They return to their vehicles to move out. Hunter takes the Harrier back up to scout the road ahead. He hasn’t ever been this far north in Colorado before and except for a camping trip to Yellowstone he has never been to Wyoming. That makes it hard to know what exactly he can expect to find. Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming, but it is still not that big of a city, more like Colorado Springs than Denver. Yet it only takes a few zeebs to make a complete mess of things.
There are no serious obstacles that he can see on his approach to the city. No packs of zeebs and no stretches of the road that have become impassable. It should be clear enough for the convoy, so long as the engines don’t overheat or anything like that.
As he nears the city, he sees there’s not too much damage to it. There’s a layer of grime on the taller windows and weeds growing through cracks in the street, but otherwise it’s not too bad off. He drops as low as he dares, enough to get a better look for any zeebs that might be inside the buildings.
The Harrier’s engines are again like the Pied Piper’s flute, bringing the zeebs from their hiding places. A few of them actually hold up their hands as if they might be able to grab onto the Harrier and drag it down. More and more of them appear, until he estimates there are about a thousand of them.
He brings the Harrier around in a tight turn to face the horde of zeebs. He presses down on the trigger for the cannons. There’s a clunk, but no shells tear the zeebs apart. “Son of a bitch,” he growls. He tries again, but still nothing happens. He slaps the console with frustration.
A jam. Those assholes in Mile High loaded the ammo wrong. They might have done it by accident, or they might have deliberately sabotaged it, hoping it would kill him. He doesn’t know how they planned to collect the reward then.
Hunter brings the Harrier down lower, until those zeebs with their hands extended can nearly touch the belly of the plane. He tilts the Harrier’s nozzles to their VTOL position and then pushes the throttle up. Even over the engine he can hear their roars of pain as the hot exhaust burns them. It probably won’t kill them, but at least it did some damage.
He puts the nozzles back into their flight position to head for the highway. The convoy is about ten miles out of town when he lands on a bridge to cut them off. The lead Hummer comes to a stop, the other two vehicles slamming to a halt behind it.
Hunter pops the canopy and then hops out to explain the situation to Trip and Wayne. “My cannons are jammed and there’s probably a thousand zeebs hanging around the city. We’re probably better off finding somewhere by the road to camp for the night.”
“You sure about that?” Trip asks. “Maybe if we stay real quiet—”
“We might end up getting stuck somewhere. At least out here we can make a break for it if there’s trouble,” Hunter says. He gestures to the Harrier. “I’ll take her to the airport and see if I can fix the jam. If I get it to work, then I can take care of those zeebs.”
“I guess that’s the best we can do,” Wayne grumbles. He motions to the bridge. “We’ll go over the bridge once you’re gone and then look for something with some other vehicles stranded. We should be able to blend in.”
“I’m really not looking forward to sleeping in that Hummer. Those seats are hard as fuck.”
“Yeah, well kid, I slept on a metal floor for two years. I think you can handle a hard seat for one night.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Trip grumbles. Hunter leaves them to move the Harrier. Wayne has the right idea about trying to blend in with the rest of the traffic. It might not fool any zeebs, but should anyone fly over—like a patrol from Utopia—they’ll probably think nothing of it.
He takes the Harrier back to Cheyenne to do a flyover of the airport. Like in Colorado Springs there are a few zeebs who emerge to investigate the noise. He uses the nozzle trick from in the city to burn most of them. Only this time he puts the Harrier down on the runway and pops the canopy.
While the zeebs are still recovering, Hunter begins to mow them down with the M4. He keeps it on its automatic setting until he’s out of bullets. Then he takes out his sidearm to take the last half-dozen zeebs from close range. Seeing the pile of dead zeebs, he has to resist the urge to blow away smoke from the barrel of his gun. Instead he shoves it back into its holster. From his pocket he takes a spare clip for the M4 to reload the assault rifle. Until he can get the Harrier repaired that’s all he has to rely on.
