by Mack Maloney
“5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … now!”
One second later, the sky to the north of them opened up. It appeared as if a geyser of bright red, fiery blood had suddenly boiled up from the nearby river and splattered to all sides. The sounds of the explosion came next, an incredible booming noise. A shock wave hit the building that very nearly knocked some of the troopers off their feet. Holding on in the hurricane-like wind, they strained to watch a huge mushroom of fire shoot straight up into the sky. The whole building shook as if it would crumble. The city was suddenly lit again as if it were high noon.
“Holy Christ!” Hunter whispered. Obviously, Cobra-Brother II had fulfilled his mission.
“Go! Go! Go!” Hunter heard himself yelling and it was no sooner said than done. The helipad door was blown open and the strike force was pouring inside. Below, the Cobra I started his first strafing run. Hunter could hear the confusion begin in the street as he followed the troopers through the door.
Digger Foxx fell off his bed when the LNG tank six miles away went up. He was one of the captured ZAP pilots who had spent the last seven months locked in the same room, an office-like affair located on the 48th floor. He had heard the helicopter come in, but had paid it no mind. Choppers were constantly shuttling ’Ak officials on and off the top of the building. This one sounded no different. He had just pushed aside the evening’s slop of a meal and was drifting off to sleep when the gas explosion occurred.
He quickly picked himself up off the floor and wiped a cut that had opened on his forehead. The building seemed to be swaying. He looked out the window only to see the blinding flash of the LNG going up. He was certain it was a nuclear bomb and he expected in the next moment to be swept away in the winds of the atomic blast. Good! he thought. At least I’ll take all of these fucking ’Aks with me.
Suddenly, the door burst open. Digger expected either to see a Mid-Ak executioner or the Grim Reaper. Instead, the face in the door was familiar.
“Hunter!” Foxx yelled. “What the hell …?”
“Digger, old boy,” Hunter said, smiling. “We’ve come to spring you.”
Then he was gone. Foxx could see the corridor was filled with heavily armed, black suited soldiers. He could hear gunfire further down the hall, and the noise of doors being broken down.
A trooper stopped at his door long enough to yell to him: “Get your ass up to the roof, pal!”
Foxx didn’t have to be told twice. He was out the door and bounding up the steps in a matter of seconds.
On the street below, Mid-Ak functionaries and soldiers were hugging for cover as the bright red Cobra gunship turned to make another strafing pass. Cobra Brother I had already destroyed six troop trucks and one of the Huey gunships parked in the building’s plaza. His missiles spent, he zoomed back down to street level and pulled a lever simply labeled FIRE. The front of the insect-like Cobra grew a long flickering tongue of flame. He slowed the ship up to a hover and, spinning in a tight, quick 360-degree circle, he set everything and everyone in range on fire.
He lifted himself out of the circle of fire and roared off, turned and returned to puncture the street with cannon fire again.
The Cobra made six passes before anyone started shooting back.
Mid-Ak soldiers inside the Government Building recovered from the initial shock and started flooding up to the top floors. They were met by the assault force at the 47th floor lobby and a fierce gun battle broke out. Most of the pilots were released by this time—20 in all—plus some of the monkeys and MPs that were being held. The rescued were herded up to the helipad and packed aboard the waiting Sea Stallion.
Hunter was everywhere during the firefight. Shooting it out with the ’Aks in the 47th floor lobby, helping the wounded to the upper stories, even breaking out a window to shoot at a surprised ’Ak gun crew on the building next door.
By now Mid-Ak forces on the outside were starting to react. Anti-aircraft crews were unlocking their guns, thinking that with the intensity of the flame from the gas explosion and the strafing of the Cobra, that a full scale air raid was under way. The gun crews, two located on a skyscraper directly across the street from the Government House, began opening up at random, shooting at what they thought were aircraft passing over. When they realized they were shooting at ghosts they turned their attention to the hand-to-hand fighting that was raging on the top floors of the Government Building and clearly visible through the windows of the building.
