The Circle War (4 page)

The second man was shorter, with a mass of brown hair, wearing brown combat fatigues and a green beret. This was Hunter's old Thunderbirds' buddy, Mike Fitzgerald. The perky Irishman was now the top man at the Syracuse Aerodrome, the well known and notorious airplane "truck-stop" located in upstate Free Territory of New York. Fitz, a fiercely independent businessman, had made a fortune servicing jets moving across the convoys routes between Free Canada and the West Coast. For this occasion, Fitzgerald was carrying two cases of scotch.

Hunter and Dozer walked over to greet their friends.

"Howdy, pardner," Hunter said to St. Louie, shaking his hand.

"Good to see you, Hawk," St. Louie said, a wide 33

grin revealing a perfect set of white teeth. "Been too long, boy."

St. Louie went-to greet Dozer as Hunter approached Fitzgerald. "Hey, Fitz,"

Hunter said, kidding the Irishman, "Only two cases of booze. Think it will be enough?"

"Now stop with ya joking and take one of these, will ye?" the man said in a brogue that couldn't be cut with a buzzsaw. "Good scotch weighs a lot ..."

Hunter took one of the cases from him. The airman had to laugh. Here were two of his closest friends, both, who despite the New Order chaos across the continent, had still not only managed to survive, but had made millions of dollars in the process. At least capitalism was not MIA in the post-World War III age.

"So, Fitz," Hunter said as the four men walked toward the town "You have that hundred bucks you owe me?"

Fitzgerald, well known for his frugality, blanched. "I'm not here to talk over old debts, Hawker, me boy," he said. "We have work to do."

The old saloon was a mass of cracked veneer and plywood, dirt, dust, mud and broken windows. A smashed jukebox sat in one corner. Chintzy decorations hung ragged from the ceiling. The barroom's booths had long ago succumbed to age.

Yet the old place still had a quality of sleazy charm to it.

"Looks like it was a good place to get lost in, in its day," Hunter said as the four men walked into the saloon in the middle of the small town.

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Dozer and Hunter retrieved a semi-sturdy table as Fitzgerald opened a few bottles of his scotch. St. Louie was heating a bucket of his famous Texas stew over a dozen cans of Sterno. A set of semi-clean plates and glasses were found and once everything was ready, the four sat down to eat and talk.

Hunter filled in St. Louie and Fitzgerald on all the strange happenings PAAC

had run up against in the past few weeks. Both men sat nearly open-mouthed as they listened to the stories.

"Dear mother of God," Fitzgerald exclaimed. "1 believe the whole damn continent is haunted . . ."

"You've been having odd things happen, too?" Hunter asked between mouthfuls.

"Aye, we have," Fitzgerald said. "Lights. Strange flying lights. Over the Lakes. We were getting calls from people out there every night."

"Flying lights?" Hunter asked. "Like in 'UFOs?' "

"I guess," Fitzgerald said, refilling his glass. "The people who see 'em, claim they are different colors. Floating. Way up in the sky. Hundreds of them. Coming in from the northeast and heading southwest. They make no noise."

"Have you check them out?" Dozer asked.

"Sure have," Fitzgerald said. "Scrambled jets eight nights in a row, we did.

They fourid nothing. And believe me, it's an expensive proposition, to fly four jets out to the Lakes and back for no good reason."

"How about radar?" Hunter asked.

"We haven't seen them," Fitzgerald replied. "We sent a portable unit out there finally. Those guys sat on the edge of Lake Erie for three days and nights, freezing their asses off. No lights. No nothing. We 35

finally called them back in and the very next night, we get two hundred reports that the sky is filled with them."

"Whew, boy!" Dozer said. "This gets creepier by the minute."

"Well boys," St. Louie drawled. "You ain't heard nothing yet. I got a story that will beat any of yours."

The ruddy faced Texan pushed his empty plate aside and took a stiff belt from his whiskey glass. Then he began his story:

"A few weeks back, one of our long range patrols went out on an extended mission. These patrols are our eyes and ears on the western edge of our territory, which, as you know, borders the southern Badlands.

"These guys are the toughest, meanest bunch of troopers you'd ever want to meet. Well, forty-two guys went out. Only one came back. And he'll be in the loony bin for the rest of his life."

