Tomorrow War

by Maloney, Mack;

  “Meaning what they were looking for would be obvious to us if we overflew the same railway lines as they did?” Crabb asked.

  “That’s it precisely,” Zoltan declared, feeling somewhat vindicated. “When we get to what they wanted us to see, we’ll know it immediately—or there will be a sign left for us, to recognize the next step.”

  There was a group shrug.

  Then the Jones boys went back to the main controls, and the cardplayers returned to the makeshift poker table. Outside, the escorting AirCats and the HellJet kept pace; their crews passed time in other ways.

  Up in the Z-16’s main service bunk, Y slept fitfully. His psyche was finding sweet dreams hard to come by.

  Even at twenty thousand feet.

  The long, winding flight continued on into a third day. They had passed up and down the length of Indochina more than two dozen times, the last twelve hours of which were spent mainly overflying Thailand and Cambodia.

  It was strange—now that the Z-16 crew had a notion that the meandering flight pattern had a logic to it, they became caught up in closely examining the terrain below. The auto flight had been set with the idea that they should be looking for something. And so they were.

  Designed as a recon plane, the Z-16 had an array of gizmos that could penetrate the thick jungle layer below them. One was called the LANTRAN. It was a combination radar-bouncing/infrared scanner that could quite effectively show a real-time map of the terrain below the jungle canopy. Once the crew was hip that railroad lines were a key to what they were seeking, the Jones boys were able to program the LANTRAN to seek out patterns that would naturally correspond to a rail line and to emit a warning buzzer whenever a new image was located.

  Fairly soon into this, the LANTRAN buzzer was going off with such regularity the Jones boys finally shut the damn thing off. The lower part of Cambodia and most of the northern tier of Thailand was crisscrossed with rail lines, most of them old and little used. This part of Asia was sparsely populated—years of wars separate from the recently concluded global conflicts had made the place not very habitable.

  In all their seventy-two hours of overflight, the crew of the Z-16 had been painted by antiaircraft weapons just twice, both to no consequence. Signs of civilian life below were even more rare.

  But that all changed, as did the first phase of the search, when they arrived over the Thai region called Ma-What.

  Through this region ran a long meandering river called the Kwai.

  This area of Indochina was different from the terrain the Z-16 and its escorting airplanes had been flying over for the past three days.

  Gone were the thick jungle forests, some so dense they blocked out all light from the sun. Here were rolling hills and shallow valleys, part of the River Kwai basin.

  The grass here was so green, in the right angle of sunlight, it was dazzling and emeraldlike. This region actually looked out of place. It almost seemed like a slice of the African savanna.

  And it was here that the Z-16 crew discovered unmistakable evidence that Hawk Hunter had gone this way not long before.

  It came at midafternoon on the third day. The Jones boys were still at the controls, the nonstop poker game was continuing.

  Little had been heard from Y in the past seventy-two hours. But suddenly there was a commotion in his service bunk. Emma toppled out first, followed closely by the OSS agent.

  Y looked slightly mad, slightly frightened. He quickly fell into his service fatigues and made his way up past the poker game to the flight deck.

  “Where the hell are we?” he asked the Jones brothers anxiously.

  Seth Jones calmly pointed to the navigational screen, which had a map grid of Thailand superimposed on it.

  “Down there, the River Kwai,” he told Y. “We’ve been following the railway ever since yesterday afternoon. This is where it led us …”

  Y just stared back at him. “Why … why are you following a railway?”

  Seth looked over at brother Dave. Dave was actually two minutes older and thus as the elder sibling, it was up to him to bring the wayward OSS agent up to speed on what they’d been doing for the past several days.

  Dave did just that. He briefed Y on the discovery that the Z-16’s controls were actually set to follow parts of just about every rail line in Indochina. But since entering this part of Thailand, the Z-16 seemed to have been following just this one line.

  Y looked like he wanted to jump out of the airplane. “God … I just … dreamed we were actually riding on a train,” he said, mumbling most of his words. “That we were still flying this airplane but we were doing it on rails. And every asshole with a gun, spear, or bow and arrow was shooting at us ….”

  He stopped for a moment, suddenly aware of the monumental ass he was making of himself.

  That’s when Zoltan left the card table and climbed up onto the flight deck with them.

  “Tell us more,” he said simply.

  Y rubbed his tired eyes. He was really not feeling him self—the last three days had been nothing but hours upon hours of nightmarish slumber—deep sleeps he had trouble waking up from. His seeming narcolepsy was cut only by occasional feeling sessions with Emma and several trips to the head.

  But it was odd that he would be dreaming of railroads when, on the surface anyway, he had been unaware of the secret of the Z-16’s flight pattern in the past three days.

  “We came upon a hill,” Y spoke again. “And on top of it, was an airplane. It was just sitting there. And there was snow around it. But wait a moment. We didn’t actually see this. We were talking to a very young girl—and she was painting it! Yes, I remember now. She was shy, a bit frightened, but she had painted this strange picture of an airplane, sitting on this peak, it was red, white, and blue—and in the background, there was a city in flames and …”

  Y stopped talking for a moment. Everyone on the flight deck was staring back at him like he was insane—Zoltan included.

