by Mack Maloney
The shoreline was now a portrait of flames and smoke. The beachhead had yet to be attacked by the howitzers. Whoever was firing the ten-mile-range guns was zeroing in on the carrier. The first shot had been a lucky hit right against the side of the ship near the CIC. Fortunately, it made more noise than anything else, and Yaz’s men were already fighting the small blaze that had broken out. But other shells were now landing dangerously close. Two of the frigates were moving into position off Villefranche in an attempt to locate the howitzers’ hidden positions. One of them was the command ship carrying Sir Neil and the Recovery Mission planners. But Hunter knew the frigates’ gunners would not be able to get in close enough to find out where the big guns were.
Just then one of Heath’s men yelled to him from the bridge on the carrier’s conning tower. “Sir! The tugs are here!”
The trio whirled around to see a group of red and white blinking lights stretching across the dark horizon. “Well, well, Mr. O’Brien,” Heath said. “You’ve arrived ahead of schedule … ”
“And just in time,” Yaz added.
“We’ve got to get this show on the road,” Hunter said. “Yaz, get on the horn to Sir Neil, will you? Tell him the tugs have arrived and we’ve got to start pulling the SAS guys off the beach now.”
“Where you going, major?” Yaz wanted to know.
Hunter and Heath were already running toward the big Sea King helicopter sitting on the carrier deck. “We’re going to find those howitzers!” he yelled back.
The Sea King was armed with two outdated but still effective 40mm grenade launchers. Heath had automatically jumped behind the controls of the big chopper and Hunter had strapped himself into the side-door gunner’s seat. They were airborne less than a minute later, taking off just as a howitzer shell had come crashing down on the deck, dangerously close to where the F-16 was parked.
Hunter hung out the open bay door of the chopper as Heath steered the Sea King toward the shore. Already a frigate was moving toward the SAS beachhead, preparing to take off the first contingent of troops. Sir Neil’s command ship was still looking for the howitzers, but now the entrenched T-62 tank crews—probably awakened by the resurgence in fighting—were beginning to take shots at the Norwegian ship. Soon the night sky was filled with hundreds of crisscrossing shells.
“Let’s drop in by the back door!” Hunter yelled to Heath. The smiling Englishman with the enormous red mustache gave Hunter the thumbs-up signal and put the chopper into a steep bank. Soon they were away from the battle and over the dark hills of southern France.
Heath brought the chopper inland about twenty miles, then he turned south again, the fires of Villefranche providing a good beacon for them. Hunter studied the outline of the town. Then, amidst the smoke and the flames, he saw one, then two, then three telltale muzzle flashes. He yelled to Heath and pointed. The howitzers were mobiles—huge tank-like vehicles capable of firing, then moving to another position. Right now, they were on the far outskirts of the city, partially hidden by a seawall and practically impossible to see from the frigates. Heath gunned the Sea King in their direction.
The chopper was over the city by the time Hunter had figured out how to fire the grenade launcher. He had to guess at the fusing mechanisms, though. Twisting the timer on one grenade, he loaded one of the launcher’s twin tubes. Below them they could see soldiers running helter-skelter in the streets of Villefranche. The frigates had resumed shelling the city itself, hoping they’d get a lucky shot at the howitzers. These shells were causing much panic among the Iron Fist soldiers, clearly visible in their yellow designer uniforms. Fires from the Tornados’ bombing hours earlier were still burning unchecked. The noise and confusion were so intense no one noted the Sea King passing overhead.
Within seconds they were close behind the howitzers’ position. Hunter had a clear view of the big guns, lined up along a sea wall methodically pumping out shells towards the carrier. Heath slowed the chopper down and hovered about 100 yards away from the closest mobile gun.
“Hold her steady, captain,” Hunter yelled to the Englishman. He eye-sighted the grenade launcher and pulled the trigger. The launcher shuddered and belched a small cloud of black smoke that nearly asphyxiated Hunter.
Through red eyes, he followed the path of the grenade as it impacted on the turret of the first gun, blowing off a chunk of the tank-like body.
“Direct hit!” Heath yelled. “Good shot, Hunter old boy!”
