As he’d previously promised himself, he’d try like mad to be there when it did.
Then, just like that it was gone—disappearing over the edge of the world, continuing its five-miles-a-second journey.
Buzzing now, Hunter stepped back out of the wind and shivered once. One mission complete—now another had to begin.
He turned his attention back to the dome again and let out a long, frosty, troubled breath.
It was time to rescue Chloe.
The door to the igloo was wide open when Hunter got there.
He checked the clip in his M-16F2; as always it was full of tracer rounds. He checked his boot pistol; it, too, was fully loaded. Slowly, surely, he made his way into the entrance chamber and up to the interior hatchway. It, too, was wide open, its hinges squeaking as the high winds outside roared into the entry tunnel.
He stopped and listened. There was static bouncing around in there, somewhere, and he could just barely hear the sound of warning lights blinking on a control panel. He also heard someone sobbing. But in an instant, he knew it wasn’t Chloe.
He toed the hatch open, and immediately his laser sight finder illuminated the sleeping quarters of the man who had stayed behind. He was lying on the bed, stark naked and quite dead. His face was as white as a ghost, his body ashen and stiffening. His eyes were still open. They were dilated beyond description. Oddly, he was still smiling.
Hunter swept the red laser light to the right. It quickly fell upon the head of one of the two fellow travelers, the men he’d played cards against the night before. This guy was dead, too, the handle of a bayonet-type knife protruding from his Adam’s apple. On the snowy, wet floor beside him, was the second would-be cardshark. He was the one who’d been the one crying; but he’d stopped by now. There was a blade sticking out of his gut that made the bayonet look like a jackknife. The first man’s hand was holding the end of this enormous sword; it was evident that he’d just plunged it into his comrade’s stomach, a thrust cut short by his own quick bloody death.
The two men had killed each other.
But why? Hunter took two more steps inside, Beside the pair of fresh corpses was the money he’d lost to them just hours before. It was stacked neatly, in two exact piles, each bearing more than $1.5 million each; the gold coins were sparkling in the green VDT light of the main console.
Though he wasn’t sure why, Hunter’s senses were telling him the deadly fight had not been over the winnings.
He found Chloe behind the main console, rolled up in a heap, sniffling quietly. She was unhurt, at least in a physical sense; her ski-bunny suit only slightly mussed and damp, not one hair on her head was out of place. Hunter lifted her gently to her feet, then took another look around the main suite. It was beginning to make sense now. The two men had killed each other not over the millions in gold but over Chloe. It took them a while, but they, too, had fallen under her spell—and mutual death had been the result.
And the man lying dead and paralyzed in his living quarters? He’d died of a heart attack—caused by overstimulation and overexertion.
Hunter let out a long, low breath. With hardly a bat of the eye, Chloe had done more damage than a twelve-second burst from an AK-47.
Without a word, he put his arms around her frail, shaking shoulders and led her from the tracking station.
No sooner were they clear of the dome when Hunter’s sixth sense began buzzing again.
He suddenly stopped in his tracks, pulling Chloe back towards him. There was an airplane circling nearby, possibly right above the lake. Hunter couldn’t see it—it was hidden by the low thickening clouds. But he could tell it had four engines, probably top-mounted, piston-driven props, and that they were powering something so big and bulky it drove through the air like a truck. So what kind of plane was it? Hunter wasn’t exactly sure. But from the sounds of it, he guessed a seaplane was up there, one that was much bigger, and much newer, than the antique that had brought him here.
He immediately pulled Chloe into the thick forest and together they began making their way back down the path Hunter had taken to the top. As they moved through the cold, covering shadows, the sounds of more engines and more planes filled their ears. By the time they reached an outcrop of rock that looked out onto the northern end of the lake itself, the sound above them was deafening. Wedging themselves into a slim crack in the rocks, they hunkered down and waited.
They had picked a perfect place to hide. Not only was it protected, it also had a perfect view of the lake. But Hunter’s eyes were actually fixed on the thick clouds hovering five hundred feet above the surface of the water at the moment. It sounded like a squadron of big airplanes droning around up there now. Who the hell did they belong to? And why had they come here?
The first airplane dropped down out of the misty cover a few seconds later. It did a quick fly-by of the lake, then climbed back up again. This confirmed one thing: it was a seaplane, a big one. In fact, it was a UF-1 Grumman Albatross, an old but rugged mainstay of the air-sea rescue game. This one had obviously come down to look for the best place on the lake to land.
Another minute went by. Then suddenly all four UF-1s dropped out of the clouds, and one right after the other, set down onto the clear waters in the middle of the lake. Hunter was impressed. It was no easy task bringing such a large airframe in on such a relatively small body of water. Yet each pilot did so effortlessly. Hunter had his powered up binocs out now, using them to scan the length of each big seaplane. None of the flying boats was carrying any national emblem or insignia or hardly any markings at all. This was a sure sign that they were part of some mercenary outfit.