To avoid anyone who happens to fly over to see him, he taxis the Harrier into the nearest hangar. He leaves it at the entrance while he sweeps the hangar with the M4. A zeeb in mechanic’s coveralls emerges from behind a row of shelves to lurch towards him. He hits it with a short burst from the M4.
With the hangar clear, he brings the Harrier in to get to work. There are plenty of tools in the hangar, probably the ones the zeeb used to fix any airliners who came in for maintenance. Having already just about rebuilt the Harrier from the wheels up, he doesn’t need long to get the cannon pods open. As soon as he does, he shakes his head.
They used the wrong ammunition. Instead of 25mm shells they put in standard 20mm shells. No surprise that the feeding mechanism would jam up then. He doubts they did it to sabotage him; more likely they didn’t have any 25mm ammo and were just cheating him. The problem now is he doesn’t have any cannons to use against zeebs or other obstacles. That makes the Harrier all but useless.
Short of going back to Mile High, there’s not much he can do about the situation. A civilian airport wouldn’t have the ammunition he needs. He doubts there’s a Marine air station for hundreds of miles where he might find another Harrier.
He finishes taking out the 20mm ammo and then closes the cannon pods again. To work off some of the frustration, he decides to walk around the airport. He pokes his head into the various hangars on the million-to-one chance someone might have left a Harrier or stack of 25mm cannon ammunition lying around. All he finds are a couple of small planes and an old biplane used for crop-dusting.
Hunter can’t resist climbing into the cockpit of the biplane. When he was a kid he had read about the World War I aces. Those guys had really had balls, flying wooden planes filled with gasoline without parachutes when things went wrong. Back then a bombing run was literally the pilot tossing bombs out of the cockpit—
Hunter smiles to himself. It’s a risky idea, but it might work to get rid of those zeebs in Cheyenne—and anywhere else they might go. But before he can put it into action, he needs to get some explosives put together. Thinking of the Moltov cocktails Carl Sherwood had put together on the George Washington, Hunter hopes no one has cleaned out the bars in the terminal.
***
The old biplane’s engine started on the first try. Hunter had checked the fuel tank to make sure it wasn’t running on empty. He didn’t plan to be airborne for too long, but he didn’t want to crash before he could reach his destination.
With the wind whipping in his face, Hunter can’t help laughing with glee. Now this is flying! As much as he loves the Harrier and X-29, he’s still sealed in his little cocoon. Even in the Cessna he had trained on there was a cockpit all around him. But with this he just has a little windshield in front of him. One nod to safety is that he’s still wearing his helmet; he keeps the tinted visor down so no bugs will get in his eyes.
While he’s tempted to try some barrel rolls and loops in the venerable aircraft, he has to force himself to focus on the mission at hand. He brings the biplane in low over Cheyenne, its engine louder than the Harrier’s to really rile up the zeebs. It looks like they’ve added to their numbers since the last time he buzzed them.
He has to turn around to get one of the homemade explosives from the rear seat. As he lights the fuse, he does the mental calculations in his head on when to throw the bomb. The most important thing is to get the bomb clear of the biplane so it doesn’t set the plane on fire.
He counts off a few seconds and then tosses the bomb over the side. There’s no time to see how much damage he did as he has to br
ing the biplane up and then wheel around for another pass. The zeebs are starting to scatter from the fire, but there are still enough clustered for another firebomb to be effective.
He makes two more passes with the Moltov cocktails. The zeebs are shambling around, many of them still on fire since they’re too dumb to remember that old adage: stop, drop, and roll. For his last pass, he flies as level as he can. When he figures he’s at the right spot, he triggers the pesticide canisters beneath the plane. While he’s not sure what is in the canisters, it’s definitely flammable. He risks a look over his shoulder to see the whole street below is on fire now. That might not kill all the zeebs, but it will certainly thin out their numbers.
