Then where did they come from? Even the most obvious choice—the norteamericanos—made no sense. Wakisaki had seen the heavy bomb loads these aircraft had been carrying. There was no way they had flown all the way down from North America carrying such heavy loads for this sneak attack. And from the reports of the survivor-rescue, the strange eight-rotor flying contraption certainly could never have made such a long trip.
Yet Wakisaki was sure there were no American megacarriers on either coast of South America. In fact, in the six months since the Japanese takeover of South America, there had not been one peep from the North Americans. Not one. They were exhausted, the conventional wisdom went, from their very draining, very close-run victory over Germany after fifty-eight years of war. It was a keystone of Wakisaki’s plan that North America would not lift a finger when Japan invaded South America, or took over the Panama Canal. The attack on Pearl Harbor had taken care of the aircraft carrier fleet, they had nothing left to fight with, even if their citizenry wanted to.
Yet logic dictated these attackers had to be North Americans. So then, where was their base? How could the norteamericanos hide an entire air base anywhere on a continent that was so firmly in the grip of Japanese hands?
Wakisaki didn’t know.
But as the tears continued to roll down his face, he made a vow right then and there to find out.
Six
Two days later
THE ALL-BLACK AIRPLANE SET down at the New Lima airport just after sunset.
It was a troop transport, an eight-engine miniknockoff of the infamous Spruce Goose. It came in easily and took the full three miles of runway to slow down.
The airport itself was cordoned off to all but the highest level of security troops. The damage from the freak air attack two days before—one small airplane had knocked the base out of action at the height of the bombing raid—bad been repaired by now, or simply covered over. The entire security detail and air traffic control staff for the air base had paid the price for the single plane attack. All of them had been quietly executed earlier that day.
The huge plane rolled over to an isolated hangar and finally came to a stop. Its rear clamshell doors opened and slowly but surely a long ramp extended from its rear. No sooner was this platform down than two long lines of dark figures began disembarking.
Black uniforms. Black helmets. Black face masks, gloves, and boots. Even their weapons were black. No surprise then that they were known as Brigata de la Noche, literally, the Night Brigade.
They were Argentine commandos, special-ops troops who had terrorized the Argentine population and those in neighboring countries for years before the Japanese ever came ashore. Each man was more than six feet three inches tall and many were a half a foot taller than that. They lived on raw meat—and literally drank cow’s blood at least once a day. The Night Brigade, 1,200 men strong, were experts at both jungle warfare and urban combat. They could kill a man with a twig; crush his skull with a pebble. They had made torture an art form. They sometimes ate babies.
The Japanese had been very concerned about dealing with the Night Brigade, that’s why the unit had been paid 2 million dollars in gold before the Japanese invasion even took place. Now they were beholden to the Nipponese High Command and especially to General Wakisaki. He’d called on them several times since the occupation to take care of particularly nasty holdouts in Colombia and the forests of Brazil. On all occasions, the Night Brigade resolved the problem quickly, if brutally.
Wakisaki was expecting no less from them this time.
The bombing raid on New Lima was now firmly implanted in the combined psyche of the Japanese occupation forces. The first six months of their invasion had gone so smoothly, the troops had begun to think of themselves as agents of destiny and of Wakisaki as being divine. Now the jewel city of the New Japan lay half in ruins. The other half was soaked in water and muddy ash. A foot thick in some places, it was the lasting result of fighting more than a thousand fires.
Wakisaki knew that whoever was responsible for the fire-bombing raid had to be found and had to be punished in a very public manner. That’s why he’d called on the Night Brigade. Being home troops, they would be able to handle any terrain on the continent to get at the perpetrators. This was something the imperial Japanese troops could not do as well. The Night Brigade also knew how to deal with native populations, something else the occupation troops weren’t too good at.
This is what Wakisaki knew had to be done. The mysterious bombers had to have come from within a 150-mile radius of New Lima—this figure from analysis of several insta-films that had been made during the raid. The huge bombers—definitely of North American design—had been so weighted down with bombs, Wakisaki’s aeronautics people told him the planes couldn’t have been carrying very much fuel, and thus a 300-mile round-trip would have been their limit. There were only three directions from which the bombers could have come: north, east, and south—west was simply the ocean, and the planes definitely did not come from an American megacarrier. There was only one left, the USS Chicago, and it was still in dry dock in San Diego.
Another clue: The raiders had come from the northeast and departed in that same direction. Japanese and Peruvian airplanes had been overflying the area northeast of New Lima for forty-eight hours straight, looking for any sign of a secret air base, but with no luck. This was not unexpected, though. The area the planes were canvassing was among the most rugged on the continent, all mountains and thick jungle and valleys so deep, reports persisted that dinosaurs still lived in some of them.
The suspected area was also sparsely populated, but some tribes still lived in the region, and again, that’s why the Night Brigade’s talents would be needed. It would be up to them to question the local tribesmen by any means necessary as to what they might have seen along the lines of a secret installation or airplanes flying overhead. Through these native peoples, Wakisaki was certain, the mysterious air raiders would be found.
