Hunter was on the scene in a matter of seconds; the Foxbat had already turned to escape. But it was too late. In an unusual moment of uncontrolled anger, Hunter unleashed two Sidewinders and sprayed the Foxbat with a long barrage of cannon fire from his quad-pack. Both missiles hit the Foxbat almost simultaneously with the arrival of the cannon barrage.
The resulting explosion was enormous; the fireball even bigger. When the debris blew away, only a few engine parts remained, tumbling to earth, trailing a few wisps of black smoke.
By this time, JT’s Tigershark had already crashed onto the streets of Hanoi.
Chapter Fifty-two
Outside Hanoi
24 hours later
NEVER HAD THERE BEEN such gloom inside the huge mansion that served as headquarters for CapCom.
There was no darker place than the mansion’s boardroom. Those lights that had not yet gone out were certainly dimming. Less than a third of the huge TV sets were still online, and two of those were mostly static. Even the phones were dead.
The chairman of the board looked out on his once-prosperous stable of members and saw nothing but death and profit loss. Two members had already blown their brains out, a third was soon to follow.
Where did they go wrong? the chairman asked himself. They’d undercut all of their suppliers and overcharged all their customers. They had neglected their own citizenry. With each new battle they had achieved the perfect balance between an evershrinking work force and higher rate of asset acquisition flow. This was supposed to be capitalism’s Nirvana.
So what happened? the chairman wondered, pulling out his own Beretta and placing the barrel in his mouth.
He would never know.
The muffled sound of the chairman’s gun going off barely echoed off the sides of the cavernous boardroom. Two more members followed their leader to hell via pistol shots to the temple. Another man simply decided to slit his wrists and go slowly.
This left only two members who were afraid of ending their own lives.
So they made an agreement: one would shoot the other and them himself. A quick toss of a South African 110-mark gold coin decided who would be the triggerman. Grimly, the men embraced for the last time.
Without much hesitation, the shooter did his work, blowing half the skull off his colleague, and adding a bullet to the heart for good measure. He checked the pistol—there was one bullet left. Would it be enough? the man wondered.
It would have to be, he finally decided.
He put the pistol barrel in his mouth, and pulled the hammer back. Just as he was about to let go however, he heard a strange noise off in the distance. It was peculiar enough to cause him to take the gun out of his mouth momentarily and look outside.
The noise was coming from a quartet of huge helicopters landing just outside the mansion’s east wing.
No sooner were they down, when scores of white-uniformed troops began pouring out, their weapons poised, their demeanor obviously one of shoot-on-sight. One chopper had landed in the middle of the other three, and from this aircraft a man in a black uniform emerged.
The last CapCom member squinted in an effort to get a better look at the man. He was extremely tall, maybe 6-10, thin but powerful looking. He was a white man, though his face was dark from the sun. He wore his hair long and bunched into a ponytail that reached halfway down his back. A small stiletto-sharp goatee adorned his face.
This man drew a long cape around himself and then began a quick march towards the mansion. The CapCom member wasn’t quite sure what to do. Who was this? Who was he to arrive with such arrogance? The board member was curious—so much so, he felt death could be put off for a moment or two.
He watched as the tall man in black walked right up to the huge picture window anchored to the southern end of the boardroom and delivered a vicious kick of the boot. The huge pane simply shattered away, scattering thousands of small shards of glass all over the boardroom, the bright sun making them glisten like diamonds.
The man in black walked quickly through the hole in the window, followed by a squad of heavily armed soldiers. They stopped to study the boardroom itself. The man in black counted out the twelve dead bodies and then held back his head and laughed.
“Which one was Judas?” he roared with demonic delight.
The squeal nearly split the brain of the surviving CapCom member. He’d never heard a laugh so chilling, so fearsome.
The man in black then walked over to the CapCom member, who was now shaking with fear and confusion.
“Do you speak French?” the man in black asked him.
“Non … not enough …”
“English then?” the man in black asked.
“I speak it,” the CapCom man replied.
The man in black looked around the room. “You are the only one left?”
The CapCom member nodded slowly. He was certain the man in black was about to order one of his troops to finish the job of killing himself.
“And were you were a senior member of this … this organization?”
The CapCom man nodded slowly again. He was lying, of course. He was barely a junior member.
The man in black stared down at him and then, strangely smiled.
“You are the sole proprietor remaining, then?” he asked him, almost gently.
The CapCom man nodded a third time, with more vigor.
“Then,” the man in black said, “I have a proposition for you.”
The man from CapCom was puzzled. “You do?” was all he could reply.
The man in black looked around the room. “Yes,” he said with a huff. “I want to buy this, or whatever’s left of it.”
“You want to buy CapCom?” the board member asked incredulously.
“I do!” the man in black replied heartily. “And as you are the only surviving member, you will be the one I shall pay. Now I’m a busy man. Will five thousand pounds of gold do?”
The CapCom man was astonished. He’d been a half a second from killing himself. Now, suddenly, he was a very rich man. Had there ever been anyone luckier?