He brings the biplane up and then banks around to head back for the airport. The biplane comes down hard on the runway, enough that he wishes he had a seatbelt. As he taxies to the hangar, he pats the biplane’s fuselage. “Good job, old girl.”
***
He catches up to the convoy the next morning. He still doesn’t have working cannons, but he has a few homemade explosives with him to help deal with any zeebs they might find. There shouldn’t be that many between Cheyenne and Devils Tower considering how sparsely populated the region was before the outbreak.
After a couple of hours they have to leave the main highway to take a narrower one. It’s easier for the highway to get fouled up now and should they come to anywhere blocked by traffic, there’s not a lot Hunter can do about it. He keeps a close eye out for zeebs too, though there’s also not a lot he can do about individual ones; he doesn’t want to waste the few bombs he brought with him on a single zeeb.
About thirty miles down the road, he sees an obstacle he can do something about: a herd of sheep is milling around in the road. Hunter lowers the Harrier, trying to stay high enough that the nozzles won’t hurt the sheep, just scare them. Between the noise and the heat from the exhaust, the sheep scatter out of the road. He watches them go, wishing he might take a couple of them for some lamb chops. They look in dire need of a shearing too, though he’s not sure if anyone has the expertise anymore to make fabric from the raw wool.
At a small town called Douglas they have to change roads again to head for the Tower. It’s getting to the late afternoon, which could make it hard for them to find a way inside. They might have to stay outside tonight and then look for the entrance in the morning.
As he considers this, Hunter hears a missile lock tone in his headset. Since there aren’t any airplanes around, this must be from the ground. He accelerates while looking around to see who’s locking onto him. Off to his left he sees a streak of flame. A surface-to-air missile.
Hunter drops flares and radar-reflecting chaff to try to confuse the missile. He’s not sure whether the missile is heat-seeking or radar-guided, though he figures it’s probably the former. From what he saw, it’s too big to be a shoulder-mounted unit, which means there’s a battery down there.
Hunter drops the Harrier into a roll before the missile can get him. It explodes harmlessly overhead, but he hears another tone indicating a second launch is imminent. If he had his cannons he might be able to strafe the missile batteries to make it a more fair fight, but without them, he doesn’t have much of a chance except to keep evading.
This time he waits until the missile is closer before he drops flares. The missile takes the bait, exploding well behind him. Another missile is already locking on. Hunter curses to himself. He’s not going to last much longer out here.
Devils Tower is ahead, standing out against the orange sky with its steep sides and flat top. Hunter pulls back on the control stick to get up to the peak of the mountain. Now he’s glad he brought that climbing gear along.
After evading two more missiles, Hunter finally gets close enough to the mountaintop to see there’s nothing up there. They probably never worried someone in a VTOL jet would land on top of the mountain. Hunter doesn’t waste time to land, not wanting to deal with another SAM. The wheels hit the top of the mountain hard enough that he bounces in his chair like when he landed the biplane. At least he’s down on the ground—so to speak.
He lets out a sigh of relief and then pats the control panel. “Good job, old girl,” he mumbles. Then he starts to gather the mountain climbing gear.
***
Hunter never did much mountain climbing. At the Academy he had to climb up a rock wall once, though that was using handholds, not having to carve his own. He supposes some brave—or crazy—people have tried going down Devils Tower by hand, but it’s not something he wants to try.
With the steel claws attached to his boots he digs into the rock. As he lowers himself, he chips at the rock with his hammer. This would be a lot easier if he were going up instead of down, but the SAMs didn’t leave him much choice about it.
He continues his slow progress down the mountain, glad there’s not much wind to blow him off. He does have a safety rope around his waist in case he slips off; he hopes it will be long enough that he can get near the bottom without having to detach the rope. He slides down another couple feet and then pauses to wipe sweat from his brow.
The sun has set, but the moon is full, one of those big harvest moons that make it seem a few sizes larger than usual. This gives him a little more light to see by, though it would still be pretty easy for him to slip in this dim light. Maybe he should have made camp at the top of the mountain and started to climb down in the morning.
