by Mack Maloney
"So where's the box?" Hunter said.
"Well, Jesus, aren't we in a hurry?" she quickly lit a cigarette, swallowed a handful of pills then pushed herself up off the bed. Unlike the scenery in the Grand Canyon, Hunter had no trouble averting his eyes as the big woman bent over and reached underneath her mattress. Seconds later she came up with the box, its red light still blinking.
"Here you go, fella," she said, handing him the precious black box. "That's been holding up this bed for more than a year now. Don't need no sign anymore.
Everyone knows where I am."
Hunter took the box and for the first time smiled. He reached into his pocket and gave her a handful of real quarters. "See ya, Mary. Take care of yourself," he said.
She looked at him as he was about to turn and leave. "Hey, hold on," she said, squinting her eyes to get a better look. "Aren't you that 'Wing Man' fella everyone's always talking about? The guy with the famous airplane? You look just like him."
Hunter smiled again, leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Then he was off, running down the hall, dodging stray bullets as he went.
Hunter landed at the Denver airport early the next morning after being directed there from New Mexico. Jones met him in the base's makeshift situation room, taking possession of the two additional black boxes and making arrangements to get them to Eureka immediately.
Then they sat over a pot of coffee and talked. Both knew instinctively it was the last time they'd be able to have a normal conversation for a while.
"We know we can't destroy all the SAMs right now," Jones told him. "But we have to act, to get them to start thinking defensively."
Hunter's mind flashed back to the Big War.
"We're up against the same type of thing as in Western Europe," he said. "The Soviets had superiority in men and weapons, just like now. But we beat them not so much on the front line, but behind the lines. We went after the rear echelons. Their supply dumps. Their means of communications. There wasn't a bridge left standing between Paris and Moscow by the time we were through.
They definitely had the quantity but we had the quality. We forced them into a fight near Paris and they had no back-ups. No supplies. No way to get their reserves through. We kicked their asses.
"It's really no different now. Between them and the Circle ground forces, they've got us on numbers. But all the time I was flying over the 'Bads, I kept thinking: 'Where the hell are their rear areas?' The answer was, they didn't have any. Nothing between the eastern edge of the SAM line and the Circle troops moving east.
"That area is like a limbo now. No civvies, that's for sure. But plenty of bridges, highways, railroad tracks. Lines of communications they're counting on to move the Circle troops on."
Jones thought for a moment, "What you're saying is that if we can get in there, behind the SAM line and in front of the advancing ground troops, we can make it difficult for them."
"Exactly!" Hunter said. "We'll force them to fight somewhere, but only after we've taken our measure of them."
Thus, the strategy for beating the Circle was born…
It was time to go. Hunter had to load up his F-16 and make arrangements to meet a Free Canadian Air Force tanker plane over Saskatchewan to get the fuel needed to make the long trip to New York City.
But Jones had one more subject to discuss. He pressed the photograph of Dominique and Viktor into Hunter's hand, expressing total mystification of what it all meant. But Hunter seemed to totally block out everything. Jones would never forget the transformation that came over the pilot as he studied the photograph. Hunter's mouth narrowed and his fists clenched in rage. A new color roared into his face — a crimson associated with an adrenaline rush. His whole body began to vibrate, as if some inner strength was threatening to burst out of him. But it was Hunter's eyes that got to the senior officer.
Normally blue, they seemed to turn almost white with anger…
What seemed like an eternity later, Hunter looked up from the photo and said to Jones: "I'll be back…"
Then he walked briskly from the room and toward his F-16, carrying the crumpled photograph in his hand…
Chapter Twenty-two
Dawn broke unevenly over the Badlands that next day. There were rain showers extending from central Nebraska on up to the Canadian border. At the same time, Kansas and Oklahoma had clear, if typically hazy, skies.
