Army of the Damned (Sky Ghost #1)

by P. T. Dilloway

  He pulls the F-100 into the hangar to start taking a look at it. The engine is in dire need of an overhaul; it probably hasn’t received any maintenance since the Kennedy administration.

  After a couple of hours he has finished with overhauling the engine. He’s going to get it ready for a test flight when one of his co-workers tugs on his sleeve. “Hey, man, you should get over to the infirmary.”

  “The infirmary? I feel fine.”

  “It’s Tammy. She’s your girl, right?”

  Hunter shrugs; Tammy is the redhead who propositioned him the first day in the PX. They have shared some late nights together—off the clock. While it makes him feel guilty for being disloyal to Casey and Misuko, he had to admit he might never see either of them again and in the meantime he still had needs only a woman could satisfy.

  “I guess you could say that. What’s wrong?”

  “Not sure. The boss said they had to take her in and that he thought you should know.”

  “All right, I’ll be right there.”

  The infirmary is a few blocks away. He doesn’t run, but he walks at a brisk clip all the way there. A nurse directs him to a cubicle at the end of the hallway. Before he can go in, Jimmy grabs him by the biceps. “Hold on, there,” he says.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “The doctor says it’s not going to be too bad. A couple of weeks and she’ll be good as new.”

  Hunter finally manages to push Jimmy aside to brush the curtain back from the cubicle. He resists the urge to gasp to see Tammy with two black eyes and bandages around her nose. “Oh, Hunter,” she sobs, melting against his chest, turning her head away so as not to do any more damage to her nose.

  “What the hell happened? Who did this to you?”

  “It was some guy. He wanted to do some really sick shit. And, well, he didn’t want to take no for an answer.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. He was one of those pirates. Some nobody. I’m just so glad you were here.” He holds her for a few minutes, until the doctor comes back with an envelope of pills.

  “It’s just ibuprofen. I could give you something stronger, but with your history that’s not a good idea.”

  “What history is that?” Hunter asks.

  Tammy looks down shyly at her feet. “I…I used to be an addict. Meth mostly.” When she smiles it almost breaks his heart. “The outbreak got me clean.”

  “If you can get some ice, put it on those eyes. In the old days I’d suggest a steak, but good luck finding one of those,” the doctor says with a nervous chuckle. “Come back in a week and we’ll check that nose to see how it’s coming along.”

  “Thanks, Doctor.”

  “You’re welcome,” the doctor says, looking a little too long at Tammy’s breasts.

  Hunter helps her off the gurney and then starts to walk her out of the room. Seeing Jimmy still waiting, Hunter urges Tammy to go on ahead. “Hunter, don’t—”

  “Just go on. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

  She looks ready to say something, but then stops herself. She pads down the hallway to leave Hunter with Jimmy. Hunter shoves his friend back against the wall. “You know who did this, don’t you?”

  “It was the guy whose plane you fixed. The Super Sabre?”

  “That son of a bitch. I should have known.”

  “Hey, don’t do anything crazy. I know he deserves it, but the outfit he’s with does a lot of business here. We don’t want to start a war with them.”

  “Sure. We wouldn’t want that.”

  “Hunter—”

  “Relax, Jimmy. I’m not going to do anything.”

  Hunter catches up to Tammy before she can get to the doors of the building. He puts an arm around her to walk her back to the room in the barracks where he has been staying—and where she has spent some of her nights. He sets her down on the bed, tucking her in as if she’s a child. He bends down to kiss her on the forehead. “I’ll go get some ice from the cafeteria.”

  “Thanks.” She takes his hand to pull him down for a careful kiss on the lips. “Don’t be too long.”

  “I won’t.”

  He walks briskly again, though not towards the cafeteria. Instead, he heads back to the hangars, where he finds the Super Sabre still waiting for its shithead owner. He makes sure no one is looking and then picks up a wrench. A few adjustments is all he needs to make sure this son of a bitch will never make it back to his base.

