She helped him turn the little plane around and then boosted herself up on one of the big tires and climbed in.
As she looked around the duct-taped interior she asked, “Is this thing top secret?”
He’d flipped his night-vision goggles back down and immediately identified a problem. There was so much smoke and debris in the air now, the glare from the big red star made it look like a thick green soup. With or without the night-vision goggles, Hunter would not be able see the other end of the roof, which was crucial for takeoff.
He had to fix this. After making sure his passenger was strapped securely inside the plane and the canopy was closed, he brought his M-16 up to his hip and emptied a clip into the big red star.
He thought he’d just knock out its lightbulbs. Instead, the huge ornament exploded into thousands of pieces. The blast was so intense it knocked Hunter off his feet.
When he looked up again, the red star was gone, leaving only the remains of a lot of mysterious-looking communications equipment that had been packed inside.
Hunter got back on his feet and jumped into the plane.
Revving the engine, he asked the blonde, “Want to close your eyes?”
“I won’t if you won’t,” she shouted back over the noise of the engine.
Just then, the mob of zombie-like Russians burst onto the roof. Hunter pushed his throttles to max, popped the brakes, and the little plane shot away. They were past the mob and up and over the side of the roof in two seconds. A moment after that, the plane was heading straight down.
Hunter quickly began the harrowing process of recovery. He backed off the throttle, counted to three, then rejammed it to full power. He pulled back mightily on the controls at precisely the same moment and let the little plane’s odd design do its thing.
It took a few more seconds than it should have. Superheated winds were gusting all around them, slowing down the physics of it all. But finally the air caught under the high-angle wings. The plunge slowed, then they came to a complete halt as the plane turned 180 degrees on its lateral axis. Now pointing upward, Hunter stayed off the gas for three more seconds, then jammed the throttle forward again—and off they went.
Straight up to the stars.
They reached five thousand feet in seconds, and Hunter turned them over to level flight. While he could still feel the buffeting of the firestorm even at a mile high—it was like driving down an extremely bumpy road—with every second they moved away from it, their flight got less and less turbulent.
Through it all, the mysterious woman had not made a peep, not spoken a word. She’d held on tight as he’d instructed her to do, but she went through the worst of it like a combat veteran.
He turned the steering controls to the left and pointed his nose toward New Jersey. He checked his watch again—he’d been inside 30 Rock for just under six minutes, not much more than he’d planned. This also meant he wasn’t too far behind the lumbering Sherpas. He maxxed his throttles, intent on catching up to them.
It was very cramped inside the clown plane’s cockpit. He and the blonde were shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee; the NKVD attaché case wound up on her lap. He studied its trio of time locks, then he ran his gloved finger over each of them. He counted to three and then tapped the handle.
The case sprang open in a snap.
“That’s impressive,” she said sweetly, just loud enough to be heard over the clown plane’s rambunctious engine.
Inside the case was a bright-red striped pouch. But it did not contain photos of blondes in slinky outfits. Instead, it held a plain-looking document, a couple dozen pages, written in both Russian and English. Its title: Convoy 56 Deployment Schedule.
“Those CRAP guys used to walk around with these briefcases cuffed to them all the time, like they were pocketbooks,” she told Hunter. “Even if they weren’t leaving the building. It was their way of showing off to each other. Briefcase envy. But I always thought they were carrying around the secret of warp drive or maps that show where all the nukes are or something. That title makes it seem like a ferry timetable. Unless …”
Hunter couldn’t resist. “Unless what?”
“Unless it’s intentionally … bland,” she said, finding just the right word.
She wasn’t wrong. Misleading headings were a key part of spy craft. Besides, why would the top NKVD guys be walking around with plain old cargo ship information locked to their wrists?
He asked her to read the first paragraph to him.
It took her only a few seconds to do so, despite the dim light emanating from the mini-instrument panel. But even before she was half done, Hunter knew everything was going to change. Just a handful of her words brought his dream of rescuing Dominique to a screeching halt.
His passenger, too, was stunned by what she’d read.
She found his arm and squeezed it.
“If this is true,” she said worriedly, “in just a few months, America won’t even exist.”
Chapter Seventeen
One mile below, the firestorm had already moved on from the Fifth Avenue and Forty-Eigth Street area, where the four main military buildings of the Okupatsi had stood less than twenty minutes before.
There were piles of smoldering debris ten feet high and lots of smoke overhead. The 30 Rock skyscraper was still on fire, the flames slowly making their way to the top, as were many smaller buildings around it. But what had been the dead center of the MMZ was now four hot, smoky patches in the ground.
The industrious MOP crew who’d managed to position one of the old, broken-down fire trucks up against the NKVD headquarters was finally forced to surrender to the inevitable and get away from the seventy-story skyscraper before it collapsed. They’d gotten the fire truck’s engine turned on and just as slowly as they’d appeared, they began making their way back down Fifth Avenue, dirty, wet, and beaten.
But suddenly, one of the erstwhile firemen saw something moving in the rubble on the corner of East Forty-Ninth and Fifth, what had once been the old Simon & Schuster Building, and more recently, the Russian Military’s Joint Ops Building.
