Sky Ghost

by Maloney, Mack;

  “Now, there’s about a dozen people in other prisons that are being given the opportunity to serve out their sentences in combat. That’s how bad things have become.”

  Hunter just shook his head. Renegades and criminals released from prison to help out the struggling war effort.

  “I think I’ve seen this movie,” he finally told the officer.

  Pegg signaled for the guards to come get him.

  “So? Is it a deal?” he asked Hunter.

  Hunter thought for only a few more seconds, then nodded slowly.

  “To tell you the truth, to get a decent bath and some new clothes?” he replied. “I’d do just about anything.”

  Captain Pegg left the prison 10 minutes later.

  A black, nondescript military car was waiting for him outside. He nodded to the driver, then climbed into the back and settled in beside the car’s only other passenger.

  “How did it go?” the man known as Agent Y asked him.

  “He bought in,” Pegg replied with a cough. “He’ll be on his way within the hour.”

  Y breathed what might have been interpreted as a sign of relief—but was actually one of exhaustion.

  He hadn’t slept in so long he couldn’t remember the last time he’d closed his eyes. Hidden away in their tiny subbasement office in Washington, D.C., he and his two colleagues, X and Z, had continued to pour over intelligence reports from the front, trying to find more clues as to why the German resurgence had taken place.

  In many ways, it seemed to be a fool’s errand, especially to X and Z. Akin to painting the life rafts as the Titanic went down, was how they put it. To X and Z, the reason for the German resurgence really didn’t matter in the end. The war was back on, and America was losing it, and that was it. It was fate.

  But Agent Y was a different kind of person. He believed the tiniest incident could have an effect on the whole. He and his colleagues had narrowed down the first day of the German resurgence to August 15—the day that Hunter and two others were found floating in the Atlantic.

  True, many mistakes had been made by the U.S. military since then, downsized and caught off guard as they were. But could all that be reversed? Could a small twist here change the course of History? If a butterfly flaps its wings over Brazil, does it eventually cause a hurricane over Cuba?

  Y didn’t know. But if the man the Germans had retrieved from the sea was so special that he put the Reich back on its feet and on the offensive in just a few short months, then perhaps the biggest error the U.S. had made so far was keeping the other man pulled from the sea that day locked up in jail.

  And that’s what Y was here this day to change.

  “Do you think he suspects that he is being sprung for reasons other than the fact that he is a pilot and a good one?” the OSS man asked Pegg.

  The elderly officer thought about the question, and then just shrugged no.

  “Well, that is the reason he’s getting out, right?” he asked Agent Y. “I mean, what other reason would there be?”

  “Yes, of course,” Y mumbled, his thoughts more on butterflies and hurricanes and the fact that he already felt a strange connection with this man Hunter. “What else could it be?”

  Pegg cleared his throat and leaned back, and promptly fell asleep.

  Envious, Y just slumped further in the seat and told the driver to get going.

  He had to get back to Washington before X and Z knew he was gone.

  Chapter 11

  ONE HOUR LATER, HUNTER was as far away from his cramped cell in Sing Sing as he could have ever imagined.

  He’d been allowed to shower and get dressed. Then he hustled to the meal hall, where he ate an enormous bowl of oatmeal alone. Then he was given a flight suit for a U.S. Air Corps officer that looked more like something from a movie prop department.

  Then he was blindfolded.

  He was led outside, where a car with a perforated muffler was waiting by the front gate of the prison. It was now about 7 A.M. He was stuffed into the back seat of this car with three other people. The driver, a man with a mild English accent, told them there would be no talking during the trip. Then he gunned the engine and they were off.

  The car drove for more than eight hours. Some of it was over very bumpy roads, some on a very crowded highway. The car was moving very fast, and the driver laying on the horn every 10 seconds or so. Hunter knew they were moving northeast. Not a word was said during the trip.

