Sky Ghost (29 page)

He didn’t know. But it was clear it was heading for American-held territory and that it was up to no good and that Hunter had to somehow knock it down.

He was desperate now. He looped again, got back on the big plane’s tail and gingerly keyed his cannon’s safety switch. He knew the backwash from the huge airplane would make it almost impossible for him to get close enough for a clear shot with the low-velocity cannon, but he was running out of tricks to try.

So he increased speed and opened up with the cannon for the first time ever. Immediately he heard an ungodly noise and the Mustang-5 began shaking so violently he thought it was coming apart of the seams. The nose-mounted cannon produced a cloud of smoke so thick, Hunter couldn’t see for several hair-raising moments. And when it did clear, the first thing he saw was a gang of enemy airmen in porthole bubbles still laughing and pointing at him.

But the 25-shot cannon barrage had paid off. It had taken a chunk off the big plane’s tail wing before running dry. Hunter was now out of ammo and almost out of gas. But he’d scored a little wound on his target—and this gave him a rather desperate idea.

Hunter knew that as big as the plane was, like all planes, it needed all its critical surfaces to fly. And like all planes, it needed a tail wing to stay airborne.

Something in the back of his skull told him of a tactic the Russians used way, way back in some other place and time. When they were out of ammo, they would simply ram their opponent. Hunter decided he would do the same.

He pushed the throttle ahead, his engine sucked up a load of gas and he rocketed right into the left-side tail wing. The big Mustang-5 sort of bounced off, its nose crunched in, but it took a small chunk out of the extremely huge tail wing in the process.

Hunter dropped back, got steady, increased throttle and rammed the tail again. Another chunk flew off, producing another big dent in the Mustang’s nose. He hit the huge seaplane again, and another piece of the tail broke off. He hit it again, and again. And again. The coast of Iceland was now in sight. The blisters were still full of faces looking out at him, but no one was laughing now. These faces were etched in confusion and horror as they watched the mad American pilot continuously ram their airborne ocean liner, picking away at their unsinkable flying ship, one piece at a time.

It took another 20 long minutes. But at last, more than half the tail section had been knocked away.

And finally, the big plane started to go down.

The Mustang-5 was on fire as it approached Dreamland base.

Its nose and right wing were smoking heavily. From mid-fuselage on back was totally engulfed in flames. The engine was scoring very high. Its screech sounded like it was going to explode at any moment.

Yet as the small crowd of concerned colleagues looked on, Hunter brought the huge fighter in low, wheels up, gunning his engine with the last of his gas, and succeeding in blowing the fire off his fuselage.

He turned again, intentionally draining off his airspeed and lined up on the far runway. He came in shallow, waiting for the last moment to pop his gear down. It was on fire too. The Mustang hit the frozen runway a few seconds later, bounced up, came back down heavily on its right wing, bounced again, and came down hard again.

It was the damaged nose that was causing all this oscillation; in the thick, cold air, it was as aerodynamic as a mallet. The plane bounced a fourth time, but at that moment, it finally ran out of gas. It came down for good on the fifth bounce, then went into a wild spin. But somehow Hunter managed to keep all three of its wheels on the ground.

And that’s how he came to a stop—spinning. The emergency trucks were already rushing out toward him. Many of his squadron mates were running across the frozen tarmac too. Watching the drama from in front of the ops building, Payne threw his jeepster into gear and joined this mad rush. His vehicle was faster than the running men, faster even man the fire trucks. He was the first one to reach the crash site.

He found Hunter waiting for him.

His uniform was singed, his helmet gashed, his face painted with soot and snow, but he was alive, and in one piece.

The same could not be said for the Mustang-5. Fuselage scored, wheels collapsed, wings literally hanging off, and a nose that looked like a punch drunk fighter, the wind and snow would claim it before the base mechanics could.

The first thing Payne asked upon reaching him was: “Where in hell did you learn to fly like that?”

Hunter took off his helmet and washed his face with a handful of snow.

“I have no idea,” he told Payne truthfully.

Payne drove him at high speed back to the ops building. A doctor arrived, and after looking Hunter over, just shook his head and said, “Wow.” Then he departed.

