by Mack Maloney
"I don't think I have to tell anyone here what this all means. We have to remove those missile sites. The Russians and The Circle are in a position now that they can call the shots east of the Rockies, except for Texas, and as they so brutally displayed a few nights ago, the Texans seem to be next on their list. The most vital link on this continent — that is the free, safe and direct air convoy routes between Free Canada and the West Coast — will be shut off as soon as the Russians make their move. And that could be any day now."
The silence in the room became frightening. The situation seemed hopeless.
Jones looked at Hunter. The ace fighter pilot was in another world, staring out into space, as if he wasn't listening. Something bigger than the missile crisis was eating at him, Jones knew. Something personal. And Hunter was too distant for Jones to ask him what it was.
The general turned his attention back to the Security Group. He removed his baseball hat and ran his hand over his stubbled hair. "Gentlemen," he began again slowly. "We are in a bad situation. But all is not yet lost.
"I'm about to tell you one of our most closely guarded secrets. This information is so secret, only the president of the United States and a handful of people knew about it before the war. And, frankly, we stumbled across it when we set up the Pacific American Armed Forces.
"I see this secret — this weapons system — as being our best hope of holding our own when the shooting starts in the Badlands. But first we must get it to work. And we must use it properly. Only then will we have a chance to save what little there is left of democracy on this continent."
All eyes were on the general as he paused and drew a breath.
"Gentlemen," the general continued, "two hundred and twenty-nine miles south of here, near what once was Eureka, California, there is a top secret air base. You would never know it because it is disguised as a typical, small municipal airfield.
"There is a hangar at this base. Very typical looking. However, underneath this hangar is one of the most sophisticated weapons laboratories ever built by the U.S. Air Force. It is in this underground laboratory, my friends, that we may find the way to fight back…"
Chapter Fifteen
The huge elevator creaked to a stop. Its hydraulic door slid open to reveal a huge subterranean cavern lit by hundreds of flourescent lights. The members of the Security Group stepped out into the underground bunker. Except for Dozer and Jones and a few others, no one in the group was even aware of the secret installation's existence until the general made the revelation the day before at the emergency Security Group meeting.
They were more than 400 feet underground, directly below the Eureka Municipal Airport. The elevator was actually a cleverly disguised section of one of the airport's repair hangar's floors. Similar to the lift on an aircraft carrier, it was big enough to lower a large airliner into the bowels of the earth.
The cavern was immense, easily encompassing the size of three or four normal-sized airplane hangers. Its metal floor was cluttered with aircraft support equipment, most of which looked like it hadn't been used in some time.
The smell of lubricants and jet fuel filled the dank air.
"This is just the beginning, boys," Jones said as he and the Security Group walked briskly toward the far end of the bunker. Once there, they found a huge metal door — big enough to be out of a science fiction movie. Jones located the controls and pushed a few preliminary buttons. A series of buzzes and clicks emanated from the control panel, and a few seconds later the word "READY" flashed on the panel's screen.
Jones turned and addressed the group. "Behind this door lies one of the closest kept secrets of the U.S. Government before the war," the general began in measured tones. "Back then it was called, appropriately enough: Project Ghost Rider. The Air Force never got to use it during the Big War. I guess we're lucky they didn't. Because gentlemen, what lies on the other side of this door may be our only hope in countering the Russian's missiles and The Circle."
Jones hit the button and the gigantic door rolled open. Beyond lay another cavern, completely darkened. Jones thew another switch and a bank of ultrabright lights snapped on. The glare temporarily fuzzed the eyes of the group like a camera's flash bulb going off. But as soon as each member's retinas adjusted, they saw what Jones was talking about. "Hot damnl" one of the Texas Air Rangers cried out. "That's about the prettiest sight I've ever seen." The rest of the group could only agree. Before them sat five, gleaming brand-new B-1 bombers…
Hunter didn't make the trip to Eureka. He was getting ready for another journey — one he knew would take him to five dangerous locations. Uncertainty waited at each stop. Even death. He would be gone for at least two weeks. This in a critical time when a huge war was imminent and the democratic forces of the west would need every man they could get — especially fighter pilots. And most especially, the best fighter pilot ever.
