Tomorrow War

by Maloney, Mack;

  They could also carry as many as one thousand troops each. And judging by the way these Beaters were flying—under 75 mph and very close to the ground—they all seemed extremely overloaded. It was obvious they belonged to the Black Army.

  “Beaters?” Fitz said over and over, not quite believing it. “That worm Sluggo never said anything to us about Beaters.”

  “Jeesuz, are they coming for us?” Ben wondered with no little nervousness in his voice.

  They had that answer just a few seconds later when the first line of the monstrous helicopters flew over their position—and kept on going. They slowed a bit just over the bloody bridge and began setting down about a quarter mile behind the Blue Army Line.

  Almost immediately the sound of gunfire could be heard.

  “Son of a bitch!” JT yelled. “That asshole Sluggo was right about one thing: the Blacks are just going right over us—and putting it to the blue bloods.”

  It seemed strange, but it was apparently true. In seconds the air above them was filled with tracer fire from Blue Army AAA guns. It was not aimed at Red base, but at the oncoming Black Army Beaters.

  “Jeesuz, how weird is this?” Kurjan yelled.

  “They can kick ass on each other all they want,” Crabb shouted back. “But what does this mean for us?”

  Suddenly Fitz was standing up in the trench, his huge double-barrel machine gun up on his shoulder.

  “I say, let’s find out!” he cried.

  With that, a second line of Beaters roared overhead. Fitz took aim on one of them and let loose a long double stream of tracer bullets. He immediately scored hits up and down the closest Beater, now just one hundred feet above them. There was a series of small explosions, followed by a much larger one.

  Fitz had just enough time to yell: “Hit the deck!” The next second the huge helicopter went down and crashed at the end of the base’s main runway.

  There was a tremendous explosion. The ground shook beneath their feet once again. They looked up to see a big copter become engulfed in flames.

  “Christ!” Crabb yelled. “This is unbelievable.”

  But suddenly Kurjan and Fitz were up and running toward the crash site.

  “Where the hell are they going?” Zoltan yelled.

  “Just watch and learn, swami!” JT shouted back at him.

  Baffled, Zoltan and Crabb followed the two men as they began crawling into the wreckage, emerging soon afterward with one of the aircraft’s occupants dragging behind them.

  Crabb jumped up and helped Kurjan and Fitz pull the Black Army soldier into the trench. He was badly hurt. His black uniform was stained with blood and oil from the crash. Kurjan stuck a canteen against the man’s lips and began pouring. Then he sat him up and gave him the once-over.

  “This guy ain’t no run-of-the-mill mercenary,” Kurjan declared, examining the man’s uniform and equipment “He’s a Special Forces type. Part of a shock-troop unit, I’d say.”

  “That means they’re going for something inside the city, something they need to capture before their main forces arrive,” Fitz said. “But what could it be?”

  “Let’s ask him,” Kurjan said.

  He slapped the man awake. The soldier was semiconscious and in great pain. But he seemed aware that his life had been saved, at least temporarily.

  “What was your target?” Kurjan asked him. “Where were you going?”

  The man just laughed at him, causing a bloody gush from his mouth and nose. “Like I should tell you for nothing?” he replied in German. “Give me some morphine and I’ll tell you all.”

  Fitz was in no mood to haggle. He drew his field knife and pressed against the man’s pulsating jugular.

  “Where were you going?” he asked him sternly.

  The man immediately began freaking out. It took all five of them to hold him down. Finally he collapsed, took a deep breath, and started talking.

  “There is a place … deep inside the city,” he began. “A central command post … it is deep underground … impossible to bomb from the air …. We were to overtake it. It is the key to this battle we were told …. When we heard you Reds had surrendered, it forced us to make our move. We had to get the central command of the Blues. Those were our orders.”

  The man laughed again, more blood gushed from him.

  “Ah, but my friends, you have simply saved me from dying later rather than sooner,” he said through bloody lips. “And for this, I thank you.”