Already Hunter was lining up a shot on the second big gun. But by now, the howitzer crew had spotted the chopper and were training their smaller mounted machine guns on Heath and Hunter. Plus some courageous antiaircraft gunners in the nearby town had started firing at the Sea King.
Despite a murderous barrage being fired at him, Hunter calmly loaded the launcher and line-sighted the second howitzer. He launched a second grenade. This one hit the rear of the mounted cannon, igniting its fuel supply. Within two seconds, the howitzer was engulfed in flames.
“Jesus, what a lucky shot!” Hunter yelled out.
“Should we try for three?” Heath yelled to him, straining to be heard over the noisy clatter of the chopper blades as well as the intense fire from below.
“No! Back off!” Hunter yelled to Heath, who needed no further prompting. The Britisher bolted the Sea King around and flew back over the city and out of range of any brave antiaircraft gunners.
“We won’t be able to surprise them like that a second time,” Heath told him as soon as they had cleared the area.
“We won’t have to,” Hunter said. He had sensed the approaching aircraft. It was two of the Tornados, returning to the action after refueling and rearming back on Majorca.
Heath was already on the radio, giving the Tornados the coordinates of the howitzers’ position. Hunter and the Englishman watched from a distance as the swing-wing fighters swooped in and took out the last howitzer with two well-placed antipersonnel bombs. Then the Tornados turned east and strafed the revived tank emplacements.
“Those boys have the situation under control,” Hunter called out to Heath. “Let’s head for the beach.”
The Englishman steered towards the SAS beachhead and soon the Sea King was down on the shore. Landing craft from the Norwegian frigates were busy ferrying SAS men off the beach, despite an occasional tank round landing in the sand or in the shallow water.
Hunter jumped out of the copter and quickly found the SAS beachmaster. He knew that if the SAS force had taken some casualties, the Sea King would be the fastest mode of transporting them to the medical unit on the command frigate. But the SAS casualties had been surprisingly light.
However, there were other “passengers” the SAS men wanted Hunter to evacuate …
“Right after we landed we moved into this small hotel near the highway road,” the SAS beachmaster, a Scotsman named Montgomery, told Hunter as the two men walked toward the three blocks of buildings the SAS had temporarily occupied. “We were using it as an observation post when we heard screams coming from the cellar. We found a bunch of, well, citizens down there.”
“Citizens?”
“Aye!” Montgomery said. “The Fist was using it as a jail or some such thing. Had these people under lock and key. Some were chained to their beds.”
Reaching the hotel, Montgomery led him to a room off the lobby. Hunter sensed there was something unusual about the liberated citizens. He was right. Inside sat twenty-four beautiful, if slightly disheveled, women. The women were too busy eating the K-rations the SAS men had given them to notice Hunter and Montgomery had walked in.
“Ladies of the night, they are … ” Montgomery explained. “They say they’ve been held hostage here by the Fist for better than two years. Been, should we say, ‘servicing’ them and the Faction soldiers all that time. Not getting a dime for it either.”
Beautiful women? Painted ladies? Revolutionary mistresses? Hunter thought.
“They’ve been a great help to us,” Montgomery continued. “Pointi
ng out enemy positions and so on. Those bastards will kill them all if we leave them behind.”
One of the women, slightly older, yet no less beautiful, came up to Hunter and the beachmaster. Her name was Clara, Montgomery explained, and she was the House Madam.
“Can you take us with you?” Clara asked Hunter, her hand strategically resting on his chest. “The boys told us you are swiping that big ship out there. Well, swipe us too!’
Clara oozed sensuality. She, like the rest of her troop, was dressed in a 1960s-style miniskirt, low-cut blouse, dark stockings, and high heels. Despite her “ordeal,” she was in good shape, as it were. Very good shape …
“We’ll go anywhere, do anything, just to get out of here,” she said, with a well-practiced, innocent smile.
Hunter turned to Montgomery. “Who’s the senior man here?”
Montgomery, a field captain, shifted uneasily. “Well, sir,” he said, slowly. “The colonel took a bullet in the groin and he’s already been sea-lifted back to the ship. Our Sergeant-Major was killed by a tank shell. All that’s left are captains and a few lieutenants.
“I guess that makes you the senior man, suh!”
Hunter detected a slight smile on the Scot.