Yet he had to go. First, to the west, over the vast Pacific, to a place whose name was burned into the American soul. Pearl Harbor.
Then to Wyoming, to a place called Devil's Tower. Next it would be Arizona's forbidden Grand Canyon. Then on to a particularly nasty part of New Mexico, and finally to the most dangerous place of all: New York City.
Five locations. Five secrets to be revealed. Five Holy Grails to be retrieved and brought home. If not, the west would surely lose — the war that was coming.
Project Ghost Rider involved five, specially-adapted, ultra-sophisticated B-1 bombers. The swing-wing, "do-it-all" B-1 was originally built in the 1980s to replace the granddaddy of bombers, the B-52. But these Ghost Rider B-1s were birds of a different feather. They were actually five pieces of the same weapon system. They had a mutual brain — it was jam-packed into the command airplane, known as Ghost Rider 1. Tens of thousands of semiconductors, miles of digital audio tape, a sea of bubble memory banks — all ruled by the most elaborate artificial intelligence system ever designed. When Ghost Rider 1 commanded, Riders 2, 3, 4 and 5 obeyed. As well they should — because by following the orders of the AI brain in the command aircraft, the five B-1s became invisible to radar. Not just "hard to see" or flying with a low radar "signature." But invisible.
That's what the Ghost Rider Project was all about.
Five "black boxes" held the key. Once in place in their respective airplanes, the control boxes interconnected the flight, weapons and navigational systems of the five Ghost Riders. Working together and making full use of a radar-jamming technology so complex that even Hunter was just now beginning to understand it, the five bombers could literally fly over enemy territory without showing up on radar. They could not be shot down with radar-homing missiles; they could not be tracked by radar controlled anti-aircraft guns.
Radar-guided air-to-air rockets would fall to earth unexploded because no target could be found.
All this was of the utmost importance to PAAC because although the Russian SAMs sitting in the Badlands were of many different sizes and configurations, they all had one thing in common: they tracked their targets on radar. And what they couldn't "see,1 they couldn't shoot down.
But the eyes of the Ghost Rider Project were missing. Dispersed by design after the war so they — and the nearly completed Ghost Rider total radar avoidance system — would not fall into the wrong hands. The black boxes were under the command of an Air Force general named Christopher Josephs when the Big War broke out. At the time the system was just a month away from going operational — bu; it was never dispatched to the European theater Why? Call it a fluke of the military bureaucracy 01 call it fate. But when the war came, the test pilot; assigned to Ghost Rider were routinely called back to their combat bomber duties. From the day they left.
General Josephs was on the phone to Washington DC every hour of every day trying to get his pilots returned. Without them, the airplanes could not be tested. But they never came back. And soon no one answered the phones in Washington.
So Josephs called in his trusted right-hand man, a captain named James Tr
avis.
It was Travis's job to take the five Ghost Rider black boxes and hide them at Josephs' direction. When PAAC discovered the underground laboratory they found Josephs' personal diary sitting on the pilot's seat of Ghost Rider 1. It took months to break the computer code which held the secret of Ghost Rider and which Josephs — his fate and whereabouts unknown — had left behind to find, for anyone who was smart enough to look for it.
The black box locations were finally narrowed down to Pearl Harbor, Devil's Tower, the Grand Canyon, New Mexico, and, of all places, Manhattan. Why these locations were selected, no one knew, but at least Josephs could never be accused of not having an imagination: the black box at Pearl was supposedly hidden in the flag mast of the USS Arizona, the battleship that was destroyed by the Japanese sneak attack and that still sat half sunk in the harbor serving as a war memorial.
As soon as they discovered the meaning of Ghost Rider, PAAC engineers began work on all the other aspects of the system. Coincidentally, Jones was intent on discussing a recovery mission with Hunter when the current troubles in the East took precedence. Now the black box recovery mission was critical. It was up to Hunter to find the boxes and bring them back to Eureka. Only then could the five B-1s operate up to their marvelous potential. Only then could they be sent in to destroy the SAMs in the Badlands. Only then could PAAC lead the fight against The Circle armies. Only then could the battle for democracy on the American continent be won.
