Skyfire

by Maloney, Mack;

  Less than a minute later, Nushi’s column roared around the bend in the highway to find the 150-foot bridge which spanned a wide dry gorge was still intact.

  But not for long.

  Suddenly three 122-mm shells flashed out of the sky and came crashing down dead center on the bridge. There was a huge explosion that was so sudden and violent that all of the drivers in Nushi’s column instinctively slammed on their brakes.

  Nushi was almost ejected from his turret by the screeching stop. Once he regained his balance, he peered through the smoke, dust, and flame to see that most of the bridge was gone.

  He was stunned by this sudden turn of events. Kicking his driver on the back of his head, he indicated he wanted to move right up to the edge of the ruptured span. The rest of the column followed.

  Beyond the separated bridge, the hills began. But where were the Pacific Americans? There was no way they had time to cross the span before his artillerymen had dropped it. So where were they?

  He ordered his driver to stop completely as soon as they reached the edge of the wrecked and smoking bridge.

  “Ssshh!” he hissed to his men.

  Suddenly it was very quiet. There was no noise—no engines, no horses’ hooves, no whispered voices.

  Where could they be?

  That was when he heard it.

  The strain of a truck engine, not too far off. He turned his vehicle’s powerful spotlight to his right and discovered a narrow service road which led down into the dry riverbed. Lifting the beam up slightly, he caught the reflection of the rear of the tractor-trailer truck about a quarter mile away.

  He had them.

  Cautiously, he directed his column down the service road and out onto the dry riverbed. All the while he kept the Americans captured in the searchlight. It was rather a pathetic scene. Many of the horsemen had dismounted and the gang of Americans were desperately trying to push the squealing, skidding tractor trailer up the sharp incline of the far bank.

  He laughed once and checked his watch. It was exactly midnight. Perfect, he thought. He would begin this glorious day by annihilating the last pocket of enemy resistance in the newly conquered land.

  That was when the ground beneath his vehicle started shaking.

  He turned left and right, trying frantically to find the source of the increasingly violent rumbling.

  Suddenly one of his junior officers cried out, “Tsunami!”

  Nushi spun around and saw to his horror an immense wall of water bearing down on them from the opposite end of the wash.

  “The gods no!” Nushi screamed. The gigantic rush of water had appeared so suddenly, it didn’t look real somehow.

  But it was too late to escape, too late to scream anything else. Too late to do anything but await the deadly wave of rushing water.

  In his last instant of life, the terrified Nushi knew he would spend eternity wondering from where did the tidal wave come.

  The Pacific American column continued on into the night, reaching the rugged hills around Soda Lake by 4 AM.

  Only then did they stop to rest.

  The horses were brought down into a shallow ravine, where they were fed and lightly watered. The truck was backed into a rocky blind and quickly covered with desert camouflage netting as were the HumVees. A watch was posted and the rest of the men sacked out for what could only be a three-hour sleep until it was light and time to move again.

  “Crunch” didn’t even bother to bed down. He hadn’t slept in days and didn’t figure to start now. Instead he climbed the tallest hill and sat next to the young Pacific American soldier on watch and stared out toward the west.

  He had no idea what had happened back at the dry river; no idea where the massive wave of water had come from. What he did know was it had saved their lives and vanquished their enemies. But strange as it was, “Crunch” realized it was only a very temporary victory. He’d been in too many wars to think of it as anything else. The Asians would be after them again by sunrise, with their vicious combination of massive numbers and fanatical determination.

  Sometimes it seemed that there was no stopping them.

  “Crunch’s” small band of cavalry and mismatched soldiers had taken out about six hundred of the enemy in the past few weeks and still they kept on coming at them. Like one long human wave, streaming over the Pacific, an endless line. Invading his country.

  That was why “Crunch” couldn’t sleep. No matter how bad it was awake, he couldn’t bear to dream about it as well.