  By mid afternoon, they were by the sea. Hunter could taste the salt in the air. The distant sound of waves crashing echoed in his ears. They turned due north and the road got very winding, yet fast. Hunter slept, but even in his dreams he was trying to figure out where he was going.

  After an hour on the winding oceanfront road, the car finally stopped. The door opened and a hand came in and pulled him out. The other passengers, who had endured the same long ride in complete silence, were taken out as well.

  They were at an airfield, Hunter could tell. The stink of aviation fuel was something he could never forget. The air was thick with it here.

  They were led away from the car and toward an aircraft Hunter could hear the whine of its engines in pre-warm-up mode. He could sense that this aircraft was large—very large—judging by the smell of gas fumes in the air. But he also knew it wasn’t a fixed-wing aircraft.

  He was put into a large cabin, along with at least six other people, three of them carrying guns, obvious by the rattling. Hunter was placed on a benchstyle seat, facing forward and belted in over his lap and shoulders.

  Then, the aircraft’s engines came to life.

  The rumble started somewhere around his feet, went up through his ankles, his torso, his chest, neck, eyes, and ears. It was so loud, and so deep, his body began shaking with sympathetic movement. The air itself was fluctuating, the growl was so intense.

  “Oh Lord,” Hunter heard one of his fellow travelers say. The voice was hauntingly familiar. It was an Irish brogue. “They’ve put us on an old Beater. Did they really take us out here just to kill us like this?”

  The aircraft lifted off a moment later. It did so not with any kind of grace, but with a huge bang and a tremor that set the bench’s bolts to rattling. The engine noise only got louder as the aircraft groaned itself into the air. For the first time he could recall, Hunter found himself actually fearing a takeoff—that’s how steep and shaky and sharp the ascent was.

  But this feeling quickly passed, and he felt awash in another sensation entirely. He was flying—again. For the first time in a long time he was actually moving through the air. Now his heart was beating faster, but for a different reason. Suddenly all the months in the prison, all the uncertainty of who or what he was—suddenly it was all gone away.

  He was in the air. That’s all that mattered at the moment.

  But what exactly was he flying in?

  That question was answered a few moments later.

  It came without warning. One moment, Hunter’s eyes were blindfolded—the next, the blindfold was gone. A crewman had removed it and handed him an olive-drab ski mask. “Put it on,” a voice said. “It gets mighty cold up here.”

  Hunter did as was told, grateful the blindfold was gone at last. But his eyes could see nothing but white light for the next few moments. He was next to a window, facing the sun, and the rays were strong and they stung his still-fragile retinas.

  But eventually his vision cleared and he was able to distinguish shapes and colors. The wind was suddenly in his face. The most horrendous noise filled his ears.

  What the hell was he flying in exactly? It was very large, painted dull gray inside and out. It had very long thin wings sticking out from underneath the cabin where Hunter was sitting, but he could see no power plants or engines on those wings. The roar of the engines was coming directly above his head. So he looked up, and saw the blurred flare of a rotor blade, spinning right above him. It was one of many.

  Goddamn. They were on a helicopter—yet it was the size
of a jumbo jet!

  “Damn us and bless us,” Hunter heard that brogue say again. He finally turned and looked at the guy sitting next to him.

  He was a small fireplug of a man. Pale face, except for the red nose. He looked like a leprechaun on steroids. Hunter’s jaw simply fell open.

  He knew this man—but he didn’t know how…

  The man stared back at him too—it was obvious he was having the same sensation.

  Finally the man stuck his hand out.

  “How ye be?” he asked Hunter. “Mike Fitzgerald here.”

  Hunter felt his skin go cold. His mouth went dry. The hair on the back of his neck was suddenly standing at attention. He unconsciously moved away from the man, all the while unable to break the lock of his gaze on him.

  Jessuzz, he knew this guy. Somewhere back in his memory, he knew him. He may even have been good friends with him. In fact, they had gone to hell and back together, several times.

