Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  Yet, regardless of whatever radar-absorbent material this enemy plane was coated with, the fact remained that it was a boxy, unwieldy, even archaic design, not used by the U.S. military in decades. Both radar and the naked eye should have been able to see it with no problem.

  But David Sykes, despite sitting inside one of the most state-of-the-art cockpits in the world, was effectively flying blind. He felt like a stranded swimmer, treading water in an ocean where a shark lay in wait.

  The glow of Kristina Lake’s satellite terminal reflected upon her features- blond hair, swept sternly back, pale face hard, yet undoubtedly attractive out of uniform.

  “Okay,” she said into the radio. As a rule the CIA Special Operations Group refrained from using ranks or call signs or anything else which would associate them with the American government. “You should be entering the town now. Turn right onto Norman Manley Highway. I’m going to lead you around the target to cut them off.”

  On the ground, Raine threw the bike into a sharp right hand turn and flew down the long, straight road. There was still no sign of King and Sid, which only prompted him to drive faster. He swerved around an old banger which trundled up the road with a traditional all-the-time-in-the-world Jamaican pace.

  “Take the next left,” Lake ordered.

  Raine cut in front of an oncoming van, earning an elongated screech of tyres and a sharp honk of the horn but he ignored it as he ducked into the rabbit-warren of little streets which riddled Port Royal, following Lake’s directions, twisting left, then right, then left again.

  The crumbling stonework of the colonial buildings stretched past at a blur as he guided the bike down narrow allies, avoiding dumpsters and packing crates and the occasional late night stroller.

  “Okay, now take the next-”

  “Shit!”

  Sykes threw the helicopter into a sharp, stomach churning lurch to port as the streaking ribbon of an AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missile whooshed on by. Behind it she could see the enemy plane suddenly appear, dropping down from the blackness of the night sky. It looked almost like one of those optical illusion pictures where by only by holding it at the right angle would the image on it be realised. To Lake, it looked as though the Caribbean night sky were the canvass and the enemy plane the painting.

  “Which way?!” Raine shouted through the cockpit speakers, even as Sykes brought the helicopter out of its awkward tumble, the G-force lessening under his expert guidance.

  She checked her console. “Damn it! Double back, you’ve overshot-”

  “Belay that!” Sykes cut her off. “Get the hell out of there!”

  Lake snapped her head around. Through the cockpit window she saw the black plane drop towards the ground and open fire with its multiple machine guns on the tiny figures of Raine and O’Rourke on their bike.

  The bullets tore into the ground just behind Raine’s back tyre, the big black plane thundering down above him. He pulled back on the handlebars, lifting the front wheel off the concrete road. O’Rourke grabbed him around his chest to prevent from falling backwards as he spun the bike on its rear wheel only, a full 90 degrees and shot into an ally just as the stream of bullets shattered the road they had just occupied.

  The Catalina swept on by, banking just above the rooftops, the thunderous air of its propellers punching into Raine’s bike and threatening to topple it. He kicked out, struck a dumpster and up-righted the bike. He refused to slow down as he raced down the alley, directly towards a wooden fence.

  A dead end.

  Raine twisted the bike’s throttle harder, squeezing every last ounce of speed from it.

  “Shiiiittt!” O’Rourke called out as soon as he realised Raine’s intentions. He gripped the driver tightly around the waist as Raine pulled hard, lifted the front wheel off the ground once again, inches from the fence.

  The force of the impact was shocking. The front wheel crashed through the rotten panels and the fence literally exploded, huge splinters of wood cart-wheeling away down the street.

  The front wheel slapped back against the uneven roadway of a larger side street and Raine cut west, dodging potholes as he lanced into the night.

  “Talk to me, Lake!” he called into his radio.

  “They’re coming about for another pass!” Sykes warned even as he threw the chopper into evasive manoeuvres, lurching down just as a trail of tracer bullets erupted from the Black Cat.

