by Mack Maloney
“We have a plan, Major Hunter,” Sir Neil continued. “One that could thwart a large part of Lucifer’s war-making sickness. One that could strike a preemptive blow and delay this new phase of the war long enough for The Modern Knights to move their armies. But it is a bold plan. One that needs all the help we can muster. This is why, when we heard you were in the area, we wanted to contact you, major.”
Hunter once again began to speak up. “I find this all very interesting, but—”
Sir Neil raised his hand. “Please, major, let me at least tell you of our plan. I think you’ll see that our cause and your goal are one in the same.”
He paused for a moment, then continued. “Our idea is to strike quicker than Lucifer. Seize and hold a very important strategic point just a few days before The Modern Knights and their armies arrive.”
“Where is this strategic point?” Hunter asked.
Sir Neil looked at Heath, then back at Hunter. He was heartened that the American was showing some interest. “You realize, major, that this is all very, very hush-hush.”
Hunter nodded. “Of course.”
“And that if we bring you into our confidence you will become one of only about twenty individuals who know our intentions.”
“Yes, I understand,” Hunter said. His curiosity—or was it the gin?—was getting the best of him.
Once again, Sir Neil smiled broadly.
“Okay, Major,” Sir Neil said, rising and pulling down a map on the wall behind his desk. It showed the entire Middle East and Africa region in detail. “Let me preface this by saying that the majority of Lucifer’s forces—The Legion, he calls them—are concentrated in what used to be called Saudi Arabia. That country was hit pretty hard during the first clashes of the Big War, and not just by neutron bombs either. The government was wiped out, and so was most of their oil production facilities. All that was left was their land, and Lucifer took it.
“He recruited many radical religious freaks, terrorists—and, of course, mercenaries. There are close to one million men in all. For the past year, they have been training in his new Arabian Kingdom for the Holy War against the democracies. And, by the way, that Kingdom includes the Persian Gulf.”
“And all that oil?” Hunter asked.
“Yes,” Sir Neil nodded. “All that oil.”
Hunter let out a long, low whistle. One thing that stayed constant in the New Order world was the axiom “Oil is power.”
Sir Neil continued. “What makes this all the more dangerous for us is the number of allies Lucifer has bought throughout the Med itself. His confederates are operating all over. His tentacles are everywhere.
“But in all this disputed area, there is one point that has yet been claimed. One very important strategic position. The army that holds it will in fact control the flow of the war to come. And the race will soon be on. Our plan is to seize this strategic point. Our intelligence agents tell us that Lucifer covets it too.”
Hunter studied the map. Using the little information Sir Neil had told him, he had already guessed where the all-important strategic point was.
“The Suez Canal,” he said.
Sir Neil clapped his hands. “Right on! Major,” he said with obvious glee. “Suez. He who controls it can tighten or loosen the screws as he wishes. He can move his army through the canal and he’s assured of his oil supply once he breaks out into the Med.”
Hunter thought for a moment, then asked, “Do you know just what it is that Lucifer wants?”
Sir Neil shook his head. “A good question,” he said. “We’ve asked it ourselves many times. The answer apparently has to do with what exactly Lucifer’s deep-down intentions are. Here is a man using the name of the Devil himself. He’s not building an army as much as he is building a cult. He is attracting the most radical religious elements in the region to continue to fight this war. They are, for the most part, a rabble. Armed fanatics, just as you explained the Circle Armies were. The only difference is they receive extensive training in terrorist tactics. But there are certain limitations one must address when you have men in arms in quantity, but not quality.”
“Just like back in America,” Hunter said. “He never really believed that he could take us over per se. He was happy enough just keeping us destabilized.”
“Exactly, major,” Sir Neil said. “It’s all part of the same plan. Keep the whole world off balance. Until someone—be it the Russians, or some entity even more evil—can rise up and take over. Lucifer is more than just a Soviet agent. He is a master terrorist. He does what he does purely for the terror of it.”
