The Twisted Cross (40 page)

Shane quickly walked up and down the 737's aisle, making sure each of the high level Twisted Cross officers was securely tied and gagged. Also loaded onto the airplane were the dozen or so honor guard soldiers, who now looked slightly ridiculous in their starched white uniforms. In the front row of the airplane were the two original 737 pilots, men who played along with the whole charade out of fear for their lives. They were wired -each had had explosives strapped to his chest. One wrong move and the UA men responsible had promised to flip a switch and blow the pilots to Kingdom Come.

Satisfied that the prisoners were secure, Shane spoke briefly with the UA pilots now at the controls of the 737. Then he gave them the okay to depart and suggested they do so quickly.

Already, the first mortar rounds from the alerted airport security forces were crashing down on the runway . . .

For the first time in his life, Hunter was biting his fingernails.

"This is driving me crazy!" he said, not for the first time that day.

"Jesus, Hawk, will you settle down?" JT told him. "Have a belt if you're so jumpy."

They were sitting in a makeshift Ready Room at an airport called Terechecchi in the country of Big Banana, formerly Costa Rica. Just outside the building was the F-16XL, Sandlake's deactivator pod attached under its right wing. The airport and all its facilities were being rented by United Americans, initially for three days, but with an option to stay a whole month. The rundown but functioning airport would serve as the UA's advance base for the sneak attack on Panama.

Jones had been the first one to utter those words to Hunter. Although diplomats might prefer the term "preemptive," the UA attack on The Twisted Cross was a sneak attack -pure and simple. It was born of false promises and deception and more than a few intensive interrogations of the Nazi envoy, Colonel Frankel, in which nearly a gallon of sodium pentathol was used.

(Frankel, like the kidnapped Nazi delegation, was on his way to a specially-built prison located near Kimball Mountain in Alaska.) So it was a war fused by dirty tricks, all of them laid at the feet of the United Americans. Yet Jones felt no

compunction at all in launching the attack. In fact, he had been its main architect -a fact that made it even more devious as the Nazis knew full well of Jones's straightas-an-arrow reputation.

"No government - friend or foe -will ever trust me again," Jones had told Hunter earlier that day. "But it's a small price to pay to prevent the Nazis getting a chokehold in this hemisphere. A nuclear chokehold to boot."

Hunter couldn't have agreed with him more.

But now the Wingman was more antsy than at any time he could remember. In front of him and JT was an ice cold pot of coffee, a basket of half eaten biscuits and a worn-out VCR. They had been awake for six hours, five and a half of them spent continuously reviewing two videotapes.

The first one was made back in Washington one week ago to the day. It showed every aspect of the deactivator pod -how and why it worked, how it was powered, what to do if it got cranky. After watching it twice, Hunter knew the videotape by heart. The subsequent 20 showings were just what the UA pilots called "tired gravy."

It had taken him a little longer-actually four viewings-to commit the second videotape to memory. It was a high altitude sequence taken very early that morning by Captain "Crunch" O'Malley's RF-4 recon airplane of the entire length of the Canal. Special electronic "points" had then been edited into the video, each one corresponding with the location of one of the underwater nuclear mines, as indicated by a special radar imager that O'Malley had carried aloft with him.

It was over each one of these points that Hunter would have to crank up Sandlake's deactivator and bombard the underwater mines arming mechanism with signal-scrambling radio waves.

"Jesus, what time is it?" he asked Toomey.

JT took off his sunglasses - a rare occasion at any time -and looked Hunter right in the eye.

"What the hell is bugging you?" he asked. "You know that you can't go in until the whole fucking Canal is softened up. We've got to wait for the word and it's still a half hour away at least. So why are you making me - and yourself-so fucking miserable?"

With that, he stormed out of the Ready Room, shaking his head.

Hunter knew his friend was right. Something was bugging him -it had been eating at him since he returned with Elizabeth.

What was it? He had fulfilled his promise. Elizabeth was back and safe. His timing couldn't have been any better - barely an hour after returning to Washington with her, the United American "sneak attack" plan went into effect.

