Wingman

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Wingman Page 2

by Maloney, Mack;


  Two days later the enormous outline of an aircraft carrier appeared off to the south. It was the John F. Kennedy. The captain came ashore and word quickly spread through the 5,000 remaining ex-GIs that they could hitch a ride to America as long as it was an orderly evacuation. The 7th Cavalry saddled up, and with Hunter tagging along, were among the first group to be taken aboard the great ship.

  The voyage west took ten days, and as the faint outline of Manhattan appeared on the horizon, questions ran through the minds of the men on board. What was the country like now? Was there any country left to come home to?

  They got their answers soon enough. As the ship neared the harbor they could see that what looked to be a mist enveloped the city. The mist was actually smoke. The city was burning. A collective shudder went through the men on the ship when they got a look at the Statue of Liberty. It was headless. The top had been blown off by some unknown catastrophe. As the JFK neared a docking point just off the southern tip of Manhattan, sounds of gunfire could be heard coming from the city streets. Welcome to New Order America, was all that Hunter could think of.

  The ship docked and the passengers began filing off. Some stayed in groups, others just disappeared into the streets alone. Not many of them had any destination planned. Hunter gladly joined the Marines as they smartly formed up and marched down the gangplank.

  Dozer told him that the 7th had decided to stay together no matter what. Technically, they were no longer Marines and Dozer was no longer their commanding officer. But they agreed to stay with him and try to reach Fort Meade, Maryland. The Marine captain asked Hunter to go with them, but Hunter had made up his mind that if New York City was an indication of the state of the country—and he was certain it was—then he wanted no part of it. He had already set his sights on getting to the mountain in New Hampshire. Still he knew it would be wise to stay with the Marines until they were out of the horrible Beirut-like Manhattan.

  Dozer formed his troops into one main column and gave them the order to march. Their destination was the George Washington Bridge. The sound of gunfire was everywhere. No one had a clue as to who was fighting whom, but most of the destroyed equipment they came across bore the markings of the National Guards of New York and New Jersey. Were the two states battling it out for possession of the island?

  They were nearing Central Park East when they ran into trouble. Scouts stationed ahead of the column got word back to Dozer that a small group of armed men were holding two women at gunpoint three blocks away. Using hand signals, Dozer instructed his men to surround the gunmen. When one of the gang members raised his rifle the armed men were cut down in a volley of murderous gunfire.

  And then a strange thing happened. One by one, civilians started to appear. They had been hiding in doorways, alleys and in buildings. Shyly, cautiously at first, they began to emerge from their hiding places. Soon, there were a couple of hundred of them—old men, women, children. Some of them were wounded; all of them were caught in the terrifying madness of the anarchy in New York City.

  One man was particularly happy. He was running up and down the street, waving a small American flag and yelling “The Marines are here!” Just as he was running up to Hunter and Dozer, a shot rang out. The man’s chest exploded from the sniper’s bullet. He fell right into Hunter’s arms. He gasped and tried to speak, but all that came out was “… Why … shoot … me?”

  Then he died.

  Hunter laid the man’s body down on the street. He was about 65 years old, Hunter figured, just one of millions of New Yorkers. He located the man’s wallet and looked inside. His driver’s license said he was Saul Wackerman. A photo showed him, his white-haired wife and two daughters. Another photo showed his son—apparently an Israeli soldier—in full uniform.

  Hunter looked back at the man. He was still gripping the American flag, so much so that Hunter had some difficulty prying it from his fingers. He folded the flag and put it in his own pocket. The look on Saul Wackerman’s face would haunt the pilot for many years to come.

  Then Dozer showed Hunter something which would also haunt him: one of the gunmen had been carrying a AK-47 Kalishnikov assault rifle. Obviously, there were plenty of guns in New York City these days. What was startling was the AK-47 was the standard issue rifle for the Soviet Army.

