Return of Sky Ghost

by Maloney, Mack;

What would happen to her, he wondered.

  Colonel Asten was running the thin defense line one more time, taking a moment with each small group of STS men, bucking them up before their world came to an end. Hunter was checking the M-18 the Brits had given him. It was a long-range combat rifle, with a five-shot auto feature and a long belt of ammo. It was a powerful weapon, but this last firefight would be a particularly frustrating one for him. For any battle, his place was in the air. That would not happen here. The Z-3 was useless where it was, in the cow pasture, three miles and a large body of water away from any appropriate runway. No runway, no takeoff. The plane was useless.

  It was strange because just as the storm clouds joined completely over their heads and the cold rain began to fall and the troopships grew closer to the shore, Hunter felt another odd sensation go through him. It was familiar too. Its meaning was not quite as clear though. It was almost like the cosmos was telling him to stand by, watch what happens next.

  Whatever the meaning, the vibration rang true.

  Because just as the defenders were beginning to count their last minutes, just when it seemed they would soon be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of heavily armed amphibious troops, just as it seemed like the troopships were ready to stop and start discharging troops, something very, very odd happened.

  The ships just kept on going. The destroyers, the carrier, the troopships, and the cruisers went right by the entrance to Tenean Beach, right by the sandbar, by the rocks at its tip, and kept on sailing.

  There were gasps of disbelief and no little relief from the slit trenches. Asten was immediately on his radio, shouting at a squad of lookouts he’d posted on the hill.

  “What’s happening?” he was yelling into the mouthpiece. “Where are the ships going?”

  Hunter had already scrambled up the highest dune and he now had the Japanese ships in sight as well. He watched as they went right by West Falkland point, and into the middle of the sound. They all bore to starboard and soon they were steaming down into the sound itself. Only then did the ships begin to slow down. Hunter and Asten jumped into the only jeepster available to them and tore up the road to the nearest cliff. From here they could see the whole sound and the coast of East Falkland beyond.

  Over the next few minutes they saw the ships stop, throw out anchor, and begin to discharge in their landing craft. These amphibs were heading southeast and entering a place that according to Asten’s map, was called San Carlos Bay.

  Asten and Hunter stayed on this cliff for the next two hours, watching the invaders dislodge their troops and supplies, not quite believing what was happening.

  But after awhile it was clear.

  A miracle of some sort had happened.

  The Japanese had invaded the wrong island.

  Twenty-eight

  THE PLACE WAS CALLED Casket Island.

  It was a small piece of land located in the middle of Falkland Sound, nearly equidistant from West and East Falkland.

  The island was not much more than sand, rocks, and a few scrub trees. An ancient wind sock erected on its northwest edge provided the only evidence of human contact. In years gone by, the directional aid had been used by pilots flying into McReady field, one mile to the east. Now the sock was ripped and tattered, its pole barely winning the battle against the constant gales which swept up the sound.

  The island was usually home to thousands of seabirds—terns and gulls mostly. But they were nowhere to be seen now. They had scattered during the brutal air battle at McReady the day before. At the end of that battle, an odd six-engine long-range-type aircraft had been shot down and crashed on Casket Island. Since that happened, the birds had yet to return.

  The wreckage was fairly intact. The left wing had been partially ripped from the fuselage and the tail had separated after coming down. But the flight compartment was still in one piece. Indeed very few of the large array of window-panes in the craft’s bug-eye nose were even cracked. More importantly, the insides of the airplane had not been too seriously damaged.

  This was one reason that Hunter and six of the STS commandos were now approaching Casket Island in a small rubber boat. There were things inside the airplane they might need.

  Hunter had spent the day secreted atop a Point Curly cliff looking across the sound at San Carlos Bay where the Japanese were still unloading their invasion troops and provisions. The invaders could be clearly seen fanning out over the rugged landscape of East Falkland, setting up command posts, cutting slit trenches, installing weapons. Watching them for hours on end through his binoculars, Hunter’s intuition was that the Japanese were looking for something—but having a hard time finding it. He wasn’t sure how he knew this. There just seemed to be an air of desperation and frustration emanating from the Japanese beachhead.

  Too busy invading the wrong island, the Japanese had not paid any attention to the plane wreck on Casket Island. There was a chance they didn’t even know it was there. The way the plane had come down, the wreckage could be seen more clearly from West Falkland than from the east. But it was probably just a matter of time before the Japanese did find the wreck. Hunter wanted to beat them to it.

  The defenders of West Falkland all knew that the reprieve they’d received earlier in the day would be a temporary one. Eventually the Japanese would realize their mistake, and come across the sound to West Falkland. At the moment, the defenders needed every piece of weaponry they could get to bolster their defense. Hunter was fairly sure the bug-eyed airplane had intended to land at McReady in advance of the seaborne invasion troops. If that was true, then there probably were some special ops troops on board and these people would have weapons and ammo that the STS defenders on West Falkland could use. He’d convinced Colonel Asten of that fact; thus he was made lead man of this special mission.

  There were other things inside the airplane that Hunter thought they could use too. Besides weapons, he hoped the airplane was carrying a radio, possibly one powerful enough to get a message to a friendly base and tell them of the suddenly desperate situation unfolding on the Falklands.

