Final Storm (33 page)

The sharp twinge of pain from the stabbing syringe made Hunter wince and recoil, but it was as if he was in slow motion. The powerful sedative quickly found its way through his overtaxed system, and though he instinctively tried to fight it, he finally buckled. Jones, the doctor, and several others reached around to grab him under the arms to prevent him from falling to the pavement.

Just before Hunter’s bloodshot eyes closed, he looked up at Jones.

“It’s over, Hawk,” the general said calmly. “And we won.”

“We won?” Hunter repeated groggily, catching one last glimpse of his battle-scarred white fighter and then beyond it, to the piles of burned hulks and salvage wrecks that lined the base.

“We won what?” he asked.

The Aftermath

H
UNTER SPENT THE NEXT
forty-eight hours sleeping.

Yet, in a strange way, he was never more awake. He found himself immersed in strange dreams—actual living visions in which he teetered between a coma-like unconsciousness and an eerie trance that was more half-sleep and half-hallucination.

At times he rolled fitfully in the hospital bed, his arms flailing as he fought off dark demons that the powerful sedative drug had released from his subconscious. Now they roved through his nightmare, gruesome and malevolent, conjuring the lurid images that played out in his fragmented non-stop incubus.

Throughout his drug-induced fog, one cruel vision kept assaulting his tormented brain. He was high above the surface of the earth, as if he was cruising his F-16 into the stratosphere. But there was no sensation of being confined to a cockpit, or even an aircraft. He was just floating—floating along in the thin air, powerless to control his flight, like a runaway helium balloon accidentally released from a child’s hand. And all he could do was watch helplessly as the planet below appeared sporadically through the dense cloud formations.

At times he was miles above the North American continent, suspended over the whirling clouds as they were driven along by the swift river of the jet stream. Below him, by some trick of the cloud’s parting, he could see the entire United States stretching serenely from Atlantic to Pacific coast, and from Canadian to Mexican border. The towering peaks of the Continental Divide tumbled down to become the flat plains of the central West, then the fertile fields of the Midwest, and then the rolling knobs of the green Appalachian chain rose up until they faded into the eastern coastal plain. It was, at first, a beautiful, nirvana-like vision.

But something was terribly wrong.

Even as Hunter was watching, an evil-looking red-and-black stain appeared in North Dakota and began spreading south and west. Terrific explosions rocked the ground below him, seeming to engulf whole states in their deadly volatile embrace. The shock waves buffeted Hunter as he hung there, unable to react except to cry out in anguish for the wounded land below.

The dark stain flowed faster with each explosion, driving farther and farther into the heartland of the nation. As more territory was consumed, new explosions erupted and added to the smoke and noise swirling across the continent.

Hunter was shocked and amazed; even in his dream state he tried to avert his eyes from the terrible scene. But strangely he was unable to do so. He watched with trancelike fixation as the explosions finally subsided. From the badlands of the Dakotas, down to the northern rim of Texas, the ground had turned inky black, punctuated only by a series of eerie, glowing pinspots that shimmered luminescently against the darkness.

Then something even more horrifying occurred.

Just as the shock waves subsided, the turbulent air was blasted by another huge explosion. This one was different from the rest, as if it were a volcanic force welling up from the earth’s core itself, rumbling to a deafening crescendo that threatened to split Hunter’s eardrums.

Suddenly, huge fissures gaped open in the boiling surface below, as if a cataclysmic earthquake were ripping chunks from the very continent itself and sending them sliding away.

He couldn’t bear to watch, but still he wasn’t able to turn away, being horrified and mesmerized at the same time. The explosions continued, opening still more wedges of darkness in the land. A huge piece of New England was split off from the continent, and began drifting out to sea. More explosions sent Texas plunging southward. The Southeast, from Maryland to Florida, had entirely separated from the larger land mass, propelled by the mighty convulsions of the earth.

There was fire and smoke everywhere. The earth-rending explosions sent powerful shock waves up to smash against Hunter, who struggled against them like a man being swamped by a series of successive tidal waves. Their crushing force pressed against his chest like a massive weight, sucking the breath out of him, forcing him downward.

