Ghost War

by Maloney, Mack;

Hunter considered the whole strategy for a few minutes.

  Finally, he spoke. “It’s innovative, I’ll give you that,” he told his old friend. “Needs split-second timing. And a lot of busting ass by Geraci’s guys. But if it works …”

  JT nodded grimly. “It’s got to work, Hawk,” he said. “If it doesn’t, well …”

  His voice trailed off.

  Hunter studied his old friend for a moment. Suddenly JT looked older than his years. He was learning very quickly that being in command was usually an unenviable task. However, he had come up with an innovative, if bizarre plan against the Minx, one which would not only check them in Da Nang, but also might send shock waves right through the rest of the entire Minx corps. If it worked, it would be considered a stroke of military genius.

  But if it failed …

  “So what do you want me to do, boss?” Hunter finally asked JT.

  JT’s smile returned. “You do what we do,” he replied. “Get in the air as soon as the balloon goes up and keep those bastards off the base. As for Da Nang city, well, again, it will really be up to the 104th to pull off their end as quickly as possible. Any delays and the bad guys will chop us all up into little pieces.”

  Hunter poured out another round of drinks.

  “So when the shooting does start, how do you think it will begin?” Hunter asked.

  JT just shrugged. “It will begin when all those assholes out there finally get paid from their blowboys in Hanoi,” he declared. “Then they’ll just launch a traditional attack. Mortars and big guns first. Katy rockets too. Then comes the infantry. They might feint here, feint there, but, in the end it will be two full-scale frontal attacks. One on the base, and a bigger one here. My guess is they’ll want to capture the city first and then work on the base.”

  “We better hope they do,” Hunter said, consulting the map again.

  “Well, that’s why Geraci’s guys are working night and day,” JT replied. “That’s why we all have to be ready, every minute of every day. Ready for that first mortar round to drop. When that happens, we’ve got to go right down the line, doing the right things, at the right time. If we do, we might get lucky and be golden. If we don’t? Well …”

  Once again his voice trailed off.

  “Don’t worry,” Hunter told him. “We’ll do it right.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  The next morning

  THE BASE AT DA Nang was a whole new experience for the New Zealanders, Timmy and Terry.

  They’d spent most of their lives rather isolated in Auckland, and during their military service, fighting in the bush in Malaysia, on Borneo, the swamps of Sumatra, and now, Vietnam.

  They’d never been so close to really high-tech weaponry—NightScopes and choppers were about as advanced technology as they had seen. So they were very wide-eyed walking along the flight line at the base. They were especially amazed at the weaponry formerly installed on Nozo and Bozo, weapons now part of the defense of the base.

  The LARS was the centerpiece of this long range defense. The massive rocket launcher was anchored at the end of Da Nang’s main runway, its tubes loaded, a crew on duty around the clock. Although the base and Da Nang city itself were ringed with literally hundreds of machine guns and light-to-heavy artillery, the LARS would be the most important weapon when the inevitable Minx attack finally came. It could unleash an unholy barrage of thirty-six high-explosive rockets either individually or in staggered fashion at half second intervals. Each one of these rockets could carry a forty-pound charge an astounding distance of fifteen miles and hit just about any target right on the dime.

  While the Z-men were amazed at the sheer brutal power of the LARS, they were also fascinated with the line of Bozo’s Gatling guns which now protected the west flank of the base. This was the most likely direction from which the Minx would come, and when they did, they would be met by these six awesome weapons, each capable of firing sixty rounds a second.

  The Z-men contemplated the weapons and then the long stretch of flat ground and dried-up rice paddie over which the Minx would have to traverse when attacking the base.

  “It will be a killing field,” Terry said grimly. “Bloody better them than us.”

  They continued their informal tour around the base perimeter passing a mélange of weaponry—from M-48 heavy tank emplacements, to Milan anti-tank positions, 155-mm howitzer pens to 20-mm antiaircraft gun mounts with their barrels cranked all the way down to level.

  “Only madmen would do a frontal on all this stuff,” Timmy said as they walked back toward the main runways. “How much can they be paying them to face all this stuff?”

