Return of Sky Ghost

by Maloney, Mack;

  “I hear a reporter has sunk her hooks into you,” Sara said, as she began climbing out of her duty overalls.

  “I just don’t get it,” Hunter told her. “We’re here, in a top secret operation, and yet the press is here as well. I’m not sure that’s how it should be or how it was back …”

  He caught himself before he blurted out the next sentence.

  She stopped dressing for a moment and just looked over at him. She knew exactly what he’d been about to say.

  “Well, you should be used to talking to the press by now,” she said, changing the subject slightly. “I’ve seen you give the same song and dance a hundred times myself.”

  But Hunter was only half listening to her. Instead he was intently watching her dressing process. She had slipped out of her duty overalls, wearing only underpants and a bra beneath. Then she’d slipped out of the bra, giving him an all-too-fleeting glimpse of her pert breasts. Finally she’d slipped into her skintight flight suit, zipping it up like a cocktail dress.

  In all, the process took just twenty seconds or so, and Hunter had seen it many times before. But his breath never failed to catch in his throat when it happened.

  She laced up her flight boots, grabbed her helmet, her survival pack, and her gun, a massive double-barrel Colt .45.

  That’s when Hunter’s stomach began tossing at full throttle.

  They embraced, as always, and kissed, once, twice, three times. It was a ritual now after three months, and again he was loath to break it. She’d come back every time since beginning it; he wasn’t about to break that streak now.

  He walked her back out to the flight line. The three other pilots going up with her were already in their cockpits warming their birds up.

  They would be flying a patrol route which would take them 300 miles to the south, 250 miles to the east, and then back on the northwest line for about 400 miles. They would fly this route three times; the mission would take five hours. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, he would meet her for breakfast at 6 A.M.

  She climbed into the cockpit and he helped strap her in. They kissed goodbye—again three times. Sara looked up at him and smiled.

  “Listen, if that woman reporter is too hard on you,” she said with a wink, “just leave her to me. I’ll take care of her.”

  Hunter smiled, saluted, and went back down the ladder. He watched her taxi away; she was waving and smiling as if she were going no farther than the corner store for a quart of milk. Hunter felt his chest heave again. It was very strange. He’d only known her a short time, yet he felt like they’d been together for years.

  The four black Mustang-5s roared off into the night, expertly slipping through the hole in the LSD screen. Hunter watched them disappear into the starry abyss. He checked his watch. It was five minutes past midnight.

  Now the real waiting began.

  Ten minutes later, Hunter had made his way up to the highest point on Xwo’s peak, a place where the LSD screen gave way to the stars overhead.

  There was a ledge here on which he could perch and watch the constellations march across the sky. This was where he usually wound up on a night Sara was on patrol.

  It was usually his only time to think as well. Really think—about his present life as compared to his previous one. There were still many things he couldn’t remember about the other place. He knew he was called the Wingman back there, and he remembered how he’d gotten that name and what battles big and small he’d fought in. But other things weren’t so clear. He had a hard time remembering individuals, friends, lovers, enemies. This was especially frustrating considering the never-ending sense of déjà vu he experienced anytime he met a person he thought he might already know back in the other place.

  This had happened twice for real so far. The first example was the man known here as Agent Y. He was an OSS officer, an intelligence agent who had engineered Hunter’s assignment to Iceland from where he had led the air war against Germany. Back in the other place, Hunter knew Agent Y as Stan Yastrewski. In fact, “Yaz” and Hunter had fought many times together and were close friends “Back There.”

  The Yaz here and the one Back There were exact duplicates of each other, in physical description, age, and so on. They were exactly the same, in temperament, courage, and professionalism, too. The only real difference was that in this world, Yaz was an OSS agent; Back There, he was a liaison officer for the United Americans.