Why do these things always happen to me? Hunter had to ask himself.
Outside, the sporadic sounds of gunfire suddenly flared up. An artillery shell, fired from somewhere near the Faction T-62 emplacements a half mile away, crashed down on the street outside the hotel. One of the Tornados streaked low overhead, rattling the hotel from top to bottom.
“Sounds like things are heating up outside, major,” Montgomery said.
Hunter was still wrestling with the question of what the Recovery Force could possibly do with the twenty-four prostitutes when another tank shell landed right outside the hotel, shattering the few remaining intact windows in the place. A few cries came from the assembled ladies.
“Okay,” Hunter said, making his decision. “We’ll lift the girls out in the chopper. Captain, you’d better start withdrawing the last of your men.”
“Aye, aye, suh!” Montgomery said, flashing a smile and an authentic opened-palmed British salute.
Clara’s arms were around Hunter in a half-second. “Thank you, Major,” she cooed. “We are very … grateful.”
Ten minutes later, a very surprised Captain Heath was helping Hunter load the two dozen women onto the Sea King. The last of the SAS troopers were climbing aboard their landing crafts even as a new barrage of tank shells came crashing down on the beach. The rejuvenated attack was too little too late. The temporary SAS occupation was coming to an end, their mission successful.
Heath gave Hunter and the women a thumbs-up signal and lifted off the beach, plotting a course to the command frigate. Passing the Saratoga on the way, Hunter could see that Yaz’s men had already attached heavy-wound lines of rope to twelve of O’Brien tugs. Eight more of the tugs were circling nearby. In the light of their salvage beacons, Hunter could see each tug had an enormous shamrock painted on its deck. They looked like huge green flowers, floating on the sea. The work appeared to be proceeding so smoothly, Hunter estimated the carrier would be moving before sun up.
He caught Heath stealing glimpses of the women crowded into the helicopter compartment. “Wait until Sir Neil sees this,” Heath yelled.
But even the presence of the two dozen beauties was not enough to distract Hunter from his deeper thoughts. He just couldn’t get the words the old man Peter had spoke out of his head …
Chapter 14
THE F-4 PHANTOM TURNED high over the desert highway base and came in for a landing.
Gone were the tents and temporary buildings, the water tanks and antiaircraft batteries. No Tornados sat on the pavement runway or patrolled the nearby air space. All that remained of the RAF highway base was a weatherworn desert mobile house trailer, three fuel tanker trucks parked side by side, and two elderly reservists of the Gibraltar Home Guard.
Captain Crunch rolled the jet fighter to a halt and popped the canopy. The two reservists, their game of gin rummy interrupted, walked over to the jet as the airplane’s engine was just beginning to wind down.
“Are you here for fuel, lads?” one of the reservists, a man named Smythe, yelled up to Crunch and Elvis, a flexible silver ladder under his arm.
“Yes, if you have JP-8,” Crunch yelled back.
“We do,” Smythe called back. “Have yer got gold or silver?”
“Silver,” Crunch said, holding up four bags. “We’re close to dry. Can you give us enough to make the next big base?”
“Twenty minutes from here on afterburner,” Smythe answered, his words easier to hear as the F-4’s engine spun to a halt. “Are you Canadians here for the war?”
“We’re from America,” Crunch called back. “We’re looking for another American. A pilot named Hunter.”
“Hunter, you say?” Smythe called back. “Does he fly a fancy jet airplane? Red and white and blue?”
“That’s the man,” Crunch said, standing up in the Phantom’s front seat. “Have you seen him?”
“He was here,” the other reservist said. “Back when this place was a working air base.”
Both Crunch and Elvis looked around. They had assumed the base had always looked like this: two stretches of straight highway with the reservists’ trailer and the fuel trucks.
“You mean this was once more than just a fuel stop?” Elvis asked.
“Aye, lad,” Smythe said as his partner headed off to start one of the gas trucks and begin the refueling. “A few weeks ago, this was a major base for the Gibraltar Defense Force, that being formerly a part of the RAF.”
Smythe unfolded his ladder and put it up against the F-4. He slowly climbed up until he was eye level with the two pilots. Unstrapping a bottle of ice water from his belt, he passed it to the pilot.