  He and the others were heading east—to where? The Asian Forces controlled just about everything to the Nevada border and, at the rate of their conquest, they’d be over the Rockies within a month. Even if “Crunch” and the others made it across what used to be Kansas and into Missouri, then what? On the other side of the Mississippi waited an enemy that was even larger, even more barbaric than the Asian Forces.

  These were the forces of the Fourth Reich—the other half of the combined Second Axis. When the vanguard of Norse invaders attacked the East Coast months before, little did anyone know that it was just a feint of what was to come. That was, the massive, coordinated two-prong invasion of the American continent by a new, enormous enemy: the Second Axis.

  Like a bad nightmare from the early 1940s, the Second Axis combined the strengths of two massive mercenary armies. One was made up almost exclusively of renegade Asian military sects, the other nothing less than the rebirth of the fascist Germanic state. It was only after the Norse invaders were stopped in a titanic pinnacle battle on the eastern coast of Florida that the United American Armed Forces realized that the Norse invasion had been simply a way of deflecting the UAAF from what really lay out beyond the horizon. The UAAF was a clever, highly skilled group. They had won several wars and had finally succeeded in reuniting a fractured America. The Norse invasion was a bold ruse indeed to have tricked such a hearty alliance. No sooner had the Norse amphibious force been stopped when the power of the Fourth Reich showed itself, in the form of a massive air strike launched from somewhere out at sea, presumably from an aircraft carrier.

  In one bold stroke, the Fourth Reich fascists wiped out most of what was left of the United Americans’ small but respected air force, and thus immobilized most of its ground forces. Already battered and bleeding from the bloodcurdling Norse onslaught, the East Coast was totally unprepared for the massive sea and air blitzkrieg carried out by the Fourth Reich. Just like the coordinated Asian invasion of the West Coast, much of the fighting was quick and brutal. The American armies on the East Coast surrendered in light of a threat to destroy a major city and incinerate hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians via a sub-launched nuclear weapon.

  It had all happened so quickly. That was what bothered “Crunch” the most. They didn’t even have a chance to fight. And in the process, he’d lost at least two of his best friends. One was Elvis, his longtime partner in the fighter-bomber unit for hire known as “The Ace Wrecking Company.” Elvis was last seen taking off for a reconnaissance mission over an area west of Hawaii to check out rumors of a massive invasion force sailing eastward. The rumors were true: the invaders turned out to be the Asian Forces. Elvis was never heard from again.

  His second friend lost was Hawk Hunter. The Wingman. The one person more than any other who had been responsible for pulling the shattered American nation together once again. After the air strike by the mysterious carrier force off Florida, Hunter had taken off in his Harrier jump jet with several weapons strapped underneath and headed out to find the floating airfield.

  He never returned.

  And now here was “Crunch,” just about the last of the top officers of the United Americans still living and not in a POW camp, sitting on top of a barren hill. He was being chased by an enemy who wanted his country only because they were envious and not respectful of their own. And all he had left, really, was the contents of the dilapidated tractor-trailer truck.

  It was a sad situation.

  “How lon
g do we have, sir?” the young soldier on watch suddenly asked him. He too was staring out to the west. “How long before they catch us?”

  “Crunch” considered the frank, gloomy question for a moment.

  “We’ve got the rest of our lives,” he replied finally.

  It wasn’t until the next morning, when they gained the higher ground, that they saw the cause of the miraculous tidal wave had a very earthy explanation.

  Off in the distance they could see the remains of a large irrigation dam which had burst, instantly flooding just about every dry riverbed in the area. By using long-range binoculars, they could see by the long streaks of black soot along its cracked sides that the dam had obviously been blown up, either by set explosives or a well-placed bomb.

  But just who was responsible for destroying the dam and why was impossible for them to know.

  Part One: A Man of Water

  Chapter One

  Black Rock, Indiana

  MIKE FITZGERALD YANKED AT his overly starched priest’s collar and muttered a curse.

  “Goddamn thing. Cutting off my windpipe, you are.”

