by Mack Maloney
The other pilots came over the mountain and shared the same surprise. Quickly, each pulled up and threw their arming switches to the Off position. Soon the eight planes were flying in formation once again. While the others orbited above, Hunter streaked low through the valley. He couldn't even see so much as an oil spot to indicate the Russian base had been there a few hours ago. He put the F-16 on its tail and climbed to join the others.
Hunter was the first to break radio silence. "Sorry, guys," he said with the puzzlement much evidenced in his voice. "I guess we're shooting at ghosts again."
"That's okay, major," one of the A-7 pilots, a guy named Mick, radioed back.
"Alaska's pretty this.time of year."
"Well, you guys enjoy the scenery on the way back," Hunter said, checking his fuel. "I'm going to look around a little more."
"Gonna need help, Major?" It was Max, one of the A-10 pilots.
"Thanks, Max," Hunter replied. "But I'll go this one alone. Go buy yourselves a round of drinks and put it on my tab."
"Aye-aye, sir," Mick radioed back. "Good luck."
With that, the seven attack jets turned southward and streaked off. Alone again, Hunter began searching…
The conference room at the PAAC base headquarters was filled to capacity. More than 60 pilots plus base support personnel were squeezed into a room that was built to hold 50 people, tops. Around the round conference table — its top strewn with empty and full coffee cups, wrappers from sandwiches and countless liquor and beer bottles — sat the principal officers of the Air Corps. The atmosphere was tumultuous as the pilots talked among themselves. Finally, the man they had been waiting for — General Dave Jones, commander of the Pacific American Air Corps — strode into the room. The assembled men snapped to attention as one, and barraged their commanding officer with an orgy of salutes.
The general, small, craggy faced and wiry, instinctively returned the salute.
These guys are real pros, he thought. The PAAC had done away with all but the most barebone rules and regulations between the ranks, yet Hunter and his guys never failed to catch the old USAF officer in him.
"Sit down, gentlemen," Jones said, walking over to shake hands with a few of the officers within reach.
"Relax…"
Hunter, standing at the head of the conference table and in front of a large video screen, greeted Jones. For Hunter, seeing Jones was like seeing a ghost.
The man was the identical twin brother of the deceased hero, General Seth Jones — Hunter's one-time commanding officer and mentor. Seth Jones had died bravely in the opening rounds of the Mid-Ak coup in the Northeast. Before he died, he told Hunter and the other ZAP pilots to head west and join up with his brother Dave. Eventually, they did.
"Good flight up, sir?" Hunter asked him. Jones's HQ and the main base for PAAC was located at the old Naval Air Station in San Diego.
"Sure, no problem," Jones said, taking off his trademark baseball cap and undoing his leather flight jacket. "Any coffee or whiskey left?"
"Both," Hunter said, retrieving a bottle from the table while another pilot handed a mug of coffee to the general. Jones splashed a healthy slug of whiskey into the coffee cup and took a gulp. "Okay. It's good to see everyone.
As you all know, I've been out of touch for a while. Without going into detail, we've got a secret project working and I was locked up in a laboratory — me and a bunch of eggheads — for several weeks. Now I hear there's been somse strange stuff happening. So what the hell is going on up here, Hawk?"
Hunter looked around at the soldiers in the room and especially at those seated around the table. This was the first council of war called since the new PAAC base was established at Coos Bay, Oregon. Anyone who was anyone at the base was on hand. At the far end of the table sat Ben Wa and J. T. Toomey, Hunter's friends who had served with him in the Thunderbirds before the war and in his F-16 squadron during it. They had also been with him at ZAP. Next to them sat four officers known as the Ace Wrecking Company, the two-plane F-4 fighter team for hire — and commanded by the swaggering Captain "Crunch" O'Malley. They had helped Hunter win the Battle of Football City and had accepted employment with PAAC when Hunter headed west.
Beside them sat two officers from The Crazy Eights, the eight-aircraft chopper team that once formed the equally famous Zone Air Ranger brigade back in the days of ZAP. The Crazy Eight Rangers were now doubling as the new base's airborne security force.
