Sky Ghost

by Maloney, Mack;

  “Why so nervous?” Hawk Hunter asked him dryly. “Didn’t you know I was coming?”

  Zoltan began squeaking. “Well, yes, of course. But I think you got a wrong impression about me.”

  “And what wrong impression would that be?”

  Zoltan took a breath. “You probably think I was involved in sending you to jail. But I wasn’t…I swear it.”

  Hunter leaned back in the rickety chair. “Who was then? Not those old guys.”

  Zoltan bit his tongue. Did he really have to tell this guy about the OSS agents? Would he kill him if he didn’t?

  “No, not those old dudes,” Zoltan replied finally. “Someone they were working for. They’re the ones who sent you to the joint.”

  Hunter put his left foot up on the edge of the dressing table. It was just enough for Zoltan to see he had a huge double-barrel Colt .45 automatic strapped to his leg. It was his crash survival weapon, literally a hand cannon.

  Zoltan began sweating, even though it was freezing in the dressing room. The guy was radiating strange vibes, though not negative ones necessarily. Just weird ones.

  “Hey look pal, that was so long ago,” he started. “And besides, you’re obviously working for the military now. I don’t have to tell you how screwed up it is. Does it really make much difference now who put you away?”

  Hunter had to agree with him. It didn’t. But that was not why he’d come to see Zoltan anyway.

  “I will tell you this,” Zoltan went on. “They didn’t put much thought into it. The guys who put you away. They didn’t have time for that. You were a nuisance. An oddity, true. But they really couldn’t have cared less about you. Sending you to prison was just the easiest thing to do.”

  “Well, they did me a favor,” Hunter surprised Zoltan by saying.

  Zoltan calmed down considerably after that. Maybe this guy wasn’t going to kill him after all.

  “So?” he said. “Why did you come to see me?”

  Hunter leaned forward a little. But he still kept his pistol in full view.

  “It’s simple,” he began. “Out of all the people I told my story to back then, you were the only one who gave any indication that you might think it was true.”

  “I’m convinced it’s true,” Zoltan answered immediately. And he meant it. He did have psychic ability—he’d been tested for months by the military before getting his officer’s bars in the Psych-Eval unit. It’s just that his powers weren’t always “focused.” So he was usually either right big-time, or wrong big-time. There was no in between with Zoltan.

  And he believed Hunter’s story. He believed he was from another place. A place just like this place, but another place entirely. The question was—and he had thought about this for many months after first meeting him—was he right big-time about this Hunter? Or…

  “Some of it has come back to me in dribs and drabs.” Hunter was telling him. “You could help me out by telling me what I said while I was hypnotized. Do you recall any of it?”

  “Are you kidding?” Zoltan replied. “I know it verbatim.”

  Hunter sat back and put his hands behind his head. “OK then, let me have it…”

  So Zoltan told him everything he’d heard that night. About Hunter falling out of the sky. About his being a soldier for an outfit called the United Americans. About the crazy patchwork of wars they’d fought. Russians. The Mid-Aks. The Family.

  “I didn’t know you were a pilot,” Zoltan said. “Not until you ran out and stole that Pogo. That’s odd.”

  “It was like I was sleepwalking,” Hunter revealed to him. “Until I got airborne that is.”

  His voice trailed away, thinking about that first wondrous moment of flight so long ago. When he took off these days, he still got the thrill, but everything around him was so crazy, it was hard to appreciate it.

  “Well, they eventually found out you’d KO’d two subs,” Zoltan said. “And that you saved a few thousands lives, but they covered it all up. They didn’t have the concept of what a hero is. But I’ll tell you, some of the whispers I’ve heard since…”

  “Whispers?”

  “It’s the tippiest top secret in the country right now. And I only know it because I heard someone in the know blurt it out during a hypno session right before I left the service. I never put it in my report. In fact, they’d probably shoot me if they realized I know what I know.”

  Hunter leaned forward and looked the guy right in the eye. “If I guess it, will you tell me?”

  Zoltan just stared back at him. “Maybe,” he replied.

  “Things haven’t been the same since me and those two other guys were fished put of the water?”

  Zoltan’s eyes went very very wide. “God, man, how do you know?”

  Hunter just shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just know…”

  “Well, that’s it exactly,” Zoltan told him in a whisper.

  The psychic nervously lit a cigarette, wondering if he had said too much—again. Instantly the small room filled with smoke.

  “Those other two guys,” he asked Hunter. “Has it come back to you who they were?”

  Hunter shook his head. “Nope,” he admitted. “Not really, anyway. I do get a sense that one was my friend and one was my enemy, but I don’t know who was who, or which was which.”

  Hunter paused a moment.

  “Does anyone back in D.C. know who the two others were?” he asked Zoltan.

  “If they do, I’ve never heard about it,” Zoltan replied. “My feeling is, they’re as much in the dark about it as you are. But the deep dark secret is that the German resurgence has something to do with the guy the Huns picked up that day.”

  Hunter just nodded glumly.

  “How strange,” he said. “How it happened. I mean, what if the Germans had picked me up, and the Americans had gotten one of the other two? Does that mean everything would be different?”

