Sky Ghost (13 page)

“All we got is beer and whiskey,” he told Hunter. “Which will it be?”

“Both,” Hunter replied. “And how much for a bowl of stew?”

The bartender just stared back at him.

“This is also the officers’ chow hall, rook,” he said. “It doesn’t cost anything.”

This was good; Hunter didn’t have a penny on him.

The beer proved watery and the whiskey was bitter but Hunter quickly drained them both, trying his best to shake off the chill from the awful flight in. He got two more drinks and a huge bowl of stew. And even though he had his pick of any seat in the house, he took his food and drink to a table in the farthest corner.

Just like you can tell an army by what it eats, you can tell an army by what its mess hall looks like. And on closer look, this place was a dump. And the stew sucked.

This was not good.

The club was so dark it was almost solemn. There were no trophies in evidence, no plaques, no insignia depicting the reverie of the men who were assigned here. This place was supposed to be the watering hole for an entire squadron of fighter pilots. But where the hell was everybody?

Bad as it was, Hunter finished his stew and ordered another beer. No sooner had he returned to his seat, than the door flew open and an Air Corps officer came in. He marched across the room to the mantel above the fireplace. Here was placed a huge, ugly ceramic mug that was shaped into the face of a devil. The officer turned the mug around so its demonic features were pointing outwards.

Then he cleared his voice and bellowed to the empty hall:

“Squadron briefing in 30 minutes. All pilots report.”

With that, he turned on his heel and went back out the door.

Hunter looked up at the bartender who blinked and then looked away again. Hunter stood up and scanned the room once again.

Indeed, it was still empty.

“Well, I guess he means me,” he said.

Twenty minutes later Hunter was sitting in the 2001st’s squadron briefing room—alone.

A military family tree of sorts was painted on one wall of the room. The mural showed the area in southeast Iceland where the frigid base was located. It was actually an island off the coast, surrounded both by water and snowy tundra—there was no evidence of any of the famous Icelandic hot springs here, at least not according to the painting. It was just snow and ice and mountains and water.

The island was nearly a perfect oval, and there was a ring of 12 air bases built around its periphery. All had American flags and various unit numbers painted above them. The bases were laid out like pearls on a necklace, each with several long runways, each one about 10 miles from the other. A quick count revealed that 32 bomber squadrons, totaling more than 800 airplanes, were supposedly on station here. Each base had its own strange Nordic name.

The base where the 2001st Fighter Squadron was located was called oDrjmlendk. Or as Hunter would learn later, in slang, “Dreamland.”

Below the painted map, in quotes, someone had tagged the entire arrangement of air bases “The Circle.”

Next to the mural, the wall was plastered with photographs. They were pictures of pilots, some of them candid, some striking heroic poses, but mostly regulation photos. Below each one was a man’s name and a date, followed by the letters “KIA.” Hunter didn’t have to be a cryptologist to decipher what these initials meant. This was a wall of the dead, and there were so many photographs, the morbid gallery stretched completely around to the other side of the room.

After another 10 minutes, the same officer who had made the announcement in the Officers’ Club walked in and climbed up onto the slightly raised stage at the front. A small plaque on the podium identified him as Major A. Payne, Briefing Officer. He was a pudgy but solid man in his mid forties, red of face, and thin of hair. His uniform seemed baggy on him. Off to his left was the omnipresent Main/AC computer, whirring and burping as usual. Behind him was a movie screen. Hunter was sitting fourth row, aisle seat. There were more than 400 chairs in here, he guessed. But at the moment, his was the only one that was occupied.

The officer ignored Hunter at first—like the OC bartender, it was like he didn’t even want to look at him, that if he did he too might share his fate. Instead he kept his eyes glued to his wristwatch. At exactly 0300 hours, he looked up and finally took a long gaze at Hunter. Then he just shook his head.

He switched on a device that resembled a movie projector and the movie screen behind him came alive with blotches of brilliant but blurry colors. The officer focused the device’s lens to reveal a map being projected on the screen. It showed the northwestern corner of England.

