Battle for America

by Maloney, Mack;

  Hunter was nodding furiously. “Right here—these guys were her guards—or they were with her, or something. And they were pushing this yellow box and … But then she …”

  He had to think a moment. Did she really lay him out with a single punch?

  “And then … I went … somewhere else,” he began sputtering. “A place with two moons and stars out in the daytime. And I saw Princess Xara again. And she said …”

  Dozer slapped his medic’s shoulder. “Will you please give him some oxygen? He’s going freaking Dixieland on us.”

  The medic put a small mask over Hunter’s nose and mouth and said, “Seven deep breaths. … No talking.”

  Hunter took five and then brushed it away. But the pure oxygen helped.

  “Jesus, how long was I out?” he asked, cobwebs clearing.

  The medic checked his eyes again. “Hard to say. … A few minutes at least.”

  “And no sign of her? No sign of a yellow box?”

  The troopers all shook their heads no.

  “And how about the copter,” he asked Dozer. “Is it still on board?”

  “That’s what we’re doing down here,” the marine told him. “Looking for it and looking for you. It definitely hasn’t taken off. We’d hear it no matter where we were on this tub.”

  The last three words had not yet left Dozer’s cigar-clenched lips when a horrendous roar rocketed through the bottom passageway. It was so loud they all put their hands over their ears, but when Hunter put his hands over his helmet’s ear holes, it broke in two. A crack ran right down the middle of it.

  “Fuck, man,” he swore loudly. “You know how long I’ve had this thing?”

  Dozer finally pulled him to his feet. The noise got even louder, more distorted, but they knew it could only be one thing: the huge Mi-26 chopper, straight ahead, starboard side.

  They all ran in that direction, but the medic held Dozer back for a moment.

  “He might have gotten a snootfull of hal-lou residue,” the medic told him. “You know … the powder? I can smell it down here myself. It doesn’t last too long, but it would account for the ragtime chatter back there. …”

  Dozer just shrugged. “Or maybe he really did go ‘someplace else.’”

  It was a longer run than they expected and took a good five minutes of snaking their way through the bottom of the ship. Still woozy, Hunter was in the lead for some reason, his night-vision goggles guiding them as they were drawn to the noise that grew more thunderous with each step they took.

  Hunter turned a corner and suddenly found himself on the lip of the immense flight-deck elevator. Black-uniformed NKVD policemen were loading the bright yellow box onto the copter, which still had its external emergency lights burning. The box must have been heavy, because a dozen of them were just barely able to lift it on board. As for Dominique, she was nowhere in sight.

  “See? I’m not crazy,” Hunter yelled to Dozer. “There’s the yellow box … and whatever the hell is inside it.”

  Dozer fired an instant later. He let go with a stream from his M-16J banana-clip model, intentionally keeping his fire low so as not to hit Dominique if she was inside the copter. The barrage cut the legs out from under three of the NKVD policemen. A few of the copter’s lights were hit, too, and suddenly the hangar was thrown into near-darkness.

  The Russians returned fire and though everyone was shooting semi-blind, a major gun battle erupted. There was a lot of shouting and noise and confusion. Then the copter’s huge rotors began moving.

  The copter pilots were doing an emergency procedure called burn and turn. Although throttling to full power right away wasn’t great for the engines, it worked well for quick takeoffs.

  Someone in the cockpit aimed the remote control device at an electric eye hanging on the hangar’s bulkhead. It activated a robot arm, which bent down and hit a switch. The gigantic elevator began to move upward.

  The last few Russians standing scrambled aboard the helicopter, quitting the gunfight and leaving their wounded comrades behind. The 7CAV troopers and Hunter leaped onto the moving elevator, pushing off the wounded Russians. At the same moment, the helicopter started lifting off from the elevator itself.

  “What the fuck?” Dozer yelled above the noise. “They’re going to fly it out of here?”