  Hunter and Agent Y had become good friends since the end of the war against Germany; in a way, Y was Hunter’s guardian angel. The OSS agent knew that Hunter was an extremely valuable commodity on an almost cosmic level. It was his entry into the war against Germany which had provided the defining moment that turned the tide back in favor of the U.S. Y also knew that Hunter was from somewhere else, which for various reasons was highly classified information. So Y acted as Hunter’s shield. Sure, the American people knew Hunter as a mysterious hero. But only Y and a very few others knew just how mysterious he was.

  The other example was Captain PJ O’Malley of the 99th Bomber Squadron, one of two units presently operating off Xwo Mountain. Hunter had known O’Malley as “Captain Crunch” back in the other place, and, like Y, this man was in fact the same person. Back There, Crunch had also been a close friend of Hunter. He’d run an outfit called the Ace Wrecking Company, had fought many battles along with the United Americans and had drained just as many whiskey glasses with them too. In this place, Crunch was still hard drinking, still absolutely fearless. Except here, he was a superheavy bomber pilot. Back There, he flew fighters. Just like many things, the difference between Here and Back There was usually very small.

  The reporter today looked fairly familiar to Hunter too, as had dozens of people he’d met since coming here. He just assumed these were people he might have had a passing acquaintance with Back There, and thus would cross paths with them infrequently here. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret when he thought about people who he’d been close to Back There and who he would never see again.

  Unless, somehow, he got back home …

  He shook these sad thoughts away, and looking back up into the heavens, tried to recall more from his previous existence. He knew he dropped into this place after detonating the string of nuclear bombs which diverted the comet from smashing into his old Earth. This meant he’d been in space, of course. But oddly enough, he couldn’t really remember what it had been like up there. This was strange, because in his heart he felt a deep urge to fly in space. It was a dream, a vision:—and Back There, he’d obviously done it. But, curse of curses, he could not remember any of it. Liftoff, orbiting, weightlessness—it was all a blank. His memory banks as far as space travel was concerned had been deleted, a particularly cruel joke that the cosmos had played on him.

  What made it worse, there was no space travel in this world. No satellites, no high-velocity rockets, nothing. The decades-long World War II here had made the notion of spending money to travel in space both ridiculous and unthinkable. In fact, it just wasn’t something the people here even had in their consciousness.

  That’s what fifty-eight years of constant war could do.

  So Hunter could only stare at the stars and wonder what it had been like and what his lost memories had been.

  He watched the stars spin across the sky for another two hours.

  The concern he’d felt for Sara was still there, but it was gradually replaced by another emotion—one of growing relief that the long night would eventually end in a couple of hours, and that he was over the hump, and that he would see her again soon and that she would be safe.

  He was just starting the climb down from the ledge when suddenly his body began shaking. He knew what it meant right away: An aircraft was approaching the base. His internal psychic-radar usually gave him advance warning of such things. But this wasn’t an enemy aircraft coming in. The vibe was all wrong. Yet something about it gave him a tinge of dread.

  He scrambled down from the peak
just in time to see the faint red light approaching from the north. The noise arrived a second or two later. Engines misfiring, the sound of the air being chopped through. He watched as the LSD technicians opened a hole in the screen not at one end of the runways, but in the roof. This was not a fixed-wing aircraft that was coming in. It was one of the monstrous eight-rotor aircraft known as Beaters.

  It came down through the LSD hole like a sack of bricks, standard landing profile for the ungainly thing, bouncing twice before settling down on solid earth. The crew immediately shut down all engines and the base ground personnel routinely hosed down a few of the aircraft’s side-mounted engines, power plants which always seemed to be catching on fire.

  The access ramp was lowered and Hunter saw the aircraft had only one passenger aboard.

  It was Agent Y.

  Hunter met him at the bottom of the ramp. They shook hands heartily. They hadn’t seen each other in a couple of months.

  “Hawk, how are you?” Y asked.

  “Doing good,” Hunter replied. “This is an unexpected visit, isn’t it?”

  They began walking away from the smoldering Beater.

  “Unexpected and quick,” Y replied. “Per order of our friends in Washington.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Hunter said.