He picked himself up out of his chair and stood tall on two unsteady feet. “I accept your offer, sir,” he said in the boldest voice possible.
The man in black pulled a parchment document from his cape. He then made an old-fashioned ink quill pen appear out of thin air.
“Sign this, my good man,” he said, thrusting pen and paper at the CapCom board man. “And our deal will be consummated.”
The board member did so quite hastily. The man in black took back the piece of paper, studied it and then added his own signature, a large sign of a “V.”
“Excellent,” he whispered. “Now everything is legal.”
The CapCom member straightened out his uniform and pushed back his rumpled hair. “And now, sir?” he asked.
The man in black smiled again. “And now, it is time for your golden parachute.”
“Excuse me, sir?” the CapCom man asked.
“Golden parachute,” the man in black repeated. “Aren’t you familiar with the term? It means ‘early retirement.’”
Suddenly there was a gun in the hand of the man in black. The CapCom member was astonished—it was his pistol. But he had no idea how the frighteningly-imposing figure before him had gotten it from him.
It made no difference. The man in black pulled the trigger and the bullet entered the CapCom member’s skull right above the left eye. He was hurled back against one of the big picture TV screens, bounced off and fell to the floor. He was dead in two seconds.
The man in black dramatically blew the smoke from the still-hot barrel and then threw the pistol on the conference table.
“Another day,” he sighed. “Another hostile takeover.”
He turned on his heel and walked back through the hole in the window. His second in command was there, waiting for him.
“This is all in your hands now,” the tall man in black told him. “Consolidate what is left, sell what we don’t n
eed, and keep what we do. I’ll expect a full report in a week’s time.”
The man snapped an instant salute, then turned and began barking orders to his vassal officers.
“Find any servants inside the house and kill them,” he shouted in Arabic. “Locate any soldiers, disarm them and do the same. I want a complete inventory in my hand in less than one hour!”
As his troops scrambled to work, he turned back to the man in black.
“Your wardrobe is fully packed, sir,” the second in command told him. “You will find it laid out in your sleeping compartment on the command plane.”
The man was pulling on his long black gloves. “The best in artic gear?” he asked.
“The very best,” the second-in-command replied with a lopsided grin. “It’s pure ‘shark skin.’”
They both laughed and then the man in black was off, walking briskly back to his chopper, and quickly climbing aboard. Within seconds, the huge aircraft was off the ground and turning to the north.
The troops left on the ground all watched it until it was completely out of sight.
Chapter Fifty-three
The next day
THE HUGE CH-53 SUPER Stallion helicopter touched down right outside the ops building at Da Nang airbase.
Its massive rotors never stopped turning. It had to pick up some passengers and then quickly be on its way. The chopper and its crew were from the Second Italian International Corps, based down near Cam Ranh. They were responding to a direct request from Hawk Hunter himself. The United Americans needed a heavy-lift, armed helicopter quickly.
The Italians were only too happy to help out. It was after all because of the United Americans that practically all Minx activity in South Vietnam had ceased nearly twenty-four hours before. Every major target throughout the country was on the verge of falling into enemy hands when the Minx suddenly stopped shooting, and quickly began to withdraw. A catastrophe was averted by mere hours. And everyone knew it was because the United Americans had bombed the Central Bank of Hanoi, and in one brilliant massive stroke, dealt the one blow to the Viet Minx military structure that could not be defended against: bankruptcy.
With the gold and paper reserves of the Minx’s fortune lying in cinders and dust in the middle of Hanoi, the Minx were suddenly devoid of all operating capital. The massive tap-out caused the immediate collapse of its management company, CapCom. No Minx meant no paychecks for the various military units in the field. An entire army had been handed its pink slip, and was now literally unemployed.
Democracy and Freedom had survived again in South Vietnam—at least for the time being.
So the Italians were grateful to the Americans, as were all of the foreign military units fighting for the people of South Vietnam. When the call came for a big chopper with big guns, they were the first on the scene.
Fourteen men emerged from the ops building, each heavily armed with M-16AX laser-sighted rifles and carrying a variety of small munitions, such as grenades and flash bombs. Each man was also wearing a Kevlar helmet, except for one, who was wearing a faded white crash helmet.
With the small army finally settled on board, the huge Sea Stallion revved its engines and slowly rose into the air. Once it gained altitude, it turned and headed towards North Vietnam.
His name these days was just Dong.
He was driving a truck—one carrying septic waste—on old Route 9, heading for a disposal center near the village of Quang Shau, which was located about 10 miles south of Hanoi.
The irony of driving a shitwagon on Route 9 was not lost on Dong, dull-witted as he was. Mere weeks before, he had commanded more than a division of men in a major battle fought for access to this very highway. He had lost.
Now he was back to doing what he supposed he did best—driving crap up and down the Minx lines.
Because his truck had no radio, Dong was one of the few Viet Minx troopers in either Vietnam who didn’t realize that they were actually out of a job. For Dong, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. The former multimillionaire had exactly three gold coins in his pocket, enough for a used pair of tire-rubber sandals, a pack of cigarettes and maybe a glass of him-ham, and that was it. And though he didn’t know it yet, there would be no more pay slips coming from Minx High Command, simply because there was no more Minx High Command.
