Sometimes it didn’t.
As reports of the air bandits became more frequent, it was soon obvious that they were preying on anything that flew around the Catskills and all the way up to the Adirondack Mountain Range. In two weeks’ time several planes—stragglers, solo artists—had been shot down. Others were forced to land, their cargoes stolen, their crews killed. The area wasn’t too far from the well-traveled convoy routes, but this band of pirates—touchingly known as the Cherry Busters—were avoiding the big stuff and going after the small potatoes. What was worse, this happened before the ZAP radar string was brought on line.
Because every airplane that flies needs people on the ground to keep it that way, roving pirate bands always carried a substantial ground maintenance entourage. These mechanics—prisoners and ex-gas station owners mostly—traveled with the bandits, servicing the planes and occasionally acting as ground troops. They were paid by sharing in the booty. Frequently these ground support crews were as dangerous, if not worse, than the pilots they served. The Cherry Busters were no different. While the pirates’ terrorized the skies above, small villages and towns on the Zone-New York Territory border were attacked by the Buster’s rampaging ground crews.
Jones had been watching the situation and had increased the air patrols in the area. He quietly dispatched a 100-man Ranger unit by helicopter to sit on the border in case it was needed. But there was little else he could do. The pirates were operating in an area that was out of his jurisdiction and Jones’s bosses in Boston warned him strongly and repeatedly that they wanted no part of anyone else’s problem. As long as the pirates didn’t violate the Northeast Economic Zone’s airspace, Jones and ZAP was powerless to stop them.
But then the Cherry Busters made a mistake. The bandits’ ground crews blew into a town that straddled the border with the Northeast Economic Zone and held it for three days. By the time the Rangers heard about it and got there, the place—once a town of 600—was in ruins, burnt to the ground. The Rangers found evidence of mass executions, torture, looting. The bodies recovered were those of old people and men, some of whom had fought back. As always, anything young and pretty was gone—young girls were the pirates most sought-after booty. Other women, those not quite measuring up to the pirates’ standards, were found dead also, but not before they had all been brutally raped.
Although the demolished town sat literally, right on the border, Jones had seen enough. Screw the orders from Boston. He had his own policy. It was called Hot Pursuit. He deployed ZAP’s battle units into the area with orders to seek out and destroy the Cherry Busters. The same orders were given to the Rangers. The search for the pirates had begun.
ZAP recon flights had not yet pinpointed the airstrip the pirates were flying out from. Just about every known airfield in the region big enough to handle the Cherry Busters’ hodge-podge of jet fighters was kept under surveillance. Yet the bandits couldn’t be found.
Then ZAP got a break. Residents living near a remote section on the border told the Ranger unit that they heard engine noises every night nearby, although there wasn’t an airport for miles. The Rangers radioed the information back to Otis, and Hunter fired up the F-16 and headed for the area. Flying high enough to evade any shitbox radar the pirates might have, it took Hunter only about 20 minutes to locate the pirate base. It turned out that ZAP was looking in the wrong place for the Cherry Busters all the time. The pirates weren’t using an airfield at all—they were using a highway. The bandits had found a certain section of the abandoned New York State Thruway that was straight enough for the right distance to handle fighter take-offs and landings. They managed to hide all their support equipment in buildings nearby and parked their aircraft under the forest canopy at the side of the roadway.
Hunter spotted a series of tire marks on a section of the highway close to the border. The straight lines of black were the unmistakable result of jet landings. It was a subtle, but dead giveaway. After hearing Hunter’s report, Jones ordered an immediate air strike on the pirates’ base.
