Death Orbit

by Maloney, Mack;

  Hunter pointed out at the huge swastika-shaped station hanging in space before them.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” he asked directly.

  Viktor looked out at the space station, and then to Hunter’s complete surprise, just shrugged his shoulders.

  “You know something,” the superterrorist said, in a voice that sounded so sincere it was frightening. “I have no idea where the hell it came from…”

  Hunter turned around and looked him straight in his very red eyes.

  “I really don’t,” Viktor continued. “It was up here when we got here…”

  Hunter stared at him and found his jaw dropping.

  “Jesus Christ,” he swore. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

  Viktor just nodded. He seemed genuinely mystified by it, too.

  “We needed a place to go, and suddenly there it was,” he said. “One moment it was just empty space. Then we went around in the Mir and the next orbit, it had appeared. Empty, powered up, ready for us to use. Even the design was just right, if a little too Forties for my taste…”

  “You have no taste!” Elvis screamed at him.

  Again Viktor infuriated the pilot by ignoring him.

  “But that was certainly a good question, Mister Wingman,” he continued, talking to Hunter. “A good parting mystery, no? I’m sure you would have been able to drag out a whole new series of your adventures just finding out where the hell it came from. Too bad you won’t have the chance.”

  “Like hell he won’t!” Elvis suddenly screamed.

  The red-faced pilot was out of his seat and hovering next to Viktor. His face was crimson with rage. Suddenly the superterrorist looked terrified himself. He tried to get away and call out for the two guards who had come aboard with him and stayed below. But Elvis yanked on his floating cape, pulled him back, and cuffed him hard across the mouth.

  Hunter just stared at Elvis, who looked like he was about to pop a vessel, he was so angry.

  “I’m sick of this fucking guy,” Elvis screamed, as he continued to pummel Viktor in the kind of violent slow-motion of zero-G. “Sick of every thing he’s done to me. To you. To everyone.”

  He was wrapping Viktor’s cape around his neck now. The terrorist was so aghast at what was happening, he couldn’t even cry out.

  Elvis looked up at Hunter. He was crying, he was so furious.

  “And you know what I say, Hawk?” he whispered angrily. “I say if we ain’t coming back, then we take this asshole with us.”

  Hunter looked up at Elvis, then down at the terrified, struggling Viktor, and then back up at Elvis.

  “You know what?” Hunter then replied. “I say we do, too…”

  What the others aboard the space station saw next would be a matter of some dispute.

  JT and Ben were in the observation deck of one of the station’s twisted arms, brought there by the Nazi space techs, who, while now doubling as guards for the practically empty space station, were still unsure exactly what they should be doing.

  They were aware that Viktor had gone over to the Zon for one last taunting session against Hunter, and that he had brought his two remaining officers with him for protection and support.

  But now, the Zon was pulling away from the space station after having quickly broken the docking connection. Those two officers were floating motionless in space behind it—without any space suits on.

  In fact, it appeared the two men hadn’t exited by way of the air lock. Rather, they had come out of the bottom of the Zon, through a hatch that was used for emergencies during launch and touchdown, but never in space.

  But however they’d been expelled, the two men were now clearly dead.

  As for the Zon, it had slowly moved away from the space station, had turned, and was now pointing right at the comet, which was lighting up the dark sky with a tremendous unholy glow.

  What JT and Ben saw was an explosion of flame coming from the rear of the Zon—obviously the main engines had lit properly. The spacecraft started to gather more speed by the second. It was an astonishing sight for them—they’d never seen the Zon from this angle before, never believed it could really move that fast. But it did.

  Very quickly, it became a blur of motion. It went straight up toward the oncoming comet, trailing the three strings of nuked-up space mines far behind it.

  JT and Ben watched it open-jawed for as long as they could, which was about a minute or two, but not much more.

  Then, very quickly, it left their field of vision, disappearing into the glow of the enormous approaching comet.

