Sky Ghost

by Maloney, Mack;

  He crossed over one inactive runway and reached the main strip. Here a line of Navy Pogos was gleaming in the moonlight. They looked like they hadn’t flown in as long as the Boxcars, even though Zoltan knew at least a couple of Pogos bounced off from Otis everyday, just so the pilots could get their required flight time in before the anticipated Muster-Out Day.

  Zoltan too was counting the hours to the cease-fire; he wanted the war to end because he believed the economy of the country and himself would be better off for it. But cease-fire or not, he was getting out of the service in 15 days on a medical discharge. He had a bad leg, injured during a 14-day tour of duty in a huge SuperSea combat platform. He finally got a doctor to go along with him and with his OK, he would be out of the service for good by the end of the month.

  Once discharged, he hoped to get a head start on everyone and go back to his former profession as a traveling magician and hypnotist. His daughter was at their home in the Catskills right now, booking dates for him starting the first week of September. Last time he had spoken with her, they had gigs stretching into January already. He really didn’t want anything to happen that would gas those shows.

  He walked briskly and was soon within a half mile of the admin building. Throughout this little journey, he’d been aware of his moon shadow dancing on the tarmac in front of him. But now, suddenly, the blue shadow disappeared. Zoltan stopped. What had happened?

  He turned around and saw that a gigantic bank of very dark clouds had suddenly appeared on the eastern horizon and had blotted out the moonshine.

  Zoltan felt a shiver go through him. Never had he seen clouds so dark and moving so fast.

  Instinctively he hunched his shoulders and pulled his uniform collar close to his neck.

  Then he quickened his pace even more.

  By the time Zoltan arrived at the Assessment Board office, one of the elderly lieutenants was fast asleep.

  The other two officers were simply sitting there, puffing on pipes, not reading, not talking, just waiting.

  Zoltan faked a salute and put his bag on the table.

  “Where is the subject?” he asked Captain Pegg.

  Pegg simply pointed his pipe towards the far end of the table and Zoltan took a look.

  He immediately felt his breath catch in his throat. The man sitting at the end of the table was looking back at him in the strangest way. And he looked so…different. Zoltan’s heart began pounding. The aura in this room was very strange.

  Zoltan turned back to the three elderly officers—the second lieutenant was awake by now. Behind them was a mirror, and Zoltan knew who was sitting behind it. He shivered again. There were many strange vibes in this room. Bad ones, good ones. Unidentifiable ones.

  Zoltan put his hand to his forehead again, but this time just to ward off a headache. He knew it was going to be a long, strange night.

  Zoltan’s first duty was to fill out a half dozen very extensive forms.

  On these he had to write down, over and over again, his credentials, his military background, his success rate, and so on. The war had been on for 58 years and yet no one had discovered a way to cut down on all the paperwork.

  Zoltan’s MagicPen ran out of ink halfway through the sixth form and he had to nudge Captain Pegg awake to borrow another writing instrument. All the while, the man at the end of the table sat calmly, staring out the window, through the blinds, at the line of deep blue runway lights beyond.

  Finally Zoltan completed the paperwork. He massaged his wrist to get the circulation going again and pushed the documents under Pegg’s nose. The senior officer harrumphed himself awake, and the commotion was loud enough to wake the two lieutenants.

  Pegg pretended to read Zoltan’s paperwork, then lit his pipe again.

  “Where exactly do you want to do what you do?” Pegg asked the psychic officer.

  Zoltan took another scan of the room. The sleepy officers, the mysterious subject, the three men hidden behind the mirror. All the weird vibes were still here. He had to go to another location.

  “A small office will do,” he told Pegg.

  Pegg turned to one of his looies. “Fred, you want to handle that, please?”

  Fred, the lieutenant on the right, rose slowly from his chair, adjusted his back, his hips, and his kneecaps, then walked over to a wallphone and slowly punched in three numbers.

