Target: Point Zero

by Maloney, Mack;

  Hunter turned the Sopwith over again and found himself riding two hundred fifty feet above the Clocks positions. The friendly soldiers in the eastern trenches were hunkered down and holding on for dear life as the enemy soldiers they’d been trying to kill, one at a time for the past three months, were being slaughtered by the Sturmoviks just a few feet away.

  It went on for ten full minutes—wave after wave after wave of Stormers swooping down, their Merlins smoking mightily in the frigid air, their cannons strafing the Works trenches mercilessly from one end to the other. Hunter went in on the tail end of one strafing pass made by the three Fokkers and was astounded at the number of casualties lying in the snow. The sun was rising now and its first rays clearly revealed the destruction the Stormers were wreaking. There were thousands of dead and dying Works soldiers staining the icy landscape, froths of blood all around them. Any major weapons systems the invading army had employed—from heavy mortars to rocket launchers—also lay in smoldering ruins. Smoke and huge fires were flaring up everywhere.

  Never before had the Wingman seen such quick and complete destruction.

  After a while it seemed as if there were no more targets for the Sturmoviks to shoot at. Still they formed up once again and as one pounced on the enemy trenches.

  The Clocks Air Force had no radios; there was no way at all to communicate between pilots. Had there been, Hunter would have called off the air assault at this point. Destroying an enemy’s war-making capability was one thing—firing on helpless, wounded and obviously defeated soldiers was another.

  But now, all he could do was watch with growing repulsion as the Stormers once more opened up on the men fleeing the Works trenches. Hunter realized just what a shitty business he was in. Superheroics aside, he was, in the end, a practitioner in the art of making war, and war only led to suffering, misery and death. Had he the ability at that moment to throw a switch and turn it all off, he would have done so gladly. What he was witnessing wasn’t really a battle now—it was one-sided butchery. He was almost beginning to feel pity for the routed Works soldiers.

  Still, the Sturmoviks continued attacking. They were concentrating on troops in the rear areas of the Works positions now, gunning down unarmed supply troops and civilian support people. Soon the entire eastern side of the enormous mountain was running red with blood, giving the whole thing a distinctly surreal edge. Just when would the Stormers run out of ammunition? Or fuel? Or targets to shoot at?

  Finally it got to the point where Hunter knew he had to call a halt to the action, in whatever way possible. He flipped the Sopwith over and made a beeline for the far end of the Works trenches. Two Fokkers were just completing yet another strafing run. As they flashed by, Hunter began giving them the cut signal, emphatically drawing his finger across his throat. But whether the Russian fliers saw him or not, he couldn’t tell. The Fokkers pulled straight up and began climbing madly, a maneuver Hunter took to be the prelude to a loop and yet another attack.

  Two more triplanes came off the shooting gallery—Hunter gave them the kill sign, too. But just like the first pair, they either didn’t see him or they chose to ignore him. They, too, put their triplanes on their tails and began climbing straight up. The last two Fokkers arrived next, but they pulled tails-up even before Hunter could attempt to signal them. The trailing pair of Spads did the same thing. Before he knew it, all of the Russians were heading straight up, climbing so high, they quickly passed out of sight.

  What is going on here? Hunter thought madly.

  At that moment, he felt a mighty pounding on his left shoulder. He turned to see Orr grabbing him, a look of absolute horror etched across his face. He’d long ago dropped his cameras and was pointing straight up with his free hand. Oddly, Hunter could even see some of the Clocks soldiers glaring up into the early morning sky. Even some of the surviving enemy troops on the Works side were gazing heavenward.

  Finally Hunter looked up, curious to know what the hell everyone was looking at. An instant later, his jaw dropped open as well.

  There was a huge shadow passing over them—it was so big, it blocked out all light from the rising sun. All Hunter could see at first was black—squares of it, they seemed scorched and burned. Then he saw the huge wing, then the gigantic nose, then the trio of monstrous tailpipes and finally the massive tail itself. The sound of a woman screaming filled his ears again. It quickly turned into a screech.

  Only then did he see it full view.