  Several hours later they reached the George Washington Bridge. The Marines were heading south. Hunter was going north, determined to get to the mountain in New Hampshire before the whole world came crashing down. He thanked Dozer and bid him and his troops farewell, knowing he’d never see any of them again.

  The general listened to it all, quietly sipping his morning brew and at one point, breaking out a box of Havana cigars.

  Hunter reached into his pocket and produced a piece of cloth. He unfolded it. It was the flag he took from Saul Wackerman.

  “We could both be shot just for your having that,” Jones said nonchalantly.

  “So that’s what it’s come to,” Hunter said defiantly. He felt the flag for a moment, fingering the bloodstains that dotted one edge of it. He always carried it with him so he would never forget what it was like … before. He folded it carefully and returned it to his pocket. “They’ll have to pry it from my fingers, before they take it away from me.”

  “They probably will,” Jones said smiling grimly.

  There was silence between them for a few moments. Then Jones clapped his hands together and reached for the bottle.

  “Well, shit, Hawk,” he said, freshening his coffee. “That’s one hell of a story. No wonder you headed for the hills.”

  Hunter had to laugh. It must have sounded like an incredible adventure. And he didn’t even tell him the part about how he had met and bedded down with a beautiful girl along the way in France.

  “So what happened to you?” he asked Jones, reaching for the whiskey bottle himself. “We thought we’d seen the last of you when the Finns drove you away.”

  Jones let out a loud laugh and clapped his hands again. “I was in Paris, Hawk, old buddy. And did you miss some party, boy!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHEN THE NEW ORDER came down and the general was led away by the Finns, Hunter had assumed that the old man would be thrown in prison at best, or worse, executed. Actually, the officer had a free ride to the French capital where his handlers inexplicably set him free. Once there, he met many other ex-military officers who were of the same mind as he: We won the war and we still got screwed. With nothing else to do, they proceeded to drink the Paris nightclubs dry.

  “It was great,” Jones testified. “More booze than I’ve ever seen.”

  Paris was one of the major cities Hunter thought he was prudent in avoiding during his odyssey to Scotland. He had visions of deserted streets filled only with rotting corpses, its beautiful buildings in ruins, the curtains drawn on the proud French republic, finally defeated.

  “You’d be surprised how good a shape the city was in,” Jones told him. “Of course, considering that the largest battle ever fought in the history of mankind took place about 30 clicks aways, and that half the people had either been gassed or had vamoosed before the first shot was even fired, the ones who stayed were great. Writers, politicians, musicians, artists, old bucks who had fought the Nazis. These people just kept on celebrating. They didn’t give a shit who won. They didn’t give a shit that the Russians—or what was left of them—were just over the next hill. They just wanted to get back to their food, booze and getting laid. Everything else was secondary to them.

  “I was traveling around with a bunch of crazy Brits. RAF guys. We busted up the town pretty good. But after a few weeks, we realized that the city was getting real hot—real fast. We knew Ivan was just over the hill, licking his wounds and getting ready to play the conquering heroes.” He spat in disgust. “The filthy swine! We kicked their asses and they made like they just took over the world.”

  “They did,” Hunter reminded him.

  The general went on. A bunch of senators and go
vernment bozos were stuck in Paris after the armistice was signed. They had the Concorde—the famous SST—waiting at Orly Airport. Jones said a seat on that plane couldn’t have been bought for a million dollars. The politicos were getting itchy to get out of Europe before it went Red. Trouble was, the pilot never showed up. Now they needed someone to fly it. Somehow, they knew Jones was in town.

  “They got word to me while I was shitfaced, sleeping under a table in a bar on the Left Bank. Or was it the Right Bank? Anyway, they sobered me up and fed me. Then, we loaded the sucker up with French wines and chow, and it was oeuvre!”

  He clapped his hands in joy, just thinking about it. “You should have come to Paris, Hawk, my boy. We had a hell of the time there!”

  He got up and started another pot of coffee brewing. Hunter was astounded at the general’s ability to land on his feet. There he was, crossing the Atlantic lashed to a bulkhead on the JFK in the middle of a hurricane, and Jones made the trip supersonically, in three hours, drinking the best wine and eating the best food in the process.

