But as he pulled up, a burst of AA fire caught his tail section. He felt the F-16 yaw out of control temporarily, and he nearly lost it avoiding a radio tower. He brought the plane under control, although it took all his might on the foot pedals to keep it level.
He spotted the chopper once again, this time flying out away from the city and toward the desert. Hunter turned the 16 around to pursue, only to see a small SAM flash up toward him. He peeled off instantly, but the warhead exploded close by, shattering his already cracked canopy. Hundreds of pieces of the exploded missile got sucked into his jet’s air intake. The plane stalled, but he quickly restarted the engine. It stalled again, and he pumped the emergency fuel-release lever and started the engine again.
“C’mon, baby,” he said under his breath. “C’mon, stay with me.”
His airspeed now was down to less than 100 knots. The noise inside the cockpit was deafening, and things were flying in and out at alarming speeds. He felt like he was losing his beloved F-16 piece by piece. Still, he kept the chopper in sight ahead of him.
His engine coughed once again, and the 16 pitched to right. He regained control and throttled up a little more. The chopper was going at about the same speed as the crippled jet fighter. He throttled up even more and started to gain on it. He had no more Sidewinders—he couldn’t have used one anyway. This was a job for his cannons.
He placed himself on the chopper’s tail and fired a short burst. The shells streaked by the white and gold Hind’s tail rotor, several of them finding targets.
He closed in on the copter and fired another burst. The force of the powerful cannons going off nearly jolted the 16 out of control, but he quickly regained level flight. This time the cannon fire found its intended target, the chopper’s fuel tank.
Now, as the misty cloud of fuel flew back into his open cockpit, he fired a third time. He saw pieces of the Hind’s tail rotor fly off. Just as the chopper started to drop, the F-16’s engine stalled again. Hunter put the jet into a shallow dive and crossed his fingers. The engine came back on again.
He was now at barely 1000 feet, the chopper was at 700. Its rear end was smoking and its fuel leak getting worse. They were getting farther out in the desert with only an hour of sunlight left—he had to wonder if Lucifer knew where he was going.
He dropped down even farther and put another burst in the Hind. That did it. The smoke started pouring out of the chopper now and it veered out of control. He followed it down. The pilot put the burning craft into a semihover, and Hunter shot by it, his own plane doing a fair amount of smoking.
He did a careful loop and came back just as the copter was going through a controlled crash. It slammed into the side of a large sand dune, bounced hard, and came down for good.
One more loop and Hunter spurted right over the Hind. Two figures jumped out of the chopper, one of them wearing black robes and a hood, the other a standard flight uniform. He had no trouble figuring out which one was Lucifer.
But now the F-16 stalled again, and he knew that this time it was for good. He pulled the nose up and started looking for a level piece of sand to set down on. The engine coughed a couple times, telling him he couldn’t get fussy about a landing spot. A fairly flat stretch of desert just below the dune where the Hind went down looked to be his best bet.
He glided in, wheels up, the cracked canopy obscuring his view somewhat. Then he hit—hard. He was jostled around the cockpit, as every light and buzzer went off at once. Waves of sand flew everywhere as the jet plowed into the soft ground.
“There goes the paint job,” Hunter said grimly.
The battered fighter finally came to a stop. Its nose was buried three feet into the sand, its tail end was smoking. But he didn’t have time to think about it.
He jumped out of the cockpit, grabbed his M-16, and looked around. Lucifer and his pilot were climbing the dune in front of him. He couldn’t lose them now. He checked his rifle’s magazine. It was full. He pulled his helmet visor up and took off after the two men.
The chopper pilot foolishly took a shot at him as he was coming around the back of the smoking F-16. Hunter aimed and pumped off three rounds, dropping the pilot with three bullets through his heart.
Lucifer picked up the dead man’s rifle and continued climbing the top of the dune. Hunter double-timed it up the dune, drawing even with the heavy robed man just as they reached the summit.