  A drowsy corporal appeared at the door about a minute later. Lieutenant Fred told him his needs. The corporal yawned and then gestured for Zoltan to come with him. Zoltan in turn looked down the table at the mysterious subject.

  “Would you mind coming with me, sir?”

  They marched down the corridor, the corporal shushing them twice, telling them, “Be quiet. People are asleep.”

  They finally reached a small office at the end of the hall. The corporal opened the door, switched on the light and turned to go. Zoltan caught him by the shoulder.

  “Stick around, junior,” the psychic officer said, in a rare exhibition of rank-pulling. “I might need you.”

  Actually, Zoltan almost always worked alone. But something was very puzzling about this particular subject, this man plucked alive from the sea. Just being in the same room with the guy seemed a bit too eerie for him. Zoltan wanted someone else around.

  The corporal grumbled as he pulled a chair out in the hallway, sat down on it, and promptly fell asleep. Zoltan sat behind the office desk, gesturing that Hunter should take the chair opposite him.

  “You’ve spoken with a number of people since being found I take it?” Zoltan asked him. “You’re probably getting sick and tired of all these questions.”

  Hunter just shrugged. “I keep putting people to sleep,” he replied. “That’s probably a bad sign.”

  Zoltan thought a moment about this reply—but then plunged on. The man’s voice was very odd; so were his features. Not scary. Not frightening. Just odd.

  “Do you know what I do?” he asked Hunter.

  “Nope.”

  “I’m going to put you under hypnosis, hook you up to a couple devices at the same time, and ask you some questions. Have you ever been under hypnosis before?”

  Hunter’s mind suddenly flashed a scene before his eyes. He’s on a train, in a large berth surrounded by many lit candles. There’s a very young woman standing before him, dressed in a long silk Asian gown. She unbuttons the front of the gown and reveals two beautiful breasts…

  “Sir?”

  Hunter shook himself out of his daze.

  “Have you ever been under before?”

  Hunter thought another moment then replied: “I really don’t know.”

  Zoltan pretended to take notes. The truth was he wanted to get this whole thing over with as soon as possible.

  He opened his equipment bag, lifted out his Truth-O-Meter and his three crystal balls. Hunter looked at the globes and then back at the man as if to say, you’ve got to be kidding me.

  Zoltan had Hunter attach his own contacts from the Truth-O-Meter. One wrapped around his wrist, another around his right ring finger and a third around his head.

  Then Zoltan plugged the device in, tested the power, saw it was good, and switched it on.

  Then he pulled another device from his bag and connected it to the first. It was a box with a small TV screen in it. Zoltan plugged this in too, did a quick test, then switched it on. The screen came alive. On it, a small yellow light began blinking.

  “OK,” he said to Hunter. “Now look at the blinking light. Wipe from your mind the fact that you are hooked to the TOM. Just relax. And tell me everything…”

  Back in the Assessment Board room, the three elderly officers went back to sleep.

  The three men behind the mirror sat silently as well, smoking cigarettes, staring at the ceiling. Though they had no way of knowing it, each man was thinking of the same thing: what he would do after the war.

  Agent X hoped to latch on to a lucrative position with the War Crimes Commission; it was already getting formed u
p in Washington and his contacts were lobbying for him to be hired as an investigator. This would be ideal for him. The position would pay well and be long-term. After so many years of brutal warfare, he was sure that any war crimes trial would go on for 10 years or more.

  Agent Z hoped to go to work for one of the big weapons manufacturers once the fighting was over. Their coffers would be flush with money, he was sure—money looking for a place to be spent. His talent would be very helpful in the postwar environment, he believed, especially in finding another war to fight.

  As for Agent Y, the silent partner of the three, he wasn’t really sure what he was going to do. He wanted to get married, but he’d have to find a girl first. He wanted to build a house near the ocean, maybe further out on Cape Cod. He’d always had visions of a farmhouse right on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the Atlantic.