  Lake was trying to do a dozen things at once- work as Sykes' co-pilot, monitoring the enormous banks of computers and guidance systems, manning the Super Stallion’s armaments and guiding the team on the ground. Raine’s bike appeared as a red smudge on her infrared, now directly below the chopper. She also tracked two more red blobs which headed towards the western harbour.

  “Take the second exit on your right,” she told Raine.

  “Lake,” Sykes snapped at her. “Shoot the goddamn bastards!”

  The Catalina rushed towards them, fast and furious, its design, though antiquated, nevertheless intimidating. Once upon a time, the Catalina Flying Boats had been the workhorse of the U.S. Navy, its amphibious landing capabilities making it perfect for either search-and-rescue missions or bombing operations, heading deep into Japanese territory during WWII. Now, it was as though a ghost of those famous planes, now outfitted with modern technology, was haunting the skies of Jamaica. Fast, silent and deadly.

  Lake worked the Super Stallion’s gun controls and let rip with a barrage from the chopper’s shoulder mounted machine gun. The Catalina was almost hit and banked hard, almost completing a 360 barrel roll as it escaped their weapons fire.

  Sykes adjusted the chopper’s torque, pivoting the vehicle where it hovered in the sky above the Caribbean island. Lake kept the volley of machine gun fire chattering away, chasing the aeroplane. It began to climb so Sykes altered pitch, bringing the helicopter’s nose up to allow Lake a better shot. But, try as she might, the black plane stayed seconds ahead of her leading bullets.

  Then, in front of their eyes, once the Catalina increased altitude above the Super Stallion’s, it vanished from sight, literally appearing to fold back into the blackness of the night sky. It vanished from radar at the same instant.

  “Holy mother of god,” Sykes blasphemed. “What the hell is this thing?”

  “Lake!” Raine pleaded through the cockpit speakers. She snatched her attention away from the ghost plane and glanced at the heat signatures over laid on a satellite map.

  “Left! Turn left!”

  Raine followed the delayed order to the letter and twisted left, mounting the sidewalk and ducking down a tiny ally between two buildings. It was barely wide enough for the width of the handlebars, the cobblestone walls of the old town blurring by as he raced down it.

  “The end of this alley will bring you out onto the harbour. Time it right and you’ll come out just in front of the targets!”

  The Team Leader hung low to the handlebars as he skidded onto the waterfront. To the left was Port Royal’s fish-smelling harbour, decrepit old trawlers moored to the concrete dock. In front of him, the ‘Pirate Party’ still raged. Close to three hundred pirate enthusiasts- dressed as everything, from Long John Silver to Captain Hook to Jack Sparrow and their scantily-clad wenches- milled about with plastic cups of cheap beer and Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum.

  They blocked the street directly in front of him, oblivious to the two motorbikes racing into their midst.

  “Move!” he yelled at them. “Get out the fucking way!”

  The partygoers on the outside of the gathering seemed to notice him then, staring wide-eyed with alcohol induced shock. The Team Leader ploughed into them, lashing out with his legs to kick their knees, crumpling them to the ground out of his way. His one remaining soldier followed with Sid strapped to his bike, while the dead weight of Benjamin King, his head bloody, pressed against his own back.

  The stirrings of indignant panic began to simmer among the crowd which still
refused to move quickly enough out of his way.

  Holding the bike under control with one hand, he wrenched out his handgun and shot Captain Jack Sparrow square in the forehead!

  Pandemonium ensued. Some of the partygoers didn’t even know what had happened but were nevertheless caught up in the confusion, adrenaline causing them to run any which way they could. A few even jumped into the dirty water of the harbour to escape the madness that gripped the party as men and women literally clawed at each other to escape the gunman.

  They also opened up a tunnel through the heaving bodies which the Team Leader took full advantage of. He raced down the open space, weaving around any stray pirates, faster and faster, gun in hand, remorselessly ready to gun down any idiot who happened in his way.

  That idiot turned out to be one Nathan Raine.