  Flying right over them, slower than possible and coming in for a landing, was the Zon space shuttle.

  Hunter could not believe it. The thing looked like an enormous flying battleship, filling up the sky. His blood began to boil. His muscles tensed to the point of bursting his flight suit. So this was how it was going to be? The mountain was coming to Mohammed? Well, okay, that was fine with him. He had no idea why the Zon was coming down here, at Clocks, but it didn’t make much difference, did it?

  In fact, the cosmos had just made his job a lot easier.

  A second later he, too, was flying straight up, at the same moment, screaming back at Orr to get the Sopwith’s machine gun ready. The Sturmoviks were already firing on the great spaceship, their guns blazing as they flew rings around its nose and tail. Two Stormers were pouring fire into the Zon’s cockpit windows, two more were firing directly into its exposed underbelly. The other four were strafing it up and down and every which way. They were showing even less mercy with the spacecraft than they had with the enemy troops below.

  Soon enough, streams of flame and smoke were breaking out all over the shuttle. Still the huge spaceship continued floating towards the ground, its nose pointing towards the insanely short runway just outside Clocks.

  Hunter madly was pouring on the rpms now, seeking with all his might to climb and join the strange battle. But it seemed the faster he went, the more distance he found between himself and the smoking, flaming Zon. What was this? Were the instruments in his open cockpit reading wrong? Were the winds screaming between the twin peaks counteracting his attempts to close in on the shuttle? Or was it something else?

  He pushed his throttle forward all the way and then some. Still, it seemed like he could not quite catch up with the falling spaceship. He turned back towards Orr, who was now incomprehensibly wearing a swami’s turban and playing a long ebony flute. Hunter turned back to see the Zon was suddenly below him, the Sturmoviks still buzzing around it, firing their massive cannons and pouring fire into dozens of already smoking wounds.

  It was time for a change of tactics.

  Hunter laid on the throttle as heavy as possible and soon the Sopwith was plummeting back to earth. Down the side of the mountain they went, quickly gaining speed and getting below the floating shuttle once again. In seconds, he was able to bring the biplane in for a short, quick, almost violent landing. He didn’t even bother to kill the engine—once it had stopped, he simply jumped out and ran, full tilt, towards the end of the small runway.

  The Zon was just coming in, trailing hundreds of streams of smoke and fire behind it. The Sturmoviks kept firing on the shuttle even as it touched down with a cloud of dust, smoke and snow. It roared by Hunter, its rear chutes deploying and somehow slowing it down in an amazingly short amount of distance. The massive shuttle came to a halt in a mere five seconds.

  Suddenly the tiny airfield seemed very crowded. It was as if the entire population of Clocks had turned out for this strange arrival, soldiers and civilians alike. An oom-pah band—a real one—was lined up near the nose of the smoking spacecraft, belting out its lustiest tune. Soldiers were firing their guns into the air—Hunter couldn’t tell whether it was in anger or celebration. He ran up to the front of the shuttle, his M-16F2 gun suddenly appearing in his hands. A ramp was lowered from the front door of the spacecraft and Hunter bounded up its steps, taking three at a time. Then the door to the shuttle itself began to open, very slowly. Hunter reached the top and put his M-16 on full auto—he was intent on killing the first person
to come out of the Zon and everyone behind them as well.

  Finally the hatch was swung back all the way. Hunter raised his weapon, took a bead on a dark figure emerging from within the shuttle. His fingers began to squeeze the trigger just as this person walked out into the suddenly brilliant sunshine. It was a man, tall, wearing enormous sunglasses, with long hair, sideburns, a dark collarless suit, tight pants and high-heeled black boots. He was carrying a banjo with him and was plucking a tune on its strings.

  Hunter’s next breath caught in his throat—Jessuz, was it really…

  “Who are you?” he asked incredulously.

  The man looked back at him, lowered his sunglasses, and laughed.

  “C’mon boy…” he said, through a curled upper lip. “Don’t you recognize the King?”

  Hunter stared back at him “Elvis?”

  A moment later, he sat straight up—and smashed his head on the steering wheel of the tanker truck. His legs were instantly entangled; his hands, feet and fingers were numb. He closed his eyes, counted to three and then opened them again.

