Sky Ghost

by Maloney, Mack;

  So he had nothing to shoot at the missile and he would soon lose the ability to chase it. What could he do?

  He knew he first had to catch up with the missile and pull even with it, no matter how much gas it took. So he laid on the throttle and flushed the toilet and watched the reserve fuel needle go down and the fuel warning light pop on. But the airplane burst through the air with renewed power.

  It took him but a minute to pull even with it. But already the coastline of Massachusetts was coming into view. This DG-13 was one of the missiles targeted for downtown Boston. Hunter knew he had to act quickly, or the terror weapon would surely hit its mark.

  With no ammo, Hunter really had only one choice. He flew a little ahead of the DG-13 and with the last of his fuel, laid on his engine hoping to disrupt the air flow in front of the missile. But the weapon just wobbled a bit and continued blundering on its way.

  Hunter tried again, this time putting the ass end of the Pogo just a few feet away from the missile’s snout, but again the flying bomb only wobbled a bit and resumed its course.

  Hunter had only one trick left. The coastline was looming up very fast. He might not have enough time to do it, but he had to try. Without thinking about it, he yanked the control column up, left, then left again. A moment later he was riding directly underneath the missile. Then, gently, he moved up on its right side. Then with a flick of the steering yoke, he tipped the Pogo violently to the right. His wing smashed against the missile’s, jarring it loose from the fuselage. Hunter hit it again, the missile’s wing began to flap some more. He hit it again and again. And again. Finally on the sixth try, he hit it hard enough for the wing to fall off. That’s when he kicked the Pogo all the way to the right. The missile fell away crazily to the left.

  The big bomb spiraled down, impacted on a deserted beach next to a jetty, then bounced up and went into the side of a cliff. Hunter got the Pogo back under control and put it into a very steep climb. The missile went off two seconds later. The explosion was so huge, the flames chased Hunter right up to 4000 feet.

  But he didn’t care.

  He was suddenly laughing again. He’d killed the missile and lived to tell about it.

  He turned the Pogo over, and though now dangerously low on fuel, he buzzed the huge crater made by the explosion. Already the seawater was running into it, creating a small lake right on the edge of the famous Cape Cod seashore.

  How strange was this, he thought. How fitting as well…

  Hunter pulled up and turned the plane back towards the inside of the Cape. As he did, he flew above the cliffs and noticed that they were out of place for the landscape. These were the highest places around, and as he passed over one particular place he thought he could see a farmhouse below him and a field that went right up to the edge of the cliff. It looked like a hayfield.

  And when Hunter flew over it, he felt even better than when he first became airborne.

  Why did he feel this way, he thought, looking down on this little farm with the hayfield at the edge of the cliff.

  It would be a long time before he found out.

  Chapter 5

  THE ATTACK SIRENS FINALLY wound down at Otis.

  At the last squeal, people began emerging from their hiding places. The shelters emptied out. The slit trenches too. People gathered in small groups and began discussing what had happened, which was useless, because none of them really knew. The attack warning had gone off, but there was no attack. It wasn’t a drill; they would have been notified by now if it had been. Was it a false alarm? It would be a rare occasion if it was.

  But something else had happened here. Just as the alarm had gone off, someone had stolen one of the base’s Pogo verti-planes. These two events had to be related—the people knew no other way to think about such things. But just how they were related, they didn’t know.

  Only the small group of men on the sixth floor of the admin building knew the answer to that—and even they weren’t sure what had happened exactly.

  “Well, this guy is long gone now,” Agent Z was saying as he scanned the skies all around the base. “Though God knows where.”

  The phone rang. X picked it up, listened briefly, then hung up again.

  “That was an intercepted call from coastal patrol,” he told the others. “They report a large explosion over near Nauset Heights.”

  “He crashed?” Z asked.

  “They said it was very big—maybe a German missile,” X replied. “There’s a hole down there the size of a football field. That sounds a lot bigger than one he could have made.”

  “Maybe there really was an attack then?” Zoltan wanted to know.

  “If that was the case, where did the missiles land, Swami?” Z taunted him, irritated that the psychic officer would even dare to speak.

  “It really is a mystery now,” X relented. “Too bad that guy is gone…”

  “Don’t be too sure of that,” Z said.

  They all looked up at him.

  “Why?” they asked.

  Z was standing at the big window looking out at the coast with his binoculars.

  “Because I think he’s coming back…” he said.

  “Coming back?” Agent X and Zoltan said together.

  They all rushed to the window, and sure enough, they saw the telltale exhaust trail of the Pogo approaching.

  “This is rather impossible, isn’t it?” X said, never taking his eyes off the oncoming verti-plane. “He should have run out of fuel long ago.”

  “Why would he come back?” Zoltan wondered aloud. “That’s what I want to know.”

  Z turned to him.

  “You know, for a guy that supposedly possesses so many psychic goods, you’re asking a lot of questions…”

  Again, Zoltan almost said something—but thought better of it, and kept his mouth shut instead.