More explosions. Closer this time. The downward pull became a free-fall as the powerful waves hit him again and again. He was plunging downward faster and faster toward the fragmenting continent, his arms punching uselessly against the onrushing air that stole the breath from his lungs. Another explosion shook him violently. Now he was falling faster, screaming against the sound that seemed to draw him downward.

He was falling, hurtling down at almost terminal velocity, when …

Hunter’s body struck the floor heavily, causing him to exhale involuntarily and then gasp for breath with heaving lungs.

It took several seconds for him to look up at the hospital bed, and the sterile white walls to realize that he had been dreaming. But everything—the sensation of falling, the noise of the explosions, the continent breaking up—had been so vivid …

So real …

Boom!

He instinctively dove under the metal frame of the hospital bed as the shock wave hit the sturdy little building, washing over and around it with the sound of the explosion. Hunter looked around as dust filtered down from a hundred crevices in the room. Whatever else it was, he thought,
this
wasn’t just a nightmare.

Another explosion shook the building.

The base must be under attack! he thought, his mind racing.

Another blast, this one closer, more powerful.

He had to get up, his brain told him. He had to
fight back
!

His groggy mind attempted to cut through the last traces of the drug’s fog as he forced unwilling limbs to respond with urgency. He clumsily stepped into his flightsuit, washed and neatly pressed and folded on the edge of his bed. His boots half-on, he stumbled heavily to the door, banging his shin painfully on the frame, and staggered quickly down the hall to the exit that led to the flightline.

Another explosion rocked him just as he reached the building’s main door. His eyes finally cleared and saw that the puff of smoke and the spit of flame out on the runway was real enough.

That’s when he stopped in his tracks, and literally pinched himself hoping now that he
was
asleep and the horror before him was just another dream.

But it wasn’t …

Out on the flightline were ten smoldering wrecks. He squinted and realized that he was looking at ten smoking and burning air frames—the remains of ten F-16s.

Someone—or something—had blown them up.

The smoking hulks lay heavily on their smashed airframes, landing gear crumpled beneath them, their backs broken in a hideous posture of death. The shattered air intakes pointed skyward at crazy angles, their now-jagged metal mouths were frozen in silent death cries.

He turned back toward the hospital, one more time convincing himself that he was actually up and out of the building, and not still experiencing the sedative hallucination.

But it was all too real.

He turned back to the almost surrealistic scene. A pair of jeeps were parked in front of the now-destroyed aircraft on the tarmac, and several soldiers wearing uniforms Hunter didn’t recognize were unloading what looked like another batch of high explosives. They called out in a strange language to each other, methodically preparing another charge and detonator for the next aircraft in line.

Hunter froze again.

He stared hard at the small blue flags perched on the jeeps’ front fenders, and the light blue armbands worn by the sappers. They bore the blue field and white globe symbol of the United Nations.

What the hell was the UN doing here at Rota, demolishing their airplanes? And why were the US personnel at the base—Jones, Ben, Toomey, Blue, and the others—allowing it to go on?

Then he noticed the small cluster of Air Force personnel standing woodenly behind a hastily erected barricade of saw horses and bright yellow plastic tape. Seemingly impervious to the smoldering glares of raw hatred from the confined men, two of the foreign soldiers stood impassively in front of the group, watching them closely, with their AK-47 assault rifles at the ready.

Puzzled for a moment, Hunter looked both at the demolition team, then at the improvised holding pen. Then he lowered his head and began charging toward the last two F-16s.

A warning cry went up from one of the guards around the airmen; another raised his rifle to sight in the running pilot. Suddenly one of the confined men—it was Blue—leaped forward and struck the guard’s gun just as the trigger was pulled, causing the bullet to ricochet off the ground.

For his trouble, the mechanic was leveled with a chop of the second guard’s rifle butt.

But Hunter kept running, oblivious to the commotion over at the holding pen. He was on top of the startled demolition team before they knew what was happening. The two unarmed soldiers carrying the plastic explosives were quickly dispatched by Hunter’s powerful punches, and they hit the tarmac heavily as their dangerous baggage was thrown to the ground in the fight.

