Here, in this place, the building process was more specialized. Instead of 5,000 copies of one design being produced, there might be 100 copies of fifty designs. It seemed to be the less efficient way of doing things, but it did have one positive aspect: It made for a world that was rich in different airplane designs and capabilities. Back There, Hunter could count on one hand the number of airplane designs a typical military pilot might fly in a typical career. Here, that number would be doubled, maybe even tripled.
But even this, that he might have dozens of cool airplanes to fly, wasn’t enough to lift the suspicion that the OSS was about to use him, rely on him, entrust him with something way out of proportion to what he could really do. It was a very uneasy feeling.
Strangely, he accepted the premise that he was a “secret weapon,” as much as a human could accept such a thing. He was an anomaly here in this world, and he couldn’t argue with the thesis that he did have an effect on the outcome of the last war. But was that because he was not from here, and just by his transference to this place alone caused the war to end once he jumped into it? Or would it have ended anyway?
It was a strange but important question and he didn’t have the answer and that’s what bothered him the most. It was not long after he found himself in this world that he had made one important discovery: that the people here had no conception of the idea of “coincidence.” Everything that happened Here just simply happened, and if two events seemed to coincide, the people here just accepted it as the way it was supposed to go. They did not appreciate the irony of the coincidental event because they had no concept of it.
Hunter’s insertion into the war against Germany and the fact that the conflict finally came to an end shortly thereafter could not be labeled a “coincidence,” no matter how mystical or cosmic or strange it might be. Here, it was just accepted as the way things were.
But now, with these new burdens being placed upon him, what would be their result? Would Hunter’s simple presence in the OSS’s future plans actually guarantee them to work? Or did they depend more on his skills, his reasoning, his derring-do to pull the fat out of the fire at the end?
He just didn’t know. But one thing seemed certain: He felt he was used to doing these things—leading desperate missions, fighting against the odds, and trying to win big. The vast majority of his memories were still hazy. But back where he came from, Back There, he knew he must have been quite a hero.
They drove for about half an hour, again staying on the barely paved roadway, passing enormous buttes, dozens of small canyons, and innumerable dry washes.
Finally they reached their next destination: It was another hangar simply plunked down out in the middle of nowhere. It was ringed with concertina wire and had the requisite pair of guards watching the front gate.
Y flashed their OSS passes and again, they were waved in.
The size of the hangar was interesting, because it was normal. Something built to house just one, normal-size airplane. This was another oddity here. In this bigger-is-better world, it was the small things that were special.
Y got them by the second set of guards and they soon gained access to the small hangar. Like the one before, it was dark in here, and musty. The air stank, telling Hunter that the door to this place hadn’t been opened in a while either.
But when Y flipped on the light, what Hunter saw next made him forget the stink, the heat, the dirt, the dust, and the fact that the OSS was counting on him to win a major war—again.
What he saw gave him such a jolt, all these things were suddenly washed away. A spark in his memory turned to flame. Years ago. Back There. He’d walked into a hangar and seen his beloved F-16 revealed to him. It would be his plane for the next five years, through many air battles, many wars, many memories.
Now that identical feeling was running through him again.
Before him was an airplane. A jet-powered one. Those were the only two things he knew for sure.
It was sleek. Sleek to the nth degree. It was so sleek in fact, it looked like a flying hypodermic needle. Its nose was so sharp it did indeed look like it could puncture skin. Its fuselage was extremely long and thin, so much so that the canopy blended right into the airframe. Its wings were short, stubby, almost nonexistent. The fuselage ended, quickly, with a small tail section positioned slightly above the twin exhausts. It was painted all white, with silver and chrome trim.
Quite frankly, Hunter had never seen a more beautiful plane in his life.
“Jessuzz, what is it?” Hunter heard himself exclaim.
Again, Y checked the MVP.
“It’s called the Z-3/15,” Y said. “Nickname, ‘Stiletto Deuce.’ First flight, October 1972. Reason for being: a high-speed transsonic fighter, capable of near-space flight. Development off and on until 1991. Top speed attained: Mach 6.1. Highest altitude climbed: 111,000 feet. Wow, that is the edge of space. Armament: two cannons, two antiaircraft missiles. Only one model exists. This is it.”
Hunter was slowly nodding his head as if he was paying attention to every word Y was saying—but he wasn’t. He couldn’t. His ears weren’t working. Neither were his knees.
This plane looked so … well, cool, he really couldn’t do anything else but stare at it.
“What … is it for?” he finally managed to ask Y.
Y checked his orders. And at last he saw something that didn’t make him frown.
“What is it for?” he replied. “It’s for you. It’s yours. This is your new mode of transportation. To do with what you like.”
Suddenly, with those words, everything that had been weighing on Hunter’s mind simply ceased to exist. Suddenly everything had changed. Suddenly he was more one with Here than ever. Because now, he had something that he’d had Back There. He had an airplane. His airplane. Sure, the Mustang-5 of his European war days was a great plane. And the Super Ascender was also a neat little bird.
But they weren’t like this.
