Y nearly hit the roof. This was not like him. He was usually the coolest cat in the room.
“We are towing a freaking aircraft carrier,” he repeated slowly for effect. “We are probably sitting ducks out here. We are calling more attention to ourselves than the super-bomber did when it sank Japan for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, I do admit we have raised our exposure a bit …,” Zoltan agreed quietly.
“A bit?” Y asked him back. “Have you seen the size of that thing?”
Zoltan looked out the window. From this angle—yes, indeed—the size of the carrier was in full view.
“Is it as large as the one in your dream?” he asked Y.
The question surprised the OSS man. In his dream the carrier was always enormous.
“Well, it’s not as big,” he began to say. But then he came back to reality—such as it was. “But that doesn’t matter. We have put ourselves in a very vulnerable position. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”
“We were just following the psychic path,” Zoltan said. “It might seem crazy now—but somewhere down the road we might need this vessel. That’s what the vibrations are telling me.”
Y just shook his head. He needed more wine.
“When my office gets wind of this,” he said, slowly pouring them both another drink, “they’ll have me tapping phones in Idaho.”
The seaplane lurched forward a bit—this was a typical movement now and they were used to it. There were twelve tugboats in all. When it turned out that their operators had been held against their will, too, by the pirates, they agreed to sign on with the American force and help move the carrier farther south. The odd thing was, all of the operators were Irishmen.
Zoltan took a sip of his wine.
“I agree we do have a defensive problem now,” he said. “That is, if there is anyone left in this area that can challenge us.”
Y just shook his head. “You know how these things work. You have to assume the worst, and hope for the best.”
They were silent for a few moments.
“And you’re sure the damn carrier was empty?” Y asked him finally.
Zoltan nodded glumly.
“Just the few Bugs we were able to get from the atoll,” Zoltan replied. “Six in all.”
Y swigged his drink again.
“If there is anyone out here with any kind of air power, we’ll be sunk with only a half-dozen jetcopters to defend us,” he said darkly.
Zoltan stared at him and countered, “Well, we can always get us some air power of our own.”
The OSS man looked up at him.
“Get some?” he asked. “Get some where?”
Zoltan suppressed a smile. His world was better if he was following his psychic vibrations. If he wasn’t, it was like swimming against the tide.
He felt the tide turning a bit.
“We might have someone on board who can give us some information on that,” he said.
Y just shook his head. “I know I don’t want to hear this.”
Zoltan just shrugged. “This person’s presence has a very high psychic value to it,” he said.
Y didn’t comprehend this part, for he was too busy pouring another goblet of rice wine.
“Just explain it to me,” he said to Zoltan.
“Well, the hostages we picked up,” Zoltan began. “They were, as you know … ladies of the evening. ‘Comfort women’ was how the Japanese once described them. These girls were the top of the line, believe me. Anyway, they’ve been going through debriefing by the Unit One-sixty-seven guys and they’ve come up with some very interesting information.”
“Such as?” Y asked, slurring his words mightily.
“Such as the location of a free-lance fighter-plane group nearby,” Zoltan said. “Good guys who know how to fly jets and protect ships.”
“Air mercs?” Y asked. “Trustworthy ones? Out here?”
Zoltan nodded slowly. “That’s what they said,” he replied. “But they have some even more interesting stuff for us. It’s the real value of why we rescued them.”
“And that is?”
Zoltan leaned forward a bit and lowered his voice; outside the seaplane shivered as the push and pull of the towing operation jerked them all forward.
“I should let one of them tell you herself,” Zoltan said.
Y didn’t say anything one way or the other, so Zoltan took the opportunity to leave the room briefly. Y swallowed his entire glass of saki and poured yet another. He let the gasolinelike fluid run over his tongue, down his throat, and felt it reignite the already raging inferno in his gut.
Why was he drinking so much?
He didn’t know ….
The door opened again, and Zoltan stepped back inside. He was followed by a goddess …
Or at least that’s what she looked like to Y.
She was wearing a long flowing silk gown, and her hair was piled on top of her head. She smelled of lilacs. Her nails were painted red, as were her lips. Blond hair. Slightly pouting lips. Small perky breasts. Deep-blue eyes …
Y nearly fell off his seat. She looked like an angel. One from his dream ….
He staggered to his feet. This girl looked very familiar to him. But he wasn’t quite sure why.
She stood before Y—he could hardly take his eyes from her.
“Tell him what you told me,” Zoltan prompted her.
The girl looked so sweet and demure, Y was having trouble believing the line of work she was in.
“I saw it,” she said simply.
Y just stared back at her—for a moment he wondered drunkenly if his fly was open.
“‘You saw it?’” he asked, baffled. “Saw what exactly?” She looked at Zoltan, who urged her on with a fatherly nod.
“We saw the Big Plane,” she finally replied.
Y felt his heart start to pump mightily. His eyes grew wide.
“Are you sure?” he managed to blurt out.
She just nodded. “It was the biggest flying thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It went right over our heads the same day the world turned dark at daytime.”
Y took out a piece of paper and a pencil from his leg pocket and handed it to her.
“Draw it,” he said.
