“Maybe they’re just nuts,” Hunter said, taking a swig of the laced joe. “Maybe they’re all drugged up and they’re just out on a killing spree. No motive. No strategy.”
Jones gave a quick nod. “I would tend to agree with you, if not for something that we learned just yesterday.”
He handed Hunter a single sheet of yellow Telex paper. It was covered with a series of numbers, which to the untrained eye seemed to be just random binary codes. However, Hunter quickly detected a startling pattern.
“Communications satellite readouts,” he said to Jones who confirmed with a nod. “Same message over and over.”
“Exactly,” Jones replied. “It’s all in two-digit numerical code, but I’ll tell you the translation. It reads: ‘Mayday. Mayday. Thousands killed. Can’t hold out much longer. Mayday. Mayday.’”
Hunter let out a long breath. There was something frightening about the stark SOS, repeated over and over and over again, perhaps as many as 1000 times just on this page alone.
“Where’s it coming from?” he asked Jones.
The general took another sip of his coffee. “We’re not exactly sure.” he said slowly. “But it’s being transmitted from somewhere around the South China Sea, maybe a little further west. Our Signal Intelligence guys are still trying to nail it down.”
Hunter just shook his head. “It’s got to be linked with the battleships,” he said. “Be too much of a coincidence if it wasn’t.”
“I’m sure it’s connected,” Jones replied. “But there’s more.”
He took out another piece of Telex paper. “While the Siglnt guys were studying the signal, they routinely put the encoded message through the Cray, figuring something in the patterning itself could help in narrowing down the location of the satellite uplink.
“And?”
“And, they found something even more disturbing,” Jones replied slowly. “They found that someone was actually tampering with the uplink channel, affecting its transmission time and level, from another uplink station relatively nearby. They weren’t blocking the Mayday call, or throwing a lot of electronic fuzz around it. Rather, they wanted it to go out—along with their own little message.”
Hunter was stumped. “A message like what?”
“Like this,” Jones replied, handing Hunter the second sheet of paper. “The frequency of the tampering had its own pattern—it was not at all random or chaotic. They would simply delay the Mayday call for anywhere from one to ten seconds. By doing this, and by using the same binary code, the tampering agent was able to insert their own message in between the Mayday calls. A message that could be understood only by someone looking for it. The message is on that piece of paper….”
Hunter opened the folded sheet and saw it held the same single sentence over and over again.
It read: “Victor is alive.”
Dusk
Hunter sat on the summit of the isolated mesa, staring at the sun as it slowly dipped below the horizon.
There was a fire in his heart, unlike any he’d felt in a long time. The days he’d spent on the deserted Hawaiian island had given him time to think—but maybe it was too much time. On one hand, he’d convinced himself that despite all the misery that America had gone through in the past few years, there was something to celebrate: the American continent was once again free of foreign invaders.
But on the other hand, he knew the misery index was way off the meter at other places around the globe. The United American Command regularly received reliable reports that Europe was in the throes of periodic anarchy and chaos, and that Africa, South America, and the Middle East were even worse. On the greater Asian continent, China had retreated back to its mysterious, xenophobic ways, as had most of the countries on the subcontinent. And, as much of central Japan had been left in flames and ruin by the recent campaign of United American air strikes, that country was hurtling into anarchy and destabilization.
So while America was for the moment, stable and free, the rest of planet was suffering in most places.
Hunter did not believe in the randomness of events. He’d seen too much—experienced too much—to buy in to the notion that the cosmos just grooved along in its own unguided way. No, he believed everything that happened—big or small, significant or not—was related to something and everything else. Everything had a meaning; every event a cause and an effect. That’s the way it was in deep physics—and that’s the way he believed it was in deep life.
This belief had led him to another conclusion long ago; Evil was not random. It was not something floating in the air, something that just happened to fall on unsuspecting heads at any given moment. No—evil was a bomb whose fuse was usually lit; evil was unnatural. As such, evil could be personified.