  Maybe he could actually grow something on it and sell it and leave this crazy life behind…

  Two hours and 20 minutes later, Zoltan staggered through the door of the interrogation room.

  The three elderly officers were in various stages of napping when he burst in. Zoltan fell into a chair, the noise stirring the old men. He was sweating and out of breath.

  “My goodness, what’s the matter with you?” Captain Pegg asked the hypnotist.

  “This man,” Zoltan said, hastily lighting a cigarette. “He’s just told me the most incredible story.”

  “Oh really?” one of the elderly lieutenants said.

  “Well, tell us then,” Pegg said, lighting his pipe.

  Zoltan composed himself and drew heavily on his cigarette.

  “I’m not sure where to begin” he stammered between puffs, opening up a notebook full of scribbling. “He claims that he is from America, and that he is a soldier of the American armed forces. But not the U.S. Army or Air Corps.”

  “Well, we knew that,” Pegg told him.

  “Yes, but he says he’s part of something called the United American Armed Forces. And that America has been fighting a series of little wars for about five years, after the world went through a catastrophic war he called World War III. He says the Americans won that war, but were screwed in the peace talks.”

  “Screwed? How?” Pegg wanted to know for some reason.

  Zoltan took another long drag from his cigarette and checked his notes.

  “He says that the bad guys sent a bunch of missiles over the North Pole that obliterated the middle of the country. Killed a lot of people, drove a lot more a little crazy. Destroyed the fabric of the government. There was a period of anarchy. A lot of people escaped to Canada.”

  “Who were these bad guys? The Germans?” Pegg asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Zoltan said, checking his notes again. “He mentioned so many enemies. Some were called the Mid-Aks. The Family. The Soviets…”

  “You mean the Russians?” one of the looies asked.

  “We’re not fighting them,” the other old looie said. “Are we?”

  “No,” Captain Pegg corrected them. “No one is fighting the Russians. There are no Russians. Germany owns Russia.”

  “No, these were different Russians,” Zoltan insisted. “Some are good. Some are bad.”

  He took another massive puff of his cigarette.

  “But then he says after a lot of fighting, America made a comeback. Not as the United States, but as a bunch of little countries and territories and such. It was broken up that way. And they began their own armies and navies and things. And then they began fighting each other. Or was it the other way around? I’m not sure. Anyway, then the Second Civil War happened, and then the Russians were finally thrown out. And then the Germans invaded and they were beaten. And then the Vikings invaded…”

  “The Vikings?” Pegg laughed.

  “Yes, he swears it,” Zoltan went on. “They had invisible boats and strange weapons and drank some weird drink and…Jessuzz, I don’t know if the Vikings invaded first or the Germans. Or maybe they came over at the same time. In any case, they were all beaten and thrown out—and then these United Americans battled the Japanese. Or people who were like Japanese.”

  “The Japanese?” Lieutenant Jeff wheezed, “Why, there’s no more peaceful, gentle people in the world…”

  “I know,” Zoltan went on. “But he says they fought them and beat them. Then he fought in a place he called Viet Nam.”

  “Viet Nam?” Pegg asked. “Where the hell is that?”

  Zoltan just shrugged.

  “Beats me,” he said. “In fact, I don’t know half of the places this guy says he’s been. But he and his men went down to this Viet Nam place and fought a war there—or maybe two wars, I’m not sure. And well, I just had to stop at that point. I felt like I was going crazy…”

  Zoltan drew heavily on his cigarette and let out a long, troubled plume of smoke. The room grew silent. Outside, the first rays of dawn were beginning to peek through the window blinds. They’d been at this all night.

  “Strange tale,” one of the lieutenants said finally.

  “Little too late in the war to be bucking for a Section Eight, isn’t it?” the other looie said.

  “But I don’t think he’s crazy,” Zoltan said, the words leaving his lips just a bit sooner than he wished. “Not completely, anyway.”