But for Hunter, there was more at stake in the mission. For him, there was another mystery to be solved; that of the photographs of Dominique. The pictures the Texans brought with them were variations of the same pose and dress as the photograph he'd found on the renegade convoy airplane. The horsemen's pictures were discussed briefly during the viewing of the Badlands recon film — but were quickly dismissed by Jones.
"They must have busted into an X-rated book store somewhere along the line," the general had said to the Security Group at the time. Actually Hunter had taken Jones into his confidence, telling the senior officer of his previous discovery on the crashed 707. The general was as mystified as Hunter on what the photographs meant to the overall problem. Ben Wa and Toomey were also told as the two ex-ZAP pilots were the only comrades of Hunter who knew Dominique.
All three of his friends agreed that the photos were an odd twist to an already strange story. But they also agreed to keep it top secret. They knew it was a mystery — and a battle — Hunter would have to face himself. They knew he wouldn't let them here him if they tried. That was the nature of Hunter. The imminent war had taken on a new, different meaning for him. The battle against the totalitarian force that were attempting to take over what was left of th< American way of life was uppermost in his mind am in his soul. But in his heart, the whole thing had become very personal. Why they had found photo graphs of Dominique on the convoy pilot and th< Mongol warrior, he didn't know. But he did know that the only connection between the two dead mer was they were on the side of The Circle and th(Russians. Hunter also knew that back east, some where, was Dominique. The fact that he was heading in the opposite direction didn't bother him. He felt in his gut she was being held against her will. A prisoner. Now he renewed his vow to find her. And God help those responsible when he did.
Jones had taken most of the afternoon explaining Project Ghost Rider to the Security Group. Hunter took off later that same day, heading for Hawaii. The next morning, which was appropriately May 1st, the Soviet SAMs opened fire on a convoy that was attempting to pass over the southernmost section of the Badlands. Seventeen airliners were brought down by SAMs. At about the same time, two divisions of The Circle Army were spotted heading for the Syracuse Aerodrome. Another two divisions were discovered marching from the western end of Kentucky into eastern Missouri, apparently moving toward Football City. Their lead element ran into a company of Football City's famous recon troops and a sharp fire fight ensued.
By noon that day, the first shots of the Second American Civil War had been fired.
Chapter Sixteen
The F-16 had spent the past hour lazily circling th Hawaiian island of Oahu at 50,000 feet. Hunter was surveying the ground below using his topographica contour radar. The device allowed him to spy on th island below him, charting where any weapons — including interceptors, anti-aircraft guns or SAN sites — might be located.
He found none, which didn't surprise him. Al though contact between the Hawaiian Islands am PAAC on the mainland was nearly non-existent, th Pacific Americans knew that the New Order frenz; of disarmament had been nearly complete through out the 50th state and that a kind of modern royal tribal rule had returned to the islands.
He located an airstrip on the northeastern end o the island and swept the area with his scope. There wasn't a weapon nor a breathing human around. H quickly set the F-16 down and hid it in a forest o coconut trees located at the end of the runway. Th< landing strip appeared to be an abandoned Coast Guard air station. He found a paved road nearby which would carry him south and he began to walk. The sun was just coming up out of the sea on the eastern horizon. The sky was red — as red as the Aurora Borealis he had encountered at 90,000 feet several weeks before. He knew a red sky in the morning was a powerful omen for bad things to come. - But to Hunter, the crimson sunrise meant another thing: the fighting had started to the east. Although he was thousands of miles' to the west, he could smell war in the air. His mission just became more crucial, possibly more desperate. He quickened his step. He had to make the 25 miles to Honolulu by nightfall.
Hunter had been to Hawaii several times while he was touring with the Thunderbirds. The Honolulu he'd remembered was a nice, clean if overcrowded city. Now he was sure that had changed. According to the reports PAAC did get from Honolulu, the city was now a sprawl of honky-tonks, drugs, hedonism and crime. Gambling, never considered a vice in the old days, had been raised to the level of science on the islands these days. Yet there was no police force or government. Hunter was glad he'd made the trip packing both an Uzi and his trusty M-16. He also carried a small backpack that was filled with some of his best tricks of the trade.