It was Hunter’s first action in years, and it turned out to be surprisingly dull. Leading a flight of four—his F-16, the F-4 and two A-7s—Hunter caught the pirates on the ground just as the sun was coming up. Hunter and the two-seat F-4, piloted by Ben Wa with Toomey riding in the rear as the weapons officer, flew air cover as the A-7s delivered several tons of effective—and expensive—blockbuster bombs onto the makeshift runway. The pirates never got a plane into the air—their entire contingent of six jets was destroyed on the ground. Hunter’s contribution to the raid was confined to two strafing runs to suppress some token groundfire that had been pestering the A-7s. It was over in a matter of 20 minutes. The Cherry Busters’ base was destroyed. The gang was history, scattered. The Ranger unit, waiting nearby, managed to rescue some of the pirates’ hostages left behind as the bandits fled.
From then on, aside from a few scrambles, air pirates gave the area a wide berth. The brief campaign became known as the Thruway War, significant because it was the first time ZAP drew real blood. Jones was pleased the unit had acted and performed in a highly professional manner.
Trouble was, his bosses weren’t …
Every month, the team was asked to perform on the so-called Profit Holidays, occasions decreed by the Northeast government to celebrate the financial successes of the region. On these occasions, businesses would shut down in the capital city and the citizens would line the banks of the Charles River and watch ZAP do its stuff.
There were many reasons to celebrate. Convoys were leaving Logan Airport every other day now and Boston Harbor was filled with ships carrying goods from what was left of the civilized world. As the number of declared Profit Holidays increased, so did the performances—and the popularity—of the ZAP team.
Some of the members of the team had trouble reconciling the government set-up in Boston. But to Hunter, it was simple enough. Everyone living in the Northeast Economic Zone worked for the government. The business of the region was commerce. And business was booming.
Logan Airport was the busiest trading center by far on the East Coast. A convoy left the airport once every two days now, usually as many as 60 huge airliners with nearly half as many escort craft. The skies across the continent were still dangerous. But the attitude was similar to the days of the covered wagon pioneer. If 55 of 60 planes made it, it was a successful trip.
Boston’s natural harbor called to many ships; lines that in the pre-war days would have stopped in New York City, now avoided the place with a passion, all for Boston’s gain. So, the Profit Holidays were actually the holidays for a government in which everyone worked for—and benefitted from—the financial conquests of the state. Some called it Socialism for Profit but unlike past Marxist experiments, this one worked. The economic success of the Northeast Economic Zone grew by leaps and bounds.
And so did ZAP. The general continued to lobby the more rational minds in Boston that the tiny Air Patrol was important to the survival of the government in the turbulent times.
“They make a lot of money in import duties and trade taxes and for running one of the few operating airports on the continent,” Jones would explain, endlessly over drinks at the base’s heavily patronized pilot’s club. “If they give me just one percent of what they are making, I can build them an air force that will kick the grease out of anybody.”
Their victory in the Thruway War was seemingly the proof. For a while, the Leaders Council gave Jones all the money he asked for.
And someone had to spend it and that job fell to Hunter. Jones made him the base procurement officer; the man in charge of buying new aircraft for ZAP. Armed with bagfuls of real silver, Hunter was able to cut deals with aircraft brokers from Texas to Canada. Word about ZAP was getting around the country—the air corps that kicked ass on the Cherry Busters, the air corps with all the money—and the dealers would gladly come to Otis to talk purchases. Within a few months, Hunter’s acquisition had increased ZAP’s inventory to 18
planes, a dozen of which were operational at any given moment. Most of the aircraft he bought were A-7s, the National Guard attack planes that were in abundance simply because they weren’t rushed overseas when World War III broke out. They were hidden in great numbers when the New Order went down. Hunter was able to buy a six-pack from a dealer who had hidden them on an island in the Florida Keys just before the Mid-Ak occupation forces took over the state after their war against the Florida-Alabama Unionists. He spirited them away on a ship to Texas and let Hunter have the planes for a song; he was more interested in keeping them out of the hands of the Mid-Aks than making any kind of profit.
The little A-7s, while hardly glamorous, fit the bill in the post-war world—the new era of “anything will do.”
