Circle War

by Maloney, Mack;

  “Bodyguards?” Hunter said. “That’s great, my man. You just got yourself an extra thousand.”

  “At least,” the man said, grinning.

  Twenty minutes later, Hunter was sitting in the back of the gunmen’s speeding jeep, enjoying the scenery. Not only had he parlayed himself a ride for the final 20 miles into Honolulu, he also had a way to pass through the seven further checkpoints between him and the city. At each stop, the gunmen—known as the Tau Fin—were routinely waved through. A peaceful, if shaky, coexistence was in force among the tribal gangs, or at least the ones who controlled this roadway. Between roadblocks, his escorts remained silent, which was fine with Hunter. He sat back and let the warm late spring sunshine soak through him.

  They reached the outskirts of Honolulu about an hour later. From the top of a hill, Hunter could see the island that used to be the Pearl Harbor naval station. He was too far away to see if there was any military activity at the base. His earlier radar sweep revealed nothing heavy, but he hadn’t yet discounted the possibility of some kind of presence at the base.

  He had to reach the USS Arizona Memorial, but first he had to rid himself of his chauffeurs. He didn’t feel that he was justified in shooting them, although they had foolishly left him alone in the backseat of the open vehicle with his M-I6 and Uzi, both fully-loaded. Instead, he would put the two to sleep.

  “Stop!” he yelled in the driver’s ear as they drove into the very outskirts of the city.

  The passenger gunmen turned around quickly, his sawed-off shotgun at the ready.

  “What?” he yelled over the sound of the motor.

  “Stop,” Hunter yelled again. He had reached into his backpack and produced a small plastic bag of white powder. He waved it in front of the passenger-side gunman.

  The man smiled broadly. “Coke? We do a line?” he asked as his partner slowed the jeep.

  “We do many lines,” Hunter said, producing a mirror and a razor blade.

  The jeep had slowed down and stopped by this time. The gunmen smacked their lips as they watched Hunter expertly pour a small pile of the powder onto the mirror and start chopping away with the razor blade.

  He fashioned the resulting fine powder into six long, thick lines. A straw was produced. Hunter handed the mirror to the passenger-side gunman who took a long, noisy sniff, pulling the entire stretch of white stuff up his nose in one swipe. “Ahhhhh!” he said with evident satisfaction.

  His partner grabbed the mirror and repeated the process. His reaction was also one of delight. “Goooood stuff,” he said, snorting the stuff back into his nostrils.

  In two seconds, both he and his partner were knocked out cold.

  “You mean ‘Goooood night,’” Hunter said, jumping out of the jeep and hauling the two limp bodies out of the vehicle. Thorazine pentathol, Hunter’s own concoction of sleeping powder, looked, cut and tasted like cocaine. The gunmen would sleep for almost 24 hours, he figured. That’s what they get for being so greedy with their lines.

  “See ya, chumps,” Hunter said as he disarmed the men, got behind the wheel of the jeep and roared off toward Honolulu.

  He was across a makeshift bridge and at the fence of the old Pearl Harbor base less than an hour later.

  Passing through the city of Honolulu had been an experience in itself. The place had so many gambling casinos even Louie St. Louie would have blushed. There were people in the streets although it was still barely 9 AM. Every one of the men were armed and it seemed every one of the women were topless. Ben Wa would have been proud.

  He had found the road to Pearl with no problem. Driving slowly long the perimeter fence, he saw little evidence of military activity inside the base. There were a few military vehicles such as APCs, halftracks and even an old M-60 tank. But he saw very few people walking inside the base.

  He reached the main gate and found it manned by a lone sailor. With his white uniform, complete from upturned hat to black boot leggings, the man looked like something out of World War II. He was also sound asleep.

  Hunter climbed out of the jeep and approached him. He was precariously balanced on an old chair leaning against a small guardhouse.

  “Excuse me, sailor,” Hunter said in a voice that was half a shout.

  The man didn’t stir.

  “Hey, Navy!” Hunter said, a little louder.

  Still asleep, the man brushed an imaginary bug from his nose.

  Hunter leaned down, cupped his hands and yelled into the sailor’s ear. “Hey! Swabbie!”

