Skyfire

by Maloney, Mack;

  And although his gut was telling him that Dominique and his friend were not anywhere nearby—and never yet had his sixth sense of his been wrong—there was still the chance that other kidnapped Americans were being held on the boat.

  “Well, whenever the hell it was built, it’s ours now,” the Commander suddenly boasted, breaking into Hunter’s thoughts. “It took these bastards to come to Long Island to finally get their asses whipped.”

  Hunter began to say something, but thought better of it. He knew the militia officer was assuming that this boat was the one and only vessel belonging to the raiders. Hunter doubted this, though. With the number of attacks reported in New England three days before, the numbers just didn’t add up.

  The Commander quickly radioed the other boats in his small fleet to stop and prepare for boarding.

  “Just like we planned it,” he said over and over into his radio microphone. “We don’t need any screw-ups at this point.”

  Hunter checked the ammunition in his M-16 and adjusted his crash helmet. There was a good chance that someone was still alive aboard the sub, and if they chose to fight, they would prove to be a troublesome adversary. For although more than three hundred raiders had died at Montauk Point, not all of them had been killed by the militiamen or by Hunter’s cannons. Rather, more than one hundred of them had died by their own hand, killing themselves after realizing that, despite their ferocity and just plain dumb courage, their battle had been lost.

  The very thought of that had been giving Hunter the creeps all morning. Only fanatics choose suicide over defeat, and from painful experience he knew the worst kind of enemy was a fanatical one.

  After five minutes of shaky maneuvering, the small militia flotilla had finally surrounded the big sub. At that point, the Commander gave the word to board the vessel.

  Hunter, Goldstein, and the Commander himself were among the first to climb up onto the boat’s deck. Then a fishing boat pulled alongside and deposited twenty-five distinctive, green-uniformed soldiers on to the sub. These men, all of them veterans of World War III as well as the various postwar continental campaigns, composed the militia’s shock troop unit. They had volunteered to go into the sub first.

  Once he saw that the rest of his troops were standing close by, the Commander left Goldstein in charge of the top side and then gave the signal for the special forces to enter the sub.

  With Hunter and the Commander in the lead, the small force squeezed down through the conning tower hatchway and into a long pitch-black corridor below.

  Right away it was apparent to all that this was no ordinary submarine—outside or inside.

  By the light of a powerful flashlight attached to Hunter’s M-16, they could all see that the walls of the corridor were adorned with hundreds of bizarre symbols. Birds, dragons, schools of fish, seals, trees, snowflakes, grapevines, all mixed in with strange lettering—a kind of hieroglyphics, Hunter supposed.

  Moving down the passageway, the symbols on the wall changed from letters and pictures to murals of battle scenes featuring black-uniformed, axe-wielding, bugle-blowing soldiers in combat against indefinable, almost generic-type enemies. There were doors all along this dark hallway, but each one had been welded shut. Removing his glove and feeling the area around one weld, Hunter nearly burned his finger, evidence that the sealing operation had taken place just recently. That also accounted for the acrid smell in the air of the passage.

  They worked their way down the corridor and into the control room. Again, all the indications were that the boat was hardly like anything ever built before. The vast steering deck was also covered with hundreds of the strange symbols, but there were surprisingly few actual controls. The steering mechanisms were especially rudimentary, as were the levers for the ballasting action. The few computers in sight looked to be about vintage 1958, and try as he might, Hunter could not even find a periscope. Nor were there any controls which might be tied into any kind of weapons systems.

  “It’s so big,” the Commander said, “yet so, well … primitive.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Hunter replied.

  Leaving six of the shock troops in the control room, Hunter and the others pressed on into the midsection of the boat. They found more welded doors and even more extravagant murals on the walls and ceiling. The acrid smell gave way to another odor, this one, however, of definite human origin.

  “God, it stinks worse than a locker room down here” is how one of the shock troops so aptly put it.

  The stench got worse as they approached a set of double hatches. Seeing they were not welded, Hunter and the troops carefully unlocked them and pulled them open. A massive wave of body odor was waiting for them on the other side.

  “Jeesuzz,” Hunter said, quickly wrapping his red cowboy style kerchief around his nose and mouth. “These guys ever hear of soap?”

  The room they’d entered was a large barracks type affair, with stacked beds reaching five and six bunks high. The place was a human pigsty. The floor was covered with all kinds of trash, from greasy rags and ripped, discarded clothing to empty cans of oil and piles of fish bones. One corner of the room was apparently used as an open latrine. And instead of mattresses and blankets, the bunks were covered with little more than collections of filthy animal skins and tacky furs.

  “We’re dealing with some very strange people here,” Hunter said with classic understatement.

  On Hunter’s suggestion, the militia commander assigned four unlucky soldiers to count the number of bunks inside the dark and dirty chamber. Holding their noses and working quickly, the men reported a total of 173.

  “That’s bad news,” the Commander said. “Because if we don’t find another barracks like this, that means—”

  “… that there was more than one sub off your position last night,” Hunter finished the sentence for him. “And that means they have at least two of these things and most likely many more.”