Hunter’s head was spinning, and now he couldn’t blame it entirely on the gin. It seemed as if the world had become Lucifer’s deadly playground.
“The man is a monumental egomaniac,” Hunter said. “And he has to be stopped. But wouldn’t it be easier just to track him down? After all, that’s what I’m here for.”
Sir Neil shook his head grimly. “There are two problems with that approach, old boy,” he said. “First, we know though our intelligence agents that Lucifer has an extremely elaborate chain of command, manned by Soviets or Soviet puppets and designed, no doubt, in Moscow. It’s a highly intricate system and is quite the opposite of the rabble he calls his army.
“The central purpose of this command is not to win battles or even the coming war—although this is high on their list, of course. No, their major aim, we have learned, is to continue the fight even if Lucifer is killed or captured. They are expert propagandists. They are well-prepared to make their leader a religious martyr if they have to.
“In fact, it wouldn’t be beyond them in the least to fake Lucifer’s death at just the right time. Look at your own experience back in America. You said there was a point where you and many others thought Viktor might be dead. And what happened? Only the veterans in his army were dissuaded from fighting. The brainwashed young soldiers fought on.”
“That’s true,” Hunter agreed. “We know he was putting ‘feel-good’ drugs into their chow.”
“Exactly!” Heath said. “The difference here is that the drugs have been replaced by the traditional religious fanaticism of the region. He doesn’t have to dope these soldiers.”
“The second problem is finding Lucifer if we wanted to,” Sir Neil said. “His command headquarters is continually on the move. They have many secret locations in southern Saudi Arabia—a place so desolate even the old Saudis called it Rub al Khali or ‘The Empty Quarter.’ But he does have several major seaport bases on the Red Sea.”
Sir Neil quickly splashed out three more drinks. This time the formality of toasting was dispensed with; all three men drained their glasses simultaneously.
The British commander continued. “Lucifer is also very well guarded. It would be very hard for a single assassin to find him and get close enough to him. Even if that assassin is flying an F-16.”
Hunter thought for a moment. The situation was so bizarre, it took a minute to sink in. Finally he said, “I’m still not so sure that I can give up what I came over here for. But I have to admit I’m fascinated.”
He saw Neil and Heath exchange winks.
“Okay, so what is your plan?” the pilot asked. “How do you intend to seize the Suez Canal?”
Sir Neil smiled once again: “We thought you’d never ask … ”
Chapter 7
“DO YOU REALLY THINK Hunter could have made it out of this place?” Elvis, the Weapons Systems Officer, asked.
Captain Crunch O’Malley shook his head. “This one might even have been beyond Hunter.”
Standing on the wing of their lopsided, stuck-in-the-mud F-4 Phantom, the two pilots were looking out on the astonishing mass of humanity that covered the Casablanca airport. The nervous air evacuation to South America of forty-eight hours before had turned into utter chaos.
Now there must have been 100,000 people crowded into the square half-mile-sized base. Few were carrying anything more than the clothes on their backs, although
rifles and sidearms were much in evidence. There were so many people, they were lining the runways, standing no more than twenty feet from where monstrous 747s and DC-10s were roaring in and out. Thousands more were crushed inside the airport’s terminal, and overflowing onto its outside walkways, its roof, and its window sills. The area surrounding the T-shaped structure was thick with people, all of them trying to do one thing: get on an airliner and get the hell out of Casablanca.
The problem was the airliners were landing with much less frequency now. The aerial traffic jam had cleared up the night before; airliners coming in now were given a clear shot at landing immediately. And most of them were landing more for want of fuel than a desire to join the dangerous confusion. Plus, once the airplanes were down, it was taking them two hours or more to pass through the crowds and get from the taxiing strip to the terminal building.
Fewer airliners meant fewer seats to freedom. And the price of the ride was going up—drastically. Where two days before five bags of silver or one bag of gold would have meant at least a seat at the rear of the plane, now greedy aircrews were now charging as much as six bags of gold just to sit on the cabin floor. The quick hike in air fare led to some disagreements. The sound of gunfire, once distracting in its infrequency, was now a constant background noise.
