Wingman (12 page)

"Hawk," Dominique continued. "We would be free of all of this. You could still fly. Fly for the Free Canadians. They need pilots as much as anybody. We could be so happy."

He closed his eyes and didn't speak for what seemed like an hour.

Finally he whispered to her. "I can't go. I have to stay. This is my country.

I love you. Very much. But I love this country too. I have you now. I don't have it.

I don't have the feeling It would need to leave it with a clear conscience ..."

It was agonizing. He was torn like never before. He loved her so very much, hetwould probably consider even giving up flying for her. There had been girls andtwomen before-but not like her. He wanted to be with her. But he couldn't give up his country-or what was left of it. "Then I stay with you," she declared, her French stubbornness bubbling to the surface.

"No," he said. "No, I won’t let you get caught up in this. This is my fight, not yours."

He pulled her up to him so that he was looking straight into her eyes. She was crying. She knew he wouldn’t let her stay. Her eyes were so sad, so painful, he knew this was how he would remember her, always.

"I've already made the arrangements," he said firmly. "A Beechcraft is landing here tomorrow morning. Jones is moving some valuable documents to Montreal for safekeeping. Ben and Toomey are going to escort it up to the border. You're going to be on that airplane."

"No, Hawk . . ."

"Yes, Dominique." And that's all he had to say. She was crying openly now, her head buried in the hair on his chest.

They made love. Then they lay still and held each other for the remainder of the night, not speaking, not sleeping. This lasted about 50 years too soon, he thought.

The sun came up. She quietly packed her things while he went out to meet the Beechcraft.

An hour later, she was gone . . .

Hunter went straight back to where it all started-the base bar. There he stayed, adding to his already exorbitant tab. He was devastated. He felt like an Exocet had homed in and exploded in his heart. Slowly but surely, he got drunk. The day passed, quiet, blurry but tense. He was the only one drinking in the bar most of the time. Everyone else was involved in the base's war preparations. Watching the activity through the window next to his seat at the rail, it seemed that every person he saw was armed and in battle dress.

Night came. But the war scare had also killed the normally after-hours festive atmosphere of the base's club. A few people wandered in. He retreated to a corner table, still sitting alone. Ben had come in earlier to tell him the Beechcraft made it to the border without trouble and that two Free Canadian jets had met them as planned and took up the escort from there. He thanked his friend and the Hawaiian left. After that no one bothered Hunter-no one dared even approach him.

The hours passed. His heart ached. Midnight passed into early morning. About 20

others had come in during the night to find refuge from the war jitters in the bottle.

But it seemed like everyone was drinking alone. That was fine with Hunter. He was now at the point of drinking himself sober. Another day lost, he thought as the first rays of sunrise filtered through the bar's windows.

Suddenly, the whole world came crashing down on him.

There was a tremendous explosion. He knew right away the base's ammunition bunker had been hit. The bar lights blinked and a heartbeat later, the room was filled with flames. In another instant, a scattershot of flying shrapnel, red-hot and shrieking, perforated the walls of the bar.

Hunter was thrown 30 feet out of the structure. He remembered lying on his back, looking up at the early morning stars and hearing the air raid siren go off. Next, the mechanical thumping of the base perimeter guns started up. When he looked up, the barroom and the people that had been inside-were gone. The scramble Klaxon came on moments later.

He slowly extracted himself from the smoking rubble and, without bothering to check for personal damage, he was up and racing across the tarmac toward his F-16.

The base was under attack. Two ships off the coast were pounding the area with their deck guns and missile launchers. There were soldiers firing mortars at them from the dunes on the beach. Apparently one of the ships had landed a contingent of commandos, some of the ghostlike figures were visible in the first streaks of daylight, others were illuminated by the ferocious fire that was blazing away at the bombed ammunition bunker at the edge of the base.

The runway lights were on, and Hunter did hear the familiar sound of the jets on the flight line winding up their engines. When he reached the line, his F-16 was already hot,-a quick-thinking monkey had turned the key and armed the weapons even as mortar shells were raining down around them. Looking around in the confusion and smoke, Hunter saw three other jets were hot, and a few in the process. He also saw several of their fighters had turned into burning wrecks. He felt a pang in his heart as he saw good aircraft go up in smoke.

