Jones expertly put his plane into a roll, pulled back on the throttle and streaked over the now-abandoned base. He deposited his blockbuster bomb smack center in the main runway, causing a miniature mushroom cloud to blanket the landing strip. As he pulled the F-111 up, Hunter put his F-16 into a dive. Screaming low over the base, he pulled his weapons release lever just at the end of the runway. The bomb hit perfectly, taking out the last quarter of the strip, thus preventing the ’Aks from landing anything big at the base any time soon. Turning in his cockpit, he had to smile as he saw another mini-mushroom cloud rise above the base.
He linked up with Jones who was loitering nearby and together they went full afterburner. Hunter took one last look back. The first Mid-Ak choppers were just appearing over the base, their pilots confused not so much by the smoke and explosions as by the lack of groundfire. It would take the ’Aks a little while to catch onto what was happening. Then, and only then, would they realize they’d been hoodwinked by the last official act of ZAP. Time for a change, Hunter thought as he turned to the west. And California, here I come.
They had been airborne only about 20 minutes when he lost sight of the general. As usual, he was riding on the general’s right wing when they began to climb up to a safe altitude. At about 40,000, he followed Jones into a monstrous cumulous cloud. When he emerged, barely a half minute later, the general was nowhere to be seen.
At first, he was tempted to break radio silence, but he resisted. The day was otherwise very clear. He twisted in his seat looking out the bubble-top, searching the sky for the F-111. Nothing.
He climbed up to 45,000 feet—then 50,000. Still nothing. He dove down to 30,000, then 25,000 then 20,000. Still, there was no sign of Jones.
He took a chance and switched on his radar. Just as it went hot, he saw the barest of blips at the edge of his screen. The profile indicator read out that the blip was large enough to be an F-111, but the plane’s direction was due south. He and Jones had been on a heading of due west.
He thought it out for an instant and decided to double back and follow the blip. It was so unlike Jones to deviate from an agreed-upon plan that he was worried enough to take the risk. Something peculiar was going on. He could feel it in his bones.
He booted the F-16 in an effort to catch up with the blip. Traveling at close to 1300 mph, he knew that by the time he could make a visual sighting, he and the mystery plane would be close to crossing over into Mid-Ak airspace. Still, he pressed on.
He continued to track the blip and finally got a visual sighting a few minutes later. There was no doubt about it. It was Jones. He had dropped his plane down to barely 10,000 feet and was still dropping when Hunter caught up to within five miles of him. They passed into Mid-Ak territory seconds later.
Suddenly, Hunter saw two more blips appear on the screen. They were smaller, faster craft and both were heading directly at Jones. If the general had followed his own orders, Hunter thought, he’d have his radar off and would be unaware of the other two planes.
Hunter wasn’t taking any chances. He immediately armed his Sidewinders and floored the plane to full military speed to intercept the two planes. They came within visual sighting in seconds. Two F-101 Voodoos, mean-looking supersonic fighters that were the favorite of free-lancers and pirates alike. Both planes were painted in an evil-looking black and red trim color scheme, indicating a fighter-for-hire team.
All the while, the F-111 had been losing altitude, and Hunter strained to keep it in sight while streaking to intercept the Voodoos. Jones had slowed considerably and Hunter could see he had his flex wings spread out as far as possible, almost perpendicular to the plane’s body. It was the configuration for a low-level bombing attack. By the time Hunter was within a mile of him, he had figured out what the general was up to.
Jones was leading a one-man bombing mission against the Mid-Aks. Hunter couldn’t believe it, especially after Jones had convinced them all that he was pure mercenary. But Hunter had no time to wonder about the senior officer’s motives. He’d have the two Voodoos to deal with first.
He knew the two pilots didn’t see him to the last second. Either they were flying without radars or didn’t have them turned on. Either way, it was a fatal mistake for them. Just as the first one rolled out to pounce on Jones’ plane far below, Hunter fired a Sidewinder. The Voodoo pilot never knew what hit him. The air-to-air missile went right where it should have gone: up the exhaust pipe of the F-101. The plane exploded in mid-air. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left.
