Tomorrow War (38 page)

He took another step inside and felt an almost orgasmic rush swell inside his body. His eyes adjusted to the dim light, and he saw a figure standing in the shadows at the other end of the cell. He took another step—more absolutely ecstatic rushes went through his body.

What was happening?

He was about to find something he’d lost a long time ago, something he’d been looking for just as long.

Another step. The sobbing got louder. But it was no longer sad. No, these were tears of joy coming from the shadows.

Another step, and Hunter took off his battle helmet, and dropped the gun to his side. Another step and the figure in the shadows moved toward him.

Another step …

He saw her face …

Heard her call his name …

And that’s when he went down on one knee, and lowered his head and reached out and touched her outstretched hand—and that’s when he remembered the name of the woman he’d loved so deeply, and lost so long ago. And the entire Cosmos made sense to him again.

He looked up into her eyes and saw that she was smiling.

It was Dominique.

B
Y LATE AFTERNOON THE
territory close to Kabul Downs under Red Force control had shrunk to barely a quarter mile across.

Though nearly all of the Red Army had managed to escape the disaster in the making, the rear-action troops, close to 750 men, were now trapped, with thousands of Blue Force troops on one side and tens of thousands of Black Army mercenaries closing in on the other.

Though the destruction of the central command station had ceased all rational military activity, and had allowed many of the Red soldiers to get away, a new kind of madness had gripped the remaining Blue and Black forces. Rogue units from both sides were now pounding each other viciously—and the last of the Red Army soldiers were caught right in the middle.

Among these luckless troops were all of the JAWS team, all of NJ-104, the Jones boys, Ben, JT, Fitz, Zoltan, Crabb Geraci, the drunkenly, unconscious Y, and the entire intelligence company for the Red Army, including Major Kurjan and his staff.

During the brief respite after the central command station was vaporized, Kurjan had ordered all of the remaining Red Force biplanes to withdraw. Some pilots managed to take some badly wounded troops up with them, squeezing them into their already-tight cockpits and then fighting their way to freedom. One of the AirCat fighter-bombers had landed, managed to squeeze in three wounded men along with the four “Brandy”s, then escaped by flying at treetop level right over the heads of the advancing Black Army.

The Red Army troops that were left behind gallantly fought on, but there was little doubt that very soon they would be crushed between two enormously powerful forces who, just by sheer weight alone, would eliminate the last of them and return the crazy three-sided battle to just two sides.

There was no panic as the Red Force pocket grew smaller by the minute. By Kurjan’s order, all troops were to give ground only gradually, withdrawing toward the air base and the bend in the Saint Yabuk River. It was here that they would make their last stand against the two converging monsters.

There were just a few aircraft still on the ground at the air base: One was the Bug that had served the Red Force intelligence group throughout the struggle. Many of the AirCats fighter-bombers were all still in the air, launching strike after strike against the two enemy armies. Meanwhile, the HellJets were still performing their high-altitude heart-stopping dive-bombing runs on targets within Kabul Downs itself. But once their ammunition loads were gone and their presence no longer needed, the Jones boys had given the pilots orders to withdraw and save themselves.

Now as artillery shells rained down on them from two directions, Kurjan, the Jones boys, Ben, JT, Fitz, Zoltan and Crabb found themselves sharing yet another trench, this one right along the edge of the Saint Yabuk river, hard by the burning wreckage of the Beater that Fitz had brought down at the end of the base’s last workable runway.

“This is a hell of a way to end this adventure,” Crabb was saying. “I’m not sure even Hawk could scrape us out of this thing.”

“He can’t do the impossible,” Zoltan replied, ducking as a particularly brutal stream of high-explosive shells went over their heads and impacted nearby. “He did his best. He bought us some time. Just not enough, I guess.”

Crabb turned and looked at his friend. They’d been through a lot together in a very short amount of time. He stuck out his hand. Zoltan took it and they shook hands for a long time.

“What do you see for our future,” Crabb asked him.

It was strange because what Crabb meant was: What will our souls face on the other side.

But the moment the words left his mouth, Zoltan’s eyes went up into his head.