“The target for today will be the electrical power plants in Manchester,” the major began. “You will be flying fighter escort for the 999th Bombing Group.”

As the officer was saying this, the map suddenly came to life. Small but distinct cartoonlike icons of bombers began popping up on the screen. The animated planes rose up from the southern Icelandic coastline and formed up into neat boxes about 50 miles out to sea.

“Weather over the target area is expected to be cloudy, with breaks. Winds on the ingress will be twenty-two knots southeast, sustained.”

Now animated clouds appeared and began moving across the map of England.

“Approach to the target will be from the northwest,” the major continued. “The drop site is approximately one square mile.”

Now a blue ring appeared on the map and the highlighted section became a zoom-in. It showed in some detail the city of Manchester.

“The 999th will drop their bombs on the center of the city, as a large power generation plant is located there. It will be a drop-on-leader release.”

Again, the cartoon played out to show thousands of bombs dropping from hundreds of planes and the targeted city exploding into flames and smoke. It was all amazingly lifelike, yet almost humorous at the same time.

“Enemy fighter opposition is unknown, but could be heavy,” Payne said, completing his briefing. “Full ammo loads and reserve tanks will be mandatory.”

The major finally looked up.

“Any questions?” he asked the near empty hall.

Hunter stood up. “Yes, I have a question.”

The major seemed annoyed. “Yes?”

“Sir, I’m the only one here.”

The officer took his glasses off and rubbed his balding head.

“I know that,” he said.

Hunter just stared back at the man.

“But it seems like such an important event as a mission briefing for an entire fighter squadron would demand mandatory attendance,” he told Payne. “Wouldn’t it?”

The officer took a breath and let it out slowly.

Then he told Hunter calmly, but through gritted teeth: “There
is
no one else.”

And that’s when it hit home. Maybe it was the three beers and two whiskeys that were clouding his judgment, or maybe it was the bad stew sitting like a rock in his stomach. But finally it dawned on Hunter what was happening here. The empty officers’ club. The wall of deceased pilots. Pegg had been right when he said the Air Corps was desperate for pilots. Very desperate.

The fact was, there really was no one else in the 2001st Fighter Squadron.

Hunter was it.

T
HE SUN CAME UP—SO
to speak—about 90 minutes later.

Hunter had been directed to a prep room, given a pile of insta-films and a device called a Boomer on which he could watch them. The films were copies of previous missions flown over Manchester, England. Each one played out on the Boomer’s small TV screen using the lifelike cartoons similar to the briefing film he’d just seen.

At 0400 hours he suited up, and at 0415, began the long trudge out to the frozen flight line where a lone fighter waited silently in the snow. What kind of planes did the 2001st Fighter Squadron fly exactly? Hunter wasn’t sure. Some kind of big airplane had shown up on the insta-films. But even though he would soon be flying one himself, Hunter didn’t know the aircraft’s name or lineage.

Now, the closer he got to the fighter, the more it looked like a weird combination of two planes he was somehow able to recall. The plane before him had the distinctive cockpit, nose, and tail section of the famous P-51 Mustang. But it also had the swept-back wings and air intake of the equally famous F-86 Sabre jet. The plane was more than twice the size of both these aircraft and from the looks of it, powered by a jet engine of enormous proportions.

The weird bastardization did impress Hunter for a moment. It was interesting that in this strange place in which he found himself, that many airplanes had followed a kind of aeronautical Darwin’s theory. Survival of the fittest. It was as if some airplanes he’d known back in his other place had mated and mutated into completely different animals.

He reached the airplane and was met by a very junior member of the ground crew, a kid who wasn’t even old enough to shave. He seemed very surprised to see Hunter walking out to the flight line. The plane, the kid told him, was called a F-151 Mustang-5.

They did a quick walk around. The kid told him the Mustang-5 had four machine guns on board, two in each wing, and a cannon in the nose. The machine guns were at full load, the cannon had exactly 25 shells and usually didn’t work very well.