Payne gave him a cup of coffee and together they sat in the empty ops room.

“So what the hell happened out there?” the officer asked him.

Hunter gave him a quick recounting of his battle with the huge airplane. Payne’s eyes got wider with every sentence.

“I got a good spot on the wreckage,” Hunter told him. “It came down right on the edge of the island. We’ve got to get out there and see what the hell it’s full off, and what it was doing way out here.”

Payne grimaced at Hunter’s plan but knew it would be necessary. “I already called for a Beater from 999th; it should be here in ten minutes.”

Hunter drained his coffee and got a refill. Finally, the cold was leaving his veins.

“I don’t like this,” Payne was saying. “They’ve never come out this far.”

Hunter dumped a half a cup of sugar into his coffee. He would need some energy for what was coming up.

“Not that we know of anyway,” he replied ruefully. “But we’ve been making a lot of noise lately. It was probably just a matter of time before they did something about us.”

Payne refilled his cup too.

“I’ve got a squad of the Air Guards ready to lift off with us. Do you think we’ll need them?”

Hunter thought for a moment, remembering the kids who’ d flown in with him that first horrible day. They hadn’t seen much action up here in the great frozen north, but Hunter had come to admire them for their tenacity, their willingness to help out, and their general goodwill.

He finally nodded. “Yes, we should definitely bring them. And someone else too…”

The Beater arrived 10 minutes later.

Hunter and Payne were waiting for it out on the main runway. The squad of Air Guards—10 men in all—were waiting too. Each was wearing the heaviest in polar combat-wear: Large hooded parka, thermal pants and boots, fur-lined helmet, and face goggles complete with radio and Boomer inputs. Hunter and Payne were dressed in similar PW gear as well.

The 13th member of this party looked very lost in his bulky outerwear, though.

Zoltan the Magnificent had never had to climb into one of these gorilla suits before, and he was swimming in it. He’d also never had to handle a weapon before, but one of the Air Guards had given him a mammoth M-25 semiautomatic battle rifle and a long belt of ammunition. The psychic looked very weighed down by all the necessities of this odd, upcoming mission.

Hunter wasn’t exactly sure why he wanted the swami to come with them. The man had been playing to sold-out audiences every night since the bombing campaign had begun, and had become a favorite of everyone on the base. Hunter and he had had many discussions in that time concerning Hunter’s rather odd background—something that no one else at the Circle Wing knew about. Not Payne, not Sarah. No one but Zoltan. In that time, he and the psychic had become friends.

Now his gut was telling him the psychic might come in handy on this strange mission and he’d stopped questioning his instinct a while ago. The psychic didn’t look happy about it though.

And who could blame him? As the Beater came in, its frightening set of rotors and flying surfaces and its immense size was enough to make anyone wince.

But the thing finally touched down and the gangway fell open and the Air Guards, Payne, and Hunter charged in. Zoltan was the last one up the ramp.

When no one was watching him, he made a quick sign of the cross.

It took them about half an hour to fly out to the crash site.

The perpetual storm grew worse as the Beater sloshed its way northeast. Hunter had flown over the crash site with the last fumes his Mustang had left, and had done a visual spot on it before limping the rest of the way to the base.

That had been more than an hour ago now, and with the way the snow was coming down, he was concerned the crash site would be covered over before they reached it.

But finally they were approaching a place called Krujebackn Harbor, a deserted stretch of shore line about 35 miles northeast of Dreamland base. Hunter had his nose pressed up against the Beater starboard observation blister, scanning the frozen land and ice-clogged water way. And then he saw it, just as he’d left it. The huge airplane cracked up on a rocky beach, only about half a foot of snow hiding it from above. Oddly, it seemed as if this place had been the plane’s destination all along.

Everyone on the Beater, from the flight crew to the Air Guards, was staring out at the crashed seajet, their mouths wide open with astonishment. Even in a world of big, bigger, and better, this airplane was a monster.

The Air Guards checked their weapons and prepared for what might be an opposed landing. Hunter estimated that there might be upwards of 150 people or even more on the airplane, judging from the faces he’d seen in the windows.