For the Russian soldiers stationed at the large missile site concentration near Broken Bow, Nebraska, the day began as any other. They were on the edge of the bad weather, it had rained during the night, but had stopped just before first light. This meant that all the tarpaulins that had been placed over their missiles when the rain started the nigh before had to be taken off and the missiles literally wiped down. But this would not happen before a dull hour of calisthenics at five in the morning, followed by an even duller fare for breakfast. Then would come the daily political lecture that followed th morning meal — an assembly that all the soldier loathed. Most of them had been hidden away in th Bads for nearly a year and thus had been hearing th same boring Marxist indoctrination day after day week after week. But in the lock-step regimen of the Soviet Armed Forces, the daily speech would be held as planned. Only after that would the missiles be attended to.
The soldiers — SAM technicians mostly — were filing into the briefing tent when six PAAC A-7 Strike-fighters suddenly burst through the permanent smoky haze.
The jets came in very low and two abreast, covered from above by Captain Crunch and the F-4Xs of the Ace Wrecking Company. Before any of the Russians could act, one of the lead A-7s deposited a laser-guided anti-personnel missile directly in the center of the briefing tent, destroying it and everyone inside. The second lead Strikefighter took out the missile installation's all-important communications hut, before streaking away off to the east.
The next pair of A-7s concentrated on two of the six SA-2 missile launchers at Broken Bow. Again using laser-guided munitions, both pilots fired at the same time, and watched as their missiles smashed into the sides of two rocket launchers, each hit creating an enormous explosion. These two airplanes then also disappeared to the east. The tail end pair of attackers each deposited a missile into two further SA-2 sites, again scoring laser-guided direct hits.
By this time, the lead jets had circled back around and commenced to strafe the remaining two SA-2 sites with their Vulcan cannons. The second pair of A-7s followed their leaders in, cannons blazing. First one, then the other SA-2 launcher took hits and exploded. By the time the tail-end of the flight returned, all of the installation's missile launcher; were in flames. Each of these trailing jets made < strafing run on several support buildings before linking up with the rest of the strike force and heading back to their Colorado base. During the lightning attack, the Russian soldiers failed to fire a single shot in defense of their tarpaulin-covered missiles. And the F-4 pilots of the Ace Wrecking Company sav nary a Yak in the area.
The attack on the eight SAM sites near Dodge City, Kansas also came as a complete surprise. No expecting any enemy action, these Russian missile handlers had neglected to leave on their low-altitude phased radars during the night. Thus, when four PAAC A-10s appeared out of the morning sky, th Russian defenders didn't know what was happening until the first A-10 dropped a 2000-pound block buster right on the installation's central radar house creating a huge fireball and leaving nothing in it wake except a smoking crater half the size of football field.
As two PAAC F-106 "Delta Daggers" watched from above, the A-10s swept in one at a time an deposited a potpourri of bombs and missiles onto th eight SAM sites.
Again, the Soviets had no time to mount a defense. Those who found cover simply hunkered down as the A-10s swept in again an again, taking a deadly toll on the SAM sites. With most of the targets destroyed or burning, the attackers finished up the strike with two strafing runs apiece, then broke off and streaked off to the west.
At about the same time, a makeshift squadron of P
AAC fighter-bombers with fighter protection attacked a string of Russian missile installations set up along the Smoky Hill River 50 miles north of Dodge. There were 22 missile sites altogether. The strike group — made up of eight PAAC San Diego A-4 Navy Skyhawk attack aircraft, and a half dozen souped-up PAAC-Oregon T-38s — was being covered by four PAAC-Oregon F-104 Star fighters. As soon as they arrived over the target, the strike force was met by a barrage of heavy anti-aircraft fire thrown up by Soviet troops along the river. One A-4 and a T-38 were shot down immediately. The Starfighters' flight commander — who also acted as the strike's overall leader — ordered the attackers to clear the area, then led his F-104s in to take out the ack-ack battery with missiles and napalm. But this time, the SAM sites were going hot and missiles were launched at the attacking A-4s and T-38s loitering nearby. Two more T-38s were shot down within seconds.