  With the militia commander’s ego deflated slightly, they moved through the smelly compartment and into the powerplant of the boat. This was where they got their biggest surprise.

  “Coal?” the Commander exclaimed when he first spotted the large pile of bituminous material inside the power chamber. “This is too unbelievable …”

  At first glance, Hunter had to agree. A submarine powered by coal? But on closer inspection he discovered that whoever built the vessel might have cut corners on the aesthetics, but they had come up with an ingenious way of fueling its propulsion units.

  “They don’t burn coal in the usual way,” Hunter explained, pointing to the igloolike structure in the middle of the power compartment. “This thing is a coal gasification unit. It breaks down the coal and converts it into a gas.”

  He walked past the igloo to the bank of turbines at the far end of the large compartment.

  “They burn the gas in these turbines,” he said, inspecting the four compact but powerful, jet-enginelike machines. “And they turn the propellers and provide electricity to the boat’s systems. The beauty of it is they don’t have to use very much coal to get the gas they need.”

  “Amazing,” the militia commander whispered.

  “It gets better,” Hunter replied, walking over to two larger turbines which were situated right up against the bulkhead wall. “It looks like they’ve built in a recycling aspect, too. These are steam-driven turbines. My guess is that they can recover some of the heat from the gas turbines’ operation, use it to boil water, then make steam and drive these babies for even more power.”

  The Commander was astonished at the propulsion system’s makeup. “Do you mean that despite its size and lack of sophistication, this boat has power to spare?” he asked.

  “This one does, yes,” Hunter replied. “And it also means they can stay at sea for extended periods of time without refueling.”

  At that moment, one of the shock troopers left behind in the control room came running into the power chamber.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he
called out to the commander. “But you’d better come up to the control room. We just found some people …”

  Five minutes later, Hunter, the Commander, and a squad of militiaman were staring at a very curious sight.

  They were in a room just aft of the control center, one that had been welded shut before some industrious LISDF troopers decided to break in. Once through, they had discovered twenty-two individuals, calmly sitting cross-legged in the middle of the otherwise bare room chattering away in some foreign language, practically oblivious to the fact that they had just been captured. It did appear as if these men—all of them bearded, dirty, and obscenely smelly—were discussing their situation. Yet they were so serene about it, they looked like nothing more than a bunch of Boy Scouts sitting around talking about slipknots and such.

  “Can this all get any stranger?” the Commander whispered to Hunter.

  “Don’t ask,” Hunter replied.

  The senior officer cocked his good ear toward the circle of smelly men. “What language are they speaking?” he asked. “It’s not German, is it?”

  Hunter gave a long listen, but the prisoners were talking so rapidly, it was hard to pick up many key words.

  Still, Hunter had a theory.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s at least part Scandinavian,” he told the Commander.

  “Well,” the senior officer huffed, “if they think that just by ignoring us, we’ll go away, they’re very wrong.”

  With that he pulled out his .45 Colt pistol and fired two shots into the compartment’s ceiling.

  This act immediately got the prisoners’ attention.

  “Who are you people?” the senior officer yelled at the group, now staring at him with expressions of anger and disbelief. “Why have you attacked us?”

  The men looked at each other and shrugged.

  Two more bullets into the ceiling brought only more stares and shrugs. “Where is your captain?” the Commander yelled. “Why are you here?”

  Despite the bombastic effort, it was quickly obvious to Hunter that the Commander’s tactics weren’t working.

  “Can I give it a try, sir?” he asked the officer.

  With a nod from the Commander, Hunter walked into the middle of the circle of strange men. Picking out the one he judged to be the biggest, he strategically aimed his M-16 at the floor between the man’s legs.

  “This always works,” Hunter muttered over his shoulder to the militia commander.

  Then he pulled the trigger.

  The victim, a bear of an individual with an especially slimy beard, literally jumped four feet into the air. When he came back down, Hunter instantly had his boot on the man’s throat and his hot gun muzzle on his nose.

  “Who?” Hunter asked simply, pointing to the man.

  “Theut” was the terrified reply.

  “This?” Hunter asked, sweeping his free hand around to indicate the boat itself.

  “Knorr Kristsuden …” the man answered, his nose beginning to run due to the heat on snout of the M-16. “Krig Bat Seks …”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Godthaab …”

  Holding his own nose, Hunter quickly searched the man. All he found was a kind of religious card, sealed in plastic. It depicted a crude picture of the earth, with a huge snake wrapped around it.

  Hunter then reached inside his flight-suit pocket and pulled out the photograph of Dominique that he always kept there.

  He shoved the photo right between the man’s eyes.

  “Seen her?” he asked, just barely controlling his anger.

  The man was absolutely petrified, as if he knew exactly why Hunter was asking the question.

  “Na … na!” he babbled shaking his head. “Knorr Kristsuden na for skraelings.”

  Hunter suppressed the urge to kick the man in the head. Instead, he went back over to the Commander.