“You look like you got a bad wing there,” Smythe said looking at the Phantom’s starboard side.
“We did a skid back in Casablanca,” Crunch told him, taking a long swig of ice water, then passing the bottle back to Elvis.
“Casablanca!” The old man laughed. “Well, you boys are lucky you made it out of there with just a twisted wing!”
“You saw Hunter?” Crunch asked.
“No,” Smythe answered. “But we heard about him. He saved this base he did. Stopped two out of three missiles from blowing the place off the map. What a corker! Flipped the bloody things right over, they say.”
Crunch eyed the scarred portion of the highway-runway where the third missile had fallen, then asked, “Do you know where Hunter is now?”
“Yes I do,” Smythe told him. “He’s gone. Gone with the rest of them. Gone to fight the war.”
Crunch looked at Elvis, then shook his head. “Do you exactly where?”
Smythe laughed. “Aye, haven’t you blokes heard? He and the RAF guys are sailing a carrier to the Suez! Going to stop that Lucifer character right where he lives, the arse!”
“An aircraft carrier?” Crunch said in disbelief.
“It’s a grand-sounding adventure isn’t it?” Smythe said. “A Crusade they are calling it. I’d be with them if I wasn’t seventy years old. They all left—days ago. Sent Roger and me here. Just to top off the tanks of the regular customers we get through here. Things have been slow, though, mate. The war is coming. People are afraid to fly, even this far west.”
Roger had arrived with the fuel truck and began filling the F-4’s wing tanks. Smythe pulled out a piece of beef jerky and started chewing on it.
“Course they haven’t got a prayer, the poor bastards,” he said.
“Who’s that?” Crunch asked.
“Well, your boy Hunter and the heroes of the RAF, I’d say,” Smythe replied. “They’re sailing to an early death if you ask me. Why, they’ll be lucky if they make it past Crete. Do you know what the Med is like these days, lads? Blimey. It’s filled with Russians, terrorists, Lucifer’s allies, and Lord knows what else. And
that’s even before you get to Lucifer’s Kingdom. Who knows what’s floating around out there.
“Aye, those RAF guys. Brave. Filled with courage they are. And your boy Hunter too, of course. Brave fools, laddies.”
Roger had completed filling up the F-4’s tank. Crunch turned over four bags of silver to Smythe.
“Where can we find out more about this crusade?” Crunch asked, flipping his standby switches and turning on the F-4’s generator.
“You’re heading there, mates,” Smythe said, taking his bottle and descending the ladder. “Gibraltar, lads. Been having trouble raising them on the radio this morning. But don’t worry. They’ll tell you all about it in Gibraltar … ”
With that, Crunch lowered the canopy, gave Smythe a wave, and taxied the jet slowly to the end of the highway runway. The two reservists watched as a spit of flame erupted from the back of the F-4. Then, its engine screaming, the Phantom roared down the runway, lifted off, and disappeared over the horizon.
Chapter 15
HUNTER BROUGHT UP THE throttle on the F-16 and made a final check of his instruments. Everything was okay. He gave the thumbs-up signal to one of Yaz’s men standing next to the aircraft, then leaned back in the fighter’s seat and braced himself. A long thin wisp of steam rose up in front of him as he counted down:
“ … three … two … one … Now!”
He was slammed against the seat with such a force, his ears started ringing. The carrier deck whipped by in a blur and next thing he knew, he was out over the open sea. The F-16 had gone from standing still to 120 mph in less than three seconds.
“Jeezuz!” he thought as he yanked back on the side-stick controller and gained altitude. “No wonder those Navy pilots are all crazy.”
The first catapult launch in a long time from the deck of the USS Saratoga was a success.
They were now more than fifty miles away from the Riviera and heading east. Moving the Saratoga proved to be just another few hours’ work for O’Brien’s tugs. The Irishman and his men had pulled and pushed and pulled some more with their twenty extra-large tugboats. Just as the sun was coming up, O’Brien got all of his tugs working together and, sure enough, the carrier slipped off its sandy resting place and out into deep water once again. All the Faction tank gunners could do was lob a few angry but meaningless shells into the sea as the Saratoga and its strange attending fleet of tugs and frigates sailed away.