While the Starfighters destroyed the anti-aircraft position, one of their group was lost to a SA-7 shoulder-held missile fired by someone on the ground.
Ten minutes into the attack, five of the PAAC jets were downed and not a single missile site destroyed. At this rate, the attacking force would be decimated before anything on the ground could be hit. That's when the Starfighter flight commander called in the Spookys…
The C-130 gunships were on station above the Colorado-Kansas border ready to be vectored wherever needed. The two big airplanes arrived near the Smoky Hill River within ten minutes of receiving the call from the strike leader.
As the gunships started a wide arc around the target area, the strike leader coordinated a second attack on the objective. Once again coming in low to best avoid any SAMs fired at them, the remaining A-4s and T-38s as well as the three F-104s, concentrated on the missile batteries located on the far flank of the positions. At this altitude the major threat from the ground was from the shoulder-launched SA-7s and the mobile anti-aircraft batteries. One by one, the attackers braved the withering fire being sent up at them and came in on the target, each dropping a single bomb or firing a single missile, then streaking away. The action caused the Soviet troops to concentrate their missiles — and their undivided attention — to their northern flank. That was their mistake; the second attack was simply a feint.
Just as the last of the attacking jets dropped its single token bomb and cleared the area, the Spookys had completed their wide turn. Now they approached the riverside base from the south, practically unseen. Each airplane sported three GE Galling guns poking out of its port side. Each gun was capable of firing 6000 rounds per minute and was equipped with a computer aiming-and-firing device.
Like most Spooky attacks, this one nearly defied description. With a total of six powerful Gatling guns firing at a rate of 3600 rounds a second, the two planes swept over the missile installation pouring out a curtain of flaming lead that cut through Soviet positions like a sickle. Secondary explosions followed in the wake of both airplanes. Buildings around the central command center of the missile base — mobile trailers mostly — were sliced in two by the awesome gunship barrage. Fuel supplies were hit, adding to the conflagration. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the path of the gunships was perforated with bullets where he stood.
By the time the two gunships completed their run, half the missile base was in flames. Once again, the strike leader brought his remaining aircraft around and went in on the missile sites. It was a bold move, sending in gunships to attack SAM sites — a tactic worthy of a court martial in the normal earlier times. But these weren't normal times. These were the times to innovate, to use whatever was at your disposal. And the idea worked. While the Soviets were still reeling from the unexpected barrage by the Spookys, the attack jets swept in and laid down their ordnance all around the target area.
With the majority of the targets destroyed, the strike leader ordered his airplanes to return to their Denver, Colorado base.
Later that morning, F-105 Thunderchiefs from the Aerodrome squadron led by Mike Fitzgerald himself and flying out of a secret base in Manitoba, destroyed six missile sites near the Black Hills in South Dakota. Two squadrons of mixed Texas Air Force F-4s and exiled Football City F-20s bombarded 10 more Soviet sites around Oklahoma City and Tulsa. However, this time, the Russian missiles were waiting for the attackers. In a swirl of laser-guided bombs and flying SA-3 missiles, three F-4s and a valuable F-20 were downed.
By noontime, 15 separate attacks were launched against the Russian SAM installations. More than 50 SAM launch sites were destroyed or heavily damaged at the cost of 14 attacking aircraft. But the grim total was just the tip of the iceberg. The commanders of the Western Forces estimated there were still as many as 2000 to 3000 more operational missile sites scattered throughout the Badlands. And there would be no more "sneak" attacks — the Russians would be waiting for the attackers from now on.
But the air strikes were serving one part of an overall strategy. They were, meant not to destroy the entire SAM wall, but simply to poke a few holes in it…
Chapter Twenty-three
It was the last night of the full moon and the yellow lunar glare threw a freakish light and shadow display across the battle-scarred skyline of Manhattan. About half the island's skyscrapers still had working lights, some were even equipped with large searchlights on the roofs. Many bristled with machineguns, rocket launchers and heavy artillery pieces' on their top floors, where they could be easily positioned to fire at enemies in any direction and any number of blocks away.
