by Mack Maloney
He saw more lights in the sky — initially these looked like genuine shooting stars. First one, then another, then another. Soon they were falling in twos and threes. Then fours and fives. Inside of two minutes, they were coming down like raindrops in a summer shower. Hunter was baffled by it — sometimes the sky in August was lit up with meteorites — but this was only May.
He came to almost ignore the strange falling lights and finally reached the base of the Tower. That's when he heard the voices…
At first it seemed as if someone was standing right over his shoulder, talking into his ear. He instinctively spun around, but no one was there. Then it sounded as if the voices were farther away. Then he heard a shout — echoed like the owl's hoot. Then more voices. They were jumbled up, making no sense, and in no particular language, more like a murmuring. First in front of him, then off to his left. Then to his right, then behind him. Then from all directions at once.
"Fuck this," he muttered. He didn't have time to pay attention to all the weirdness around him. If someone — or something — approached him, he'd just empty the M-16 into them. Simple as that.
He soon located the most climbable section of the mountain and started to scramble up..
It took him nearly two hours to reach the Tower's summit. Throughout his trip, the voices got louder. The shooting stars waned, then returned. And the moon got even bigger. It all became secondary — he was concentrating on how he would deal with whoever the hell was living on top of the Godforsaken place.
Chanting. That's the noise that stuck out most. Chanting at the top of the Tower. He double-checked the M-16 magazine. There were no signs of sentries or a defense perimeter, nothing which would indicate the people at the top were snuff military types. That was fine with him.
Finally he reached the top. Looking over a mound of boulders he could see right down onto the leveled section of the mountain. It was about the size of a football field, he determined, but round, almost like it was a volcano at one time but the lava had barely reached the top when it coagulated and formed the platform.
There were people down there. Indians. Not like' the Native Americans he had come to know and admire back in Oregon. These people were dressed and painted just like Indians he'd seen in the movies. They were also armed to the teeth.
He spotted rifles, shotguns, and at least two machineguns set up on the edge of the platform.
The Indians were chanting and whooping it up in a primitive-looking war dance, step, circling a huge bonfire they'd built. The lights he'd spotted were anything but primitive — they looked to be arc lamps of some kind. Color filters — red, green, yellow — like the type used on searchlights, covered about half of them. The others were bare white.
Then he saw the box. It would have been hard to miss. Right at the edge of the Tower's platform there was what could only be described as "an altar-like stone." And, sure enough, there on top of it was the small black box, its small red light obediently blinking away.
But there was also a photograph on top of the altar. Hunter was astonished to see it was a picture of a B-1. Then he started to notice other things. One Indian had what looked like a B-1 painted his bare back. Another carried a spear that had a small B-1 shape carved out at the top. Then he saw a half dozen Indians appear, carrying crudely carved pieces of wood that resembled the distinctive shape of the B-1.
The study of primitive religions had always fascinated him, and this one would probably fill a textbook. The warriors were worshipping an idol shaped like a B-1. He had heard of a similar case reported during World War II in the South Pacific. Natives on an out-of-the-way island had never seen a white man before until the Marines landed and started hacking away at the jungle to make landing strips. The natives had never seen airplanes before either. When the landing strip was finished and the supply airplanes came, some of the barter — cigarettes, chocolate, whatever — was given to the natives as goodwill presents. The more airplanes that came, the more presents they got. Soon enough, the natives came to worship the airplanes. And why not? The big birds brought them good things from the sky. For their culture, that was as god-like as you could get. When the war moved on and the Americans moved out, the airplanes stopped coming. Confused, the natives built crude wooden airplane-shaped idols and set them up all over the island, as if displaying something that looked like an airplane would cause one to swoop down and land.
Hunter was convinced that same kind of idol worship was in force on top of the Tower. Somehow, these Indians — probably one of the more isolated tribes — knew there was a connection between the black box and the B-1. By displaying the box and carrying airplane-like shapes, the Indians were praying, chanting, almost pleading for a B-1 to come down out of the sky.
Hunter had to shake his head. With all the weird stuff flying around the skies near the Tower, the Indians chose a B-1 to pray to. He sniffed the air. Well, he thought, maybe all that peyote he smelled, had something to do with it.
The air was thick with it. He could see the warriors ceremoniously passing a pipe around, and he could tell by the distinctive yellow curling smoke that they were inhaling a form of ka-rac-hee, or smokable peyote.
He would have loved to have stayed and observed the dancing and chanting all night, but he had a job to do. Get the box. Andjiow, he thought as he scrambled back down the mountain, he knew how he was going to do it.
The night sky was spinning…
"See the stars fall from the sky!" the Indian named Katcheewan chanted. He raised his arms over his head, one hand holding an M-16 decorated with tribal feathers and ornaments, the other holding a rattle-like instrument called a wan-tauk. "Hear the owl!" he bellowed. "The wind sings! The voices of the dead are with us!"
The other 24 Indians sat transfixed, their eyes cast deep in the shaman's hypnotic spell.
"Tonight!" Katcheewan whispered dramatically, pointing the wan-tauk first at the blinking black box that sat on the stone before him, then to the crystal-clear full moon directly above them. "The moon fills up the sky!"