Hunter barely had time to turn his head back toward the holding area before the savage thrust of an AK-47 rifle stock to the back of his neck crumpled him to his knees beside one of the wrecked planes.

Blue’s face loomed large above him as his eyes gradually focused again. Hunter rubbed the back of his head where a painful lump was forming. He looked up at the lanky crew chief, whose face was twisted in a tight mask of barely controlled fury.

Suddenly, the mechanic was hustled away by two UN guards, dragged over to a wall nearby and instantly shot in the head.

Now an officer wearing a blue patch leaned over Hunter, a .45 automatic in his hand. The dazed pilot heard the pistol’s hammer click open.

At that moment, Jones came up beside the officer, and started pleading with him. The UN officer was staring at Jones, a rock hard expression on his face. Finally, the officer nodded harshly and stormed away.

Next thing he knew, Hunter was hauled to his feet by the two UN soldiers.

All the while he was yelling out: “What the hell is going on? Who are these guys? Why are they pranging all the goddamn planes?”

“They’re Finnish soldiers,” Jones told him warily once he was thrown inside the pen by the soldiers. “They’re the enforcers of the cease-fire, under the guidance of the United Nations.”

Hunter was confused. He sat down and took a series of deep breaths, trying like hell to clear his head. “Finns? … UN? … why are they blowing up our airplanes?”

Jones looked him straight in the eye.

“Buck up,” the senior officer said through clenched teeth, his tone more serious than at any other time Hunter could remember. “A lot happened while you were knocked out. Now these guys are not going to let me stay around here much longer, so I’m going to tell it all to you once and straight from the hip. Save the questions—it ain’t going to do you any good to know the answers. Got it?”

Hunter nodded. “Yes, sir …”

“OK, here’s the situation in a nutshell. The Soviets nuked the US. Started two nights ago, ended this morning.”

“
What?
”

“It was a bolt-from-the-blue sneak attack. Everything from North Dakota down to Texas is gone. Wiped out. All our underground ICBMs are gone.”

“
I cant believe this
…”

“Believe it, Major. There’s more: The President is dead—assassinated. Along with his Cabinet, his family, his kids, everyone. We’re not sure but we think the Vice President is running things. But someone in Washington has already tossed in the towel. That means the war is
really
over now—and we lost.”

“But, the ceasefire,” Hunter said, never more feeling like he was living a nightmare as at that moment. “The Soviets gave up … I
remember
that.”

“It was bullshit, Hawk,” Jones said, his teeth still clenched in silent rage. “The President got it less than an hour after the Sovs cried uncle. Two hours later, the missiles began to fall.”

“Did we retaliate?”

“No,” Jones answered. “Not one of our missiles got off the ground.”

“But the Navy subs …”

“The Navy’s sub launch systems were sabotaged,” Jones said harshly. “I told you, not one of our missiles were launched. Someone high up in the US government called off all our defensive systems. Someone up there must have been a first-class Soviet mole …”

Hunter could not stop shaking his head. He felt like his brain fibers were going to burst.

Jones drew even closer to him, eyeing one of the guards who had moved closer to them. “Now there’s something you are going to have to understand, right now,” he said in a harsh near whisper. “There is no more United States of America. Get that? It’s gone. And these boys here will shoot you, right now, if you even say those words,
United States of America.
”

“What the hell are you talking about, sir?” Hunter said. This, of all the news, shook him the deepest.

“It’s called ‘The New Order,’ Hawk,” Jones said quickly as two more guards moved up beside him. “It’s the terms that the U … I mean, that our former country agreed to as part of the armistice … That’s why they’re blowing up our airplanes. Part of the ‘peace agreement.’ We have agreed to be disarmed. Both here and back home … These ‘neutral’ bastards have agreed to help things along …”

At that point, the two guards grabbed Jones and began hauling him away. Inexplicably, a new Mercedes-Benz pulled up, and the guards began leading Jones toward it.