The second Voodoo pilot had already started his attack dive when he realized his partner was gone. He started to take evasive action, but again, Hunter was quicker to the draw. A second Sidewinder flashed from under his wing. It met the Voodoo at about 15,000 feet, just as the pilot had managed to pull up out of his attack dive. The missile clipped the F-101’s wing, shearing it completely off from the jet’s fuselage. Spinning wildly, the Voodoo continued to plunge. It impacted into the side of a mountain, a ball of flame instantly erupting from it.
Hunter rolled out and started to dive of his own to catch up with Jones. He had no idea where he was. He had passed over a city that may have been old Philadelphia, but the only thing he was sure about was that, by this time, they were deep in Mid-Ak territory. Breaking through some clouds at 10,000 feet, he picked up the F-111 again. It was streaking barely 150 feet off the ground, coming on under any radar that might be around and heading toward what looked like a major city. Hunter could see the outline of the coast and the bustling harbor. Only then did he realize that city was Baltimore. Jones had decided to attack the very heart of the Mid-Aks’ evil empire.
He watched as Jones made his approach. Even though Hunter knew they were both in “deep sierra,” he had to admire the general’s coolness. He knew there was nothing he could do to stop Jones from carrying out his bombing run. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to. He decided the best he could do was help now, and hope they were both around to discuss the matter later.
About five miles out from the city’s limits, Jones started to pick up groundfire. Hunter was right on his tail at the moment, and Jones wiggled his wings to acknowledge his wingman’s presence. The F-111 sped on, dodging several small, shoulder-fired missiles launched by troops on the ground, the plane’s outstanding terrain-hugging feature lifting it up and down as dictated by the contour of the ground below.
They started picking up some heavy flak about two miles out. Hunter could see hundreds of Mid-Ak troops scrambling below as the two jets passed over barely 100 feet above the deck. Hunter’s target acquisition equipment picked up a couple of fortified gun posts ahead and he put several bursts from the M61 into both of them. But there were more guns than he could shoot at, and he knew the F-111 wasn’t equipped with a cannon or any kind of gun to shoot back with. Hunter knew he’d have to ride shotgun for Jones for the whole bombing run.
About a mile out, the air was filled with flak, missiles, and bullets from rifles of the troops below. It seemed like everyone on the ground was armed and shooting at them. Hunter saw the F-111 shudder from taking a few hits, but it never wavered from its course. He kept his F-16 continually rolling from side to side, its cannon flashing, stirring up columns of earth as the M61 shells hit the ground or human targets.
Then, a missile—it looked like a Stinger—hit the F-111 midship. The big plane shook violently and began to lose altitude. But just as quickly, it stabilized and regained its heading, though trailing some bad-looking black smoke.
Within seconds they were right on the city itself, the F-111 neatly lifting itself above the on-coming skyscrapers. Hunter saw the plane’s bomb bay doors open and knew Jones was preparing to drop whatever he had concealed inside the body of his plane.
All the groundfire had stopped by this time as they were directly over the heart of the city. Hunter was going slowly enough to see people scattering on the streets below. Because the Mid-Aks had no fighter jets of their own, their citizens were unaccusto
med to seeing such aircraft above their city. Hunter also imagined that the city’s air raid siren was cranking full blast.
When he saw Jones wiggle his wings again, he knew the general was coming to the end of the bombing run. All the while the smoke from the F-111 was getting worse. They had passed over the city and were coming up on its airport, which was located a few miles outside its limits. The airport was now a bristling Mid-Ak military base and training center. Hugging the waters of Chesapeake Bay, it gave the Middle Atlantic states an easily defended outlet to the well as a place to launch their seaborne invasions from. Jones was out to put an end to that.