"Jesus Christ," Hunter said. "What the hell happened?"

St. Louie paused, then said: "We don't know exactly. We talked to the one survivor, but believe me, he's gone around the deep end and he ain't coming back.

"But this is what he said —or mumbled — about what happened:

"They were on the fourth night of a twenty-one-day mission. Now according to their orders, they could skirt the 'Bads, but if they actually went in, they had to maintain radio silence, as part of their training.

"Anyway, they did go into the Badlands. That 36

much we know. Apparently on that fourth night, someone —or something —crawled into their camp and stole all their food and water."

"Weren't there any sentries?" Dozer asked.

"Oh yeah," St. Louie answered. "They found them, six of them, cut up terrible.

Butchered. Now remember, these recon guys are the highest trained force we have. But still someone greased six of them very quietly, then came in and stole the food.

"So now my guys are hopping mad. They start to track whatever it was. Soon they're more than a hundred miles inside the 'Bads, which has got to be the furthest anyone civilized had gone in before.

"Well, they get in there —and the survivor said it was like being on another planet, no trees, nothing growing, poison everywhere. Fog covering everything.

Very, very strange.

"And in the middle of all this, what the hell do they find? A nuke station!

And the Goddamn thing is working!"

"What?!" Hunter couldn't believe it. "That's got to be impossible . . ."

"That's what / said," St. Louie replied. "But, I'm telling you, this guy swears it's true. They spot this place with three cooling towers. Steam coming out of them and lights blazing all over the plant.

"Anyway, at this point, it gets fuzzy. But, for whatever reason, they decide to head back home. They were three days into the return trip when they were walking in a ravine. It was around midnight, as by this time they were sleeping during the day and moving at night.

"So they were in this ravine, when all of a sudden, 37

the guy said they heard this tremendous noise. Like thunder. They turned around and . . . and it gets really strange here, boys . . . they see thousands of guys coming at them. On horseback! Screaming, terrible. At full charge.

"They came up on my guys so fast, they couldn't get to defensive positions.

They must have formed up in tight groups, but it didn't make any difference.

These . . . horsemen ran them right over. Trampled almost all of them to death and kept right on going!"

Hunter shook his head as if the motion would drive away the very strange story. Dozer and Fitzgerald looked like they were in a state of shock.

"Only three guys lived through it," St. Louie said slowly. It was evident the loss of the men had hit him pretty hard. "Two of them were really badly broken up. They died on the way back. This one guy stumbled across the border eight days later. We found him and got him on a medivac chopper but it was useless.

He was out of it. Delirious. Still is. Whatever he saw out there —horses or whatever—his brain is gone."

The four men were silent for a long time, absorbing the frightening tale. Fitz reached for another bottle, opened it and took a long healthy swig. Hunter could see the Irishman's mind working. He knew his friend was seriously superstitious. And Hunter had to admit to himself, that right now, he was getting more than a little spooked too.

The departure from Mac Intosh went off without a hitch. Just as the five PAAC

choppers lifted off, a PAAC C-130 tankerplane appeared right on schedule over the small town, its four-ship T-38 fighter escort in tow. Two at a time, the PAAC helicopters hooked up to the orbiting C-130's in-flight refueling probe and drew fuel from the mother ship. Their tanks thus filled in mid-air, the small air armada headed for home.

But it was a long, troubled flight back for Hunter. He sat alone in the Sea Stallion's spare navigator's seat, everyone on board knowing enough not to bother him. The intelligence meeting was a success from an operational point of view, but he had a million things running through his already overloaded mind. The disturbing stories from Fitz and St. Louie had only added to his worries about the similar strange events happening on his side of the continent.

The tale of the recon troops in the Badlands was particularly haunting him. He felt a shiver in his spine when he thought of the brave soldiers walking into the gates of hell like that. St. Louie said he doubted if the lone survivor would be able to leave the psychiatric ward-ever.

Right then and there, Hunter had vowed to find out what really happened in that ravine that night.