Captain Frost, an officer in the Free Canadian Air Force and another friend of Hunter's, was on hand as the liaison officer for PAAC. Next to him, and sitting at Hunter's right hand, was Captain John "Bull" Dozer, the tough Marine commander who had been with Hunter all through the war with The Family.
These men made up the war council, the group which, by agreement, was called to a meeting any time a crisis threatened the security of PAAC or the territory it protected.
Now Hunter had the floor.
He flipped a switch and the video screen came to life in a burst of static. He waited until a fuzzy image appeared on the screen then froze the picture.
"This is the videotape shot from the U-2 two days ago," he started. "Before I roll it, let me just say that I'm glad what's on this tape proves that I am not losing my mind — there were Russians out there — and that the tape will clear up a little of the mystery as to how the Soviets were able to disappear so quickly and take fifty jets with them. In a blizzard yet."
He paused briefly, "this is just one of a number of strange things that have been happening around here. Before I run this tape, let's just hear what you guys have run into lately, then maybe somehow, we can try to figure out what the Christ is going on."
He turned to Ben Wa and Toomey. "Ben, you first."
Ben Wa, the Oriental fighter pilot, stood up and began his story.
"About three weeks ago, J. T. and I were on TOY down to Nellis Air Force base outside of Vegas. As you know, we've been using the Nellis as a refueling station and target practice area lately.
"Anyway, we were drinking in town one night — there are a few barrooms still open in Vegas — and the locals told us they had heard strange stuff out in the desert a month or so earlier."
"What kind of strange 'stuff?' " Jones asked.
"A loud explosion, sir," Toomey, the perpetually sunglassed pilot jumped in.
"Like an atomic bomb went off, one guy told us. Louder than a sonic boom or jet aircraft or things like that."
"But that area is practically deserted," Jones said.
"Yes," Wa continued. "That's what was so strange about it. The people were scared, sir. They said the explosion — or whatever it was — shook the city for ten minutes. Then they saw a lot of smoke and flame, out on the eastern horizon.
"We decided to stick around and try to track it down. We flew around the area where they said they saw smoke and flames. It took us a while, but then we found it."
"And what was 'it?' " Jones asked.
"A crater, sir," Twomey said. "The biggest Goddamn crater you'd ever want to see. It looked like it was made by a nuke. Easily a mile across. It was still smoking when we got there."
Jones took a swig of his spiked coffee. "Meteorite, maybe?"
Toomey shook his head. "We landed, then drove out to the place, sir. It was definitely an explosion. There were bits and pieces of metal everywhere. Plus a few threads of clothing. Even a few fresh bones — they still had some, well, muscle on them."
Jones took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. "A mile wide crater?" he asked. "That's a lot of bomb, if it was a bomb…"
"Whatever it was," Wa said. "It shook up the civilians pretty bad. Some of them left town; others are chipping in to buy an anti-aircraft battery, just in case."
A murmur rose up and subsided among the assembly.
Jones shook his head and took a swig of his booze-laced coffee. "What else?"
he asked.
Hunter nodded to Captain Crunch, commander of the Ace Wrecking Comp
any.
Crunch stood up and started his story. "We were flying routine sea patrol, General, a few weeks before Ben and J. T. were down in Vegas. We were about one hundred fifty klicks off what used to be San Fran when we started picking up some strange radio clutter."
"What kind of strange?" Jones asked.
"Well, it sounded like a lot of different kinds of traffic. Routine stuff — like weather, wind direction, but also the kind of transmissions you'd hear between ships. Course headings, fuel loads, these kinds of things. Some of the voices were in English, others, well… not English."
"Russian?" Jones asked, looking up.
"I don't speak it, sir," Crunch said. "But it could have been."
"So what happened?" asked Jones as he refilled his coffee cup.
"Well, we alerted the base and vectored to the area," Crunch continued.
"That's when we made contact with the Coaster intell ship that was coming back from a long-range patrol."
