The Circle War (14 page)

The conference room was absolutely still. The only noise was the whirring sound of a film projector

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flickering images on a large screen at one end of the room. Every person crowded into the darkened room had their eyes riveted to the screen. No one spoke as the hour long film ran from beginning to end.

It was the recon film Hunter had shot over the Badlands. It began abruptly with his tracking the convoy of SAMs, ran through his dramatic low-level sweeps of the Soviet's castle-like base, and then, in what seemed like a never-ending series of sequences, focused in on the hundreds of Russian SAM

installations stretching across the continent's devastated midsection.

Finally —mercifully —the film ended with shots of the glider base in South Dakota and some high-level north-to-south panoramas of the Russian missile sites. When it was over, someone threw on the lights and the projector cranked to a stop. Still the room was completely silent.

Jones finally rose slowly and stood at the end of the table. He looked out on the men seated around him. The Ace Wrecking Company was there, as were the Cobra Brothers and officers from The Crazy Eights. Captain Frost sat beside Dozer. The two Texas Air Rangers were to Dozer's left. Crowded in the back of the room were the approximately 50 PAAC-Oregon pilots, plus the senior officers of the base's security force and infantry division. Sitting apart in a far corner of the room, totally alone from them all, was Hunter.

"Gentlemen, we face a very grave situation," Jones f began. "I guess all of us who fought in the war —and f got screwed by The New Order —always feared that 142

the Russians would invade America someday.

"Well, I think these pictures —plus the incidents that have been happening over the past few months — confirm that not only are the Russians here, they've got in without hardly firing a shot.

"What's worse, they've succeeded in splitting the continent in two. From the reports we get from Fitzgerald in Syracuse, the Russians apparently have allied themselves with this terrorist army, The Circle. And, if our information is correct, The Circle is not only raising a huge army, they've acquired substantial, weapons-making capabilities.

"I don't think I have to tell anyone here what this all means. We have to remove those missile sites. The Russians and The Circle are in a position now that they can call the shots east of the Rockies, except for Texas, and as they so brutally displayed a few nights ago, the Texans seem to be next on their list. The most vital link on this continent—that is the free, safe and direct air convoy routes between Free Canada and the West Coast — will be shut off as soon as the Russians make their move. And that could be any day now."

The silence in the room became frightening. The situation seemed hopeless.

Jones looked at Hunter. The ace fighter pilot was in another world, staring out into space, as if he wasn't listening. Something bigger than the missile crisis was eating at him, Jones knew. Something personal. And Hunter was too distant for Jones to ask him what it was.

The general turned his attention back to the Secu-143

rity Group. He removed his baseball hat and ran his hand over his stubbled hair. "Gentlemen," he began again slowly. "We are in a bad situation. But all is not

yet lost.

"I'm about to tell you one of our most closely guarded secrets. This information is so secret, only the president of the United States and a handful of people knew about it before the war. And, frankly, we stumbled across it when we set up the Pacific American Armed Forces.

"I see this secret —this weapons system —as being our best hope of holding our own when the shooting starts in the Badlands. But first we must get it to work. And we must use it properly. Only then will we have a chance to save what little there is left of democracy on this continent."

All eyes were on the general as he paused and drew a breath.

"Gentlemen," the general continued, "two hundred and twenty-nine miles south of here, near what once was Eureka, California, there is a top secret air base. You would never know it because it is disguised as a typical, small municipal airfield.

"There is a hangar at this base. Very typical looking. However, underneath this hangar is one of the most sophisticated weapons laboratories ever built by the U.S. Air Force. It is in this underground laboratory, my friends, that we may find the way to fight back . . ."

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The huge elevator creaked to a stop. Its hydraulic door slid open to reveal a huge subterranean cavern lit by hundreds of flourescent lights. The members of the Security Group stepped out into the underground bunker. Except for Dozer and Jones and a few others, no one in the group was even aware of the secret installation's existence until the general made the revelation the day before at the emergency Security Group meeting.