  Before they could get to the hatch door, the huge copter ascended from the still-moving elevator. It went up about six feet in just a few seconds.

  “We can’t shoot it down if Dominique is aboard!” Dozer yelled to Hunter in the vicious artificial wind. “How are we going to stop it?”

  Hunter didn’t reply. Instead, he jumped up and caught the copter’s front left skid. The copter began to stagger. Dozer joined Hunter, grabbing the right hand skid. All 7CAV troopers now joined in. In seconds, seven people were hanging on the Mi-26’s skids and trying to pull the thing right back down.

  But the pilots leaned on the throttles some more, and with the added power, the copter began to pull away. Everyone had to let go and drop back down to the elevator.

  Hunter was enraged, but he had to also admire the cool of the Russian chopper pilots. They were flying straight up, ten feet above the moving elevator, true and steady, while the carrier was rocking wildly and smoke was obscuring the upper decks.

  This was an amazing feat, and Hunter could tell the copter was seriously overloaded. The pilots were trying to ease it up out of the great pit, a bit at a time, all the while trying to keep it out of the grasp of the seven Americans trying to drag it back down again.

  “They’re good,” Hunter said. “The bastards.”

  It went on like this for more than a minute, Hunter and the 7CAV guys trying a few more times to try to grab onto the huge copter’s struts before it reached the outside world. Meanwhile, Dozer was on his radio, yelling at all of his men to pass the word not shoot at the ascending helicopter. There was a “friendly” aboard.

  Finally, the Mi-26 and the elevator were both nearing the carrier’s flight deck. Only the great expanse of sky lay beyond.

  The copter was still staggering due to its weight, and Hunter and the 7CAV troopers tried one last time to grab it and pull it back down. Again, it was just out of their grasp.

  But just as it reached the flight deck, a dark figure suddenly entered the scene. Making a running leap, he landed on the helicopter’s right-side landing strut. From there, he was able to get his hands onto the bottom of the open hatch door and hang on.

  The elevator arrived on the deck and stopped; the helicopter kept on going. The 7CAV guys and Hunter scrambled off the lift, noting that all gunfire had stopped. Everyone was watching this new drama.

  This wasn’t another 7CAV guy trying to drag the helicopter back down to the deck by himself. This person was dressed all in black … including his cape.

  “Jeesuz,” Dozer exclaimed. “Is that guy the captain or something?”

  He was close. It was Yuri Zmeya, senior ship committee chairman of the Isakov and the commissar’s younger brother. The Isakov was in ruins. Most of his crew was dead. He was abandoning his own ship.

  The copter continued going straight up, and he hung on. None of the Americans shot at him for fear of disabling the copter, but no one inside the huge aircraft was helping him in. Yet it was clear his added weight was beginning to destabilize the Mi-26 in the high winds. As big as it was, if he climbed aboard, the copter might become unbalanced and come crashing down. But if he stayed where he was, the copter could spiral out of control.

  Suddenly, they all saw a dark figure come to the copter’s open doorway. He, too, was dressed all in black.

  This person didn’t bend down to assist the helpless man.

  Instead, he stepped on his fingers.

  The younger Zmeya hung on for a long time, but finally, he could take it no longer. When a boot came down hard on his left hand, he had
to let it go. By this time, the copter had moved out over the sea.

  He held on for a few moments longer, dangling with just his right hand. But then his killer stomped on those fingers, too—and that was it.

  With an otherworldly scream, Yuri Zmeya fell into the stormy sea and was quickly swallowed up by the waves. With that, the huge copter flew away, disappearing into the storm clouds.

  Suddenly, Dozer’s radio came alive. It was the men who’d made it onto deck one. They’d reached the EEC room, and after a quick firefight, they had managed to take it over. They were in the process of shutting down the carrier’s engines. The group of 7CAV troopers down near the wreckage of the two Sherpas had finally overcome the special security troops and the pilots they’d been fighting in the gunwales, thanks to troopers who’d made it onto deck one attacking the Russians from the rear.