"That was the Liberty Two ship, General," Hunter interjected.
Now a collective shudder went through the room. Everyone there knew what happened aboard the Liberty 2 was downright spooky.
"Right," Crunch said. "We talked to them. Reported that we were hearing all this strange stuff and it seemed to be coming from a point close to their location. They said they were picking the stuff up too, and that they were getting a little jumpy. They also said they were in the middle of a first-class fog and to them, the radio traffic sounded like a whole Goddamned fleet of ships was bearing down on them.
"We told them to sit tight, that we were about fifteen minutes away. We radioed the base again and requested back-up and also a air-sea rescue chopper, just in case. Then we lit out toward the Liberty. We were still getting a lot of noise on the radio, so much so we had trouble raising and maintaining contact with them."
Crunch stopped and took a chug from his coffee mug. It wasn't holding coffee.
He continued, slowly: "Well, we finally got to within twenty miles of the Liberty's coordinates and sure enough, there was the biggest Goddamn fog bank I've ever seen. It went on for miles in every direction. Thick as hell. We got a good lock on their receiver and we started sending like crazy. At first we got no answer, then…" Jones looked up. "And then, Captain?" Crunch took another slug from his cup. "Then we had one more transmission with them, sir.
We were talking to the skipper." "What did he say?"
Crunch reached out to the tape recorder which sat in front of him and pushed the PLAY button. "Here's what we picked up, sir."
The room was completely silent as the tape crackled to life. First, a burst of static could be heard. Then noises, like hundreds of voices, were clearly evident. Then, one voice came through. It was the Liberty 2 skipper. His voice was shaky: "Get here, quick, Phantoms! Get here quick! They're all around us!
Jesus, there must be a hundred of them! Phantoms! Do you copy? May Day! May Day! May…" The tape abruptly ended in a burst of static. The whole room shuddered as one again. Even Jones shook off a chill.
"We searched the area up and down, sir," Crunch said, caution evident in his voice. "We were twenty five feet off the deck in that God damn fog and we didn't see a thing."
"So what happened?"
"We waited for the chopper and that's when they found the ship," Crunch answered.
Hunter took it from there. "The chopper dropped two divers, General," he said.
"They climbed aboard the ship and found not a single soul on board."
"The engines were running, the radio was still on, the coffee was still hot on the stove," Hunter said. "But there wasn't anyone to be found."
"Any blood?" Jones asked. "Any signs of a struggle?"
Hunter shook his head. "We sent an armed tug out and they towed it back. We went over it with a fine tooth comb. Didn't find a thing. It's like they vanished into thin air."
"Goddamn it, what happened to those men?" Jones said, lightly pounded his fist on the table.
Absolute silence fell upon the room.
"I'm afraid the worst is yet to come, sir," Hunter said. He turned to one of the officers from the Crazy Eights. His was the strangest story of all.
The officer, a lieutenant named Vogel, stood up and slowly, clearly told his tale:
"We were sitting in the scramble house one day when we got a call from the frontier guardsmen's post out in the Hell's Canyon area," Vogel began. "It seems that one of their patrols was on a week-long mission and they passed through a small town named Way Out.
"They had planned to bivouac there, as they had in the past. But when they arrived, they found the town was… well, gone, sir."
"Gone?" Jones asked. "Don't tell me the whole Goddamn town vanished, too…"
"No, sir," Vogel continued. "Gone as in dead, sir. Wiped out. All of the townspeople killed. Mutilated."
There was dead silence.
"There were more than 300 people," Vogel went on. "So many the guardsmen couldn't bury them all. They headed back for their post and that's when they called us."
"Then what?" Jones asked.
Vogel continued: "I took Crazy Two and Crazy Four out with seventy five men.
By the time we reached the outpost, there was no one left there either. It was burned to the ground. No one around except this one guy. He was beat up pretty bad, lost a lot of blood. The medics tried to fix him up, but he was fading fast. But he kept saying one thing, over and over…"
"And that was…?" Jones said.