At that point, the wind and snow began to blow so hard, Hunter couldn’t even talk to the kid anymore. He climbed the access ladder alone and strapped himself in. He fiddled with some dials, did some standard checks and then fired up the plane’s huge engine. The thing literally bucked to life. Soon every bone in his body was vibrating. He increased the RPMs and gradually the big engine smoothed out and the vibrations died down. Hunter had no idea what shape the engine was in—it sounded OK, but not great. One thing was for certain: the cockpit heater was a piece of shit. It was blowing absolutely frigid air.

Hunter did a full diagnostic check, following a manual he found laying on the seat. From what he could surmise, everything was working as it was supposed to.

He gave the kid the OK sign and the kid unchocked the tires. Then Hunter dismissed him with a salute.

Then he waited.

The airplane was bucking and bronking and the wind was blowing and Hunter sat wondering in the freezing cold cockpit just how he’d managed to get himself into this position. Fall out of the sky, go to prison, transfer up here to a frozen hell, meet a dead man on the way. How crazy had things become? How crazy would they get? Finally the radio crackled to life, relieving him of the burden of replaying all the recent events in his head. The voice on the other end sounded like it was coming from Mars.

“Flight Zebra One, are you ready for take-off?” the radio asked.

Hunter looked for the microphone, found it under his seat, and responded. “Roger Tower—one question: any idea where I’m supposed to go exactly?”

“You are to link up with the 999th 55 nautical miles southwest of here. Homing beacon set to 76.9 hertz. Got it?”

Hunter was now searching the cockpit for anything that looked like a homing beacon. He found it eventually over near the auxiliary fuel pump activator.

“Click it on and it tells me where to go?” he asked the tower.

“That’s right,” came the reply. “You are now cleared for takeoff.”

It was strange what happened next, because Hunter just rogered off, popped the brakes, and then started taxiing. It was really was a stupid thing to do—or it seemed stupid. He had no idea what he was supposed to do, how this plane flew, what its limitations were, or even its range or ceiling. There had been no time to read the thick manual. But something inside him was just telling him: Do it. Take off. Find the bombers. Fly the mission.

Was it instinct? His unconscious? The onset of insanity? He didn’t know.

So he gunned the engine and began taxiing. He made the runway in less than a minute. Another gun of the engine and the aircraft settled down nicely again. He took a long look around. Obviously there was no other traffic he had to be concerned with. So he hit full throttle and the Mustang jet began rumbling down the runway.

And rumbling. And rumbling.

His speed was going up, but so slowly, it seemed to take forever for him to approach takeoff velocity.

He pushed extra throttle and still hit only 95 mph.

The end of the runway was coming up very quickly now. The wind, the cold, maybe water in the fuel. They were all working against him.

Deep concern suddenly flooded his chest. Maybe this flying stuff ain’t so great after all—those words had come back to haunt him again. But then, again from somewhere deep in his mind, from a place that seemed to be located way in the back of his skull, a voice told him that to get into the air all he had to do was tap the brakes, raise the nose and go.

It was an old aviators’ trick that had drifted to the forefront of his brain. So Hunter tapped the brakes and the nose flared up and it was just the kick the airplane needed to jump off the ground.

The engine coughed once, then twice, but somehow it pushed enough air through the turbine to burn enough fuel to keep itself going up. Hunter let out a quick sigh of relief. He was flying—again.

He brought the jet up gently, no time to show off here. The cold air was wicked, but apparently this engine could swallow anything. Soon he crawled up the gear and pushed more gas. The beast responded better than he would have ever thought. He pulled back on the control stick and climbed.

Up over the frozen field. Up over the nearby mountains. To the layers of crystal air above. It was now close to 5
A.M.
The day was already into its perpetual twilight; it wouldn’t get much brighter anywhere in Iceland today. But he knew it would grow lighter the further south he went.

He climbed some more and the absurdity of the situation began to wear away, to be replaced somewhat by that sheer delight of being airborne. Again the feeling from the back of his head told him that doing things like this—taking off in a strange airplane to fight in some unknown battle—were not that alien to him. In fact, he seemed to have vague memories of doing things much worse, more dangerous, even more foolhardy than this.