He was the first one to taxi out onto the runway, never pausing for anything as trivial as takeoff clearance or wind direction. His only thoughts were on bombing the shit out of those ships off shore, then swinging around and tearing up the ghost troops on the beach. He would figure out who the hell his enemy was later.

As the jet moved forward, he felt the drag of a dozen all-purpose bombs hanging on his wings. No problem. They wouldn’t be there long. His avionics were switching on.

One-by-one indicator lights telling him his fuel load, weapons load and other sundry information flashed onto the HUD screen in front of him. It would still take his radar another minute or two to heat up. But he couldn't wait that long. He gunned his engine and started screeching down the runway.

The F-16 lifted off and he put the nose of the fighter right in the middle of the dull orange sun that was just peeking over the horizon. The enemy ships were about a mile offshore, their muzzle flashes giving away their positions in the ever-quickening daylight. A properly trained pilot would have gained more altitude, executed a bank to the right, swung around to his left and attacked the ships on a south-to-north heading, relying on the plane's computer to give him the correct direction and speed. But there wasn't time to do things by the book. These ships were bombing his home, his friends, his airplanes. Can't waste time. He flipped the fire control computer switch from automatic to manual. He'd do this all by himself.

His landing gear was barely up when he was screaming in on one of the ships, a craft that looked to be a light cruiser. It was painted in black camouflage and had about a dozen guns firing at the base. Hunter held the F-16 just 50 feet off the surface of the water, and was closing in fast. He pressed his cannon trigger. The familiar popping sound filled the cockpit as the powerful gun started to blaze away. The first shells sent up shots of spray as they hit the water and walked right up the broadside of the ship. Black uniformed sailors scattered as he bore down on them. They never expected to be attacked so quickly. He could actually see their horrified faces as he closed in, the 20 mm cannon pumping away. Just when it must have appeared to them like the crazy pilot was about to ram the ship, he eased up on the control stick and streaked up and over the craft, rocking it with an ear splitting scream and washing it with blazing jet exhaust. In a split-second, he was clear of the ship. Looking behind him, he saw several small explosions light up. Targets were hit. Fires began to burn.

The second ship lay just beyond the cruiser on almost the same heading. It appeared to be armed with a couple of dozen missile launchers, streaks of fire were bathing its decks as it launched missile after missile toward the beach. This ship was also serving as the enemy's troop carrier. Landing craft, filled with enemy troops, were still being loaded alongside.

Hunter never veered from his course. Still barely above the waves, but gaining speed all the time, he coolly flicked the Bomb-Safety switch on his control stick and line sighted the mast of the ship through the video projected target sight on the canopy in front of him. He started picking up some return fire, but it didn't concern him.

Like a torpedo-bomber pilot of World War II, he 120 released two bombs and yanked back on the control stick at the same time. The bombs seemed to hang suspended in the air before slamming into the side of the troop carrier. He pulled up and put the F-16

in a straight-up climb, the digitals on his altitude indicator flashing by in a blur.

Soon he was out of sight of the ships, three miles above the action.

He gracefully started to roll the fighter plane over on its back. The last of the morning stars reflected off his helmet visor as he closed his eyes and relaxed, letting the G-force wash over him. The few seconds of intense action were now replaced with the serenity of flight. He was calmed. It felt good to be back in the saddle again.

The plane properly flipped over, his mind properly, if briefly rested, he began a wicked dive, anxious to return to the battle. His radar had just now switched on and the UHF radio began to crackle. In the wall of voices, he was able to discern Ben Wa and Toomey talking, exchanging heading information and target coordinates. He also heard another familiar voice- "We are under attack! Two enemy ships are firing on our position.

Troops have been landed. Please relay instructions." It was Jones, calling Boston, reporting the attack. Technically, Jones had to get an okay from the Leaders' Council to take any armed action, but this procedure was lost in the burning rubble of Jonesville.

