Sky Ghost

by Maloney, Mack;

Four long arms, twisted at the middle.

  The fourth picture was added, then the fifth and finally the sixth. And that’s when the pattern became crystal clear.

  By painting the roofs of selected bunkers, the Germans had in effect created a huge swastika, several miles in length, and situated perfectly on an east-to-west axis. Obviously it had been laid out just so high-flying spy craft could photograph it

  “Jessuzz, look at that.” X couldn’t believe it.

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s a swastika,” X told him coldly. “And why? Well, shoot me if I’m wrong, but I think they’re sending us a message here.”

  Z just looked at him. “And that message is?”

  “I think,” X said, “they’re telling us: Fuck You.”

  It was strange, because at that precise moment, they both felt the ground shake. Not a lot, but enough to notice. The ice cubes in X’s drink began to tinkle. The last wave to hit the beach landed a little funny and off-kilter. Even the two beauties, necking on a blanket nearby, noticed it. They came out of their clench long enough to look over at the OSS agents.

  “Are there earthquakes in the Bahamas?” the blond asked.

  Both agents shook their heads. They didn’t know.

  Then, a moment later, they heard another sound, another rumbling. They looked up and could see an aircraft was coming out of the north, quickly descending out of the clouds. It was an octocopter, a massive eight-rotor helicopter capable of carrying up to 200 passengers.

  This one was heading right for them. They watched as it took about half a minute to get to within 150 yards of the beach. Then it went into a hover and came down about 100 yards away from them, dislodging X’s sun umbrella from its mooring, knocking over his drink tray, scattering his selection of grapes, and blowing sand all over the two amorous bathing beauties.

  X shielded his eyes against the billowing sand, watching his little piece of paradise simply blow away.

  The octo finally set down and its rotors began to slow. A door opened, and a familiar figure jumped out and began running toward them.

  It was their colleague, Agent Y.

  “Well, the party’s really over now,” X said.

  They both knew something must be up for Y to come all the way over from the mainland in such a big aircraft.

  “Hear the latest?” he asked the two agents.

  “Yes, sunny all day,” X replied sarcastically. “You came all the way down here for that?”

  “The Germans just iced Paris,” he said.

  “Iced?” both X and Z asked.

  “Flattened,” Y was more specific. “A missile barrage of some kind. They’ve killed everyone in a 20-mile radius. There’s nothing left. Not even the Eiffel Tower.”

  X and Z just stared back at him. “You’ve got to be kidding,” X said, slipping into denial.

  “You think I’d come all this way just to pull your crank?” Y asked him.

  “Jessuzz, he’s serious,” Z said, the news just beginning to sink in.

  “When did this happen?” X wanted to know.

  “About an hour ago,” he replied, looking out to sea. “They said it was so bad, we might even get some shock waves, maybe even a tidal event.”

  X and Z looked at each other. The jolt they’d just felt. The Earth had moved. Literally.

  “They’ve killed a million people, maybe two, or even three,” Y told them, his voice sounding almost as if he was in shock. “Including the President, the Cabinet, maybe as many as 200 of our top military guys. This is big trouble.”

  “Bastards,” Z swore. “Got everyone in one place at one time. Then, zap!”

  “We’ve all got to get back up to D.C.” Y told them. “There’s going to be a national emergency declared any minute.”

  X pieced the photos back together on his lap. The huge swastika looked even more ominous now.

  “Boy, when these guys say ‘Fuck You,’” he said, “they really mean it.”

  The next month was a living hell for Agents X, Y, and Z.

  The war was back on. Battlefronts which had been dormant for months had suddenly come to life.

  The Germans attacked viciously everywhere—a massive simultaneous Blitzkrieg was begun, including yet another brutal invasion of England.

  Caught napping, with its leadership gone, the American forces could only retreat, trying to save as many men and as much material as possible. And among the turmoil and uncertainty, there was the question: How? How had the Germans been able to do it, so quickly, so secretly?