  Hunter sets the wrench aside and then disappears from the hangar. From the cafeteria he gets two bags with ice, one for each eye. They won’t last long in the desert heat, so he has to run back to the barracks. Tammy is dozing on the bed when he gets back. She squeals with surprise as he sets one bag of ice on her right eye. “That is better.”

  “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He lies down next to her on the bed, content to hold her for a while. Tammy’s not quite the good girl Casey and Misuko were, but her primary advantage right now is her proximity. Any port in the storm as they say. And all things considered, it’s a damned good-looking port. He kisses her on the forehead again and then closes his eyes to get some rest.

  ***

  The next morning Jimmy calls Hunter into his office. From Jimmy’s expression, it’s clear he’s not happy. “I got a message from the Red Devils—”

  “Who?”

  “Pirate group that operates mostly across the border—or what used to be the border. Their guy in the Super Sabre didn’t make it back. They were pretty annoyed.”

  “He must have decided to take off. Guys like that aren’t the most loyal.”

  “Cut the shit, Hunter. You sabotaged his plane for what he did to Tammy, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe I did. Let them try to prove it.”

  “They don’t have to prove it! All they got to do is believe it enough to come here in force. Then we got a problem.”

  “You have your defense force.”

  “Yes and I want to keep them. Even old shit boxes like that Super Sabre can get a lucky shot in. Then I’m down a pilot and a plane I can’t replace.”

  “So what was I supposed to do? Sit on my hands?”

  “We could have worked out some compensation. Now we’ll be lucky if we don’t have a war on our hands.”

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy.”

  “No you’re not. You’re a do-gooder. You always have been. But it’s not a do-gooder world anymore. There’s no place for Batman or Superman or any of that here. You understand?”

  “So do you want me to leave?”

  “Consider this your first and only warning, OK? And, well, the sooner you can get that Harrier up and running, the better.”

  “I am sorry to inconvenience you like this, Jimmy. Thing is, I let that guy go once before. Up in Spokane. Him and a buddy were going after a convoy. I forced him down and let him go. So what happened to Tammy, it was my fault. It’s like you said: this isn’t a do-gooder world. I tried being a hero and all it did was get Tammy hurt.” By the same token he had tried to be the hero by destroying the pirate gang in Portland and that had left Snowcap Mountain vulnerable. He had flown that airliner of civilians home instead of continuing his search for Misuko. It seems every time he tries to be a hero it blows up in his face.

  “I’m sorry about that, Hunter.” Jimmy pours them each a double Scotch. Hunter gulps his down in one go. “The world is shit these days. We have to make do the best we can.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Just be careful, buddy, OK?”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  Jimmy nods to him, which Hunter takes as a dismissal. He trudges to the hangar, where there’s a C-119 cargo plane in need of attention. That should at least help to keep his mind on something other than Tammy’s face or Jimmy’s disappointment.

  Chapter 15

  Without the Internet, Hunter has learned to operate the Harrier by trial-and-error. All of the repair crews, along with Jimmy and mo
st of the visiting pilots, gathered by the tarmac to watch his first attempts to get the Harrier airborne.

  While it’s supposed to go vertical like a helicopter, the process is different since the Harrier uses four nozzles instead of two rotors. Hunter’s first attempt catapults the Harrier into the air. It nearly flips over before he can level it out by counterbalancing the nozzles. He adjusts the controls until it’s flying level.

  Once he’s level, he starts to bring the Harrier up slowly, to fifty feet and then a hundred. After getting to two hundred feet, he keeps it level for a couple of minutes. Then he starts the laborious process of landing the Harrier. He has to make a few adjustments, but even then it’s like trying to bring down a Venetian blind; he drops from one side to another until the wheels on the right hit the tarmac hard enough that his helmet bumps against the new canopy he installed.

  There’s a round of applause when he pops the canopy. He’s not sure how much of that applause is sarcastic. “Nice job,” Jimmy says.

  “You know what they say: any landing you can walk away from.”

