Return From the Inferno (40 page)

You'll be dead within a half hour. We all will be."

Hunter felt like an icicle had just been run through him. Both his mind and his gut were telling him that Elizabeth wasn't bluffing.

"You know why they all wanted me, don't you?" she began again, calmly checking her nails. "Because I know the codes."

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Hunter was tensed to the max. "What codes?"

"Four words, spoken into this radiophone," she went on, the tone of her voice bouncing from sultry to suicidal and back again. "And the last Atlantic Fire Bats launches its missile right at us. That's an eighteen-megaton warhead, Mister Bigshot. Or is it twenty-eight megatons? I'm not sure. Suffice to say it will be enough to kill everyone-and everything-for about fifteen miles around, wouldn't you say?"

"You're crazy," Hunter told her. "But you're not that crazy. . ."

"I know," she said, the insane smile never leaving her lips. "And that's exactly why I am doing it."

Before Hunter could move, she had clicked on the radio phone and had screamed four words into its mouthpiece: "Return From The Inferno!"

He lunged at her, struggling to get the radiophone out of her hands, at the same time trying to deflect her naked breasts which she was intentionally thrashing in his face.

He finally managed to pull the radiophone from her grasp, but he knew it was already too late.

She laughed in his face and then stretched back out on the couch.

You're a fool, Mister Wingman," she said running her hands over her naked form. "You should have taken me when you had the chance."

Somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico

Frost was up and out of his bunk at the first blare of the warning buzzer.

Running down the narrow cabin of the P-3 Orion, he reached the communications deck in record time. Just about the entire crew had already gathered there, each one wearing an expression of shock.

"We've got confirmation of a launch," the man behind the 341

master communication panel told him. "Flashed from a CommStar device up near Football City right to the Fire Bats. We got the infrared indication ten seconds later. Here's the confirmation read-out."

The man was pointing to an auxiliary computer screen which was filled with numbers Frost didn't have time to understand. All that was important was the dire message flashing at the bottom of the screen: "Launch Confirmed."

"Where's the damn thing heading?" he asked the man.

"That the weird part, sir," the man answered. "It was called in by someone up at Football City to hit Football City."

Frost felt all of the energy suddenly drain out of him. Had they really gone through all this-just to have Football City nuked?

"How long to impact?" he asked gravely.

The man simply pointed to the auxiliary read-out screen. "There's the countdown, sir," he said. "Just below twenty minutes. Now at nineteen minutes and fifty seconds. . ."

Frost was trying his best to think straight. "Can we divert it in any way?

Screw up its guidance systems or something?"

Just about everyone on the P-3's communications deck just shook their heads.

"There's nothing we can do," the communications man finally said. "There's nothing anyone can do."

Hunter had the Harrier's engine screaming at full speed as he rocketed nearly straight up into the sky south of Football City.

He knew it was hopeless. Checking his situation clock he saw it was just barely eight minutes before the missile's impact. Just spotting the incoming nuclear weapon would be close to impossible, even for someone with his keen eyesight. It would have to be a million-to-one-shot of being in the right place at the right time.

And even if he did spot the missile, then what?

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He had about 80 rounds left in his cannon pod, but what good would shooting it do at this low altitude? It was probably an airburst warhead anyway, timed to go off at 10,000 feet and blow downward for maximum destruction. Even if he was able to intercept it at say, 20,000 feet, and get an accurate shot off, the warhead would probably still detonate. In fact, he would probably succeed only in allowing the blast and the deadly radioactive aftereffects to disperse over a wider area.

No-he knew the only way he could have averted a catastrophe was to intercept the missile way up near 50,000 feet, just as it was on its final re-entry path. Then, what he would have to do was get an exact shot, right on the warhead, and hope it wasn't completely fused yet. If all these things happened, then he might be able to prevent the warhead from going completely nuclear.

