Ghost War

by Maloney, Mack;

  It was a small unit, about the size of a cheap paperback book, and weighed less than a pound. But Hunter was sure that if he could graft the lead wires from Me-262’s black box to the microprocessor, and then put the combined-unit into an adaptable airplane, then the coupled device would lead him right to the person who was now calling himself “Victor.”

  Hunter backed himself out of the torn-apart flight panel and was halfway surprised to see his audience was still there.

  “I’ve got the sucker,” he announced triumphantly. “Now, if I can just get a gap file, a micro-tandem wrench and some power, I can have this thing working in …”

  He stopped in midsentence. Crunch was looking slightly askance at him.

  “Hey, Hawk,” Crunch said. “Are we forgetting the big picture here?”

  Hunter just shrugged. “I don’t know—am I?”

  “We’ve a little problem right here, in this country?” Crunch went on. “Remember? We were going to swipe a battleship?”

  Hunter stared at him for a moment, and then smiled.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said in perfect self-mocking tone. “The battleship. Right.”

  “First things first, mate,” Terry said with a laugh.

  The understatement was met with smiles all around. But then Hunter’s expression turned dead serious again.

  “But once we get this thing settled out,” he said, his voice actually raspy with anger, “then I’m going to hunt down whoever the hell this new ‘Victor’ guy is.

  “And then I’m going to kill him.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Four days later

  THE MINX PATROL HAD been walking for twenty-two hours straight.

  All fourteen men were exhausted, tired, hungry, thirsty, hot and covered with bug bites of all shapes and sizes.

  They’d left the Minx port stronghold of Son Tay almost three days before on a routine tax-collecting mission. They had been diverted to the small Delta village of Ko Lung by their regional commander: their orders were to contact the small garrison there and investigate if their radio gear was in proper working order.

  What the regional commander didn’t tell the leader of the Minx patrol was that the garrison at Ko Lung hadn’t been heard from in nearly forty-eight hours.

  The Minx patrol reached the outskirts of Ko Lung just before sunrise. The first thing they came upon was a small hut on the outlying edge of the village which had recently burned down. It was still smoking and its embers still glowing. The Minx patrol leader inspected the remains of the hut himself. There were a number of empty oil barrels thrown about as well as several lengths of singed, uncoiled electrical wire.

  He ordered two of his soldiers to collect the wire—cleaned and properly coiled, the patrol leader was certain he could get more than 100 piestas for it back at Son Tay.

  The patrol moved on, passing several more abandoned huts, which were empty of booty, and entering the center of the village itself. It was eerily quiet—not that unusual for a fishing village, but strange nevertheless. The patrol leader sniffed the wind, and quickly reached up to hold his nose.

  “Luc qway son toe!” he screamed, “something is a dead thing here—find it!”

  Momentarily confused, the thirteen troopers quickly dispersed throughout the village, trying to find the leader’s “dead thing.”

  They didn’t have to look very long.

  At the edge of the river was a long low building, used in the past as a fishing cleaning center. The far wall of this building was adorned with a row of three dozen five-inch hooks; on these the carcasses of fish were hung to dry.

  The two troopers who burst into this building found thirty-six dead Minx soldiers hanging from these hooks instead.

  The patrol soldiers couldn’t believe it. The dead Minx had not just been killed, they’d literally been gutted. The contents of their stomachs—as well as the stomachs themselves—were spilled out on the floor in front of each corpse.

  The patrol leader was called, and though he was a veteran of many battles, he immediately vomited all over his second-in-command. The rest of the patrol was almost as sick as their leader—they had heard the rumors of similar slaughterings further up in the Delta, brutal butcherings done by a mysterious band of flesh-eating “comfort girls.”

  Now, here, was proof positive that these stories were indeed true. And the patrol was twenty-four hours from nowhere.