The fireman yelled for the driver to halt, and several of the MOP soldiers jumped off the truck and waded into the still-sizzling debris.
Incredibly, there was a man in the middle of it all, digging himself out. He was about halfway to freedom when the firemen reached him. They pulled him out the rest of the way.
He was covered with white ash and powder, but somehow he’d survived the firebombing and the collapse of the building. Even with a few burns and some cuts here and there, he was in surprisingly good shape—and this included his eyepatch.
“Thank you, my friends,” he said to his rescuers. “Though I believe I would have made it out in another day or two. …”
It was Colonel Sergei Gagarin, the man who ran the joint operations daily briefings.
The man who knew everything.
Chapter Eighteen
Bull Dozer thought his ears were bleeding.
They were ringing so loudly they hurt.
But he didn’t care. He was in exceptionally high spirits—and not because of really bad whiskey.
He was alone in the spy tower. So many of his men were involved in the New York City bombing raid, the pair of troopers who usually manned the lookout post were filling in back at the base. So, tonight, way out here in the thick woods, it was just Dozer and the ghosts.
And after a while, hearing the screeches and yelps echoing through the forest became routine.
Almost. …
No matter, the night noise in the Pine Barrens had become the background music for one of the happiest moments of his life.
He’d watched the firebombing via the balloon cam. As soon as the napalm-filled barrels began falling, he saw their explosions on the aerial camera’s infrared lens, each one creating a blip of light on
the video monitor. Dozer counted forty-eight bombs, forty-eight distinct blips.
Each bomb hit its mark. Not bad for a rookie air-assault team.
But about twenty minutes into the raid, something happened that had not been part of the firebombing plan. It had been more than a month since Dozer started sending out radio messages to the other patriot groups that usually banded together to battle America’s latest enemy. After weeks of no replies, and countless theories why haunting his dreams, including the most troubling one—that no one cared anymore—he’d just about given up on ever hearing from anybody ever again.
But after climbing up to the tower that night, he’d switched on the old radio anyway, not surprised to hear only static spilling out of the battered, tinny speaker.
After watching the fire raid and praying all his planes would return safely, Dozer’s thoughts went to Hunter, knowing his mission was just starting and wondering if his friend would live through the night. Jumping into the cauldron of flame, into a firestorm, into Hell itself, just to find the woman he loved.
Though no expert on relationships, Dozer still wondered, was Hunter crazy in love, or was he just plain crazy?
And it was at that moment—that exact instant—that something wonderful happened.
His radio receiver finally came to life.
His back was to it at the time, but it came on so loud, so suddenly, he thought it was an explosion. That one of the creaky communications devices that made up the tower’s console had short circuited and blown up.
It took him a few seconds to realize the racket was coming out of the radio’s speaker.
Voices.
Calling him. …
Voices that he recognized.
All of them yelling, “Come in, Bull,” or “Calling 7CAV. …”
It was an explosion, all right.
All of the people he’d been trying to contact—his friends, his colleagues, his fellow warriors—were calling him. And by the timbre of their voices, it sounded like they’d been trying for some time. So many on so many channels, coming through all at once—that’s when his ears began to hurt, but in the best way possible.
What had happened? It was as if someone had flipped a switch, or better yet, opened a floodgate, and a tidal wave of radio messages waiting to be sent were suddenly washing all over the cosmos—or at least this part of northeast America.
But whatever the cause, it was good to know that after all this time, he wasn’t alone out here.
For the next ten minutes, Dozer replied to as many of the radio calls as he could.
He spoke to a couple dozen old friends—Louie St. Louis, Lieutenant Ben Wa, Captain J. T. Toomey, Colonel Rene Frost, Captain Crunch, the Cobra Brothers, and many more.
And they all said variations of the same two things: “Where have you been?” and “When do we go to war against the Reds?”
It was such an onslaught, Dozer nearly missed the coded signal that came through at exactly 0030 hours.
Just a couple of beeps on the radiophone.
The Sherpas were returning.
He shut off his radio receiver—doing so with a quick apology and a promise to be back in touch soon—and then strapped on his night-vision goggles and stuck his head out the shack’s window next to the reinstalled 50-caliber machine gun.
He saw a faint light blinking to the north. The strobe attached to the nose of Sherpa 1.
Dozer crossed his fingers. The Sherpas that survived the raid would be right behind the lead plane, but they would still be flying dark. He wouldn’t know who was still alive until they flew by him.
He hastily radioed the base, telling them to open the camo net. Then he turned back to the north and watched as the planes approached.
The first Sherpa roared in, followed by the other three—and trailing slightly behind them, the little plane with the big wheels.
Dozer felt another wave of relief wash over him.
He called back to base, “Five ball in the corner pocket!”
He exited the spy tower quickly, falling halfway down the tree again, and was soon in his jeep speeding toward the base, watching through the trees as each plane landed safely.
There were no wild celebrations on the tarmac.
No high-fiving, no whooping it up.