The girl learned forward on the table and started to draw. Y couldn’t help but look down her low-cut gown to see all but her entire breasts. They were small and erotic.
The girl drew a credible picture—she was artistic, too! And the drawing she produced looked exactly like the missing B-2000 superbomber. It was gigantic, all engines and wings and fuselage. Even more interesting, she added the tow plane the superbomber was towing when it left Bride Lake on its secret transpolar mission.
Y felt another surge of excitement go through him. This was their first solid lead of the journey. He looked up at Zoltan, who was smiling slyly.
“OK, OK,” he said to the psychic. “One of your things finally panned out.”
Zoltan just threw his shoulders back and shrugged with practiced nonchalance.
“Just doing my duty, sir,” he said with a smile.
Y turned back to the young girl. She was so delicate and beautiful—and he could not get rid of the feeling that he knew her from someplace before.
“We will have to ask you a lot of questions about this,” he said to her. “Exactly when you saw the big plane, which direction it was going, and so on. Do you mind? It will be a great help for us.”
She nodded sweetly.
“Not at all,” she replied. “You saved us from those pigs on the island. I owe you that at least.”
Now Y felt another surge of energy go through him. This one started south of the border and made its way northward.
He finally stood back up and straightened himself out.
“And you are?” he asked, trying to be cool and not succeeding in the least.
She smiled, seeming a bit embarrassed, but took his outstretched hand and shook it lightly.
�
�My name,” she said softly, “is Emma.”
CHAPTER 11
IN ANOTHER WORLD THIS place was once known as Bloody Iwo.
Its full name was Iwo Jima. It was a spit of land, about four hundred miles south of what was left of Japan. There was a huge airfield consisting of four massive runways and eight smaller ones. This place was a stopping-off point, a gas station for the behemoth cargo planes and passenger carriers that plied the skies above the South Pacific.
The island was now nicknamed the Hellhole. The airfield itself was known simply as the Pit.
It was, quite accurately, the worst place on the Pacific Rim. Homicide was an hourly occurrence. The sound of gunfire was heard as frequently as that of the wind blowing through the palms, or the patter of the rains that arrived like clockwork at one o’clock every afternoon.
The Pit was such a dangerous place that even at the height of its power, the Japanese Imperial Army never came here. Not in force anyway. As for pirate groups like the Cherrybenders—they never came within one hundred miles of this place.
It was here, though, that Zoltan, Crabb, and Y landed one of the captured Bug copters.
They were smart enough not to bring the jetcopter down right in the middle of the vast airfield. The people in the Pit would have shot them out of the sky just for target practice. No, landing a Bug at the Pit would have been like showing up at the Grand Prix in a golf cart. That’s why they set down on the beach about a mile from the outskirts of the base itself. It would be easier, they felt, to bribe guards and whomever else they met along the way to get into the place. As it turned out, this was a wise decision.
The currency in these parts was gold: coins, bars, ingots, rings—anything. Just as long as there was gold in it, it passed for money on Iwo Jima.
Before leaving the U.S., Y had had the good sense to carry with him the equivalent of $10,000 in gold. This included four sets of earrings, several rings, a tiepin, a Relox twelve-jeweled twenty-four-carat watch, and a bag of gold coins.
These items were now locked in a small strongbox fitted into the leg pocket of Y’s battle fatigues. He was dressed, in his opinion, as a bummy air merc. His fatigues, borrowed from one of the Unit 167 Sea Marines, were slightly frayed and torn in a few places. He was wearing a crappy beret and an ancient weapons belt that could barely hold his pistol holster.
Zoltan and Crabb were dressed similarly. Zoltan was carrying a huge twin-barrel Thompson machine gun; Crabb was lugging a 4.57 Magnum triple shot.
They left the Bug on the beach and began walking toward the lights of the Pit. The sun was just going down, and the sky was a beautiful crimson-red. The sounds that mixed together were the crash of waves, the wind in the palms, and the roar of jet engines warming up. All were shaking the early-evening air.
“I wonder what kind of booze they got around here?” Y asked, still rather puzzled by his infatuation with demon alcohol lately.
“Probably that crappy Scottish stuff,” Crabb replied knowingly. A standing rule at his Chicago club was that no Scottish liquor of any kind could pass through the doors. In this world, booze from Scotland was the worst.
“The ambient vibes tell me that the liquor here is actually very good,” Zoltan said, touching his hand to his forehead. “And so is the food.”
They topped a sand dune and came upon a roadblock. It was manned by two guards in a small armored personnel carrier commonly known as a Gnat.
One man was sitting next to the vehicle’s top-mounted machine gun; the second was throwing a net into a small tidal pool nearby—no doubt fishing for his supper.
They barely raised their heads as Y, Zoltan, and Crabb made their way down the path toward them. The man fishing took a quick glance and went on about his business. The man at the machine gun actually yawned. Y decided already these two would get a gold ring from him, and not much else.
“Peace!” he greeted them with an upraised hand. “Friends here …”
Crabb and Zoltan looked at him like he was from outer space.
“What do you think, you’re in a cowboy movie here?” Crabb asked him.
Crabb stepped up and looked at the man fishing.