Still, the general, a soldier to the end, was calling his commanders, asking them for permission to act.

As the earth rushed up to meet him, he saw the outline of the attacking ships against the vast ocean. Both were burning. He saw two A-7s-it had to be Wa and Toomey-following his lead by streaking across the wave tops, attacking the ships side-by-side. He detected some spits of fire coming from the stricken craft, indicating that not all of the antiaircraft fire was suppressed. Not yet, anyway.

He smiled. Pulling the F-16 out of its dive, he banked hard to the right and put the jet into a screaming 180-degree turn. He was sure the A-7s- and anything else that got off the ground-could handle the ships. It was time for him to visit the beach.

There were hundreds of soldiers splashing ashore after being disgorged from one of dozens of World War II-style landing craft. It struck him that this was a fairly elaborate seaborne invasion. But who was the enemy? He pondered the question only for an instant. The answer would come later. Now, the first order of business was to destroy this mysterious invader.

He checked his bomb load and confirmed he had ten 500pounders left. He put the jet into another 180 and lined up with the shoreline. He could see soldiers scampering as they heard him approach. He opened with the cannon and flipped the Bomb-Ready switch.

Four pushes of the button and four bombs fell in a neatly timed sequence, one right after the other. The four explosions ripped through the groups of soldiers as they vainly tried to find cover. Soon the frozen sands on the beach near Jonesville ran red with the blood of the unknown attackers.

He executed another loop and bore down on the beachhead again. He could see a T-38 and an F-106 strafing the beach ahead of him. He didn't even think to call them on the radio. The pilots and planes of ZAP were just doing their thing. Quickly, but not quietly blowing the shit out of anything that moved.

Suddenly, an indicator light and buzzer told him a shoulder-launched missile, fired from a position hidden in the dunes, was homing in on him. He calmly dropped four more bombs in sequence, and then, using a maneuver from his Thunderbirds days, rolled the plane six times in quick succession. The trick baffled the antiaircraft missile and it slammed into the side of a sand dune, exploding harmlessly.

He pointed the F-16 straight up, once again and flipped it over on its back. Only the F-16 could handle all this maneuvering while still carrying a full fuel and bomb load. "What a plane!" he yelled, banging the console with an appreciative fist. "What a fucking plane!"

He set his sights on two landing craft that were just reaching the beach. The soldiers on board never had a chance as Hunter placed a 500pounder in each craft. The bomb, more suitable for taking out hardened gun positions and the like, simply obliterated the two small ships. Looking back, he saw bodies, and parts of bodies, flying wildly through the air. They looked like busted-up, blown-up dolls. Whoever they were, they, like the guys on the ships, just succeeded in getting themselves killed. Sorry guys, he thought. You just got yourselves hooked up with the wrong customer.

Hunter made two more passes over the beach, using up the rest of his cannon

ammunition. The A-7s did the same. It didn't appear to make much difference-the beach and the shoreline were covered with the bodies of the black-uniformed attackers. He could see the Rangers, who had immediately met the invaders on the first line of sand dunes, now start to emerge from their positions and pick over the dead soldiers. The situation on the beach seemed to be in hand.

He rolled right, out to sea. Offshore, the two ships were burning fiercely. The secondary explosions that were continually rocking the vessels told him that there wouldn’t be very many survivors left on board. The cruisers were going down bow first.

The missile launcher/troop ship looked no better. He doubted it would stay afloat long enough for them to inspect it and look for evidence as to who had attacked them and why.

He streaked over the base and saw the destruction the attack had wrought. A half dozen airplanes were destroyed and several buildings-including the ammo bunker and the club-were in flames. All the while, he could still hear the base radio operator repeatedly trying to raise Boston to tell them of the attack.

As Hunter made his final turn for landing, he was filled with a strange mix of confusion and elation. ZAP and the Rangers had stopped the invaders before they even reached the high water line. And, in all, the action had lasted only a half hour. Yet, some valuable men and equipment were lost in the surprise attack. And for what?