As always, it was this airplane which landed last from any bombing mission. Only after everyone else in the flight was back down safely did the Super-A come in. Once down, it rolled to its own special parking area at the far end of the flight line, where it was greeted by its own special ground crew.
This day, its guns were as empty as its fuel tanks. The ground crew could tell just by the way the airplane taxied up to its hardstand. The quicker it went, the more spent it was. Oddly, that was also a good description of its pilot.
He pulled the small plane up and killed its engine just before his tanks went dry. The air crew came out. Though they were all under eighteen, all three were veterans of the war against Germany. They knew this small plane inside and out, and had been selected personally by its pilot. Of the 100 ground personnel at the base, only they could touch the Super-A. This was something they were very proud of.
Their nicknames were Dopey, Sniffy, and Sneezy.
The pilot popped his canopy and climbed out, jumping down from the high cockpit without the benefit of an access ladder.
Dopey appeared, took the pilot’s helmet, and gave him his ever-present baseball cap.
“Good flight, Major?” Dopey asked.
“Ran great,” the pilot replied. “I’m empty on ammo, so you can align the gun sights if you want.”
Another member of the ground crew appeared. He had a can of paint and a small brush on hand.
“How many today, sir?”
The pilot had to think a moment.
“Six for sure,” he said finally.
The kid checked his can of paint.
“I might run out,” he told the pilot.
They both walked around to the snout of the strange little airplane. On both sides of its nose, and all the way down to the cockpit, there were dozens of tiny pictures of yellow airplanes with little red balls on their wings—the symbol for a downed Japanese SuperZero. There were so many of them, they threatened to cover the entire fuselage.
“Sir, if you keep going like this, you’ll have to get a new airplane,” Dopey said.
The pilot just smiled and saluted them off.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “It would be hard to give this baby up.”
He was Hawk Hunter. Fighter pilot extraordinaire, secret agent, infiltration expert, military strategist. More than anyone else, he was the brains behind this secret base.
He walked into the administration building to find the base’s operations officer, Major Eddie Payne, planted as always behind a very disorderly desk.
Hunter and Payne had most recently served together flying bombing missions from Iceland against the Germans. Payne was middle-aged, balding, solid with a slight paunch. He was a highly professional combat officer whose main concern was always getting his men home safely.
That was a tough order up here, atop Xwo Mountain, but Payne was trying his best.
Hunter put his mission recorder down on Payne’s desk and gave his fingers a snap.
“The group nailed the target absolutely,” Hunter told him. “The fighter opposition was ….”
But Payne wasn’t listening. Hunter looked down at him and saw that the operations officer was pointing across the room with one hand and holding a finger over his mouth with the other.
Hunter turned and saw there were three other people in the room with them. One man was holding a camera, one man was holding a set of lights. The third person was a very attractive female. She seemed familiar to Hunter, not an unusual occurrence for him. She was wearing a very short skirt, a lot of makeup, and holding a microphone.
“Hello, Major Hunter,” she cooed. “We’re from CNT World News.…”
Hunter looked back at Payne as if to say, You’ve got to be kidding me….
Payne just shrugged.
“Sorry, Hawk,” he said.
It was a strange thing in this world that even though the U.S. military was running an operation as secret as this one atop of Xwo Mountain, they allowed the press almost unrestricted access to whatever they wanted. Why? Because it was in the Constitution and the American public was rabid for news from the front. But it was also Freedom of the Press at its most extreme.
“They’ve been waiting for you all day,” Payne said under his breath. “Flew in just after the group took off. Why don’t you just do a quick interview and maybe we can get rid of them.”
Hunter felt the adrenaline of the mission quickly drain out of his body. Due to circumstances beyond his control, Hunter was a big hero back in the U.S. Though never officially confirmed by the U.S. Government, it was he who had infiltrated Germany, found the six atomic bombs, secured their smuggling out to U.S.-controlled territory, where five of them were re-fused and then dropped on Nazi Europe, ending the fifty-eight-year-old conflict known at one time as World War II.
Thus he was known to many as “the Man who won the War,” though he loathed that title. More than a million American soldiers had died fighting fifty-eight years of World War II; in Hunter’s opinion, they’d had more to do with winning the conflict than he had.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the Panama Canal, and later invaded South America, the U.S., still reeling from the war against Germany, had been deliberate, some said too deliberate, in taking action. It took months to gather enough forces just to secure the border of Texas and Mexico; after all with the Japanese in Panama, and a constant state of anarchy in Mexico, a potential invasion force was just a few hundred miles away.
Only then could the U.S. start thinking about taking the war right to the Japanese. Hunter had been a spearhead for this, parachuting alone into the jungles of Peru just two weeks after the Japanese landed. Operating from a small ultralight aircraft, the man some people had taken to calling “The Sky Ghost” did target identification, defensive assessment, and forward base scouting.