  The patrol leader regained his composure and ordered his men to take the safeties off their weapons—it was an order that he hoped would make them a little less shaky, but it had mixed results. He found his own hands shaking as he hastily loaded his Koch pistol. It took all his self-control to not vomit again.

  The rest of the village was searched, but nothing was found; no guns, no radios, no more bodies. Nor where there any villagers: the garrison at Ko Lung had ruled over at least two hundred inhabitants. Now they were all gone.

  It was the patrol leader’s intention to get out of Ko Lung as quickly as possible—but his superiors at Son Tay had other ideas. When advised that the garrison had been graphically butchered, the regional commander ordered the patrol leader to cut down the bodies, go through them for personal effects, such as watches, rings or money and deliver such items personally to him.

  Then, by orders of the regional commander, the patrol leader was to skin the bodies and bring the hides back to Son Tay. When dried, the skins would bring a good price on the exotic garment black market where they’d be sold falsely as “sharkskin.”

  The patrol leader did not have enough money in his unit bank to buy his way out of the gruesome order, so he set his troopers to rending their departed comrades.

  He spent the time vomiting down by the river.

  There were only five motorboats left in the Minx southern occupation patrol fleet.

  When the Minx first moved into the area in preparation for their upcoming assault on the major cities of Vietnam, their river patrol fleet was twenty craft. Three had been lost to accidents, two others to maintenance. Ten others had gone out on routine patrol up the Delta—and never came back.

  Boat #6 left the dock at Son Tay early in the morning; its captain was hoping to make the village of Buk Sik by four that afternoon. His mission was to check on a radio transmitting station at the small village, which, their commanders had told them was not in correct working order.

  The captain was not looking forward to the patrol; like the other river force officers, he’d heard the rumors of what happened at the place called Ko Lung several days before. Thirty-six men of the garrison had been found butchered by a long-range patrol. When one of the Minx few helicopters was dispatched to the Ko Lung, they found all fourteen members of the long-range patrol dead, their bodies tied to pier supports where they had been fed upon by the fish, crabs, and other scavengers along the river.

  All indications were that the men were still alive when they were lashed to the pier supports.

  The scene at Ko Lung was so gruesome, the Minx commanders had shot to death the helicopter crew, lest the lurid talk leak out to the rest of the Minx forces at Son Tay. As it turned out, the chopper crew had died for nothing. News of what happened at Ko Lung was all over Son Tay within hours.

  The river craft captain urged his motorman to coax as many rpms as possible out of the eighteen-footer’s two Mercury engines. The last thing he wanted was to make landfall at Buk Sik after nightfall. Only an hour and a half downriver from Ko Lung, the captain wanted to be nowhere near the place once the sun went down.

  As it turned out, Boat #6 made Buk Sik by 3:30 in the afternoon. Everything seemed peaceful enough as they floated in. Too peaceful. The captain’s mission paper stated that Buk Sik had more than 120 citizens and a 24-man Minx unit watching over the radio transmitter. As the river craft motored up to the village’s only pier, the crew couldn’t see a soul.

  Not wanting to make the mistakes his fellow officers obviously made in Ko Lung, the captain had all three of the boat’s .50-caliber
machineguns loaded, manned and ready.

  This left himself and four crewmen to search the deserted village. They did so cautiously, slowly, with weapons up and ready, safeties off. They moved to the small radio shack first. Kicking in the door, they were horrified to find the two-room building was absolutely covered with blood. In fact, the reason the radio transmitter was not working was its booster units were literally sticky with blood.

  They left the radio shack and moved into the village itself. Again, there was no sign of life—not even a bird calling or insect chirping. The stillness in the hot air was bone chilling.

  The village was the typical collection of ramshackle straw huts and wooden or cinder block Minx barracks. None of the Minx buildings were occupied. Everything within them seemed in order—weapons in their lockers, ammunition in the magazines, and in some cases, food still on the table.

  This left the civilian dwellings to search.

  Normally the captain would have dispatched two, two-man teams to conduct the house searches, but under the circumstances, he decided it best they all stick together.