Y consulted the MVP, then walked over to a utility deck which was on wheels next to the sleek airplane. He rummaged through the top drawer and came out with a silver-plated card with many numbers displayed on it. It was an activation card, the thing that was needed to plug into the cockpit’s Main/AC computer extension and start the airplane
With no ceremony at all, he simply handed the card to Hunter. It was like giving him the keys to the Kingdom.
As soon as that card touched his fingers, Hunter knew his world Here would be different. No more doubts. No more questions. He was suddenly complete. Stay tight. Stay cool. It was time to do the impossible.
His seduction by the OSS was now complete. And he knew it.
“I’ve got to hand it to your bosses,” he said to Y. “They really know how to pull a guy’s string.”
Seventeen
THEY RETURNED TO AREA 52 and after tracking down the security officer, were given the use of an office, a telephone, and a place to plug in the MVP for recharging.
Hunter lay sprawled on the couch in the small office. Its only window looked west, out away from the runways and the rest of the base, and into the mountains beyond. He was drinking coffee and watching the sunset as Y, seated behind an ancient oak desk, fiddled with the power-drained MVP.
A number of thoughts drifted through Hunter’s mind, as was his wont at the end of most long days. As the sun was going down, the desert was turning golden. His thoughts went backwards from there. Seeing all the strange planes at Bride Lake. The wild nights in Texas. Xwo mountain. The battle at Axaz. The Super Ascender. Sara.
His brain rewound itself, and then took a right turn. Stranger notions began streaming in. Eating bugs on the ground in the Peruvian jungle. Trying to stay invisible atop of Xwo. The strange feeling that night on the roof of the Happy Valley when his psyche had him staring off to the northeast. Then, earlier this very day in Dallas, and the strange fortune-teller.
Hunter laughed a bit to himself. It seemed like ten years ago now. It was strange: He could picture the
psychic right down to her dimples and her deep brown eyes. But he could hardly recall what she had told in her prediction.
You will soon be very cold—he remembered that much intact. But that was hardly true. It was ninety-six degrees inside the office right now, even though the sun was going down and the huge windowframe air conditioner was blowing cold at full tilt.
What came after that? You will meet old friends again, she had said. Again Hunter chuckled. Not out here, he wouldn’t.
They will build something to come apart. What the hell did that mean?
Hunter frowned. What was the rest of it? Then you will be asked to …
“Holy shit …”
Y’s soft exclamation broke Hunter out of his trance. The MVP was repowered and reconnected. Their new orders were streaming in. Y was reading them—and swearing in amazement with each line.
“Son of a bitch,” he was mumbling. “Are they kidding?”
“Jessuzz, break it to me gently,” Hunter told him, staring now up at the ceiling, as if he was waiting for it to fall in on him at any moment.
“Well, first off,” Y began, “by a presidential order you have been officially designated a ‘secret weapon’ by the War Department.”
“You’re kidding …”
Y shook his head no.
“I’m quoting here: ‘A panel of the senior Psychic Evaluation Officers have recognized that for whatever reason, Major Hunter’s presence in a tactical or strategic situation will probably have an effect in the overall outcome.’ Therefore, Major you are valuable. Therefore, you are now a secret weapon. It also means you can be cleared for some of this.”
Hunter just shook his head and went back to staring at the ceiling.
“Point Two,” Y went on. “The U.S. and its allies are going to attack the Panama Canal.”
Hunter stopped looking at the ceiling for a moment.
“Really?”
Y nodded. “That’s what it says. They’re looking at a two-pronged assault simultaneously on both entrances. The Navy is taking the Pacific side, the Army and Air Corps are taking the Caribbean end. If they can gain both approaches to the waterway, all the Japs left in the middle will wither on the vine.”
Hunter turned this concept over in his mind a few dozen times in the space of about five seconds. “Hey, a plan like that just might work,” he said finally.
“Maybe,” Y replied. “But here’s the real bombshell: It says that the whole Canal attack is just a diversion. For something bigger …”
“Bigger?” Hunter asked. “Bigger, like the Brazil operation?”
“Nope,” Y replied. “Bigger than that even.”
Hunter was stumped. “What the hell could be bigger than a full-scale invasion?”
That’s when Y just handed the MVP to Hunter.
“You should see this for yourself,” he said.
What the screen showed was, to Hunter’s surprise, a huge mushroom cloud. It was an image not seen very often in this world—at least not until the five H-bombs he’d stolen were dropped on Occupied Europe to end the war with Germany about a year before.
This image faded into a long text detailing the mission statement, which had the words classified and top secret written all over it.
Hunter hit the “Fast” button on all this. He wanted to see the MAS, the “mission animation sequence.” It would tell him not in words but in pictures what lay in store for him.
What he saw was almost comical.
It showed a group of men entering an animated version of the huge hangar they’d visited in the middle of the desert earlier, the one that housed the colossal airplane. Once the tiny figures were inside, the building started spewing smoke and literally shaking at its foundations—this was the animation-briefers’ way of telling him that work was going on inside the big hangar.
