Skyfire

by Maloney, Mack;

  Eventually the orange ball on the sun passed over them and sank down into the now-greenish waters of Cape Cod Bay.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, the glow making her features even more radiant. “Beautiful as always …”

  “Sure is,” he agreed softly, taking a deep breath and then asking her: “How do you say ‘This is the life’ in French?”

  Chapter Nine

  Nova Scotia

  LIEUTENANT COMMANDER STAN YASTREWSKI—“Yaz” to his friends—finally eased the tracked vehicle out of the woods and onto the deserted highway, triumphantly shifting into second gear for the first time in hours.

  “Never thought I’d be so damn glad to see asphalt,” he whispered to himself as he brought the ancient two-ton half-track up to thirty-five miles per hour on the otherwise empty two-lane turnpike.

  He checked the time—it was just 11 PM. With luck he’d be back in the coastal town of Yarmouth within the hour. But that would be about fifty-nine minutes too long a trip for him—he was cold, unwashed, unshaven, and his stomach was growling like a polar bear. The muscles in the lower part of his back were in open revolt, spasmatically stinging him as punishment for the seven hours of bumping and jostling he’d just put them through.

  Yaz had been plowing through the dense Nova Scotia wilderness since four that afternoon. The word “grueling” didn’t even come close to describing the trip. “Pure torture” would have been closer to the mark. Yet, beneath his grumbling and discomfort, Yaz knew it had all been necessary. The location of the place he had visited was one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world. Being built seven hours from the nearest road was essential in keeping it that way.

  Its official name was Kejimkujik Station. It was little more than two small structures built into the side of a mountain in such a way as to be invisible from the air. The mountain itself was on the edge of the Tobeatic Game Sanctuary, a place as far away from anything as one could get on Nova Scotia.

  Kejimkujik was not a military installation per se. Rather it was a prison—one which held only one man. Yet this prisoner was so notorious that the isolated jail had been built just for him. It was a place where he would serve out a life sentence for the most damaging crime of all, that of betraying his country.

  It may have struck some as ironic that the ex-vice president of the United States would be imprisoned in a foreign country. But to the leaders of the United American government, the arrangements made perfect sense. After his conviction on numerous counts of treason—the most damaging being his aiding and abetting the anti-glasnost Soviet clique known as Red Star in their nuclear sneak attack that had obliterated the center of the United States at the end of World War III—the ex-VP was sentenced to life in solitary confinement. Although the government quietly announced that the “most likely site” of the prisoner’s incarceration would be a military prison in Point Barrow, Alaska, the real plans called for him to be shipped to the Kejimkujik facility, which had been built by the Free Canadians for just such a purpose.

  The assassination attempt on the ex-VP by the deranged Elizabeth Sandlake only postponed the prisoner’s eventual transfer to Kejimkujik; once he had recovered from his wounds in a Canadian hospital, the quisling was transported via half-track to the secret jail in the middle of the Nova Scotia wilderness.

  Within minutes of his arrival, he was locked inside a bare, windowless room that held a large American flag as its only wall decoration.

  It was here that the man would contemplate his crimes until he died.

  Because operating the secret jail was a joint effort between the Free Canadian and United American governments, providing for its security was also a shared affair, and this was the reason for Yaz’s trip. As part of the inner circle of General Dave Jones and the United American Armed Forces Command Yaz had been asked by Jones to make the required monthly trip to the Kejimkujik to meet with the prison’s Free Canadian security officer.

  During the two-day visit, Yaz had been briefed on several new security procedures instituted at the jail. He also spoke with the contingent of Football City Special Forces Rangers who served as half the guard force, and was now carrying back a sack of mail for them to be first screened and then delivered to their families.

  All in all it had been a routine trip—it was the manner of transport to the place that proved to be unbearable, yet painfully necessary. He just wished someone had told him that shock absorbers were not standard equipment on Free Canadian Army half-tracks.

  As part of the joint agreement, the Kejimkujik Station could not be approached by air. This rule was instituted because should someone want to free the prisoner it would be a relatively easy operation to track a flight in and out of the deep forest and thereby determine the jail’s top-secret location.

  Thus all access to the prison had to be made by land vehicle, and the noisy, uncomfortable, spine-wrecking half-tracks were the best means available for following the twisting, always changing, barely marked passage into the deep woods that surrounded Kejimkujik. Many times during the trip, Yaz mused that perhaps a more deserving punishment for the famous traitor would be to force him to make the torturous journey several times a week.

  A warm, dry, if bare, cell seemed like paradise in comparison.

  Yaz spotted the smoke about fifteen minutes after pulling out onto the paved highway.

  It was a tall column of black and gray directly to his south, a mushrooming plume that seemed frozen in the cool Nova Scotia summer night. His first reaction was to dismiss it—the smoke was probably nothing more than a small woods fire, burning somewhere near his destination of Yarmouth. There had been a lightning storm a couple of hours back, and it wasn’t unusual for a stray bolt to set a small patch of the dry forest aflame.