A line of tracked vehicles rolled out onto the runway just as Wakisaki was reviewing the dastardly Argentine troops. There were no speeches, no ceremony. Wakisaki simply looked over the gigantic soldiers, nodded a little, and rubbed his bandaged nose. Then, with his vast entourage in tow, he jumped into his heavily armored limousine and left the air base.
Once he was gone, the Night Brigade climbed aboard their huge tracked vehicles—there were thirty of them in all—and their long column departed.
Across the airfield, toward a highway just recently built, they headed north.
Northeast Peru
The place was called Exuxuci.
Loosely translated in the dialect of the Intez Indians, it meant the Two Mountains of the Gods.
And indeed there were two mountains here. Both more than 8,000 feet above sea level, both enshrouded in perpetual mist. They were known as Xne and Xwo. Ringing them on all sides were thick forests, the trees of which reached about two-thirds of the way up both mountains. After that, they both wore crowns of stone and snow.
Like Xne and Xwo, the forests were considered holy by the local Intez Indians. Stories passed down from the Ancients, the distant ancestors of the Intez, told of beings from the Heaven landing on Xwo thousands of years before and living there for a very long time. These beings made friends with the Intez, even though they never really spoke to them. After a while, the Intez came to revere the beings, and in turn, the beings protected the tribe. When the beings finally returned to space, they asked the Intez to watch over Xwo, as it was now a holy place to which they might someday return.
One family of Intez, the Xuzu, lived in the forest between the two mountains. Their warriors had protected these holy lands for nearly five millennia. It was the duty of the family chief to make a pilgrimage to the top of Xne Mountain at least once a week, to check on things on the top of Xwo, the second mountain nearby.
The current family chief was a man named Xaxmax. He was 253 years old by Intez time, and considered a very noble and brave lea
der. He’d been head of the 145-member family for nearly forty-five years, taking on the traditional role his father had passed to him.
Xaxmax had made the weekly pilgrimage to Xne to look over at Xwo every week for the length of his tenure. This involved sitting on the peak of the first mountain and gazing for one whole day and one whole night on the flattened-off surface of Xwo, which was approximately half a mile away.
This weekly trip had been a mostly ceremonial journey for the past 5000 years, yet it had remained unchanged in all that time. There was no reason for it not to be. After all, this area of Peru was so isolated, the world’s anthropologists weren’t even aware of the existence of the Intez. It was accurate to say that very little ever happened in this part of the continent, either down in the jungles or on the tips of the holy peaks.
At least, not until a month or so ago.
That’s when Xaxmax had first seen them. Three weeks ago. The lights. The fire.
The gods themselves.
Now, he was preparing to make his weekly climb up to the top of Xne once again. He hoped this trip, like the last three, would prove to be very exciting.
He’d already eaten his mescal flowers; the ingestion of the powerful hallucinogenic was part of the weekly ceremony. He’d also drank from the waters of the nearby River Ugu. He’d hugged his wife good-bye and all of his twenty-seven children, saving the last embrace for his oldest son, Itax. Then, as the mescal began to kick in, he set out on the path to the top of Xne, starting as always when the sun was highest in the sky.
The trip up usually took six hours. The first three were relatively easy. The path Xaxmax followed had been worn down for thousands of years by his ancestors making this same journey. It was as smooth as glass in some places, its texture feeling cool to the bottom of Xaxmax’s bare feet.
At the beginning of the fourth hour, however, the path got steeper, rockier, the jungle less dense. By the fifth hour, there were no more trees, just the rocks and the wind whipping everywhere. When the trees dropped away, the mescal flowers really began to take effect, and usually Xaxmax could see the stars and planets, even though the sun was still out. The constellations took on new shapes in the daytime and whenever he saw the animals of the jungle in the star formations—the jaguar, the snake, the condor—then Xaxmax knew it would be a good journey up.
One month before, on his 2,334th trip up to Xne, the chief had seen a strange, new star formation. This was of a huge bird—long wings, a long silver body, with a mighty hooked beak and huge talons. Xaxmax was frightened by this image at first. The stars looked strange enough in the daytime; this particular vision had been slightly terrifying.
But he’d continued climbing that day, knowing it was the proper thing to do. But thoughts of his family, his wife, his children, his oldest son, and the rest of the tribe had saturated his brain with every step he took. When he’d reached the top, his body had begun vibrating, though he wasn’t sure why.
This journey had been easy compared to that one.
This day, the sun was not so bright, and he saw the stars through the sunlight very clearly. They formed the large silver bird again, but he no longer feared it. This would be the fourth time he saw it; and each time, he grew to like it even more.
The mescal was at full peak when he reached the top of Xne. His brain was spinning in a million different directions as usual. From here, he got his first good glimpse of Xwo, half a mile over. The peak of the sacred mountain was obscured in fog, but that was not unusual. Xaxmax found his favorite rock and sat down on it. He ate his last mescal flower, drank his Ugu water, and sat back. Slowly his eyes gained in power and clarity.