  He was trudging down a very dusty road, the miserable summer’s heat making his long, black wool priest’s cassock seem twice as heavy and twice as hot.

  “Next time you impersonate someone, check out the wardrobe first.”

  He’d been talking to himself a lot lately. Perhaps it was the first clue that this priestly charade was, in fact, driving him mad. Or maybe it was his body reacting to the fact that no whiskey had touched his lips in months. Or that he had not seen a grown woman in just as long, never mind touch one.

  “A little of all three, I suppose.”

  His present location only made things worse. It was flat—flat as far as the eye could see. The only diversion in the landscape were some low hills to the south. Everything else was dry pastureland, withered cornstalks and acres of sallyweeds. It was a virtual hell for him, having grown up and thrived in noisy, boozy, wet, lusty urban landscapes.

  About a mile down this straight, dusty, hot road was a place formerly known as Kathryn, Indiana. Located about twenty miles to the southeast of what used to be Lafayette, Indiana, the small typically Midwest American town had been renamed Bundeswehr Four. It was the capital of the Fourth Military District of the Fourth Reich Occupying Forces, an area that encompassed all territory north up to the city of New Chicago, south to the former city of Terre Haute, east to the old, virtually abandoned state capital of Indianapolis and west to old Illinois Route 57.

  “Bummer Four,” Fitzgerald spit out, as the string of gun towers surrounding the small city came into view. “Maybe another Dachau someday.”

  A short, sharp peel of a siren startled Fitz out of his sullen thoughts. He swung around to find a column of Spahpanzer armed recon vehicles and Panhard VBL Scout Cars tearing down the road.

  He barely had time to jump out of the way as the first Spahpanzer roared by. The soldier sitting in the turret spit at him, but Fitz neatly dodged the expectoration.

  “You need a bath, priest!” the soldier yelled at him, laughing.

  It was all Fitz could do to restrain himself from letting rip a stream of select expletives. But such an act would immediately blow his cover as a man of the cloth, a profession that most of these neo-Nazi invaders curiously found nonthreatening.

  He stood in the road ditch as the column roared by, many of the soldiers cursing at him in German and flashing universally understood obscene hand signals. Fitz retaliated by continuously making the sign of the cross as stoically as possible, while keeping his nasty curses under his breath.

  The VBL scout car at the end of the column screeched to a stop in front of him. An officer stared out the open door, taking a full measure of Fitz’s priest garb.

  “What are you doing out here?” the officer asked him in a harsh, heavy German accent.

  “Tending the flock, sir,” Fitz replied in his best holyman’s voice.

  “Don’t give me that!” the officer screamed. “Your bromides are not an excuse for being out of the perimeter!”

  Fitz gently raised his hand to interrupt the officer.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said, his voice fighting to stay calm. “I was tending the flock. The sheep, sir?”

  The flustered officer turned to his driver and spat out a stream of German. The driver demurely replied that one of the priest’s duties was to care for the herd of sheep and goats that grazed in the pastureland several miles outside of town.

  The officer’s face went red in a second. He punched his driver on the shoulder, ordering him forward. As the driver put the scout car in gear, the officer turned back toward Fitz, spit at him and then roared off.

  “Someday, you bastards,” Fitz swore under his breath. “You’ll all pay for this.”

  After walking for twenty more minutes, Fitz finally reached the edge of Bummer Four.

  Here was Bundeswehr’s reason for being: the massive air field constructed by the Fourth Reich soldiers in less than two months using thousands of slave laborers. It was also a symbol of why the Nazi invasion of the American continent had been so complete and over so quickly.

  Unlike many of the enemies Fitz and his United American allies had fought during the years since the end of World War III and the subsequent fractionalization of America, the Second Axis realized that the true secret to military dominance was the critical application of air power. Past foes of United America—primarily the long gone Soviet-backed Circle Army, the pre-natal Panama Canal Nazis of the Twisted Cross and the White Supremacist armies of the repugnant Knights of the Burning Cross—had all used air power to certain degrees. But just like the United Americans themselves, the quality of that aerial force was borderline Grade B in most cases.