More bombs rained down on them, the explosions were getting closer now, and the last streams of wounded and ragged Red soldiers were stumbling back toward the air base.

For some reason, Zoltan was grinning widely.

“My God,” he was saying, eyes wide open, looking off into space. “My God, I just don’t believe it …”

Crabb had to grab him and pull him back down into the trench to avoid a stream of tracer fire coming from the Black troops now only a mile away.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he demanded of the psychic. But again Zoltan was not listening. Instead he broke free of Crabb and began crawling along the trench to where the Jones boys were huddled with Fitz, Ben, JT, and Kurjan.

Zoltan was out of breath by the time he got there. He began gasping at Kurjan: “Get everyone … to the river ….
Hurry!”

The Red Force intelligence man looked back at Zoltan as if he’d gone insane.

“Are you crazy?” Kurjan said, stating what seemed to be the obvious. “The river is the most exposed place we could possibly go.”

“We have to get there, and I mean now!” Zoltan screamed back at him—a new authority rising in his voice.

Finally Seth Jones grabbed him. He looked into his eyes, which were literally bugging out now.

“Why?” Jones asked him simply, calmly. “Why do you want us to the river?” It was probably the first time he hadn’t addressed Zoltan as “swami.”

“Because …,” he said in an absolutely eerie voice, “we are about to be saved.”

Jones looked back at him. “How?”

Zoltan just smiled, pointed straight up, and said: “See for yourself …”

Jones looked up—they all did—and saw absolutely nothing.

But then, not two seconds later, they heard a groaning noise. It was loud. It was familiar.

“Jeesuzz!” Dave Jones screamed, nearly leaping out of the trench himself. “I don’t believe it!”

A second later an immense shadow passed over the trench—the noise was incredible. They were all hit with a wind of hurricane proportions.

It was the Bro-Bird.

The huge seaplane had come to their rescue.

But as a famous military officer from another world once said, what came next was “a closely run thing.”

The Bro-Bird, enormous against the smoke-filled afternoon sky, began circling the entrapped pocket. At its open windows, the members of Unit 167, the valiant Sea Marines, were firing all kinds of weapons at the advancing Black and Blue troops.

This made for an intimidating sight. With Cowboy Bobby Baulis gunning his stack of engines, emitting a horrible mechanical scream, combined with the stream of fire being sent down by the Sea Marines, many of the enemy troops—especially the Black mercs—simply dove for the nearest hole and stayed there.

This gave Bro the time he needed. He stopped the huge bird from circling and then, with admirable precision, leveled the big plane out and started descending toward the Saint Yabuk river.

“Jeesuz!” Dave Jones cried as he saw the big seaplane start to fall out of the sky. “He’s not going to …”

But even before the words got out of his mouth, he had his answer. Bro Baulis was going to attempt to land the flying cruiseliner on the waters of the Saint Yabuk River.

Nearly all of the remaining troops were at river’s edge by this time. As one, they watched with astonishment as the enormous airplane got lower and lower. The river was only about one thousand feet at its widest here. The Bro-bird’s wingspan was nearly as wide. It was most unreal to see the gigantic airplane coming down to attempt a landing in such a small area.

But somehow Bro did it. The seaplane came down fast, then at the last moment, its nose was pulled up, hitting the muddy waters of the Saint Yabuk with a mighty crash. As soon as it touched the water, Bro reversed all engines, causing the chilling scream already being emitted from the airplane to grow even louder.

Many of the soldiers down at water’s edge were battered by ten-foot waves, the result of the huge plane’s sudden wake. Now they were holding their ears, too, as the noise reached into the decibel levels of painful proportions.

The seaplane’s bumpy if spectacular landing brought another rain of artillery shells down on the entrapment, but many were off the mark and ineffective. No sooner had the huge airplane stopped when the Red soldiers began swimming out to it. Unit 167 members opened the dozen floating ramps and were hauling Red Army troopers in as fast as they reached the big plane. As luck would have it, two AirCat fighter-bombers were still in the area. Seeing the desperate rescue attempt, they screeched in low overhead and began firing at both Black and Blue forces. All the Bro-Bird needed was a little more time—ten minutes tops, to load everyone on board. The AirCats would help them buy that time.