  “See for yourself,” Y said.

  He handed Hunter a mission viewing pad, or MVP. This was a flat screen device about the size of a hardcover book. It had a six-inch-square screen on it surrounded by a series of buttons and dials. Animated films could be back-projected onto this small screen, either by inserting an insta-film cassette tape, or via radio waves sent from just about anywhere in the world. MVPs had about a million different uses. This was how many combat pilots were briefed on their upcoming missions. The MVP would contain all elements of the mission, play them out as little cartoons on the screen, and then go with the pilots as a kind of guiding light throughout. It was the same with Army officers in the field, and ships’ captains at sea. The OSS in particular relied on the MVPs to keep their agents updated, in touch, and safe.

  Hunter switched this one to Play and saw a map of South America materialize on the screen. Two-thirds of it was painted orange. The remaining part, Brazil and several smaller nearby countries, were painted blue.

  Hunter knew exactly what the map meant.

  “Brazil is finally coming into the war on our side,” he told Y.

  “Good guess,” the agent replied. “Negotiations have been going on in Washington for two months, and they’ve reached what the diplomats call ‘the fruitful stage.’”

  “What’s the timetable?”

  Y shrugged. “Six weeks, maybe eight,” he replied. “We began shipping them shitloads of stuff even before the secret talks started. They’ve got enough materiel now to field ten divisions. In a month that number will triple.”

  Hunter did the math. “Three hundred thousand guys—plus force of our own I assume?”

  Y nodded. “We’ve got twenty divisions in an expeditionary force ready to sail. The Brits are sending five divisions. The Italians will do air support for the Brazilians. We might be looking at a pretty even-up situation down here in not too long.”

  Hunter had to agree.

  “Interesting …” he said.

  “Go to the next page,” Y said, “if you want interesting.”

  Hunter found himself looking at a close-up picture of occupied South America. The mountain ranges were highlighted in topographic relief and there were blue cartoonish stars above six of them. Hunter pushed the Continue button. The cartoonish mission film then showed six of the peaks being flattened off and tiny airplanes arriving. Once in place, the airplanes took off again and began bombing dozens of sites all over Japanese-held South America. Little flames and plumes of smoke appearing above the targets boasted future successes.

  Hunter smirked. MVPs always ran like this—like a cartoon. It was a strange way to get briefed. All that was missing was the music.

  “The Air Corps figures they can have six more LSD-protected air bases operating down here inside of four weeks,” Yaz explained. “Following your model here, they’re very optimistic.”

  Hunter was getting mildly excited. Big things were happening in South America. The Japanese were already on the defensive. An invasion from Brazil, coupled with bomber strikes, carrier strikes, and insurgency actions could prove to be a hell of a fight, one the Americans and their allies just might win.

  Hunter was glad that he was going to be a part of it.

  But Yaz saw the look on his face and stopped walking. He took the MVP from the pilot and lowered his voice.

  “I know exactly what you’re thinking,” he told Hunter, “so I’ll just be straight with you: They’re calling you back to the States.”

  Hunter shook his head, as if this would somehow unclog his ears. He had to have heard Y wrong.

  “Excuse me?”

  But Y looked too grim-faced to be kidding.

  “It’s true,” the OSS agent told him. “They’ve got something for you up north. I have orders to bring you back.”

  Hunter was absolutely bowled over. Why in the world would they be recalling him now, just when things looked like they were about to pop in the U.S.’s favor?

  Again, it was not hard for Y to read his mind.

  “I don’t know why, Hawk,” he said. “And I couldn’t tell you if I did. You’re needed up north. That’s all I know.”

  Hunter had to take a few moments before the news finally began sinking in. He looked around the base, and in a flash realized he’d actually miss it.

  He checked his watch. Sara would be back in two hours. He’d have to tell her of course, hopefully spend some time with her, then he’d pack his things and check with the Super-A’s ground crew and …

  “OK,” he told Y. “If I got to go, I can leave by noontime—or midafternoon would be better.”