Vogel paused, then said: " 'Horses,' sir. That's all he could say, was
'Horses.' "
" 'Horses?' What the hell does that mean?" Jones asked, looking at Hunter. All the pilot could do was shrug his shoulders.
"Then what happened, lieutenant?" Jones asked.
"Well, I set up a defense perimeter, sir," the officer continued. "Then I took twenty five men with me in Crazy Two and flew out to Way Out.
"It was just as the guardsmen said. Bodies everywhere, horribly cut up. Some missing arms, legs, heads. They were in really bad shape. So bad even the timber wolves wouldn't eat them. Just like the guardsmen, we couldn't bury them, so we burned them instead."
Vogel paused for a drink from his coffee cup.
"Then we flew back to the outpost," he went on. "By that time, our guys had found the rest of the guardsmen. Or what was left of them. They were all thrown into a pile about a half mile from the place. They were also badly cut up — no arms, heads. Disembowelments.
"We burned them, too. Then it started snowing, so we had to pull out."
Jones took a healthy swig from his whiskey-laced coffee.
"Any of your guys see any tracks out there, lieutenant, horses or otherwise?"
the general asked.
"No sir," Vogel answered. "But, like I said, it was starting to snow pretty hard. Anything would have been covered up."
Jones thought for a moment, then turned to Hunter. "Raiders, Hawk?" he asked.
"Could be," Hunter answered. "But I doubt it. Too messy. The ones we've dealt with like to come in quietly and fade away. The less commotion for them, the better."
"Could be someone new to the neighborhood," Dozer said, speaking for the first time.
"Anything is possible, I guess," Hunter said, swigging his own laced coffee.
"Well this beats the shit out of me," Jones said, refilling his cup with both Java and booze. "Okay, Hawk, your turn."
Hunter turned back to the frozen video frame.
"As you all know, this is the video I shot the other day," he began. "For my own peace of mind, I'm glad to say that it does show something was out there."
He pushed a button and the video started rolling. It began as Hunter's U-2 descended through the storm clouds and into the blizzard-swept valley. The heat sources could clearly be seen at the end of the fuzzy outline of the gorge.
As the U-2 drew closer, the heat source started to become defined. Soon it was clear the heat was coming from many separate shapes. The
two lines of fighters, plus the igloo building and the radar dish came into view. Then, two figures could be seen, the heat sensitive video giving them the look of garish red ghosts. Two more figures could be seen running out into the snow and aiming a SAM launcher at the jet.
Then, just as the camera passed over its closest to the jet fighters, Hunter hit the video's SLO-MO button. He zoomed in on the image. Sure enough, everyone could see the side of a bluish jet, with the unmistakable red star with yellow boarder emblem of the Soviet Union.
"Now that's the best image that we have so far," Hunter told the group, freezing the frame on the video. "We have some guys at the photo recon lab working on it with computer enhancement. But it's a slow process. So they tell me it will still be a few days before we can reach any conclusions on what type of Soviet jet we're dealing with here."
Jones looked at the screen and then spoke the words that were on everyone's lips: "Amazing," he said.
The meeting broke up after a short time later. Hunter and Dozer saw Jones back to his airplane. The General would return to his PAAC San Diego base and brief his top officers there. But before he left, both he and Hunter agreed that the incidents that were discussed at the meeting should all be considered top secret for the time being.
After Jones's airplane took off, Hunter and Dozer retreated to the base bar for the first of several rounds of drinks.
"This is bugging me," Hunter confided in the Marine captain. "Here I am, flying all over the Goddamn North Pole and the Russians somehow land 50 jet fighters right on top of us, then somehow get them to disappear. Some watchdog I was."
"Hey, Hawk, knock it off," Dozer told him. "You were doing your best. There's a lot of weird shit happening these days. This is just another one of them."
Hunter downed his drink and poured another.
Dozer continued. "Ghost, spooks. Mysterious explosions. Those swabbies vanishing like that. Someone icing those frontier guardsmen. I mean, those guardsmen ain't just out there playing soldier. They're tough guys."