And at that moment, it appeared that evil’s new name was “Victor.”
Victor, aka “Viktorvich Robotov,” aka “Lucifer,” was a walking, living, breathing human plague—or at least he used to be. Just where he came from, no one was really sure. The most reliable bio said he was a former KGB agent who never got with the program after his ilk was put out to pasture. He first came to America during the massive foreign invasion which touched off the so-called “Circle War.” Once defeated by Hunter and his allies, Victor fled to the Middle East, where he adopted the persona of “Lucifer.”
Gathering a huge army in the Saudi Arabian desert, Victor attempted to invade the Mediterranean countries via the Suez Canal and relight what was informally called World War III. It took Hunter and a band of fearless RAF pilots to thwart Victor’s plans, refloating a disabled nuclear aircraft carrier and towing a small, but effective air armada to Suez where they delayed Lucifer’s Legion just long enough for a much larger Free World-sponsored mercenary army to arrive.
Hunter’s final confrontation with Victor happened shortly afterwards in the middle of the Arabian desert. To stand face-to-face with the man was to experience pure terror. Victor looked like every person’s idea, of the devil: sinister eyes and nose, a thin mouth, a stiletto mustache and goatee. Hunter was about to shackle the superterrorist in order to bring him back to America for trial when suddenly a shot rang out. His back, throat, and chest literally blown apart, Victor fell dead at Hunter’s feet. Off in the distance, two men armed with long-range rifles, wearing Nazi swastika armbands, hastily drove away.
Hunter had checked Victor’s body for a pulse and had found none. He didn’t bother to bury the body—vermin like Victor did not deserve a final resting place. Better that the buzzards and the insects eat him.
So on that day, Hunter thought they were finally rid of the human death sentence—but in the past few months, he wasn’t too sure. Strange things happened during the recent campaign against the Cult’s headquarters in Japan, and the subsequent battle on Okinawa. Little things—a stray radio message here, a sudden disappearance of enemy forces there, bloody messages left on a wall. To a trained eye, these signaled that not everything was kosher with the cosmos.
And there were larger things, too. Entire armies usually don’t sacrifice themselves blindly as the Cult did at Pearl Harbor—especially if they were made up almost entirely of paid mercenaries. But that’s exactly what happened in the final battle of the recent Pacific campaign. The top staff of the United American Armed Forces was savvy enough to know that when peculiar things happened involving large military forces, then some kind of extraordinary control—be it drugs, brainwashing or both—was probably in play. Not many people had the power to control large numbers of paid soldiers, but Victor had done just that during the Circle War—and in retrospect, his psychic fingerprints were all over the final actions of the Cult grounds forces in the more recent Pacific war.
And then there was the case of Yaz.
Stan Yastrewski was a charter member of the United American Armed Forces Command. His duties usually involved troubleshooting or performing special missions at the bequest of General Jones. During the Pacific campaign, Yaz, a former submarine officer, found himself in ch
arge of the American aircraft carrier, the USS Mike Fitzgerald.
While returning from a long-range recon mission, Hunter’s airplane had been caught in a typhoon. Running low on fuel and nearly out of electrical power, his F-16XL’s nose cameras popped on momentarily just as he was entering the murderous swirl. Some time later, when Yaz reviewed this footage, a vision on the screen literally knocked him into a life-threatening coma, from which miraculously emerged weeks later.
No one ever really figured out what happened to Yaz—why he went into his death sleep, and why he just as quickly woke up. All that was certain was the vision which had triggered the extreme hypnotic suggestion had been the enormous image of a face, possibly projected onto the storm clouds by lasers.
That face, Yaz had said, was that of Victor.
The videotape was now locked in Jones’ safe at his office in the Pentagon, under strict 24-hour guard. No one had viewed it since Yaz’s nasty experience, and probably no one ever would.