They started picking up some more groundfire as they approached the airport, but it made no difference. Jones had wiggled his wings a third time then pulled back on his stick and put the F-111 into a screaming climb. Hunter followed suit, guessing that Jones must have planned to drop something big. They had climbed to 20,000 when he saw a single, chubby bomb drop from the smoking F-111. The plane then stood on its tail and with its wings swept back, was kicked into afterburner. Now Hunter knew why Jones was getting them high and out of there quick.
The bomb he dropped was a nuclear one …
They were at 40,000 when the blast went off. Hunter rolled to get a better look and was astonished to see a mushroom cloud—this one very authentic—rising up from the airport. The blast wave hit his plane a few seconds later, rocking it and causing his instruments to blink. He knew that whatever—and whoever—was on the base was now vaporized. When or how Jones had managed to get hold of a nuclear bomb, he couldn’t imagine. He was still awestruck by the size of the blast and the growing mushroom cloud rising over the airport base.
He should have figured that Jones wouldn’t have let the Mid-Aks off so easily. Nor would he have involved the rest of the squadron in nuking the Middle Atlantic’s main base. It was technically a one-plane mission, and that’s how Jones had planned it all along. The paycheck soldier talk was a cover. His hate for the Mid-Aks—their murderous, barbaric ways—had become personal a long time ago. With the constraints of the ZAP out of the way, Jones decided the time was right to deliver his own personal message of protest to the Middle Atlantic States. It was his way of avenging all the deaths and human misery the ’Aks had caused.
Mesmerized by the ever-growing mushroom cloud, Hunter concluded that the Mid-Aks had made a mistake a long time ago by making General Seth Jones their number one enemy. “You don’t fuck around with General Jones,” the saying used to go, and once again, the adage was proved correct.
The general’s smoking plane had leveled off at 55,000 and had made a wide turn out over the Bay and headed due north. Hunter, realizing that after the nuking of the airport, something like maintaining radio silence seemed unimportant. He attempted to raise the general.
But he got no reply …
He followed the disabled F-111 as it flew out over the Atlantic and steaked off to the north. Off the coast of the old state of Connecticut, the plane started to drift to a course back over the land. All the time, Hunter was trying to raise Jones on both his VHF and UHF frequencies, but still got no response.
He pulled up beside the fighter-bomber several times and used hand and wing signals, again to no response. The F-111’s canopy windows were tinted in such a way as to make it hard to see the pilot inside. Hunter dropped back to survey the damage to the general’s plane and noted that while the jet was still flying, the hole in its side would soon force it down. He figured the plane’s radio might have been knocked out by groundfire, but it was spooky that Jones would not acknowledge his wing or hand signals.
And why the hell was he heading north?
Soon they had passed over into the Zone’s airspace and still the F-111 flew north. Hunter could tell the plane was slowing down, gradually losing altitude. He pulled up beside it again, trying to get some response to his hand and wing signals, but it was to no avail.
After flying this way for 20 minutes, the landing gear on the F-111 came down. This further slowed the jet. Hunter surveyed the ground below and quickly calculated that they were somewhere over the forests of the area once known as Vermont. When the F-111 wings swept out and it banked to the left, Hunter knew it would soon be landing somewhere. He felt he had no choice but to follow suit.
Sure enough, as they broke through the low mists of the Vermont Green Mountains, an airport, carved out of the woods, came into view. The F-111 dropped down even further and began a final turn for landing. Hunter could see that while the strip, would be able to handle the short-landing F-111 easily, it would be a squeeze for the F-16.
After watching the F-111 set down to a perfect, three-point landing, he slowed his F-16, and lowered its gear. The strip would prove a tricky landing for the average pilot, but tricky landings and take-offs were one of Hunter’s specialties. He coolly set the F-16 down, and immediately reversed the engine for a quick, if bumpy stop.
He couldn’t help but think of the amazing events that had transpired in this single day—the explosion at the base club, the attack from the sea, bugging out of Otis, nuking Baltimore’s airport and now, with the sun finally setting, his landing somewhere in Vermont. He felt it was time for a change, but this was getting bizarre.