  But Yaz was shaking his head. At that moment Hunter noticed that the Beater crew had never shut down their main power plants. Nothing was being unloaded or loaded onto the Octocopter. It was suddenly obvious the aircraft wasn’t staying on the mountaintop for very long.

  “We got to go now, Hawk,” Y was telling him. “And I mean, right now.”

  Now a new feeling came over Hunter. He was getting pissed.

  “Wait a minute,” he said with rare sternness. “I got loose ends to tie up here.”

  Y was shaking his head. “Sorry, man. No can do.”

  Hunter felt his temples flush. “These people in Washington. They realize I’ve been busting my ass down here for almost a year now? That I was eating snakes and bugs and wearing the same undersuit for six weeks at a time?”

  Y was nodding. He was obviously in a bad position. On the one hand, Hunter was his friend; on the other, he had his orders from the highest levels of the U.S. government.

  “They all appreciate your contribution, Hawk,” he replied. “Obviously they do. The whole upcoming air campaign is based on your work here. This counteroffensive would never be happening so soon if you hadn’t done all the grunt work. And they know it.”

  “So?”

  “So,” Yaz went on slowly, “there’s something maybe even bigger they want you to do. And to do it, we’ve got to go now. There’s a rocket plane over in Brasilia that’s already heating up its engines.”

  Hunter began to say something—but stopped. What was the use of arguing?

  He felt the weight on his heart double in size. He’d have to leave his airplane behind. His colleagues. And Sara. He wouldn’t even be able to say good-bye to her.

  That hurt the most.

  “We’ll leave a message for her,” Yaz said, reading his mind again. “Now … ?”

  He indicated the waiting Beater.

  Hunter just shrugged and together they started walking toward it.

  Off in the distance he heard a jungle bird begin its morning song. The dawn was just an hour away; another day on the mountain would
begin. And he wouldn’t be here.

  As it turned out, he would miss Sara by less than fifteen minutes.

  Fourteen

  THE BEATER FLIGHT OVER the predawn Peruvian jungle was, as always, a white-knuckle affair.

  The Octocopter—any Octocopter—seemed to defy every major law of aerodynamics. It looked too big, flew too big, usually had a couple of engines out, or even in flames. It was gangly, loud, uncomfortable, slow, smelly, and forever unstable.

  But it got the job done—at least this time. The light green hue of the Peruvian countryside gradually gave way to the dark emerald color of the Brazilian rain forests. The constant bucking and broncing and Hunter’s deep funk prevented him from enjoying the scenery. He found himself checking his watch every few minutes and thinking, She’s just turning back to base now. She’s just beginning her prelanding checks now.

  She’s just landing … now.

  Finally he just slumped deeper into his seat, and closed his eyes. Surprisingly enough, he fell asleep. He dreamed he lived on a farm, somewhere back in the U.S.

  It was on the edge of a cliff. With a little house. And a hay field. And the great blue Atlantic beyond.

  Brasilia was a city in the middle of the jungle.

  It was a futuristic design, from the eyes of someone forty years ago. Lots of strange-looking buildings, wacky statues, wide-open roadways. Stadiums. Weird globular structures that served little or no purpose. It was a place built to be people-friendly and was anything but.

  The Beater swooped low over the center of the city and set down at the huge military air base on its eastern fringe.

  Hunter and Y got off the noisy aircraft only to have their ears assaulted by the thunderous roar of jet engines. Gigantic unmarked C-919 Super Flying Boxcars were landing at the air base at a rate of one a minute, lugging in the materials of war for the upcoming Brazilian offensive. The staging area was thick with military equipment, from supertanks to artillery guns to rocket launchers to mountains of ammunition. There were also many troops in evidence. Brazilians, British, Dutch, Icelanders, and Americans. No one was wearing any insignia, though. Like the jumbo cargo planes, everyone was playing a game of deniability.