  The carrier was theirs.

  Great relief washed over the Americans when they realized what they had done—but the euphoria lasted about three seconds. Because at that moment, there was a great boom and three enormous flashes of light went over the carrier and crashed into the sea close by. The explosions were so hot and powerful, the water they threw into the air immediately turned to steam.

  Now everyone looked down toward the stern to see Convoy 56’s second monstrous battle cruiser coming up on the carrier’s starboard side.

  “Oh, fuck,” Dozer cursed. “These guys must have orders to sink this baby if it ever falls into enemy hands.”

  Another fusillade of giant shells went over their heads, fired by the battle cruiser’s huge complement of fourteen-inch guns.

  Dozer quickly called his command leader back inside the ship and explained what was happening. But there was nothing anyone inside or outside could do. True, they were in control of the burning carrier and just about all of the crewmembers were dead. But the gun battle inside the ECC had ruined the primary and secondary command systems for all of the carrier’s weapons.

  Basically, they were sitting ducks, defenseless against the oncoming warship.

  Another barrage went over the Americans’ heads and hit what was left of the carrier’s superstructure. Each shell carrying two thousand pounds of explosive, the three resulting blasts were massive, further tearing the carrier apart. There weren’t many ships in the world that could actually sink a titan like the Isakov, but this battle cruiser was one of them. And its task was made all the easier because the stricken carrier was not able to fire back.

  The next volley would be right in the middle of the flight deck, and that might be enough to crack the carrier in half. The battle cruiser was so close, Hunter could see the gun crews adjusting their aim points.

  “We’ve come too far for it to end like this!” Dozer yelled over everything.

  Hunter couldn’t disagree.

  But suddenly, just as the killing shots were about to be fired at them, there was another great roar and a mighty splash of fire and water.

  When the smoke was blown away by the brutal wind, the battle cruiser that had been firing at them was no longer there.

  Dozer turned to Hunter. “What the hell just happened?!”

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  May 8

  The Hummer was taking a real beating as it made its way down the narrow, unpaved trail in the Pine Barrens.

  Between the boulders, the sand pits, and roots as thick as tree trunks, its shock absorbers were ready to give up the ghost, in more ways than one.

  The two men in the Hummer had just driven from Free Tennessee to New Jersey, seventeen hours, nonstop. Buzzcut and ripped, with tat sleeves and earrings, they’d gone by many aliases over the years. Currently, they were Phil and Don. But most people knew them as the Cobra Brothers, the best helicopter gunship team in the world.

  They’d gotten through to Bull Dozer just two days ago; he’d said he’d be in touch. A follow-up message had arrived twenty-four hours later: Start driving and leave your copters home. We’ll have some for you when you get here.

  Normally Phil and Don flew AH-1 Cobras, heavily armed, highly maneuverable gunships—hence their nickname—but Dozer said he just needed pilots.

  The Cobra Brothers were hardened veterans of the many wars fought across the continent in the past few years. They’d been in battles against the Russians, the Asian Mercenary Cult, the Fourth Reich, the Circle, and others—all of these clashes involving heavy combat. But they’d never experienced anything as frightening as driving through the Pine Barrens at night.

  Strange lights in the trees. Bloodcurdling shrieks around every turn. Bizarre creatures running in front of them just long enough to get caught in the headlights before disappearing again. Worst of all, that feeling, which they could not shake, that someone was following them.

  By the time they reached the base’s main gate at about 2100 hours, just past 9:00 p.m., they were nervous wrecks. The gate consisted of a recently cut white birch that lay across two stacks of boulders. That was it. Two folding chairs were nearby.

  But no one was there to meet them as Dozer had promised. True, they were about an hour early, but still, where were the guards?

  They could see into the hidden base, which wasn’t so hidden at the moment. Dozer had told them what to expect—and this wasn’t it. The camouflage roof was wide open; anyone flying overhead could easily spot the place. Vehicles and runway equipment were scattered all over; the place looked abandoned. There was no sign of life anywhere.

