Labyrinth (42 page)

The time had come.

He made the appropriate signal to the men directing the planes on both runways, and immediately the first two dusters began to accelerate down the dust-blown strips.

Ahmad Hamshi saw them clear the ground. As the next two taxied into position, he moved inside his cobweb-coated office and adjusted the transmitter to the proper frequency. He gave his call signal and a slightly garbled voice answered with the according one.

“The birds are flying” was all Hamshi said, repeating it twice before he returned to the runways.

“We got two thousand horses under us, Chris,” Pop Keller shouted back to Locke from the front of the cockpit.

“What?”

“There should be a set of headphones in front of you,” Pop shouted louder. “Put them on!”

“I got them!” Chris yelled back, fitting the plastic over his ears.

Pop Keller's voice filled them immediately. “I said we got two thousand horsepower pulling us. I do some special stunts so I had the old Warhawk souped up a little.” He tightened his own set of headphones. “You'll be able to hear all communications clearly now, friend.” His eyes tilted down. “That's the base down there to our right. Enjoy the show.”

The ninth and tenth cropdusters were climbing for the sky when Hamshi saw the planes coming. He shook himself, wondering if it might have been a trick of the brightening sun, then quickly realized it wasn't. Unless he had lost his mind, though, the squadron of planes swooping toward Stonewall Jackson on an obvious attack run was a mixed collection of World War II fighters!

He started running toward the twin rows of dusters, reaching them just as two more screamed toward the sky and the ghost squadron roared closer.

“Damn!” Pop Keller rasped into his headset. “Some of the cropdusters are already airborne. Blue leader, how many do you figure slipped out?”

“I count twelve climbing and spreading, Red leader,” the husky voice of Mickey Ostrovsky came back. “Weighted down by the look of it. Climbing slow.”

“Blue leader,” said Keller, “take your Pipers down and knock out as many of the other dusters as you can. Have the other half of your wing wait to mop up the mess.”

“Affirmative, Red leader.”

Pop adjusted his headset and Locke felt suddenly dizzy as the bottom seemed to drop out of the Warhawk.

“Red Wing, this is Red leader. We're a little late, boys. Time to do some huntin'.”

Ahmad Hamshi had just signaled the dusters to continue taking off when the wave of Pipers soared over the runways. He saw the shiny, oblong objects shot from their wings, heard the rockets whistling through the wind, and hit the pavement just before they did.

The explosions came fast and loud, like thousands of pieces of glass shattering. Smoke clouded the start of the runways but as Hamshi climbed back to his feet he saw that miraculously only two of the dusters seemed damaged. Armed assault troops were pouring from the barracks by this time, rushing toward flatbed trucks that held heavy-canvas-covered, high-caliber machine and antiaircraft guns.

They were still yanking the covers away when the Pipers attacked again from the opposite direction. A dozen rocket-propelled warheads hurtled toward the ground. The resulting explosions sent huge chunks of cement into the air and disabled at least four additional dusters. As the Pipers swung into a steep climb, a pair of Bearcats dove under them and sprayed the runway area with machine-gun fire, scattering Hamshi's men.

The smoke made it hard for Hamshi to estimate the damage. This was crazy. He was watching the whole plan disintegrate around him thanks to a bunch of crazy men flying ghost planes. He started running toward the main body of troops, who had started to organize their fire, even as the truck-mounted big guns were tilted toward the sky.

“The planes!” Hamshi shouted. “Move the disabled planes out of the way! We've got to keep the runway free! The runway must be kept free!”

Already he was starting to consider how to make up for the loss of at least six dusters. Mandala's orders had been precise in the event of sudden mechanical breakdown. Well, this certainly fell into that category. The canisters were the key, Mandala had explained, and should be moved from disabled planes onto planes that could fly.

Sprinting along the runways, Hamshi noticed two more of the dusters had managed to take off and were climbing into the sky. Then he saw the streak of red, a Warhawk with a shark's mouth for a nose, screeching forward, and he heard its machine-gun fire. Both dusters dipped crazily out of control, swooning for the ground beyond the runway and exploding on contact.

