Death Orbit (4 page)

The six officers were on their feet and over to the women in a flash.

“What’s the matter?” several of the men asked at once. “What happened?”

The women were crying so much it was hard for them to get the words out.

Finally, one of them grabbed Matus by the lapels. “The kids. Four of them. They’re missing…” she cried. “You have to come. Right now!”

The six officers grabbed their sidearms and piled out the door and down the steps of the Hut.

It was 11:59
A.M.

When the daily broadcast from Cape Canaveral came on the radio a minute later, no one was in the NJ104 CP to hear it.

A group of children and family members from the NJ104 billet had taken a morning trip to a beach approximately two miles south of Ship Bottom Bay.

This place, known locally as the Dunes, was a deserted stretch of shoreline festooned with high, towering sand dunes and thick plumbush vegetation. It was a favorite spot of the billeted families, especially those with young children. The water was a little calmer here, and the dunes were a natural playground. Some were more than fifty feet high, and with the proper acceleration, some kids were able to fling themselves out twenty feet or more before falling to the soft sand below.

The party that had left for the Dunes earlier that day was made up of sixteen children and five adults, all women, two of whom were combat engineers. The group arrived around 8
A.M.
and settled down into the shade of Big Two, one of the largest dunes in the area. The group of children then split. The seven boys, their ages ranging from eight to thirteen, went immediately to dune-jumping, while the nine slightly older girls chose to go swimming.

The next two hours passed without incident. Some of the girls retired to their blankets to sunbathe. The boys continued playing on the dunes, moving down to Big Three, probably the largest dune of them all. Sometime after 11
A.M.
, four of the girls told the adults they were going to Big Three to join the boys.

They never made it.

It took a while before anyone realized the girls were missing. Two of the boys, hungry and thirsty from two hours of dune-jumping, saw the girls climbing up the north side of Big Three just as they were climbing down, on the way back to the others. They said the girls had flirted and thrown sand at them as they passed. The boys continued on their way, last seeing the girls about twenty feet below the summit of Big Three.

It wasn’t until these two boys ate a sandwich, drank some punch, took a swim, and then returned to Big Three that anyone knew something was wrong. They found the other five boys atop Big Three—but the girls were not there. Some more time passed before one of the two boys asked where the girls were and was told by the others that no one had come to the top of Big Three since they’d left.

One of the younger boys became concerned, as his sister was in the group of four girls. He ran back down to the others on the beach, and when he found the girls were not there either, the adults began looking for them. Thirty minutes went by, and still there was no sign of the girls. The adults, now joined by the other children, searched the dunes and the thick vegetation nearby. They scoured the shoreline in both directions. They even climbed to the top of the larger dunes and called the girls’ names in unison. There was no response.

By this time, one of the adults was on a personal radiophone calling back to the Surf City billets, but as luck would have it, the radiophone was malfunctioning. All that could be heard were static and strange unintelligible voices. Finally, one of the women ran the two miles back to Ship Bottom Bay to alert the others. The first people she came upon were the mother and aunt of one of the missing girls.

These were the two women who had run to the top of the Hut to get the NJ104 staff officers.

By 1
P.M.
there were 100 people swarming all over the dunes—CE troopers, women, and older children.

Two of NJ104’s attack helicopters, AH-1 Cobras, had joined the search. Both had LANTIRN day-assisted radars able to see through the thickest underbrush. Two more helicopters, huge Chinooks, were dispatched from NAS O’Keefe, as were fifty additional SAR personnel.

This small army searched the Dunes for ten miles in both directions. All they found was the bathing suit top of the oldest girl hanging from a plumbush tree about two miles from Big Three, near an area known as the Crater. The search was then concentrated in this area, though it was beyond anyone’s comprehension how the four girls, last seen just twenty feet from the summit of Big Three, could have made it so far, over rough terrain, so quickly.