  Called back to active duty, X, Y, and Z worked 24-hour days sifting through the mountains of intelligence that suddenly wound up at their door. Books would be written, all three knew, about the stunning resurgence of the German military. Not only had the Germans won back all of the territory they’d lost in the past two years of the war, they went on the offensive to win new objectives: all of Africa, all of India, all of Siberia. And of course, all of the British Isles.

  Within two months of the Deception at Paris, the Allied Forces held two lone positions that separated Iron Cross Europe from the American mainland: Iceland, and the Azores.

  On Christmas Day, 1997, Germany launched a massive combined air-sea assault on the Azores and won them in three days. After the stunning victory, a German military spokesman told the world press: “We are just trying to win the war.”

  As the OSS’s top intelligence agents, X, Y, and Z were ordered to make some sense of the astonishing German resurgence. How was the enemy able to come back so strong, so quickly from the brink of defeat?

  Finding out would be a daunting task. The German war machine, always excellent at security, had become more secret than ever. Even stranger, German society was rebounding at the speed of light as well. New building projects were exploding all over the Reich. Huge candlelight parades were held in German cities night after night, usually involving tens of thousands of citizens marching around and around in the shape of enormous swastikas. Roof-painting continued throughout Germany too. Along with forest-cutting and field-trimming, the Germans were carving huge twisted crosses across their landscape as if they were trying to communicate with peoples in outer space or on other planets.

  What’s more, throughout the renewed fighting a vast array of new German wonder weapons had been revealed. One was an artillery shell which was fired some 50,000 feet in the air where it exploded and rained thousands of smaller lethal shells on large concentrations of Allied troops below. Hundreds of Me-462 jet fighters, Arado heavy jet bombers, V-6 and V-7 rockets, some carrying poison-gas warheads, had also been used by the Germans.

  The worst wonder weapon of all, though, was a blockbuster high-explosive warhead called the DG-55. Just three of them were enough to devastate Paris and kill 3.2 million people on what was supposed to be the Armistice Day. The warhead was so big, there was no doubt one would be able to sink one of the Navy’s new megacarriers or any of the current line of megaships. The U.S. Navy then was effectively stuck in its home ports.

  There was no arguing then that the speed at which the German war machine had been revitalized was astonishing, almost unnatural. From the brink of surrender to a position of dominance in such a short time was unheard of.

  What was the spark that relit Germany? How had the resurgence been so complete, so massive, so quick?

  In among the many American reversals on various battlefields worldwide, this was the deepest, darkest mystery of all.

  The three agents interviewed hundreds of American military and diplomatic people, often bringing them down to a small, dark, intentionally intimidating room in the subbasement of OSS headquarters and giving them the third degree. This in the lack of German POWs, of which there were none. There was even a shortage of suspected Germans—spies and saboteurs, real or imagined—that the trio of agents had never had a problem securing before.

  But even from all these interviews and interrogations, there was little clue as to what or who was behind the German resurgence
.

  It became so bad, the agents were forced to turn to the Main/AC military-affairs computer, the machine which was hooked into every ship, airplane, supertank, and platoon-size Army unit throughout the U.S. military. The computer kept instructing the agents to whittle down time and events and try to isolate the one specific day, the one specific hour that could be pinpointed as the day the tide turned back in favor of Germany.

  It took many more hours to fulfill this task, many long nights of arguments, frustration, and bad coffee.

  But then, finally, the agents narrowed in on an answer.

  The date, they found out, that things began to change turned out to be August 15, 1997.

  The day three men were plucked from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Chapter 9

  THE FIRST DAY OF January, 1998, found Captain Eric Wolf in mixed spirits.

  He’d just been promoted. His previous exploits in the Atlantic war against the U-boats had not gone unnoticed in Washington. Wolf was about to take responsibility for strategic operations in the entire Atlantic Wartime Command. It was an enormous job of great challenge—especially in light of the recent German resurgence.