They were more than 400 feet underground, directly below the Eureka Municipal Airport. The elevator was actually a cleverly disguised section of one of the airport's repair hangar's floors. Similar to the lift on an aircraft carrier, it was big enough to lower a large airliner into the bowels of the earth.

The cavern was immense, easily encompassing the size of three or four normal-sized airplane hangers. Its metal floor was cluttered with aircraft support equipment, most of which looked like it hadn't been used in some time.

The smell of lubricants and jet fuel filled the dank air.

"This is just the beginning, boys," Jones said as he 145

and the Security Group walked briskly toward the far end of the bunker. Once there, they found a huge metal door —big enough to be out of a science fiction movie. Jones located the controls and pushed a few preliminary buttons. A series of buzzes and clicks emanated from the control panel, and a few seconds later the word "READY" flashed on the panel's screen.

Jones turned and addressed the group. "Behind this door lies one of the closest kept secrets of the U.S. Government before the war," the general began in measured tones. "Back then it was called, appropriately enough: Project Ghost Rider. The Air Force never got to use it during the Big War. I guess we're lucky they didn't. Because gentlemen, what lies on the other side of this door may be our only hope in countering the Russian's missiles and The Circle."

Jones hit the button and the gigantic door rolled open. Beyond lay another cavern, completely darkened. Jones thew another switch and a bank of ultrabright lights snapped on. The glare temporarily fuzzed the eyes of the group like a camera's flash bulb going off. But as soon as each member's retinas adjusted, they saw what Jones was talking about. "Hot damnl" one of the Texas Air Rangers cried out. "That's about the prettiest sight I've ever seen." The rest of the group could only agree. Before them sat five, gleaming brand-new B-l bombers . . .

Hunter didn't make the trip to Eureka. He was 146

getting ready for another journey —one he knew would take him to five dangerous locations. Uncertainty waited at each stop. Even death. He would be gone for at least two weeks. This in a critical time when a huge war was imminent and the democratic forces of the west would need every man they could get —especially fighter pilots. And most especially, the best fighter pilot ever.

Yet he had to go. First, to the west, over the vast Pacific, to a place whose name was burned into the American soul. Pearl Harbor.

Then to Wyoming, to a place called Devil's Tower. Next it would be Arizona's forbidden Grand Canyon. Then on to a particularly nasty part of New Mexico, and finally to the most dangerous place of all: New York City.

Five locations. Five secrets to be revealed. Five Holy Grails to be retrieved and brought home. If not, the west would surely lose -the war that was coming.

Project Ghost Rider involved five, specially-adapted, ultra-sophisticated B-l bombers. The swing-wing, "do-it-all" B-l was originally built in the 1980s to replace the granddaddy of bombers, the B-52. But these Ghost Rider B-ls were birds of a different feather. They were actually five pieces of the same weapon system. They had a mutual brain —it was jam-packed into the command airplane, known as Ghost Rider 1. Tens of thousands of semiconductors, miles of digital audio tape, a sea of bubble memory banks —all ruled by the most elaborate artificial intelligence system ever designed. When Ghost Rider 1

commanded, Riders 2, 3, 4

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and 5 obeyed. As well they should — because by following the orders of the AI brain in the command aircraft, the five B-ls became invisible to radar. Not just "hard to see" or flying with a low radar "signature." But invisible.

That's what the Ghost Rider Project was all about.

Five "black boxes" held the key. Once in place in their respective airplanes, the control boxes interconnected the flight, weapons and navigational systems of the five Ghost Riders. Working together and making full use of a radar-jamming technology so complex that even Hunter was just now beginning to understand it, the five bombers could literally fly over enemy territory without showing up on radar. They could not be shot down with radar-homing missiles; they could not be tracked by radar controlled antiaircraft guns.

Radar-guided air-to-air rockets would fall to earth unexploded because no target could be found.

All this was of the utmost importance to PAAC because although the Russian SAMs sitting in the Badlands were of many different sizes and configurations, they all had one thing in common: they tracked their targets on radar. And what they couldn't "see,1 they couldn't shoot down.