It was he who had found the mountains of Xne and Xwo about a month into his mission. Reconnoitering them extensively, he had made certain they were big enough, wide enough, and remote enough for the secret base to be set up. The first problem was making sure enough portable electricity could be airlifted up to the mountain top to run the high-voltage LSD screen. Once this problem was solved by the construction of a superpower, air-portable double-reaction generator, the base began to take shape. Late-night flights down from Texas gradually dropped enough supplies on the peak to build the base, construct the runways, and most importantly put up the LSD screen, including the unique LSD “roof,” which covered the secret facility from the air as well.
The bombing campaign had begun soon afterwards.
So far it had been a great success, for what it was intended. That was, to put the Japanese on the defensive whenever and wherever possible.
All of this was more or less known back in the U.S. due to the wide-open relationship between the Pentagon and the media and the American people’s endless fascination with war heroes. In addition to Hunter, many of the other pilots on Xwo were celebrities back in the States as well. Their exploits had been recounted over and over in the press back home, as a way of building morale, which in the end Hunter knew was vitally necessary.
But Hunter was the most famous of them all. He was the one everyone wanted to talk to, get a glimpse of, get an autograph from. And now, with the appearance of the Network TV crew, it looked like all that was going to continue.
Hunter walked over and shook hands with Kate Kalloway, the beautiful familiar-looking female reporter.
“So, Major,” she asked, “Do you have a few minutes for us?”
Hunter shrugged.
“A few, I guess,” he replied.
With a roll of the eyes from Payne, they all filed into a private office off the main ops room.
Hunter took a seat across from the reporter. The lights came on; a microphone was put in front of him. Ms. Kalloway fixed her hair. Hunter started going over his usual responses in his head. He knew by now what to say and what not to say to the media. If these press people w
ere no different from the thousands he’d met before, they would ask about his early days in the jungles of Peru, the building of the hidden base, the first missions against the Japanese, the battle on the mountain plain of Axaz.
But the reporter had a surprise for him.
“Major Hunter, exactly where did you grow up?”
The words froze Hunter. He looked over at Payne, whose face began to pale. This is not what they were expecting.
“I … I believe that is actually classified information,” Hunter was finally able to mumble.
This much was true. All information about Hunter’s personal background was classified top secret.
“But there are rumors …” the reporter persisted.
Again Hunter paused. Yes, there were rumors. Where did Hawk Hunter come from? The real answer was, no one knew for sure.
Not even Hunter himself.
He’d been picked up by a U.S. warship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on August 15, 1997. How he got there was still a mystery. Hunter had total amnesia at that point, but some memories began draining back to him soon afterwards. He soon remembered he was a pilot, an extremely good one, and that he’d come from a different place. It was a place exactly like this one, with the United States and all the other countries of the world, and 6 billion people and the daily conflicts of life—but a place much different too. The only explanation Hunter or anyone else privy to all this had come to was that he’d somehow passed into an alternate universe somehow.
Gradually, just about all his memories came back. “Back There,” in the place from where he came from, Hunter had been the world’s best fighter pilot ever. He’d been an officer in the United American Armed Forces, who protected the American continent after their version of World War III went against the U.S. Five years of civil war and foreign invasions followed before the United Americans finally freed their country again.
Then the UA found itself involved in several wars overseas, and gradually, it became known that one person was behind all of this misery and war: A superterrorist named Viktor Robotov.
When Hunter discovered Robotov had managed to go into orbit in an old Russian-made space shuttle and take over a secret orbiting space station, Hunter stole the shuttle and went into space after him. But the Earth learned it was in the path of a huge comet which would destroy the planet in one gigantic collision. This disaster was averted—Hunter assumed—when he used the space shuttle to tow a string of nuclear weapons directly into the path of the comet, the explosions from which deflected the gigantic snowball away from the Earth.
Robotov was in the space shuttle with Hunter for this suicidal mission, as was a close friend of Hunter’s named Elvis Q. All Hunter could recall was watching the bombs detonate in space—and then falling … falling … falling into the Atlantic Ocean, where he was eventually picked up.
Elvis had been picked up too—by the Germans. He had turned against the principles of the United Americans, single-handedly revitalized the Nazi cause, and in the end, killed himself over it shortly before the war was over.
What had happened to Viktor, who’d also fallen into the water, was not known. At least not by Hunter.
But all this—where he came from and how he was found—was still very top secret, simply because the U.S. military didn’t know where the hell Hunter came from either—or at least they claimed they didn’t. True, they’d recognized Hunter’s special abilities in ending the war with Germany and now they relied on him very heavily in light of the new Japanese threat. But there was still a certain element who hadn’t quite figured him out yet—something Hunter himself could sympathize with. He hadn’t figured out a lot of things either.
One reoccurring event since he’d arrived here was an overwhelming feeling he had at times that the people he was talking to were vaguely familiar. He’d theorized these déjà vu-like events were leftovers from his previous life. It stood to reason that if he was here, then people that he recalled from his previous place would be here, too. Though just to what extent these familiar ones were his friends or enemies was sometimes pretty hazy, as well as where he had met them or why.
