Ghost War

by Maloney, Mack;

  This is why the invented air support, Hunter thought.

  If the key to the island was its flattened top, then that’s where they would have to go. Just from a vantage point alone, they would be able to see for miles around them once day broke. If there was the wreckage of a large jet anywhere within twenty klicks, they would be able to spot it easily.

  But as it turned out, they wouldn’t have to look that far.

  It was Hunter who saw it first. Just a glint of metal off about a half klick to their south. He stared at it for a long moment, his eyes getting seemingly conflicting signals. It was a huge dark shape, smooth in some places, jagged in others. It was definitely unnatural—just like the top of the hill on the island. He thought he could see wisps of smoke rising from it.

  It hit him an instant later.

  It was a C-5.

  He nudged both Timmy and Terry and they soon saw the same dark shape in the gloom of the southern horizon.

  “That’s a motherfucker, that is,” Terry observed. “We didn’t have to look very hard for it after all.”

  “I’ve got to see this up close,” Timmy agreed.

  But Hunter was already ahead of them, somehow crashing through the thick mangrove swamp while still maintaining a semblance of silence. The Z-men were soon right on his tail.

  It took them ten minutes, but they finally made it to the bottom of the rise which held the wreckage of the enormous C-5. Hunter climbed up on a piece of wing and ran his hand along the battered fuselage. Even in the near pitch-blackness he could clearly see the elaborate scrolling which dominated the design scheme of Crunchtime. There was no doubt about it now, this was Crunch’s airplane.

  “I guess everything we heard was true,” Timmy observed.

  “This must have broke some glass coming in,” Terry observed. “Can’t imagine anyone living to tell about it.”

  Hunter wasn’t so sure. True, the monstrous airplane was definitely a total wreck. Its wings had been sheared almost completely from the fuselage, and the entire rear half of the airplane had been gutted by fire, and was now almost skeletal.

  But the forward section of the airplane, while battered and twisted, was still intact.

  He turned and looked out onto the marshy delta. It was open for miles around. No swamps, rock outcrops or spits of solid land. Suddenly the vision of the big airplane coming in appeared in his mind’s eye. Flying low along the water, its engines smoking, overheated and running out of fuel, he saw it hit the water’s surface once, then twice, then a third time. With a master pilot at the controls, this action would have served to slow down the flying behemoth, maybe enough to make its impact speed into Nieu Go relatively nonviolent.

  He turned back to the wreck and once again studied it from end to end. Most of the damage was done by the fire, and that could have taken hours to burn out. Even now, there were still wisps of black smoke trailing up from it.

  If the airplane had slid in, instead of crashing, there was good chance that there were some survivors—or even no casualties at all.

  But how could they know for sure?

  The answer came just a few seconds later.

  Hunter saw the burst before he heard it. A huge, fiery red explosion went off no more than 250 feet above their heads.

  Hunter yanked both Z-men down with him, all three rolling to the cover of one of the C-5’s wrecked engines. There was another explosion, this one bigger and brighter, not 150 feet above them. Once more all three of them ducked lower, Hunter clamping his pilot’s helmet tight around his ears.

  But at the same instant, he knew something was wrong here. The aerial explosions were frighteningly bright in flame and intensity, but their corresponding sonics did not match the visual, like the flares shot at them over Khe Sanh.

  When the third explosion went off just fifty feet above them three seconds later, Hunter had already figured it out.

  These were gasoline bombs exploding overhead—frightening to the nth degree, but, for want of a better word, harmless at such altitudes.

  “I think they’s just trying to scare us, mate,” Terry yelled over the muffled explosion.

  “They’re doing a damn good job,” Timmy called out in reply.

  But Hunter knew Terry was right: the bombs were more for show than anything else.

  They crawled out from behind the engine, and managed to make it to the more protective burned-out frame of the fuselage before the next air-burst went off. From this position, Hunter could see just where the aerial bombs were coming from: not surprisingly, the flattened off top of the small plateau.