  They went from hut to hut, finding nothing unusual. Several even had small baskets with coins in them—but the captain didn’t steal the money, and ordered his crew not to do so either. They came up to the last hut, and the captain was almost breathing a little easier. One more search and he could return to the boat, his mission accomplished.

  They kicked in the door to the small dwelling to find a table set at its center, four wooden bowls surrounding a metal cooking pot. There was a definite odor inside the hut—familiar, like meat cooking, but the captain could not place it.

  His men routinely searched the three-room hutch and found nothing. The captain stood idly by, next to the table, sniffing the air and trying to identify the slightly sweet, slightly-smoked aroma.

  That’s when he casually lifted the lid of the cooking pot and discovered it was filled with human eyeballs.

  Two of his troopers fainted dead away; the captain himself retched up water and phlegm. He thought himself in a state of instant shock. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop looking at the bowl of bloody eyeballs.

  It took both of his iron-stomach troops to lead him out of the horror hutch and lead him back towards the boat. But it was then they got their second horrible surprise: the boat was gone.

  The gunners were floating face up in the river, their throats slashed, the swift current taking them away.

  Crazed by the sudden, grisly events, and certain that the same horrible death awaited him momentarily, the boat captain pulled out his sidearm, placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Leaderless and now mad with fear, the surviving crewmen did the same thing.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Son Tay

  IT WAS SIMPLY CALLED the Scream Hall.

  Built years before by a contracting firm from Xmas Island, the large building resembled an aircraft hangar, except that it was located at the end of a long pier. Like many of the buildings in the port city of Son Tay, the Scream Hall was painted in garish hot orange. The dozen flags ringing its curved roof was of the same color, as was the bunting running all along its trim. These ornaments had been added just that morning, in preparation for the celebration scheduled at the large hall that night.

  Next to the orange building were two barges, each supporting a huge crane. These machines were in constant use, keeping the surrounding port area deep enough to carry the huge Asian Mercenary Cult battleships which called with increasing frequency these days. The cranes too were painted hot orange.

  Beside the crane barges was a strip of docks holding facilities large enough to handle up to 100 vessels. These docks were full. They were playing host to vessels of all shapes and sizes, from junks to seagoing luxury yachts. These were hooker boats, vessels which plied the waters from the Tonkin and the Gulf of Siam, stopping at the port cities and offering their services. Son Tay was one of the more popular ports-of-call; the Minx officers in the southern part of Vietnam were fairly wealthy, unlike their comrades in the north, who were too busy in combat or preparing for war to amass large bank accounts. The Minx officers at Son Tay were also inordinately sexual. This was because the Cult had provided them with myx, the superhallucinogenic, superaddictive drug which, among other things, raised the ingestor’s hormone level as high as two thousand percent.

  About 300 yards from this dock area was a small airstrip. It was here that the meager Minx helicopter corps was stationed. It was also here that the strange jet carrying the Cult “goddess” Ala had first landed, then taken off, only to land again, and repeat the process seventeen and a half times.

  The huge festival scheduled that night at the Scream Hall was being thrown in honor of the flight of Goddess Ala. On the nineteenth try, the jet did not return. The relief felt by the top Minx officers at the port city was immeasurable. The goddess was no doubt not only on her way to her destiny, she was also finally out of their hair. And this meant they would not incur the wrath of the Asian Mercenary Cult for somehow queering the holy pilgrimage of their current “chosen one.”

  And this was cause for the celebration.

  Only the top Minx officers at Son Tay were invited of course; they and every eligible woman or girl their legions could round up for them—voluntary or not—on the streets and docks of the city.

  It was now seven in the evening, and the sun had disappeared.

  Son Tay was lit up with strings of multicolored lanterns and even some gas-fire poles. The streets were mostly clear by this time. Son Tay’s hundreds of unfortunate citizens were in their meager homes, imprisoned by a strict, shoot-to-kill curfew. The only people in the streets were patrolling Minx soldiers and the high command’s prostitute procurement squads.