Once down, the airplanes turned one hundred eighty and headed directly towards the western shore. Vast doors in the nose and rear end of each plane slowly opened up. As Hunter and Chloe watched in amazement, heavily armed troops began jumping out of these doorways, hitting the shallow water and quickly sloshing their way to the bank. Now Hunter was mildly astounded—this was a rather unique little operation they were witnessing. Landing a load of quick response troops, in a remote mountainous area, by seaplane…
Not bad, he thought.
No sooner had the troops gained the shore than they formed up and began a double time march towards the summit of the mountain. Now it was beginning to make sense to Hunter. Chloe had told him of the mess the tracking station was in when she returned with the two travelers, and how the third man had been found drunk and blacked out. Someone must have tried to contact the station during that time, he figured, and after getting no reply, they had pulled a switch somewhere indicating that something was wrong at Point Zero. This unit had been sent to see what was up. They were an on call, for hire, rapid deployment force. A very enterprising idea.
Just who had employed them, or from where, was still a mystery. But those details were actually irrelevant. Whether they knew it or not, in the end, their paycheck was coming from Viktor and his blood money.
And that was a shame, Hunter thought.
“There seems to be so many of them,” Chloe said. “Will they search for us?”
Hunter hesitated in his answer—was it his imagination or did he really just detect a tinge of excitement in her voice at the thought of all these guys looking for her?
“They might come looking,” he finally replied, helping her down from their hiding place and then leading her back under the thick canopy of trees. “But it won’t do them any good.”
As a matter of policy, each flying boat left one man behind to watch the airplane while the assault troops it carried did their thing.
The man who happened to be watching Flying Boat 4 was an Austrian, and at one time, an airline pilot for Lufthansa. He’d been flying the seaplane mercs around these parts for a year now. The pay was good, the big seaplane was kept up to trim, and he never had to involve himself in any of the fighting. It was a sweet deal all around.
He was now seated in the cockpit, doing a quick run through of his diagnostics while th
e rest of the flight crew stretched their legs on land. His mind was already imagining what he’d do once this drill was over and they returned to their base in Venice. A dinner. A good cigar. Some brandy, maybe buy a couple bimbs and…
Suddenly he sensed someone standing behind him. He turned expecting to see his copilot or the flight engineer. Instead, he found himself looking into the eyes of the most beautiful young girl he could have ever imagined. She was standing in the short passageway between the flight deck and the rest of the ship. It was as if she had materialized out of nowhere.
“Fräulein?” he gasped, equally shocked by her sudden appearance and her stunning, rather bewildering beauty. “What are you doing here?”
She did not reply. Instead, she reached up and began unzipping the front of her form-fitting snow outfit.
“What is this?” he demanded, his breath catching in his throat. “Who are you?”
Still, she said nothing. She slid the zipper all the way down and then dramatically pulled both sides back. Suddenly the pilot was looking at two incredibly luscious breasts. It was enough to bring him out of his seat.
He never saw the fist that hit him. It seemed to come out of nowhere, as if it was launched from some other dimension. It hit him square on the jaw, fracturing it slightly and knocking him back on his ass. He hit his head on his seat console and landed in a heap on the cockpit floor.
Dazed but still conscious, he looked up to see a man was now hovering over him, pulling his gun from his holster and the ammunition from his belt. Now this man was lifting him by the shoulders and dragging him to the back of the boat. All the while the girl was standing over him, too—the front of her suit still unzippered, her breasts still mesmerizing him as they swayed.
He was pulled to the rear door of the flying boat and rather unglamorously thrown into the lake. The frigid water quickly revived the pilot, at least long enough for him to swim like mad to one of the plane’s wing-mounted floats. In the short time it took him to do this, the strange individual who’d dumped him into the water had already climbed into the cockpit of the seaplane and had started the plane’s two inner engines.
The Austrian pilot began screaming from his perch on the float, but the noise of the big propellers was already drowning out his cries. It became very obvious very quickly that this guy and this girl were stealing Boat #4 and there was little he could do about it. That’s when he let go of the float and began swimming to shore.
It took him fifteen seconds to reach dry land. When he finally stopped, he took a deep breath, then turned around. The big seaplane was already out in the middle of the lake and beginning its takeoff run. The Austrian pilot couldn’t believe it—everything had happened so fast. Barely a minute had gone by since he was sitting peacefully in his seat, dreaming of good food and Venice. Now he was wet, angry, with a sore jaw and without his plane.
He watched with building fury as the Albatross lurched forward, and with a great burst of power and spray, roared into the sky. It banked sharply the moment it was airborne, the mysterious pilot gunning the engines and pointing the nose away from the mountain.
Then, still climbing, it turned again and quickly disappeared over the southern horizon.
Part Three
Fourteen
THE SUN FINALLY PEEKED over the hazy, bluish edge of the Earth, its rays once again bathing the Zon space shuttle in much-needed warmth.
It was cold inside the orbiting spacecraft—too cold actually. The shuttle was now passing over Central America; it had been in the dark of the Earth’s shadow for nearly ninety minutes. In that time, it had become so frigid inside, small beads of frozen condensation, caused by nothing more than human oxygen exhalations, had begun to appear on some of the critical control elements on the flight deck.