  “Not the fun place I expected,” Don said dryly.

  “All’s not right here,” Phil replied.

  They collected their M-16s and night-vision goggles and started across the runway. They were heading for the Quonset hut, but halfway across the landing strip, they came upon a large red drawing someone had smeared onto the tarmac.

  Viewed through night vision, it looked like a grotesque smiley face, except the smile was depicted as a semicircle of garishly drawn surgical stitches. The crudeness of it made it even more disturbing.

  Phil reached down and touched the reddened part of the tarmac.

  “Bull said this place was kind of spooky, right?” he asked Don.

  “The ride out here didn’t give that away?” Don replied, his weapon up. He was feeling the really bad vibes now.

  “Well, it gets worse,” Phil said, looking at the red substance on his gloved hand. “Because this ain’t paint. …”

  Chapter Thirty

  May 8

  Dominique woke up hoping it was all a bad dream.

  But as soon as she saw the unfinished, plaster-patched ceiling above her bed and the MOP painter’s cans and brushes and tarps in the corner, she knew it wasn’t so.

  “When will they get this room done?” she thought out loud. She had to admit she liked 30 Rock much better than Tower Two of the World Trade Center.

  What hadn’t been a dream but seemed like one was still fresh in her mind; sleep could not erase a moment of it. Flying out to the carrier in the storm, the battle to get on and then off the ship. Grabbing the Magilla.

  Seeing Hawk. …

  Punching Hawk.

  Her hand still hurt from hitting him.

  She studied the splotches of white paint over her head again and thought, How can I expect anyone to understand all this when I can barely understand it myself?

  That was her daily morning prayer.

  She slipped out of the bed and showered, methodically scrubbing herself up and down.

  Toweling off, she prepared herself mentally before walking back out. Although she’d been asleep some of the time—and pretending to be asleep for a lot more—she and Zmeya hadn’t talked much since returning from the hellish trip out to sea.

  He was supremely pissed off about what had happened to Convoy 56. But his successful retrieval of the special box he referred to as the Ma
gilla seemed a bit of a balm to him. She’d heard him on the radiophone several times, basically saying that as long as they had the Magilla, they could live without everything else.

  He had not said one word to her about his brother or what he’d done to him. She could still hear the horrible screaming; it echoed in her ears. At the time, Zmeya had mumbled that one more person would have overloaded the copter and doomed them all. But that was it.

  Of course, she didn’t mention her encounter with Hunter at the bottom of the ship.

  That she would have to take to the grave.

  She walked into the living area to find Zmeya at his desk looking out on the city as usual.

  His aide-de-camp was there, updating him on the NKVD’s relocation to its new headquarters at the WTC.

  “Per your orders, about eighty percent of our people are here and in place,” the man reported. “That includes all our field officers, as you requested. They are now populating the midlevel floors here in Tower Two, the spaces MOP had been working on before … the trouble started.”

  “Building security is in place?” Zmeya asked. “Inside and out.”

  “Again, exactly per your orders,” the aide said, adding, “It won’t be like 30 Rock. We won’t be trapped if anything goes wrong. We’ll have a way out. A secure way out. On the other hand, it will be very hard for any interlopers to go anywhere in this building if they don’t know how our security is wired up.”

  He hesitated a moment then asked Zmeya, “Do you want the latest dead and missing figures from the fire inside 30 Rock? One of the CRPP members is among the missing.”

  The aide was sure this would give Zmeya pause; the members of the Committee of the Revolution for the Protection of the People were the closest Zmeya had to friends. But the commissar just waved him off.

  “Next. …” he said.

  Dominique walked around the side of his desk and into his field of vision. Off in a side room was the bright yellow box containing the mysterious Magilla. Zmeya was wearing its activation key attached to a chain around his neck.