The Circle War (3 page)

"Right," Crunch said. "We talked to them. Reported that we were hearing all this strange stuff and it seemed to be coming from a point close to their location. They said they were picking the stuff up too, and that they were getting a little jumpy. They also said they were in the middle of a first-class fog and to them, the radio traffic sounded like a whole Goddamned fleet of ships was bearing down on them.

"We told them to sit tight, that we were about 23

fifteen minutes away. We radioed the base again and requested back-up and also a air-sea rescue chopper, just in case. Then we lit out toward the Liberty. We were still getting a lot of noise on the radio, so much so we had trouble raising and maintaining contact with them."

Crunch stopped and took a chug from his coffee mug. It wasn't holding coffee.

He continued, slowly: "Well, we finally got to within twenty miles of the Liberty's coordinates and sure enough, there was the biggest Goddamn fog bank I've ever seen. It went on for miles in every direction. Thick as hell. We got a good lock on their receiver and we started sending like crazy. At first we got no answer, then . . ." Jones looked up. "And then, Captain?" Crunch took another slug from his cup. "Then we had one more transmission with them, sir.

We were talking to the skipper." "What did he say?"

Crunch reached out to the tape recorder which sat in front of him and pushed the PLAY button. "Here's what we picked up, sir."

The room was completely silent as the tape crackled to life. First, a burst of static could be heard. Then noises, like hundreds of voices, were clearly evident. Then, one voice came through. It was the Liberty 2 skipper. His voice was shaky: "Get here, quick, Phantoms! Get here quick! They're all around us!

Jesus, there must be a hundred of them! Phantoms! Do you copy? May Day! May Day! May . . ." The tape abruptly ended in a burst of static. The whole room shuddered as one again. Even Jones shook off a chill.

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"We searched the area up and down, sir," Crunch said, caution evident in his voice. "We were twenty five feet off the deck in that God damn fog and we didn't see a thing."

"So what happened?"

"We waited for the chopper and that's when they found the ship," Crunch answered.

Hunter took it from there. "The chopper dropped two divers, General," he said.

"They climbed aboard the ship and found not a single soul on board."

"The engines were running, the radio was still on, the coffee was still hot on the stove," Hunter said. "But there wasn't anyone to be found."

"Any blood?" Jones asked. "Any signs of a struggle?"

Hunter shook his head. "We sent an armed tug out and they towed it back. We went over it with a fine tooth comb. Didn't find a thing. It's like they vanished into thin air."

"Goddamn it, what happened to those men?" Jones said, lightly pounded his fist on the table.

Absolute silence fell upon the room.

"I'm afraid the worst is yet to come, sir," Hunter said. He turned to one of the officers from the Crazy Eights. His was the strangest story of all.

The officer, a lieutenant named Vogel, stood up and slowly, clearly told his tale:

"We were sitting in the scramble house one day when we got a call from the frontier guardsmen's post out in the Hell's Canyon area," Vogel began. "It seems that one of their patrols was on a week-long mission and they passed through a small town named Way Out.

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"They had planned to bivouac there, as they had in the past. But when they arrived, they found the town was . . . well, gone, sir."

"Gone?" Jones asked. "Don't tell me the whole Goddamn town vanished, too . .

."

"No, sir," Vogel continued. "Gone as in dead, sir. Wiped out. All of the townspeople killed. Mutilated."

There was dead silence.

"There were more than 300 people," Vogel went on. "So many the guardsmen couldn't bury them all. They headed back for their post and that's when they called us."

"Then what?" Jones asked.

Vogel continued: "I took Crazy Two and Crazy Four out with seventy five men.

By the time we reached the outpost, there was no one left there either. It was burned to the ground. No one around except this one guy. He was beat up pretty bad, lost a lot of blood. The medics tried to fix him up, but he was fading fast. But he kept saying one thing, over and over . . ."

"And that was . . . ?" Jones said.

Vogel paused, then said: " 'Horses,' sir. That's all he could say, was

'Horses.' "

" 'Horses?' What the hell does that mean?" Jones asked, looking at Hunter. All the pilot could do was shrug his shoulders.