  But the closer he got to Yarmouth, the more he knew something was wrong. As he came within fifteen miles of the town, he saw that the smoke plume rising over the tops of the trees in the distance was actually being fed by several fires, possibly as many as a half dozen, and that the columns of sparks and ash shooting into the air were blue and green in color, indicating that more than wood was burning.

  Instinctively, he gunned the old half-track up to its top speed of 40 mph. Still, it took him more than fifteen minutes to drive to the top of the hill that lay on the outskirts of the town where he would have an unobstructed view of Yarmouth.

  When he got there he was horrified to discover that the entire town was in flames.

  Twenty heart-wrenching minutes later, Yaz was barreling the half-track through the burning streets of the seaport city, feeling like he was driving through a bad dream.

  The destruction was beyond description. It appeared as if every structure in the postcard seaport—from the small brick buildings in the center of town to the hundreds of fishing shacks and houses down near the water—was either burned to the ground or still on fire. What was more, the town was still being rocked by a series of explosions, telling Yaz that the small fuel storage depot next to the town’s docks was going up.

  And everywhere, he saw bodies.

  Even for a combat veteran like himself, it took a while before Yaz could determine just what had happened. A novice might have assumed that the fuel depot—it contained a good amount of highly volatile jet fuel—had exploded and set fire to the rest of the town. But Yaz knew better. He recognized the telltale signs of many fires individually set: Rows of houses were in varying degrees of burning, as if someone had run along the street torching them in a methodical fashion. Plus, most of the bodies were in the street, indicating that the victims had some kind of warning—albeit a short one—before disaster struck. Even worse, not all of the corpses were smoldering black skeletal wrecks. Judging from the number of bashed-in skulls, some had apparently been clubbed to death.

  But the most dastardly clue was the smell. On top of the sweet odor of wood smoke and the stink of jet fuel burning, the unmistakable scent of napalm—jellied gasoline used in aerial bombs—was thick in th
e air.

  Washington, DC

  Thirty minutes later the secure telex located in the Pentagon office of General Jones started buzzing.

  The night-duty officer attached to Jones’s command retrieved the short message, read it once, then immediately called over to Jones’s residence.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir,” the night officer explained to the still-yawning Commander in Chief. “But we’ve just received an urgent communiqué from Commander Yastrewski, via the Free Canadian Naval base at Halifax.”

  “Read it to me …” Jones replied.

  The night officer took a deep breath and then read the message through dry lips: “ ‘Port of Yarmouth attacked by unknown force before 1100 hours last. City completely devastated by fire. No survivors.’ ”

  Chapter Ten

  Off the coast of New Hampshire

  HIS NAME WAS ROOK, and this morning, like every other morning for the past two years, he arose and poured himself half a glass of whiskey.

  The weather was already getting warm, and as the harsh liquor made its way into his distended belly, he knew that another day of heavy lifting awaited him.

  The small island off the coast of the old city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, had been his home since the end of the second Circle War. A South African mercenary, Rook had fought on the losing side and was present at the resounding defeat of the Circle Army at the hands of the United American forces in the pivotal battle of Washington, DC.

  He deserted the field just minutes before his unit was wiped out by a United American air strike, and had spent the next few weeks making his way up through New England until he found the small deserted island and set up refuge. The ensuing two and a half years had passed in relative calm—all except, that is, for the day that the Soviet ICBM came crashing down onto his beach.

  It had happened almost a year before. Rook had been asleep as usual when a monstrous crashing noise just about threw him from his bed. Dashing from his log cabin hideout, he had been amazed to see the smoky remains of a huge Soviet SS-19 missile sticking up in the sand just above the high tide water mark on the east side of the island.

  His first reaction was to flee. He had been trained in the South African Army as an airborne explosives expert, and as such he knew an intercontinental ballistic missile when he saw one—especially one carrying a nuclear warhead.

  Yet, at the same time, he knew that whoever launched the missile had done so incorrectly. The object he had discovered that morning was very nearly an entire missile—launch stages, warhead, everything. The missile had not separated in the upper reaches of the earth’s atmosphere as it was supposed to. Instead, it had landed on his beach virtually intact.

  Knowing that the warhead could explode at anytime, Rook had hastily packed his things and took to his small boat almost immediately after the missile crashed. Making his way to shore, he hid in a cave for the next twelve hours, knowing that if the warhead did explode, it would be a waste of time trying to get out of the blast area.

  But when the nuclear device did not explode, he summoned up enough gumption to leave the cave and move into Portsmouth. He spent the next few months living in a partially abandoned section of the city.

  It was during this time that he realized that the missile sticking out of the sand back on his island was worth a fortune.

  One of the most profitable enterprises in postwar America was the black market, especially the segment dealing in weapons. Through a few whispered conversations, Rook was able to ascertain that the going rate for a nuclear device in repairable condition was a whopping five thousand bags of gold. With that kind of money, Rook knew he could make it to one of the Caribbean islands—hell, he could buy one of them!—invest in a couple of pounds of cocaine, purchase a bevy of female love slaves, and live the rest of his life in contented decadence.

  Just a few things stood in the way of his dream.