  But most of all, Hunter wanted to examine the bodies on board.

  Ever since he’d first spotted the invasion fleet heading for the Falklands he’d had a strange feeling about the whole thing. Things just didn’t add up, especially the motive for such an operation. If he was able to get to the wreckage of this plane, and get a look at the people who were flying in it, his gut was telling him he might uncover some answers.

  The rubber boat made landfall right where they wanted to be: on the edge of a rocky beach about 300 yards from the plane wreck.

  The STS commandos silently moved into the high shore grass, weapons up, heads low; like Hunter they were wearing black smudge camouflage on their faces and hands. It was a waning moon this night and the shadows were stark and bare. Still the STS men managed to make themselves invisible. They were so good at this, Hunter could barely see them and he was only a few feet away!

  Once everyone was up on the beach, two troopers went ahead to scout the area in front of the crashed plane. The word came back that it was clear. Hunter and the others took their cue and ran the final 100 yards to the airplane. They made it with no problem.

  Hunter was the first to reach the wreck. It was still smoldering in places. The crash was now about twenty hours old, yet some parts of the crumpled fuselage were still warm.

  Hunter kicked in a side access door and immediately saw the first goal of this mission had been a success. The airplane was full of rifles, machine guns, and firebomb rocket launchers. It was also full of bodies.

  The STS commandos immediately began hauling the cache of weapons out of the wreck and running them back to the waiting boat. Hunter stepped into the gory hold and made his way up to the mid fuselage. Here he found the plane’s long-range radio and receiver. The device was a total wreck, split in several places in the crash, impossible to repair. Next to it was a computer which looked a little like a Main/AC, all lights and knobs and b
uttons and things. But it too was smashed beyond repair.

  Disheartened, Hunter began moving forward. He appreciated the small irony here. It seemed as if he’d spent much time in his life crawling through plane wrecks, looking for clues. The last time was up in Iceland, literally the other end of the planet, when he searched a huge German air transport he’d shot down. This wreck was smaller, more cramped, and nowhere near as damaged. But clues sometimes fall out of the sky, he recalled thinking back then, and he’d been right. He wondered if it would be the same case now.

  He and some STS men came upon the first clutch of bodies; these were twelve special ops soldiers, Japanese shock troops who’d been riding up at the front of the airplane. They were well equipped and heavily armed. Right away the STS men started stripping the weapons from them.

  One of the commandos reached out and tapped Hunter’s arm. He was shining his flashlight on the face of one of the dead men. The man was badly cut, with many broken bones. He was probably in his mid thirties, with bad teeth, and several scars crossing his face. He looked Asian.

  But was he, really?

  The STS man rubbed his fingers along the dead man’s cheek and came up with a startling discovery: The man was wearing makeup. The STS man wiped some more and sure enough his fingers were turning dull orange from the makeup.

  Hunter pulled out a kerchief and rubbed the man’s face clean. This was a little too weird. Makeup? On a special ops soldier?

  It was true though. Once the makeup and eyeliner and other powders and paints were gone, there was no doubt the man lying before them was a Caucasian.

  The STS men rolled over another body and wiped its face. The same was true here: The man had been made up to look Asian, but was in fact white. They all were; these twelve special ops troopers as well as the other dead soldiers further back in the plane. Not Japanese regular troops, but white men made to look Japanese.

  The Brits were simply stunned. As was Hunter.

  What the hell was this?

  Then it got stranger.

  There was a yell from the rear of the wreck. Hunter immediately began crawling back toward it. Two commandos had found another clutch of crash victims. They weren’t soldiers and no one had tried to make them look Asian. But they were wearing eyeliner, blush, nail polish, and lipstick. There were females—four of them. They were young, shapely, but dead—or at least three of them were. The fourth one was still alive.

  Not for long though.

  Hunter got to his knees and propped her up in his arms. She was dressed in the clothes of a hooker.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked her.

  “It was a job,” she began. “These two guys hired us to take an airplane ride with them. We thought it was a two-day trip. You know, a party. Well, it lasted three weeks. And these two guys were crazy—crazy and drunk all the time. There was a computer up front, they were always asking it stupid questions. They were also looking for someone they kept called the Third Guy or something like that.”

  Hunter gave her water from his canteen. She drank greedily but then coughed most of it back up.

  “One day they asked the computer some very hard question,” she went on in a gasp. “And it took so long for the answer to come back, these two assholes thought they’d broken the thinking machine. Finally it spits out an answer that just drives these two weirdos even more crazy. Right away they forget all about looking for the Third Guy. Now they wanted to go get whatever it was that the computer had told them about. I think it was a bomb or something.”

  She gasped again and Hunter tried to give her more water. But it was not going down at all.

  “We stopped in Bermuda,” she went on, her voice now no more than a whisper, “and they kicked off the regular crew and hired these soldiers. They made them wear this weird makeup and clothes to make them look Asian. They also bought all these weapons for them. Finally we headed south. We landed and met up with some real Asians—I think they were Japanese—and they made a deal. A deal to come here and attack this place.”

  She coughed and what came out was mostly blood.