  “Not nearly enough,” Terry replied.

  They reached the aircraft parking area, and once again their eyes went wide at the sight of the rather exotic weaponry on hand.

  The three Football City Special Forces C-5s were there, parked wingtip-to-wingtip, their red-and-blue, sports-logo-style striping gleaming in the hot sun. The Rangers were doing routine maintenance on their quick response vehicles which were lined up beside the huge C-5s. The most impressive of these were the FV101 Scorpion tracked vehicles. They looked like miniature tanks, complete with 76-mm gun turret, and two 7.62 machine guns, as well as various antitank or medium range rocket systems.

  The Rangers however had souped up the engines to these Scorpions, and added everything from NightScope capability, to laser targeting. Now the minitanks could travel upward of 70 mph, while firing, even at night. When carrying a crew of six (double the normal complement) and massed for attack in number of twenty or more, the Scorpions could wreak havoc with any large attacking force, their capability to hit, run, hit and run again bordering on mind-boggling.

  The Z-men passed the trio of Football planes and ambled up to the Triple-X. The crew was on break, and the airplane empty. The New Zealanders wandered into the huge cargo hold and out the back of the plane.

  “How does it get itself up in the air?” Terry wondered.

  “It must be like flying a building or two,” Timmy nodded in agreement.

  They moved on to the trio of F-20 Tigersharks. Though they’d been in action with jets providing air support, the Z-men had never seen anything like the sleek, sexy F-20s.

  Terry put the tip of his finger on the end of the first jet’s stiletto-like nose.

  “It’s bloody sharp,” he cursed. “I swear I could cut me finger on it.”

  Timmy tentatively fingered the needle-nose and actually did nick his pinky. “Right, you could run a man through with that,” he declared.

  They passed the three jets and finally came upon Hunter’s F-16XL. Of all the weapons they’d seen in the walk, this one was by far the most impressive.

  “Look at it, will you?” Terry was near-shouting. “It looks like it’s from bleeding out of space.”

  “It’s like sci-fi on the old telly,” Timmy agreed. “It’s like Kirk and Spock …”

  Hunter was in the cockpit, checking his avionics package for any damage JT might have caused. He saw the New Zealanders approaching and climbed down to meet the pair.

  “Never seen anything like this one, Hawk,” Terry said. “Had a bunch of A-4s helping us out down in Borneo once. They were downright stuffy compared to this.”

  Hunter ran his hand along the XL’s sleek fuselage.

  “The A-4 is a good airplane,” he said. “Built for something a little different than this one though.”

  “How did you get it?” Timmy asked. “Did you buy it? Build it from scratch?”

  Hunter had to stop and think about it for a moment. He’s always considered the F-16 his airplane. But did he really own it? The original frame was from his old Thunderbird demonstrator. He’d changed everything out from that long ago, and had help from a team of aerodynamics experts in converting it from a regular F-16 to the XL Cranked Arrow configuration. But was the airplane actually his? Or was it rightly owned by the government?

  “I guess it’s mine by reverse eminent domain,” he
finally answered. “I’ve been flying it for so long, I can’t imagine not having it.”

  “Ah, you love it then,” Terry said with a tooth-gapped smile. “Like a race driver likes ’is car. Or a hunter likes ’is gun.”

  Hunter smiled and nodded. He’d never really thought of it in that way before, but he did love the airplane.

  “Like a woman,” Timmy said. “Break your heart, and you go crawling back.”

  “Amen,” Hunter replied.

  The Z-men stayed and chatted for another few minutes. Hunter liked them both—it seemed as if he’d known them for years, and not simply a couple weeks. He knew they were virtually fearless, yet he’d never met anyone as down to earth as they were. Had they not been mercenaries, they would probably have been farmers or cattlemen. They were Hunter’s kind of people, he could talk with them for hours.

  They made plans to meet at JT’s palace bar in an hour for a bottle of beer, and then the two New Zealanders ambled on, their baggy camouflage uniforms whipping in the hot wind, their weapons slung over their shoulders like fishing poles.

  “Good guys,” Hunter thought, returning to avionics package.

