Sky Ghost (11 page)

“That will be all, Captain,” he said. “For now…”

Two weeks later

T
HE SOUND OF A
key turning in the lock of his cell woke Hunter from a very deep sleep.

The door opened, and the faint light from the bare bulb in the hallway flooded in.

His two guards peered in at him. What did they want, he wondered. It wasn’t time to go to the library. His breakfast wouldn’t come for another two hours. Maybe he was being executed today…

That’s when he realized there was a third person with them. He was an officer in the Air Corps. Brown suit jacket, tan shirt, brown tie and cap. He was old. Very old. Wrinkled face, white hair, red nose. His officer’s bars actually reflected some of the spare light from the hallway.

Hunter recognized him right away. It was Captain Pegg, the ancient officer from that day at Otis. One of the guys he’d wanted to kill.

Pegg indicated to the guards that he was OK, and they let him into the cell alone. Hunter was slouched in the corner now, both bemused and confused.

What the hell could this be about?

Pegg laid his topcoat on the bare cot, then took a seat in the creaky wooden chair across from Hunter.

“You’re not a chaplain now, are you?” Hunter asked him. “Come to give me instructions on how to meet the Maker?”

Pegg cackled—and for a moment Hunter thought that he might have actually known this guy before. Back where he’d come from. It was a strange, stray thought.

“I’m hardly a priest,” Pegg told him.

He studied Hunter for a moment. He looked different from the last time he’d seen him. It was the very long hair and the beard that was so off-putting. He could have been an artist’s model for a religious card, Pegg thought.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Pegg told him. “In the past few months, the war has taken a terrible turn for us. The Germans have made headway on every front. They’ve grown stronger. Bolder. Smarter. This time last year, people were chilling the champagne for the victory party. Now, there’s worry about whether we can hang on through the winter.”

Hunter’s ears perked up. The last he’d heard, the U.S. was about to put the sword through the German heart and finally be done with this final phase of World War II. What had happened? And why was this bird here telling him this?

The guy read his mind.

“Why? Well, the official answer is, ‘We don’t know,’” Pegg said. “Unofficially, there is new leadership at the very top of the German High Command. All we know is that the enemy has been revitalized to near miraculous proportions, everywhere.”

Hunter sat up a little more. What the hell
was
this all about?

“Why am I here?” the officer asked the question for him. “It’s simple, really. After your actions that day at Otis, you got a file down at HQ that fills its own drawer. Anyone who’s ever read it concludes that you are either a kook, an illusionist, or a guy from outer space.

“But the plain fact is, we need people who can fly airplanes, and that’s just about the only thing anyone I’ve talked to agrees you can do.”

“So?”

“So, I’m here to offer you a way to get out of this place,” Pegg said.

Hunter sat all the way up now.

“How so?”

The officer just shrugged. “It’s simple. The Air Corps needs pilots, and we need them now. You don’t even have to be good. We’re that desperate.”

He let his voice trail off.

“Flying I can do,” Hunter replied. “But where exactly would I be doing all this flying? Cargo humping?”

The officer laughed and shook his head. “You think we’re going to spring you just to have you flying shit from Shiloh?”

“That would be my guess,” Hunter replied.

“Well, your guess would be wrong,” Pegg told him. “The guys who were shipping shit are now flying bombers over London. That’s where you’ll be going too. If you survive the flight over there.”

“You make it sound so inviting,” Hunter told him. “Maybe the food here isn’t that bad after all.”

The man smiled and appreciated the joke, but then got serious. “Let me tell you something,” he began. “This is a one-time offer. Your choice. You’ll start at the lowest rank possible, and you’re guaranteed to see combat, a lot of it, very quickly. No one will know who you are, or where you came from. But the way I see it, if you choose to stay here, someday someone down at HQ will decide that it’s time to start shooting all the spies and traitors and kooks we’ve got locked up here. Especially if the Germans keep their steamroller going.

“Now, there’s about a dozen people in other prisons that are being given the opportunity to serve out their sentences in combat. That’s how bad things have become.”