  Thirty-two

  Nauset Heights, Cape Cod

  DONN KURJAN WAS THE last one left.

  He was sitting on the edge of the highest cliff on Nauset Heights, looking out on the gradually calming seas.

  The storm had finally ended 24 hours before. The rain had stopped first. Then the lightning and the thunder. And finally the wind.

  The seas were still high, but at least they were no longer breaking up on the cliffs. The sun had come out, though it seemed dull, compared to the huge glare lighting up the eastern sky now. This was the comet, Kurjan knew now. The one Chloe had dreamed about, the one that Hunter was trying to either destroy or divert.

  The one that had taken Dominique’s life.

  They’d buried her at sea, as she would have wanted it, the day before. Frost, Chloe and the girls were there on the beach when Kurjan got Frost’s old seaplane working again. He managed to sail it about a mile offshore. Weighted down with the books she’d loved and other mementos, Kurjan had dropped Dominique’s lifeless body over the side and watched as it slowly slipped beneath the waves. Then he stayed over the spot where she’d finally disappeared and cried for at least an hour. Then he made his way back to shore.

  The UAAF helicopter arrived from Boston about two hours later, the result of a message Kurjan had finally managed to get out over the ancient radio in Frost’s seaplane. On-board were two people attached to the NJ104 engineering battalion. The joy Kurjan saw in their faces when they first laid eyes on their four missing girls was almost enough to erase the pain of Dominique’s sudden death.

  Almost… but not enough.

  The hows and whys of what had happened here at Skyfire would have to be answered later—if there was to be a later. Right now, all that was certain was that the enormous comet, so bright it was almost impossible to look at, would collide with the earth in less than two hours—if Hunter somehow failed in his final mission.

  Kurjan had decided to stay here, at Skyfire, to await the end, if that’s what was coming.

  He felt it was the right thing to do—a kind of tribute to Hunter and to Dominique. This is where they had lived for just a brief period of time, yet those days were their happiest. Kurjan was sure of this, because when he was here before, those had been some of his happiest days, too.

  So he felt it was only fitting that he guard this place, this last outpost of Hawk Hunter’s life, and be here for whatever was about to happen. He would serve to the end, just as Hunter and Elvis and the others had done. He would be the last UAAF soldier, guarding the last place the hero for their age had called home.

  It was here that he sat down, shortly after the helicopter had left, bearing Frost and Chloe and the four girls and the newly awakened Yaz. It was not long after Dominique’s death that Yaz had suddenly come to life. Walking down the stairs, still in his soaking wet flight suit, like a ghost from decades-old airplane crash, he began to speak about the dreams he’d had, about the explanations of missing people, missing ships, missing airplanes, and how they would all turn up, somehow, somewhere, if the world didn’t come to an end.

  It was a question of metaphysics, he’d try to tell Kurjan, but at the time, the guy nicknamed Lazarus just wasn’t listening. Other things were consuming his thoughts. He’d promised Yaz he’d spend a week hearing the story of what had happened inside his head after he’d suddenly appeared in the old ramshackle farmhouse, but not
now. There were just too many other things to do.

  He’d lifted Yaz onto the helicopter, and bidden farewell to him and Frost and the four young girls, and the absolutely beautiful Chloe. His arms were still warm where he had held her in those terrible hours of the storm’s mighty rage, and in those unbearable moments after Dominique had died. When Kurjan touched his hands to his face, it reminded him of her—and the warm kiss she had given him before the helicopter took them all away.

  If there was another life after this one, he hoped he would meet up with Chloe again.

  He had fully intended to await the fate of the planet alone, but just when he figured that the comet was only about an hour away from hitting the earth, he saw a man trudging up the road leading to Skyfire.

  He was dark-skinned and Asian in feature, wearing a pilot’s suit, with his helmet and oxygen mask still clinging to his side.

  Kurjan met him at the ledge and the man introduced himself with the unlikely name of Budda-Budda. He was the man, he said, who had flown Chloe to this place, and since their plane had crashed two days ago, he’d been searching for her.

