by Mack Maloney
And the two Main Street saloons and the whorehouse on Gowano Avenue were still opening and holding packed houses. Liquor seemed to be in unlimited supply as was ammunition. Card games were going on everywhere, a few of which escalated into smaller gunfights. When the bullets started flying, the nonparticipants nonchalantly took cover, waited for the lead to stop, then returned to their drinking and poker and whoring.
Hunter was an odd sight when he first appeared at the swinging doors of the Pecos’ Double Star Cafe. Most everyone at the bar and at the card tables turned to look at him, clad in a black flight suit, carrying an M-16 in his hands and his flight helmet on his belt. He purposely strode into the saloon, staring down the few who chose to look at him for longer than three seconds.
Don’t fuck with me, his eyes said. No one dared to. The card playing and the drinking started up again almost immediately. Outside another gun battle was in full fury.
Hunter leaned up against the bar and ordered a whiskey, throwing down a dozen real-silver quarters. The bartender, aware that Hunter had overpaid for his drink by about five times, quickly recognized the bribe and asked: “What do you want to know?”
“Scary Mary,” Hunter said. “Who or what is it?”
“Depends on which one you mean,” the barkeep said in a voice drenched in Western twang. “Got two of ’em. One in town, the other outside.”
Hunter downed the whiskey and motioned for another. It was late afternoon. Several hours before, he had successfully catapulted out of the Grand Canyon and, instead of flying back to PAAC-Oregon, he had moved immediately to Location No. 4. He set the F-16 down on a desert strip near the town and had walked in, ducking bullets and dodging running gun battles all along the way. According to notes left behind by General Josephs, the box could be found “under Scary Mary.” Adding this clue to what Tracy had told him about Travis’ adventures in Pecos, Hunter had to put the pieces together.
“What’s the one outside of town?” Hunter asked, swigging the cheap bourbon.
“A big rock,” the bartender said, pouring himself a drink. “About 20 miles to the north, near a village called Mary de Vista. Biggest chunk of stone you’ll ever see. Mile and a half if you walked around the thing. Might be a meteor, people say, dropped in long time ago from outer space.”
“What’s so scary about it?” Hunter said, dropping a few more quarters on the bar for a third.
The bartender leaned over to him and poured. “The rock is filled with sink holes and blind cliffs,” he half-whispered. “And pumas. And buzzards. And rattlers. And bad spirits. Some people go in, some don’t come out again. It’s dangerous. The Indians used to call it chimiyo chimayo. Means like ‘no hope’ or ‘no way out’.”
Hunter thought it over for a moment. He didn’t have the time to go crawling all over a chunk of desert rock—never mind one that was infested with vipers, cougars and vultures and was haunted to boot. And he doubted that Travis did either.
“Where’s the other one?”
“The ‘other’ Scary Mary?” the bartender laughed. “Watch out, pal. It’s much more dangerous. Over at the whorehouse. Room 333.”
The door to Room 333 burst open, courtesy of Hunter’s powerful flight boot.
He was ripping mad. It took him four hours to get the three blocks from the saloon to the whorehouse, so intense was the gunfire in the streets. He had to take a dozen detours and spent most of the time ducked in doorways waiting for the bullet-happy party to pass by. He wound up shooting his way out of a couple tight spots. Luckily his M-16 qualified as heavy artillery in a battle that contained mostly .22s and shotguns.
It was dark by the time he reached the cathouse, and he immediately ran up the stairs to Room 333. A dim bulb provided the only light in the room. He saw only a bed, a dresser, a mirror and a night stand. On the bed was a huge, dark complexioned woman, naked except for a cheap garter belt and stockings. An old cowboy—shriveled up, on his last legs and drinking his way through it—was trying his best to get it on with the tubby prostitute. But from what Hunter could see, their size difference made it a physical impossibility.
Not only were gun battles raging outside the whorehouse, people were shooting at each other inside the place as well. It was total bedlam. Just the noise of all the guns going off made it hard to hear anything. Hunter knew he’d have to hurry, before the next gun fight passed through. He had to announce himself quickly so he fired a burst from the M-16 which ripped away a large section of the room’s shabby ceiling. Immediately, the woman sat up, knocking the elderly rustler clear off the bed.
“Well what the fuck do you want?” she screamed at Hunter. He instantly knew how she’d earned her nickname. Her hair was dyed a terrible fright yellow, her eyes sported massive fake eyelashes and her chubby face was painted in gooey make-up. She must have weighed in at 400 pounds.
“Few years ago. An Air Force guy named Travis came through here,” Hunter said sternly. “Gave you a black box …”
The woman looked at him strangely. “Travis?” she asked, reaching for a bowl of multi-colored pills that sat on the nightstand. “You mean that crazy flyboy guy with all the weed?”
“That’s the guy …” Hunter said quickly. Outside the particularly intense gunfight was going full tilt.
“God damn asshole he was!” the woman shouted. “Owes me money. He comes into town a few years back. He buys dope. He takes his piece of me. He doesn’t pay. Instead, he gives me this box, with a red light blinking on it. Then he’s gone. Vamoosed. So I got this box with a red light. Hey that’s my business, so I put it in my window. To help my customers know I was … available.”
Hunter had guessed right. This was the monster Travis had wrestled with.
Suddenly the gunfight outside got louder and closer. He could hear several explosions going off just a few blocks away and screams coming from the street outside the room’s window. Inside the house, bullets were ricocheting off the walls down the hallway. Scary Mary however seemed oblivious to it all.
“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 du
mps. 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 night 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 the morning meal—an assembly that all the soldiers loathed. Most of them had been hidden away in the Bads for nearly a year and thus had been hearing the 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 launchers were in flames. Each of these trailing jets made a 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 saw nary a Yak in the area.
The attack on the eight SAM sites near Dodge City, Kansas also came as a complete surprise. Not 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, the Russian defenders didn’t know what was happening until the first A-10 dropped a 2000-pound blockbuster right on the installation’s central radar house, creating a huge fireball and leaving nothing in its wake except a smoking crater half the size of a football field.
As two PAAC F-106 “Delta Daggers” watched from above, the A-10s swept in one at a time and deposited a potpourri of bombs and missiles onto the 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 and 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 PAAC 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 Starfighters. 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 Gatling 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.