  “They got the view on us, I suppose?” Jimmy said.

  “Maybe got a NightScope up there,” Hunter replied. His psyche was telling him that he was being “painted” by some kind of electronic detection device. “But if they wanted us dead, we’d been cooked by now, don’t you think?”

  The Z-men agreed. But that didn’t solve their problem. As if to underscore it, another larger aerial burst was fired from the top of the hill, igniting just twenty-five feet above the burned-out fuselage. It was so close, they could feel a moment of intense heat tear right through their skin.

  “Well, if they want us to leave, then, we might take their advice,” Terry called out.

  But Hunter knew it was already too late for that.

  “Party’s over, guys,” he said, conspicuously laying down his M-16, and his .357 Magnum sidearm.

  The Z-Men stared at him for moment, and then looked behind them. They found no less than 100 armed individuals staring back at them.

  The soldiers were all dressed in black and wearing black jungle hats pulled low over their eyes. Many were wielding AK-47s, some of which were equipped with NightScopes. Others were carrying weapons of even larger caliber.

  In a word, they looked vicious.

  “So much for the notion of no Minx in the area,” Terry dead-panned, dropping his weapons as well. “Looks like there’s plenty of them to me.”

  While the two Z-men were braced for a fusillade, Hunter actually relaxed a little. He was sure they weren’t going to be shot. He wouldn’t have dropped his weapons if he had.

  “I know this sounds like a bad movie,” Hunter said slowly, “but I think they want us to go with them.”

  Sure enough, one of the soldiers stepped out and motioned the trio to come forward. Hunter and the Z-Men complied and they were soon being marched away from the wrecked C-5 and towards the flattened plateau.

  “I just hope they kill us before they eat us,” Timmy said.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  IT WAS DAWN BY the time they reached the top of the plateau.

  Hunter wasn’t surprised by its layout. It was about ten acres in all, and was heavily fortified with mortars and high-caliber machine guns around a 360-degree perimeter, all hidden under expert camouflage. There were barracks for about 500 people, a mess hall, two small fuel storage tanks and a concrete weapons’ magazine, again all of it concealed under top-notch camouflage.

  The view from the top of the plateau was spectacular. He could see a slightly smaller island attached to the main part of No Gieu’s “spoon,” and it too had a high hill at its center. These two vantage points were by far the highest things for 100 miles around, and even the rising haze of the Delta morning didn’t obscure the vista. They were the most militarily advantageous positions for as far as the eye could see.

  At the plateau’s center was a hut slightly larger than the rest. It was surrounded by a rather out-of-place white picket fence that appeared to be electrified. Standing at the door was a man much taller than the soldiers around them. He was bald, in his mid-forties, of hefty frame and wearing a long one-piece black gown. Hunter stared at the man now about fifty feet away.

  It really was no surprise when he realized that it was Crunch.

  They were marched right up to the larger hut, and then the guards were dispersed by Crunch clapping his hands once.

  “Sorry about all this,” Crunch said, authen
tically apologetic. “We can get carried away every so often.”

  Hunter studied his old comrade. He seemed a little older, a little heavier, a little less pugnacious. There was a moment of uneasy silence. They’d been friends for years. But it seemed as if Crunch had suddenly been dropped back on Earth, It was apparent he’d been out of touch with the rest of the world for a long time.

  Finally he stepped forward and embraced Hunter, then they shook hands heartily. They were both extremely glad to see each other alive.

  “It’s been weird, Hawk,” Crunch said, the gleam returning to his eyes. “This is a very weird place.”

  Hunter quickly introduced Terry and Timmy and Crunch led all three of them inside his hut. It was dark and rife with early morning shadows. The surfeit of mosquito netting was arranged to make the place look mysterious. Still, the place was fairly well-appointed, considering its location. There were several baskets of fruit sitting on ice, a barrel of rainwater, and a brace of recently killed chickens hanging over a spit. A large straw bed dominated the far end of the building. In the shadows they could see several young Oriental women were asleep atop it.

