Skyfire

by Maloney, Mack;

  “Now tell me, what do you know about subs?”

  Knowing he had little other choice, Yaz prudently took the next few minutes explaining to the captain that he had served as an executive officer aboard the Navy submarine USS Albany during World War III.

  “Do you know propulsion systems?” the captain asked.

  “Some,” Yaz answered.

  “Then you will help us,” the captain replied. He turned to the rabble and tore off a short burst of yips and yaps. They immediately broke into a loud cheer.

  Turning back to Yaz, the captain explained that although the sub’s powerplants were working at maximum, only a small amount of power was reaching the propeller screws. Plus, the boat’s electrical systems were faltering en masse.

  “Power-shift differential is all screwed up,” Yaz said by way of an instant diagnosis.

  The man took another bite of lamb. “Can you tell us how to fix it?” he asked.

  Yaz thought quickly and then answered: “Possibly. But first I want to know the whereabouts of my friend’s woman and what her condition is.”

  “What else?” was the captain’s reply.

  “I want food,” Yaz continued, sensing he could extract more from the man. “I want clean clothes and I want freedom for myself, my friend’s woman, and all of the civilians you have on board this vessel.”

  The captain simply shrugged. He was a get-to-the-point type of guy and sensed that Yaz was, too.

  “You will be fed,” he said, drinking from his chalice. “And given clothes. But you are too late to get freedom for the civilians you spoke of. They are no longer on board. This is a warboat—a Krig Bat—and therefore is no place for slaves.”

  Yaz took due note of the reference to “slaves.”

  “So where are they?” he asked.

  The man took another huge bite of meat. “They were transferred to another boat last night,” he said, his words barely understandable with his mouth full. “Only you and your friend’s friend remain on board, and we are keeping you both.”

  “OK,” Yaz said. “Then I want to see her.”

  The captain spit out a piece of fat and ground it into the floor with the toe of his boot. Then he wiped the residue of grease from his mouth with his bare hand.

  “You will eat first, get clothes, and then help fix our gears,” he said. “And then, maybe you will see this woman.”

  “No,” Yaz said firmly, at the same time wondering just how far he could bargain with the man. “I must know her condition first and above all other things …”

  The captain just shook his head and kind of chuckled in an exasperated way.

  “Will you please forget about this female? This ‘friend of your friend?’ ” he said. “She is all right. In fact, she’s in the best hands possible.”

  “Prove it,” Yaz said defiantly.

  The captain let out an enormous, greasy laugh, causing the others around them to laugh, too.

  “Prove to me the world is round,” he told Yaz in a mocking tone. “And tell me why the sky never catches on fire …”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Montauk Point Yacht Club

  MIKE FITZGERALD TOOK ANOTHER swig of whiskey and relit his cigar.

  “Some days I wish I was lying on a sunny beach somewhere,” he said wistfully, leaning far back in his chair and closing his eyes. “Tub of ice-cold beer in front of me, redheads on either side, rubbing on the tanning oil, keeping the sun out of me face …”

  “Dream on,” Hunter told him grimly. “This ain’t like the old days …”

  They were sitting in the commodore’s swanky office on the top floor of the once-luxurious Montauk Point Yacht Club. The multi-million-dollar building, which was built overlooking the scenic Montauk Bay, had been turned into a temporary United American field base. As such, it was crawling with Long Island militiamen as well as regular United American Army troops. A makeshift helipad large enough to handle three choppers plus Hunter’s Harrier had been set up in the parking lot, and the entire area had been ringed with defensive weapons and sentries.

  The battle at Montauk Point and the subsequent seizure of the raiders’ submarine was the reason for all the activity around the yacht club. Once word of the capture of twenty-two enemy sailors had been flashed to Washington—and eventually across the country—the sleepy area around Montauk suddenly became the center of the universe. For it was here that the vicious, marauding invaders had finally been thrown back. Now some people were using Montauk in the same breath as the Battle of Saratoga, Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo, the brave stand at Khe Sanh.

  But the corralling of the twenty-two POW’s had also created the need for interrogation, and that’s why Fitz was in town. When it came to grilling prisoners-of-war, the barrel-chested Irishman was the best in the business. In fact, in the past forty-eight hours he had done little else but question the sailors, letting other UA officials deal with the swarm of media types who had camped out by the yacht club’s main gate.

  Yet with all his experience in the technique of “POW persuasion,” Fitz’s sessions with the captured seamen had been the strangest by far. As it turned out, language had not been a problem. Fitz had a definite knack for speaking in northern European dialects, and with his knowledge of Norwegian and Swedish, he was able to converse with the prisoners quite easily.

  But understanding just what the hell the prisoners were talking about proved to be another matter.

  Now it was late afternoon, and he and Hunter were awaiting an open line to Washington so they could give a complete report to General Jones. After that, they would have to start planning for their next step.

  Both of them were tired, but The Wingman looked uncharacteristically weary. Fitz knew there was good reason for this, however, for his friend had not stopped to eat, sleep, or even breathe in the past two days. When he wasn’t flying long, torturous search patterns off the American East Coast trying to locate other enemy subs, he was arguing, cajoling, and outright bribing people for the jet fuel needed to make the flights. When he couldn’t get the fuel, he was helping Fitz with the interrogations, or lending a hand setting up a SAM site or flying close-in chopper patrols along the Long Island beaches.