  “You’re too late,” Kurjan had told him, even as the glare from the comet began to envelope everything in an all-encompassing hellish red glow.

  Budda-Budda took the news very hard at first. But then, strangely, he looked up at the monstrous glare in the eastern sky and smiled.

  “I knew her for a while,” he said. “That was enough for me.”

  With that, he took up a station on the rock a few feet from Kurjan’s own. They sat there in silence, the two strangers who had only the knowledge of Chloe and her beauty in common, to await the end together.

  The explosion, when it came, looked like a thousand suns had suddenly been blown apart.

  The glare alone was blinding. Many people around the world who now knew of the comet’s deadly approach were rendered sightless, the explosion had been that bright.

  The shock waves that hit the earth mere seconds later were enough to trigger massive earthquakes and tidal waves and set all of the planet’s major volcanoes erupting. The seas seem to catch fire. They became tremendous and wild, and their waves were like waves from a nightmare. Animals hid, flowers closed up, electricity stopped running, streams and rivers reversed themselves. Birds all over the world fell from the sky.

  Then the clouds came. All over the planet, from pole to pole, the angry black cumulus blotted out everything, including the glare from the great explosion. Then it seemed as if these clouds themselves had caught on fire, because the skies looked as if they were totally in flames. Everywhere, a deep, massive rumbling could be heard. Some said it was the combination of all the people of the world crying, now that the end had apparently come. Others said it was really God laughing. At last, the punchline for the great cosmic joke had been delivered.

  But slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the clouds ceased to burn. And at an even slower pace, they began to clear. On that part of the globe where it should have been daytime, the sky reemerged blue and clear.

  Slowly the sun came out again.

  No one really knew what had happened.

  The huge explosion in the sky had come—and then it had gone away. The comet’s glare no longer fouled the skies, and all of the strange, unnatural things that had preceded its approach to earth finally stopped happening.

  So the bold plan conceived by Hawk Hunter must have worked to some degree. The earth was still here, in one piece, and Doomsday had been postponed, at least, for the time being.

  But had the comet been destroyed? Or simply diverted?

  The answer to this question came for those on the American continent when night finally arrived. For as the sun went down and the stars came out, they saw in the sky not one moon, but two.

  This new satellite, smaller, fainter than Luna, was hanging about 50 degrees above the moon, almost like a little brother, slightly red, slightly glowing. From this astounding event, the scientists and the physicists, and then the holy men, and then the regular citizens of earth finally divined the truth.

  Hunter’s plan had indeed worked. The massive comet had not been destroyed, but was diverted by the 44 nuclear blasts. What remained of it had taken up a wobbly orbit around the planet. It was closer but smaller than the old moon. Just enough to lend an additional beauty to the night sky, but not enough to upset the delicate balance of the tides.

  And this, the people of earth would learn, was the lasting result of the brave mission to save the planet. To look up into the night sky now, they would forever remember how the new moon had come to be there.

  As for the men who had brought all this about, the truth was not so certain. For many nights and weeks on end, the people of earth searched the skies, hoping, praying, speculating that somehow, somewhere, the Zon would suddenly appear, a long, fiery tail behind it, looking for a suitable place to land. Many people claimed they saw it streaking overhead, its battered wings wagging in greeting, twisting this way and that, as if it was looking for a safe place to land.

  But the new and growing myths aside, the truth of the matter was that in the many weeks following the saving of the earth, no sign was ever seen of the Zon, or of the person who had been behind its controls on its last mission, Major Hawk Hunter, the one they called the Wingman.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Wingman Series

  Part One

  Water

  Chapter 1

  August 15, 1997

  1300 Hours

  THE U.S. NAVY DESTROYER Louis St. Louis was five hours out of Cape Cod when it got the strange message.

  A Navy long-range, antishipping bomber had spotted three bodies floating in the Atlantic about 350 miles off the coast of Maryland and 24 miles from the destroyer’s current position.