  “Where are these guys now?” Hunter asked her.

  “The cowards,” she said with her last ounce of strength. “They jumped out, with the only two parachutes on board, just before we got shot down. They knew it was going bad, so they bailed. I’ll see them in Hell, I suppose.”

  “Do you have any idea who they were?” Hunter asked her, even though he knew she was fading fast.

  The woman shook her head no. “They never said. But before they went out the door I pulled this off of one of them. It was hanging around his neck, like it was a religious medal or something….”

  She put something in Hunter’s hand. Then came another cough, and a series of convulsions.

  “I don’t want to die here,” she said, looking up at Hunter. “I don’t even know where I am …”

  She clutched his hand tightly and then let go. He tried mouth to mouth on her, but it was too late. She was gone.

  Hunter gently lowered her to the crushed cabin floor and closed her eyes. Then he looked at what she had given him. It was an ID card. For the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS.

  There was no name on the ID, no address, rank, or personal information. All it had for the man’s sole identification was a single letter.

  That letter was X.

  Twenty-nine

  West Falkland

  The next morning

  THE TRENCHES PROTECTING THE beach at Point Curly looked the same as the day before except they had twice as many weapons sticking out of them.

  Thanks to the raid on Casket Island, the small force of defenders had twice as many rocket launchers, twice as many heavy-caliber triple-.50 machine guns, twice as many fire rockets.

  But bulked-up as the defenders were, it didn’t change the overall situation. They were still outnumbered more than 50 to 1. The enemy also had at least fifty aircraft still operational over at McReady. Plus, they had two cruisers and two destroyers at their disposal, each with plenty of long-range naval guns and sea-launched artillery rockets.

  Even worse, now the Japanese knew where they were. A pair of SuperKate recon planes had been flying over West Falkland all morning, undoubtedly taking photographs and paying particular attention to the defenses at Tenean Beach. It was no longer a hiding game for the defenders. The Japanese probably knew more about their positions than they did themselves.

  What stealing the extra weapons might accomplish could only be measured in time. Because of the extra guns and ammo, the fight that everyone knew was coming might last a little longer. The defenders might enjoy a little longer life span. But that was it. The extra rockets, bullets, and fire shells would not affect the ultimate outcome of the battle. It would just delay its arrival.

  His head thick with these thoughts and a million others, Hunter was in the third beach trench, helping dig a hole in which the last stolen rocket launcher would be placed. The day had dawned with routinely awful weather. Heavy rain mixed with snow. High winds. The waves were crashing on Tenean Beach with the impact of disrupter shells. For the defenders, these were the perfect atmospherics for a cold dark battle that would ultimately be the death of them all.

  What a perverse joke all this was, Hunter thought now as he began packing icy sand around the launcher’s legs. He’d been handed a suicide mission which, if anything, would have given him the opportunity to go out as a very big hero, not that it meant very much to him. But still, after all the deep think and anxiety and philosophizing about it, fate or something had determined that he was actually going to die here, on this crummy cold and dirty beach. Nothing more than a piece of sand, going out like a match goes out. One-trillionth of what he’d been imagining.

  It was kind of funny, he thought, as he hefted his millionth shovel full of wet sand. Yes, the cosmos did have a sense of humor. A cruel one.

  It was also particularly ironic, considering the circumstances, that he would die on the ground
. Whether it was going to be the soft mushy sand of Tenean Beach or the hard ice-packed bogs of inland West Falkland, Hunter knew now that he was definitely going to give it up with his two feet firmly entrenched on terra firma. That too was funny. The least God could do was allow him to die while airborne, preferably while battling the fifty or so jet aircraft the invaders still had at the ready.

  But that was just impossible. The Z-3/15 was still sitting up in the cow field, gas in its tanks, ammo in its guns, and absolutely fucking useless.

  If only …

  A radio began buzzing. The electronic sound ran a cold chill through all the troops in the trench with him; it froze him for a moment as well. This buzz could very well be the death knell for all of them. The Roamer crew was up on the cliff nearby, looking over at San Carlos Bay where enemy troops had been massing all night and morning long. They’d been told by Asten to call down to the beaches when the invaders made their first move. Now the radio was vibrating with its warning buzzing.

  The radio man clicked his set to receive and turned up the volume for everyone to hear. The Roamer crew’s message was simple. To the point. Chilling.

  “Here they come …” was all it said.

  The word went down the trenches in a matter of seconds.

  Another report from the Roamer came in a minute later. It said the Japanese were pushing off the northwestern tip of San Carlos in landing craft disgorged from the troopships earlier. This was an interesting piece of news. It meant the invaders would have to travel several miles up the sound, make a wide turn to the west, go around a natural jetty known as Ashmont Rocks, turn south, and finally make for Tenean or “Tin Can” beach, as the defenders were now calling it.

  That was a lot of sailing to do in what were basically landing craft built to run in from the big boat to the beach and little else. The awful weather would play havoc with the landing crafts as well. The waves presently breaking on Tin Can beach were huge, irregular, driven by the rain and snow. Many were over six feet at the crest and some even higher than that, possibly the worst weather conditions imaginable for a huge amphibious landing.