  Suddenly he felt the hair on the back of his head go straight up. He froze, trying to ascertain from his psyche what was wrong.

  Then he heard it.

  The distinct sound of a mortar tube pop, echoing from the jungle beyond the end of the runway. He heard the whine and then the screech as the mortar shell rocketed out of its trajectory and came streaking back down. His computerlike brain was able to input the changes in the acoustics of the shell and tell him it was going to come crashing down very close by.

  He jumped off the XL and ran to the front of the airplane. The screech was getting louder. He knew it was going to hit in about three seconds, and approximately forty feet away.

  “Damn, no …” he screamed.

  The huge mortar shell came down exactly three seconds later, exploding just beyond a line of ancient Huey choppers. As everyone around him was running away from the blast, heading for cover, Hunter was running full tilt towards the impact point.

  When he finally got there, his worst fears had come true. There was a huge crater in the middle of the tarmac, still smoking, with sparks popping out.

  Beside the smoldering hole, riddled and bleeding beyond recognition, were the bodies of Timmy and Terry.

  Chapter Forty-three

  YET ANOTHER WAR FOR Vietnam had begun.

  With the opening round, the base at Da Nang came under a massive mortar and rocket bombardment. There were suddenly fires everywhere; smoke was obscuring the midday sun. Alarms bells and sirens were ringing; people were scrambling to the system of hardened shelters. Long range artillery was booming all over, the chatter of gunfire filled the air.

  And in amongst it all, the angry sound of a jet engine screeching to life.

  Not two minutes after the firing had commenced, Hunter’s F-16XL was screaming down the main runway at Da Nang. Lifting off with a burst of power, he pulled the futuristic fighter back up on its tail, booted in the afterburner and shot straight up until he was out of sight.

  He was loaded for bear. There were four points along the bottom of each of his wings, and each held some kind of exotic weapon.

  On his right side inner he’d attached one KMU-351 Paveway smart bomb; next to it was a Durandal runway buster bomb. Third over on the right was an AGM-65A Maverick; beside it was a Mk-83 GP 1000-pound bomb. The tip of the wing held one of his two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.

  On the left side he had stacked from the inside out, a CBU-528 bomblet dispenser, a larger CBU Rockeye dispenser carrying napalm globets, a Mk-117 750-pound GP bomb and a Mk 82 Snakeye bomb.

  He was also packing a full house of ammo for his four M-61 nose cannons.

  He screeched the F-16XL up to 15,000 feet in under ten seconds and then slowly flipped the fighter over. The war had started just as JT said it would—without warning, by mortar and rocket attack, as a prelude to a massive ground assault. Just as he was taxiing out for takeoff he heard the Da Nang tower confirm that fighting had also broken out down in Cam Rahn Bay, at Hue, at Bien Hoa, at Nha Trang, and inside New Saigon. He knew there were at least a dozen more coastal cities that were also probably under attack and had yet to report in. Just as advertised, the Viet Minx had paid of all their soldiers and were now trying to take all of Vietnam in a single bloody offensive—only the various mercenary armies and a small Vietnamese defense corps stood in their way. Caught in the middle were about two million Vietnamese citizens, who once again, had to stand by and watch others determine the fate of their country.

  Hunter put the XL into a tight orbit and began studying the ground below. Just the smoke and flame spots alone gave away the enemy’s previously hidden mortar positions; some of them were very near the wire at the Da Nang airbase, others as far as a half mile away from the perimeter. Behind the mortars were the 140-mm and 155-mm artillery and the Katuysha rocket emplacements. And somewhere in between, Hunter knew, was a huge enemy ground assault, poised for launch.

  He was still shaking with rage over the deaths of the Z-Men. It was savagely ironic that the first shot of the war would kill the two happy-go-lucky New Zealanders, two soldiers who were far away from home, fighting on a foreign soil just so others they didn’t know could remain free. Hunter had seen a lot of combat—and a lot of death. There was only one way to deal with it: try to forget it. But he knew it would be some time before he would lose the memory of the two bodies of Terry and Timmy, perforated by Minx mortar fragments.