Just like that trip one month ago, strange sounds began to reach his ears. It was not the wind, not the jungle below. Not the symphony of the planets. These sounds were very unusual and so different from anything Xaxmax had ever heard before.
They were very high-pitched, the sound of metal and fire mixed together. Xaxmax sat on his holy rock, the flattened piece of stone where he would spend the night and the next day and tried his best to make his eyes burn a hole through the fog. Sometimes, this would take a while.
As before, his nose began picking up the strange odor; he’d smelled it the last three times he was here as well. But what was it? Something was burning … over on Xwo. But still, he could see nothing but fog.
So Xaxmax sat on the holy stone, peering through the mist, smelling the smell, and hearing the strange sounds until night fell and the stars came out for real.
That’s when it happened again.
The fog had blown away from the top of Xwo, but Xaxmax could still see nothing unusual. The flattened-off peak looked the same, though his vision was getting blurry from the afterglow of mescal.
But then, the noise! It came again. Like a thousand children screaming at once. It was so loud Xaxmax fought the temptation to put his hands to his ears. With all his willpower he fought to keep from closing his eyes. Soon his mouth was open, but he could not scream.
Above him, as if it had suddenly appeared out of the thin air itself, there was a huge flying machine. It was much bigger than Talaz, the mythical bird of creation. It had silver wings and a giant glassy head, there was fire coming from it, and the noise it made nearly caused his ears to bleed.
It went right over his head. Screaming, burning, filling the air with fire and smoke.
Then suddenly—it was gone.
Just like that.
Xaxmax shook his head, cleared his eyes, and stared over at the nearby mountain peak. Just like the past three times, it seemed as if the giant silver bird had simply disappeared as soon as it had reached Xwo. But how could this be? Even under the influence of the mescal, Xaxmax knew that things like a giant silver bird could not simply disappear. That was just not the way of the world—or at least this part of the world.
So, what had happened?
Like before, Xaxmax, still frozen in place, tried to wrack his brain for anything in his teachings that might give him a clue as to what he’d just seen. Then, he heard the sound again—and an instant later, another gigantic silver bird appeared over his head! It too was sprouting fire and smoke. It too was screaming with the voices of angels. It too disappeared into nothingness.
Then came another. And another. And another!
They were flying over his head, with fire and smoke and noise, and the smell, descending onto Xwo, where suddenly they simply vanished.
This was madness, and again for a moment Xaxmax feared that he’d ingested too much mescal. What should he do? He’d asked the same question the last three times he’d journeyed to Xne. Those times he’d fought the temptation to flee back down the mountain after seeing the silver birds. He’d fought to keep his courage and his sanity and had laid on the rock all night long, shaking with fright, but knowing that to be brave, he must stay. And each morning he woke up and the sun was shining and all seemed normal again. And he’d gone back down the mountain and told not a thing to his tribe.
But now the silver birds were being very loud, very fiery, and very terrifying. Xaxmax wasn’t sure he could take it. He cried out. He prayed. He beseeched the gods for an answer. But he heard nothing in reply.
Now more of them went over his head and simply vanished. His ears sounded like they were full of bells, he knew he couldn’t take it anymore. He got up and gathered his things, making ready to run down the mountain and face the disgrace that would bring.
Then he heard another sound. This one was not a scream. Rather it was like many wings flapping at once. He turned around and saw that another kind of flying monster was hovering right above him! It was just as big as the others, but very different. This one was flying in place, right over his head.
And then suddenly, a line fell from it, and smaller monsters came down these lines. And the whirring things on top of the flying beast—there were eight of them in all—were kicking up dirt and dust and little bits of snow, and Xaxmax found it hard to breathe and keep his balance.
But these monsters were huge! And they were dressed in strange blue skins and had strange bubblelike heads and their belts were full of weapons and wires and things. They were carrying long magic sticks which Xaxmax knew could destroy him in a second.
So this is how I will die, he thought …
But then something very odd happened.
One monster stopped, looked at Xaxmax, and slowly removed his headgear. His face was very white, his hair long, and Xaxmax realized he was not a monster but a human being like himself. The man smiled at him, and Xaxmax smiled back. Above them another silver bird went over and quickly disappeared from view.
The man smiled again.
And somehow, Xaxmax finally understood.
Later that day, when Xaxmax went back down the mountain, he gathered his family around him and told them of his adventure. He’d watched the huge silver machines—yes, that’s what they were—go over his head and simply disappear. He had made friends with the ones he had first thought were monsters. Before he left, he waved to his friends inside the silver machines and they waved back to him as they went over and disappeared into the fog of Xwo.
What Xaxmax now understood, and what he told his tribe, was that these men were here to save the people of the forest just as the people from Heaven had come 5,000 years ago to do the same thing.
He told the people of his tribe that these strangers were their friends too, and that some evil ones were now ravaging the jungles for many miles around.
Someday soon, the Intez and the strangers might have to fight these evil ones.
Return of Sky Ghost Page 6