But there was a grave price to pay for this: If he got close enough to shoot at the warhead and it did break apart, then he'd be exposing himself to an invisible but instantaneous blast of radiation, one that would spread out in the upper atmosphere for miles in less than a second. It would only last a few seconds, but it would be enough to give him a quick, but very high dose.

Pushing the Harrier's throttle to the max, he continued his desperate climb, prepared as always to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Back at the recently rechristened Football City Airport, Jones, Cook and the other UA commanders were watching the grim drama unfold before their eyes on a huge tracking radar screen. The only major player not there was the mysterious Wolf. Apprised of the situation, he'd chosen to stay with his ship and crew.

"There's the missile!" one of the UA radar technicians declared, pointing to the small white blip that had just entered

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the green, oval screen. "It's sixty klicks out, eighteen high and coming on like crazy."

Jones did some quick calculations and then looked at Cook. "We've got less than three minutes."

The feeling of helplessness was hanging over the airport control room like a lead cloud-indeed, it hung over the entire city. After one of the most brilliant campaigns ever fought had regained freedom for a large portion of America, it was now all going to go for naught, just because a crazy person had her finger on the button.

Jones turned away from the screen and stared out the huge window overlooking the airport. Hundreds of UA troopers were just standing around-more or less in a state of shock, knowing what was about to happen, but simply not having enough time to do anything about it.

In the midst of these stunned soldiers, he saw one grimly amusing sight. Down on the tarmac, moving about the handful of captured Fourth Reich aircraft, was Roy From Troy, notebook in hand, taking down the vital statistics of specimens which in less than four minutes would be vaporized into little more than radioactive dust, along with everything else within twenty miles.

"A businessman to the end," Jones said, shaking his head. "Now that was America. . ."

Suddenly he heard a great whoop! come from the men gathered around the radar screen.

"I don't believe it!" Cook was yelling. "He did it. Hawk did it!"

Jones was back at the screen in a second. "What's happened?"

"The blip looks like its breaking up, sir," the radar tech said, trying his best to keep his cool.

Jones followed the man's finger; he saw that indeed, the white blip representing the missile had busted down into at least six little blips, and even they were fading from the screen.

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"How can we be sure?" Jones asked.

"Just wait about fifteen seconds," the tech replied.

They all stood there, staring at the screen and at each other. Would the missile hit? Or had Hunter saved them all again-to the detriment of his own well-being.

Time crawled. Everyone had their watches up and their eyes glued on the seconds indicators.

"Five . . . four . . . three . . . two ... one..."

Nothing happened.

Ten minutes later, the Harrier came in for a noisy, yet soft landing.

A crowd of troopers and technicians formed a wide circle around the jet, being careful not to get too close, a& they assumed it had been irradiated. Pieces of the now harmless missile had fallen about twenty miles west of the city in a totally unoccupied area. But they were sure Hunter had flown through the resulting "hot" cloud.

The canopy popped and a weary Hunter climbed out. Somewhere, someone had dug out a radiation protection suit, and it was elected that Jones don it and go out and talk to the Wingman.

But no sooner had he climbed down from the wing when he was telling Jones that it was OK. Neither he nor the Harrier were hit by the radiation.

"You mean you didn't stop the missile?" Jones asked him incredulously as he removed the anti-radiation helmet.

Hunter was sadly shaking his head. "No, I never got high enough and I never saw it coming."

Jones was totally confused. Happy to see that Hunter was safe, but baffled about just how the nuclear disaster had been avoided.

"But Hawk," he finally managed to say. "If you didn't stop the missile, who did?"

Hunter turned to the north and pointed to the black air-345

plane that was just lining up for a landing. "He did . . ."

The specially adapted, long-range F-117G Stealth fighter bounced in for a less-than-perfect landing and taxied all the way to the far end of the base.

It sat there, its engines white-hot and smoking, its pilots not able to even pull the canopy release lever.

Now wearing the anti-radiation suit, Hunter walked slowly out to the airplane alone. He pushed a ladder up against the jet's cockpit and climbed up three steps, using the emergency release lever to pop the canopy.