Other tall buildings were dark, burnt-out skeletons of twisted metal and dangling concrete. Nearly four years of sustained warfare had turned downtown New York City into a bizarre urban battleground.
It was a war of territory that was being fought not only on the streets but in the skyscrapers. There were as many as a hundred different groups formed after the original combatants — the National Guards of New York and New Jersey — had fought themselves to a standstill a few years before. With the break-up of these two armies, other smaller militias proliferated. Street gangs, organized crime families, religious fanatics, even Nazis operated in the dense urban sprawl. Not a day went by when one faction was not fighting another. And frequently, groups of different factions would join together to battle a common enemy only to fight each other at some point down the line.
What was everyone fighting for?
Gold. There was plenty of it floating around the city. New York had become the ultimate Black Market, its main occupation was trafficking in dangerous and hard-to-get items. With enough money and the right contacts, anyone could buy anything — from a pound of cocaine to a thousand M-16s to a small tactical nuclear weapon — in New York City. But to make it work, ships had to dock, bridges had to work, streets had to be secured, protection had to be provided.
This meant territory had to be conquered — property in midtown and down by the East and West Rivers was at a deadly premium — and the best way to hold an area was to utilize the buildings contained within it.
So the measure of power in New Order Manhattan was how many skyscrapers your groups held, where they were located and how tall they were. Some smaller group held just one or two skyscrapers. ' Others claimed dozens of buildings as their own, fortress-like blocks of territory and power. Most of the fighting was done between one group seeking to take over another's skyscraper.
A key 'scraper on a key block of buildings meant more money into the coffers of the turf masters — payment for passing through. Also, the taller a building, the better line of sight and, therefore, fire one had. The fight for turf was just not concentrated on level areas but had evolved to vertical conquests as well.
The balance of power shifted daily.
One group's attack on another's skyscraper could be compared to the great ocean battles fought in the 17th and 18th centuries between the navies of Great Britain and Spain. First the enemy would maneuver as close as possible to its intended prey, moving guns in and out of the many abandoned downtown sky-scrapers. Then, when their position was right
, the attacker would put guns in every floor possible and blast away at the desired prize. The defenders would inevitably fire back, leaving the two buildings to pound each other like two man o' wars.
Once it was determined that the target building was sufficiently softened up, the attacking troops would move in. Some were experienced ground fighters, others earned their keep by scaling the sides of buildings like human flies, leading attacks to the higher floors. The outcome could take days or even weeks to be determined — rarely was a takeover bid successful without many bloody hours of floor-to-floor, room-to-room fighting.
Like magnets to steel, Manhattan attracted every sort of low-life, criminal and soldier-for-hire. It was a place so dangerous, even The Circle had decided to leave the New Yorkers to their own devices, for the time being, at least.
In fact, The Circle found it very convenient to deal with the New York power brokers — many top-shelf combat weapons systems, technologies and ammunition were bought by Viktor's minions sent to Manhattan with bags of gold and promises of more. Not surprisingly, the city was also crawling with leftover Mid-Aks, air pirates, Family members, Russians and other representatives from "eastern" European countries.
And somewhere in the morass lay the fifth black box.
Punk 78 and Iron Man were two soldiers in the Power Systems Sector. Theirs was one of the top five largest groups in Manhattan — its territory stretched from the southeast corner of the obliterated Central Park to Park Avenue and down to the border of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Along with the The Wheels, The Corporate Cats, Maximum Army Inc, and The House of David, Power Systems ruled the very profitable center of Manhattan. That there was a perpetual war going on between the five groups had little or no bearing on the huge profits they reaped. Battles or not, each group pulled in hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of gold and real silver each week as a result of their various gun-running, drug-pushing, protection and prostitution enterprises.