“We want to get to the Pit,” he said. “What is the quickest way?”
The guard shrugged. He was Fijian—far from home. But not that far.
“Many, many ways to get to town,” he said, finally snagging a couple of sunfish.
Crabb looked back at Y and stretched out his palm. The OSS man stalled a moment.
“Is it too late to hypnotize these guys?” Y asked Zoltan.
The psychic just rolled his eyes. Y just shrugged, then finally came out with two rings and the tiepin. Together they added up to a substantial amount of gold.
“I asked what’s the quickest?” Crabb said, displaying the rings.
The two soldiers looked the bribe over and then smiled.
“Over the next two dunes, around the mine field, then a half mile north,” one said.
Crabb was suddenly displaying the gold pin.
“OK, now,” he said. “How much for a ride?”
Ten minutes later the Gnat was rumbling through the very muddy main street of the Pit.
The place was very aptly named. It featured what might have been the largest collection of Quonset huts on the planet They were lined up for a mile along the main muddy drag, and some of them went at least a dozen blocks deep.
These plain tin houses were not used just for living areas. Many were converted into bar rooms, gambling halls, and brothels. The neon around these structures was so bright, Y noted that there was no need for streetlights. And indeed, there weren’t any.
The red, orange, and yellow glow was nearly blinding. The muddy streets were thick with vehicles of all descriptions. A few air bikes fluttered high above. The land traffic included mercs of all shapes, sizes, uniform color, and ethnic persuasion. There were hookers everywhere, too.
“Jeesuz, look at all the fuckware!” Crabb said, looking at the talent parading up and down the streets. “No wonder Emma knew where we should look.”
Y felt a sudden pang in his heart. Was Crabb insulting the beautifully delicate Emma?
And if he was, why would Y care?
The Gnat dropped them off at the largest Quonset hut in the vast airport city. This place was the combination saloon, black-market armory, and the unofficial headquarters for the fighter-plane mercenary group that Emma had told them about.
The trio thanked the Gnat crew and jumped off the APC to the muddy streets below.
True to form, the sound of gunfire soon punctuated the night air—not just pistol shots, but the loud reports of heavy-caliber machine-gun fire. Yet the crowds in the streets went about their business as if nothing more serious than a truck backfiring had happened.
Zoltan turned to Y and asked, “OK, now that we’re in, how are we going to get back out again?”
Y motioned his head toward Crabb.
“Ask our tour guide,” he said. “That is, if you don’t know already …”
Just as a matter of course, all three men checked the weapon clips in their guns and then walked into the huge Quonset hut.
The place looked like a cross between a movie set—bright lights everywhere—and an Old West saloon. A long bar stretched around three quarters of the immense space. The place was packed with mercs and hookers, all of them drinking, fighting, arguing, or eating.
Y took one look around and felt a strange sensation well up in the back of his head.
“Damn, I’ve been here before,” he said.
Zoltan looked at him. “That’s my line, isn’t it?”
Y wasn’t listening, though. He was too busy studying the interior of this place. It was strange. It was as if he was seeing it for the first time, yet he still had intimate knowledge of the saloon. The long bar, the crowd of soldiers and hookers, the very bright movie lights.
It was a very strange sensation.
Like a dream within a dream …
&n
bsp; They walked over to the bar, and the bartenders all ignored them.
Y pulled out the gold necklace and began waving it in full view of the nearest beer jockey—but again to no effect.
Zoltan looked around, took out his massive gun, and fired two shots into the ceiling. The report from his weapon was earsplitting, the smoke and cordite like a small storm.
Not one person turned a head.
“Wow … tough crowd,” the psychic said.
“If Hawk was here, we’d have a drink by now,” Y said, more to himself than to the others.
It was just dumb luck that a waitress was passing by with a huge pitcher of beer and three mugs. Zoltan lifted the brews from the tray. All three quickly quenched their thirst.
This done, they had to start looking for the people they’d come to find.
Y knew very little about the air merc group, other than their name: the AirCats. Emma had told them only that they flew odd-looking airplanes—the norm in this world—and that they were fearless, which could also mean they were simply crazy.
Y knew a bit about military aircraft, as did Zoltan. In this world there were literally dozens of current military aircraft models, not just a few top-of-the-line fighters, bombers, and so on.
And there was a fighter-bomber manufactured by Boeing-Grumman-Northrop-Bell called the AirCat. It was a big, powerful, quick, double-reaction-powered airplane, with straight wings, a central power plant, and a small compartment able to hold three crew members: a pilot, a copilot/bombardier, and a navigator/tail gunner for big jobs, a single pilot for small ones. AirCats could lug a lot of bombs, hold as many as eight cannon on its wings and, ironically, was able to operate off of an aircraft carrier.
But how to spot a certain gang of air mercs in a place that was full of them?
Y turned to Zoltan.
“Got your antenna up?” he asked the psychic.
Zoltan grimaced—he disliked any suggestion that his ability was anything less than genuine. But he closed his eyes, wrinkled his brow, and put his finger to his goateed-chin.
Then he simply spun around and pointed to a table in the nearest corner.
“There …,” he said, without opening his eyes.
Tomorrow War Page 6