  But he was also sure about something else.

  He was sure that this man was dead…

  The helicopter flew on into the night.

  The weather got bad, and the engines on the huge chopper growled even louder. The cabin was unheated and unlit, just like his jail cell, and Hunter was too stunned, too confused, maybe even too frightened to converse with the man next to him.

  So he didn’t.

  He simply kept his eyes left, looking out the window and watching as monstrous black swirling clouds enveloped the huge helicopter.

  The flight lasted four hours. Hunter had slept, fitfully, his mind fighting what his body demanded. But his dreams were full of dead birds, corpses coming to life, and everyone speaking in Irish accents and asking him why he thought everything was so weird.

  When he awoke, his ears detected a slowdown in the huge chopper’s power plants. The man who’d spoken to him was still beside him, cold and not moving. The temperature inside the passenger cabin was below freezing. He was convinced the man was dead.

  But now the helicopter was descending rapidly and the screech of the huge engines began waking up the other passengers. Eventually the man on his right stirred too.

  Hunter wished he hadn’t. He would have preferred the man stay dead. Because if he wasn’t, then Hunter would be certain that this strange place in which he’d landed was indeed hell, or some kind of hell, where the dead come back and your life is a succession of idiots, old men, prison cells, and flying on airplanes you are certain are going to crash.

  Yes, at that moment he thought he finally had his answer. He had died and gone to Hell.

  What had he done to deserve this, he wondered as the chopper simply fell out of the sky, quickly and not under any kind of control. What had he done in his previous life to wind up in eternal damnation?

  He didn’t know.

  Somewhere in among these gloomy thoughts, he heard a voice come over the cracked intercom speaker. The voice was unintelligible, but the others took the message to mean they should fasten their seat belts—quickly. The aircraft engines were screaming like banshees now, and the thick clouds outside gave no clue as to how high they still were or how fast they were actually falling.

  Hunter grabbed for his seat belt and redoubled the clasp, and in the next second there was a huge boom! The chopper shuddered from top to bottom—-and each man’s head hit the ceiling, seat belts or not.

  A second later, they were down.

  The incredible down wash from the big chopper’s blades had created a huge snow squall. That’s why it looked as if they’d been flying at 10,000 feet when in reality, they’d been about 10 feet from the hard surface.

  “Did we crash?” someone asked.

  Hunter thought, maybe we did. He forced the door open and jumped out. The others followed him. He rolled and scrambled as far and as fast as he could.

  When he looked back at the helicopter, he saw the top rotor assembly was smoking heavily. A pair of smaller helicopters were buzzing about it, spewing purple-K foam from nose-mounted nozzles onto the hot engines. Finally the Beater’s blades stopped spinning and the whirlwind died down, and Hunter realized they’d landed at a huge air base out in the middle of a very frozen, cold forest.

  Gander. Newfoundland.

  Somehow he knew that’s where he was.

  Two trucks appeared out of the last of the snow squall. They stopped, turned around, and backed up to where Hunter and his fellow passengers stood, shivering in the freezing temperatures. Two men jumped out. Hunter’s fellow passengers were given uniform packs that were clearly marked: Tropical Combat Issue. Each man was handed a flight helmet and a pair of gloves. Then they climbed into the first truck. As the drove away, the last man on board, the one who’d said his name was Mike Fitzgerald, gave Hunter a ghostly salute.

  Now it was Hunter’s turn. He was given a pack that read: Polar Combat Issue. Then he was put into the back of the second truck, alone.

  The truck drove to the opposite side of the base and stopped outside a barracks. An officer appeared from within. He was wearing so many layers of clothing his face was all but obscured. He checked Hunter’s pack and then took a long time just staring at Hunter’s long hair and beard.

  “No one had a chance to shave you up?” he asked him. “Or give you a buzz?”

  Hunter just shrugged.

  “No sir,” he replied.

  “Well, there’s no time now either,” the man said.