  By now the groups of people who’d been chatting out on the flight line were aware that the Pogo was returning as well. They were pointing and gesturing as the plane approached, all of them just as surprised and startled as the men in the admin building.

  Many began running towards the big circle painted on Runway 4, where the Pogos usually landed. A security detail, its vehicles equipped with high-pitched sirens, made their way for the same place.

  X picked up the phone and was instantly talking to the base’s security officer.

  “Arrest the individual flying that plane,” he told the man before gruffly hanging up.

  The plane went right over the admin building, losing speed and altitude as it did so. As the three agents and the mystic watched, it came to nearly a complete stop. At the same time, it moved its tail down and its nose up and went vertical, just like that.

  The Pogo was not a pilot’s dream. The reason they were used sparingly was they were a bitch to land. The pilot had to get a hover set and then look over his shoulder and ease the thing down. It was like tapping one’s head and rubbing one’s belly at the same time, as someone once put it. Up was down; right was left. Some Pogo landings went on for many agonizing minutes; the pilot backing off, going higher, only to complicate his task because the higher one went, the longer and more painful the landing process would be.

  But not this pilot—this very surprising individual. He did it completely differently. As soon as he went into his hover, he simply cut the engine way back and the Pogo fell—backward—toward the big circle.

  And just as everyone was convinced it would crash, the pilot cranked the engine again, in effect putting on the brakes. Then he touched down without so much as a bump.

  It was such a piece of artistry, some people applauded. But then the security troops arrived and the crowd scattered.

  The pilot climbed out—and accepted a brief spate of renewed applause. Then he met the security people at the bottom of the access ladder and went calmly to the paddy wagon. The security truck slowly began to drive away.

  The phone in the sixth floor office rang a moment later. X answered it. It was the
base’s top security officer.

  “We have him,” was the message. “Now what do we do with him?”

  It was a good question. X and Z looked at each other. Neither wanted to take on the responsibility of this strange case. What the hell was this guy? A villain? A hero? A spy? A madman? They’d be months trying to figure it out.

  No, neither one wanted to get involved in this thing, not so close to what should be the end of the war.

  They had better things to do.

  So it called for a quick decision, like many quick decisions made when victory was pending. What would they do with this man, now back in their custody?

  “I say send him to Sing Sing,” X declared. “With the rest of the freaks.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Z replied. He picked up the phone again.

  Zoltan was astonished. “You’re going to send that man to prison?” he asked. He couldn’t believe it.

  But they ignored him.

  “Make arrangements to transport the prisoner to Ossining Military Prison,” Z told the base security officer. He listened for a moment, then cupped the phone and said: “They want to know on what charge?”

  X and Z had to think another moment. “Theft of government property?” X suggested.

  “Sure…or something,” Z agreed.

  Zoltan lit another cigarette. “I think this is a big mistake,” he said. “This man, he is not just an ordinary person. I mean, look at what he did here today. There are some pilots that still can’t land a Pogo and they’ve been flying them for 10 years!”

  X finally turned back towards him and fixed him in his steely gaze. “You want to join him in the clink, Swami?”

  Zoltan’s heart went into his throat. He had no doubt the OSS agent could get him locked up just as quickly as this strange Hunter character.

  So he took the cigarette out of his teeth and drew a line across his mouth. The message was clear: his lips were sealed.

  “Theft of government property,” Z said into the phone. “Give him, um, let’s see. Ten years…OK. Bye.”

  Z then gathered his notebooks and put them into his briefcase.

  “Well, that’s that,” he said, snapping the case closed with a flourish. “Where are we going to eat dinner?”

  “Your choice,” X replied, getting his coat and hat.

  At that moment they both looked up at their other colleague.

  Agent Y hadn’t said two words during the whole time. He was standing at the big picture window now, looking out on the huge air base, watching as the armored police wagon took the strange man away to prison.

  “Problems, my friend?” X asked him.

  But Agent Y didn’t really hear the question. He turned around and looked at them both, his face blank, as if he was coming out of a trance himself.

  “You know what’s really strange about all this?” he asked them.

  They both shook their heads.

  “The strange thing is,” Agent Y told them, “I think I might know that man.”

  Chapter 6

  THE ENORMOUS GERMAN BATTLE cruiser slipped into the German-occupied Spanish port of Cadiz at exactly midnight.

  The ship had been at sea for nearly two months, a long time these days, and this stop was to be the last of its last patrol. The ship captain’s orders to his crew were to cool off the double-reaction engines, destroy all sensitive documents and await further orders.

  In days past, when the cruiser returned from patrol, families of the crew members would be on hand to welcome the vessel back. Sometimes there was recorded music, speeches, a small celebration. Reunions. Then preparation for the next cruise would begin.

  But there was no celebration this time. No loved ones, no mechanical oompah-band pumping out reverb polkas. This time the return of the battle cruiser had been kept a tightly guarded secret. The port itself had been sealed off. Armed soldiers lined all the docks, the harbors, the roofs of nearby buildings. They blocked off all roads leading in and out of the city itself. A curfew from sundown to sunrise had been declared. Violators would be shot on sight.