  Zoltan reached into his makeup drawer and came out with a bottle of scotch. He quickly poured out two glasses, handed one to Hunter, did a mock toast, and downed his drink, all in one smooth motion.

  “Take some advice, my friend, from one who knows,” he said. “Don’t dwell on what could have happened. You’ll drive yourself crazy.”

  Hunter thought about that for a moment, then drained his glass as well.

  “That’s advice I think I’ll take,” he told Zoltan.

  They sat in silence for a moment, then Zoltan spoke again.

  “Are the crowds always so dead up here?” he asked Hunter. “That OC is like a funeral home out there.”

  “We’ve got a big mission coming up,” Hunter explained. “The biggest, in fact.”

  Zoltan began applying his makeup again. “Oh yes, I felt the vibe,” he said.

  “Any predictions on how it will go?” Hunter asked him impulsively.

  Zoltan stopped with the makeup, shut his eyes, and concentrated intently.

  Then he looked up at Hunter, as if he himself was surprised by the message the cosmos had sent him, or that he got any message at all.

  “Yes, I do,” he said.

  “Care to share it?”

  Zoltan looked at him like he was a ghost. “What you do will change the course of the war.”

  Hunter was a bit surprised at just how bold a prediction it was. But then he asked another question.

  “Change which way? In our favor? Or against us?”

  Zoltan concentrated once again, but this time it was clear the psychic was getting a busy signal.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That I guess I can’t tell you.”

  Chapter 23

  THERE WAS A LIGHT SNOW falling the next morning.

  The wind was at 20 knots, and more snow was expected by midday. The temperature was supposed to be minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit, but if it had been possible to take a thermometer sampling 1500 feet above the small southeastern Icelandic island where the Circle bases were located, the temperature would have read a relatively bal
my 28 degrees.

  A combination of factors was responsible for this: increased heater activity at the seven still-activated air bases of the Wing; the combined heat from so many humans, in frenzied activity, exhaling carbon dioxide at an accelerated rate all at once; but mostly the high temperature swing was due to the massive exhaust being given off by the combined engines of nearly 1100 aircraft turning on their double-heat engines all at once.

  So even the elements would be changed this day.

  The first plane took off for Target Germany at exactly 0500 hours from Base Three. It was a B-24/52. The pilot was Captain P.J. O’Malley of the old 999th Bomber Group. He would serve as the flight leader for the 1000-plus bombers taking part in the big mission today.

  Aircraft took off at a rate of one every 10 seconds from all seven bases. Still, it took more than 90 minutes for all of them to get airborne and into formation.

  The activity at the eighth base, that being the home of the 2001st Fighter Squadron, was also very frenzied. Fifty-six Mustang-5s, whipped into shape by Dreamland’s revitalized maintenance teams, took to the air, forming up themselves and meeting the huge flock of bombers at the rendezvous point 55 miles southeast of the coast of Iceland.

  The last plane to lift off from Dreamland was Hunter’s well-worn Mustang-5. He flew low, as mandated by the crowded skies above the Circle, and by chance found himself roaring over Base Nine, the place where the hundreds of bomb magazines had stood dormant for so long. He couldn’t help giving it the once-over as he flew past.

  Base Nine was even more of a ghost town now. All of the magazines had been opened, and where literally thousands of tons of high-incendiary bombs had been stored just a few days ago, there were now just empty holes in the ground.

  How lucky he’d been just to stumble upon it, Hunter thought as he began climbing to meet the rest of the fighters.

  Almost as if it was meant to be.

  One hour later

  The German radar station was located on a small island off the north coast of Scotland called Toe’s Head.

  There were three main radar dishes set up there. They had the ability to detect targets up to 100 miles out into the North Sea. The station also had a smaller, limited electronic eavesdropping ability, but this device was not turned on. In fact only one of the three radar dishes was working at the moment. The power supply to this desolate part of Scotland had been erratic lately, due to a series of power station bombings down south. That’s why they were operating at just one-third capacity.

  But one dish or three, the activity inside the station itself was still the same. Five technicians of the German Defense Corps were assigned here. At the moment, all five were asleep.

  This was against regulations of course, but there was no one in authority within 150 miles that would be able to discipline the sleepy radar crew. Sleeping late was the routine here on Toe’s Head. The radar had a self-sensor unit in it; if a blip was picked up, a warning buzzer would sound and at least one of the techs would usually wake up. The way the system was set up, if two blips were detected, the warning buzzer’s volume got a bit louder. Three blips, a little louder than that.

  The volume of the warning buzzer that went off at 0735 hours this morning not only woke all five technicians, it knocked them off their cots. Then a second later, it blew out the speaker through which it was sounding.

  The five techs were dazed—they weren’t really sure what had just happened. One second they were asleep, the next, their ears were assaulted by a screeching buzzer, and then complete silence.

  Finally the techs got into their trousers and sat at their radar screens. They switched on their main radar displays—and were even more confused. The screen showed one-quarter snow. In other words, the upper left hand quadrant of the round screen was all white. Only under two conditions could this happen: the most likely was a malfunction in the main screen power array. The device was overloading itself.