  And that’s when it began to sink in. He was still inside the cab of the cold Benz trailer truck, parked along the side of the road leading up to the twin mountains.

  He had fallen asleep.

  Fifteen minutes later, Hunter was driving up to the base of the twin peaks.

  There was a city nestled in here all right—large, cluttered and charmingly Alpine. But it was dead and empty, just like all the other cities he’d seen in his trip across the barren continent. Its streets were bare, its houses either boarded-up, flattened or slowly surrendering to the mercy of the elements. No one had lived here in many years, he knew. No light had burned, no fire had been struck in a very long time.

  He pulled the big rig onto the mountain road and began the long slippery climb up. It was no different than a dozen other mountain roads he’d traveled in the past two days; if anything, it was maddeningly familiar. He reached the summit after a while and stared off to the west to find more mountains, with more barren, slippery roads in between.

  He stopped the truck at the peak and stared back down at the deserted city for a moment. Though fully awake now, it was still hard for him to believe. There was no Clocks, no Orr, no Volkspolizi, no Rootentootzen, Badtown, biplanes or Sturmoviks. How strange it was. Frozen wars, UFOs, Nazis and free men, pyramids, space shuttles, dinosaurs, Emma and Elvis—these were the things the Wingman dreamed of.

  That is, when he dreamed at all…

  Part Two

  Nine

  Vietnam

  IT WAS TWELVE HUNDRED hours, high noon, when the trio of C-5 Galaxy gunships began taking off from Da Nang air base.

  The first to go was “Football One,” one of three C-5s operated by the United American Football City Special Forces. The enormous red, white and blue-striped airplane was known as a “shooter.” It contained two dozen antiaircraft missile ports along both sides of its vast fuselage. Specifically these were locked-down Stinger missile platforms. The airplane also had a dozen Sidewinder air-to-air missiles hanging beneath its wings. Sophisticated air defense radar installed in the airplane’s cargo bay had the capability to pick up enemy fighters from as far as one hundred miles away. Any unfriendly airplane coming within twenty-five miles of Football One would be shot out of the sky almost immediately.

  The second Galaxy to launch was called “Black Eyes.” It was operated by an aerial intelligence unit attached to the United American Armed Forces Command Section. Its bay contained tons of high tech navigation and detection equipment; poking out of the top of its fuselage was a huge revolving radar dish more commonly seen on AWACS aircraft. A recent transient to Southeast Asia, the equipment contained inside Black Eyes was so advanced, even some members of its eighteen-person crew didn’t know the true capabilities. The rumors said the plane could see up to five hundred miles away, on land or sea.

  In contrast to the first two, the third C-5 to take off was nondescript. It had no intriguing nickname, no fancy paint job. It was simply covered with dull sea-camo gray and had very few attachments sticking out of its body or wings. This C-5 simply was a cargo ship; oddly though, it was the most important airplane of this mission.

  Once aloft, the three huge planes turned out over the South China Sea and headed east. Ten minutes later, they were picked up by their fighter escorts, two F-20s of the Football City Air Force. Once connected, the five-ship formation immediately went into radio silence. They climbed to twenty thousand feet and turned south.

  Though the communist capitalists of CAPCOM had been soundly defeated, there was always a chance that fighters hired by forces unfriendly to the United Americans might be about. Even a stray force of air pirates, still plentiful around the troubled planet, would relish the chance to shoot down a United American aircraft; there were huge bounties offered by many despots around the world that would pay an unsavory pilot to do just that.

  But this flight turned out to be uneventful and routine. The five airplanes maintained their altitude and three hundred fifty knot speed for one hour. Two blips appeared on the radar screens within the Black Eyes intelligence craft. The radar indications turned into a pair of medium-sized fighters, appearing out of the south. The five airplanes went up to high alert, but this, too, was just procedure. They’d been expecting the two fighters at this coordinate. They were Panavia Tornados, the entire complement of the Tommies’ Air Force.