  “It was the last congressional boondoggle flight in history,” the general continued. “We put down in Washington, because New York City looked too hot to handle. These guys didn’t want any part of it. Half of them were on their way to Weather Mountain. You know, that place near DC where they have a fully stocked city right inside the mountain and all the big shots are supposed to go when the bomb was dropped?”

  Hunter had heard of the place.

  “Well, I don’t know how many of them made it past the door, but they were telling me about the place. They had enough stuff hidden away to last them for years. The place is so big inside they even have a lake there. These guys claimed you could water ski on it. One senator said there was even a plan to round up all the best call girls in Washington right before the shit hit the fan and get them down there too. You know, just to give them all something to do while they waited for the dust to settle? Yeah, we had our share of great leaders, huh? They needed women to continue the human race with. Let their descendants crawl out of the cave and run things. You know, keep it in the family. But can you imagine what kind of a bastard is produced when a politician knocks up a hooker?”

  The thought of it sent a shiver down Hunter’s spine. He took a slug of his whiskey-laced coffee.

  Jones did the same, lit up a cigar and went on with his story. Once he touched down at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, the politicians bolted off the plane and were gone without so much as a thank you. Except for one of them.

  “One guy did give me a bag of French francs,” Jones said, blowing smoke rings. “Big deal, I thought at the time. They were probably worth all of twenty-five bucks, and that was in France! He thought he was doing me this big favor and all he cared about was that his ass was home, so he was in a generous mood. Typical politician. Well, I hung onto them Frenchies, a wise move, I found out later.

  “Andrews was pretty much abandoned. There were a few creeps around. Left behind GIs, MPs. These screwball National Guard guys. People like that. All of them were armed to the teeth and looking for trouble. I ignored them, but they had their eye on the plane. I saw a bunch of aircraft that had been blown up by some good little soldiers. Some assholes following the New Order to the letter, I suppose. Air Force One was there, or what was left of it. Lot of F-15s, gone. Pieces of them, scattered everywhere. It made me sick to look at them.”

  Jones became quiet for a moment. Hunter knew the general was thinking of the wasted, destroyed jets.

  “I was beat and I had nowhere to go, so I slept for about two days right in the Concorde. Finished off the food and booze, then I realized that I could be sleeping in a real bed somewhere. I found some LC’s office with a hideaway bed. I stayed there for two days, and you know, during the night some assholes sneaked down to the runway and blew up the SST? God, I’d heard of following orders, but some of these people carried it a bit too far.”

  Hunter nodded. Another example of a waste of technology. When would anyone get around to building a supersonic airliner again?

  “I bummed around DC for a while,” Jones said, stirring his coffee. “There were some people still left. All the restaurants were open. It was nearly business as usual, except they were practically giving the food away. Dollars were as valuable as used toilet paper, but I found out that people would take coins, including my francs. It didn’t matter that quarters, dimes and nickels were all clad coins with not enough silver to fill a tooth. These people treated them like they were pure through and through. There were even people running around with real silver and gold coins. So they loved to see me and my francs.”

  Jones soon took residence in an abandoned swank Georgetown townhouse. It was his home for three months.

  “It was party time there too,” he said. “All over DC. Food, booze and broads. I was out in a bar every night. It’s great when you don’t have to go to work. Met a lot of funny people. But unfortunately, I also met a lot of people carrying guns, and not just .32 caliber water pistols either. It started getting tense. Pretty soon there were shootouts every night. It was Dodge City. I figured it was just a matter of time before a stray bullet would catch my ass, so I started thinking about getting out.

  “Then I heard some of these new little countries were starting navies, armies, militias, things like that and they needed military people to help. I talked to a guy, who knew another guy who had a friend who knew about this job. Commander of the Northwest Economic Zone’s Air Patrol—‘ZAP,’ for short. A little bulky, but it sounded good to me. They had a little money to spend and they were lucky. Most of their National Guard units were never turned on by the disarmament weirdos, so there were still a few guys around who knew how to take an order. I tell you, troops like that are a rare commodity these days.”