He met his first Hawaiians about five miles into his trip. They were all wearing typical Hawaiian shirts and calmly manning a roadblock set up in the middle of the highway. It was the marking of the edge of their tribe's territory. He knew from here on in, he'd have to deal with these gunmen. The one regret Hunter had was that Ben Wa, he of the island of Maui to the south, wasn't able to accompany him on this trip. They would have made a great team, but a pilot of Wa's caliber was much too valuable at the front.
Of the 10 men guarding the outpost, six were asleep. They were quickly roused when their partners first spotted Hunter, clad in a green, unmarked flight, suit, baseball cap on his head, his flight helmed dangling from his belt, walking down the middle of the unused highway.
The pilot carried his firearms in full view as he approached the men. He heard the safeties click off their firearms — a variety of hunting rifles, M-16s and shotguns. Hunter walked right up to their railroad crossing-style barrier and asked the first man he came to: "Which way to Honolulu?"
The gunmen laughed at him. A man who appeared to be their leader emerged from a small hut and walked up to Hunter. He was a small, dark, obviously Hawaiian man of middle age. Tough and wiry, he carried a .357 Magnum on one hip, an extra-large machete on the other.
To this man, Hunter repeated his questions: "Is this the road to Honolulu?"
"Could be," the man said in broken English.
Hunter got right to the point. "How much to pass through?"
"How much you got?" the man said.
"I'll give you a thousand in real gold now," Hunter said calmly. "Two thousand on the way out."
The man grinned. "Lot of money. Why don't we just shoot you now and get all three thousand?" A few of his men laughed in agreement.
"Ain't got it all now," Hunter said. "Gotta do my business in Honolulu first."
"What k
ind of business?" the man asked.
"Drug kind of business," Hunter answered. "As in blow. Coke. You guys get that stuff up here?"
The leader laughed again. "How much you got?"
"It ain't how much I got," Hunter said. "It's what kind I got." With that he reached into his backpack and produced a brick-sized piece of compacted brownish leaves.
"Jesus Christ, man," the leader exclaimed. "You got a brick of…"
"Raw coca," Hunter said, finishing the man's sentence for him. "Now unless you guys got some processing works around here, you'd better let me through, so I can sell this shit."
The leader knew Hunter was right. The chemicals needed to break down the raw coca were in short supply — ether especially. Handling a brick of raw coca would be useless — but breaking it down into pure cocaine could net them anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 in real gold, and that was only if they were stupid enough to sell it pure. And they weren't that stupid.
Neither was Hunter. The leader thought for a moment, then said. "You go, two of my guys go with you."
"Bodyguards?" Hunter said. "That's great, my man. You just got yourself an extra thousand."
"At least," the man said, grinning.
Twenty minutes later, Hunter was sitting in th back of the gunmen's speeding jeep, enjoying th scenery. Not only had he parlayed himself a ride for the final 20 miles into Honolulu, he also had a way to pass through the seven further checkpoints be tween him and the city. At each stop, the gunmen — known as the Tan Fin — were routinely waved through. A peaceful, if shaky, coexistence was ii force among the tribal gangs, or at least the one who controlled this roadway. Between roadblocks his escorts remained silent, which was fine with Hunter. He sat back and let the warm late spring sunshine soak through him.
They reached the outskirts of Honolulu about an hour later. From the top of a hill, Hunter could see the island that used to be the Pearl Harbor naval station. He was too far away to see if there was an; military activity at the base. His earlier radar sweep revealed nothing heavy, but he hadn't yet discounted the possibility of some kind of presence at the base He had to reach the USS Arizona Memorial, bu first he had to rid himself of his chauffeurs. Hi didn't feel that he was justified in shooting them although they had foolishly left him alone in the backseat of the open vehicle with his M-16 and Uzi both fully-loaded. Instead, he would put the two to sleep.