  Over the next two weeks Hunter gets behind the Harrier’s controls every day. By the end of the first week he can take off and land as smoothly as any Marine flying these for years. The second week he spends flying around the Tucson area, getting used to the Harrier’s maneuverability. It’s not as quick as the X-29 or the F-16 Hunter used to fly, but it’s a lot better than most anything flying these days.

  The good thing about the desert is it’s easy to find somewhere secluded for target practice. He loads the Harrier with a full load of 25mm cannon ammunition and a couple of 500-pound “iron” bombs to drop on the unsuspecting cacti, lizards, and snakes. After dropping one bomb, he circles around to see how close he came to his expected target. His first attempt looks ten or fifteen feet off, so he adjusts his course slightly for the second bomb. It gets almost dead on the target.

  The strafing is a little easier, though the Harrier’s sights might need a bit of adjustment. He should take the entire flight system apart to recode it, but he doesn’t have the equipment; what he took from Microsoft is probably still at Snowcap Mountain. There’s no way he can go back for it now.

  He completes the strafing runs and then brings the Harrier back to Davis-Monthan for a perfect landing. Climbing down from the cockpit, he decides what the Harrier really needs is a fresh coat of paint to erase the old USMC markings. There’s still plenty of gray aircraft paint left from when Davis-Monthan was a working Air Force base.

  The painting takes another ten days. First he needs a couple of days to sand off the old paint and then apply some primer. Then he sprays on the first coat of paint. He waits for it to dry before laying on the second coat. For the final touch, he applies a white ghost on each intake in memory of Gary.

  “That looks like a sweet ride,” Jimmy says when Hunter is finished.

  “Thanks. And thanks for letting me have her.”

  “You earned it, buddy. I hope you’re not planning on leaving for a little while.”

  “I’ve still got to find my friends. And my plane. You got anything on that yet?”

  “Not yet. I’m still working on it.”

  “I guess this is where I give you my two weeks notice then.”

  “Hunter—”

  “You’ve got a good setup here, Jimmy, but I still have people out there. When I find them, maybe I’ll come back.”

  Jimmy sighs and then nods. “I hate to lose you, but I understand. It has been good having someone from the old days around.”

  “It has. I hope we can do it again soon.”

  “Me too.” Jimmy pats Hunter on the arm. “Good luck, buddy.”

  Hunter nods and then climbs up into the Harrier’s cockpit. He has a full load of fuel, plus a drop tank under each wing. That should give him plenty of range to search for who took his plane and any sign of where Casey, Polly, and the others might have gone.

  He already said his goodbye to Tammy this morning. She wasn’t too pleased about his leaving. She sobbed in a way he hadn’t expected. They had fucked probably two-dozen times since he showed up on the base, but he had never given her any indication that he planned to stick around.

  “Promise me you’ll come back,” she said.

  “I can’t promise that. You know how things are out there,” he said. He took her hands, giving them a squeeze. “I’ll do everything I can to come back. That’s the best I can do.”

  She stared at him for a moment. Around her eyes had healed, but her nose was still a little crooked from the beating she had suffered. Hunter supposed that was in large part why she was so sad to see him go. She finally nodded to him. “I guess that’s the best I can hope for. Take care of yourself.”

  The last kiss she gave him was so short and dry it was like that of a relative or close friend, not someone with whom he had been intimate. That was probably her way to insulate herself from some of the pain of his leaving. He had grabbed a rucksack with clothes, food, and water in it and then headed out to the hangar.

  Tammy is of course not anywhere by the runway as he takes off. He gives Jimmy and the others a salute and then rises into the air. Once he’s over the base, he transitions the Harrier into its normal flight mode. It doesn’t rocket away, but it moves at a good clip to soon put Davis-Monthan behind him.

  ***

  He’s over the southern rim of the Grand Canyon when he hears a familiar voice making another distress call. Captain Nation sounds fairly cool as he says, “Anyone out there, we’re under attack. We’ll give you a nice bonus for some help.”

  “Where are you at?” Hunter says into the radio.

  “We’re on the north rim of the Canyon.”

  “I’m on the southern rim. Shouldn’t take too long to get to you.”