Fitz was inside, his face pale and drawn, his eyes and nose running uncontrollably.

Hunter stuck his head inside the cockpit and grasped his old friend's hand.

"I was in the right place at the right time," Fitz explained, with a halting, weakened voice. "I'd been following Frost's radio communications the whole way up."

"You saved us all," Hunter told him, never letting go of his friend's hand.

"We were as good as dead, and you saved us."

Fitz coughed once, hard, and then had trouble catching his breath.

"It's eating me up inside," he said, his voice fading. "I can feel it. . ."

Hunter squeezed his friend's hand. He tried to speak, but couldn't.

"Did you find Dominique, Hawk?" Fitz asked him out of the blue. "Is she ...

alive?"

Hunter just nodded. "I think so, Mike," he managed to say.

"And we beat the bastards, didn't we?" Fitz said, his voice getting weaker with every word.

"You beat them," Hunter replied.

Fitz managed one last laugh. "You're the one who came up with the grand scheme," he said, each word coming harder 346

than the one before it. "Making me out to be some kind of miracle worker. How were you able to do it, Hawk? How did you arrange for it to look like I actually saved those people from drowning in the river? Or brought that guy back who'd been nailed to the cross? Or the guy from Gary, who'd been cut up so badly in the big gun blast? It must have taken some doing . . ."

Hunter stared in at his friend. He knew he was fading fast, but...

"Hey, Fitz," he said, squeezing his hand for a final time. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Fitz looked up at him, his eyes widened to twice their normal size. He tried to say something but he no longer could speak. He gripped Hunter's hand, the look on his face being one of total bafflement and then, maybe finally, some kind of understanding.

Then he leaned back and smiled.

And then Fitz died.

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"Crunch" had his troopers arrayed in the best possible defensive positions, but he knew it was probably hopeless.

Far below, but getting closer, he and the remaining Pacific American militiamen could see no less than six Puma helicopters ascending toward them.

If each Puma had twenty five Nazi soldiers onboard, then the odds would be one hundred and fifty to twenty five, or six to one.

It was one bad bet.

"Crunch" was angry-at himself as much as the approaching Nazis. Maybe he'd screwed up a long time ago by bringing this little unit up to Loki. What had he been thinking of? What drove him to do it? They had been carrying one of the most important items in postwar America all around the Rockies with them, and if he'd been smart, he would have just hid it away someplace and waited for a better time.

But no, something had compelled him to put it all together again, and to display it, in hopes that someone would see it and know that at least one great American was not dead.

Looking back toward the very top of the summit of Loki, he suddenly felt very foolish. It had taken them almost two months to put it back together, even still he doubted if it actually worked. But every piece was in its proper place-if that counted for anything.

At that moment a streak of sunlight broke through the perpetually cloudy overcast, and fell on the F-16XL jet fighter that seemed teetering on the peak of the mountain.

"What the hell was I thinking of?" he asked himself one more time.

The Pumas were overhead now and circling. "Crunch" and his men had no anti-aircraft weapons, in fact they were armed with little else than rifles and machineguns. He'd told them earlier not to waste precious bullets shooting at the helicopters before they landed. Every shot would have to count when the Nazis hit the ground and came out attacking.

But then a very strange thing happened.

One of the doors on the nearest hovering Puma opened and a white sheet was draped out. Suddenly the same thing happened to a second chopper. Then another, and another.

Within a half minute, all six choppers were displaying large white flags.

"What the hell is going on, sir?" Nick, the grizzled old militiaman yelled back to "Crunch." "These guys look like they're surrendering ... to us!"

"Crunch" had no reply. Nothing fit. But then the choppers descended and sure enough, the Nazi troopers began piling out, the hands raised over their heads and screaming: "Ubergabe!" over the combined roar of the six chopper engines.

"Goddamn, they are giving up," "Crunch" whispered to himself, not quite believing what he was seeing. "What the hell has happened?"