But again all this was top secret and he couldn’t possibly get into it with the TV reporter, as he wasn’t even sure what was going on himself.
Thus his current dilemma.
“I really can’t say very much about the subject,” he tried again—but the woman wasn’t letting go.
“Look, Major,” she began slowly. “You are a hero. You are known to millions of people around the world. Billions, in fact. Even the Japanese have offered cautious praise for you. During the war with Germany, the Germans held a memorial service for you when they thought you were dead. They even gave you your nickname, the Sky Ghost.
“Now, you must see that with all these admirers, many people would be curious about your background….”
Hunter was trapped. He looked over at Payne, who could only shrug back. Even he didn’t know the circumstances of Hunter’s arrival in this place. He only knew that those circumstances were highly classified.
“As I said,” Hunter tried again, “the information you are asking me for is classified. I’d be committing treason if I told you.”
“Classified?” the reporter huffed. “Your birthplace? Who your parents are? Your whereabouts before August, 1997? Why would these things be top secret?”
Finally Payne spoke up.
“I believe the answer to that question is also top secret,” he said, the absurdity of his statement slowly sinking in among those gathered. Even the technicians looked at him bemused.
Payne sought to recover.
“Look, Miss Kalloway,” he began, “Major Hunter just returned from a long mission. I’m sure his mind is, well … in other places. Why not give him some time to get back to Earth, so to speak? Then we can all get together again real soon.”
The newswoman frowned at this suggestion, but knew it was one she would have to take, mainly because Hunter was already on his feet and leaving the room.
“OK, Major,” she called after him. “But tomorrow morning. Bright and early. We begin again.”
Thirteen
NIGHT FELL AND THE jungle beneath Xwo Mountain finally quieted down.
As always, several squads of Air Guards—the U.S. Air Corps’s infantry division—went outside the LSD screen for their nightly patrols. Between these soldiers, the hundreds of electronic detection devices scattered about the mountain, and help from Xaxmax’s extended family, as well as all the neighboring tribes, the mountain and the area around it were virtually impenetrable.
Any time any Japanese airplane came within 100 miles of Xwo, fighters were scrambled and the enemy was either shot down or chased away. After a while, the Japanese and their allies knew better than to approach the area from land or air. In many ways, Xwo Mountain was probably the safest place on the South American continent.
Still, every other night, whenever the sun went down and the jungle got quiet, Hawk Hunter would find a pang of concern begin to well up in his stomach. As the hours grew to midnight, this feeling would grow no matter what he was doing or where he was.
By 2300 hours, he would usually start walking down to the flight line, and this knot in his stomach would grow until it felt like it was the size of a small boulder.
There was a reason behind this seminocturnal bout of stress. The 2001st Fighter Squadron flew the Mustang-5s off Xwo. Twelve aircraft in all, the squadron was made up exclusively of women pilots.
Hunter had served with them during the last days of the war against Germany, first in Iceland, and later off one of the Navy’s megacarriers. He’d gotten to know all of the female pilots, and had come to admire them greatly for their courage, skill, and openness.
The fact was, though, he’d come to know one of them very well.
She was Captain Sara James, the squadron’s CO. She was smart, funny, and drop-dead gorgeous. A brunet with big blue eyes and lots of curves wrapped tight in a compact body, she
and Hunter had grown close since their first meeting.
Very close….
More than once they had broken regulations about officers sleeping together in a combat zone. But with Hunter’s stealth skills being what they were, he’d yet to get caught sneaking in the window of her billet to spend the night or sneaking back out again before the crack of dawn. Their romance was not exactly a top secret though, despite all these high jinks. Sara served with eleven other women and, like men, they talked.
He cared for her deeply for many reasons. She was there during the coldest days of his service in Iceland, when he was battling the Germans with one hand and trying to figure out just who the hell he was with the other. She was with him during his rise to superhero status after the war. She stood beside him at every celebration, at every boring speech, at every boring party that followed. All this while never asking him a question about who he was, or why he seemed to be able to fly an airplane like no one else in this place.
She was a very important person in his life now. What’s more, the skills of her squadron mates and their ability to adapt made them perfect for this strange mountain top duty. When Hunter requested they be assigned to the secret air base, the Air Corps heartily agreed. Their romance simply went south of the border after that.
The problem was, Sara flew the midnight patrol mission three times a week, and it was this that caused the stress bubble to grow in Hunter’s stomach. Though he knew she was a great pilot and tough as nails in the air, Hunter was still afraid for her every night she went up. He couldn’t imagine what he would do if she went off on a mission and didn’t return. He would be lost without her.
So he would walk down to the flight line every night she was going up and help her do her preflight walkaround. He wanted to make sure for himself that her plane was in optimum condition to fly. If he didn’t, and something happened, he knew he’d never be able to forgive himself.
This night, they met at her plane as usual and stole a brief hug in the shadows. She was letting her hair grow long and with each day she grew sexier, if that was possible. The preflight went quickly and without a problem. Hunter then accompanied her into the ready room.
Return of Sky Ghost Page 11