They stood and faced each other. Hunter in his ripped and worn flight suit and helmet, Lucifer in his black robes right out of central casting. It was the first time Hunter had seen the madman since he had crashed his party on top of the World Trade Center. It was also the first time he saw the horrible facial scars.
Each was holding a rifle on the other.
“Well, Hunter,” the man sneered at him. “We meet. Again.”
“Yes, Viktor … ” Hunter felt almost tongue-tied talking to the super-criminal. It started with two military forces heading for a collision in the Suez Canal, and now it came down to this. Just Hunter and Viktor.
“I have to admire your pluck, Hunter,” Viktor said in his singsongy whine. “I’ve been watching you ever since you crossed the Atlantic. There was no shortage of assassins willing to get rid of you. You dodged our missiles. You didn’t blink when we sent those robot Ilyushin-28s after you, or when the Panatella air force took you on. And you were very clever figuring out my hundred-arms-of-Briareus idea. And even ghosts don’t scare you.”
Hunter was silent.
“So what do we do now, Mr. Wingman?” Viktor continued. “Take ten paces and draw? I’m sure you are better at such things than I. You should just shoot me now.”
“No, Viktor,” Hunter said, barely containing his temper. He hated this man, hated him for everything he stood for. “Shooting you would just inflame all those drooling idiots you’ve brainwashed into joining your sick, perverted cause. Death is too good for you. What you need is a slap of justice.”
“How noble, Hunter,” the man said. Hunter heard him try to pull the trigger of the AK-47 he was holding. But it had hit the sand many times in the climb up the dune and now it was hopelessly jammed.
“Nice try, Viktor,” Hunter said. “But I’m not about to kill you. What I am going to do is march you out of this desert and all the way back to America.”
The man seemed genuinely surprised. “America?” he asked. “What in Hell’s name for?”
“To stand trial,” Hunter said, the anger rising up in his voice. “For war crimes committed against the people of the United States of America.”
For the first time, the black-robed man lost his sneering grin. He actually looked worried. “You’re mad,” he said. “What makes you think you can get me all the way back to America?”
“What made us think we could stop your fleet?” Hunter shot back. “You destroyed a good part of my country, Viktor. And I’m going to see that you pay for it.”
“You foolish, idealistic patriot,” the man said, his sneer returning. “You have no country! When are you and your super-hero friends going to realize that? You lost the war, Hunter. There is no United States.”
Never before had Hunter been so tempted to shoot a man in cold blood. He would be doing the world a favor.
“You’re wrong, Viktor,” Hunter replied, calmly. “As long as one person can say it, believe it, be willing to die for it, there will always be a United States of America. What you and your kind just can’t get through your bullet heads is that men were born to be free. Many brave men died today fighting for that idea, Viktor. Many men died when you unleashed The Circle War. And many men died when the Big War was started, I have no doubt, by your countrymen. Or is it ‘former’ countrymen, Viktor?”
“Don’t stand and preach to me, you flag-waving son of a bitch,” Viktor just about screamed at him, a slight hint of a Russian accent creeping into his voice. “What the hell do you have to be so proud about? Your leaders weren’t the most honorable men who have walked the earth—”
Viktor shook his head. “Hunter,” he said slowly. “It’s the question of power you don’t understand. Who else can project their face across hundreds of miles? Defeat entire armies without firing a shot? Who else on earth could have turned that babbling idiot Peter into something from your worst nightmare? Don’t you realize the control I have over men’s souls?”
“Don’t even try to bullshit me, Viktor,” Hunter said sharply, cutting him off. “You’re dead wrong. You might be able to control men’s minds—with trickery, hypnotism, and laser beams. But you cannot control their souls. All those brave soldiers who died today, fighting to stop your evil—you may have tried to spook them, but they carried on, didn’t they? They may have been scared, but in their souls they recognized you for what you are: a bloodthirsty terrorist. Nothing more.”