  The person who was in the job before him had met a rather inglorious end—he’d dressed in his best uniform and then jumped out his Pentagon office window. It was 15 floors down. The pressure of running the Atlantic war had become too much for him. When Wolf was appointed to his post, they gave him the deceased man’s office. The first thing Wolf noticed was that all the windows had been nailed shut.

  He’d been on the job two weeks now. He’d slept an average of two hours a night in that time. His section was being swamped with reports of renewed German activity up and down the east coast. There were tales of huge new German vessels, battleships, cruisers, flying boats, and submarines. American shipping had ground to a halt; 33 ships had been sunk since Wolf took his new job. Not only oceangoing vessels, but coastal cargo haulers, barges, even pleasure craft. The Germans were getting close again.

  Wolf’s job was hampered by the fact that he had very few resources, such as antisubmarine planes and ships, or men to operate them. Like everyone else, he was the victim of the premature muster-out before the Deception of Paris.

  So when he’d received the message to report to the OSS main office this particular morning, he’d assumed it was for some kind of briefing. Perhaps yet another new design of German warship had been spotted in the Atlantic, or a new kind of U-boat weapon was in the offing.

  But when Wolf arrived at OSS HQ, he was taken to a basement office where three men awaited him.

  These characters were rather grim and war-weary. The room itself was very dark and smelled of bad coffee.

  He was told to sit down.

  “Captain, we’ve called you here to discuss an incident which happened in August of last year,” one man began.

  Wolf had to think a moment. So much had happened between August and the present.

  “You were ordered to investigate some people found floating in the middle of the ocean,” the man continued. “Do you recall?”

  “Yes, of course, I remember,” Wolf replied—as if he could have forgotten that day.

  “There were three people in the water, true?”

  “Yes, that was the report,” Wolf replied, now becoming very curious as to why the OSS men wanted to know about this strange incident.

  “The man you picked up,” he was asked. “What do you recall about him?”

  “He was very odd,” Wolf replied right away. “Definitely a military man. But I was never sure exactly what military he belonged to. I just assumed he was part of a secret unit or something…”

  The three men just looked at each other wearily.

  “And the other two people in the water,” one asked him. “Did you ever get to see either one of them?”

  Wolf just shook his head. “No,” he replied. Then he got brave. “Why do you ask?”

  But the OSS men wouldn’t answer that question. Not in a million years.

  There was a long silence.

  Wolf shifted in his seat. “Is that it? Do you have anything else for me?”

  The man closest to him turned and looked him straight in the eye. “Did you have any chance to recover either one of the other two men that day?”

  Wolf thought a moment.

  “No,” he answered truthfully. “We were under attack. They were too far away. The Germans were very close. They’d fired on us twice, and I’m sure they were preparing to fire again. My Main/AC told me I should withdraw after retrieving the one man.”

  “And it is your testimony that it was impossible for you to pick up the second man, the one the Germans eventually got?”

  Wolf felt a chill go through him. “Testimony?” he asked. “Why? Is this a trial?”

  “Maybe it is,” one man growled at him. “So just answer the question.”

  Wolf began stammering, stopped, and took a deep breath. He knew the OSS was capable of just about anything, especially these days. However, he felt it was best to simply tell the truth.

  “Yes I guess it is…” he finally replied. “I went the way the computer told me to go. Those were always my standing orders. So I didn’t attempt to retrieve either of the two remaining men.”

  That’s when one of the OSS men lost it completely. He suddenly began pounding his fist on the table.

  “Goddamn it man, couldn’t you have at least tried?” he screamed at Wolf, before his colleagues were able to restrain him. “Do you have any idea how things would be different right now if you had just made that extra effort!”

  Wolf was stunned.

  “But…I was just following orders,” he heard himself saying. “The Main/AC told me to…”

  But one of the agents held up his hand and cut Wolf off. Then he got up and slowly opened the door.