But Fitz and St. Louie had given him other information as well. Both men had spies everywhere, especially entrenched in the Northeast and the old Atlantic States' region where the Mid-Aks once ruled with a brutal iron fist. Things had changed dramatically since Hunter, along with Dozer and a special strike force, rescued a bunch of ex-ZAP pilots the occupying 'Aks were holding prisoner in a Boston skyscraper. Not only had Hunter and his small, airborne army freed the pilots; they blew up a liquid natural gas facility close to the city which torched most of the Mid-Aks' military supplies that were foolishly stored nearby. The daring rescue mission and the destruction left behind more or less ended the 'Aks military domination in the region. Right now, the once-thriving Northeast Economic Zone — the territory that ZAP once protected

—was pretty much abandoned. The 'Aks retreated southward to be closer to the home territory; the citizens had fled northward into the relative safety of Free Canada.

But now Fitz had told him that some of the Mid-Aks were itching to become a force to be reckoned with once again. Or at least share that power. Right

-after the Battle of Football City had been won—at a terrible loss of life and property—Hunter had heard that a new, more sinister alliance was forming in the

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east. Apparently made up of representatives of the air pirates, the Family, the 'Aks and other scum, the shadowy alliance —known as The Circle—was now gaining momentum.

According to Fitzie's spies, the group was being run by a mysterious figure named Viktor Robotov. They said that although he was probably as Russian as his name indicated, where he came from was still a mystery. One rumor had it that he was a major in the Soviet KGB before the war. Another said Viktor was part of the so-called Peace Committee that had imposed the bogus New Order on the hoodwinked American populace. Either way, it made him a mortal enemy of Hunter's.

Now this Viktor character was said to be calling the shots and that the other members of The Circle were listening. One thing that gave him his power was money. Apparently Viktor had a lot of it. One of The Circle's first actions was to put a bounty on Hunter's head. But the group also had amassed great quantities of military supplies, spending freely on the wild and dangerous arms black market in South America and in parts of Soviet-occupied Europe.

But what was worse, Fitz had told Hunter that The Circle was actually starting to manufacture weapons. This was very disturbing news. In the past, since The New Order came to force, the warring factions on the American continent relied on armaments left over from the pre-war days and not destroyed in the similarly bogus "disarmament" frenzy that swept the continent after "peace"

was restored. Because a lot of equipment was destroyed, there was a limited amount to go around —a blessing really, as it imposed a kind 41

of finite cap on the number of weapons available on the continent. The costs of these weapons also made buying them on the black market an expensive proposition. But now, if The Circle started making new weapons, this delicate

"arms control" balance would be dangerously upset. According to Fitzgerald, the weapons being made by The Circle were presently limited to imitation M-16s and ammunition. But he knew, as did Hunter, that it was only a matter of time before The Circle moved into making more sophisticated armaments.

So Hunter saw two problems: the bizarreness that seemed to be sweeping the countryside and the obvious rise of the dangerous Circle. Maybe St. Louie was right. Maybe the whole fucking continent was becoming haunted . . .

But even with all of these reports troubling him, it was a more personal matter that, deep down, bothered him most. Before St. Louie and Fitz flew off at the end of the confab, to leapfrog into Free Canada for their refueling stop, Hunter had asked the Irishman if his spies had any word on Dominique.

Ever since she had disappeared in Free Canada after a flight Hunter had put her on landed safely in Montreal, Fitz had assigned two of his best men to try to find the woman. Nearly two years had passed since, and they had come up with complete dead ends in all that time. Sadly, Fitzgerald had to report to Hunter once again that he had no news. Dominique was nowhere to be found.

These troubles wrapped Hunter in a mental cold blanket that lasted the entire flight back. Dominique. Always his thoughts were absorbed with her. Hunter 42

was a strikingly handsome young man; his looks, fittingly hawk-like in youth, were now more like an eagle as he reached his mid-20s. He was tall—taller than most pilots —and sported a shock of golden, sandy hair, usually worn long. He was a genius (first certified at the age of three), an athlete, had a sense of humor, though usually taken as quiet on first meeting. He had never experienced any trouble attracting women —from his days at MIT (where at 15, he was the youngest student ever admitted into that institution's aeronautical doctorate program) and before, all the way through his USAF and Thunderbird days. But no woman—before or since—had ever affected him like Dominique.