Viktor shook his head, troubled that he was losing the debate. “Ah, Hunter,” he said, stroking his devilish beard. “You are just untemptable. It’s just too bad we don’t think alike. Together we could—”
Hunter held up his hand, raising the M-16 with the other. “Don’t even say it. I’d rather be brain-dead than think like you. Anyone who would kill, maim, and uproot as many people as you have doesn’t even deserve the justice you’ll get back in America.”
Viktor laughed again. “But, Hunter,” he began, “as a military man you should know that I was just following orders—”
Suddenly, a shot rang out. Viktor’s throat exploded in a burst of blood and bones. He was stunned. He held up his hands to his throat and looked at his own blood. Then another shot hit him, right in the center of the back, exiting through his breast bone. He looked at Hunter, shook his head feebly, then fell face down in the sand at Hunter’s feet. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Hunter immediately hit the dirt. Someone had shot Viktor from the back. He looked out over the dune and saw a vehicle parked about a half-mile away, with two uniformed men standing near it. One was holding what appeared to be a rifle with a long telescopic lens.
Hunter reached down into his flight-suit pants leg pocket and pulled out the small pair of binoculars he always kept there. He put them to his eyes and focused just as the two men were climbing into the truck.
They were wearing brown uniform shirts and dark brown pants with desert boots and chaps. Each man was wearing some kind of military-issue pith helmet. Hunter strained to take in more about the men.
Then he saw it …
It was an emblem, displayed on an armband both men wore. A red circle, with a particularly twisted design inside. Despite the raging heat, Hunter felt an ice-cold chill run through him. That emblem …
“It’s a goddamn swastika … ” he whispered, not wanting to believe it.
As he watched, the two men drove off in the opposite direction. He followed the truck through the binoculars until it disappeared over the eastern horizon.
“Nazis?” he asked himself. Then he looked at Viktor. The dead man’s body was exuding blood that was quickly soaking the loose sand beneath it.
“Were they gunning for him?” Hunter asked himself, looking at the body. “Or me?”
He trudged back to the crippled F-16, and was surprised to hear the radio crackling. It was just about the only thing that still worked in the plane’s cockpit, and that was only because it powered directly off the 16’s batteries.
“Hunter, Hunter, Hunter, F-16, come in … ”
He recognized the voice. It was Crunch. Hunter reached into the shattered cockpit and retrieved his flight microphone. “Hunter here … ” he said, wearily. “Go ahead, Crunch … ”
“Hawk, Jeezuz, where the hell are you, buddy?”
Hunter looked around. “Beats me,” he said. “Out in the middle of the desert somewhere.”
“Are you okay? Did you catch Public Enemy Number One?”
“Viktor’s dead … ” Hunter replied, not quite believing his own words.
The radio crackled. “Dead?” Crunch too was surprised. “Sounds like a long story.”
“It is … ” Hunter answered, the image of the swastika emblazoned in his mind.
“I can’t wait to hear all about it,” Crunch went on. “But first, we’ve got to come and get you.”
“Take your time,” Hunter said, watching the sun go down. “I’m not going anywhere. Plus we’ll need a heavy lift chopper. My airplane is slightly bent out of shape.”
“Serious damage?” Crunch asked.
Hunter looked over the battered F-16. “Nothing that can’t be fixed,” he said, managing a proud smile.
“Well, look, Hawk,” Crunch continued. “We cleaned up this mess here at Ismailia. Greased all the Hinds and sank both those battlewagons. Saved a lot of people on the western bank too. A couple of platoons of Football City paratroopers jumped in and they’re helping the Aussies and the Gurkhas take care of the wounded. We were able to set the planes down about a hundred miles west of the Canal.”
A three-second-long burst of static interrupted the F-4 pilot temporarily. It cleared up and he continued. “Anyway, Hawk. I have some good news for you. First of all, we found one friend of yours, a guy named Yaz. He’s alive.”
Hunter shook his head in an effort to clear it out. “Yaz? Alive?”