The officer of one of the gun crews realized that the helicopter with its engine running on top of the building wasn’t a Mid-Ak aircraft at all. He ordered his crew to turn the gun around and start blasting away. Other gunners were now also keying in on the top of the building. Two searchlights went up, their lazing beams highlighting the huge Sea Stallion chopper.
The gun crew officer was certain that his crew would zero in on the intruding chopper and blast it off the top of the building. But he heard a strange whirring noise behind him. When he turned to look, he was staring down the barrel of a flame tube on the nose of the Cobra gunship. He saw a spit of flame leap out of the muzzle then was aware that his clothes and those of his gun crew were suddenly engulfed in flames. He could clearly see the face of the helicopter pilot. It looked grim, fierce, determined. The next instant, he felt the sensation of his face melting away. There was no pain. He passed from life to death so quickly, his nerve endings were dispatched before the sensory messages reached the brain. A moment later he was little more than a pile of cinders blowing high above the streets of Boston.
The assault force located and freed the remaining ZAP monkeys and MPs. Then, their work done, the troopers started slowly moving back up toward the roof. Explosive experts left behind powerful delayed reaction bombs in their wake. All of the pilots and liberated prisoners were soon aboard the Stallion. Hunter would be glad later that he supercharged the engines, as there were nearly 80 people jammed into the Stallion’s cabin.
Meanwhile, the Wingman and a force of six troopers were holding off a large force of Mid-Aks on the observation deck of the building. The deck was lit by ultra-violet light, giving a dark spooky feeling to the place. Tracer bullets flew back and forth as Hunter’s small group pinned down the ’Aks with a continuous stream of fire. It was only when he was certain that all the prisoners were free and aboard the Stallion that he began moving up toward the roof himself.
The second Cobra had sped to the scene and was now adding fire to the conflagration that was the street below. Both small ships weaved back and forth, taking out AA guns that threatened the Sea Stallion, while continually strafing anything that moved near the Government Building.
Hunter finally reached the top floor, flipped his last grenade down the stairwell and bolted out onto the roof. The Sea Stallion was hovering by this time, troopers in the doorway were waving him along. The side gunners were blasting away with their M61 cannons at the Mid-Ak gun positions on the roofs around the Government Building. Bullets seemed to be flying everywhere as Hunter zigzagged across the helipad toward the chopper.
Suddenly, out of the night, yet another helicopter appeared. It was a Huey troop carrier, ferrying troops to the scene of the action. Its pilot, already committed to landing, was attempting to set the chopper down on the helipad just next to where the Sea Stallion hovered waiting to take off.
Someone aboard the Stallion pushed a button and all three of the GE Gatling guns locked onto the Mid-Ak chopper. Another button was pushed just as the first Mid-Ak troops were jumping off the Huey even as it was still five feet above the helipad. The Gatling guns opened up with their strange, buzzing sound and instantly cut the Huey into two sections. Half the ship came crashing down onto the helipad, its rotor spinning wildly, chopping up the troops that had just leaped from the stricken craft. The tail section of the Huey, its rear stabilizing propeller still twirling, went flying off the side of the building, plunging along its side and into a crowd of Mid-Ak troops below.
Hunter had to duck out the way o
f the rotor pieces of the doomed helicopter, but now was up on his feet and running toward the Stallion once again. More Mid-Aks had reached the helipad door and were blasting away at the big chopper. The assault force gunners were returning the favor with a vicious stream of lead. Somewhere, someone had fired a shoulder-launched SAM and it streaked by, spraying the helipad with sparks and fuel exhaust and adding to the pandemonium on the roof of the building.
Hunter finally reached the door of the Stallion and the pilots prepared to lift off when something caught his eye. It was just a glint of light reflecting off a metal bar on the uniform of one of the building’s defenders. It struck a note in his head, and he turned and stopped. Then, as the incredulous assault force looked on, Hunter dashed back across the helipad, dodging the flames of the burning Huey chopper and the blizzard of lead. He reached the man with the metal bar on his shoulder and started dragging him back across the pad toward the Sea Stallion.