  Hunter and the New Zealanders took a seat on the floor while Crunch collected four glasses.

  “Not exactly a surprise visit, is it?” Hunter asked him.

  Crunch just shook his head. “I knew someone would come—eventually.”

  “Who else got out?”

  “We all did,” Crunch replied, coming up with a bottle of rice wine and taking his seat next to them on the floor. “The crew hooked up with a passing River Assault Group. A bunch of Italian mercs, armed to hilt, hired by someone to bust Minx. There were four injured of our guys; I sent the other three along with the wounded.”

  He poured out four glasses of wine, they did a quick air toast and downed the shots immediately.

  “Why didn’t you go with them?” Hunter asked him. “Surely you could have squeezed on somewhere.”

  Crunch slowly nodded. “Oh, they had room for me, all right,” he said, his voice a little low. “But that’s just it—they didn’t have enough room to take all of us.”

  “All of you, you say?” Timmy asked.

  Crunch nodded again, then smiled faintly. “Well, you know, you met my friends …”

  Terry laughed. “The people with all the guns? They did a damn good job, they did.”

  Crunch’s smile widened. “You’d be surprised,” he said enigmatically.

  He stood up and opened the hut’s back door, revealing an exercise yard beyond. The area was filled now with at least 100 people, all of them doing a form of t’ai chi, the ritualistic morning exercise practiced by many in China.

  But it was not the almost ballet-like movements of the participants that raised Hunter’s eyebrows. Rather it was the fact that all of the exercisers were young women—and they were all topless to boot.

  Hunter just shook his head.

  “Well, Crunchman,” he said, “you’ve finally managed to top JT.”

  It took the entire bottle of rice wine for Crunch to tell his story.

  It was simple, really. After he brought the C-5 in for its incredible controlled crash landing, he and the others instinctively headed for the high ground at the top of the plateau.

  The Chinese women were already there. They’d been living in what used to be a Minx lookout post, having been abandoned there by slave traders, who, at the last moment, chickened out of a deal to sell the women as sex slaves to Minx high commanders in the occupied cities in the southern part of the Delta. When the Minx found out about the deal gone bad, they hunted down the slave traders and killed them.

  Then they went to the plateau to get the women.

  The Minx made their first mistake by sending only twenty-five men to collect the 150 would-be prostitutes. Having had at least an hour’s warning of their approach, the women were ready when the Minx arrived on the island. Armed with sharpened tree branches, heavy rocks, and their own hands, feet, and teeth, they set upon the surprised Minx soldiers and killed all of them, losing only four of their own.

  Taking their weapons and securing the landing craft the Minx had brought with them, the women were also ready and waiting when the second group of Minx arrived looking for the first. Appearing docile at first so the soldiers would approach unsuspectingly, the women then surprised the Minx river crafts, sinking them with hand grenades taken from their first victims, and then machine-gunning those Minx left floundering in the water.

  Retrieving the weapons caches on both craft increased the women’s arsenal to nearly 100 weapons. The next Minx rescue party approached the island more cautiously. They found twenty of the women on the island’s small beach, completely naked, and waving the soldiers onshore. Like the Sirens of Greek myth, the women captured the Minx soldiers and then killed every one of them, further increasing their growing arsenal.

  Within a month’s time, the women became the most potent, and most crafty, military force in the basically anarchic Delta area.

  But they didn’t stop there. Having little hope of returning to China, and blaming the Minx for their current situation, the women—now collectively calling themselves Li-Chi Chi—began a campaign against the Minx with a vengeance. Soon, the word got around about the crazy women, and most of Minx units within twenty-five square-mile area pulled back to safer areas.

  Some didn’t make it.

  “You guys saw some pretty gruesome sights on the way in, I assume?” Crunch asked them.

  Hunter and the Z-men nodded.