  The man went over like a capsized ship. He was quickly to his feet, his hand wrestling with the .45 automatic he wore on his belt. When retrieving it failed, he foolishly took a swing at Hunter. The punch wasn’t even close.

  Hunter’s Uzi was out and against the man’s nose in a split second. “Take it easy, Popeye,” Hunter said, his other hand seizing the sailor’s .45.

  “Who the fuck are you!” the man screamed.

  Hunter looked at him. He was unkempt, unshaven and, judging from the downwind, unbathed. The sailor was a disgrace to his uniform.

  “Where’s your CO?” Hunter asked sternly.

  “Where he always is,” the sailor said, trying to upright his fallen chair. “Shitfaced.”

  “Where?”

  The sailor pointed over his shoulder to a white two-story structure. “Up in his office,” he said. “Over there.”

  Hunter snapped out the .45s magazine. It was empty. He shook his head and returned the useless gun to the sailor.

  “You know something, I always bet on you guys in the Army-Navy game,” Hunter said angrily. “No wonder I always lost.”

  For the first time the man looked embarrassed.

  “Hey, listen flyboy, it ain’t always been like this.”

  It didn’t matter what he said; Hunter was already hurrying toward the dirty white building.

  He entered the unguarded structure and double-timed it up the stairs. He found an entire row of offices unoccupied. Then he came to a corner room and saw a man sitting with his back to him. He was turned around in a chair behind a desk, reading what looked to be a skin magazine. As far as Hunter could tell, the man was the only person in the building.

  He walked in. “I’m Major Hunter, Pacific American Armed Forces. From back on the mainland.”

  Startled, the man took one look at Hunter and instantly sprang to his feet.

  “Commander … Josh … McDermott,” he said, his voice trembling as if from lack of use. “United Sta … I mean, United Hawaiian … National … Royal Naval Defense … ah, Forces.”

  The man’s hand was shaking as he tried a salute.

  While the sleepy guard was a wise-ass slob, this man was pitiful wreck. He wasn’t old. Hunter figured 43, maybe 45. Yet his face, his skin and his white hair were those of a man twenty years his age.

  “Good to meet you, Commander,” Hunter said, reaching over the desk and surprising the man with a handshake.

  The man calmed down a little. He was dressed in a tattered U.S. Naval dress white uniform that looked like he had worn it, unpressed, every day for the past five years. The office itself was shabby. Files long gathering dust cluttered the place. Paperwork lay discarded on the floor. The windows were so dirty, it was hard to see the water of Pearl Harbor that lay just a short distance from the building. Through the grime, Hunter spotted the white shape of the USS Arizona Memorial.

  “What brings you our way, Major?”

  “I’m looking for something, Commander,” Hunter said, reaching into his pocket for a photo of the Ghost Rider black box. “This box is very important to me,” he said, handing the picture to the man. “It’s hidden on the Arizona.”

  “The Arizona!” the threadbare officer asked as he took the photo and studied it. “What is it, Major? A guidance system or something?”

  Hunter looked at the man. He could tell that at one time, the guy must have been a savvy officer.

  Hunter shook his head. He couldn’t hold it back any longer
. “What’s happened here, Commander?” he asked looking around the disheveled office, a trace of sadness in his voice. “This is Pearl Harbor, for God’s sake …”

  The man turned away and shook his head. A whiskey bottle stood on a windowsill nearby. He reached over and grabbed it, scooping up two glasses in the process. When he turned around the pitiful look had added the new dimension of apathy.

  “Have a drink, Major?”

  For the first time in as long as he could remember, Hunter declined.

  The man poured himself a healthy one anyway.

  “We were left behind, Major,” he said, bitterness evident in his voice. “Left behind after the armistice with no ship big enough to get back to the mainland.”

  The explanation hit Hunter like a punch in the gut. In an instant, he realized the man’s tragic plight. “How about airplanes? Some must have come through,” he said.

  “Sure,” McDermott said, downing his drink. “Plenty of them in the first few weeks following the end of the war. All unauthorized. I was the fool. I decided to be all-Navy. I didn’t believe for a minute that the country—that our armed forces would go along with the New Order double-cross. I was sure the fleet … the real Navy … would come steaming over the horizon at any minute.