But as bad as the crowd was inside the airport, it paled in comparison with the mob that waited outside the airfield’s fence. O’Malley estimated there were close to a quarter of a million people surrounding the facility.
“This is ridiculous!” O’Malley said to Elvis. “A thousand 747s couldn’t carry all these people out!”
The Wreckers had arrived just minutes after a gruesome catastrophe. Many of the fences around the airport were no longer strong enough to hold back the burgeoning crowds. Several had already broken down. One of those remaining was the barrier on the north side of the airport, closest to its last operating runway. Its supports finally gave way just as a beat-up Swedish National Airline 747 Jumbo jet, smoking and desperately low on fuel, made what was technically an unauthorized landing.
Just as the big airplane came in, the weight of the thousands pressing against the fence made it collapse. Those leaning on the fence when it snapped were forced to run in all directions, the crush behind them was so great. Several hundred were forced right into the path of the landing 747. The airliner’s pilots, horrified to see the people on the runway, were too low to abort. The big plane plowed through hundreds of terrified people head on, flipping many up and over its wings and horribly sucking others into its jet-engine nozzles. The pilots had immediately reversed the big jet’s engines in an attempt to halt the airplane’s screeching roll and stop the unbelievable carnage, but the action only caused the airliner to skid off the runway and plunge into a larger crowd of people. A fire quickly broke out and the airplane exploded, killing its crew, and more than a thousand others.
O’Malley and Elvis had arrived just two minutes later. They found the runway littered with bodies. Only O’Malley’s skill allowed the fighter jet to land without colliding with a corpse. Still, in steering the landing aircraft around the bodies, O’Malley was forced to swerve the plane off the runway, and now it was stuck up to its right wingtip in sand and dirt that had turned to mud at the end of the runway.
O’Malley reached inside his flight suit, dug out six bags of silver coins, and gave them to Elvis. “Try to bribe someone with a towline and a vehicle, will you?” O’Malley asked him. “We’ve got to winch this bird out.”
“Roger,” Elvis said, taking the silver and bounding off the jet’s wing.
O’Malley reached into the F-4’s cockpit and came up with an M-16. “Here, better take this too,” he said, handing the gun to Elvis. “And better keep your helmet on.”
“Where you headed, captain?” Elvis asked.
O’Malley looked out onto the mass confusion of the airfield, then checked his .45 automatic sidearm pistol.
“I’m going to the control tower to find out if anyone’s seen an F-16 around here.”
Chapter 8
THE RAF NIMROD RECONNAISSANCE aircraft took off and gracefully climbed to 20,000 feet. Although there was bad weather off to the northeast, it was a beautifully clear morning over Gibraltar.
The big plane turned toward direct north and was soon over the coast of Portugal. Hunter and Sir Neil were sharing a large window near the plane’s navigator’s console, both enjoying the view of the shimmering early morning Atlantic and inviting lushness of the land below.
The pilot called back a reading and Sir Neil checked a navigation chart. “All right, major,” he said with a sly smile. “We are soon to cross over Lisbon. If you look down into their port facilities, I think you’ll see something very interesting.”
Hunter moved closer to the window. Despite a bunch of puffy clouds, he could begin to focus on the port of Lisbon below. Immediately, he saw what Sir Neil was talking about.
“Jeezuz,” Hunter exclaimed. “I’ve never seen so many ships in one place in my life!”
The port and the surrounding waterways were crowded with ships. Freighters, ocean liners, warships, large ferries. There must have been at least 200 of them. They were anchored side by side in a line that stretched for miles. All of them were painted with the same drab, gray-green color scheme.
“Those are the ships of The Modern Knights,” Sir Neil said, a touch of boast in his voice. “Two hundred and forty major vessels. It is a fleet to rival only Lucifer’s.”
“I should say so,” Hunter said, fascinated at the sight of concentrated power.
“But, it’s what will be riding in those ships that’s important, major,” the Englishman continued.