The sweet smell of peyote smoke was everywhere, swirling with the winds that sporadically buffeted the top of the Devil's Tower. The brightness of the moon and the light of the raging bonfire combined to cast the most eerie of shadows around the band of warriors.
Katcheewan — himself into a peyote-induced trance so deep, his eyes had turned red — slowly began to rattle the wan-tauk.
"Tonight!" the shaman yelled, his voice rising an octave and startling the other Indians. "The wind tells me it comes!"
As one, the group raised its eyes and stared out into the night sky. Shooting stars were falling everywhere. Never had they'd seen a night so fantastic.
Off in the distance a rumbling sound deeper and louder than the wind arose. It was coming from the east. The noise slowly turned to even deeper thunder as it drew closer to the Tower.
Katcheewan saw it first. It was just a speck with a faint thin flame spitting out beneath it. The object moved slowly into silhouette in the large white moon, at which time all the Indians saw it. A gasp ran through the warriors.
"It comes…" one warrior shouted out in awe. The other Indians instinctively started chanting in low, moaning voices. Katcheewan himself felt paralyzed. He was unable to take his eyes off the strange flying object.
It moved to the center of the moon, then seemed t< stop. The flames emitted underneath it turned from yellow to bright white and grew in intensity. Th< object hovered for a moment. Then it started to move toward them.
A chorus of frightened yelps came from the warriors, some breaking from their cross-legged sitting positions. Katcheewan wanted to yell to them to stay where they were and to not be afraid, but he could not speak. The words would not come out. The object grew larger as it came closer. The noise was getting very loud, by now drowning out all evidence of the high wind. Not one of the warriors thought to raise his M-16.
Now the object was directly above them, no more than 200 feet away.
&n
bsp; Katcheewan — his mind swimming in a mixture of surprise and shock — could not even shake the wan-tauk. He watched as the intense white flame took on a tinge of deep blue. By now the noise was a thunder, never ending, getting louder. Some of his warriors fled to the nearby rocks; others sat like stones, unable or unwilling to move. They had come south to the Tower 12 seasons before from deep in the Caribou Mountains of northern Alberta. Of them all, only Katcheewan had ever seen an airplane, and that was only once.
But he had never seen anything like this. The object was very close. So close, they could make out its silver color and the large red star bordered in yellow painted on its side. As many as ten blinking lights flashed from its wings and tail. The power of the flame was kicking up dust and stones on the platform as the craft hung barely 100 feet above them.
Suddenly its nose burst into flame. Streaks of light shot out from it, adding the combined sound of hundreds of explosions to the already excruciating noise of its whining engine. The craft started to turn slowly, streams of tracer lights still emitting from its snout. Another half dozen Indians jumped up and fled to relative safety of the rocks. Still, Katcheewan could not move.
The craft completed its circle and the firing from the nose ceased. The engine noise now reached its peak and the downward wind thrust was like a hurricane.
It was coming straight down. Still a few die-hard warriors stayed in their places, their peyote-resin soaked blood pumping rapidly through their bodies.
Somewhere deep in his diaphragm, Katcheewan found the strength to scream: "It comes!" Then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he collapsed in shock. Seeing their leader fall was all it took for the rest of the Indians to scatter. From their ledgework hiding places they saw the craft come down and land next to the stone altar where the blinking box lay. They could see a figure, wearing a strange white headpiece sitting inside a glass bubble at the front of the strange craft.
Suddenly the bubble burst upward and the man stood up. He raised his right hand, causing some of the Indians to cower behind the rocks in case the god was going to strike out a lightning bolt in their direction. He did not. Instead the figure climbed out of the broken bubble, stepped onto the craft's wing, then leaped to the ground. The light from the still raging bonfire reflected off his suit.
Thankfully, he didn't approach the warriors. Instead he walked to the altar, picked up the black box, then quickly returned to the craft. Sitting back down inside, the figure somehow made the bubble top come together with the rest of the craft.
Then with a roar and a flash of fire, the craft started to shake, then move. Slowly it began to ascend into the night sky. Some of the Indians stood now and watched as the craft rose high above them. A reassuring chant rose up from them as the object climbed back into the light of the moon, getting smaller by the instant.
When the craft was as small as when they first spotted it, they heard one last burst of noise and saw another long streak of flame come out of its tail. Then it suddenly shot forward and was gone…
Chapter Eighteen
Jones was waiting on the tarmac when the Yak-landed.
Two runways over, a pair of A-7 "Strikefighters" roared away on take-off.
Almost immediately, two more taxied out onto the strip and awaited permission to go. In back of them waited two F-106's. Then another pair of A-7's.
The VTOL craft settled down and Hunter jumped out. Jones saw the box and, shook Hunter's hand. "All right, Hawk," he said breaking out in an appreciative grin. "How to come through, buddy."
"Two down, three to go," Hunter said, taking off his helmet for the first time in what seemed like days. He ran his hand through his long, sandy hair and looked around the base. The place was jumping with activity.
"You've found a forward base?" Hunter asked the general, correctly interpreting the reason behind all the hustle.