By now the convoy has probably stopped for the night around Douglas. It won’t be morning until they approach, so why is he doing this now? Because if they have surface-to-air missiles, they probably have defenses for intruders coming by land. If he can talk to someone inside, maybe he can make things easier for the convoy to get here safely.
His muscles have turned to limp pasta and his body is coated with sweat by the time he nears the bottom of the mountain. From his watch, it’s four in the morning, meaning he has been climbing down the mountain for almost eight hours. All in a night’s work, he thinks to himself and then chuckles.
He detaches the safety rope for the last fifty feet or so of the mountain. He resists the urge to go faster as he nears the bottom. A fall even from a few feet up could still break a leg or arm or split his skull. It’s better to make sure he actually gets down safe than to rush it.
When he reaches the bottom, he hardly has time to let out a sigh of relief before the bushes around him come to life. Soldiers in brush camouflage aim their assault rifles at him. He holds up his hands, letting the hammer fall to the ground. “Easy, fellas. I’m on your side. Major Hunter Hawking, USAF.”
“You’re trespassing on a Top Secret government installation, Major,” one of the soldiers says. The man’s face is smeared with paint so there’s not much to see except the lenses of his nightvision goggles. “You better have a damned good reason before we put a few bullets in you.”
“I’m flying escort for Commander Edward Wayne. He received orders from Cheyenne Mountain to bring some aircraft and personnel here. If you’ll let me see your commanding officer, I’m sure we can work all this out.”
The soldier doesn’t move for a few moments; Hunter has no idea what the man might be thinking. He finally turns to one of the other soldiers. “We’ll take him to the colonel.” Then the man snaps his fingers and another soldier steps forward. Before Hunter can react, the butt of an M16 is hitting him full in the face. The night sky explodes with stars and then he collapses to the ground.
Chapter 31
When he wakes up, Hunter is sitting on a hospital gurney. He’s able to sit up, but trying to move his right hand, he finds it chained to a railing. He jiggles the handcuffs a few times just to make sure they won’t come loose.
“You keep doing that, you’ll give yourself a bruise,” a man says. Hunter turns to see a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper crewcut. He’s wearing green fatigues that give his last name as Briggs and his rank as a colonel. “I’m Colonel Carson Briggs. I’m in charge of this facility.”
> “Major Hunter Hawking—”
“I know. My boys told me what you said. We got a message a couple of days ago from Commander Wayne, so I’m obliged to believe you. There is a small matter of why an Air Force pilot is flying a Marine aircraft.”
“It works a lot better for close support.”
“How’d you learn to fly it?”
“Trial-and-error mostly.”
“Where’s Commander Wayne?”
“They should be back on the highway yet. They’re probably camping out somewhere to get here in the morning.”
“And you thought you’d climb down the mountain in the middle of the night. Takes real guts to do something like that. Or insanity. You a Section Eight?”
“No, but these are crazy times we live in. How long have you been here, Colonel?”
“Two years. We occasionally pick up some radio traffic. Doesn’t sound like things are going real well out there.”
“Some of us have been trying to change that. I’m sure we could use your help. How many boys you got in here?”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge that. Not yet.”
“That’s fine. What I really need to know is if you got room for about two hundred civilians. Women. And not for entertaining your troops either.”
“I see. There are no planes, are there?”
“There are, but they’re back in Arizona, being reassembled. We have a more immediate use for them.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge that. Not yet.”
“Now’s not the time to get smart with me, son.”
“I can tell you once we have an agreement about the safety of the people with Commander Wayne. Can you accommodate them or not?”
“We could. There might be a discipline problem bringing in two hundred women with a bunch of guys who haven’t seen one in two years.”
“I’m sure we can work something out. You have supplies enough to handle them?”
“This place was built to handle a whole division. I’m not going to say how many are here, but it’s a lot less than that.”
Army of the Damned (Sky Ghost #1) Page 28