Jones, Fitz, JT, Ben and the others had worked around the clock to get all the ducks in a row while putting up a convincing front that they were actually intent on cutting a deal with the Canal Nazis.

And now they had just received word that the very critical initial operation -

that being nothing less than the abduction of the Twisted Cross Command staff-had gone well.

So what was bugging him?

It was Elizabeth. Her return to Washington and to the arms of her hurting father was less than satisfying. Thinking back on it, it seemed like such a trivial thing. But all the feeling -the joyful tears, the endless embrace, the many, many thanks-yous - simply didn't happen.

When they were finally reunited in Jones's office, Elizabeth greeted her father with little more than a slight hug and barely a kiss on the cheek. Then she asked to be fed. The old man was visibly crushed.

So why should this bother Hunter? He had no pat answer. He told himself that he couldn't expect every one of his adventures to have a happy ending. He felt a little foolish now pining away over Elizabeth's photo, thinking that their first meeting would be right out of an old Hollywood movie and maybe, just maybe, end with them walking hand-in-hand into the sunset.

On the contrary, she barely had said a word to him on the way back - they had landed in Texas after two inflight refuelings, then caught a quick flight to DC courtesy of a Texas Lear jet. At first, Hunter chalked it up to the residue of her harrowing experience. But now, he was beginning to suspect it was something more -or, more accurately, something less.

Suddenly, his thoughts were broken by the sound of JT's voice.

"Let's go, Hawk!" he yelled into the Ready Room. "You're up!"

The F-16XL was off and climbing in less than five minutes.

Hunter felt good being back in the saddle of a real jet fighter again. Despite the Harrier's many advantages, it was a specialty airplane - designed and flown primarily for ground attack. For the ability to take off and land vertically, it gave something away in speed and range. And flying the Kingfisher had been a kick in a way -it had served its purpose, getting him down on the Yucatan rare waterways. But its top speed was 170 mph and that was brand new.

His F-16XL could beat that speed by a factor of 10 ...

So now with 40,000 pounds of pure thrust at his command, he climbed, straight up. Past 30,000 feet. Past 40,000 . . . 45,000 . . . 50,000 . . . 55,000 . . .

It was time to stop wondering about Elizabeth and what was and what he expected to be -they were rarely the same anyway.

It was time to go to work.

JT was on his right, Ben was on his left. They were both flying souped-up A-7E

Strikefighters. All three of the aircraft were carrying four Sidewinders apiece, and Hunter was packing a Short Range Air Missile (SRAM) on his left side wing, which would help balance out the

deactivator pod on the other.

All three were also packing fully-loaded cannons -one each on the A-7Es, no less than six in Hunter's highly-modified F-16XL Cranked Arrow.

They were 30 minutes from the Canal and all during the flight, they received immediate updates on the various actions along the waterway. The best news were the results from the air attacks on The Twisted Cross's main troop depots at San Valle and Las Avitos. The electronically radar-invisible B-1B Ghost Riders had flattened Las Avitos without a single shot being fired at them; the huge C-5 gunship Nozo had vaporized the base at San Valle.

There were also positive if sketchy reports on the 7th Cavalry's attempt to seize the main Atlantic side locks. Those aboard the CATS Chinooks returning from the action said that all of the key SAM and AA sites in the Red Area were destroyed, either by them or in the two subsequent air raids by Free Canadian CA-10 Thunderbolts. All reports said that the 7th got down on the ground in good shape and were moving on the locks. Meanwhile, offshore, a large seaborne force of United American soldiers were waiting to enter the Atlantic side of the waterway.

Ten minutes before, a squadron of Texan F-4X Super Phantoms ran right into a like number of Twisted Cross F-4s over the Pacific coast city of Balboa and a tremendous aerial battle was still in progress. The B-1Bs had returned to the Big Banana base, were refueled, bombed-up again and were ready to head out for their second mission in as many hours.

But the reports out of the Panama City Airport were less optimistic.

Some of the Texas Phantoms reported the airport was being shelled heavily from three sides by the Twisted Cross security force and a reinforced armored battalion called in from Panama City itself. The combined F-20/F-4 Diversion Squadron was carrying out ground attacks

against the Twisted Cross troops, but already two F-4s and a precious F-20 had been downed in the action by enemy shoulder-launched SAMs.