  One of them was that the warhead had to be detached from the missile in order to be sold, and that promised to be a hazardous operation—at least, at first. Just the radioactivity alone was enough to kill someone not handling the device correctly, and Rook had nothing in the way of protective clothing or instruments.

  So, with typical deviousness, he solved the problem at the expense of others. Hiring three men in a bar in Portsmouth, he offered them a small fortune to remove the warhead from the launcher. They foolishly agreed after he assured them that there was no danger present. Carting them to the island, he directed them from afar via walkie-talkie as they gingerly unscrewed the nosecone from the battered, rusting Soviet ICBM and retrieved the nuclear device.

  The entire operation had taken more than twelve hours. Then, once the trio had placed the warhead into a heavily leaded canister, they walked back to Rook’s cabin to demand payment. Keeping them at a distance, Rook explained to them with a cold rationality that he had lied to them and that they had been irreversibly irradiated.

  Then he simply shot all three of them to death.

  All this had happened a week before.

  Now, on this morning, with his glass of whiskey swilling in his belly, he began to steel himself for the next crucial part in his plan; hauling the heavy lead-lined cannister onto a raft he’d made and eventually sailing it back to Portsmouth.

  Rook took another swig of the bad whiskey and, thus bolstered, pulled on his trousers and boots and walked out of the cabin, whistling as he turned toward the beach.

  He never saw the axe, nor the man wielding it. All he felt was a cold yet sharp sensation on the back of his neck, which was replaced almost immediately by a gush of sticky warmth. He was dead an instant later, his collarbone, shoulder blade, and upper cervical vertebrae all neatly severed by one well-placed blow.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cape Cod

  THE MORNING DAWNED BRIGHT and sunny over Nauset Heights.

  Hunter was awakened by the first rays of the morning as they streamed into the farmhouse’s bedroom. Instantly the warm light pried his eyelids open, reminding him of the big day that lay ahead. Moving with characteristic agility, he gingerly disentangled himself from the beautiful, naked form of Dominique and quietly slipped out of the large brass bed.

  Silently moving down the creaky stairs, he reached the kitchen just as the automatic coffee maker was clicking on. A bowl of oat bran disappeared quickly enough, as did two cups of coffee. A trip to the head included a long, hot shower and a shave and, finally, he was ready to face the day.

  Walking out to his fields, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so enthusiastic. Today he would cut his hay crop, and all the indicators were looking good for the operation. The sky was clear, no rain was in the forecast, and the wind was at a minimum.

  But still, he needed to conduct one last test. Pulling up a single strand of grass, he tasted it and found it was sweeter than ever.

  That was all he needed.

  He ran back to the house and made a quick radio call to a phone located in the firehouse of the small seaport village of Nauset, just a mile away. Several days before, three of the local militiamen stationed there had offered to help Hunter pull in the harvest, and now he was taking them up on their neighborly offer. Once his help was on the way, he started up his tractor, got the cutter working, and headed out to the east high field.

  Minutes later he was happily cutting his first acre of pasture.

  The noise of the tractor had awakened Dominique.

  Now, through sleepy eyes and a cup of coffee, she watched from the side porch as Hunter steered the clanking beast through the field, slicing down swaths of hay in his wake.

  She had never seen him so happy—so vibrant in the little things of life. He was dwelling in the inconsequentials, reveling in the little pleasures. She knew that producing the hay crop had nothing to do with money or survival. Hunter had plenty of gold on hand, leftover payments from his days in the United American Armed Forces. In fact, harvesting the hay wasn’t necessary at all—but that was the beauty of it. For
the first time since she’d known him, Hunter was actually doing something he didn’t have to do.

  And that made all the difference.

  She smiled and waved to the three militiamen who arrived in their Chevy pickup a few minutes later. They graciously accepted a thermos of coffee from her, each man trying his best to avoid staring down the front of her plunging nightgown. With a tip of their militia caps they walked out into the field, had a brief conversation with Hunter, and soon enough were wielding large wooden rakes and spreading the hay out so it could dry properly.

  If the weather stayed good and all the hay was cut and spread on this day, then it could be bundled and stored and sold anytime after that.

  The job was done by four that afternoon.

  The work had gone surprisingly smoothly—all three of Hunter’s fields were cut and raked and bundled with daylight to spare. The only glitch developed when Hunter tried to pay the three militiamen at the end of the workday. All three adamantly refused any money. Still a novice concerning the customs of his neighbors, Hunter quickly realized that the trio was almost insulted when he tried to push a bag of silver on them.

  It was Dominique who saved the day, suggesting that as a return gesture for their help they all gather down on the west beach and steam some clams. This they heartily agreed to do. A quick call down to the village brought the militiamen’s girlfriends and two cases of ice-cold, newly bottled locally brewed beer.

  By the time the sun began to set over Cape Cod Bay, an old-fashioned New England clambake was in full swing.

  They all ate and drank and ate some more. When the sun finally dropped down into the bay, its fading light reflected off the warm water to give the illusion that the sky near the horizon was aflame.

  Hunter sat on the beach with Dominique and watched the unusual natural display.