But the eyes of the Ghost Rider Project were missing. Dispersed by design after the war so they — and the nearly completed Ghost Rider total radar avoidance system —would not fall into the wrong hands. The black boxes were under the command of an Air Force general named Christopher Josephs when the Big War broke out. At the time the system

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was just a month away from going operational —bu; it was never dispatched to the European theater Why? Call it a fluke of the military bureaucracy 01 call it fate. But when the war came, the test pilot; assigned to Ghost Rider were routinely called back tc their combat bomber duties. From the day they left.

General Josephs was on the phone to Washington DC every hour of every day trying to get his pilots returned. Without them, the airplanes could not be tested. But they never came back. And soon no one answered the phones in Washington.

So Josephs called in his trusted right-hand man, a captain named James Travis.

It was Travis's job to take the five Ghost Rider black boxes and hide them at Josephs' direction. When PAAC discovered the underground laboratory they found Josephs' personal diary sitting on the pilot's seat of Ghost Rider 1. It took months to break the computer code which held the secret of Ghost Rider and which Josephs — his fate and whereabouts unknown —had left behind to find, for anyone who was smart enough to look for it.

The black box locations were finally narrowed down to Pearl Harbor, Devil's Tower, the Grand Canyon, New Mexico, and, of all places, Manhattan. Why these locations were selected, no one knew, but at least Josephs could never be accused of not having an imagination: the black box at Pearl was supposedly hidden in the flag mast of the USS Arizona, the battleship that was destroyed by the Japanese sneak attack and that still sat half sunk in the harbor serving as a war memorial.

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As soon as they discovered the meaning of Ghost Rider, PAAC engineers began work on all the other aspects of the system. Coincidentally, Jones was intent on discussing a recovery mission with Hunter when the current troubles in the East took precedence. Now the black box recovery mission was critical. It was up to Hunter to find the boxes and bring them back to Eureka. Only then could the five B-ls operate up to their marvelous potential. Only then could they be sent in to destroy the SAMs in the Badlands. Only then could PAAC lead the fight against The Circle armies. Only then could the battle for democracy on the American continent be won.

But for Hunter, there was more at stake in the mission. For him, there was another mystery to be solved; that of the photographs of Dominique. The pictures the Texans brought with them were variations of the same pose and dress as the photograph he'd found on the renegade convoy airplane. The horsemen's pictures were discussed briefly during the viewing of the Badlands recon film —but were quickly dismissed by Jones.

"They must have busted into an X-rated book store somewhere along the line,"

the general had said to the Security Group at the time. Actually Hunter had taken Jones into his confidence, telling the senior officer of his previous discovery on the crashed 707. The general was as mystified as Hunter on what the photographs meant to the overall problem. Ben Wa and Toomey were also told as the two ex-ZAP pilots were the only comrades of Hunter who knew Dominique.

All three of his friends agreed that the

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photos were an odd twist to an already strange ston But they also agreed to keep it top secret. They kne\ it was a mystery —and a battle —Hunter would hav to face himself. They knew he wouldn't let them hel] him if they tried. That was the nature of Hunter. Thi imminent war had taken on a new, different meaninj for him. The battle against the totalitarian force that were attempting to take over what was left of th< American way of life was uppermost in his mind am in his soul. But in his heart, the whole thing hac become very personal. Why they had found photo graphs of Dominique on the convoy pilot and th< Mongol warrior, he didn't know. But he did knov that the only connection between the two dead mer was they were on the side of The Circle and th( Russians. Hunter also knew that back east, some where, was Dominique. The fact that he was heading in the opposite direction didn't bother him. He felt ir his gut she was being held against her will. A prisoner. Now he renewed his vow to find her. And Goc help those responsible when he did.

Jones had taken most of the afternoon explaining Project Ghost Rider to the Security Group. Hunter took off later that same day, heading for Hawaii. The next morning, which was appropriately May 1st, the Soviet SAMs opened fire on a convoy that was attempting to pass over the southernmost section of the Badlands. Seventeen airliners were brought down by SAMs. At about the same time, two divisions of The Circle Army were spotted heading for the Syracuse Aerodrome. Another two divisions were discovered marching from the western end of Kentucky into