"Then what happened, lieutenant?" Jones asked.

"Well, I set up a defense perimeter, sir," the officer continued. "Then I took twenty five men with me in Crazy Two and flew out to Way Out.

"It was just as the guardsmen said. Bodies every-26

where, horribly cut up. Some missing arms, legs, heads. They were in really bad shape. So bad even the timber wolves wouldn't eat them. Just like the guardsmen, we couldn't bury them, so we burned them instead."

Vogel paused for a drink from his coffee cup.

"Then we flew back to the outpost," he went on. "By that time, our guys had found the rest of the guardsmen. Or what was left of them. They were all thrown into a pile about a half mile from the place. They were also badly cut up —no arms, heads. Dis-embowelments.

"We burned them, too. Then it started snowing, so we had to pull out."

Jones took a healthy swig from his whiskey-laced coffee.

"Any of your guys see any tracks out there, lieutenant, horses or otherwise?"

the general asked.

"No sir," Vogel answered. "But, like I said, it was starting to snow pretty hard. Anything would have been covered up."

Jones thought for a moment, then turned to Hunter. "Raiders, Hawk?" he asked.

"Could be," Hunter answered. "But I doubt it. Too messy. The ones we've dealt with like to come in quietly and fade away. The less commotion for them, the better."

"Could be someone new to the neighborhood," Dozer said, speaking for the first time.

"Anything is possible, I guess," Hunter said, swigging his own laced coffee.

"Well this beats the shit out of me," Jones said, refilling his cup with both Java and booze. "Okay,

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Hawk, your turn."

Hunter turned back to the frozen video frame.

"As you all know, this is the video I shot the other day," he began. "For my own peace of mind, I'm glad to say that it does show something was out there."

He pushed a button and the video started rolling. It began as Hunter's U-2

descended through the storm clouds and into the blizzard-swept valley. The heat sources could clearly be seen at the end of the fuzzy outline of the gorge.

As the U-2 drew closer, the heat source started to become defined. Soon it was clear the heat was coming from many separate shapes. The two lines of fighters, plus the igloo building and the radar dish came into view. Then, two figures could be seen, the heat sensitive video giving them the look of garish red ghosts. Two more figures could be seen running out into the snow and aiming a SAM launcher at the jet.

Then, just as the camera passed over its closest to the jet fighters, Hunter hit the video's SLO-MO button. He zoomed in on the image. Sure enough, everyone could see the side of a bluish jet, with the unmistakable red star with yellow boarder emblem of the Soviet Union.

"Now that's the best image that we have so far," Hunter told the group, freezing the frame on the video. "We have some guys at the photo recon lab working on it with computer enhancement. But it's a slow process. So they tell me it will still be a few days before we can reach any conclusions on what type of Soviet jet we're dealing with here."

Jones looked at the screen and then spoke the

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words that were on everyone's lips: "Amazing," he said.

The meeting broke up after a short time later. Hunter and Dozer saw Jones back to his airplane. The General would return to his PAAC San Diego base and brief his top officers there. But before he left, both he and Hunter agreed that the incidents that were discussed at the meeting should all be considered top secret for the time being.

After Jones's airplane took off, Hunter and Dozer retreated to the base bar for the first of several rounds of drinks.

"This is bugging me," Hunter confided in the Marine captain. "Here I am, flying all over the Goddamn North Pole and the Russians somehow land 50 jet fighters right on top of us, then somehow get them to disappear. Some watchdog

/ was."

"Hey, Hawk, knock it off," Dozer told him. "You were doing your best. There's a lot of weird shit happening these days. This is just another one of them."

Hunter downed his drink and poured another.

Dozer continued. "Ghost, spooks. Mysterious explosions. Those swabbies vanishing like that. Someone icing those frontier guardsmen. I mean, those guardsmen ain't just out there playing soldier. They're tough guys."

"I hear you," Hunter agreed. "But these Russian jets are what really bothers me. We're lucky they didn't come down here and nail us. I mean, we would have shot them up pretty bad, but still, we would have been on our ass, too."