Hunter just shook his head. Renegades and criminals released from prison to help out the struggling war effort.

“I think I’ve seen this movie,” he finally told the officer.

Pegg signaled for the guards to come get him.

“So? Is it a deal?” he asked Hunter.

Hunter thought for only a few more seconds, then nodded slowly.

“To tell you the truth, to get a decent bath and some new clothes?” he replied. “I’d do just about anything.”

Captain Pegg left the prison 10 minutes later.

A black, nondescript military car was waiting for him outside. He nodded to the driver, then climbed into the back and settled in beside the car’s only other passenger.

“How did it go?” the man known as Agent Y asked him.

“He bought in,” Pegg replied with a cough. “He’ll be on his way within the hour.”

Y breathed what might have been interpreted as a sign of relief—but was actually one of exhaustion.

He hadn’t slept in so long he couldn’t remember the last time he’d closed his eyes. Hidden away in their tiny subbasement office in Washington, D.C., he and his two colleagues, X and Z, had continued to pour over intelligence reports from the front, trying to find more clues as to why the German resurgence had taken place.

In many ways, it seemed to be a fool’s errand, especially to X and Z. Akin to painting the life rafts as the
Titanic
went down, was how they put it. To X and Z, the reason for the German resurgence really didn’t matter in the end. The war was back on, and America was losing it, and that was it. It was fate.

But Agent Y was a different kind of person. He believed the tiniest incident could have an effect on the whole. He and his colleagues had narrowed down the first day of the German resurgence to August 15—the day that Hunter and two others were found floating in the Atlantic.

True, many mistakes had been made by the U.S. military since then, downsized and caught off guard as they were. But could all that be reversed? Could a small twist here change the course of History? If a butterfly flaps its wings over Brazil, does it eventually cause a hurricane over Cuba?

Y didn’t know. But if the man the Germans had retrieved from the sea was so special that he put the Reich back on its feet and on the offensive in just a few short months, then perhaps the biggest error the U.S. had made so far was keeping the other man pulled from the sea that day locked up in jail.

And that’s what Y was here this day to change.

“Do you think he suspects that he is being sprung for reasons other than the fact that he is a pilot and a good one?” the OSS man asked Pegg.

The elderly officer thought about the question, and then just shrugged no.

“Well, that is the reason he’s getting out, right?” he asked Agent Y. “I mean, what other reason would there be?”

“Yes, of course,” Y mumbled, his thoughts more on butterflies and hurricanes and the fact that he already felt a strange connection with this man Hunter. “What else could it be?”

Pegg cleared his throat and leaned back, and promptly fell asleep.

Envious, Y just slumped further in the seat and told the driver to get going.

He had to get back to Washington before X and Z knew he was gone.

O
NE HOUR LATER, HUNTER
was as far away from his cramped cell in Sing Sing as he could have ever imagined.

He’d been allowed to shower and get dressed. Then he hustled to the meal hall, where he ate an enormous bowl of oatmeal alone. Then he was given a flight suit for a U.S. Air Corps officer that looked more like something from a movie prop department.

Then he was blindfolded.

He was led outside, where a car with a perforated muffler was waiting by the front gate of the prison. It was now about 7
A.M.
He was stuffed into the back seat of this car with three other people. The driver, a man with a mild English accent, told them there would be no talking during the trip. Then he gunned the engine and they were off.

The car drove for more than eight hours. Some of it was over very bumpy roads, some on a very crowded highway. The car was moving very fast, and the driver laying on the horn every 10 seconds or so. Hunter knew they were moving northeast. Not a word was said during the trip.

By mid afternoon, they were by the sea. Hunter could taste the salt in the air. The distant sound of waves crashing echoed in his ears. They turned due north and the road got very winding, yet fast. Hunter slept, but even in his dreams he was trying to figure out where he was going.

After an hour on the winding oceanfront road, the car finally stopped. The door opened and a hand came in and pulled him out. The other passengers, who had endured the same long ride in complete silence, were taken out as well.

They were at an airfield, Hunter could tell. The stink of aviation fuel was something he could never forget. The air was thick with it here.