  With that, the man fell over, dead.

  Fitz and Kurjan pushed him out of the trench and then slumped back down again.

  “Well, at least we know Hawk was right about one thing,” Ben said. “That central command post was the key to this whole fucking war!”

  “Looking back on it,” Kurjan said, “maybe we should have tried to find it and take it out ourselves.”

  “You mean do a ground raid?” Fitz asked.

  “That would have been the only way,” Kurjan replied. “Hawk himself said the place was too hard for anything we had to bomb it with. Even the HellJets—cool as they are—probably wouldn’t have put a dent in it.”

  Fitz just nodded sadly. “Hawk said he believed the station was at least two hundred feet underground—and concrete reinforced. Though I don’t know how he knew that, I’m sure he was right.”

  “Well, we’re really fucked now then,” JT said bitterly. “Whether it’s the Blues or the Blacks, whoever has control of that place by the end of the day will stomp us for good. They’ll be using us for target practice. What’s left of us …”

  JT’s harsh words seemed to be cruelly prophetic because a moment later artillery shells began raining down on Red Base One—from two directions.

  “God, how screwy is this?” Fitz yelled and they all went down for cover. “The Blacks are fighting the Blues, the Blues are fighting the Blacks, and they’re both throwing shells at us!”

  “We’ll need a miracle to get out of this,” Crabb said. “And I mean a real miracle …”

  But just as those words were coming out of Crabb’s mouth, they were blotted out by the sound of another tremendous scream.

  High above them, they saw the colossal outline of an airplane.

  Kurjan nearly fainted dead away. This was the largest flying thing he could have ever imagined. It looked like a battleship with wings. It was so monstrous, it seemed to take up all of the sky.

  “Holy Lazarus!” Kurjan yelled. “What the hell is that?”

  No one in the trench could even speak. But they all knew exactly what it was.

  It was the B-2000 superbomber.

  “Well, at least we know where the hell Hunter went!” JT bellowed.

  There was no doubt that Hunter was behind the controls of the colossal bomber. Apparently he’d rushed back to Kwai and was somehow able to lift the giant off the ground and return to the scene—all in the space of just a few hours.

  But now that he was here with the flying battleship, what was he planning on doing with it?

  “Just how many superbombs was that thing carrying?” Zoltan cried out.

  “If he drops one here,” Crabb added, “Jeesuzz, the whole country will sink!”

  “Relax,” Fitz told them. “There was only one bomb like that.”

  He turned to JT and Ben, and asked under his breath: “Right?”

  They both shrugged. They had no idea.

  But any notion they had that Hunter might be on a long-range bombing run was dispelled by another sudden turn of events. As streams of antiaircraft fire began rising up from the city aimed at the huge airplane, the super-bomber suddenly shifted downward. They saw the bursts of flame erupt from its multitude of engines, indicating their double-burners had been lit. The additional speed was apparent right away. The huge airplane started diving at about twenty thousand feet. In seconds, it was going more than Mach 2 and heading straight down to a point somewhere in Kabul Downs.

  It hit two seconds later ….

  What happened next
was so intense, those who witnessed it would have their psyches scarred for the rest of their lives.

  The huge bomber hit with the speed of a meteorite zooming in from outer space. Those watching at Red Base One hit the dirt immediately—but that did no good. The ground shook mightily for two full minutes, small cracks in its surface appeared everywhere. Unlike the massive artillery barrage, this was a real earthquake. This impact was so intense, the dust that rose from the crash immediately became superheated. In seconds a gigantic thunderstorm broke out, with lightning so intense, it burned the retinas of anyone who dared to look at it.

  Even before the ground stopped shaking, it was apparent what had happened: Hunter had slammed the big jet into the Blue Forces subterranean central command station.

  The Blue artillery barrage stopped immediately.

  Those in the forward trench stood up and just stared at the city and the giant lightning-packed cloud rising above it. It looked like a scene from Hell.