  Raine’s bike burst out of the alleyway and cut through the throng of people. Assuming he was another lunatic gunman, they screamed and ran away from him as he drove out into the middle of the waterfront and twisted directly in front of the Team Leader.

  O’Rourke, SCAR Assault Rifle already mounted on his shoulder, had a perfect headshot. He drew a bead on the Team Leader’s exposed forehead, even as the hostile tried to squeeze the brakes to halt the bike and twist out of the way.

  O’Rourke squeezed the trigger.

  At that precise moment an almighty explosion bloomed up in the middle of the waterfront as a Hellfire Stinger missile slammed into the ancient harbour, shattering the stonework. Massive chunks of concrete and the older foundations of the harbour blew high into the sky, along with a dozen bodies, the pirate partygoers, hurled high, arms and legs cart-wheeling, agonized screams echoing as the fireball consumed them.

  The concussion blast punched into Raine and O’Rourke, dragging them and the bike into the sky, spinning in a tangled mass of limbs, metal, wood and stone.

  The Team Leader, unlike O’Rourke had theorised, had not been swerving to avoid his head shot. Instead, ducking low over the handlebars, he led the other bike in a wide berth, skirting around the explosion which the Catalina’s pilot had warned him about a split second before the missile hit the ground.

  He raced on through the hailstorm of debris, keeping low, shielding his head from chunks of rock and his exposed flesh from the searing heat, emerging on the other side of the destruction and ploughing on at full speed.

  Raine hit the ground hard and felt lumps and chunks of concrete pepper his body, digging into his flesh. He smelt the sickly scent of singed hair and the tingle of a minor burn to his left cheek.

  He felt like doing nothing but lying there, flopped out upon the harbour side, exhausted, doing nothing.

  Instead, he pulled himself up to his feet and stared in disbelief at the devastation around him- bodies burning, a huge crater surrounded by chunks of rubble. Beyond the curling cloud of smoke he saw the two motorbikes racing into the distance. His own lay on its side not far away.

  He ran to it, hauled it up, and glanced at O’Rourke. The big black man stirred and looked up. Grimacing, he called to him; “Go!”

  He didn’t need telling twice.

  He skidded around and shot off the mark once more.

  “Eagle Eye One,” Raine’s voice came over the chopper’s speakers. “I’m still in pursuit. Can you slow these bastards down for me?!”

  Despite the military’s best-kept-secrets, David Sykes had heard about Raine’s previous betrayal. He was a traitor to his country, to his uniform, to his men. But he couldn’t deny that he was damn good to have around in a fight.

  “We’re on it,” he promised, dropping the helicopter down towards the rooftops.

  “Lake,” he ordered. “Keep an eye out for that sneaky bastard out there!”

  “Roger that.”

  The Super Stallion thundered over the rooftops and the tiny figures of the three motorbikes came into view, two out ahead, one in hot pursuit. They raced down the now deserted harbour side at phenomenal speeds.

  Sykes was faster.

  Dipping the chopper’s nose, he charged like a raging bull, roaring fast, first over Raine, then sweeping above the targets, moving out ahead of them. He worked the joystick and the foot pedals, altered the chopper’s torque, increased the rotor blades pitch, and dropped the enormous flying machine towards the ground, yards in front of the fleeing bikes, cutting them off-

  “Dave!”

  Lake’s warning came a fraction of a second too late. He saw it too, the ghostly appearance of the WWII-era Black Cat appearing from nowhere directly in front of them, spewing forth a deadly missile, propelled upon a tail of fire, which slammed into the Super Stallion’s broadside.

  In that last moment before death, he did the only thing he could think of to do.

  He reached down and pulled on Kristina Lake’s ejection seat.

  Raine couldn’t believe his eyes as he tore across the waterfront, the needle on his bike’s speedometer straining.

  In the sky directly in front of him, Eagle Eye One erupted in an all-engulfing ball of flame, swallowing the metal carcass of the giant airborne beast. He saw a shimmer in the sky as the black plane pulled up hard to avoid the hellish flames, for a moment silhouetting itself against the fiery destruction.