  “Did you understand any of that?” the militia officer asked him.

  “Not really,” Hunter answered. “He’s definitely speaking some kind of northern European dialect though, maybe even a new one. Either that, or possibly a combination of several languages.”

  “He seemed to be telling you that this boat didn’t carry prisoners …” the Commander said.

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Hunter said, studying the plastic card he’d taken from the man. Just then, a thought popped into his head. “Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless this picture is of Midgardsomr,” Hunter answered somewhat mysteriously. “And if it is …”

  Suddenly he turned and ran out the door. Moving down the long corridor in a flash, he quickly climbed up the conning-tower ladder and then out onto the deck itself.

  Most of the militiamen were milling around in small groups onto the deck, inspecting the length of the strange vessel. Hunter, however, headed right for the bow.

  Curiously, several ravens had landed on this far end deck of the sub. They flapped away with a squawk as he approached. Still, he could only get within fifteen feet or so of the nose of the sub, as it was submerged due to the damage to the aft end of the boat. Yet there was something down there that he had to see. He was formulating a very way-out theory in his mind, one that he had to confirm, and he knew a very important clue might be attached to the snout of the boat.

  After laying his M-16 down on the deck, he quickly removed his flight suit and helmet. Then, using a battered but still-attached hand railing, he slowly made his way down the bow of the boat toward the sunken tip.

  The militia commander had arrived on the scene by this time, and, joined by a curious gang of militiaman, he watched and wondered just what the hell Hunter was up to.

  Hunter eased himself down into the water until it was up to his neck. Then, taking several large gulps of air, he went under, still holding onto the railing.

  The saltwater stung his eyes briefly, but it was a small price to pay for what he saw. Attached to the nose of the submarine was a frighteningly realistic wood-and-plastic mockup of a sea monster’s head.

  I don’t believe this, Hunter thought.

  Not only was this head fashioned to exact proportions, its green skin and brown stringy mane were made of some pliable material which allowed it to move and sway and nod just like a living creature. The workmanship was so good that Hunter took a couple of extra seconds to admire it before easing himself back up to the boat’s deck.

  The Commander was there to help him up the last few steps, and now, completely soaked, Hunter shook himself to get rid of some of the excess water. Then he explained to the Commander what he had just seen.

  “It’s unbelievable,” he said, still shaking his head in astonishment.

  “But what does it mean, Major?” the militia officer asked.

  Hunter retrieved the picture card the prisoner had given him.

  “This is a picture of Midgardsomr,” he said, spitting out some seawater that had crept into his mouth. “It’s the most enduring of all the ancient Teutonic symbols. A thousand years ago, people of northern Europe believed that this serpent protected them from evil spirits. They believed it so much, they used to carve them everywhere, including on the bows of their ships.

  “Now some militiamen up in Massachusetts took a video of what looked a hell of a lot like a sea monster off their coast a few days ago. All they saw, though, was the head, and then only for a few seconds. But the thing looked damn real. Well, I just saw what they saw, and its on the bow of this sub and probably on the bow of as many subs as these guys have.”

  The Commander was shaking his head furiously by this time.

  “Well, the subs explain how these people were able to get so close in to our shores without being seen,” the man said. “But this lifelike monster head. What does it mean? Are you saying that we are being invaded by an army of … what? Ancient Teutonics?”

  “No, sir,” Hunter replied. “What I’m saying is that we’re being invaded by an army of Vikings …”


  Chapter Twenty-two

  Ninety miles off the coast of Long Island

  THE ONLY ILLUMINATION IN the small cabin came from a single waning candle.

  In this flickering light, six men and one woman sat around a small fold-down table, speaking in hushed tones.

  “This was likely to happen sooner or later,” one man said. “We couldn’t expect them to continue to make landings without meeting some well-armed opposition eventually.”

  “True,” another man said. “But this was not a regular military unit. We know they were not United American troops, but rather a local militia. It was the airplane that turned the tide.”

  “Airplane?” the woman asked harshly. “This is the first I’ve heard of an airplane being involved.”

  The six men eyed each other worriedly. No one wanted to speak. The woman was as well known for her violent temper.

  “There was an airplane, my lady,” one man finally murmured. “It was this airplane that saved the defending skraeling troops.”

  “And was it this airplane that also destroyed the troopship?” the woman demanded, pulling the dark hood she always wore closer to her face, giving her the appearance of a female Grim Reaper.

  “Yes, my lady,” several men answered at once.

  “Apparently the Krig Bat took a direct hit on its propellers before it could submerge,” another explained.

  A frightening silence descended upon the room.

  “So not only did this attack fail,” the woman said finally. “Now the enemy knows many of our secrets as well.”

  “Those men from the troopship met their deaths bravely, my lady,” said one man boldly. “And they believed that if they die with honor, then they do not die for no reason.”

  “That’s nonsense!” the woman said in a voice so chilling that all six men involuntarily flinched. “If you die without achieving your objective, then your death is meaningless.”

  “No …” another of the men half shouted. “It is the honor of death in battle that is important.”