by Mack Maloney
It seemed like such a long time ago …
And Jones, the man who led the final victorious charge only to have it all erased with the push of a button—acted as if it was all his fault. The weight of the world rode so heavily on his shoulders that Hunter sometimes wondered how the general ever even got airborne.
It rained hard and cold the next day. Everything was grounded as a damp fog shrouded the base. The weather only added to the gloom and isolation which was hanging over the Zone Air Patrol. Hunter sought refuge in the base bar. For hours, he sat alone at a table, staring at a half dozen used beer glasses. The place was nearly empty. Word of the general’s grounding and its ramifications had carried instantly throughout the base and the club’s usual party-party atmosphere was substantially subdued. Some of the free-lancers they had employed had already given their notice and left the base, sensing trouble was on the way. In the bar, only a handful of local people sat drinking. There wasn’t a ZAP pilot or monkey to be seen. The atmosphere around Jonesville was heavy with uncertainty.
Something was coming …
Hunter was drunk when she walked in. At first, the dim light over the club’s doorway cast a shadow across her face, managing to transform her hair color into dirty blond. But as soon as she stepped into the brighter light near the bar, her hair returned to its natural, brunette color.
She was small and sported a pert, nimble, curvy body. Her tiny, yet delicious looking breasts highlighted the blue, thin-strapped dress she wore beneath her raincoat. A slim figure and nicely rounded hips and rear added to the package. Her gorgeous legs completed the masterpiece. She was French. She was beautiful. And Hunter knew her.
When he had first looked up, after waiting several crucial seconds for his drunken eyes to focus, he was convinced that he was out on his feet and dreaming the whole thing. But then, after asking the bartender, who had pointed in Hunter’s general direction, she saw him and waved, he knew it was her. The strange days after the war came back to him in a flash. The black and red sky. The dark days and darker nights. His long dangerous trek from Spain to Scotland. She was the girl he had met along the way. They had both sought refuge in the same abandoned farmhouse near the French coast. She had held a shotgun on him for more than an hour, until he convinced her he was not a rapist or a Russian sympathizer. Then they had talked. Later, by mutual consent, he had taken her—and let her take him. It had been brief; she was gone the next morning. But this girl had haunted his dreams—asleep and awake—since the last time he’d had seen her. And she had just walked in the door.
Dominique. He couldn’t believe Dominique was standing in front of him, a mist welling in her eyes. He was on his feet, drunkenly trying to act like a sober gentleman, and failing miserably. It was surreal. This girl, the one who disappeared on that strange morning, was now here, in Jonesville smiling, if slightly taken aback at his boozy manner.
He tried to talk, but gave up and just listened. How did she get here? She had always wanted to come to America. Now, she had raised enough silver—he didn’t ask how—to buy herself out of Occupied France and onto a boat to Iceland. From there she caught the once-a-month flight over to Montreal. How did she know he was here? She had heard of the famous ZAP while in Free Canada, and that a young, skillful pilot named Hunter was one of its leaders. So she made her way to Boston, and finally, bought a ride to Otis.
She got him to sit down and accepted his frantic offers to buy her a drink. They talked. She was thinking of staying in Free Canada or the Northeast Economic Zone as things were really getting out of hand in Occupied Europe. Terrorism, public executions, secret police, Russian soldiers on every corner, the every move of anyone the least suspect, monitored. Oddly, she told him just about the same things were happening in Boston.
She had also thought about him since they last met and shyly admitted that one of the reasons she came across was to try to find him. She just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
He asked her if she had a place to stay. She said no. He asked if she would stay with him. She said yes. She had to help him back to his quarters, where they collapsed into each other’s arms. He retrieved her baggage the next morning and she moved in with him. It continued to rain for the next three days. He didn’t notice. They didn’t leave his room for all that time.