  “Well, they didn’t. And those assholes in the Hawaiian National Guard went on a rampage and destroyed every workable piece of military equipment on the islands. Sank all the ships in port. Pranged all the airplanes. Busted up all the radios. I’ve been stuck inside here ever since.”

  “You mean you never leave the base?” Hunter asked.

  “I mean I never leave the building,” McDermott answered. “The Tribes—the Tau Fin—rule this island, and me and the twenty-five guys I got left are all mainlanders. We’re lucky they don’t burn the place to the ground.”

  “Where are you from, Commander?” Hunter asked.

  “Rhode Island,” McDermott said, pouring another drink. Then he looked up at Hunter and asked, “Is it still there?”

  Hunter slowly shook his head. The man laughed bitterly. “Then why should I complain? I’m better off in the sun and fun of Hawaii.”

  Hunter wanted to get out of the place. He started to get back to business and ask the officer if he’d mind helping him search the Arizona, when he felt a very familiar feeling.

  “Commander, are you sure you don’t have any aircraft operating here?” he asked.

  “Are you kidding?” McDermott laughed. “There hasn’t been an airplane on any of these islands in three years.”

  Hunter’s senses were tingling.

  “Well, there is now,” he said, concentrating. “Heading this way. A lot of them.”

  “Ah, forget it,” McDermott said, pouring his third drink. “No one within a thousand miles of here can fly a kite, never mind an airplane. Besides, it’s Sunday …”

  Hunter walked to the window and rubbed off some of the grime. He looked out to the northwest. Twenty, thirty of them, he thought. Slow. Low. Carrying something. Bombs, maybe.

  He turned and looked McDermott. “Got any enemies, Commander?”

  The officer pondered the question. But Hunter didn’t have time to waste. “Get the hell of here,” he yelled to the man. Then he was out the door, down the stairs and running toward the Arizona Memorial. As he ran he could see the faint outline of a chevron of tiny dots approaching the island from out over the ocean. They were old airplanes, he knew. Prop jets.

  He bounded down the pier next to the sunken battleship and up the gangplank. If the airplanes were coming to attack, he couldn’t take the chance of the black box being destroyed. The message that Josephs left behind said the box was stashed in the base of the flag pole that sat at the very top of the partially-submerged ship’s conning tower.

  Hunter scrambled up the ladder to the conning tower and was next to the flagpole just as the airplanes were turning toward the harbor. Two by two, the airplanes broke off and raced in low. They were old, but powerful A-l Skyraiders, similar to the ones back at PAAC-Oregon. The airplanes were dangerous. They were known for being able to carry more ordnance than B-17 bomber, yet were only slightly larger than the big fighters of World War II.

  The first two airplanes streaked right over his head and released two bombs each. As if in slow motion, the four bombs slammed into a warehouse-like building two down from the dirty white officer’s building. Four individual balls of smoke and flame erupted from the structure. The two A-1s peeled off to the right together.

  Suddenly, two more attackers were over his head. They too let go a total of four bombs, theirs falling short of the first group and hitting the little used docking area nearby. He could see that other pairs of Skyraiders were attacking other targets in the base and in the city nearby.

  Hunter knew it was a matter of time before the unknown assailants attacked the Memorial. He kicked out a panel at the bottom of the flagpole base and looked inside the small wooden base.

  Just like Josephs promised, there was a gray safelike box inside the hollow base. Hunter dragged it out. A padlock was squeezing the lid shit. If the contents weren’t so valuable he would have shot the lock off. But he chose to simply pick it instead. Using the stiletto he always kept with him, it twisted the padlock off and opened the box.

  “Jesus Christ!” he had to exclaim. “It’s here!” The box was black—shiny black. He could tell by the various connections and receptacles on its side the box was the genuine article. It had a tiny red light on its top and it was blinking. It was then he realized that for the first time in his trip, he really believed that the long-distance recovery operation might just work.