  The two bikes carrying King and Sid squeezed beneath the hovering helicopter a split second before impact and now raced away beyond it. And in a heartbeat’s time, the hulk of the Super Stallion would plummet down to earth, blocking off Raine’s pursuit.

  It was insane even for him, he knew. But he did it anyway.

  Instead of slowing, he bent over the handlebars to offer less wind resistance, squeezed the bike between his knees and twisted the accelerator as far as it would go.

  A hairsbreadth before the burning carcass of the giant helicopter smashed down onto the ground, Raine raced on under it. For an insane moment, he realised, he actually closed his eyes, but he nevertheless felt the incredible heat of the inferno blazing around him, heard the clang of metal striking stone, the pop of exploding gas tanks, followed by the whoosh of igniting jet fuel.

  Only yards behind his back tyre, the wreckage smacked against the ground and sent up a billowing wall of heat which actually picked up his rear wheel and threatened to flip him over. Through luck more than skill, he maintained his balance and the wheel smacked back down, caught purchase on the ground and shot him forward, faster than ever.

  Ahead, at the end of the water front, he saw the incredible sight of the old fashioned WWII-era Catalina Flying boat swoop in front of the bikes, its far-side wheel only half on the jetty, one wing out over the water, one wing millimetres away from the harbour side buildings.

  Raine coaxed every last ounce of speed from his tortured bike.

  The Black Cat’s rear loading ramp opened, scraping sparks as it hit the ground.

  Raine flew towards his abducted friends.

  The Black Cat slowed slightly.

  The two fleeing bikes accelerated.

  They bounded up the ramp and slammed into a safety net within the plane’s hold.

  Raine gained on the slowing plane, racing only feet behind the now closing ramp. He saw the Team Leader inside, a smug expression upon his battered face.

  And then the black plane accelerated, moving away from Raine’s bike.

  It lifted off just as its forward wheels dropped off the end of the concrete jetty.

  Raine didn’t slow, even with the end of the road literally in sight.

  The plane took to the sky.

  Raine hit the end of the jetty and both he and the bike, propelled by their phenomenal speed, took to the air also, sailing through it. He pushed off from the bike, arms outstretched, reaching desperately for the plane.

  He fingers fell just short and with sickening realisation, Nathan Raine dropped down into the tranquil waters of the Caribbean while the enemy plane carrying Benjamin King and Alysya Siddiqa vanished into the blackness of the night sky.

&
nbsp; 30:

  Tortured Souls

  United Nations Headquarters,

  New York City,

  USA

  “What the hell went wrong?” Alexander Langley demanded over the communications link to Laurence Gibbs. He could hear the tension in the other man’s voice and a twisted part of him missed that post-action adrenaline come-down.

  He experienced no such thing now, however. Whereas Gibbs was currently standing on the waterfront in Port Royal surrounded by emergency vehicles, Langley had been beating back the wolves. The Jamaicans were demanding an explanation for the explosive events in Port Royal while ‘those in the know’ were demanding answers to the exact same question he had just asked Gibbs.

  “What went wrong?” Gibbs snapped. “Someone must have sold us out!”

  Langley could understand that assumption. The operation in Jamaica had been top secret, known to only a handful of people. He had watched the entire event unfold from the safety of the U.N. Tactical Operations Centre (TOC), a state-of-the-art command facility located five stories beneath the Secretariat Building. It was laced with so much fancy, ultra-modern, state-of-the-art surveillance technology that Langley felt like he was standing on the set of a science-fiction movie. He remembered the first time he had seen a TOC, newly recruited from the Rangers to Delta Force. He had been awed then by the array of computers- boxy, bulky, beige-coloured machines with enormous monitors and tangled knots of spaghetti-like cables trailing to telephones and headsets. Archaic by today’s standards. Here, there wasn’t a cable in sight. The computers were waiver-thin, the keyboards nothing but fully customisable projections which somehow knew what non-existent key one was tapping. He felt like a dinosaur, reborn into the twenty-first century.