The weather cleared and winter settled in. The Cape was usually spared the harshness of the New England winter climate, though a few inches of snow fell occasionally. ZAP air activity was kept to a minimum, per Jones’s orders. He thought it best to conserve all the fuel they had. Things continued to be tense between Jonesville and Boston. The Leaders’ Council had sent down a dozen observers, patsies really, whose job was to make sure Jones obeyed his grounding orders. It was the ultimate insult. The observers were shunned by the rest of the base community as if they were carrying the plague. Wisely, Jones ordered a dozen Zone Rangers to discreetly keep tabs on the observers.
Most of this was played out at a distance from Hunter. With the slowdown in flying, Jones had told his hardest-working pilots to take some liberty. Hunter agreed with only a minimal protest and a promise from Jones to keep him informed daily of the deteriorating situation. “Enjoy yourself,” Jones had told him, agreeing to send him a daily status report. “Enjoy that woman while you can.”
Dominique was the first woman Hunter had ever lived with—the first he had ever wanted to live with. They talked, they ate, they took long walks together along the frozen Cape beaches. And they made love day and night. She cooked for him, cleaned his clothes, cleaned his quarters. She had developed the delightful habit of walking around the apartment clad only in a pair of black lace panties and a flimsy shirt. It was as if he had died and gone to heaven.
But just as his own life was starting to get good, things continued to plummet down the tubes in Jonesville. The observers had started talk of putting Jones on trial. A power struggle was going on in the Leaders’ Council, and some of the Boston pols who considered Jones a threat were close to gaining the upper hand. This crooked, pro-Mid-Ak faction was determined to turn off the aid pipeline to ZAP. Routine requests, for fuel, ammo, food and clothing for the troops, were being held up, without explanation.
Things started going from bad to worse.
Little things. A half dozen false scramble calls over the course of two weeks—more false alarms than they had gotten in the past year. A pattern seemed to be forming. The ZAP radar net would spot something, but by the time the jet fighters got there, the bogies were gone.
Little things. The strange report the week before that a mystery ship was moving off the beach one night, running without lights or colors.
Little things. The fact that a Mid-Ak cargo ship—one of their very few—had managed to break down just a few miles off the coast of Boston, and asked for—and received—a tow into the Harbor. Such Good Samaritanism would have been unheard of barely two years before, when everyone in the Northeast was certain that their country was next on the Mid-Aks’ list of conquests. How times had changed. It was just that fear that gave birth to the really powerful ZAP and ZAR, although in the ensuing years, it had been the air pirates who had caught most of the Zone Armed Forces’ combined fury.
Little things. Like a tankerful of jet fuel, bound for Jonesville, suddenly delayed around the horn of Florida. The juice was now more precious than ever. Hunter was soon back working full-time, his two weeks in paradise over. He and Jones knew someone was probing their defenses and interdicting their supply lines. They were being set up. And there was little they could do about it.
It was having a devastating effect on the general. Every day the lonely figure of the man would be seen, walking the perimeter of the base, checking the defense, checking the readiness of the Rangers. That done, he’d retire to the radio shack and call each of the outlying radar stations, checking on their status.
After consulting with key officers in ZAP and ZAR, Jones put the base on an unofficial war footing. This necessary measure spawned a
barrage of rumors of an impending attack on Jonesville. The free-lance army in Boston—technically allies of ZAP and ZAR—seemed to be the leading candidate enemy, although other variations had the Mid-Aks, the air pirates, even the Russians all named as the possible adversaries. Some of the civilians began reenforcing their dwellings with concrete, others simply left the area. The situation was so bad, Jones ordered the base blacked-out at sunset every night.
Hunter knew he had a tough decision coming up. He returned home one night after helping in the installation of several more coastal guns down near the beach. He hadn’t flown in weeks and he was getting edgy. But sadness had overtaken that emotion.