The bastard had shot them down! Then Hamshi watched as half the ghost fighter squadron broke off and soared higher in obvious pursuit of the dusters that had managed to escape the base. He glanced in the direction of one of the hangars and then bolted in a diagonal toward where the base personnel had gathered.

“We got the sons of bitches! You see that, Chris?”

Pop Keller pulled up from his dive and climbed almost vertically, his engine straining. Locke had seen all right but he couldn't believe it. The ease with which Keller had maneuvered the Warhawk and knocked the cropdusters from the sky was incredible.

“Two down, lots to go!” Pop screamed. “Heeeeeee-yahh-hhhhh!”

Keller leveled off and picked up the Warhawk's pace as Blue Wing was diving for another attack run.

Down below, the monstrous machine guns and antiaircraft cannons had finally been made ready.

“Holy shit!” Pop grabbed his headset. “Blue leader, this is Red leader, do you copy?”

“I copy, Blue leader.”

“I just spotted guns, big ones, on the ground.”

“I see them too, Red leader,” Mickey O. acknowledged.

“They'll tear you to shreds! Have your team pull up, do you hear me?” Keller could hear the booming
rat-tat-tat
of the big guns and see the fire belching from their barrels even from this distance.

“Negative, Red leader, too late to pull out now.”

“The bastard's crazy,” Pop said to Locke.

Aren't we all? Chris might have responded but he was having trouble catching his wind.

“Red Wing,” Pop Keller started into his mouthpiece, “this is Red leader. Assume attack formation. We'll take airborne planes from the rear. Let's go for it, boys!”

As in the steps of a complex dance routine, the planes of Red Wing—a pair of trainers, three Mustangs, two Corsairs, a Spitfire, and a Messerschmitt—fell in behind Pop Keller, whose Warhawk flew at the center of a wedge spread into a pattern of wide wings. The fighters stormed into the wind, cheating the currents in pursuit of the specks climbing, spreading, and drawing away from Stonewall Jackson Air Force Base.

“We haven't got much time,” Locke said, finding his wind but not his stomach.

“Won't take much,” Pop promised, opening his throttle a bit more.

Behind Red Wing, the battle was raging back at the base. Mickey O. lost one Piper and a Trojan in the first assault from the big guns. Not one of his wing's rockets, fired in desperation, had found its mark.

“Blue Wing, this is Blue leader. Remaining Pipers, follow me down for a run at the guns, 'specially the cannons. You others blast the runway to fuckin' hell.”

Mickey O. swung his Piper for the big guns as the Bearcat, Mustang, and T-6 trainer roared for the runway. In World War II, the Piper L-4 Cubs had been used extensively for bombing runs on German Tiger tanks. A direct charge into those heavily armored monsters, of course, was out of the question. So the Pipers would make their runs by coming around the flank of a mountain or diving from the camouflage of a hill. Mickey O. tried that strategy with his remaining Pipers now. He swung in low beyond the barracks and cut a sharp angle back for the big guns, hoping to take them by surprise from the rear.

As he dipped into his approach, he saw the other three members of his wing had made a successful strike on the runways. Green-garbed men who had been pushing already disabled aircraft aside scampered frantically away. More of the dusters were blown onto their sides and set ablaze.

“Hot dog!” screamed Mickey O., who somewhere had left a wife and kids, several sets of them actually, scattered all over the country. He was sixty-two and cancer had for some time been eating away at his innards. Well, fuck these Commie bastards and fuck the cancer too!

Mickey O. released two more of his rockets as he soared over the big guns and watched as the other three Pipers did the same. One of the trucks blew up in a blaze of red, struck broadside by a pair of warheads. Guns from the other three kept blasting away, the other bombs either misses or duds altogether. Forty years ago Pipers had taken on Tiger tanks and often enough had won. But age had taken its toll on their sights, and Mickey O. should have known coming in this fast was a mistake. The enemy still had one machine gun and both its cannons.

“Pull up,” he ordered his team. “Pull up and prepare for our next run.”

“Blue leader, I'm hit! I'm hit!”