  “Just make it quick or the coyotes will be picking us apart.”

  “I’m on my way,” Hunter says. The Harrier can’t break the sound barrier, but he shouldn’t need that much speed to get to the other side of the Canyon. He can’t help taking a look down to see the walls of stone that are several stories tall. He wonders if there are any zeebs trapped down there, shuffling around the bottom of the Canyon for years. He can see a few deer prancing around, unaffected by the chaos.

  As he passes over the glass walkway on the northern rim, he sees two C-130s. He isn’t sure which one is Captain Nation’s, but he assumes it’s the lead one. Hunter edges the Harrier up towards an F-101 Voodoo on the tail of one C-130. He’s close enough that he doesn’t bother with the half-dozen Sidewinder missiles he’s carrying. Instead he triggers a burst from the 25mm cannons. The shells are meant to be used on ground targets, so they chew up the Voodoo’s wing with ease. The elderly interceptor crashes through the glass walkway before disappearing in a ball of fire inside the Canyon.

  Hunter banks hard to the right to avoid a burst of gunfire from an F-5 Freedom Fighter painted in a garish mix of bright purple and green. There’s a Joker painted on the tail to indicate which gang this plane belongs to. As the F-5 streaks towards him, Hunter uses the thrust nozzles to shift sideways, allowing the F-5 to go past him. He fires another stream of shells that erase the Joker’s face on the tail. The F-5 spins out of control to slam into a rock formation.

  “It’s the Sky Ghost!” someone shouts. Hunter isn’t sure if it’s a friend or foe.

  “That’s not his plane,” someone else says.

  “He must have got a new one. No one else could take the Joker down like he was nothing.”

  Hunter keys his radio to their frequency. In a gravelly voice he hisses, “You boys want to be next or you want to be smart?”

  They don’t need any more convincing to turn tail. He watches them before turning to fall in with the C-130s. “Thanks again, Mr. Ghost,” Nation says. “I guess I owe you another one.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Is it just the two of you?”

  “It is now, I’m afraid.”

  “You guys got any damage?”

 
“Not that we can see. You mind taking a look?”

  “No problem.”

  Hunter drops back a little and then descends to get a better look at the underside of the C-130. He can’t see any holes or fluids leaking on the starboard side. “There are a couple holes in your port rudder. It still working?”

  The rudder on the back of the C-130 goes up and down a couple of times. “Seems like it’s fine,” Nation says.

  He checks out the other C-130, but it doesn’t have any serious damage either. “Where are you guys heading?”

  “We were on our way to Albuquerque. We just made a stop in Vegas for a little R&R—if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Hunter says with a grin. “How about an escort?”

  “Sure. If you don’t mind.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “By the way, what’s with the new ride?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “I can’t wait,” Nation says. Then they start to turn east for New Mexico.

  ***

  It’s a quiet trip across the northern half of Arizona and then into New Mexico. This far north it’s not as hot as back in Phoenix or Tucson, but the summer air is still plenty warm. No other pirate gangs try to challenge them along the way; maybe they already heard what happened with the Joker. He’s sure a few stories will get back to Jimmy, Tammy, and everyone else at Davis-Monthan.

  The Albuquerque skyline comes into view, dominated by one adobe-colored skyscraper. The closest Hunter has ever come to the city before now was watching Breaking Bad on Netflix, when there was still an Internet. He grins to himself as he imagines the characters from the show shuffling around as zombies—those who survived the finale anyway.

  He gets more serious as they approach the airport. There’s a minor league baseball stadium nearby as well; he sees another tent city that looks abandoned. “You guys go down first. I’ll fly cover,” Hunter says. The Harrier’s cannon pods should provide more than enough support if any packs of zeebs come after Nation and his crews.

  The other C-130 goes down first without any trouble. Hunter puts the Harrier into a protective hover as the crew secures the cargo plane. When he sees a couple of zeebs shuffling out of a hangar, he triggers a burst from his cannons to cut them down. He waits, but he doesn’t see any more, at least not for the moment.