In the end it took only half that long to get just about everyone on board the Bro-Bird, so hard had the Unit 167 Sea Marines worked at saving people.

In some cases they were grabbing title escaping soldiers right out of the water and literally throwing them on board the huge seaplane. Members of the JAWS team and NJ-104, along with Ben, JT, and Fitz, swam out themselves and gained entrance to the seaplane through the forward hatch. Once in, they aided the Sea Marines in getting the rest of the Red Army troopers on board. Last to leave the shoreline were Crabb, Zoltan, and Kurjan.

At about the same time this trio reached the seaplane, one of the AirCat fighter-bombers bounced in for an unexpected landing on the base’s crater-filled runway. Its pilot had taken a cannon shell hit directly in the cockpit while strafing Black Army mercs nearby, shattering his arm. Two of Geraci’s men swam back to shore and with great bravery, carried the wounded pilot out to the safety of the big seabird.

Now the only two people left on shore were the Jones boys. Dave was about to plunge in for the swim out to the waiting seaplane, when he sensed his brother’s hesitation. A rain of artillery shells slammed down nearby, sending them both to the ground.

“What’s with you, man?” he asked his twin. “We gotta go!”

Seth raised his head. “We’re still missing at least one person,” he said, looking toward the smoking city of Kabul Downs just two miles away.

Dave stared at his brother, and didn’t like what he was seeing.

“Who?” he asked, already knowing his brother’s reply.

“Hunter,” Seth said. “Are we really going to leave without him?”

Another line of artillery shells came screaming down. There were many faces looking out from the seaplane’s doors at them. What was the delay?

“I think Hunter’s dead,” Dave said. “I really do.”

His words did not sound convincing.

“What if he isn’t?” Seth asked. “How can we leave him here? It just isn’t right. I mean, we came all this way for him …”

Dave Jones just shook his head in frustration. He knew his brother was right.

“But what the hell can we do?” he asked him. “We can’t go back there …” He nodded to the burning city. “It could go up at any second.”

Seth was nodding. “I know,” he said. “But something … something inside me … is telling me I should at least go look for him.”

Dave’s next breath caught in his throat.

“God, I feel it, too,” he said. He looked out at the seaplane desperately waiting for them. “You think that swami Zoltan is putting the snide on us?” he asked.

Seth just shook his head. “I don’t know,” he replied. “What I do know is that I have got to go look for him. The Bug is hidden in one of the hangars. If it’s still in flying condition, that’s what I’m taking.”

Dave just looked back at him.

“Damn it,” he said. “You know that I’m not going to let you go alone.”

Seth just gave him a grim smile. “Well, then, I guess that means we go together.”

With that, they yelled their intentions out to the seaplane, turned, and ran toward the hangar that contained the last workable Bug helicopter on the base.

The seaplane took off from the Saint Yabuk just a minute later. Flying through a hail of gunfire from both the Black and Blue Armies, it clawed its way into the air, slowly but surely climbing out of range of the enemy guns.

It soon disappeared over the southern horizon.

The Bug lifted off a minute later. Also fighting its way through a cloud of enemy gunfire, it turned north and headed for the center of Kabul Downs.

N
EITHER OF THE JONES
brothers put much faith in the psychic realm.

Certainly, they had seen and conversed with ghosts. But they were also just too pragmatic, too logical,
too busy
to believe those in the afterlife could have that much effect on the real world.

Yet both were experiencing the same odd feeling as they flew the Bug toward the burning remains of Kabul Downs. Something inside was telling them they would find Hunter alive—if they just knew where to look.

It was that part of the psychic message they were missing—or so they thought.

They arrived over the city and were astonished at the amount of destruction wrought. The streets were all cracked, and smoke and flames were rising up from below. It was as if Hell itself was trying to break out. There were dozens of downed airplanes littering the urban landscape, including many of the Black Army’s Beaters, which were destroyed when Hunter crashed the B-2000 into the Blues’ central command station. In fact, there was not a building over three stories standing anywhere in the city—except one.