More troops arrived from O’Keefe around 3:30
P.M.
, ferried in by the big Chinooks. An OV-10A Bronco air-search plane arrived from NAS Cape May around 4
P.M.
It was equipped with highly sophisticated listening equipment used in covert operations, carried in a pod beneath its left wing. Around 5:15, the pilots thought they picked up sounds of a girl crying near the Crater; a similar report was heard at a location a mile to the south about 6
P.M.

But though both areas were scoured by nearly 200 combat-hardened troops and volunteers, as of nightfall, no further sign of the girls had been found.

For Don Matus and the other members of the NJ104 command staff, the search for the missing girls was a heart-wrenching experience.

Though none of the girls was directly related to any of the men, if there was a family-oriented combat unit anywhere in the world, it was NJ104. They were a clan. Everyone felt related to everyone else, and they were famous for looking out for their own. When trouble beset one member of this extended tree, it was felt by everyone.

With night falling, Matus had two patrol boats from NAS O’Keefe searching the nearby surf. The four choppers were still in the air, as was the Bronco. The combat engineers had established positions on every dune and were sweeping all the areas below with NightScopes and listening devices. The direct families of the missing girls were keeping vigil on the beach near Big Two. The unit’s two chaplains were on hand, as was a padre from O’Keefe. Matus himself was manning the command post on Big Four. Palma and McCaffery were with him. Squads of search teams passed them regularly, some going into the search areas, others coming out for brief respites of coffee and food. Their faces looked more concerned, more pained, more agonized than at any time Matus had seen them in combat.

Night fell. The searchers now began encountering obstacles that in daylight were mere annoyances. Tree branches now became near-lethal weapons, sinkholes were like land mines. To make matters worse, a sudden storm blew up around 8:30
P.M.
, soaking sand and searchers alike. Still the members of NJ104 pressed on, covering and recovering their tracks, looking into each and every crevice, plumbush, crater, and sand hole they came to, urging each other on but finding nothing.

By 11
P.M.
, the Bronco had to depart; it was low on gas and its listening suite needed a recharge. The Chinooks left, too—Matus felt it best that the airspace above the ten-mile search area not be made more dangerous. Now only the Cobras were overflying the Dunes, and their pilots had been at their controls continuously for nearly 12 hours.

Finally, by a quarter to midnight, Matus had one of the AH-1s ferry him back to Surf City. Landing directly on top of the roof of the Hut, he went down one floor to the command center and sat down before the CP radio. Though he wasn’t exactly sure why, he felt compelled to report the missing girls to UAAF provisional headquarters down at Cape Canaveral. Maybe someone down there would have some advice. Maybe an aircraft with powerful infrared capability could be dispatched to the area or more volunteers sent in from other UAAF bases nearby.

It was precisely one minute to midnight when Matus hit the power button on the radio set. Outside the wind was howling. There was a boom of thunder, followed by a crack of lightning. The storm was getting worse. He picked up the microphone. But before he could say one word, there was a burst of static from the radio receiver and then the low-echoing voice of someone speaking.

“The day whereof I have spoken has arrived,” the eerie voice intoned. “The days of many sufferings are at hand.”

Matus was so stunned the microphone fell from his hand. The voice. It was the same one they’d heard on the radio earlier that day. With the events since, he’d almost forgotten about it. Now the words chilled him to the bone.

“Prepare, those of you who have dwelled carelessly.” The words vibrated as they came out of the radio speakers. “The end is very near…”

Free Territory of New York, The Next Day

T
HERE WAS ANOTHER ELITE
unit attached to the UAAF that was presently on standdown.

This was the famous JAWS outfit, the do-it-all/done-it-all special operations group whose nucleus had been formed several years after the Big War by a small police force in the upstate town of Johnstown, New York.

Named after the bastardization of their community’s name—Jacktown—the “Jacks Are Wild” group was made up of eighty combat-hardened regulars. Like NJ104, the core command of JAWS consisted of a handful of men, all of them close personal friends of Hawk Hunter. They had been through many climactic battles with the Wingman, including those leading up to the freeing of the American continent, and the UAAF’s more recent overseas actions as well.