  “Well, we wanted to take out that central command post,” Kurjan said. “Looks like Hawk did it for us—and saved our asses in the process.”

  There was a deadly silence now. No one wanted to say what was on everyone’s mind.

  But combat veterans all, they knew there was no way Hunter could have survived.

  Or could he?

  CHAPTER 43

  Above Kabul Downs

  HUNTER COULD NOT REMEMBER if he had ever used a parachute before.

  Certainly not in this world. But how about in the other? That other life of his Back There?

  He didn’t think so.

  It just wasn’t like him to leave an airplane in flight. He was sure that Back There he’d had one special airplane—the F-16XL. He just couldn’t imagine getting into so much trouble that he’d actually bail out of it.

  But now, in this very different place, he was finally hitting the silk. And it looked like he was descending down into the pit of Hell itself.

  The B-2000 had gone in with such an impact, it had thrown him clear of the storm cloud, clear of the lightning that was now illuminating the sky just north of him. By his own rough calculations, he estimated the giant bomber had hit the central command station at more than 2,500 mph. The result was akin to a small atomic bomb.

  Now as he drifted down through the dust clouds, he could see the huge gaping hole on the west side of the city, where the central command station had been hidden. One look and he knew nothing could have possibly survived such an impact.

  The question was, would it be enough to cause both the Blues and Blacks to give up the fight long enough to allow the rest of the Red Forces to escape?

  He drifted down through the next cloud layer and saw that his worst fears were being realized. The battlefield was still alit with explosions, with artillery shells falling, with machine guns spewing out streams of tracers.

  So, had his plan not worked?

  Or hadn’t it taken effect yet?

  He didn’t know …

  He drifted through the last layers of clouds, and now the stink of smoke and cordite began to inflame his nostrils.

  The crashing of the big jet he’d done to perfection. But to his chagrin, he’d forgotten about the most important part: where the hell to land once he’d bailed out.

  He jiggled his parachute cords now this way and that, but it was no use. He was heading for the center of a huge gun battle going on between the Blacks and the Blues.

  And he had no weapon. Nothing at all with which to defend himself.

  This was not good.

  It took him another two minutes to reach a point about one thousand feet above the battlefield. The ground below still seemed to be shaking from the earth-shattering impact of the B-2000. There were flames all over the city, some streets were cracked wide open, and many buildings had toppled over just from the shock wave alone.

  Hunter was getting pissed. Why he’d thought all fighting would stop as soon as he iced the central command station, he just didn’t know. Judging from what was happening beneath his boots, the fighting was raging even more furiously than before.

  Had he made a huge miscalculation? Had his bold plan to stop the war actually made it worse? Had he killed more people than he hoped to save?

  He just didn’t know …

  Suddenly he felt the air pressure around him change. His body began shaking. He twisted around in his chute just quickly enough to see a spread of huge howitzer shells heading right for him. He moved just in time to avoid being hit, but the concussion of the shells passing by felt like a hammer had hit him on the skull.

  His head spinning, he looked back down and saw a huge explosion coming up right at his feet. Again he tried to jiggle out of the way, but the huge concussive force—the second in less than thirty seconds—hit him full force, blowing him and his parachute up about 250 feet.

  He blacked out for a few seconds; when he came to, he saw that the soles of his boots were smoking. That’s how close he’d come to being consumed by the huge fireball.

  He was very woozy now, praying to hit the ground even though he wasn’t sure what would be greeting him once he did. He was trying to focus his eyes on his eventual landing spot, now five hundred feet below, when another series of huge explosions went off, one right after another, all around him. These were massive triple-A shells exploding high over the battlefield. It was like being punched as hard as possible in the head and stomach. He doubled over in midair, never before could he remember feeling such pain.

  It was hard for him to keep his eyes open. Then his parachute collapsed. The ground was coming up at him so fast, it was all just a blur of smoke and flames and rocks and dirt.