  “That will be all, Captain,” he said. “For now…”

  Chapter 10

  Two weeks later

  THE SOUND OF A key turning in the lock of his cell woke Hunter from a very deep sleep.

  The door opened, and the faint light from the bare bulb in the hallway flooded in.

  His two guards peered in at him. What did they want, he wondered. It wasn’t time to go to the library. His breakfast wouldn’t come for another two hours. Maybe he was being executed today…

  That’s when he realized there was a third person with them. He was an officer in the Air Corps. Brown suit jacket, tan shirt, brown tie and cap. He was old. Very old. Wrinkled face, white hair, red nose. His officer’s bars actually reflected some of the spare light from the hallway.

  Hunter recognized him right away. It was Captain Pegg, the ancient officer from that day at Otis. One of the guys he’d wanted to kill.

  Pegg indicated to the guards that he was OK, and they let him into the cell alone. Hunter was slouched in the corner now, both bemused and confused.

  What the hell could this be about?

  Pegg laid his topcoat on the bare cot, then took a seat in the creaky wooden chair across from Hunter.

  “You’re not a chaplain now, are you?” Hunter asked him. “Come to give me instructions on how to meet the Maker?”

  Pegg cackled—and for a moment Hunter thought that he might have actually known this guy before. Back where he’d come from. It was a strange, stray thought.

  “I’m hardly a priest,” Pegg told him.

  He studied Hunter for a moment. He looked different from the last time he’d seen him. It was the very long hair and the beard that was so off-putting. He could have been an artist’s model for a religious card, Pegg thought.

  “I’ll get right to the point,” Pegg told him. “In the past few months, the war has taken a terrible turn for us. The Germans have made headway on every front. They’ve grown stronger. Bolder. Smarter. This time last year, people were chilling the champagne for the victory party. Now, there’s worry about whether we can hang on through the winter.”

  Hunter’s e
ars perked up. The last he’d heard, the U.S. was about to put the sword through the German heart and finally be done with this final phase of World War II. What had happened? And why was this bird here telling him this?

  The guy read his mind.

  “Why? Well, the official answer is, ‘We don’t know,’” Pegg said. “Unofficially, there is new leadership at the very top of the German High Command. All we know is that the enemy has been revitalized to near miraculous proportions, everywhere.”

  Hunter sat up a little more. What the hell was this all about?

  “Why am I here?” the officer asked the question for him. “It’s simple, really. After your actions that day at Otis, you got a file down at HQ that fills its own drawer. Anyone who’s ever read it concludes that you are either a kook, an illusionist, or a guy from outer space.

  “But the plain fact is, we need people who can fly airplanes, and that’s just about the only thing anyone I’ve talked to agrees you can do.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’m here to offer you a way to get out of this place,” Pegg said.

  Hunter sat all the way up now.

  “How so?”

  The officer just shrugged. “It’s simple. The Air Corps needs pilots, and we need them now. You don’t even have to be good. We’re that desperate.”

  He let his voice trail off.

  “Flying I can do,” Hunter replied. “But where exactly would I be doing all this flying? Cargo humping?”

  The officer laughed and shook his head. “You think we’re going to spring you just to have you flying shit from Shiloh?”

  “That would be my guess,” Hunter replied.

  “Well, your guess would be wrong,” Pegg told him. “The guys who were shipping shit are now flying bombers over London. That’s where you’ll be going too. If you survive the flight over there.”

  “You make it sound so inviting,” Hunter told him. “Maybe the food here isn’t that bad after all.”

  The man smiled and appreciated the joke, but then got serious. “Let me tell you something,” he began. “This is a one-time offer. Your choice. You’ll start at the lowest rank possible, and you’re guaranteed to see combat, a lot of it, very quickly. No one will know who you are, or where you came from. But the way I see it, if you choose to stay here, someday someone down at HQ will decide that it’s time to start shooting all the spies and traitors and kooks we’ve got locked up here. Especially if the Germans keep their steamroller going.