  Outside the truck a slow rumbling began. Hunter’s ears began to hurt, the dissonance was so extreme. This was not some monster helicopter he was hearing. These were airplane engines winding up. But it sounded as if an entire squadron of aircraft had suddenly turned on their engines all at once.

  The noise became so loud, so quickly, it became impossible to talk, impossible to think.

  “That’s your ride now!” the officer managed to yell above the growing din. “Go!”

  Hunter climbed down from the back of the truck to find the sun was brightening ever so slightly on the horizon.

  But then it became dark again. Something in the snow and the wind was moving in between him and the horizon. It took a few moments for him to realize that it was another airplane. This one larger and more frightening than the chopper which had brought him here.

  It was a fixed-wing aircraft, at least twice the size of the Beater. Its wings held eight propeller engines on each side. Its design looked vaguely familiar to him, especially its snout, which carried an extended radar dome that looked like a long black nose. C-124 Globemaster was the designation that suddenly popped into Hunter’s head—but this airplane was bigger than the vague memory he had of that airplane. Much bigger.

  And the problem with this plane was it looked to be in worse condition that the aptly named Beater helicopter. Much worse.

  First of all, the 16 piston engines were all smoking mightily, not a good sign at all. They were sparking flames and bits of flash and sparks too. The underside of the wings were soaked with aviation fuel. One spark in the wrong place might touch off a fuel line and then a fuel tank and then things at the base would get very warm very quickly.

  What’s more, the plane itself looked horribly beat up. Its numbers and insignia were faded, some of the windows were cracked, one was even boarded up with a piece of plywood.

  Hunter felt a very long chill go through him. The last thing he wanted to do was get on this flying piece of shit. But he was in the army now. And he would have no choice.

  He hustled out onto the frozen tarmac, ran up the ramp and packed himself into the rear cargo hold along with boxes of Q-rations, bottled water, cases marked AERIAL BOMBS, and barrels of aviation fuel. A half dozen soldiers were thrown on board with him. They were wearing GI issue winter clothing and carrying enormous field packs. None of them looked over 16 years old. From their insignia, Hunter determined they were a unit of Air Guards, infantry soldiers attached to the Air Corps.

  They sat inside the hold of the big plane for more than a half hour. Not talking, not
moving, just waiting. This wasn’t a delay. It was simply the time it took for the airplane’s engines to warm up properly. Normally Hunter would have been concerned at the sight of the gas and the bombs—but at this point, he found it a morbid comfort. At least he knew that if the plane went down it would go down big and quick. The aviation fuel and the bombs would take care of that.

  Hunter was near a cracked window and watched as the ground crew went to each of the engines on his side, staring up at the contra-rotating propellers for a few minutes with huge fire extinguishers in their hands. And just for comfort, a deicing crew in a cherry picker-type truck was washing down the enormous wing with what looked to be the most ineffective deicing agent imaginable.

  Hunter was a betting man—or at least he thought he was. Looking out on these preflight operations, he figured the chances of this airplane ever getting into the air were slim. The chances of it actually arriving at its destination—wherever that might be—seemed infinitesimal.

  But eventually all 16 engines were turning to someone’s satisfaction. The noise and the shaking were enough to make Hunter’s teeth rattle—and ironically, with all the pyrotechnics about, there was no heat in the cargo cabin.

  In the end, there was no warning. The huge plane just rumbled once and started moving forward, very slowly.

  Hunter sat back and held on, but kept his eyes out the cracked window. The airplane picked up speed; the interior rumbled even more; jostling the rations and the gasoline, the bombs and the passengers. Hunter wished he’d seen the runway they were about to use—he’d have been able to tell how long it would take for a plane this size to actually get airborne. He guessed it would have to be at least five miles long.

  They started rolling faster.

  He looked around the cabin. Concern was written all over the faces of the young Air Guards. He wondered what they saw on his.