  The Tornados took over escort duties for the F-20s, who turned with a wave and then accelerated back towards Da Nang. Now covered by the Tommies, the three C-5s altered their heading slightly, pointing southeast now. They flew along like this for another hour and a half. At precisely fourteen thirty, a terrain search and guidance radar aboard Black Eyes picked up a speck of land in the middle of the vast, empty sea. It was Lolita Island.

  Preparations for the second phase of this secret mission had been going full-steam in the back of the non-descript C-5 since takeoff from Da Nang.

  Any C-5’s original claim to fame was its vast cargo bay. It could carry one hundred fifty tons inside this maw, whether that load be made of men, material or weapons. The package inside this C-5’s hold weighed less than eight hundred pounds however.

  It was one of the rarest aircraft in the world. Called a FW-1 Flex Wing, it was half ultralight, half hang glider. Fifteen feet long, barely five feet wide, it was a favorite of U.S. special operations groups in the 1970s. It could carry two crewmen and up to one hundred fifty pounds of equipment. Though basically a ferry craft, it still carried admirable capabilities for maneuver and speed. This was due to its flexible kite-shaped wing. The batlike affair could be raised and lowered by the pilot at will, allowing the aircraft to either hover for long periods of time or dash ahead at a respectable eighty knots.

  The FlexWing inside the C-5 hold was attached to a system of winches and rollers, the same used for loading and unloading cargo pallets aboard the airplane. Two men were already strapped into its seats. Ben Wa would be piloting the airplane; his colleague and friend, J. T. “Socket” Toomey was riding in back.

  Below them now was the island of Lolita. It was almost perfectly square, about five miles on each side and surrounded by rings of glittering coral reefs. As in the recent recon photos, the island appeared completely covered with vegetation—shrubs, trees, and grass. Yet now, seeing it live, the people inside the C-5s couldn’t help but feel the jungle below them was a little too green, too cluttered to be real.

  And it really was out in the middle of nowhere. There was not a surface ship or airplane anywhere within a two hundred fifty-mile radius of Lolita, a fact confirmed by the gizmo-packed Black Eyes. The island was about to have a couple of visitors—in the FlexWing.

  The three C-5s now went into a wide orbit above Lolita, the protective Tornados following in their wake. On cue, the huge clam shell doors at the rear of the gray C-5 opened up. The hold was struck by a fierce whirlwind, everyone inside had been strapped onto long tethers, s
o great was the danger of being sucked out the back of the airplane.

  The trio of C-5s descended to fifteen thousand feet, then ten thousand. At this point, Ben Wa started the FlexWing’s souped up two hundred ten-horsepower engine. The racket from the small engine filled the already chaotic cargo hold. Its nose pointed backward, the fumes from the engine were vented by the vacuum created by the large open doors.

  The C-5s then went down to five thousand feet and adjusted their course slightly to the north. This side of the island had a small beach about a quarter mile long. With the suddenly enveloping foliage, it was the only clear area of any consequence on Lolita. If all went well, it would provide the FlexWing with a suitable landing strip.

  The unmarked C-5 broke away from the others and descended to a heart-stopping altitude of fifteen hundred feet. The huge airship slowed its speed down to two hundred ten knots and banked even sharper over the north side of the island. The tethered cargo hands in the back of the airplane did a last check on the FlexWing, then with a thumbs-up from both Ben Wa and Toomey, they kicked away the FlexWing’s undercarriage restraints. With a whoosh and the snap of metal, the diminutive aircraft went right out the back of the plane.

  Ben Wa gunned the Flex’s engine as soon as they were free of the C-5. It sputtered once, then easily went up to full rev. Ben did a quick visual of the plane and its controls, then pointed the nose of the Flex towards the north end of the island.

  In seconds, he and JT were spiraling downward, shifting their weight this way and that, positioning the motorized kite for the best attitude for landing. Even as they rode this breathless controlled plunge, they couldn’t help but notice just how damn green everything seemed on the island below them. The closer they got to terra firma, the more dazzlingly emerald everything became. By the time Ben was putting the kite into its final approach, both he and Toomey knew the jungle that had so suddenly swallowed up Lolita Island was anything but ordinary.