  The crew of the Navy aircraft had no idea who these floaters were. A supertanker carrying aviation fuel had been sunk by a U-boat in the general area several days before, but it was unlikely the three bodies were from this engagement. More than 100,000 gallons of volatile T-stoff fuel had gone up when the supertanker was torpedoed. The chance that any bodies or even body parts remained was nil.

  Nevertheless, the bomber saw three bodies and the Louis St. Louis was ordered to the area to investigate by Atlantic Wartime Command.

  The destroyer was under the command of Captain Eric Wolf. He was a Naval reserve officer, mid thirties, with a good reputation for chasing long-range missile-firing U-boats away from the eastern seaboard of the United States. Though a handsome man, he was rarely seen without his thick sunglasses. He was of Scandinavian descent; his eyes were sensitive to light. But sometimes the corrective goggles made it look as if he was wearing a mask.

  Wolf immediately turned his vessel in the direction of the bodies. The destroyer was powered by double-reaction engines, and at full speed, it could reach the area in a matter of minutes. The superheavy Navy bomber, which was also double-reaction powered, would continue circling until the destroyer arrived.

  Wolf went up to the bridge and had the Navy plane’s radio signals piped directly to him. He explained the situation to his executive officer, a lieutenant commander named Ed Zal. How had three bodies come to be floating 350 miles from the nearest land? the XO wondered. A huge, weeklong hurricane had just finished battering the New England coast—the Storm of the Century, they had called it. Perhaps these were fishermen who drowned in the storm and were carried far out to sea. Or maybe they were casualties from some unknown combat in the area.

  “Strange things happen in war,” Wolf told the XO as the swift little warship carved its way through the rolling Atlantic.

  “Strange things happen in life,” the XO replied.

  At 17 miles out, Wolf was finally able to connect directly with the bomber pilot. The aircraft was still circling the area; the bodies were still in sight. The pilot could see no wreckage, no oil slick, no evidence of a recently sunk ship or a downed aircraft. The three bodies were simply floating atop the high wa
ves, each one about 1000 yards from the other.

  The destroyer increased speed and closed to within 15 miles. Then came a very strange report from the bomber. The pilot said one of the people in the water was waving up at his aircraft! Wolf asked him to repeat this. Finding three bodies out in the middle of the ocean was strange enough. But for one of them to be alive?

  The pilot confirmed his report and had the copilot come on and tell Wolf the same as well. They were flying very low and very slow and one of the floaters was definitely waving up at them.

  Wolf called down to his propulsion room and told them to reheat the engines to 110 percent power.

  He wanted to solve this mystery quickly.

  The aircraft that had spotted the floaters was a U.S. Navy B-201, an 18-engine, long-range, maritime attack plane commonly known as a SuperSea.

  It was an enormous airplane. Its wingspan was 960 feet, three times that of its distant cousin, the Hughes Spruce Goose. The airplane was so large, it needed two crews, a total of 60 men, working 12-hour shifts to keep it in the air. Capable of staying aloft for 10 days at a time, it was returning from a weeklong combat patrol in the East Atlantic when it detected the floaters. The crew had shot about 100 feet of insta-film and now the commander of the aircraft, sitting in his luxurious berth just behind the flight deck, was reviewing this footage. Clearly it showed one of the people in the water waving up at them. What’s more, a second floater seemed to be showing signs of life too. The COA just couldn’t believe it. This was getting stranger by the minute.

  Just as the COA requested another reel of insta-film be shot and processed, his surface warfare officer called up to him. An enemy warship had been spotted on the SuperSea’s long-range visual display. It was a heavy cruiser, a cloak ship, able to hide its presence from radar and sonar by means of a towed electronic-interference array. But cloaking couldn’t fool a TV camera, and the Hughes SuperSea bomber was bristling with them. The SW officer reported the enemy vessel was heading for the bodies in the water too—and at all-out speed.