  And in his spare time, he had pored over several dozen books on Viking lore.

  Throughout it all, the expression on his face never changed. It was both grim and sad—clear in its yearning for Dominique.

  Another few minutes passed, and then the phone on Fitz’s desk rang twice. Picking it up, he listened for a moment and nodded to Hunter. “It’s him …”

  Hunter immediately turned on the telephone squawk box on the table beside him and soon all three men were able to talk and hear each other.

  “How did the sessions go?” Jones asked through a minor storm of static.

  “I’ve had better,” Fitz answered, putting down his cigar and picking up a notebook which featured page upon page of names, numbers, and other various scribblings. “We’ve got a strange lot on our hands here.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Jones said, the telephone-line connection gradually clearing up.

  “If you are ready, General,” Fitz continued, “we’ll start at the top.”

  Fitz took the next few minutes explaining to Jones that all of the POW’s had basically told the same story.

  And what a story it was …

  As it turned out, Hunter’s description of the strange invaders as “modern Vikings” turned out to be quite accurate. Fitz was able to ascertain that just about all of the prisoners were of Scandinavian origin. Moreover, all of them also quite freely admitted they had sailed to North America for the primary purpose of raiding, pillaging, and capturing slaves—especially women between eighteen and thirty-six.

  However, when Fitz asked them to identify their overall military commander or a central point where their force was headquartered, the men answered with little more than blank stares. The twenty-two men were all part of one clan. The captain of the submarine—a man
who was killed on the beach the night of the battle—was the top man in this clan. And while the prisoners admitted that many clans were involved in the North America raiding campaign, they knew very little about these other groups.

  “Clans? That’s a new one,” Jones said. “Are we to assume then that they have no central command?”

  “Not one in the typical sense,” Hunter spoke up.

  Fitz then went on to explain that he had also asked each POW how old he was, where he had grown up, and what he knew about the state of the world in general. Most of them were between the ages of thirty and fifty—old for raiding work. And many were practically ignorant of world events, some of them to the point that they claimed they didn’t know anything about World War III.

  “For want of a better word, they all seem to be very naive,” Fitz went on. “The strange thing is that most of them are very talkative. Too talkative. They’ll go on forever about a house they built or a bear they killed or an axe handle they carved from scratch and talk to you about it like a little kid.

  “Yet they’ve brutally murdered at least three hundred people so far. And kidnapped at least that many more.”

  “They’re just like the original Vikings,” Hunter spoke up again, retrieving information he’d read about Viking lore. “Lack of central authority, definitely clannish, talkative. Their clothes and beards, their simple tactics—damn, right down to sticking that serpent’s head on the front of their submarine, these guys fit the description of the authentic Norsemen from a thousand years ago.”

  “Did any of them say what made all of these clans get together and come here in the first place?” Jones asked.

  “Only one guy talked about that,” Fitz replied, searching through his notes. “His name was Thurd. Of them all, he was probably the brightest, meaning he could probably tie his shoelaces by himself. He mentioned something about them returning to ‘Vinland,’ and claiming what was theirs to begin with.”

  “That’s another interesting piece of information, General,” Hunter jumped in. “ ‘Vinland’ was what the original Norsemen called the part of North America where they first came ashore—way before Columbus, I might add. It was thought to be up around Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, but maybe as far down as Cape Cod or even farther south than that.”

  “Well, that would fit in with their pattern so far,” Jones replied. “They first showed up in Nova Scotia and have obviously been working their way south ever since.”

  “And that’s one thing we have working in our favor,” Hunter told him. “These guys have no finesse. They operate on brute force. They hit a target, rape, pillage, kill, and kidnap, then they retreat to their subs, submerge and surface somewhere farther down the coast.

  “What we have to do is be waiting for them at the next likely spot.”

  There was a break in the conversation as a burst of static came and went.

  “Did you get any information about these huge submarines?” Jones asked once the line was clear again.

  “Nothing other than they were designed in Oslo by a guy named Svenson and that there are a lot of them,” Fitz answered. “And only Thurd, the smart one, knew all that. From what I could understand, the vast majority of these guys were all recruited from the mountains way the hell up in Scandinavia—some of the most isolated parts of the world. You know, dark six months a year. They were trained, probably indoctrinated to a certain degree, and then put on these boats. Apparently they’ve been raiding parts of Iceland and the British Isles for the past few months, getting their act together before sailing over here.

  “However, I did get the impression that different subs have different specialties. One sub might carry just soldiers while another might carry just fuel or weapons.”

  There was a brief silence as all three men considered the information.

  Finally Jones asked a very touchy question: “Did any of them say what they were doing with the people they kidnap?”

  Right away, Fitz saw Hunter’s face turn incredibly dour.