Dominique had prepared a candlelight dinner for them, carefully making sure the windows in their apartment were properly covered. She knew the situation at the base was bad. But on this night, she could tell it was bothering Hunter more than usual. The look on his face scared her. He was so obviously wrestling inside himself. They ate quietly—he could barely look at her in the dim light of the candles. She tried to make small talk with him—her French accent giving a comically sweet turn to slang words she’d picked up from him. But it was useless. She knew bad news was coming.
They returned to the bedroom after the meal. She had opened a bottle of wine she had been saving for a special occasion. He didn’t wait for a glass—he took two healthy swigs from the bottle, then kicked off his boots and lay back on the bed. He looked so weary to her. His handsome looks were turning old, his face becoming lined with worry. She tried soothing him by running her fingers through his long hair. He was quiet for a long time.
She removed her clothes, slowly, a single flickering candle casting erotic shadows all over the small bedroom. He couldn’t help watching her through his barely-open eyes. Once she was naked, she slowly undid his shirt and pants. He didn’t resist. Soon they were both naked. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked at her.
“Dominique, honey,” he began slowly. “I’d love to ask you to stay with me. Forever.”
A pang of surprise shot through her. Was this his way of proposing marriage?
“But,” he continued sadly. “The world is so screwed up. The whole goddamned globe is shaking and it feels like it’s going to collapse right here at Otis.”
“Oh, Hawk …”
He held his hand up. “Bad things are coming, honey. We can get stomped out of here in a second’s time.”
“But you can fight them …”
“Sure, we can,” he said, pulling her close to him. “If we decide to, we will. And it will be a hell of a fight. But we just don’t have the numbers here. We’re small, specialized. We can shoot anything down within a hundred miles. But this is different. This is a power play. It’s politics all over again.”
“Then, let’s leave,” she said. “You and me. We go. We can go up to Free Canada. None of this is happening up there. It’s like a real world up there.”
He was quiet once again. She was right. He was suffering from tunnel vision. There were places in the world—Free Canada, the best among them—where the people were still civilized and the living relatively stable. Why not just pack up and leave America? What was keeping him here? Certainly not ZAP. Although he was proud of it and proud to serve with the men who comprised it, he was, in Jones’s words, nothing more than a paycheck soldier. Then was it his loyalty to Jones that held him here? To a certain extent—but it was more for what Jones represented, than the man himself.
Hunter felt he and Jones were the last Americans. True Americans. Even his close friends like Ben Wa and Toomey seemed to be adapting to the Americanized New Order way of life. The kind of patriotism that he and Jones believed in was dying out.
“Hawk,” Dominique continued. “We would be free of all of this. You could still fly. Fly for the Free Canadians. They need pilots as much as anybody. We could be so happy.”
He closed his eyes and didn’t speak for what seemed like an hour.
Finally he whispered to her. “I can’t go. I have to stay. This is my country. I love you. Very much. But I love this country too. I have you now. I don’t have it. I don’t have the feeling I would need to leave it with a clear conscience …”
It was agonizing. He was torn like never before. He loved her so very much, he would probably consider even giving up flying for her. There had been girls and women before—but not like her. He wanted to be with her. But he couldn’t give up his country—or what was left of it.
“Then I stay with you,” she declared, her French stubbornness bubbling to the surface.
“No,” he said. “No, I won’t let you get caught up in this. This is my fight, not yours.”
He pulled her up to him so that he was looking straight into her eyes. She was crying. She knew he wouldn’t let her stay. Her eyes were so sad, so painful, he knew this was how he would remember her, always.
“I’ve already made the arrangements,” he said firmly. “A Beechcraft is landing here tomorrow morning. Jones is moving some valuable documents to Montreal for safekeeping. Ben and Toomey are going to escort it up to the border. You’re going to be on that airplane.”
“No, Hawk …”
“Yes, Dominique.” And that’s all he had to say. She was crying openly now, her head buried in the hair on his chest.
They made love. Then they lay still and held each other for the remainder of the night, not speaking, not sleeping. This lasted about 50 years too soon, he thought. The sun came up. She quietly packed her things while he went out to meet the Beechcraft.