The gunfire around them had increased twofold as more and more ’Ak gunners found the range. Finally, Hunter again reached the edge of the Stallion’s door, and with the help of the troopers aboard, lifted the man’s body onto the chopper. He then leaped just as the Stallion started to pull away, two troopers grabbing him by the seat of his pants in order to prevent him from falling to the streets below.
The ship was out away from the building and picking up speed as he was finally hauled aboard. Bullets were still zinging past them as the chopper’s door was closed and secured. Only then did he stop to take a deep breath. It was the most intense combat he had ever experienced and it had seemed to have gone on for hours. Actually, the rescue mission had lasted less than 15 minutes.
The Cobras were now linked up and leading the way out of the burning city. The three choppers raced toward the open sea, reaching the harbor and lowering down to barely wave-top level. The harbor contained a number of Mid-Ak warships, targets of opportunity that Hunter just could not pass up. He ordered the Stallion’s missile platform lowered, and the target acquisition system turned on. Instantly, bits of information started popping up on the video display terminals. Computer lock-on firing systems started firing the small, guided missiles at the anchored ships. Each missile packed a mighty wallop of HE3X explosive. Targeted to hit each ship below the water line, a dozen missiles flew out independently and found their mark. Soon, after a dozen brilliant explosions, the bottom of Boston Harbor was home for a good part of the Mid-Ak occupying fleet.
The chopper force quickly left the land behind and were out in the safer confines of the Atlantic Ocean. Only then did Hunter turn his attention to the man he had dragged aboard. With a gang of troopers gathered around him, he turned the body over. The man was dead, a bullet had caught him in the throat. But it was his uniform that interested Hunter. It was green, not brown like the standard Mid-Ak soldier, and of a completely different texture.
Hunter began stripping the man’s suitcoat off, then his shirt. The bars he wore on his collar indicated that the dead man was a captain. But a captain in what army? That’s what Hunter wanted to know.
He ripped away the man’s shirt collar and found a tag with the number 561 stitched in. He flipped the label over and then had his answer.
There was writing on the other side of the tag. Not English, as one might expect a Mid-Ak soldier’s uniform to read.
“What the hell kind of writing is that?” one of the troopers asked. “Dixieland?”
“Nope,” Hunter said, pushing the dead man away from him and concentrating on the writing on the collar. It wasn’t any kind of language found on the continent, not naturally anyway. His mind went into its flashback mode. The Kalashnikov rifles they had found in New York City. The East European cargo plane he’d sabotaged. The MIGs over Football City’s Grand Stadium. None of that had convinced him before of Jones’ grand conspiracy theory. But now he had the proof positive.
The label indicated the shirt had been sewn somewhere in the Ukraine. The man wearing it was a Russian.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THEY HAD PULLED IT off, with very little damage to themselves. Three strike force members wounded was the final toll, none of them seriously. They had struck—hard—in the heart of the Mid-Ak empire and left it burning. They had rescued a talented group of pilots and ground personnel and taught the Middle-Atlantics a lesson they wouldn’t soon forget. There was nothing more valuable than good security. It was a blow that the ’Aks wouldn’t recover from for some time.
Hunter found himself thinking about Jones as the helicopters raced north, back toward their hiding place off the coast of Maine. The general would have approved of the mission, especially its outcome. He could almost hear the old man’s voice, whispering in his ear: “Good work, Major. Detonating that LNG facility was the next best thing to nuking the goddamn place.” Looking back through the chopper’s window toward Boston, he could still see a glow over the horizon as the city burned. “This one’s for you, General,” he said quietly.
They made their way back to the small island where they grudgingly gave the Russian a proper, if hasty, burial. Hunter was now convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Soviets were involved in a destabilizing effort on the continent. He may have rationalized away the Kalashnikovs in New York City, the East European plane at the Aerodrome and the MIGs over Football City. But now he had solid proof. Logically, there could only be one reason a Russian soldier would be protecting the headquarters of the Mid-Ak occupying force—a deep concerted agreement between the two evil hierarchies so involved that lowly Russian troops were now guarding Middle-Atlantic installations. Was it any different in New Chicago? He thought of little else during the trip back to the Aerodrome.