It was growing close to dusk now, and he was about two hours from his destination. Though he was hungry, he couldn’t bear to eat, so great was the stench from the tank behind him. Instead he pulled out his last cigarette and attempted to light it. Rounding a corner which led into a thick forest, he had to take his eyes off the road momentarily in order to strike his match. When he looked up he found himself staring down the barrels of fourteen heavy machine guns.
Dong immediately hit the breaks, burning himself in the process and nearly getting ejected through the windshield.
The fourteen heavily armed men were around him in an instant, hauling him out of the truck’s cab and throwing him to the ground. There was a bootheel on the back of his neck inside a second, many gun snouts on his nose not a second later.
“Did you speak French?” he heard someone using cracked accent say. “English? Chinese?”
“Fran-swa!” he screamed. “Fran-swa!”
“Where is the largest military unit from here?” the man with the bad French accent asked him.
Dong was petrified; he was certain he was about to be shot.
“There are many,” he managed to blurt out, the boots on his back making it very difficult to breathe.
“Where’s the camp of the nearest highest ranking officer?” was the next stern question.
Dong was inhaling sand and oily road gravel now.
“Hanoi,” he gagged, “maybe some closer.”
Another boot was added to the crunch on his back.
“Where the hell would they bring an enemy prisoner around here?” a new, angrier voice asked in a definite American accent. “Someone who was shot down?”
Dong was panicking by this time. He tried to come up with an answer he hoped his assailants would want to hear, on so thin a line he believed his life was hanging.
“There is a provincial police station on the edge of the city, right up this road,” he nearly screamed. “They would take a captured pilot there.”
“OK,” a third, calmer voice replied. “You’re going to take us to it.”
It was two hours later when Dong literally burst through the door of the Hanoi police station.
Though charged with keeping law and order inside the former Minx capital city, the policemen now found themselves suddenly unemployed, just like tens of thousands of Minx soldiers. Like the troops, their pay slips came from the now-defunct Minx High Command.
The five policemen inside the station stared at Dong, astonished that he had entered in such an impolite manner.
“Leave here!” one of the policemen screamed at him, something a cop would never do in the old days. “Steal your food somewhere else!”
Dong was absolutely terrified, so much so he had trouble even opening his mouth, never mind forming coherent words. His main concern were the fourteen gun barrels he knew were aimed at his back at that very moment, their owners hidden in the dense growth on either side of the station’s door. He was already shaking from the news these strange enemy soldiers had told him during the helicopter ride up to this place. These men claim—and he had no reason not to believe them—that the entire Hanoi government had collapsed financially and that the war in the south was very abruptly over. He was easy to convince for two reasons: tales of Minx financial woes were universal throughout the ranks, plus he hadn’t received a pay slip in weeks.
Under these circumstances he knew the policemen would not be happy to see him—or any other Minx soldiers for that matter. Relations between the Hanoi police and Minx troops were always strained at best. So Dong had a very legitimate fear that he could get shot from the front, too.
The only bright spot—and it was
a small one—was that he could see a Caucasian man through a glass partition sitting in an adjacent office. He did not look up when Dong burst in, but Dong could see that man clearly enough to recognize his pilot’s uniform. The man’s head was also covered in bandages.
“They have come for him,” Dong heard himself mutter, pointing towards the white man.
The policemen were on their feet now.
“Who has come?” they demanded.
“His friends,” Dong continued to stutter. “They are outside—in force. They want him back. If not, they will kill me—and all of you, too.”
The policemen stared back at Dong, then turned towards the man in the nearby office and then back again. They were suddenly fingering the sidearms.
“Are you insane?” one of them screamed at him, no more than a foot from Dong’s right ear; Dong could smell the him-ham on his breath. “This man is an enemy prisoner of war. We must fight to keep him.”
“Are you sure,” Dong somehow coughed out. “Even in these uncertain times?”
“He is to be held here until…” a second cop yelled at him.
Dong took a deep gulp. “Until … when?”
A third officer was soon in his face too. He looked to be the fiercest of them all.
“Until someone pays us to take him,” this man growled.
Dong swallowed hard again. “That’s just it,” he replied, his voice down to a terrified whisper. “That’s exactly what they want to do.”
Six hours later
The sun was just coming up when the small patrol of Hanoi policemen reached the top of the small mountain.
This was the place they called Tienku. It was the highest elevation within twenty-five miles of Hanoi, lying due south of the dormant capital. From its summit, the policemen could see the smoke still rising over the center of the quiet city, the last vestiges of the massive American bombing attack.
They had both the soldier named Dong and the captured pilot with them. They were also all heavily armed.
The big helicopter arrived five minutes later. It landed gently on a flat outcrop of rock, a dozen heavily armed men inside deploying in aggressive fashion an instant after the chopper touched down.
Ghost War Page 38