The airplane turned east. Soon, they were flying over what Hunter recognized immediately as a massive military complex close by a mountain range.
“This is Montemor-o-Novo,” Sir Neil said, rolling the word perfectly. “This is the major staging facility for The Modern Knights. They have hired hundreds of thousands of mercenaries. From all over western Europe. There’s another facility like this at Plymouth in the UK. It is these troops, traveling on those ships, that will go against Lucifer’s Legions. This undertaking rivals the invasion force put together for the Normandy landings back in World War II.”
While the Nimrod circled, Hunter studied every aspect of the huge base. It did look like a scene out of the movie on D-Day. “Just when will these troops be ready to move out?” he asked.
“We are hoping they’ll embark just a few days after we do,” Sir Neil said, slowly. “Trouble is, the logistics of such an operation are monstrous.”
Hunter looked back at the Englishman. For the first time since meeting Sir Neil, Hunter heard a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
An hour later, Sir Neil was seated at the navigator’s control station with Hunter peering over his shoulder. The Englishman fiddled with the bank of touch-sensitive buttons that controlled the airplane’s sophisticated “look-down” radar.
The Nimrod had climbed to 50,000 feet and headed northeast. They had hit the bad weather just before crossing over the Pyrenees. Now, even at this height, rain pelted the jet, and strong headwinds buffeted its wings.
“We’ll be over our second ‘target’ in a few minutes,” Sir Neil said, working hard to get the jumble of lines on the video screen in front of them to properly shape themselves to the contour of the earth below. “This weather gives us a good hiding place, Hunter, but it also plays daffy with the TV imaging.”
Sir Neil gave the control panel a well-placed slap just above its fuse bank. The screen blinked twice and then became crystal-clear. Where there had been hundreds of lines of wavy static before, now there was the sharp, neon-blue-and-white image of the snow-capped mountain range.
“Ah, yes, the Pyrenees,” Sir Neil said happily by way of explanation. “Used to take the wife skiing there before the war. She’s in Free Canada now, thank God.”
Hunter couldn’t help but think of Dominique; she too
was in Free Canada.
The TV screen was beautifully registering the ground ten miles below, despite the poor weather. The image was so clear, it almost looked like it was being shot by a television camera, not a ground-imaging radar.
“Great piece of equipment, this,” Sir Neil said, fine-tuning the picture even more. “It’s a LORAL TK-1Q imager.”
“Next best thing to being there,” Hunter agreed.
Slowly the image of the mountain faded and was replaced by the swaying lines of the ocean.
“We’re over the Gulf of Lions now,” Sir Neil said. “That’s Marseilles up ahead.”
The airplane bucked once, hard. The video screen protested with a brief burst of static, then returned a faithful picture of the southern coast of France. Hunter turned to look over the heads of the Nimrod’s pilots and out the cockpit window. The rain was getting heavier, the air more turbulent. The pilots had the airplane’s windshield wipers working overtime, and were taking turns wrestling with the controls in an effort to keep the airplane level.
“Here it comes!” Sir Neil called out, drawing Hunter’s attention back to the screen. At the same time, the Nimrod’s pilot called back to them. “Toulon is clear, Commander.”
Hunter knew the pilot had just done a routine electronic-weapons sweep of the ground below and found no hostile SAMs waiting for them. Now, as Hunter studied the TV screen, he saw the outline of the once-famous French Riviera come into view.
An anxious jolt ran through him. The most important element of the Brits’ plan to capture the Suez was soon to come into view below. The closer they got, the wilder the British plan was becoming to Hunter.
“Just a few seconds now,” Sir Neil told him. “Just the other side of Nice and we’ll see it … ”
Sir Neil and his men were convinced the only way to seize control of the Canal was with air power. Warplanes were rarer items in the Med than in America. Lucifer’s Legions had very few, although the madman’s allies in the area boasted some small but formidable air forces. These were mostly local air units, satisfied with their role as air terrorists in Lucifer’s employ, doing occasional air pirating or free-lance bombing jobs on the side.