And the bad news got worse: The Canal Nazis were bringing up heavy mobile artillery and would soon be raining down half-ton shells on Shane's Rangers.

And should they decide to start hitting the runways, this would make it just about impossible for the ten troop-and equipment-filled C-141s reinforcement aircraft Shane was expecting to land.

The second phase of the "sneak attack" was beginning. More air strikes -by the Texan F-4s, the Canadian Thunderbolts and the CATS Chinooks - were in progress along the entire length of the Canal. A second wave of 7th Cavalry paratroopers were set to be inserted within the next ten minutes to reinforce their comrades on the ground in the so-called Red Zone. The B-lBs were launching and would soon be back over the Pacific side battle zone, this time to loiter near the Pacific side of the Canal action and wait for a target of opportunity.

But the United American's big .punch had yet to be thrown. Flying long-range from bases in Texas, a total of 15 B-52 Stratofortresses -each carrying 30

tons of explosives-would be over Panama City within 15 minutes.

Yet despite the massive show of military firepower, Hunter found it all very frustrating. His role was confined to one specific mission, deactivate the underwater nukes. An important mission, yes. By far the most important of the entire operation.

Important, but confining-and that just wasn't his style. And the waiting was killing him.

One of the secrets Sandlake had revealed to Jones and the others had to do with the arming procedure for the underwater nukes.

In a nutshell, it took a long time.

To arm the "Washbuckets" literally took just the flip of the switch - actually a computer switch. But the computer sequence, which drove a series of UHF

arming commands, had to deal with each of the 53 nukes one at a time. And what's more, this had to be done on a "random" basis, because while the computer would arm the mines sequentially, the Canal Nazis hadn't deployed the mines that way.

But the beauty of Sandlake's invention was that it could scramble a mine's timing mechanism no matter what stage of arming it was up to. Just as long as the mine's arming procedure had commenced, the deactivator could fuck 'em up.

The United Americans knew that this all-important mine-arming sequencer switch (MASS) was located in a virtually bomb-proof underground command center in the basement of The Twisted Cross skyscraper HO_ in downtown Panama City. The thinking went that when the Canal Nazis realized they were in a desperate situation, a decision would be made and the MASS would be activated as a prelude to detonating one or all 53 of the underwater nukes. But the key was this: Once the MASS was flipped, the action would give off a burst of radio energy so intense that a detecting device attached to the F-16XEs deactivator pod would pick it up within a second of transmission. Then, and only then, could Hunter start his crucial deactivating run.

And until that time, he would be forced to be a mere spectator, endlessly circling Panama City, waiting for the UA to apply so much pressure on the Canal Nazis that they would finally crack and start down the road of nuclear destruction.

Hunter, JT and Ben were still five minutes out from Panama City when they saw the B-52s approaching from the northeast.

Surrounding the 15 Stratofortresses were 18 F-105X Super Thunderchiefs of Fitzie's famed Shamrock Squadron. These venerable fighter-bombers were to perform two functions. First, half of them would protect the heavy eight-engine bombers. The others would engage in a tactic called "Wild Weasel." Simply put, these F-105s would break in three groups of three. Then one of the trio would act as a kind of decoy, being intentionally detected by, then jamming, the radar systems of any AA guns or SAMs in their assigned area.

Once this was done, the other two would go in and blast the AA site with

"smart bombs."

While Hunter and his friends climbed up to 30,000 feet, they watched half the F-105s break off and go into action. No sooner had they done this when a tremendous wall of long-range AA fire came up at the B-52s, still 20 miles from their target.

"Christ! They must have a SAM or an AA gun on the roof of every skyscraper!"

JT quite accurately pointed out.

For the next five minutes they circled the city and watched the F-105s score hits just about every time the

Weasels went into action. But there were only so many smart bombs and Wild Weasels to go around.

One B-52 caught a SAM on its starboard wing. It went down in a ball of flames just minutes before it reached the target. Then another got clipped on its tail, the SAM destroying its rear stabilizer in a fiery snap! It too plunged into the suburbs below, still ten miles from the target.