  His excitement was cut short. He heard the unmistakable whine of a propeller airplane as it was turning to attack. He looked out and saw an A-l coming in at wavetop level, heading straight for the Memorial and his position.

  He was up and firing the M-16 in less than a second. The A-l was fitted with a Vulcan cannon, which now opened up. A rain of shells exploded around him. Hunter kept firing away trying to puncture the engine beyond the whirling prop enough times to make it stall. But the airplane was on him. Two bombs released from its wings and seem to hang in the air. With quick precision Hunter pumped four shots into each bomb, exploding one in mid-air and deflecting the other to fall short of the Memorial and into the water.

  He knew he’d just made two of the luckiest shots in his career. He couldn’t duplicate them if he tried. That’s why he didn’t want to be in the conning tower when the airplane came back. He quickly slammed the safe shut again and slipped it into his backpack. Then he was back down the conning ladder and running down the ship’s deckways toward the gangplank.

  The entire base and city were now under a crushing attack. It seemed like the entire sky was filled with airplanes—bombing, strafing, twisting, turning, diving. Another swarm of A-1s had joined the attack and they were mercilessly pounding everything from the dock to the skyscrapers nearby. He could see people running in terror through the streets outside the base. But no one was rushing to mount a defense from the inside.

  He remembered the APC he’d seen near the base’s main gate and ran toward it. There were a few sailors—all in the dirty, unpressed uniforms—running about, looking confused. Their commander—McDermott—was nowhere to be found.

  Christ, where are the officers of these sailors? Hunter thought. No matter where he looked, he saw only enlisted men. It quickly became apparent that he would have to rally a defense.

  He grabbed a sailor and pointed toward the APC.

  “Can you drive that thing?” he yelled to him. The man nodded uncertainly. “Then let’s go!”

  Hunter dragged the man with him toward the tankish-looking personnel carrier. There was a .60 caliber machine gun mounted on it with a belt of ammunition hanging off its side. Hunter crossed his fingers and hoped the gun would work.

  Zig-zagging through the rain of exploding bombs and fiery debris, he and his reluctant ally reached the vehicle and climbed on-board
. Explosions were going off all around them. A huge fire raged just 20 paces from the tracked vehicle. Some of the attacking Skyraiders were strafing the APC, trying to take out what they had identified as the only formidable piece of gunpower on the base.

  Hunter knew he had to move fast.

  The sailor crawled down into the driver’s seat, while the airman positioned himself behind the big gun. He squeezed the .60’s trigger. The gun bucked. He squeezed again, it bucked once, then twice. “C’mon you mother …” He squeezed again. This time the gun kicked and a short burst streamed out of the muzzle. “Solid,” Hunter yelled, turning to the man at the controls. “Get me down to the pier!”

  Slowly the APC creaked to life and right away Hunter knew the thing was a shitbox. Black smoke was belching out of the back, nearly choking him and making them a perfect target for the angrily buzzing Skyraiders. The engine sounded like it was going to throw a rod. The nervous sailor was driving like he’d just drunk a fifth of bad scotch. Somehow they dodged the shrieking bombs, the building fires and the smoking debris and rolled out onto the pier.

  Despite the absolute lack of return groundfire, the A-1s were relentlessly pressed home their attack. Hunter had no idea who the attackers were, but they were polished airmen, he knew that much. The attack was being conducted in a very effective workmanlike manner. They had done this kind of thing before. The airplanes were all painted in the same uniform gray color, too, indicating some kind of organized force, as opposed to just a pirate gang. The only insignia he could see was three small red dots painted on the tails. Where the attackers came from or why they would choose to strike at the defenseless base and city was a mystery. But it made no difference to him. He didn’t really care who they were. One of America’s most precious memorials was in danger of being destroyed and he refused to let it happen without firing back.

  He had the sailor drive right past the Arizona on out toward the furthest point on the pier which ran about a hundred yards out into the harbor. The bombs were falling uncomfortably close to the Memorial. At least he could draw some of the fire from it. As the APC bumped its way along, Hunter spotted his first target. It was a rogue A-l sweeping in from the north, just 10 feet off the water. The attackers had become emboldened and were now flying slow and easy, routinely depositing their bombs.