So Victor—or, at least, some incarnation of him—seemed to be back in the world. And nothing would be right again on the planet until this presence was eradicated.
This was why Hunter’s mind was now pulsating with rage. In addition to all the misery Victor had unleashed on the planet’s population, Hunter also had a personal motive for finding this devil. Several years before, at the height of the Circle War, Victor had kidnapped Dominique, Hunter’s lovely girlfriend. In a twisted example of propaganda and mind control, Victor had photographed Dominique in near-pornographic poses and distributed these pictures to his troops, along with vast quantities of mind-altering drugs. The powerful combination of the drugs and her stunning X-rated beauty was enough to make his legions follow Victor anywhere.
So was the superterrorist dead or not? Hunter didn’t know. His fingers still stung where he had felt for the man’s pulse that day in the desert and found none. But on the other hand, if there was anyone able to convincingly fake his own death, it was Victor. Finding him alive would be the equivalent of finding Hitler alive—maybe even worse.
But there was one thing for certain: someone, somewhere around the South China Sea wanted anyone who was listening to at least believe Victor was still alive. And with the recent atrocities committed by the Cult battleships in the same general area, Hunter was convinced something was up—something of cosmically evil proportions.
And he was equally convinced that it would be up to him, and the men of the United American C-5 air fleet, to attempt to stop it.
He took his eyes off the fading sun and turned back to the airbase. The lights were just coming on in the massive hangars, and he could see the outlines of the twenty-five multicolored Galaxys. Time was running out—he could feel it. And while the original plan called for all twenty-five of the C-5s to fly to the Pacific together, Hunter knew now that there wouldn’t be enough time for that.
They had to go with what they had—or forever lose the chance to do anyone any good.
Chapter Five
Edwards Air Base
THE NEXT MORNING DAWNED hot and sunny, with low winds and a minimum of dust being blown around.
It was perfect flying weather.
There were nine C-5s warming up on the runway in three groups of three. The first flight consisted of the gun-ships Nozo and Bozo, plus the Football City Special Forces Rangers airship, Football One. The second flight held the JAWs plane, the New Jersey National Guard Engineers’ NJ104, and Football Two. The third flight was made up of Crunchtime, the Cobra Brothers’ Big Snake, and Football Three.
Their engines whining up to full power, their holds jam-packed with up to 150 tons of men, weapons, equipment and supplies each, the air fleet made for an impressive, if gaudy, sight.
General Jones and Stan “Yaz” Yastrewski were waiting by a HumVee parked at the head of the column of Galaxys. Behind them were the thousand or so remaining troops and mechanics. Hunter had just completed his walk around Bozo, the airplane he would be piloting along with Ben Wa. The Wingman walked over to Jones and Yaz and gave them a crisp salute.
“Everything green, Hawk?” the General asked.
“As green as it’s ever going to be,” Hunter replied. “If we forgot anything, I’m sure you can send it over with the next wave.”
He grinned slightly upon making the statement—it was an inside joke. With the rush to get the first nine airplanes in the air, they all knew that there probably wouldn’t be any second wave. The other C-5s would leave Edwards and head for the Far East as soon as they became operational, and this meant individually, if at all.
“For the record, this is a great undertaking,” Jones told him, “This country has always stood for freedom, for all people. Just because we’ve been through our own upheavals, that doesn’t mean we can forget exactly what America—and Americans—are all about.”
Hunter nodded. “I couldn’t agree more, sir …”
They briskly shook hands. “Good luck, Hawk …”
Hunter saluted once again. “Thanks, General.”
He turned to Yaz. “Wish you were coming, old buddy,” Hunter said, putting on his crash helmet. “Could be quite a trip.”
Yaz just shook his head. With his successful rehabilitation from the hypnotic shock more than a month old, he certainly felt strong enough to go. Yet Jones had forbidden it.
“Don’t worry, Hawk,” Yaz replied, his voice almost cracking. “I’ll be in the sequel.”