  But then the OSS agent pointed at the main communications console and said: “Answer that call. It’s from AirCat Three …”

  Two seconds later, the communications console lit up. One of the escorting airplanes was calling. It was AirCat #3.

  “Sir,” the pilot reported. “We’ve just spotted something pretty strange down below ….”

  The fact that it was, ironically, one of the escorting AirCats and not the Z-16 recon plane that had spotted the object below was lost in the moment following the discovery.

  What had riveted everyone’s attention was that the object spotted below was an aircraft.

  But it was not just any airplane. It was a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) Bantam. The same type that had been known to have been hanging off the wing of the B-2000 superbomber when it went on its transpolar bombing mission.

  And it was not like the airplane was just sitting on the ground—or had landed on a flat stretch of this strange region. No, it was sitting on top of the highest hill for miles around. It had not crashed there—indeed the airplane looked fairly intact. Nor had it landed there—the hill’s peak was much too sharp for that. Rather, it was quite clear the airplane had been placed there. For someone to find.

  Just like in Y’s dream ….

  CHAPTER 24

  Near the River Kwai

  HIS NAME WAS SWAMI Bawn Rashi Bawn Shee.

  He was not a native of Thailand. Rather, he was from the country now known as Tibet.

  He was a Buddhist monk, a man of God. Wrapped in orange saffron, with a crew cut, thick glasses, and leather sandals on his feet, he had sat on top of the hill with the airplane for the past month. He ate little but grass and drank only the rainwater that came down for a few minutes every afternoon at three o’clock precisely when the fast-moving monsoon passed over.

  Swami had already lived a strange life—this was just another chapter. Or at least that’s what he had kept telling himself in the past month or so.

  He’d been born on one of the highest mountains in th
e Himalayas and had spent his first ten years living near its peak. He had been trained in all the ways of Buddha and believed to his last breath that the path to salvation was refusal of self and dedication to helping others.

  But at just about the age of twenty, something changed inside him. It came in a dream—one that would last more than two decades. Every night, when he fell asleep, he would dream of the most incredible female he could imagine God ever creating.

  She was young, blonde, had huge eyes and white golden skin. Her mouth was small, slightly pouty, but angelic when she smiled. Her shoulders, her arms, her legs, her fingers … hell, every part of her was wondrous.

  And in his dreams he’d seen it all. Many times. Many, many times.

  Over and over …

  Sitting on the hill now, he had to shake these impure thoughts away, at least for the time being. These dreams—these very erotic dances in the night—were the reason he was here in Thailand and not back in his home in Tibet.

  These dreams had been scandalous from the first night. After ten years he knew that God or the Devil or someone was trying to tell him something. So he asked for permission from his superiors to leave his mountain home and go on a quest, to find the root of his dreams.

  That quest, which began just three months before, somehow brought him here. To this hill. To sit with this airplane.

  To sit, and dream.

  Why here? He had no idea … only that it was here on this hill that he had stopped in his journey and dreamed the dream of this lovely creature and finally learned her name from it.

  The name someone had called her in the dream was Chloe. That experience had been so powerful, he decided to stay here until the next domino dropped, which it did, soon afterward.

  And now, watching as the six aircraft began landing on the plain below him, he knew yet another chapter in his bizarre quest was about to begin.

  It took about a half hour for all the airplanes to get down and their crews to disembark.

  Swami watched with great interest as the airplanes landed almost as if they were helicopters, using powerful rockets under their wings to cushion the blow and reduce the distance needed to set down on the grassy rolling plain below the hill.

  Swami became fascinated with the airplane’s crewmen as they alighted from their airplanes and set up a small circle of weapons posts around them. Then, leaving some behind, about a dozen men started climbing the hill where he and the airplane sat.

  They arrived out of breath and sweaty ten minutes later. He greeted them with a deep bow and a blessing.

  “May the green grass of earth, the blue of the sky, and the light from the stars give you peace, nature, and wisdom all of your days ….”

  That’s when one of the airmen broke to the front of the crowd. Swami could smell liquor on his breath.

  “Who the fuck are you?” this man asked. He was obviously very drunk.

  “I am Rashi,” the swami replied. “And I can see you will need more than one blessing to see peace on this earth.”

  Two men came forward and yanked the drunken man back into the crowd. Swami looked at these two and felt a jolt go through him. They were twins—a very mystical sign for him.

  “Excuse us … and our friend’s behavior,” one began. “We were just wondering if we could ask you a few questions ….”

  The swami bowed deeply.

  “I have been awaiting you,” he said.

  The Jones boys gave a wave to the rest of the group. The AirCat crewmen walked Y halfway down the hill. Zoltan and Crabb joined the two pilots in sitting at Swami’s feet.

  “Can you enlighten us?” Zoltan asked the monk.

  “I can try,” the monk replied.

  One of the Jones boys gestured toward the airplane.

  “How did that get up here?” he asked.

  Swami laughed a bit. “Oh, you want me to start in the middle?”

  “Start wherever you like,” Zoltan told him.

