“Jeesuzz! Get down!” Y heard himself scream.
The next thing he knew, the gun post was swept by a storm of flaming wreckage, cinders, and pieces of metal. This was all that remained of the six Blue Force bijets. What happened? had no idea. But the answer came a second later with the roar of two mighty engines and the gale of a small hurricane. A huge airplane swooped low over the post and then turned upward into the fiery sky.
Y couldn’t believe it.
It was one of the AirCat fighter-bombers!
He looked around him now and saw that more AirCats were streaking in, firing at the Blue planes in the air, as well as the advancing enemy troops on the ground.
“Goddamn!” Y screamed, helping his young gun mates to their feet. They were burned and battered but still alive—and so was he.
“What the fuck kind of airplanes are they?” one of the gunners asked with a gasp as two of the huge fighter-bombers roared overhead.
“They’re friends of mine!” Y screamed in reply. “And somehow they found us … just in time.”
Disbelieving, Y looked straight up and saw the sky was now filled with the big AirCat fighter-bombers. They seemed to be everywhere! Many were battling the Blue Force SuperSpads, others were brutally strafing the advancing Blue troops. Y thought he heard a cry go up from those defending Red Base One.
Another horrible sound swept across the battlefield. It was a loud mechanical scream echoing from high above. Y looked up and saw a huge HellJet bomber falling out of the sky heading right for the largest concentration of Blue Army troops.
Y shook himself out of a few seconds’ stupor and once again grabbed his three young gun mates and slammed them to the ground. The HellJet unleashed its huge bomb load a heartbeat later—the bombs impacted about three quarters of a mile from Y’s position. The result was like a small earthquake. Y’s body felt like it had turned to jelly—the ground was shaking so much Y’s teeth began chattering. A storm of dirt and debris hit them next, the second such debris cloud to sweep by them in less than two minutes.
They heard the HellJet scream for altitude—only then did Y let his gun mates up from the ground again. What they saw in front of them now was a huge crater with a mushroom cloud rising above it. There was nothing left—no more trees, no more trenches, no more advancing Blue troops. Like always after a HellJet high-altitude dive-bombing, the result looked like a piece of the cold, lifeless moon.
The silence lasted all often seconds. It was like someone pushed the play button again. Suddenly the sky was filled with aircraft once more—huge AirCats picking off the Blue Force SuperSpads, two more HellJets delivering their awesome bomb loads closer to the city.
Two more earthquakes shook Red Base One. In between, Y took a potshot at a couple of SuperSpads that came very low over the gun post. The stream of tracers chasing after them looked impressive, but it was obvious these two—like just about every other bijet in the sky—weren’t interested in fighting anymore. They were retreating back to the relative safety of Kabul Downs.
Then it was over. Just like that.
There were clouds of smoke wafting in the air. There were numerous fires everywhere. The burning wreckage of dozens of Blue Force SuperSpads littered the landscape stretching between the Red and Blue lines. There were many bodies, too. But this battle was over for the moment. And Y and his gun mates had managed to survive.
CHAPTER 41
ONE HOUR LATER, THE main runway at Red Base One was so crowded, there was barely enough room left over for any aircraft to land.
AirCat fighters, HellJet bombers, the two VTOL jets, the pair of Bantams, as well as the remaining Red Force SuperCamels and one lonely Bug copter were cluttering up all but the most important taxiways. Red Army ground personnel were scurrying from aircraft to aircraft, checking fuel supplies, refilling ammo loads, and patching up any hole caused by AAA fire in the quick, brutal battle that had just concluded.
It was early morning now and the sun was coming up red and bold.
The intelligence hut at the base was as crowded as the base’s runways. Inside were all the principals of the fight: Hunter, Fitz, JT, Ben, Geraci and his staff, the JAWS team, Zoltan, Crabb, Kurjan and the Jones boys. Y was also there, sucking down a huge flask of rum, just happy to be alive.