  Fighter planes, attack bombers, recon craft and other instruments of true air power were always in chronic short supply in America, due mostly to the rather irrational disarmament agreements forged after the Third World War. Even at its height, the post-World War III United American Air Corps numbered less than 200 fighter/attack planes and the vast majority of these were elderly machines like F-4 Phantoms, F-101 Voodoos, A-4 Skyhawks, F-104 Starfighters and F-106 Delta Darts. What’s more, the aircraft flown by the various air pirate gangs which roamed rather freely across the post-war American skies were even more ancient: F-100 Super Sabres, F-89 Scorpions, even some Korean War vintage F-86 Sabre jets. The bottom line was that many of these airplanes were decades older than the men flying them.

  But while the quality of most of the equipment on both sides was hardly state-of-the-art, it created a kind of balance of power. Simply put, if everyone was driving old stuff, then the playing field was even.

  There was one exception though: the F-16XL once flown by Hawk Hunter. It was an airplane which far surpassed anything else flying at the time. But now it, like its famous pilot, were long gone.

  While secretly gathering their forces in Europe for the huge transAtlantic attack on America, the Fourth Reich had stockpiled a modern air force larger than some belonging to major countries before World War III. They did this by two means. One, the timely acquisition of an entire carrier wing of pre-war aircraft, and two, the discovery of two hundred fighter aircraft that had been hidden away during the frenzy of disarmament which followed the cessation of hostilities of World War III. In two bold strokes, the Fourth Reich assembled an air force of the most modern aircraft ever made: US Navy F-14 Tomcats, F/A-18 Hornets and A-6 Intruders; European Tornados, Jaguars, Mirages and Viggens; Soviet Floggers, Fitters and even some rare Su-24 Fencers.

  All of this, plus an impressive array of in-flight refueling aircraft, backup cargo and logistics airplanes and a large fleet of helicopters of all types, made the Fourth Reich the premier air power on the planet. They were so rich in airplanes that just a few weeks before they transferred more than 50 units to their Second Axis’s allies, the Asian Forces presently occupying the American West Coast. Granted, most of the units were elderly Uni
ted American types captured during the lightning invasion.

  Now as Fitz walked past the huge, recently completed airfield, he counted by habit the number of aircraft parked out on the runway. The tally came to 43, mostly Tornados and Jaguars, with an odd Mirage or Viggen about, but no U.S. Navy craft. Still it was a formidable force sitting out on the freshly laid tarmac, not even counting the dozen or so airplanes that were always airborne and constantly patrolling above the Bundeswehr Four military district like murderous hawks looking for prey.

  All in all, it was a sight that sickened him. Another reminder of just how firmly the country, that he and his friends and millions of people like them had fought so hard to preserve, was under the brutal Nazi heel.

  “Maybe it’s best that Hawk isn’t alive to see this,” he murmured sadly, resuming the ongoing conversation with himself. “And maybe I’m the fool for just hanging on.”

  It took another half hour for Fitz to reach his eventual destination, a little red schoolhouse on the far southern end of the city.

  It looked like something out of a 1950s magazine pictorial, with its freshly painted white picket fence and tiny well-maintained flower garden intact. It was once a public elementary school. Now it was The Fourth Reich Reeducation Center #5781.

  Fitz steamed every time he saw the meticulously hand-painted sign, imagining that the 5,780 other “reeducation centers” scattered across the divided, conquered country probably looked just as quaint. Just as perfect. Just as hideous.

  “Propaganda swill holes,” he mumbled, adjusting his clerical collar again. “I think I’d rather face a firing squad.”

  But his work here was important. He was certain of this. So it was necessary, for a few moments anyway, to buck up, take the deep breath, and prepare to act priestly.

  He hurried up the white stone walk and through the front door where two heavily armed guards scrutinized his ID cards before letting him proceed. Walking down the long dark corridor, he reached the familiar green door and went in.