Hunter was also able to buy two creaking F-106 Delta Darts, an arrow shaped plane that was at one time the mainstay of the interceptor force protecting North America. That was in the days before the ICBM. The jet fighter, which could still reach near Mach 2, had had its last gasp in Viet Nam. But Hunter was able to find two of them hidden in a hangar at a small airport in what used to be the state of Maine.
In a few months, thanks to Hunter, ZAP had increased its inventory to two F-4s, the F-8, seven A-7s, the two F-106s, five T-38s and his F-16. He was able to recruit pilots—including a dozen former Massachusetts Air National Guard flyboys as well as a handful of semi-trustworthy free-lancers. The pilots-for-pay were either tired of the long, dangerous hours on convoy duty, or felt their number was coming up and decided to lay low for a while. Meanwhile the original members of ZAP—the former Thunderbirds pilots—took on added responsibilities as instructors and trainers. A firing range was set up in a desolate bog near the base, and anti-ship operations were practiced on a target ship that had been scuttled and in place off the coast of the Cape for years before the war.
Hunter was also able to hire on some cracker-jack mechanics to care for ZAP’s air fleet. He knew, as every other pilot did, that a good “monkey” was worth his weight in real silver. In many cases, the monkey was the only thing that stood between a successful flight and the pilot impacting onto the side of a mountain somewhere. These days, good mechanics were in as big demand as good pilots, maybe more so.
Hunter was given a free rein—and bags of real silver, even a little bit of gold, courtesy of the Leaders Council—to buy as many aircraft as he wanted. There seemed no shortage of equipment available—or salesmen. A representative of the enterprising owners of The Wright-Patterson Used Aircraft Company—a man known only as Roy From Troy—would turn up on Jonesville’s radar like clockwork on the first day of every month. Always flying in some God-awful airplane that was usually almost too big to come in safely, Roy From Troy nevertheless would circle the base and schmooz with the air traffic controllers, who would usually relent and let him land. Once granted, he’d bounce in and emerge from his transportation, a case of scotch under one arm and one of his traveling bevy of blondes under the other.
Roy would corner Hunter every trip and display a battered photo album filled with pictures of his inventory of old U.S. military aircraft. “The best defense in an unpredictable world,” so his company’s motto went, “is a better offense.” It was written on his business card, on the beat-up photo album cover and sometimes painted on the side of the plane he’d blow in on.
Roy From Troy would always be touting his monthly specials—“the last B-29s flying,” or “Two F-94s for the price of one, July only.” The hand of one of Roy’s blonde sales assistants slowly moving its way up to the buyer’s crotch was part of the standard operating procedure and led to more than a few sales. The story was told of a Texan air commander who woke up from a drunken stupor one morning and found two of Roy’s blondes in his bed and a line of nearly useless B-57s out on his runway. Roy was long gone, but left a note thanking the commander for the real silver and telling him he could keep the blondes.
Despite all of the temptations, Roy couldn’t hide the fact that his catalog consisted of heavy bombers mostly—old beasts like B-47 Stratojets and B-58 Hustlers—the kind of museum piece aircraft that the speedy ZAP wasn’t interested in.
“No probleemo,” the aircraft salesman, would say. “Catch you on the next trip.” Then the ZAP pilots would drink the scotch and bed the blondes and Roy From Troy would move on the next morning, to other customers, some of which may someday turn out to be adversaries of ZAP. That is, if they weren’t already. No matter. Everyone understood. It was the art of business. Capitalism, to the delight of all, wasn’t missing-in-action.
Hunter did do business with Roy on occasion. He bought a pair of Huey H-1B helicopters from him to supplement the eight the ZAP already flew. He was also able to buy some spare parts for the F-106s. And he always had the salesman—as well as many others—on the lookout for another F-16.
But the biggest deal Hunter and Roy ever consummated was for the general’s F-111.
The F-111 was a strange airplane. Designed in the mid-60s, the jet was built too big to be a combat fighter but too small to be a heavy bomber. Its most visible characteristic was its movable wings; it was the first of several flex-wing airplanes built by the airpowers in the 60s and 70s. With the push of a button, the wings could swing forward whenever the airplane was landing or on a slow, low-level bombing run and then be swept back for supersonic flight. In fact, the airplane’s wings could be stopped at any point.