If any of them survived, would they still have the will to fight?

But as it turned out, there were no survivors of this crash.

The Beater set down with a bone-jarring thump and the Air Guards stormed down the gangway with admirable precision, weapons up, spreading out, ready for anything.

But it was quite clear quite quickly that everyone aboard the huge seaplane was dead. Those not killed outright in the crash had succumbed to the 30-below temperatures.

The wreckage, while scattered over a half mile, was actually in three large pieces. The wing had split in two, throwing the 28 engines in all directions. The tail of the aircraft was sitting in 10 feet of slushy water just off the beach. But the main compartment, the fuselage right up to the immense cockpit, was still more or less in one piece.

The Guardsmen surrounded the still, frozen wreckage, weapons ready. Hunter and Payne pried down a side gangplank, walked up and cautiously peaked inside.

Suddenly, a shock wave went through the frigid air.

From Zoltan’s point of view, standing a bit timidly at the bottom of the plank, it seemed as if Hunter had been hit by a bolt of lightning as soon as he looked inside the crumpled airplane. His body shook once from head to toe. Zoltan felt the shock wave too even though he was at least 15 feet away from the pilot.

Hunter’s reaction had been so severe, Zoltan found himself running up the gang plank, so sure was he that Hunter had been shot or electrocuted.

But when he reached him, Hunter was still among the living. He was breathing, his eyes were not rolled up to the back of his head. He was conscious.

He was, however, bordering on the verge of shock.

As it turned out, Payne was too—but not for the same reason as Hunter. No, Payne’s mouth was hanging open because of what the compartment of the huge airplane contained.

There were some troops. Mountain troops from the elite Haussling Division. There was a half company or so and they had all either been crushed at the front of the compartment, or had died of exposure at other parts throughout.

But this was not the surprise. The surprise was the airplane was also filled with hay and about two dozen dead horses.

“Horses?” Payne was saying over and over again.

Zoltan looked in on this scene of grisly carnage and felt another psychic jolt go through him.

“Horses?”
he parroted Payne’s mutterings.

He turned back to Hunter, who was still standing frozen in place at the doorway. The breath was coming out of his mouth and nostrils very, very slowly.

“Jessuzz, Hawk,” Zoltan said. “You OK? You look as if you’ve seen a gh…”

Zoltan knew better than to finish that sentence—but as it was, Hunter wasn’t listening to him anyway.

“This,” he was saying instead, surveying the compartment full of dead humans, dead horses, and bales of strewn hay, “this I have seen before…”

Zoltan looked at him as if he was cracking up. How could anyone have seen such an odd, grisly sight as this before?

Hunter was shaking his head. It seemed preposterous to him too. But from that place way in the back of his skull, the message he was getting loud and clear was that he’d seen something very similar to this bizarre scene some time back in that other place.

Payne was still oblivious to it all—only Hunter and Zoltan could feel the psychic disruption. The Air Exec, and now the Air Guards who were filtering in, were asking the same thing:
Horses?
Why would anyone want to fly all the way up here in such a large airplane under such dangerous conditions, just to bring a couple dozen horses into the middle of nowhere?

It didn’t make any sense.

Not at first anyhow.

Hunter somehow got his legs moving. He stepped into the compartment, gingerly made his way around the accumulated, flash-frozen gore and began crawling up to the cockpit.

It took some doing just to get to the front of the wreck, but when he reached it, he found he had to climb up no less than five stories around a spiral ladder to reach the flight deck.

Again, a feeling of eerieness came over him as he managed to squeeze himself through the wreckage to the front of the cockpit.

The pilots were still in their seats; four of them in all, killed on impact and already frozen solid. Hunter found himself staring in the eyes of the one he assumed was the aircraft commander.

Then, completely on impulse, he began chipping away at the man’s left breast pocket, intent on searching it. But what exactly did Hunter expect to find here? An ID of some kind? No, that was not important. The guy was a German pilot; that’s all he had to know. Perhaps he was carrying documents in that pocket, something that might unravel this mystery. But again, Hunter didn’t think that was the aim of this quest.