  “Bad stuff,” Hunter told him, quickly recounting the atrocities they’d seen in the Minx villages on their way to the plateau island. “Some of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

  Crunch bit his lip and stared at his visitors for a moment. Then it finally began to sink in. Hunter looked back at him in amazement.

  “They … did it?” Hunter asked, pointing to women still exercising outside.

  Crunch nodded. “Hard to believe,” he admitted. “But true.”

  He continued his story. Just about the time the Li-Chi Chi were butchering all the Minx in the area, Crunch’s C-5 slammed into the island. Savvy right from the beginning, the women were quick to understand that Crunch and his comrades had come to help the people of Vietnam stave off the impending Minx domination of the entire country. They evoked the old axiom: “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

  In other words, they greeted Crunch and his crew with open arms.

  When the Italian mercenary force happened by about a week after the crash, they took Crunch’s crew, including the wounded. But the women of Li-Chi Chi asked Crunch to stay. They needed some kind of military leader, and as they had witnessed his superb landing of the huge C-5, and his concern for his men afterward, he became their first choice.

  “It was a tough decision,” Crunch told them, retrieving another bottle of rice wine, and pouring out four more drinks. “I wanted to find out what happened to everyone, of course, but on the other hand, these women were really on to something. Plus, there’s a lot of very strange stuff happening out here—and not just with these ladies. Stuff that might turn out to be very important for us. And I figured that someday, the Minx would drum up enough balls to come out here in force—and, well … I guess I just thought, what would Hawk do in this situation? Or Fitz? Or the General?”

  His voice trailed off. There was really no further explanation needed.

  Except, of course, for Crunch’s hairdo—or lack of it.

  He anticipated Hunter’s question.

  “Curious about the dome?” he asked running his fingers over his bald head.

  “Very Brando,” Hunter said.

  “Well, it was a small price to pay,” Crunch replied, motioning over his shoulder to the pair of sleeping beauties on his bed. “I guess they saw the movie, too …”

  They drained their rice wine and Crunch poured another.

  “What kind of ‘strange stuff’ are we talking about?” Hunter asked, taking a gulp of
the bitter liquor.

  Crunch reached inside his pocket and came up with a photo map. He spread it out on the floor before them.

  “The Li-Chi Chi took this from one of the officers they killed along the way,” Crunch explained. “It’s a montage put together from about a dozen old high-altitude shots.”

  Hunter quickly studied the crude map and saw it was of the southern half of South Vietnam.

  “This is the city of Song Tay,” Crunch said, pointing to a pin point on the coastline. “It was a pisspot little town for years. But from what I can gather, it’s been built up like crazy in just the past few months. See how the water appears darker here?”

  Hunter studied the area Crunch was indicating. It did appear that the water in the bay near the city was darker than the rest of the coast. It was in fact as dark as the water further out in the ocean.

  “Recently dredged?” Hunter guessed.

  “Exactly,” Crunch said. “This little village is now a deep-sea port. It can handle the biggest ships, with enough room for turnaround, refueling, maintenance, you name it. They must have humped it to get it all dug in such a short time.”

  “Like they were surprised someone was coming?” Terry said.

  “Bingo,” Crunch said. “And what deep-water ships would they go through all this trouble for?”

  Hunter shook his head. “The Cult battleships,” he said bitterly. “It’s got to them.”

  “It is them,” Crunch replied. “I know. I’ve seen them.”

  Hunter looked up at him. “You’ve seen them?” he asked, slightly astonished. “How?”

  “I went down there,” Crunch declared. “Me and six of the ladies, took one of the river craft one night and sailed to within a mile of Song Tay. I saw one of those big bastards myself, with those Cult weirdos all over it.”

  “So the battleships were heading here,” Hunter said.

  “You made a good guess way back when,” Crunch told him. “There’s got to be some kind of alliance between the Cult and the Viet Minx.”

  Hunter felt a slight shiver go up his spine. “Now that’s a scary proposition. But there must be someway to find out for sure.”