Ghost War (12 page)

But in the dimming glow, he saw something else that made his heart freeze. A second and even larger wave of attackers was emerging from the treeline on the heels of the first, charging over their fallen comrades, some even using the blasted and bleeding bodies as stepping stones to cross the foot deep water of the marsh.

With only enough altitude for one try, and no fuel to pull her up again, Hunter and Ben put the transport into another steep bank to the left which took them over a small mountain at the south end of the runway. It was near here that most of the base’s inhabitants seemed to be positioned.

As the C-5 turned toward the head of the runway, for what they knew would be its final descent, Hunter saw that the second wave of attackers was closing in on the airfield.

“Ben, call back to the crew,” he said evenly, “Get ready to open fire again….”

Ben did as requested as Hunter calmly dropped the wing flaps to increase drag. In the hold, the rest of the portholes on the plane’s left side—the “killing side”—snapped open.

Hunter continued to decrease his throttle while keeping the enormous plane steady through the crosswinds and the blinding rain. Behind him, the gun crews of
Bozo
were chambering rounds, cranking down elevation, adjusting ranges, all while being bounced around in an airplane that was practically coming apart at the seams.

“Get ready …” Hunter called back to the gun crew.

An instant later, he dropped the landing gear, applied the air brakes, and then he and Ben pulled back hard on the controls to lift up the nose.

To the attackers, the C-5 looked for a moment to be suspended in midair. Confusion overtook them as many halted in midcharge and stood with their mouths agape, staring in confusion at this big plane inexplicably adorned in circus colors and scrolling details.

For most of them, though, it was the last thing that they would ever see.

“Fire!” Hunter yelled into the intercom.

A heartbeat later, all of
Bozo’s
weapons opened up at once.

The darkened sky was instantly lit up—the thunderous fusillade was deafening. Explosions erupted across the entire front of the attackers, carving deep within their ranks. A tremendous white hot flame, erupting from the right and rear side of the C-5’s specially-rigged rear-end blaster, deflecting the propulsion of the thirty-six rockets fired from the LARS II, added to the bizarre light show. Shattered bodies rose high into the air, obliterated by the forceful barrage. Hundreds were killed in a matter of seconds.

But those that survived this lethal outpouring just kept coming—through the wire, past the defensive positions and straight for the airstrip where the C-5 was about to touch down.

“At least now we know which side we’re on,” Ben yelled as the number 3 engine died. But he and Hunter had a more immediate concern. They still had to put the plane into a steep bank and to turn it over the runway. The ground was coming up fast towards them. Ben called back to the hold for everyone to brace themselves.

Hunter clenched his teeth. “
Here we go….
”

He slammed the control column hard to the left. The C-5’s wing dropped and the giant airplane seemed to turn on its tip in midair. The instant Hunter saw the nose of the plane line up with the runway, he pushed the column hard to the right, yanked back, then dropped her down.

The C-5 hit the edge of the tarmac with a resounding thud, its remaining engine screaming for life. The plane bounced—fifteen feet or higher—then came crashing back down on the battered runway. Ben immediately deployed the drag chutes and Hunter locked up the main landing gear brakes—in seconds they were a screeching mass of burning rubber. But it was not enough. They were going too fast and running out of runway very quickly. Aided by the blazing fires burning out of control from the attack, they could see the rapidly approaching far end of the airstrip. And beyond that was the base of the small mountain.

They had to slow down—
fast.

“Every weapon that’s loaded, fire
right now!
” Hunter yelled back to the gun crew.

An instant later, a huge eruption of flame burst from the plane, its blast deflecting out and down. The C-5 shuddered to its rivets, lifting off the ground once again and slamming back to earth—the pure violence of the maneuver effectively cutting down the speed of the plane.

“Hang on!” Hunter yelled.