Now that the Zon was back in the sunshine, the warmth would melt these frozen bubbles and aid in bringing up other crucial components which had been shut down because of the falling temperatures; of course, they all had to be shut down again once the shuttle went back behind the Earth.
This endless freezing, reheating and refreezing was doing none of the components any good. Like a lightbulb that’s being constantly turned on and off, the elements inside these criticals were wearing out quickly. There was no telling when one of them would pop, and what trouble it would lead to when it did.
The fluctuating temperature problem on the Zon’s control deck was not the way it was supposed to be. During a normal flight, the environment inside the spacecraft was supposed to be tightly regulated. But this was hardly a normal flight for the Zon. In fact, in the orbital craft’s short history, it had yet to make what would be considered a “normal flight.”
There were many other things wrong with it as well. The guidance and navigation systems were only running at seventy-percent, this due directly to the wild changes between heat and cold. Seventy-percent nav operation meant seventy-percent accuracy in the steering of the shuttle, it was as simple as that. At any moment, the craft could be as many as a hundred miles off its intended orbital path.
The spacecraft’s air circulation system was also breaking down; the filters in the purification elements had not been changed in three flights. This meant the prevailing smell inside the spaceship was that of body odor. There was no clean water to speak of; again a malfunction in the cabin environment filtering system. The simple electricals—lights, switches, intercoms—were becoming unreliable as power throughout the craft was also fluctuating badly. Even some of the doors and component panels were sticking shut—this due to thousands of tiny, solid contaminating particles floating freely around the interior of the ship, lodging into places unattainable in all but a gravity-free environment.
This was no way to run a spacecraft—especially one that was hurling along at five miles per second. The only reason the ship was still intact was because its engines and propulsion systems were up to snuff, though just barely, and its main computers were still fully on line. But then, it was only a matter of time before the gremlins began crawling around inside some of them, too. Then, only disaster could follow.
As it was, the Zon was breaking some kind of endurance records—though not necessarily ones to be proud of. This was the spacecraft’s third flight in as many months; back in the days of regular shuttle launches, if one orbiter went up twice in a year it was a rare occurrence, and then only after extensive reconditioning. But even though each time the Zon blasted off from Star City, every bolt, weld and adhesion agent inside got that much weaker, it was still somehow holding together.
The spacecraft was also hauling a lot more weight than would be considered normal, or, better put, sane. There were no less than fifteen people currently riding the Zon, more than twice the maximum human load. The spacecraft was built to handle five comfortably; triple that number introduced a lot of problems, fouled toilets being the first of them. There was also the matter of feeding such a horde—the Zon had taken off with only enough space-food for five people, eating three times a day for five days. It had been in orbit now for barely one hundred hours and already, almost all the food was gone.
But even this had a beneficial angle: once the food intake dropped, at least the toilet problem would stabilize.
Though the majority of space inside the Zon was unkempt and getting dirty very quickly, two areas were not.
First was the flight deck itself. Even though it bore the brunt of the constantly changing temperatures, the sole pilot occupying the spacecraft’s cockpit had worked very diligently making sure the area was kept clean. This was as much an exercise in keeping his sanity as it was for concern of the shuttle’s flight worthiness. The pilot was the only person onboard the Zon who was qualified to be here, and he, just barely. He’d had some of the basics of shuttle flight years before and he was a top-notch fighter pilot. If the Zon’s overall operation wasn’t so completely computerized, it would never be able to get off the ground. But because it did, it fell to him to fly it.
This was a strange
situation as well, because the pilot was also a prisoner. He’d been kept under duress by Viktor’s forces for nearly two years. The circumstances of his captivity were as outlandish as the notion that a battered, worn-out space shuttle could actually fly in orbit. He was a member of the top echelon of the United American Armed Forces, a friend of Hawk Hunter, Commander-in-Chief General Seth Jones, Crunch O’Malley, Wa, Toomey, and the others. He’d fought in many of the early battles of American liberation; and conducted many successful covert operations towards that eventual aim.
It was during one of these secret missions that he’d been lost in action, his airplane shot down by a SAM over an obscure mid-Pacific atoll. The island turned out to be a huge staging area for the Asian Mercenary Cult, an army financed directly from Viktor’s coffers. He’d lived on this island for months before being captured while trying to steal an airplane in an attempt to escape. He was nearly executed several times before one of the Cult overlords, a man who had direct connections to Viktor, recognized who he was, and how his piloting skills could be utilized.
For the next year, the Zon pilot had been subjected to incredibly intense brainwashing, including the forced injection of psychosis-inducing drugs. Viktor’s underlings had made a special project of him, carting him to a secret location deep inside Russia and importing some of the most hideous of brainwashing experts from North Korea. At the end of the twelve horrible months, the pilot emerged depleted, shaken and suffering from many psychological maladies.
His piloting skills remained intact, however. And when Viktor’s minions located the Zon hidden in a vast underground shelter near Star City and realized it could fly if the right man was behind the controls, the pilot was nursed back to physical health and then ordered to learn everything he could about the Russian shuttle. He’d first taken it up seven months before—this was his fifth flight.
Target: Point Zero Page 14