  The second condition was highly unlikely: that there were so many targets suddenly being picked up, it would give the screen a snow-out effect.

  The techs ran a series of quick diagnostic tests—oddly, they all came back indicating things were working fine.

  Only then did they decide to switch on their two other dishes, using backup power units to do so. To their confusion, and mounting dismay, these screens showed the white-out effect too.

  Now the techs weren’t sure what to do. They were used to seeing the irregular bomber streams flying down from Iceland to targets over Occupied England. Tracking these enemy flights and sending the appropriate warnings south literally could be done in one’s sleep, or in a sleeplike condition. But these small formations usually showed up as a scattering of blips on their radar screens, never filling up fully one quarter of them.

  They’d just never seen that many enemy bombers in the air at one time before.

  The techs decided to try their only other detection device—the electronic eavesdropping array. This could, under the right conditions, pick up airborne radio traffic within a 50-mile radius. Occasionally, if the techs were bored, they would turn on the device when the American bomber streams were going over and sometimes listen in on the panicky, even inebriated voices of the crews as they pushed further south to their targets.

  What would they hear now?

  They switched on the listening device—and the noise was nearly as loud as the warning buzzer which had knocked them out of their sleep. The squeal was so loud, the techs turned the volume all the way down and still the racket hurt their ears.

  It sounded like 10,000 voices talking at once.

  Which is what it was.

  The German techs’ concern was growing at frantic proportions now. Something was happening here that they’d never experienced before. If the white effect was not a technical glitch—and with the sounds coming out of the audio sensor, it didn’t look like it was—then there had to be many hundreds of enemy bombers heading south.

  The techs all looked at each other—panic was beginning to set in. Then they made a quick decision. They had to call south, down to London, and warn headquarters about the oncoming armada.

  But just as they were trying to raise their superiors on the secure radio, they heard another sound. This was not emanating from a speaker system, but was coming from outside the station itself.

  The techs opened the door and found the wind blowing at a high gale. The station was on a small cliff, the stormy seas below. But the noise they heard was not the wind or the sea. The noise was coming from a spread of six Mustang-5 jet fighters sweeping over the waves—and heading right for the station.

  The techs ran back inside and began broadcasting a red alert on all frequencies of their emergency radios. The jets went over the station seconds later—the techs couldn’t believe they weren’t blown off the map at that instant. But on the first pass, the American jets held their fire.

  This gave the German techs the time they needed to contact London and warn them that a huge bomber force was heading south and that a major attack could be expected somewhere in Occupied U.K. within the hour.

  The American jets roared over again, rocking the radar station down to its foundations, but not dropping any weapons this time either. This gave the techs time to confirm, repeat, and reconfirm their panicky report and then open the trapdoor which led down to the rudimentary bomb shelter in the station’s basement.

  But the five techs never made it. The American jets swooped in again, and this time, opened up with full machine guns and cannons. This first barrage killed all five techs instantly and essentially destroyed the station and everything inside.

  Two more strafing passes followed, just to make sure. When the building caught on fire, the American jets finally pulled up and climbed back up to 27,000 feet. Here they rejoined the 40 or so other fighters leading the front of the massive bomber force now just 35 miles from the coast of Scotland.

  Once the fighters had reformed, a general radio call went through the ent
ire airborne force.

  Five minutes later, the armada began a long, slow turn, not south towards targets in Occupied England, as the German High Command was now convinced, but to the east and south.

  Toward Germany itself.

  It so happened that a pair of advanced German jet fighters, having taken off earlier that day from a base in Germany, were just completing an hourlong shake-out flight off the coast of Occupied Denmark when they heard the commotion on their radios.

  The planes were Me-999s, the latest long-range fighter in the German Air Force’s newly burgeoning inventory. The Triple-9s, as they were also known, were one of 12 new designs put into service by the German military in the last month alone. The aircraft was a two-man, swept-back design able to carry bombs for ground attacks as well as machine guns and cannons for dogfighting. The Me-999 was Germany’s first true dual-purpose airplane, a concept never really explored by either side before.

  The pair of 999s had been trying out a new electronic package when they happened to pick up the very last vestiges of the emergency radio report from the now-destroyed radar station at Toe’s Head.

  A thousand enemy bombers? Also many American fighters? The report didn’t sound real. In fact, the Me-999 pilots thought they had wandered into a drill of some kind, a doomsday training scenario being conducted by occupation forces in the U.K.

  Still, they were within 100 miles of the enemy formation’s supposed position and to scoot there and back would give their double-reaction engines a fair workout. After discussing it between themselves, the pair of Me-999 pilots decided to give it a try.

  Both planes opened full throttle, and rocketed away at nearly 1000 knots. Both pilots also turned on their long-range targeting radar, exclusive equipment inside the big dual-role jet fighter.

  But like their crispy comrades back inside the Toe’s Head radar station, the German pilots thought their equipment was fooling with them. The Me-999’s radar systems indicated a huge blotch of something was heading right for them. Could there really be 1000 enemy airplanes coming this way?