wrong,” he heard his friend say.
“But they are getting hot reads from every Blue air base … full squadrons already in the air or lining up on every Blue field …”
Hunter needed a moment to digest this piece of disturbing information. The Blues never flew at night. But if what Ben was telling him was confirmed, they were suddenly throwing airplanes into the air at an incredible rate.
“There’s more,” Ben went on. “Kurjan just radioed to say that huge concentrations of Blue troops are massing near bloody bridge. At least two divisions. They appear to be ready to attack at any moment.”
Hunter’s head was spinning now. This was not good. The Blues were moving faster than he’d ever imagined. And while dropping the bridges had been a sound military tactic, he realized now that it might have come too late to do any good.
Way too late.
When you are blind, you see many things … faces, places … things that went before … Yes, the battle for Football City was a victory … but what went on before that?
He blinked … and even though he could not see, the ghostly image of one hundred airplanes became very clear in his mind …
It was Fitz, Ben, and JT who were in the best position to see what happened next.
There were two separate swarms of Blue Force airplanes now darkening the sky. One had arisen from the major Blue air base on the west side of the embattled city, the other was a combination of planes that had taken off from several smaller airfields in the north and east sections.
The m
ain force, which numbered at least one hundred aircraft, was forming up directly above the center of the city at approximately 7,500 feet.
Once gaining this altitude, the SuperSpad bijets began a slow orbit around the city. As more units joined up, this bizarre carousel of airplanes became larger and larger. It seemed like such a foolish thing to do—launch so many airplanes at once, only to have them waste time and fuel by flying in one enormous circle until every last straggler was airborne.
But this was exactly what the Blues were doing—another indication that all of the orders for the city’s defenders were coming from one central point of command.
After their spree of bridge busting, Fitz, Ben, and JT were all low on ammunition and fuel. As was Hunter. And the wise thing to do would be to dash back to base, do a hot fuel up, and a quick ammo resupply, and then get back into the air to meet this sudden massive air threat.
But even under that kind of rationale, all three pilots knew it was too late—by the time they landed and began their replenishment, the Blues would already be on their way to bomb and strafe whatever targets they had in their little minds this night, no doubt in coordination with the impending Blue Force ground attack.
No, time was on the side of the blue bloods now.
The three pilots were in a quandary. They had little ammo and less fuel, they were flying aircraft that were totally unfamiliar to them—especially Fitz in the other VTOL jet—and they were looking up at an enemy air force that was getting larger by the second. What could they do against such a storm of hostile aircraft?
As it turned out, all they had to do was watch.
As soon as the word came across that the Blues were launching massive numbers of bijets, the three pilots lost sight of Hunter. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. It was as if he simply disappeared.
They tried desperately to raise him on their radios, but to no reply. They called back to the Red Force One air base—had Hunter returned there? No, was the answer from the very panicky air controls officer. They, too, had spotted the carousel of Blue Force airplanes circling high above the city, as well as the enemy troops massing near the bloody bridge.
Tomorrow War Page 25