  “No, sir,” Fitz replied quickly. “None of them seemed to know anything about the people they kidnapped. They would just turn them over to another boat somewhere out to sea, get supplies in return, and then they’d be done with them. That’s why I think they have different boats doing different jobs. The boat captured at Montauk Point was apparently a troop vessel, a Krig Bat, Thurd called it. ‘War boat’ in Norwegian. There weren’t any accommodations for the kidnapped aboard.”

  The static returned now and stayed on the line for nearly a half minute. When Jones came back, it was apparent that he had heard enough for now.

  “Get some rest, guys” he said, his voice fading. “We’ll talk again in three hours about the next step.”

  With that, Jones hung up.

  Hunter and Fitz each poured themselves another whiskey. Although they drank in silence, Fitz could see that Hunter’s anger was building by the second.

  “I’m convinced that these guys have a lot of slave ships roaming around out there,” Hunter said bitterly. “And when they’re full, they bring all their victims to God-knows-where.”

  Fitz sadly nodded in agreement. “It’s probably something along those lines,” he said. “But with no central command point to speak of, it’s going to be very difficult to find out exactly what they are up to and what boat is where at any given time. Especially since we’ve got very little in the way of naval vessels ourselves.”

  It was true: though the United Americans were strong in ground and air forces, their navy was little more than a few dozen coastal patrol craft and two creaking prewar submarines that would probably sink if they ever ventured out of their dry docks.

  Hunter slammed his fist down on the desk. “But there has to be some kind of command structure,” he said, his voice boiling with anger now. “These grunts wouldn’t have to know anything about it. Most of them are as dumb as planks anyway. They’re stooges. Thugs. Who else would get aboard those floating shitboxes?”

  “Good point,” Fitz said, lighting up a new cigar.

  But Hunter was smoking now without the benefit of a stogie.

  “And we’ve got hardware they’ve never even heard of,” he fumed. “It’s quality versus quantity again, Mike, and this time, I swear it, quality will win out. They can throw as many of their goons onto the beaches as they want, and fuel shortage or no fuel shortage, we’ll be able to plaster them.”

  “If only we could figure out where and when they were coming in a big way …” Fitz replied, nodding. “Then we could really put the hurt on them.”

  An angry silence descended on the room.

  “Someone, somewhere, is coordinating all this …” Hunter began again, his voice even angrier than ever. “I can feel it. Even if these clans don’t know what the hell is going on, someone directed all those refineries to be bombed and someone is at least pointing these sub commanders in the right direction, telling them where to be and what to do before every raid.”

  Fitz was nodding slowly in agreement. “And if that is all true …” he said, “then someone is responsible for transporting the people they snatch.”

  Hunter’s face turned as somber as stone. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the image of Dominique, beckoning to him.

  “That’s right,” he said, his words dripping fire. “And that person is going to make a mistake eventually. And I’m going to be right on top of them when they do …”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Two days later

  IT WAS BARELY THIRTY minutes after midnight when the Norse raiding party made up of the Finnbogi clan came ashore along a stretch of deserted Delaware seafront ironically named Slaughter Beach.

  Unlike the weather during their previous landings, tonight it was raining. The sea was choppy with a high spray, and this made it more difficult than usual for the raiders to land their dozens of large, see-through rubber boats. Once on shore, things didn’t get much better. The invaders found the going slow and sluggish due to the high w
inds, chilly rain, and deep, wet sand.

  Nevertheless, they pressed on. There were six hundred and fifty-three of them in all, fully two-thirds of the Finnbogis. Most were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, although a few were carrying old, Czech-made grenade launchers as well as napalm-fueled flamethrowers. Plus, each man was carrying his own intricately carved battle-axe.

  Their target for the night was the small city of Milford, located about five miles inland from Slaughter Beach. In terms of likely targets, Milford offered the raiders many of the things they were looking for. First of all, it was the site of a medium-sized oil-processing facility, one which had contained in the past several million gallons of aviation fuel.

  Plus, the city, with its population of about five thousand, was lightly defended—so said the clan’s advanced scouts, dropped off on the beach two days before. And unlike many of the cities along the American eastern seaboard, Milford had not been abandoned, though the reasons for this were not exactly clear, according to the Norse spies.

  Once they had moved off the beach, the clan split into two groups. One party, made up of three hundred raiders and about a dozen rocket launchers, would approach the refinery via Route 36, a seaside two-lane highway. The second group of three hundred fifty would make its way over the sand dunes and through the marshes beyond, putting them in a position to attack the outskirts of the city from the south. Three Norsemen would be left behind to watch the clan’s three dozen rubber boats.

  A man named Thugg Finnbogi was the commander of the group that would move up Route 36 and attack the oil refinery. A massive individual of rock features and bright red hair and beard, Thugg was hands down the toughest of all the Finnbogis. He had led the clan on the raid at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, as well as on several towns along Cape Cod, and it was he who had planned the details for this raid on Milford.

  Proper dispersion of forces or such rudimentary things as front and rear defense of the unit were of little importance to Thugg, however. Instead of marching down Route 36 in two well-paced columns with scouts on either side watching the flanks, Thugg and his men simply walked down the middle of the rainy, windswept highway en masse, a disorganized mob with little regard for discipline or stealth.