  The Swami looked over at the Bantam fighter plane.

  “That air vessel was moved up here by the strength of eighty men,” he began. “They came here in an airplane much much bigger than yours. They told me they were compelled to come to this place, as was I ….”

  “But why did they bring it up here?” Crabb asked. “A lot of work—”

  “They did it to bring you gentlemen here I assume,” the swami said. “They left it as a sign ….”

  Everyone started shaking their heads. “Maybe we better start at the beginning,” Seth Jones said.

  Swami took a deep breath.

  “I was here, a full moon-cycle ago,” he began, a faraway look coming over his eyes. “One moment, the night was still, calm as this day. The next, it grew darker than I have ever seen. I did not know what was happening. I thought it was the end of the world. But then I looked up and saw this enormous aircraft. It was huge! I thought it was a spaceship. An alien ship of some kind—even though I do not believe in such things.

  “This airplane was so big it blotted out the stars and the moon. It took me awhile to realize that it was coming down, descending like a mad angel from the night sky. Then I realized it was trying to land here—in this valley, which until that day I called my own.

  “I couldn’t believe such a big thing could land here, but it did. It came in over those mountaintops and somehow it just seemed to stop in midair and then it came down. Bam! It shook the entire planet. I am sure of this because the birds did not sing for three whole days afterward.

  “These men came from the airplane. They were so exhausted they just fell about the ground, and many slept right where they fell. They had no idea I was even here. So, I don’t know for what reason, but I stayed hidden up here and watched them for three days.

  “They slept for almost twenty-four hours. I felt like they did not have a care in the world. But I also felt that they—like me—had been compelled to come to this place. Then on the second day many of them left. They went out to the railroad tracks and marched someplace off to the north.

  “Another day passed. And then another. And then the most remarkable thing happened. They all returned … and they had a train with them. A very long, empty train.”

  At this point Y broke free of his handlers and crawled up the hill.

  “A train?” he asked excitedly.

  Swami smiled sympathetically at Y.

  “Yes, a train,” he replied.

  Y turned to the Jones boys. “You must let me listen to this,” he begged them.

  “OK,” Seth Jones replied. “Just be polite.”

  “Please continue,” Zoltan urged the monk.

  “I watched them for the next six days,” he went on, the distant look returning to his eyes. “They did a magnificent job. They took all the weapons I could see from this massive airplane and put them on the train.

  “Huge cannons and automatic guns and things that shot rockets. They had many rockets hanging from their wings. They test-fired some of them, and the birds did not sing for another three days.

  “It was really amazing how quickly they worked and how efficient they were. It was as if they had been planning to do this thing for years.

  “Wherever they got the train from, I don’t know. Or the tools to put all their weapons onto it, I couldn’t say.

  “But when they were done, what they had created was awesome. Even for a man of peace like me, it was truly a magnificent sight.”

  Swami took a deep breath. The men before him were simply mesmerized by his story.

  “Then one day as I was sleeping something woke me up. It was one of them, he had climbed the hill and found me. He was an odd-looking person. He looked … well, different, though I don’t know why.

  “He asked me if I lived here and whether I’d been here for long, and I was truthful and told him that I’d seen everything they had done from the landing to the building of the armored train. And he went back down the hill after thanking me and soon came back with a lot of great food and sparkling
water. I was so hungry I ate it all in front of him!

  “Then he asked me to do a favor. A simple one. He asked that I stay here, and that anyone who landed and knew who he was, that I should tell them this story.”

  He turned and looked at the airplane.

  “They dragged this up here. They said that the people looking for them would see it and know enough to land.”

  Y was simply astonished.

  “It’s just like my dream,” he said over and over again.

  “Sort of,” Zoltan qualified.

  There was a long silence. Finally Dave Jones spoke up.

  “Did they say what they wanted the train for?” he asked.

  The monk just shook his head no.

  “Well, where did they go with this train?” he asked the monk. “Did they say that at least?”

  The monk just shook his head and pointed to the west.

  “All I can tell you,” he said, “is that they went that way … into what people around here call ‘Vdam Net.’”

  “And what does that mean?” Seth Jones asked.

  “Loosely translated, it means ‘Badlands,’” Swami said. “But that’s an understatement.”

  “What do you mean?” Dave Jones asked.

  Swami wet his lips, then looked to the west. “The territory over the next mountain has become hostile beyond belief. It is controlled by Rotkiv Khen—or Khen The Great, as I have heard he prefers to be called.”

  The Jones boys looked at each other. The name was not unfamiliar to them.

  “Wasn’t he that asshole who was going back door on the Japanese in Manchuria while they were getting their kicks in South America?” Seth asked his brother.

  “Yes, I think so,” Dave replied. “They said he had the largest standing army in Asia next to the Nips. But I thought they crushed him right after they solidified South America.”

  Zoltan’s hand was to his forehead—a sure sign a pronouncement was coming.

  “The Japanese let him go,” the psychic said, either tapping into the ethers or recalling some news report he’d heard or read. “They made a deal with him and he withdrew his army from Manchuria and headed south.”