He was glad to see the rescued pilots and monkeys, most of them close friends from his days with ZAP. He explained his plan to provide Football City with an air force to counter the threat from New Chicago. The Family, he told them, was closely, if secretly, allied with the Mid-Aks, and by implication, the Russians. With no prodding they unanimously agreed to join the fight. Nearly a year in Mid-Ak captivity had neither dulled their courage, enthusiasm or, on a deeper level, their patriotism. Most were former military anyway who yearned for the old days. A fight for freedom was just what they needed after being cooped up for so long.
The three helicopters touched down at the Aerodrome just before dawn. The strike force and the rescued pilots, monkeys and MPs were exhausted, but exhilarated. Fitzgerald was waiting for them, cigar in mouth, coffee cup in hand. He did a little jig when he heard the attackers had taken such painful toll on the Middle-Atlantic.
“Drinks are on me!” he yelled to the returning warriors as they emerged from the helicopters in the pre-dawn light. He had set up a victory banquet for them at one of The Aerodrome’s swankiest clubs. Despite the early morning hour, he transported the strike force—still dressed in their black fatigues—and the rescued to the club where a full sized jazz band played and an army of cooks, bartenders and waitresses were standing by to serve the returning heroes and the freed prisoners.’
Sitting with Hunter and Dozer, Fitzgerald urged them to give him every last detail of the mission, right down to the number of delayed-fuse bombs the strike force had left behind. The Irishman was clearly enjoying himself listening to the story of the stunning raid.
“You’re not acting much like a neutral now,” Hunter mockingly scolded him, as the early bird Welcome Back party got into full swing.
“In business, I’m neutral,” Fitzgerald said, smiling. “In me heart, I’m with ya all the way.”
“Well, I don’t know how much business the ’Aks will be doing in the near future,” Dozer said, draining a Bloody Mary and starting in on his second plate of scrambled eggs. “Not unless they plan to have a fire sale.”
“We’ve heard from St. Louie, again,” Fitzgerald said, pulling a yellow sheet of telex paper from his pocket and passing it to Hunter. “It came in around midnight.”
Hunter read the message: FAMILY AIR RAID
EARLIER TONIGHT ON OUR AIRFIELD. HEAVY LOSSES. CHICAGO TROOP BUILD-UP REPORTED.
“Things are getting worse out there,” he said, stuffing the message into his pocket.
“Well, you’ve accomplished almost half your objective,” Fitzgerald said. “You’ve got yourself some fine pilots and ground people. Now all you have to do is get them some planes to fly.”
“That’s the hard part,” Hunter nodded.
“Aye, there’s not much on the open market any more,” Fitz agreed. “Wright-Patterson is down to selling World War II and Korean War stuff. Those planes could probably fly one mission, maybe two, then they’d plow themselves into the earth and stay there.”
“St. Louie has been trying to hire on free-lancers,” Dozer said. “But no one wants the job. They’re all convinced that The Family will win this one, and no free-lancer wants to be on the losing side.”
“Yes,” Fitz said. “It’s very bad for business.”
The three friends were silent for a moment, then Fitz perked up. “So what’s your next step, Hawker? Mio and Aki are standing by.”
Hunter finished off his breakfast and poured another drink. “Later,” he said.
With that, the airman stood and, clinking his spoon against a glass, got the attention of everyone in the banquet hall.
“I’m glad to see we all made it,” he told them. “Please enjoy yourselves for the next five days. That’s how long we’ve got before the next mission. And this one will be more dangerous than our excursion to Boston. And when it’s over, we go to Football City and that will be the biggest, most dangerous battle of all.”
The hall was completely silent. Every eye was on him, taking in every word he had to say.
“We have dangerous times ahead, but the important thing to remember is that we stick together. Together, we can do it. Together, we can put the hurt on the Family just like we did to the ’Aks. We can put the hurt on anyone, whether they’re from this continent. Or any other. We can make sure that if anyone tries to deprive us or anyone else of their rights, their basic freedoms, then they will have to think twice. Because they won’t know where we’ll be, or when we’ll strike. We proved it in Boston. We’ll prove it again very soon. Word travels fast these days. People will know who we are.