  One of the cardinal sins of combat was to turn the fight personal; when a soldier’s emotion got in the way, it opened up all kinds of possibilities for mistakes—and mistakes usually meant either getting very hurt or getting very dead.

  But Hunter had stopped playing by the rules years ago, way back in the days of ZAP, when he was fighting the likes of the Mid-Aks and the Family. It got very personal way back then, and many times since, he’d followed his nose, not his brain.

  Today would be no different.

  The mortar that hit Timmy and Terry had been a heavy-duty job, maybe a dime-and-a-half or bigger. Judging by the way he heard it pop and how it came down, Hunter figured it was located about 1,000 meters beyond the edge of the main runway, and maybe 100 meters to the south. Sure enough, when he keyed his ground mapping radar on those coordinates, he could clearly see a staccato line of heat sources, the unmistakable glow of mortars being launched. He locked the image into the weapons control computer and then turned the XL over.

  He was instantly into a screaming dive, booting in the afterburner at a heart-stopping 5,500 feet, cracking the sound barrier and issuing a mechanical scream that he was sure could be heard for miles. That was the whole idea—he wanted these bastards to know he was coming.

  On the way down he saw that the jungles surrounding Da Nang were just lousy with Minx—big guns, tanks, mobile artillery, troops and mortars everywhere. In an instant he saw why it would have been unwise to launch preemptive strikes on this gang—the weapons and men had been so solidly dug in and hidden, it would have been a waste of precious ammunition and ordnance.

  Beside, the only way to kill rats was to wait until they came out into the light.

  He was down to 1,500 feet now and below he could see the hundred or so Minx mortar men scatter in panic at his supersonic approach. That was fine with him—he was giving them the opportunity Timmy and Terry never had, a chance to contemplate life before they lost it.

  He finally pulled up at 400 feet, applying his airbrakes even as he began to level off. He lined up the long string of heavy mortars concealed on a ridge a few football fields away from the end of the main runway and quickly called up his weapons available readout screen. He touched the symbol for the CBU Rockeye dispenser, the one carrying 100 napalm globets.

  The decision was thus made: Death by jellied fire would be the retribution for the killing of his New Zealander friends.

&nbs
p; His bomb release light flashing like crazy, Hunter eased back on the throttles and squeezed the weapons’ lever. Instantly he felt the right wing buck a little as the big dispenser dropped off and began its preguided path down to the mortar emplacements. Once the weapon computer checked off the Rockeye as dead on path, Hunter banked hard to the right, and then went into a screaming 180.

  The Rockeye hit just as he was coming around. He saw it dispense inside two seconds, spraying the area with 100 baseball-sized, compressed napalm bomblets. The effect was like a wave of blue flame, washing over the line of heavy mortars. When the wave broke, it turned first red, then yellow, then bright, bright orange. He could see figures running through the inferno, clothes, skin, hair on fire—but his heart was hardened to all this by now.

  When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left. No trees, no shrubs, no mortars. No Minx.

  “Fuck you guys,” Hunter muttered. “Hope you cashed your checks.”

  Beyond the now-scorched mortar line was a nest of 144-mm long-range artillery pieces. Like years before, this gun was favorite of the Vietnamese aggressors. The Minx had set up six guns in a rough semicircle, for the best in concentrated fire. It also made for a perfect aerial target—perfect for Hunter’s 1000-pound GP bomb.

  Unlike the mortar teams, the artillery men didn’t hear him coming. Whether it was the booming of their guns, or possibly earplugs, they didn’t see the F-16XL until it was almost on top of them. A glint of silver falling from the delta wing airplane was the last thing many of them ever saw. The huge bomb hit with such an impact that the concussion alone bent the barrels of two of the guns. The other four were simply vaporized along with their crews.

  A quick twist to the left and Hunter found a traffic jam of enemy 150-mm Koksan mobile guns. Again, in the quest for concentrated fire, the Minx had typically jammed the mobile weapons bumper-to-bumper.

  “Idiots,” Hunter muttered, calling up the weapons available screen on his main computer. He touched the panel for the 750-pound Mk117 GP bomb, and then directed his laser sighting to the grille of the very first mobile battery.