“Yep, he’s beat up but safe,” Crunch reported. “We found him floating down the Canal in a big, old wooden box. He must have been tossed into the water when the carrier went up and grabbed on to it … ”
Wooden box? Hunter thought. It had to be the wooden box Peter used to sleep in. How strange that the decrepit piece of pine would turn out to be Yaz’s salvation.
“Anyone else?” Hunter asked. “Any more of the British officers from the Saratoga?”
“No, Hawk,” Crunch reported. “A lot of soldiers and sailors. Some Italians. Frenchmen, Spanish. Quite a few Americans. All those women you guys had on board are safe. Three of the frigates made it and that guy Olson will pull through. But all the Englishmen are gone, I’m afraid. No sign of O’Brien, the Irishman, either … ”
Hunter felt a pang of sadness rip through him. He wasn’t surprised to hear they had all perished. But now the reality was setting in. He knew he’d miss them all terribly.
“Another piece of good news, Hawk,” Crunch went on. “The advance elements of The Modern Knights landed at the northern end of the Canal just a little while ago … ”
Suddenly a major burst of static interrupted the transmission. It took more than a minute of Hunter twisting dials before the connection was weakly reestablished.
“Hawk?” Crunch said, his voice growing very faint. “Hawk, I’m losing this signal. Look, switch on your air-sea-rescue indicator. We got an AWACs with us and we’ll pick you up when it gets light again. Okay?”
“Sure,” Hunter said, reaching underneath his cockpit seat to retrieve the small air-sea-rescue blackbox. He pushed its sensor button and it immediately began to hum.
“We’ve already got a lock on you, Hawk,” Crunch said, his voice fading out for good. “Stay warm, pal, and we’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
“Okay, Crunch,” he said. “Thanks. Over and out … ”
Now he was truly alone.
It was already getting cold. He felt his mind start to flood with questions, emotions. But he quickly, calmly blocked it all out. He was too tired to wrestle with it all right now. The time to think about it all would come later, he told himself, staring into the brilliant desert sunset.
With that, he climbed into the F-16’s shattered cockpit, and cleared the seat of all debris. He unfolded the large American flag Yaz had given him and wrapped it around himself to keep warm.
Then he lay his head back and went to sleep.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Wingman Series
PROLOGUE
THREE
YEARS HAD PASSED since the United States lost World War III …
Although the Americans were the victors in the great battles of the War, they ended up the losers in the deception that followed the ceasefire. After arranging for the assassination of the President and his Cabinet, the traitorous US vice president allowed the country’s defenses to drop long enough to permit a flood of Soviet missiles to obliterate the American ICBM force while it was still in the ground. This sneak attack left the center of the country—from the Dakotas down to Oklahoma—completely devastated. Now a nightmare swath of neutron radiation, these Badlands effectively cut the once-great country in two.
The “peace” that followed was dictated from Moscow. Called “The New Order,” it mandated that America be divided into dozens of small countries and free territories. All references to the “old days” were prohibited. Now it was against the law to carry an American flag or even utter the words “United States of America.”
Still reeling from their battlefield defeats during the war, the Soviets had a great interest in keeping this New Order America fractionalized and unstable. Through their agents and terrorist allies—and sometimes by direct intervention—their devious plans guaranteed that America would be constantly at war with itself. Early conflicts involved the leaders of the murderous Mid-Atlantic States—the hated Mid-Aks—trying to wrest control of the entire East Coast. Later battles involved the criminal elements now operating in New Chicago in an attempt to take over the free-wheeling but democratic independent state of Football City, formerly known as St. Louis.
In both cases, Hawk Hunter, the fighter pilot hero known as The Wingman, rallied the democratic forces and directed the defeat of the Soviet-sponsored aggressors.
But these victories for the forces of Freedom only led to an even greater conflict, known as The Circle War. A deranged Soviet KGB agent named Viktor Robotov managed to invade America from within—arming himself with thousands of Russian surface-to-air missiles. Only through much cunning and bloodletting did Hunter and the democratic forces defeat Viktor’s Soviet-led Circle Army at the Battle of Platte River.
Lucifer Crusade Page 33