An hour later, she was gone …
Hunter went straight back to where it all started—the base bar. There he stayed, adding to his already exorbitant tab. He was devastated. He felt like an Exocet had homed in and exploded in his heart. Slowly but surely, he got drunk. The day passed, quiet, blurry but tense. He was the only one drinking in the bar most of the time. Everyone else was involved in the base’s war preparations. Watching the activity through the window next to his seat at the rail, it seemed that every person he saw was armed and in battle dress.
Night came. But the war scare had also killed the normally after-hours festive atmosphere of the base’s club. A few people wandered in. He retreated to a corner table, still sitting alone. Ben had come in earlier to tell him the Beechcraft made it to the border without trouble and that two Free Canadian jets had met them as planned and took up the escort from there. He thanked his friend and the Hawaiian left. After that no one bothered Hunter—no one dared even approach him.
The hours passed. His heart ached. Midnight passed into early morning. About 20 others had come in during the night to find refuge from the war jitters in the bottle. But it seemed like everyone was drinking alone. That was fine with Hunter. He was now at the point of drinking himself sober. Another day lost, he thought as the first rays of sunrise filtered through the bar’s windows.
Suddenly, the whole world came crashing down on him.
There was a tremendous explosion. He knew right away the base’s ammunition bunker had been hit. The bar lights blinked and a heartbeat later, the room was filled with flames. In another instant, a scattershot of flying shrapnel, red-hot and shrieking, perforated the walls of the bar.
Hunter was thrown 30 feet out of the structure. He remembered lying on his back, looking up at the early morning stars and hearing the air raid siren go off. Next, the mechanical thumping of the base perimeter guns started up. When he looked up, the barroom—and the people that had been inside—were gone. The scramble Klaxon came on moments later. He slowly extracted himself from the smoking rubble and, without bothering to check for personal damage, he was up and racing across the tarmac toward his F-16.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BASE WAS UNDER attack. Two ships off the coast were pounding the area with their deck guns and missile launchers. There were soldiers firing mortars at them from the dunes on the beach. Apparently one of the ships had landed a contingent of commandos, some of the ghostlike figures were visible in th
e first streaks of daylight, others were illuminated by the ferocious fire that was blazing away at the bombed ammunition bunker at the edge of the base.
The runway lights were on, and Hunter could hear the familiar sound of the jets on the flight line winding up their engines. When he reached the line, his F-16 was already hot,—a quick-thinking monkey had turned the key and armed the weapons even as mortar shells were raining down around them. Looking around in the confusion and smoke, Hunter saw three other jets were hot, and a few in the process. He also saw several of their fighters had turned into burning wrecks. He felt a pang in his heart as he saw good aircraft go up in smoke.
He was the first one to taxi out onto the runway, never pausing for anything as trivial as take-off clearance or wind direction. His only thoughts were on bombing the shit out of those ships off shore, then swinging around and tearing up the ghost troops on the beach. He would figure out who the hell his enemy was later.
As the jet moved forward, he felt the drag of a dozen all-purpose bombs hanging on his wings. No problem. They wouldn’t be there long. His avionics were switching on. One-by-one indicator lights telling him his fuel load, weapons load and other sundry information flashed onto the HUD screen in front of him. It would still take his radar another minute or two to heat up. But he couldn’t wait that long. He gunned his engine and started screeching down the runway.
The F-16 lifted off and he put the nose of the fighter right in the middle of the dull orange sun that was just peeking over the horizon. The enemy ships were about a mile offshore, their muzzle flashes giving away their positions in the ever-quickening daylight. A properly trained pilot would have gained more altitude, executed a bank to the right, swung around to his left and attacked the ships on a south-to-north heading, relying on the plane’s computer to give him the correct direction and speed. But there wasn’t time to do things by the book. These ships were bombing his home, his friends, his airplanes. Can’t waste time. He flipped the fire control computer switch from automatic to manual. He’d do this all by himself.