Hunter shook his hand and then turned and ran out to Bozo.
“And tell JT to keep it in his pants!” Yaz yelled after him.
Ten minutes later, Hunter gunned the four massive engines on Bozo and ran them up to full power. Slowly, the huge Galaxy gunship began to move down Edwards’ long runway.
To the thunderous applause of those assembled, it rose up and off cleanly, followed close behind by Nozo, with JT at the controls and then Football One. The JAWs-NJ104-Football Two troika went next, with Crunchtime, Big Snake and Football Three right on its tail.
The air fleet formed up high above Edwards. Then as one, it roared overhead in a three-chevron formation, turning west, toward the other side of the planet. Toward the unknown.
In pursuit of a ghost….
It took more than twenty minutes for the roar of their engines to completely die away.
Chapter Six
Fiji
SUPREME COMMANDER SOHO COULD hardly hold the chisel steady, his hands were shaking so much.
What is happening to me? he heard a voice whisper inside his left ear. Am I dying? Or am I just going insane?
It was close to midnight and Soho’s ears had been ringing all day. On the table in front of him was a chunk of black Turkish hashish the size of a coconut. In his left hand was a large cold chisel; in his right, a heavy ballpeen hammer. He’d been trying to chip off a smokable piece of the hash for what seemed like hours—but his strength was so depleted, all he could get were slivers, most not big enough for even a couple of puffs.
And he needed more than that.
Finally, he summoned up enough strength to drive the chisel into the center of the hash block, chopping off an ice-cube-size piece. This was more to his liking. He took the chunk of hash over to his small wood-fired stove and dipped it into a pan of clear liquid that had been simmering on one of the burners for hours. This liquid was pure opium. He watched, eyes watering in anticipation, as the hash began to grow in size, absorbing the morphia.
Five minutes later, the chunk of hash was twice its original size. Soho retrieved it from the opium soup, put it inside his water pipe and quickly began toking on it, keeping it lit by means of a hand-held propane torch.
Five minutes of opium sucking followed. Then, suddenly, the candles inside his hut exploded and it became dark as night. Soho found himself on a hill, his mouth full of dirt, his eyes watering, his breathing labored. There were scores of dead bodies all around him, twisted in ghoulish poses. He was looking down on a steel graveyard—there were crashed airplanes everywher
e. And there were soldiers, dressed in strange garb, carrying flaming acetylene torches, cutting into the dead airplanes and causing them to shriek with ungodly mechanical horror….
Soho opened his eyes; he was shaking from head to toe. What was the problem? Too much opium? Or not enough? He wasn’t sure….
He got to his feet, his knees close to buckling, and headed for the door, pipe and torch in hand. Bursting out into the dark night, he found two guards standing next to the entranceway.
“They … they are still here, sir,” one stuttered in mumbling Japanese. “They are still on the island …”
Soho looked at the man queerly. His face seemed to be melting away. “Who are you talking about? Who is still here?”
The guard gulped loudly. “The men … from the Fire Bats, sir …”
Soho was stumped. He had no idea what the man was talking about.
He turned to the second guard; he was trembling now as much as the first.
“Explain this …”
The second guard bowed quickly, letting out an involuntary grunt. Eyes down, he began to speak.
“The submarines that sail beneath the heavenly oceans arrived here a few weeks ago, Your Highness,” the guard began. “Just yesterday, the men within finally came ashore, and by your supreme wisdoms, you ordered everyone on the island confined to their quarters—even yourself, oh, Great One.”
Soho wiped a bit of drool cascading from his mouth.
“Why did I do that?” he asked the guard.
The man grunted again. He could barely breathe, he was so frightened. “The men from the boats that sail the heavenly ocean said they had work to do here. Very important work. That is why they finally came ashore. That is why they could not be disturbed.”
“Even by me?” Soho asked, his feet suddenly feeling like they were growing roots into the ground.
Ghost War Page 4