In the next instant, he disengaged the brakes on the left side, then pulled back hard on the stick. In a blur of movement, Hunter then yanked the controls hard to the right, jammed down with all his weight on the right rudder pedal, and gunned the last port engine with the remaining drops of fuel. The great plane lifted with a hellish scream, and in what seemed like one giant ballet movement, pirouetted on the locked right landing wheel until it did a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn. Dropping hard onto the side of the runway, the plane screeched backwards for several hundred feet until it skidded sideways off into the soft earth alongside the airstrip. Finally, it lurched to a sudden halt, its front gear collapsed, its right wing lodged in the mud.

“Jesuzz!” Ben yelled as he tried to shake out the stars. “Did we really make it?”

“We did.” Hunter yelled back—“But maybe not for long …”

They were both astonished to see out the port window another human wave of attackers, bigger than the first two combined, racing right towards them.

Hunter didn’t have time to think about it.

“All weapons—fire at will!” he called over the intercom to the gun crews in the back.

The big guns behind them began to blast away, violently shaking the airplane once again. Hunter and Ben quickly unclipped themselves from their harnesses. Hunter grabbed his M-16 and a bandolier of tracer clips from the cockpit rack.

“Cover up!” Ben yelled as he unholstered his 9-mm Berretta. He fired off six quick rounds, blowing out most of the C-5’s windscreen. A blast of glass shards and pounding rain blew back on them and into the cockpit. But they were now able to see the first line of attackers just as it reached the left side of the plane.

Hunter took an instant to get a good hard look at these soldiers. They were dressed in black “combat pajamas,” wearing canvas hats and pith helmets. They looked exactly like an enemy of years ago. But who these men were or for what cause they were fighting, Hunter hadn’t a clue.

The Gatling guns were cranking furiously in the back, their muzzle flashes silhouetting the dozens of attackers racing along the tarmac right at the front of the plane. Hunter slapped a 30-round clip into his M-16 and yanked back the bolt to chamber the first round. Then he laid the forearm stock across the shattered windshield’s frame and squeezed the trigger.

His tracer rounds found their marks as if they were laser guided. One small line of attackers fell—but more kept coming.

Hunter slapped in another clip as Ben tossed out two hand grenades. Hunter snapped his M-16 to auto and opened up again, trying desperately to cut down the stunned attackers.

Round after round of incoming 7.62-mm ammo zipped and pinged, slamming into the cockpit all around him. Hot shrapnel from detonated grenades sizzled through the air, and the sounds of concussions, explosions, gunshots, mortar blasts, and screams blended into the one long, inexhaustible, blood-curdling roar of all of
Bozo
’s weapons going off at once.

Suddenly a tremendous
baaaaang
rocked the entire airplane. It came from the right rear side.

“I’m going back!” Hunter yelled to Ben. “Do your best up here!”

Ben continued to blast away with his pistol as Hunter scrambled over the tangled masses of hoses, wires, oil lines, and ammo belts, and down the ladder into the weapons hold to investigate.

It was a madhouse.

The gun crews were frantically reloading and firing their weapons as fast as they could. Empty casings were flying everywhere as the crews laid in volley after volley of concentrated firepower.

But outside, the attackers just kept coming.

Orders were shouted, and the hurried sounds of gears clicking could be heard as the muzzles of the guns were depressed as far down as they could go to meet the charge head on. Proximity fuses for the AA guns were set for detonation almost immediately upon leaving the barrels. Shouts of “Ready!” echoed up and down the firing line.

“Fire …!”
came the screams, over and over.

And each time, the guns opened up once again into the swarming mass of aggressors.

To Hunter,
Bozo
seemed like a three-masted man o’war, unleashing broadside after broadside in a great naval battle on the high seas.

But now the blasts themselves were beginning to rupture the side of the plane. And the attackers kept coming.

In between fusillades, cases of hand grenades were being dispensed in the hold. Now each member of the gun crew put their personal weapon near at hand—the situation was so chaotic and the attackers getting so close that hand-to-hand fighting was looming as a grim possibility.

More explosions rocked the C-5 as Hunter made his way to the rear. He dashed to a port hole on the other side, keeping low to avoid the armor-piercing rounds that zipped back and forth through the skin of the plane’s hull. Peering out he saw the entire outside of the plane was covered with enemy troops trying to blast their way inside.