The mood was very grim. The bravery of the Red Forces, Hunter’s astonishing one-man battle against the one hundred Blue airplanes, and the very timely arrival of the AirCats—thanks to the successful recon mission undertaken by the Jones boys at Hunter’s request—had all turned the battle in the Reds’ favor.
But the Jones boys’ foray to the south had brought back more than the AirCat squadron. The twins had also made a gloomy discovery down by the new convergence of the Indus River and the Nawa Canal.
This disturbing news was now posted up on the wall in the form of a very large long-range TV-recon still photograph snapped by the Jones boys from the Bug copter.
The photo showed the aircraft carrier and its fleet of tugboats resting comfortably in the lower reaches of the Indus-Nawa convergence. The carrier had detected the man-made waterway leading up into Pakistan and had taken the opportunity to get closer to where they knew the Z-16 recon plane had gone in. The Bro-Bird was parked in the water nearby, as well.
But farther up the new waterway—clearly one hundred miles north of the carrier’s present position—were six enormous ships sitting at anchor. These were the vessels that had carried the Black Army to the fight.
They were clearly unloaded and empty.
Another photo snapped by the Jones boys in their journey showed what looked like nothing less than a giant stream of insects moving north. This was the 200,000-plus men of the Black Army on the move, heading toward Kabul Downs. From the position of the merc army when the photo was taken, and factoring in the hours that had passed since the Jones boys first spotted the huge army, Kurjan’s men had calculated the Black Army was but a day away from reaching the fight.
“They are actually double-timing their troops to get here quickly,” Seth Jones reported to the somber group. “Some advance units are in vehicles. I’m afraid our initial estimates were only too accurate. We can expect a division and a half to be within firing range of our position within twenty-four hours. Maybe less …”
JT was instantly pissed.
“So what we just went through, was all for nothing?” he asked bitterly.
“Not exactly,” Hunter replied. “It bought us some time, like it was supposed to.”
“Time for what, though?” Ben asked.
All eyes were on Hunter now.
“The purpose here is to save as many lives as we can, is that right?” he asked the group.
This was answered by a round of somber nods.
“Then there really is only one more thing we can do,” he said, picking up his flying gear and walking over to Kurjan and his men.
“If you agree that we must take the simplest way to save as many lives as possible,” he said, “then you have to do what I’m about to ask of you, understand?”
Kurjan nodded grimly.
“You haven’t steered us wrong yet, Hawk,” he replied.
Hunter then looked at the rest of them. Valiant fighters all. He knew what he was about to say would stun them. But he had thought this part out very carefully and knew it was a necessary element of his plan.
“What I want you to do,” Hunter said slowly, “is make contact with the Blue side at exactly noontime.”
Kurjan was confused. They all were.
“What for?” the Red Army intell man asked.
Hunter took a deep breath.
“To ask for surrender terms,” he said starkly.
A gasp of shock and disbelief went around the room.
“Surrender?” several of those in attendance cried at once.
Hunter just nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “And whatever conditions they want, give into them.”
With that, Hunter shook hands with e
ach man and then left the hut.
He walked out to one of the Bantams and checked to make sure its fuel supply was fresh. Satisfied, he climbed into the tiny jet, started the engine, rolled out to the crowded runway, and took off.
The last that the others saw of Hunter, he was streaking eastward, leaving the field of battle entirely.
CHAPTER 42
THE STORM OF BLUE Force artillery shells started raining down on Red Base One at precisely 0900 hours—exactly sixty minutes after Hunter had flown away.
The barrage became so intense so quickly, that at one point, it seemed like all the explosions melted into one huge, enduring blast. Buildings were flattened. Airplanes destroyed. The ground beneath the base shook like a nonstop earthquake.