  These were very strange edicts for the port city of Cadiz, or for any part of Occupied Spain at all. The German Army had rolled into Spanish territory shortly after the occupation of France in 1940 and had been here ever since. Nearly two generations of people of mixed Spanish and German blood had come and gone, and indeed Spain was now more German than Spanish. The people felt this way, and so it was unusual for them to be treated as their forebears had been 50 years before. Curfews, soldiers in the streets, orders to shoot on sight—these things had not been seen in these parts for nearly a half a century.

  But then again, how often did a messiah arrive?

  The ship was drawn up to its berth by the automated docking system, run by the enormous Mark V computer housed in the largest building in the port. Save for a few of the ship’s top officers, and a squad of SSS guards, the crew was confined to quarters. All windows were shuttered. Absolutely no conversation would be permitted, electronic or otherwise.

  A convoy of armored vehicles was waiting at the dock. Personnel carriers mostly, three high-speed Tiger-7 supertanks were also in evidence. These frightful machines carried a crew of 10, an enormous 188-mm gun and could travel nearly 80 miles per hour on the open road. These three were just about the last ones left in the German inventory.

  There was a stretch Mercedes limousine on hand too, and it was this vehicle which was now driven up to the dock, where the gangplank from the sailing castle had been placed.

  A flurry of hand signals and walkie-talkie blasts bounced between the ship and the dock. The port and the city were secured; this was confirmed over and over again. Five massive Messerschmitt helicopter gunships were circling high overhead—yes, the skies were secured too.

  Finally, the main hatch leading from the ship’s bridge opened and a dozen heavily armed SSS troopers came out They were followed by a phalanx of the ship’s officers. Then three more armed SSS guards. Behind them, a dark figure, dressed all in black, stepped out.

  A hush went over the port. Some fool played a spotlight on the man’s face. Thin features, a short beard. Black hair. The man looked directly into the light and the bulb exploded.

  Startled, the officers hustled down the gangplank; one quickly opened the limo door. The figure in black climbed in, the door was closed behind him, and the entire motorcade sped away. Out of the port, through the deserted city and to the Spanish Autobahn beyond. They headed north—the entire roadway was clear ahead of them for miles. At top speed they’d be in Berlin by morning.

  Two citizens, two middle-aged sisters, did dare to look out their window while all this was going on. All the security in the world could not prevent them, or anyone else in the city, from knowing what was happening. Not even a well-planned German security net could keep hidden a secret this big.

  “This man who has come to save us, to save Germany,” one sister said to the other as the motorcade flashed by. “They found him out in the ocean.”

  “Walking atop the waves?” the second sister asked. “Just as they always said it would happen?”

  “Yes,” the other replied in a hushed reverential voice. “Walking atop the waves. That’s exactly how they found him…”

  Near Bermuda

  The next morning

  Somebody had finally found the third floater. It happened about 40 miles off the northern coast of Bermuda. The waves were high and the wind was blowing at 30 knots. A rainstorm had just passed through the area and it was cold for this time of year.

  A small rescue launch was sent to pick him up—a very small boat from a much larger one. The rescuers were astonished when they reached the man and found he was still alive. They quickly pulled him onboard.

  He was dressed very oddly; right away they felt he was from a different place than they. His skin was very white—he’d been in the water a long time. And he was very thin, as if he were malnourished.

  Yet once they laid him at the bottom of
their launch, he simply opened his eyes and stared up at his rescuers.

  “You’re alive.” one of the men blurted out. His accent was very thick.

  “I know,” said the man they pulled from the sea.

  “How did you get out here?” a second rescuer asked.

  The man thought for a moment.

  “That I still don’t know,” he finally answered.

  He looked up at the men. They were in gray uniforms, but they wore long scraggly beards and had oddly curled hair. Their arms, hands, faces, and chests were emblazoned with outlandish tattoos, most of them six-pointed stars.

  The man saw their boat was just one of many. Indeed, a long string of boats stretched out before him. Though they were armed, these weren’t naval vessels; rather they looked like large passenger ships that had been heavily armed in a very haphazard fashion. They were rusty and old, but their decks were crowded with people. Tough, angry faces on the seamen, gentle, inquiring faces on the women and children. They were all looking down at the man who’d just been pulled from the water.

  “What is your name?” one of the rescuers asked him.

  The man from the water thought a moment.

  “I don’t know,” he lied. Actually he’d remembered his name sometime during the long night. But he suddenly didn’t want to tell these people anything.

  “Well, from now on, you’ll be known as Rower #1446798.”

  “Rower?” the man asked, confused.

  The rescuers indicated the ship nearest to them. It was a huge cruise liner, which had been rigged with sails, and two huge outboard engines on the stern. But it also had hundreds of holes on its lower hull, down near the water line, and from these holes hundreds of oars were sticking out.

  “Yes, a rower,” one of the rescuers said. “The Lord has obviously sent you to us. He knows we always need an extra pair of hands to row.”

  Chapter 7