They were led away from the car and toward an aircraft Hunter could hear the whine of its engines in pre-warm-up mode. He could sense that this aircraft was large—very large—judging by the smell of gas fumes in the air. But he also knew it wasn’t a fixed-wing aircraft.

He was put into a large cabin, along with at least six other people, three of them carrying guns, obvious by the rattling. Hunter was placed on a benchstyle seat, facing forward and belted in over his lap and shoulders.

Then, the aircraft’s engines came to life.

The rumble started somewhere around his feet, went up through his ankles, his torso, his chest, neck, eyes, and ears. It was so loud, and so deep, his body began shaking with sympathetic movement. The air itself was fluctuating, the growl was so intense.

“Oh Lord,” Hunter heard one of his fellow travelers say. The voice was hauntingly familiar. It was an Irish brogue. “They’ve put us on an old Beater. Did they really take us out here just to kill us like this?”

The aircraft lifted off a moment later. It did so not with any kind of grace, but with a huge bang and a tremor that set the bench’s bolts to rattling. The engine noise only got louder as the aircraft groaned itself into the air. For the first time he could recall, Hunter found himself actually fearing a takeoff—that’s how steep and shaky and sharp the ascent was.

But this feeling quickly passed, and he felt awash in another sensation entirely. He was flying—again. For the first time in a long time he was actually moving through the air. Now his heart was beating faster, but for a different reason. Suddenly all the months in the prison, all the uncertainty of who or what he was—suddenly it was all gone away.

He was in the air. That’s all that mattered at the moment.

But what exactly was he flying in?

That question was answered a few moments later.

It came without warning. One moment, Hunter’s eyes were blindfolded—the next, the blindfold was gone. A crewman had removed it and handed him an olive-drab ski mask. “Put it on,” a voice said. “It gets mighty cold up here.”

Hunter did as was told, grateful the blindfold was gone at last. But his eyes could see nothing but white light for the next few moments. He was next to a window, facing the sun, and the rays were strong and they stung his still-fragile retinas.

But eventually his vision cleared and he was able to distinguish shapes and colors. The wind was suddenly in his face. The most horrendous noise filled his ears.

What the hell was he flying in exactly? It was very large, painted dull gray inside and out. It had very long thin wings sticking out from underneath the cabin where Hunter was sitting, but he could see no power plants or engines on those wings. The roar of the engines was coming directly above his head. So he looked up, and saw the blurred flare of a rotor blade, spinning right above him. It was one of many.

Goddamn. They were on a helicopter—yet it was the size of a jumbo jet!

“Damn us and bless us,” Hunter heard that brogue say again. He finally turned and looked at the guy sitting next to him.

He was a small fireplug of a man. Pale face, except for the red nose. He looked like a leprechaun on steroids. Hunter’s jaw simply fell open.

He knew this man—but he didn’t know how…

The man stared back at him too—it was obvious he was having the same sensation.

Finally the man stuck his hand out.

“How ye be?” he asked Hunter. “Mike Fitzgerald here.”

Hunter felt his skin go cold. His mouth went dry. The hair on the back of his neck was suddenly standing at attention. He unconsciously moved away from the man, all the while unable to break the lock of his gaze on him.

Jessuzz, he knew this guy. Somewhere back in his memory, he knew him. He may even have been good friends with him. In fact, they had gone to hell and back together, several times.

But he was also sure about something else.

He was sure that this man was dead…

The helicopter flew on into the night.

The weather got bad, and the engines on the huge chopper growled even louder. The cabin was unheated and unlit, just like his jail cell, and Hunter was too stunned, too confused, maybe even too frightened to converse with the man next to him.

So he didn’t.

He simply kept his eyes left, looking out the window and watching as monstrous black swirling clouds enveloped the huge helicopter.

The flight lasted four hours. Hunter had slept, fitfully, his mind fighting what his body demanded. But his dreams were full of dead birds, corpses coming to life, and everyone speaking in Irish accents and asking him why he thought everything was so weird.