Meanwhile, another huge Blue Force troop buildup was gathering near the bloody bridge. As many as four divisions, more than forty thousand men could be seen mustering up on the other side of the Blue line. It was obvious that the enemy was about to launch another ground assault—with twice as many men as the night before. There was little the Reds could do about it. They were low on ammo all-round. Their forward positions were little more than holes in the ground. Plus the artillery barrage on Red Base One was so intense, it was impossible for any Red Force fighters to get into the air, even if they wanted to.
Even worse, Kurjan’s men had intercepted a radio message from the advancing Black Army. In breaking the code they discovered a horrifying fact: If the Black Army assault on Kabul Downs was not effective within a few hours, plans called for them to detonate a DG-55 super-blockbuster bomb just outside the city. If this was true, then everything—and everyone, both Red Force and Blue—for miles around would be turned to dust.
The only piece of good news was that during the previous night, while the southern front battled the Blue offensive, many Red soldiers on both the eastern and western flanks had managed to slip away to safe havens in Pakistan and the hills west of Kabul Downs. So at least one part of the Reds’ desperate strategy—that they try to save as many lives as possible among their troops—had come true.
But this did little to relieve the sense of impending doom weighing on Red Base One. They were truly at ground zero for what was about to happen.
The fact that no one had heard from the Wingman made a bad situation only worse ….
The deadly artillery barrage continued unabated for the next three hours.
There was little left of Red Base One now—the central aiming point for the Blue Force shelling. Anyone still breathing was jammed into the few bomb shelters scattered about the base or huddled in the dozens of slit trenches, which ran the length of the base’s main runway.
Finally the fateful hour of noon came.
Acting on the OK from his superiors, Kurjan crawled to what was left of the base’s radio hut and had the communications officer inside send a message to the Blue Forces inside Kabul Downs.
“Ready to accept your previously stated surrender terms,” the message read simply.
The shelling ceased completely one minute later.
Now came an interlude, which Fitz would adequately describe as a “quiet hell.”
For only the second time in nearly a year, there was no shooting along the Blue-Red line. No artillery was going off, no constant chatter of machine guns or infantry rifles. Just the wind could be heard, blowing across the blood-soaked battlefield. The city of Kabul Downs was absolutely still. It was almost as if the Blue Force, probably taken by surprise by the sudden Red Force capitulation, was pausing to catch its collective breath before designating specifics of the surrender.
It was the silence that was almost maddening.
Huddled in a particularly muddy hole near the end of the runway were Zoltan, Crabb, Fitz, JT, and Ben.
They’d spent the three hours of the murderous artillery barrage here, hands over their heads, not speaking, barely breathing. Now that the shelling had stopped, there was only nervous conversation. Dreary chitchat as they waited for the next shoe to drop.
It was an odd and uncomfortable situation. None of them really knew each other very well, plucked as they were from obscurity to follow Hunter into this strange adventure. In fact, the only thing they all had in common was Hunter’s friendship.
And at the moment, that seemed like a very strained thing indeed.
The surreal peace finally gave Zoltan and Crabb the opportunity to ask questions. Difficult ones, to say the least. After some beating around the bush, Zoltan finally dropped a bomb of his own.
“What happened up there during that bombing run?” Zoltan asked Fitz outright. “It seems everything went screwy just after you guys dropped the big one on Tokyo.”
Of the three, the Irishman seemed to Zoltan to be the most likely one to spill his guts. But Fitz wasn’t biting. He was too busy with his binoculars, watching the mass of Blue troops still in position near that bloody bridge.
“I’ve been told that whatever happened during the superbombing mission is classified, and should remain that way,” he replied coldly.
But Crabb wasn’t going to let it go at that. They had the Grim Reaper breathing down their necks. It hardly seemed the time for hiding behind military niceties, such as suddenly classified operations.
“Listen, we came halfway around the world looking for you guys,” Crabb said heatedly. “And we might not get out of this hellhole alive. So don’t you think we deserve to know what went down?”
Fitz just shrugged and kept looking through his spyglass.
“What can I tell you then?” he finally replied. “It was rough—very rough. Especially on Hunter—”
“And that’s all we’re saying,” JT interrupted with emphasis. “So just button your flaps, OK?”