The crews of the four Sherpas just piled out of their airplanes, exhausted, sweaty, glad to be alive. A few of the men exchanged firm handshakes and slaps on the back; more than a few of the fliers kissed the ground. They’d made it. That’s all that mattered at the moment.
Dozer congratulated them all. When he asked, “How did it go?” the overwhelming reply was: “We got them good.”
Their airplanes were a mess, though.
All four Sherpas had sustained heavy fire damage under their wings and fuselages. In some cases, the planes’ metal exteriors had become so overheated they had crumpled and shrunk. That’s how hot it had been in those few seconds above Midtown.
It was a miracle none of the planes had blown up considering their fuel tanks had been exposed to the hellish temperatures. But Dozer knew it would be a long time before any of them flew again, if ever.
Hunter came in on the tail of the Sherpas, flying at max throttle, he’d caught up with the four raiders about thirty seconds before they went into their landing profile. His plane also had a lot of fire damage. He pulled up to where the returning 7CAV crews had congregated, and he killed his engine, his left wing still smoldering. Dozer helped lift his canopy and saw a blonde in the passenger seat.
Hunter climbed out, covered head to foot in soot.
Dozer shook his hand. “Well, was it ‘a walk in the park’ or ‘a piece of cake’?” he asked.
“Both and a Coke,” Hunter replied. Then he reached into the side seat of the tiny airplane and helped out the rescued blonde.
An unexpected gasp went up from the 7CAV troopers and civilian techs nearby. Dozer, too, was shocked. This woman wasn’t Dominique—but she was just as beautiful, if that was possible. Plus she was scantily dressed.
“This is why I’ve been divorced five times,” Dozer sighed, scanning her up and down.
She was looking around the base in awe. The movable cover overhead, just starting to close. The Quonset hut and the other structures, all perfectly hidden among the trees. The 7CAV troops themselves, in their camo uniforms, almost blended into the shadowy nighttime background.
“Now this …” she said. “This is top secret.”
Hunter helped her to the ground and then retrieved the attaché case from the cockpit. Dozer gave her his oversize winter uniform jacket. It reached her knees and would take a long time to button up.
He took the moment to pull Hunter aside. “I don’t want to be out of line here, Hawk,” he said in a low voice. “But did you trade up for another model? Or were they just having a sale on angels?”
“She’s one of the girls that guys like Moneybags brought to town,” Hunter hastily replied, his voice also low. “She was right in with the Reds. Right on top of 30 Rock. But she’s no fan of Ivan. She’ll be able to tell us a lot about them. But can you have the guys look after her for now?”
Dozer gave him two thumbs-up. She was still buttoning up his loaner coat.
“It’s safe to go with these soldiers,” Hunter told her, fastening the top couple of buttons for her. “They’ll have a medic look you over and find a place for you to spend the night. We’ll talk in the morning, okay?”
“If I can go to sleep somewhere, sure,” she said agreeably. She turned to go with a few soldiers, but then looked back at Hunter and said, “Thanks for saving me.”
Then she was gone, disappearing into the darkness.
Hunter held up the attaché case and said to Dozer. “You’ve got to see this.”
Chapter Nineteen
A minute later they were in
the Quonset hut, sitting at Dozer’s desk.
The only other people inside, the Worm and the Trashman, were at a table at the opposite end of the large barracks. As usual, both were working on bowls of whiskey stew.
Hunter opened the briefcase and took out the NKVD document. There were twenty pages of text and four pages of maps and diagrams. Every page was written in both Russian and English and all of it was marked SOVERSHENNO SEKRETNO. TOP SECRET.
“This didn’t come from someone’s garbage,” Dozer observed.
The documents comprised a report detailing the contents of a group of Russian ships, called Convoy 56, that were presently on their way to New York. This in itself was unusual. Since the first night of the invasion, ships had arrived from Russia on a regular basis, but always in ones and two, never more than that. This document stated nine ships were on their way, sailing as a unit and expected to arrive in New York at the same time. There was even a note attached to the first page saying space had to be made in the harbor to accommodate the new arrivals.
While the types of ships were not mentioned, one was referred to throughout as “VLV”—which Hunter took to mean “very large vessel.”
Dozer started reading the document from the beginning and found the first entry alone to be frightening. It stated that a huge amount of weapons of mass destruction were aboard this VLV. It listed fifty-three nuclear warheads, three hundred and two biological warheads, and an astonishing eight hundred and sixty chemical warheads, including canisters full of hal-lou gas, the powdery hallucinogenic mist the Russians had fired at the American Badlands as part of their devastating sneak attack. And it got worse. The VLV was also carrying six dozen mobile guns, six dozen advanced T-72 tanks, some ultralong-range artillery pieces, and many multiple rocket launchers. Also on board were three squadrons of deadly Kamov attack helicopters; each squadron containing eighteen copters.
But even worse, the report cited what were described as antipersonnel bombs on board. Twenty thousand of them. To Dozer, antipersonnel bombs meant IEDs—improvised explosive devices, to be used as car bombs, roadside bombs, or even strapped to suicide bombers.
Battle for America Page 13