  At the Scream Hall, there were already three dozen Minx officers gathered. They were awaiting three times as many women. Usually the females hired for these celebrations ranged in age from forty down to fifteen. They were provided free liquor and drugs, but had to pay for any antibiotics they might require as the evening progressed. Any food they consumed, either willingly or not, also had to be paid for.

  The Minx officers were sitting at a long narrow table at the head of the vast hall, having just finished a sumptuous meal. They were now engaging kegs of red beer and rice wine that were placed on the long table well within their reach. Above the officers was a huge thirty-by-thirty-foot portrait of the Goddess Ala, a sloppily painted, overtly toady display commissioned by the Minx High Command for the pleasure of the frequently visiting Cult officers. Close observation would reveal that the girl’s likeness was actually painted over a portrait of the man known as Soho, who in turn was painted over a portrait of a woman named Aja, who in turn was painted over an artist’s rending of the enormously chubby, ex-God Hashi-Pushi.

  The post-dinner activities had no formal beginning. Once the meal was eaten, and a quantity of liquor consumed, the women were led in. Fondling and foreplay followed, and soon all kinds of sex acts were breaking out. There was no word in the Minx dialect for “orgy,” but that best described these rather frequent Scream Hall celebrations.

  Usually, they lasted well into the night.

  No one saw the Li-Chi Chi women arrive. They slipped into the city under the cover of darkness, entered the Scream Hall unseen, and skillfully mixed in with the females already being ravaged by the drunk Minx officers. Most of them were dressed in black robes, which were quickly removed to reveal naked, and apparently willing bodies. To the intoxicated Minx officers, the infusion of new skin was a vision of delight. They immediately set themselves upon the late arrivals, especially excited when word passed through the hall that the women were Chinese, the perfect nationality for the ultranationalist Viet Minx to rape, both physically and symbolically.

  The Minx guards surrounding the Scream Hall did not take much notice then of the yelps of apparent delight coming from the building. After all, that’s how the place got its name. The screams were louder
than other occasions, though; and possibly a little less joyful in tone. And more than once they thought they could hear the sound of gunfire within the building. But there was no way that an enlisted man would ever dream of entering the sealed building, unless it was the gravest of emergencies, and possibly not even then.

  The screams of the Minx officers therefore continued uninterrupted throughout the night.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  One day later

  THE BATTLESHIP APPEARED ON the eastern horizon shortly after sunrise.

  A strobe light was flashing from the top of its radar mast, sending a message in Morse Code to the port of Son Tay, announcing its arrival. The return signals, from a similar strobe at the top of the taller crane, were a little ragged but readable. The battleship was to proceed at its leisure into the dredged-up harbor at Son Tay.

  The battleship waited offshore for an hour, finally coming in at the height of hightide. As usual, the Cult crewmen could see the hills which lined the outer harbor area were covered with the natives of Son Tay, waving and displaying little orange flags in honor of their arrival. The Cult members knew that some of these people would be coming with them when they sailed again.

  Dealing humans was an ongoing business for the Cult and the bootlicking Minx officers at Son Tay usually rounded up fifty or so citizens for purchase by the battleship captain—at very low prices.

  The battleship finally passed through the outer reaches of the harbor and, slowing down, began to move towards its specially designated berth. Up on the hill to the south of the battleship dock, was a line of about two dozen Son Tay residents, waving their orange flags. Crouched behind them were Hunter, Crunch, and the Z-Men.

  “You say it only takes a half hour to dock that damn thing?” Hunter asked Crunch as he peeked up and over the rise to study the enormous Cult warship. “It looks like it should take a couple days at least.”

  “For whatever reason, these Cult bastards have got this sea-faring shit down pretty good,” Crunch replied. “They should, they ain’t got no more ground troops.”