He climbed out from the F-16 and looked around. Except for the F-111, the place was deserted. The only building was a small hangar, which looked like it was sealed up and locked tight as a drum. The general’s plane stood at the far end of the runway, slightly off-kilter, its exhaust and wounded side still smoking. Hunter ran to the airplane, hoping to see the canopy popped up and a tired but triumphant Jones sitting on its wing.
But it was not to be. He clambered up onto the wing and crawled along the top of the fuselage to reach the cockpit. It was closed. He reached down with his foot and was able to trip the release handle. The canopy hissed once, then slowly opened. Inside, still strapped down, helmet on and sitting perfectly rigid, was General Jones.
He was dead, of course. Shrapnel from the missile hit had punctured his chest and he had bled to death probably somewhere over the middle of Baltimore. The plane, with its famous sophisticated computer-controlled flight systems, had completed the mission Jones had programmed it to, then flew him to this remote base. The spookiness of it all made Hunter shudder. Suddenly, he was very cold.
He pulled the general out and lowered the body to the ground with the help of the parachute straps. He took one long last look. Here was a truly gallant man; hero in Viet Nam, leader of the Thunderbirds, the soldier, who probably more than any other, turned the tide in the Battle for Western Europe. An officer who respected his men as pilots and as human beings, who felt that to fight for a just cause was the ultimate human experience. Now to have that life end here, on a wind-swept and desolate airstrip in the middle of the mountains seemed not at all appropriate. The man should be written up in history books. If there were any history books. He should have been accorded a full military funeral—a horse-drawn caisson, a flag on his casket, a 21-gun salute. But it was not to be.
Hunter felt like a huge part of his life had just been cut out, destroyed, vanished. Gone. For the first time in a long time, he felt utterly alone. Not at all like the solitude of his mountain retreat of a few years back. This was the emptiness one felt upon losing a member of his family. The frank realization that a person you knew, spent part of your life with and loved, was gone. Forever.
He knew he would never be the same again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE a shovel to dig a proper grave for Jones. He felt lost. And stranded. He had very little fuel left in the ’16.
It was getting late and a light snow began to fall. He covered the general’s body with the parachute and hoisted it back up onto the wing of the F-111 to keep it from any hungry animals. Hunter knew he would be spending the night at the airstrip and that he had to find shelter and damned quick. The airport’s hangar seemed the likely place.
He tried to force the office door open
, but it was nailed shut from the inside. The windows were bricked over—again from the inside. He hadn’t expected it to be so difficult. Finally, taking a wrench from the F-111, he began to work on the lock that tightly held the building’s large sliding doors.
He had no idea why Jones had programmed the F-111 to fly to this place. It looked to be an old remote strip, possibly used by the Vermont Air National Guard, or maybe an airborne forest fire fighting unit. It was in the damndest place. The area, while technically within the territory of the Northeast Economic Zone, had been vacated long before, its residents among the first to flee to Canada when the New Order came down. It was on the side of a mountain that was surrounded by larger mountains, each covered with snow, despite the month being late April. It was utterly desolate; there probably wasn’t a human around for 50 or even 100 miles in any direction. Yet, judging by the tire marks and fuel stains on the runway, it was apparent that the airstrip had been used frequently in the last few months.
He finally managed to bust open the lock and move the doors of the hangar. It was dark by this time, and his flashlight was in his Personal Survival Kit, back in the F-16. He got inside and, after wheeling the big doors closed, wandered around, looking for a light switch that he knew would probably never work. He finally found a bank of them, and started flipping. Nothing happened … until the 15th switch. Suddenly, there was a crackle of electricity and two dozen high powered arc lamps hanging from the ceiling burst into life.
Strangely, he had assumed all along that the hangar would be empty, but he was never so wrong in his life. His jaw nearly fell to his chest as he looked around the building. “Holy Christ!” was all he could say. Over and over. “Jesus H. Christ, I don’t believe it …”
It was Jones’s last card to play and it came up the ace of spades. The hangar was filled—literally to the rafter—with enough bombs, guns, missiles, fuel and spare parts to outfit a small air force.
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