Crabb took offense to that line.
“Hey, dude, we risked our lives to find you guys,” he snapped back at JT. “Don’t forget that …”
“Calm down!” Ben yelled, turning on Zoltan and Crabb. “What the fuck else do you want to know? Fitz is right. It was really rough on Hawk. He was a changed guy after it was over. We all wanted to go home—you think we didn’t? But Hawk said something else was up. Something he had to pursue. He couldn’t explain it. He didn’t even know what it was about. But we took a vote and it was unanimous. We decided to come with him. What would you have done?”
There was another long silence.
“The same thing, I’m sure,” Zoltan finally said. It was odd but he was not picking up any bad vibes from the three men. This indicated to him that whatever secrets they were holding, were buried very deeply in their psyches. Either that, or they knew very little of what happened to Hunter at all.
There was another long silence among them.
“So where do you think Hunter’s gone now?” Zoltan asked Fitz.
The Irishman finally took his eyes from the binoculars and looked at the psychic.
“I have no idea,” he answered gloomily.
“Think he’s coming back?” Zoltan asked.
That’s when JT came flying across the trench at the psychic. Punches were thrown, but none landed. Ben and Fitz stopped JT. Crabb grabbed ahold of Zoltan.
“Jeesuzz, settle down everybody!” Fitz cried. “We’ve got enough bloody problems without fighting amongst ourselves.”
That’s when Fitz got very quiet.
“Look, I really don’t know Hawk that well,” he said softly. “I mean, I feel like I know him—but I really don’t. But he certainly changed that day after we dropped the bomb. He’d had a communion with a spirit, or something. After that, he was just focused on this one thing. This thing that he didn’t even know fully himself. It was like he expected something to be here when we arrived. Something or someone that would make sense out of the crazy life he seemed to be leading. Whatever it was, he didn’t tell me—he didn’t tell anyone. But whatever it was, it was driving him hard. And it brought us here. To this hellhole. That’s all we know really ….”
A very long silence. Nothing but the wind wa
s crying.
“You said he changed,” Crabb said at last. “Was it enough for him to just leave us here to die?”
JT had to be held down again—but Fitz was just shaking his head.
“I don’t know,” the Irishman said. “Once you get mixed up with ghosts …”
He let his voice trail off for a moment.
“It’s him telling us to surrender,” Fitz began again slowly. “That’s what bothers me. I hate to say it, but it makes me think that maybe—”
At that point Kurjan leapt into the trench interrupting Fitz’s somber speech. The Red Force intell man was holding a handful of photos—long-range recon pics.
“Ready for some more bad news?” he asked gloomily.
“No,” JT replied angrily.
Fitz and Zoltan looked at the recon photos. It showed more advance Black Army troops were flooding into the area and were slowly encircling what was left of the Red southern front.
“We gave orders to everyone out on the flanks to just get out of their way,” Kurjan said. “But us, the ones who are here—we got no way out. We’re stuck and they’re coming fast.”
Fitz spit angrily.
“This quiet is driving me nuts,” he said, putting the spyglass back up and zeroing in on the thousands of Blue troops just a mile or so away. “We’ve given up. What are they waiting for?”
He got his answer not two seconds later.
It came at first like the sound of the wind screaming. Then the air itself actually began to shake.
They all looked off to the south and were astonished to see that the sky was suddenly full with large, dark forms. They weren’t airplanes—that much was certain. But they were flying machines and they were black and they were heading right for them.
“My God!” Kurjan cried. “Are those … Beaters?”
They were. More commonly known as Octocopters, Beaters were ungainly, gigantic eight-rotor flying contraptions the size of a small airliner. Once in flight, Beaters always looked like they were waging a losing war against the laws of aerodynamics. They flew, but just barely. Their engines were usually belching smoke and sometimes flames. They were noisy, slow, and always seemed to be on the verge of plowing in.
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