The situation was beyond critical. The big guns aboard were now ineffective. With their elevations cranked all the way down they could now only fire above the attackers heads—not down at them. The gun crews began to drop hand grenades out the portholes on the left side and through ragged-edged holes on the right side in attempt to blast off the attackers just twenty feet below. Others were firing their small arms at the ceiling of the plane, trying to kill the attackers who were racing back and forth along the top of the fuselage. By now, the Galaxy was peppered with so many bullet holes and shrapnel punctures that the rain was coming down as hard inside some sections of the plane as it was outside.

Three explosions rocked the rear blind spot of the plane. Hunter bolted to the back of the weapons hold, fired a burst through a jagged shell hole in the cargo bay doors to the ground below, and then once again took a look out.

A sizable force, unseen by the gunners on
Bozo
, had amassed underneath the back of the plane. They appeared to be laying explosives under the C-5’s huge rear cargo doors, hoping the resulting explosion would split the plane wide enough for them to get in. Hunter passed down the word: this threat had to be dealt with immediately—and preemptively.

Those inside the gun hold that had bayonets attached them to their M-16s; those that didn’t grabbed wrenches, pipes, any heavy tool they could use as a club. They all now knew that it was going to come down to a primitive fight for survival.

Thirty seconds went by as the
Bozo
crew got ready. On a nod from Hunter, the gun crew chief finally yelled: “Open the doors!”

With an earsplitting screech, the two heavy rear doors swung open wide, revealing the hundreds of stunned attackers below.

What the attackers saw was a haphazard collection of gun crews and flight mechanics; some kneeling in classic forward-fire-stance, others standing behind them—their M-16’s level and ready….

Standing in the middle was a man in a pilot’s suit and a helmet.

“
Fire!
” someone screamed.

Instantly, Hunter and the
Bozo
crewmen opened up. A great roar of gunfire erupted. The first line of astonished attackers were blasted back, another wave took their place and they too were mowed down by the concentrated volley. A third line met the same deadly result. But the attackers were determined, fanatically so. Those surviving the fusillades streamed inside the hold of the plane. There they were met by more gunfire, the razor sharp points of the bayonets, and blunt pieces of steel.

Slashing and stabbing and butting, the fight inside the enormous hold escalated instantly into furious hand-to-hand combat. The screams of the dying were overpowering, and the deck was quickly slippery with blood. But no matter how many attackers were stabbed, bludgeoned, shot, or killed, more charged into the hold of the plane.

Hunter was up front, fighting madly—it had been years since he’d been in a battle like this. But this time the hand-to-hand struggle was so severe and so close that he was reduced to using his M-16 as a club.
It was strange
, he thought in a heartbeat. He had survived hundreds of hours of intense aerial combat—dogfighting against the most sophisticated fighters in the world. He never thought it would end this way—in the mud and the blood, out in the middle of nowhere.

But then a very odd thing happened.

The monsoon downpour suddenly stopped. And just as suddenly, a dozen bugles sounded out. The fury of the attackers instantly dissipated. In a semicontrolled retreat, the enemy soldiers quickly fought their way backward out of the hold of the airplane and jumped down to the tarmac below. Then they all turned tail and ran back across the open ground, eventually melting into the treeline in the distance. The carnage was suddenly over.

An unearthly silence finally descended upon the hold of the transport plane. It was as if everyone inside had been delivered from death by some unseen force.

A weary voice from amidst the astonished crew said it all.

“What the hell happened?” it asked.

I
T TOOK ALMOST AN
hour to wash the blood from the C-5’s cargo hold.

It was a disgusting job. Water from the plane’s engine cooling apparatus was rerouted into its fire extinguishing systems and sprayed on top of industrial strength disinfectant. The sudsy mixture turned a sickly bright pink as it mixed with the blood of the attackers on the floor and walls of the plane.

Removing the dead bodies of the attackers was even more stomach-churning. There were 74 of them alone inside the plane, another 122 blocking the rear cargo doors. The crew used lengths of pipe and ropes to push and drag the corpses off the airplane and away from the cargo doors. Miraculously, the Americans had suffered only twenty wounded.