  Jones had traveled to Boston and met with the leaders of the Northeast Economic Zone. They promised him almost complete freedom. Just as long as he paid lip service to the New Order rules.

  “You know, no radios, no TV, no old uniforms, no Stars and Stripes.” Jones’s voice cracked slightly when he mentioned the ban on the American flag. “That’s why we have these stupid pansy color uniforms on, and that’s why that candyass, three-dollar-bill flag is flying over this place.

  “But I’ve always liked the Cape, and they let me fly, so here I came. Been here about a year and a half.”

  But Hunter was confused. Fly? The last time he’d heard, one of the New Order’s rules—the most important one in his eyes—was that all military aircraft had to be dismantled as part of the demilitarization agreement. But he had heard jets at the base. Then, as if on cue, the sound of a jet taking off filled the office, shaking the coffee pot slightly.

  Jones read his mind.

  “We have a few planes here, Hawk,” the general said, his smile looking like the cat that ate the canary.

  “So I can hear,” Hunter said. “But how’d you get around the demilitarization order?”

  The general gave out a loud “Ha!” and waved his hand. “We were lucky, Hawk. And the traitors—our so-called Vice President and the rest of them—were stupid. Their New Order said ‘dismantle all the combat aircraft’ when it should have said ‘destroy all combat aircraft.’ so what do you think the smart people in Europe did? They just started taking the planes apart, cataloging the numbers and packing them away. And who the hell was going to stop them? The UN? The Finns? The Russians? No way. So these enterprising sorts packed all the pieces away, put it on ships and sent the ships everywhere and anywhere, just before the commies moved in.”

  “Every war has its profiteers,’ Hunter said.

  “You get the idea,” the general said, pouring him another cup of coffee and adding a dash of booze. “Now, don’t get me wrong. A lot of planes were destroyed. I mean, look what happened to us.”

  Hunter well remembered the day when the Finnish observers arrived and systematically blew up the squadron’s 12 remaining F-16s.

  “Yeah
, nice guys, those Finns,” the general said, digressing for a moment. “They live in the armpit country of Europe and spend most of their time sucking up to the Russians.”

  Hunter felt a surge of rage flow through him. What a waste of money and technology?

  “Anyway,” Jones continued, lighting up a massive cigar. “The New Order boys also screwed up by not including other military aircraft like cargo planes and tankers. Copters. And they didn’t mention anything about de-commissioned aircraft either.”

  Hunter’s vision of a flightless world was happily coming to an end.

  “You’ve been to Wright-Patterson,” Jones said in a puff of smoke. “You know how many planes were in mothballs there?”

  “Hundreds, I would imagine,” Hunter said, adding some hooch to his own coffee. Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio, Hunter knew, was the location of the Air Force’s surplus aircraft storage area. It was like an elephant’s graveyard for old planes; especially the sophisticated ones that had some years behind them but were too damned expensive to send to the scrap heap. So instead of shit-canning them, the Air Force just plugged all the holes, drained the tanks and had them sit out at Wright-Patterson to use in case of an emergency.

  “Thousands,” Jones corrected him. “And most of them just needed the screws tightened and the oil changed and they were ready to fly.”

  A tinge of panic took a swipe at him. “But, what is Ohio these days? Who’s running things there?”

  “No one, which is fine with us,” Jones hauled out a map that was so new, it looked as if the ink still wasn’t dry. It was the first time Hunter had seen the new countries and territories of America. “Ohio is now a Free State. In other words, it’s an open area. No government. At least for the time being. A couple of guys out there realized they were sitting on a bonanza and opened up shop. All these little countries or regions or states—or whatever they are—came running because everyone wanted to start their own air force. It’s an airplane supermarket. We’ve got a couple of guys out there right now, bidding on some planes.”

 

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