  With his last ounce of strength, he tried to brace himself for a hard landing. He tensed his muscles, took a deep breath, and gritted his teeth.

  He hit—very hard—three seconds later. His head came down first—not the way to land from twenty thousand feet. He grazed a huge boulder that was still smoking from an explosion just seconds before. Hunter saw stars—red ones, black ones, blue ones. Then he lost consciousness.

  Hunter lay there, tangled in his parachute, head bleeding, bones cracked, for at least an hour as the battle raged around him.

  His eyes were closed, his body pummeled by rocks and other flying debris. His ears bled from the sound of explosions and gunfire going on around him. He was sure he could hear tanks creaking in the distance, way off, but coming in his direction. Yet he could not move. He was stuck in place. Unable to see or cry out.

  All he could do was hear—and the sounds he heard were those of brutal combat, getting closer with every passing second.

  So this was how it was going to end?

  How many times had he thought that in the past few months?

  It just didn’t seem right: to die here, so far away, on some unknown battlefield in a very stupid war. Yet all the evidence seemed to be stacking up that way.

  He even began to see faces flash before his eyes. His parents. When was the last time he’d really seen them? His friends from MIT, that school from so long ago. The Thunderbirds … everyone, from the pilots to the ground crew. Fitz. JT. Ben. The Jones boys. How strange was his life that he’d been able to see these close friends in two lives? In two places?

  Maybe it was fitting, then, that this was where he would die. What more could he ask from his life?

  More faces came to him. All the beautiful women he’d known. Sarah—the pilot back home. Where was she now? Did she ever think of him? He’d left her so suddenly, he wouldn’t blame her if she hated him now.

  He hoped she didn’t …

  Then there was that strange woman, Elizabeth Sandlake. Beautiful but deranged—like life itself. She’d almost killed him several times Back There—and he’d seen her here in this world, posing as a crazed fortune-teller. Odd that he would be thinking of her now, at a time like this.

  There was also that very pretty blonde—Chloe. He’d had an adventure to beat all with her Back There, and had fal
len for her so hard, he’d heard his heart drop. He had met her here, too. Back on West Falkland Island. But he’d never made it back to her. Damn. And now he never would.

  There were many others—all beautiful, all sexy. Just the thought of them, and their faces flashing before his eyes, filled him with a very warm feeling.

  But even as it was getting warm inside, he felt himself getting cold on the outside. He tensed up. My God, he thought. He could feel the life draining right out of him.

  Too many hits on the head? Maybe heart damage? Maybe a combination of both? Exactly why he was dying really didn’t make much difference to him now.

  Was it all just a folly? All just a waste of time? To come to this very foreign land and fight this very foreign war? For what? On the advice of a ghost that he may or may not have even seen?

  Oh, well, it didn’t make much difference now. His whole body was getting cold. He felt like going to sleep. All around him the noise got louder, and the tanks got nearer.

  But damn it! He didn’t want to be crushed by a tank. He tried to move, but couldn’t. He felt like he was set hard in cement.

  It was strange—but there was another woman in his life. Just one more. The most special. How could he have forgotten?

  She was so beautiful! So warm, and smart, and … and they had lived together Back There. Off and on anyway. And when he was not with her, he’d spent the time yearning for her. Dreaming about her. Fighting for her.

  But she was dead … of that much he was sure.

  And it was this thought that practically drained the last of the life force out of him. Damn, wouldn’t you know it, as the Wingman was drawing his last dying breath, that this woman he’d had way Back There, this beauty that had been so close to him …

  Damned if he couldn’t remember her name ….

  Blackness now, coming in. He was going … slipping away. He saw a long tunnel, and there at the end of it was the Light again. The same one he’d seen that terrible day he dropped the superbomb.

  Now there was a figure at the end of the tunnel beckoning to him … and suddenly he felt warm inside again. And he was drifting up to the Light. And all the people he’d just thought about were there, and he felt a warmth inside him that was so overwhelming, he wanted nothing more than to feel it.