Like NJ104, JAWS had lost their C-5 Galaxy gunship during the Second Vietnam War. Like NJ104, they had suffered nearly 30-percent casualties in Southeast Asia and in action in the South China Sea. Like NJ104, they hadn’t had any substantial R & R in nearly 19 months.

But unlike NJ104, the members of JAWS were not taking their vacation at the shore. Instead, to relax, the JAWS command staff had gone mountain climbing.

Their intention was to scale Mount Chazy, also known as “Crazy Chazy,” a virtually uncharted peak at the very northern tip of the Free Territory of New York, not far west of Upper Lake Champlain. Chazy was 6001 feet high, an almost identical lookalike to Mount Washington, a few hundred miles to the southeast. Like Mount Washington, Chazy was high enough to affect the weather in the surrounding areas. The winds whipping off Lake Ontario would buffet the western side of the peak, condense, pick up speed and strength, and rip over the top of Crazy Chazy so quickly, you could sometimes hear the roar 50 miles away. Add a constant cap of snow and ice at the peak, persistent reports that a yeti-like creature inhabited the caves near the mountain’s crown, and a fatality rate among climbers that rivaled Mount McKinley’s, and an adventure on top of Mount Chazy was something to ponder a long time before undertaking.

This was exactly the kind of adventure the JAWS team craved. They’d
blown up
a mountain almost this big on the island of Okinawa a year or so back, one that contained several divisions of Asian Mercenary Cult troops and an underground aircraft factory—and this after fighting their way up the side of the thing. They were highly trained in the arts of repelling, Alpine warfare, difficult infiltrations, and quick getaways. For unlike many postwar military units who tended to specialize in one thing or another, the JAWS team was good at doing just about everything.

Climbing Mount Chazy would be a breeze for them.

But they weren’t going to be stupid about it. The climb team had come well prepared. They’d choppered up from Jacktown the night before, setting up camp at the base of Chazy on its somewhat protected southern side. There were four of them: Mark Snyder (now the team’s unofficial leader, since Captain Jim Cook was in space), Warren Maas, Sean Higgins, and Clancy Miller. Two local men, Eddie Edson and Louis DeMarco, would serve as guides. Snyder and Higgins had once climbed K-2; they would be the climb leaders. Miller was a photo expert and would be carrying nearly 30 pounds of photo gear. Maas would be lugging most of the team’s provisions. Edson and DeMarco would carry the emergency gear and the radio.

The plan was to leave at 6
A.M.
and be at the top of Chazy peak by mid-afternoon.

The climbers got off to a good start.

The day dawned bright and sunny, and though it was August, the temperatures up in the northern Adirondacks promised to remain comfortable. The team found their main ascent trail right away, and by 8
A.M.
they were up the first quarter of the mountain.

By 10, they’d reached the halfway point, an hour ahead of schedule. Now the trees were beginning to thin and the views were becoming spectacular. Looking to the right from the southern side, they could see clear into Old Vermont; to the left, the immense puddle of Lake Ontario. By looking straight up, they could see the snow-capped peak of Chazy itself. It looked cold and mysterious, especially in the warm summer sun. All four men had promised to bring snowballs from the summit back home for their kids.

They reached the top of the treeline just about noon, again ahead of schedule. They found a shaded, rocky area and decided they’d take a 20-minute meal break. Miller wandered off to snap some pictures; Maas heated water for mixing their MRE rations. Higgins and Snyder did stretching exercises to keep their hands and feet loose for the last part of the long climb. Edson and Demarco, the two guides, found another cliff nearby and lit up smokes.

The first sign of trouble came when Miller stumbled back into the small camp about two minutes later. He was as white as a sheet, his pile of expensive camera equipment nowhere to be seen.

He could barely talk; he was having trouble breathing. His colleagues gathered around and forced him to drink some water. Then they hustled him into the shade. It was a frightening moment. They’d never seen their friend like this.

“What is it, Clancy?” Snyder pressed him. “What the hell happened?”

But Miller could not speak. He could only point to a spot around the bend from where the party had made camp. He was gurgling and choking and trying like hell to say something. Finally they let him calm down, catch his breath, and take another long swig of water.