Then, after a while, the doors to the big hangar opened, and he saw an animated version of the colossal airplane taking off, using the entire ten-mile runway to do so. Even as a cartoon, this sequence looked a little scary. The plane just appeared to be too gigantic to ever get airborne in real life. It just barely made it off the ground in the animation! Again, this was the briefers’ way of telling him that they expected the takeoff to be a bitch of an experience.
Once airborne, the airplane flew very, very high and very, very slowly, and began a long journey around the world via the polar route. Flying south, the giant aircraft went over the south pole, up the other side of the planet, over the north pole, and back down again.
Toward the end of this long, long journey, the plane was shown being attacked by dozens of smaller airplanes and antiaircraft rockets. The big plane plowed through all of this, only to be attacked again and again. Finally, still in one piece, it arrived over an island land mass, where it was attacked even more fiercely than before.
The view changed and the plane’s enormous bomb bay doors opened—and a single bomb fell out.
The plane speeded up, but just a little—it couldn’t go that fast. When the bomb went off, the resulting mushroom cloud was so enormous, it immediately engulfed the colossal aircraft.
When the smoke cleared, the animation showed the spot of ocean where the land mass used to be. Most of it was gone—exploded into the sea. Only the barest outline remained, but it was enough to provide the only clue needed as to exactly what the target had been: The Home Islands of Japan.
The animated briefing ended.
Hunter just looked over at Y and numbly shook his head.
The point of the cartoon briefing was clear: The OSS wanted the colossal airplane to go on a very secret bombing mission. There was no doubt exactly where the OSS wanted this mission to go.
Even why this big airplane was being asked to carry one tiny little bomb was not that mysterious. Obviously the plane needed both surprise and the ability to fight off masses of enemy aircraft to get to the target and drop what had to be the only available copy of the diminutive bomb.
But who did the OSS expect to fly this thing? It would take a crew of at least a dozen or so, Hunter surmised. Probably three or four times more.
“Well, I only have about a million questions,” he finally said to Y. “Number one being, do they expect me to fly that thing alone? I mean not even the OSS is crazy enough for that … are they?”
“No, they’re not,” Y was saying, going back into the mission statement itself and reading the next set of instructions.
“It says here that you have to gather a group of ‘associates,’” Y revealed. “And again I quote, ‘Individuals who are known intimately to you, who can be trusted, who have flight experience, and who can clear security. And be assembled in a week’s time.’” Y looked up at him. “Now that’s a tall order ….”
Hunter was just shaking his head. “I only know about twelve people here intimately,” he said. “And half of them are SuperBlonds back in Dallas.”
Y just shrugged. It did seem like a strange order.
But Hunter’s mind was already on to the next question. The MVP made it quite clear that this plane was to drop a bomb that would produce a mushroom cloud, obviously the sixth and remaining H-bomb from the cache he stole from the Germans near the end of the war.
But now, as they watched the tail end of the animated briefing again, obviously this sixth bomb had been altered somewhat. Because according to the cartoon, the version this plane was to deliver was so powerful, there was no way the giant bomber could get out of the way of its own blast.
Once this had sunk in, they both just looked at each other.
Y had to say it for both of them.
“From the looks of this,” he said, “it’s a suicide mission.”
Hunter just went back to looking out the window. The psychic’s last words were coming back to him loud and clear now.
You will be asked to die, she had said.
How could he have ever forgotten that?
Eighteen
OSS Headquarters
Washington, DC
>
IT WAS THE NIGHT-SHIFT maintenance crew who first became suspicious.
The three-man cleaning team who regularly swept, mopped, and buffed the floors of all the offices inside the massive OSS main building had not been able to gain access to Room 222 in nearly a week.
Knowing that the men who used this room were among the highest intelligence operatives in the country, the cleaning crew wasn’t about to ask around as to their whereabouts, not after just a couple of days anyway.
But by Day 3, the cleaning crew grew concerned. Room 222 was probably the hardest office for them to clean simply because the two agents who used it smoked more cigarettes, drank more coffee, and missed the wastebaskets more often than the rest of the people working inside the entire OSS complex combined. In other words, the OSS’s two top agents were also its sloppiest.
There were visions of a nightmare rising then by Day 4 as the cleaning crew, assuming the agents were working during the day and just not leaving the door unlocked at night, feared a powerful mess was building up inside. Four days without a sweep-out meant a colossal job for maintenance once access to the room was reestablished, and that would wreak havoc on the entire cleaning schedule. And that was one thing the maintenance men did not want.
So, by Day 5, their concern had grown to the point that they finally asked the building’s superintendent to please look into it for them. The superintendent asked the building’s night operations officer about the situation, and he expressed surprise that the men in Room 222 weren’t following the common procedure on building maintenance, which was, you left your office door open every night. The officer then turned to his Main/AC computer and asked it to locate the men from Room 222 for a message transfer.
The computer churned and chugged for a while, but then came back with an unsettling response: Not enough input for evaluation. This meant the computer didn’t know the whereabouts of the two agents, a highly unusual situation.
Return of Sky Ghost Page 16