  “Well, how can you say that?” Pegg asked.

  Even the stenographer looked up at him.

  “Yes, how can you say that?” one of the men behind the two-way mirror asked.

  It was X, usually the most cynical of the three. Now even Z sat up and began taking notice again.

  Zoltan grew jittery. His psychic radar was flashing warning signals all over the screen. He really didn’t want to open up this can of worms. He knew that, just like him, everyone just wanted to go home once the war was over. No one wanted any kind of loose strings, and any excuse to give the military a reason to keep them in after the impending cease-fire and armistice. But, on the other hand, this Hunter guy was so weird, so convincing, he just couldn’t be dismissed lightly.

  Finally Zoltan said to the three elderly officers: “I know it sounds nuts, but this man, in some manner, is telling the truth.”

  “That is nuts,” Captain Pegg scoffed.

  “Yes, that is nuts,” X said in his best old guy voice from behind the mirror.

  Z sat a little closer to the one-way glass, as if he might hear better.

  “But is it?” he asked X cryptically. “Wasn’t there a case a few years ago that…”

  X reached over and literally put his hand across Z’s mouth.

  “Cool it, my friend,” he told him coldly. “You never know who is listening in.”

  Z pushed his hand away. “Do you really think someone is bugging us even as we are bugging these people outside?”

  X leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. The subject was closed.

  “Let’s just listen,” he suggested.

  Zoltan was lighting yet another cigarette.

  “That machine of yours has been wrong before?” one of the looies was asking him. “Hasn’t it?”

  “Nope,” Zoltan replied emphatically.

  “Nope,” X parroted him.

  A silence descended on the room again. It was broken only by the erratic puffing of Captain Pegg’s pipe.

  “Well,” the very senior officer said finally. “What should we do now?”

  Another silence.

  “Get some coffee?” one of the looies asked.

  “Talk to him again,” Z said into the microphone and thus into Pegg’s bad ear.

  “Let’s talk to him again first,” Pegg said.

  The looie looked at Zoltan, who crushed out his cigarette and got up to retrieve Hunter.

  “I think this has to go higher up the ladder,” Zoltan told them.

  “Save your breath, Swami,” X said from behind the mirror. “That’s the last place this is going.”

  But just as Zoltan was about to go out the door, it suddenly swu
ng open and the sleepy corporal left to guard Hunter rushed in.

  The three elderly officers were shaken. Behind the mirror, Agents X, Y and Z quickly sat up again.

  “Shit, now what?” Z exclaimed.

  “What’s wrong?” Pegg asked the young soldier.

  “He’s gone,” the corporal replied.

  “Who’s gone?” Pegg asked.

  “That guy,” the soldier replied shakily. “The weird guy. He just got up and ran out of the room. Pushed me aside like I wasn’t even there.”

  Behind the mirror, X reached over and quickly pushed the button on his phone bank.

  “Alert security,” he barked into the phone. “We have an unauthorized individual on this base…”

  “Damn, I don’t need this,” Z grumbled. “Who the hell is this guy that he’s causing us so much trouble?”

  Agent Y, the one who had stayed silent all this time, remained so. But in his head he thought: Now that’s a good question.

  Two seconds after that, the airfield’s attack warning siren went off.

  Chapter 4

  HUNTER WAS RUNNING.

  He wasn’t sure exactly why, but he was running, full-out. Out of the red brick building, across the road, and toward the air base’s longest runway. His body was shaking so much, it felt like his head was going to burst. It was as if he had no control over what he was doing. Something very deep, very primal was telling him to run, toward the runways. Toward the airplanes that sat nearby.

  He didn’t hear the base’s attack warning sirens begin to blare. Didn’t hear the Intruder Alert Klaxons either. It was as if all sound was shut out of his head, all except his own huffing and puffing. All around him, people were running towards shelters, building basements, even slit trenches that seemed to be dug everywhere. Everyone was running in the opposite direction as he.