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"Well, I know we have plenty of eyes up there now," Dozer said.

"True," Hunter said. "I've got two-plane missions flying up there around the clock. Frost told his people, of course, and the Free Canadians are patrolling up there, looking for something —anything — that could give us a clue as to where those jets went."

"Well, when you find them and the weather ain't for flying," Dozer said. "Me and my boys will go in and take them out on the ground."

Hunter smiled. His "boys" were the 7th Cavalry-a battalion of Marines that fought for Dozer in the big war in Turkey. They won their name after being surrounded by an overwhelming force of Soviets only to survive and escape, thanks to Dozer's leadership. When the war ended soon after, the Marines had no way to get home. Dozer rallied them, "hijacked" two airliners and flew the battalion to Scotland, (where they first met Hunter) and where they all caught a ride back to America aboard the aircraft carrier, JFK.

"We need intelligence," Hunter said. "Not just here, but from back east too."

"Heard from Fitz or St. Louie lately?" Dozer asked, referring to two close friends and allies of Hunter, both of whom operated back east.

"No," Hunter answered. "But I think a meeting with them is long overdue.

Besides, the photo lab guys tell me they are still two days away from a positive ID on those jets."

He drained his drink, then stood up to go, saying to Dozer, "Ever been to Macintosh, Idaho?"

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The formation of five helicopters descended on the small, abandoned Idaho town.

The two Crazy Eight Chinooks went in first, landing beside a rusting grain elevator at the side of a railroad track. As soon as the first chopper touched down, the side doors were flung open and three squads of Dozer's best Marines jumped out. They quickly formed up on the railroad tracks and marched into the town barely an eighth of a mile away.

Meanwhile the rest of the choppers had set down, one by one, on a moist field nearby. The second Crazy Eight was carrying a portable Roland SAM air defense system and radar set. As soon as the big chopper's blades stopped turning, two more squads of 7th Cavalrymen emerged and went about setting up the small SAM

launcher and radar warning system.

The third large helicopter was a converted U.S. Navy chopper called a Sea Stallion. Hunter and Dozer emerged from the machine and went over to talk to the pilots of the two helicopters known as the

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Cobra Brothers. The Brothers, flying the small but lethal, bug-like choppers, would provide air cover over the small town, just as the Marines would secure the town itself. The precautions were needed. The hills surrounding the place were undoubtedly filled with bandits, raiders, and God-knows-what kind of New Order outlaws.

"Sir!" one of the Roland operators called out. "We're picking up something."

Hunter and Dozer walked back to the Roland set and watched over the man's shoulder. Sure enough, five blips appeared on the SAM's radar screen. "Looks like four Hueys and a Blackhawk," the operator told them.

"That'll be St. Louie's guys," Hunter said. He could feel the aircraft coming long before they appeared on the radar screen. The electronics just confirmed his sixth sense.

Five dots soon appeared over the eastern horizon, gradually getting bigger.

Within two minutes, the formation set down directly on the railroad tracks, the Blackhawk first, then the four Hueys.

The doors to the Hueys burst open and soldiers of the elite Football City Special Forces leaped out. They were clearly recognizable in their futuristic one-piece combat outfits, complete with their Football City emblem patches.

The highly trained troops quickly dispersed through the field and took up positions along a tree line 100 yards away. As planned, these soldiers would be responsible for the perimeter defense while the conference was taking place in the town.

The doors of the Blackhawk opened and two

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familiar figures stepped out. The first one was a tall, distinguished looking man-, clad in a three-piece, all-white suit. His clothes and his great shock of snow white hair gave him an evangelical look. This was Louie St. Louie, the creator, leader, and president of Football City. Formerly known as St. Louis, the city had become a "super-Las Vegas" after the New Order came in. St. Louie

—who despite his name was really a true-blue Texan —hired Hunter to retrieve a valuable diamond shipment of his, and later convinced the pilot to raise an air force and help defend Football City against a takeover attempt by the criminals known as The Family. Football City was nearly devastated in the war that followed, but its rebuilding programs — including revival of the year-long, open betting football game from which it took its name — were well under way.