But it was what was on the inside of the airplane that intrigued Hunter. The jet was packed with sophisticated, if slightly outdated, navigational and auto-pilot gear. In fact, it could literally fly itself, carrying its two-man crew along simply for the ride. The airplane’s computers, programmed before the flight, could start the engines, taxi the airplane, get it airborne, fly to the target, bomb the target and return to its airfield. The airplane also carried a super-radar system called Terrain Avoidance. This system would allow the pilot to set an altitude—usually something low like 200 feet off the deck—and lock it in. From then on the airplane would fly at precisely that altitude, raising and lowering automatically, whether it passed over a mountain or a pebble. The technique was very helpful for low-level attacks when the pilot—automatic or not—wanted to sneak in under the radar but didn’t want to cope with the hairiness of flying that low at supersonic speeds.
The general had once told Hunter a chilling story about an F-111 he had seen in Viet Nam. The pilots in the aircraft had taken off from Da Nang. The airplane was serving as flight leader for three other F-111s to bomb the Na Trong Bridge, a hot target just outside of Hanoi. The bridge was ringed with antiaircraft guns and SAM missiles, but the flyboys managed to blow up three of the four spans anyway. On their last pass though, the flight leader took a direct hit from an ack-ack position. Damaged, the airplane flew on. It returned to Da Nang, landed and taxied up to its station. The ground crew quickly blocked it off and scrambled up to the pilots. They pried the canopy open and found both men long dead. Each had had his head blown off over Na Trong. But the airplane came back.
Hunter knew the old man would love the airplane, and that it would beef up ZAP’s capability, so he finally bought it from a very happy Roy From Troy. The salesman had been trying to unload it for some time. No other Air Patrol had the expertise to fly or maintain it. But then again, no other Air Patrol had pilots like Hunter and the Thunderbirds or mechanics like those at Jonesville.
As expected, the general took to the F-111 like a kid to his first Chevy. He spent many a night alone, tinkering with the airplane, giving it all kinds of weapons and snooping abilities. Despite his cowboy demeanor, the general was a whiz at aeromechanics—almost as good as Hunter himself. Whenever the old man had a spare moment, he took the F-111 for a cruise, usually a terrifying low-level flight, with the Terrain Avoidance gear kicked in and the airplane roller-coastering over mountains and buildings alike. Occasionally, Jones would invite one of the other pilots along—an invitation more and more of the flyboys politely declined in deference to their stomachs,
if not their equilibrium.
Yet, despite the diversion of the F-111 and the growth in size and popularity of ZAP, Hunter noticed that the general’s behavior had taken a strange turn. His flights in the F-111 became more frequent, but obviously less pleasant. He stopped logging in destination codes or filling out the necessary fuel-use forms. He also started committing the cardinal sin of flying: not filing a flight plan.
Jones seemed worse whenever he returned from his trips to Boston. The Leaders seemed to be making him jump through hoops, sometimes ordering him to report to them every day, then cancelling the meeting once Jones had arrived. Like any good soldier, Jones put up with it, for the sake of ZAP and his men.
But the old man’s mysterious behavior was starting to be picked up by the other pilots. Rumors began flying around the base that he was sick, shell-shocked or just plain old. Hunter knew he would have to talk to him about it and was waiting for just such an opportunity, when one night in the base club, Jones spilled his gut to his wingman.
“It’s just a matter of time now, Hawk,” the senior officer said. “The Mid-Aks are really setting us up this time.”
“Give me details,” Hunter told him, ordering another round of drinks.
“You remember a while back when I told you I heard talk of kissing ass with the Mid-Atlantic?”
Hunter nodded. He remembered the conversation very well.
“Well, this time, it’s more than talk. I’ve got proof there have been secret meetings between some of the Boston Leaders and the ’Aks.”
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