“Eject! Get the hell outta—”

“I can't! Fuel line ruptured. Trying to—”

The explosion swallowed the rest of the younger man's words. The big guns bore down on two more of the Pipers and just kept firing, orange flaring continuously in their barrels. The Pipers bled black smoke and went into a swoon, the only consolation being the sight of two parachutes floating toward the ground. That left Mickey O. with five planes now, including his own.

“Red leader, this is Blue leader, do you read me?”

Pop Keller's wing had almost caught up with the first wave of airborne dusters.

“I read you, Blue leader.”

“Have encountered casualties, repeat casualties.”

“Shit! How bad?”

“At least four planes destroyed. Two pilots dead.”

“God damn! Gotta take out those guns, Mickey.”

“Negative, Pop, we can't control these old birds sure enough to come in that low and fast.”

“Then blast the runways from up high. Just don't let any more of the bastards take off! We'll finish our run here and come back and take them together.”

In fact, no other cropdusters were even attempting to take off because Hamshi had ordered the functioning ones to swing away from the runway and taxi behind the protection of the three remaining big guns while canisters from the disabled planes were loaded onto them.

Up ahead of him, Pop Keller watched with dismay as the airborne dusters began widening the distance between themselves.

“Shit”—he moaned—“they're pulling out.”

“No,” Locke said. “They're approaching their dispersal altitudes. We've got to take them
now
!”

“I'll drink to that, friend.” Hand on his headset again. “Red Wing, this is Red leader. Spread out and take 'em, boys, one to a customer.” Then, to Locke. “Now the fun begins.”

The Flying Devils had never performed better. They fanned out neatly and expertly in the trails of the various dusters, banking away from the wedge formation. The duster pilots fought for more speed as some of the fighters roared overhead in pursuit of the first few that had taken off.

Pop Keller drew his Warbird closer to one of the dusters in the rear.

“Gonna crawl right up his ass and give him a fuckin' enema to remember!”

Locke could see the old man tightening his gloved hands on the control stick and placing both thumbs over the red firing button that operated the twin machine guns. The 2,000-horsepower engine shook the old fighter forward like a jet.

“Here we go!”

Locke watched Keller press the button. Bullets pounded into the back and wing of the target and Keller pulled immediately into a climb.

The duster exploded beneath them, bursting into flames and dying right there in the sky. Still crackling, it slid through the air screeching shrilly and leaving a trail of black smoke in its wake.

“Hot shit! One down, eleven more to go,” Pop announced proudly.

Another duster exploded to their right, and Red Wing's pair of Corsairs had successfully crippled a pair of dusters to the left.

“Double up,” Keller ordered. “When you've made a hit, link up with the fighter closest to you and keep on huntin'.” He turned to Locke. “If any other dusters get off the ground, they'll send them away from us in the other direction. We'll have to go back for them as soon as we've finished with these.”

As it was, though, no other cropdusters had taken off. Mickey O. followed a Piper and a Bearcat down for a quick run to head them off before they reached areas of safety behind the trucks, but the big guns found a quick bearing on the two lead planes and fired, tearing the old fighters apart before they even got close. They just seemed to disintegrate in the air, taking their pilots with them. They were good men, Mickey O. thought, damn good men.

He swung into a climb quick enough to smack his teeth together, as his two remaining planes provided cover fire. He had another Bearcat and a Mustang left and both still had rockets, but their aim was unreliable. They were horribly mismatched against the ground-based antiaircraft cannons. There remained twenty, maybe twenty-five perfectly flyable dusters just waiting for a chance to take off. They had to be disabled. But how?

“Blue Wing, this is Blue leader. We'll circle around for a bit and regroup. How's your fuel?” Both pilots acknowledged they had plenty. “All right, here's the plan… .”

Mickey O. was about to go on when he heard a familiar sound that sent a shudder through his entire cancer-eaten frame. He looked down toward the hangar area in time to see four armored helicopter gunships lifting straight into the sky. Damn things looked like giant black insects with two twin machine guns mounted on either front side as stingers and rocket launchers aimed forward and back looking like antennae.

“Holy Christ …”

The helicopters had to be taken out. Otherwise they'd catch Pop and blow his entire wing to hell.