"Yes, old Denver airport," Jones replied, leading the pilot toward the base's all-purpose mess hall saloon. "The city is deserted, of course. But the airport's big and it's got good mountain cover all around. We've found places to stick our mobile radar units and our own SAMs. The runways are still in good shape as are the maintenance shops."
"What's the word from Fitz and St. Louie!" Hunter asked. He was anxious to find out about his two friends.
"All reports are go," Jones told him. "Everyone got out clean in both Syracuse and Football City. The F-20s are down in Dallas and Fitzie's '105s are sitting up in Winnipeg, waiting for us to tell them where to go."
"Anything else from the Texans?" Hunter asked as they reached the mess hall.
"They were raided again during the night, I'm afraid," Jones said, claiming the first table they could find. "They hit a place called Pampa, up near Amarillo. Really tore it up."
"Same pattern?" Hunter asked.
"Yep," Jones said. "Cavalry. Yaks. Hit and run. The town is fairly large, so they would seem to be getting bolder. More willing to take on big targets."
"This is not good news," Hunter said, reaching for the coffee pot a waitress had produced.
"It gets worse," Jones said grimly. "The Texans did a photo recon overflight of New Orleans harbor this morning. The place is lousy with Russian subs."
"Holy Christ," Hunter said softly.
"And they weren't little tin cans either," Jones continued. "Those were big boys. Nuclear jobs. They took a shot of them hauling long metal cylinders out of the missile tubes.
They're probably bringing either more mean high-explosive, or SAM fuel."
"Probably," Hunter agreed. "They figure the tubes would protect them if something went unstable."
"There is some good news," Jones said. "Word's getting around pretty quick.
Not just about The Circle, but about the Russians, too. We have guys-volunteers — pouring into San Diego. Small militias and stuff, looking to sign up. And, the Texans tell us that people are crossing over from Louisiana and Arkansas who want no part of the Reds, or The Circle or Viktor. Canadians say the same thing. To make it easier, we've agreed to be known as the Western Forces."
"Well, every last guy will help," Hunter replied. "What about the regular Free Canadian Army?"
"Frost is up in Montreal right now," the general told him. "The Canadians, want to help — but they can't send their entire army down. It would leave them too unprotected."
"I can understand that," Hunter agreed. "There are a lot of people from the USA up there. It's risking too much."
"They did say they'd have two divisions waiting at the border near Winnipeg.
They'll intervene if we need them. They'll also 'encourage' volunteers and they'll take up our Northwest Approach air patrols."
Hunter was glad to hear that. With the Free Canadians watching over the territory from Alaska over to Siberia, more PAAC aircraft would be freed up to join the fight over the Badlands.
Their waitress reappeared with a bowl of scrambled eggs and a string of sausages. Hunter immediately dug in.
"How are things at Eureka going?" he asked between mouthfuls.
"Slow," Jones said, lowering his voice a meter. "They finished all the engine work, no problem, and began to work on the avionics. But it's so complicated they have to start at square one just about. We have some great guys working on it. Wa and Twomey are there, as you know, plus a lot of former CalTech people. But they're expected to figure out in a matter of weeks what it took the U.S. Government years to put together."
"I don't envy them," Hunter said. "Compared to what they have to do, I've got the easy job, just getting the boxes."
Jones nodded gravely. "All we can hope for is that you get Boxes three, four, and five and when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, — the final battle, so to speak — we'll have the B-1s up and operating."
Hunter wolfed down the rest of the eggs, drained a cup of coffee and prepared to leave. "Well, I'd better get the '16 up and running. I'd like to be down by the Grand Canyon by noon."
He looked at the general and was tr
oubled to see an especially grim look come across his features. "There's one more thing, Hawk," Jones began. "You'd better sit down."
Hunter was back down in an instant.
"Hawk, Dozer and his guys ran across a plane wreck out on the border of Colorado and Kansas, near the Smoky Hill River," he told him.
"One of ours?" Hunter asked, mystified.
"No," Jones said. "One of theirs. Looked like an L-1011 converted for cargo.
It was an accidental crash. They found one of its engines first, about fifteen miles from the rest of wreckage. Dozer figures the engine probably came off in flight. I don't imagine The Circle has high air maintenance standards, so the thing probably ran out of oil."
"So?" Hunter said. "What was it carrying?"
Jones looked at him for a moment, then took off his cap and scratched his wiffle-cut head. He slipped an envelope out of his pocket. "This," he said, handing it to Hunter.
Hunter took the envelope and ripped it open. He felt a lightning bolt come up his spine and explode in his brain. It was yet another photo of Dominique.
Same shot, same pose.
"It's weird, Hawk," Jones said. "The whole Goddamn airplane was filled with them!"
Hunter looked at him. "What does you mean, sir?"
"I mean there were crates of them," Jones said, leaning forward and speaking in an urgent whisper. "Thousands — tens of thousands of copies of the same picture."
"This is crazy…" Hunter said.
"Hawk, I can't imagine what the hell is going on," Jones said. "The Russians, The Circle, this Viktor guy — these things I can understand. But what the hell is it with these pictures? It looks as if they were going to drop them.
Spread 'em around like propaganda leaflets or something."
