by Mack Maloney
But in Lucifer’s arrogance, he was unintentionally tipping his hand. By lining up the P-3 and the image, Hunter determined the source of the original video image was now coming from one of the battleships.
At last, he had found Lucifer …
He put the F-16 into a screaming climb, heading right towards the holographic laser image of his nemesis. As the face got bigger, Hunter felt the fire of hate he had for all things Lucifer boil up inside him. This was Death incarnate. All that was evil with the world was embodied in that sneering, devilish face. If it was the last thing he ever did, he vowed to smash it …
He streaked right through the image and lined up the P-3 flying 10,000 feet above it. Whether the pilots of the Orion knew he was coming or not, the airplane didn’t try to escape. Hunter knew it meant only one thing: Lucifer had ordered them to hold their position no matter what.
Hunter armed a Sidewinder and let it fly. It caught the four-engine propeller plane on its right wing, knocking out its outboard engine. But the damage was not instantly fatal to the laser plane. Hunter wanted more. He let another Sidewinder loose and this one impacted right on the aircraft’s midsection, blowing it to pieces.
Just as the missile hit, Hunter turned over quickly and saw the image of Lucifer blink once and fade away …
Chapter 44
THE SARATOGA WAS BEING rocked by the deadly accurate fire from the two battleships now just a half-mile away. The remaining principal officers—Sir Neil, Heath, Yaz, and O’Brien—were hurrying the others aboard to lifeboats at the rear of the big ship. The American sailors and Spanish Rocketeers were the most difficult groups to convince to go. But with every shell that hit the flattop, the argument for leaving the carrier grew.
Heath, bandages and all, was running back to the bridge when he heard a strange sound behind him. He spinned to find that, unbelievably, the F-16 was coming in for a landing.
“What the hell is that crazy Yank doing?” Heath thought.
The F-16 screamed in, caught the arresting wire, and screeched to a halt. Heath ran over to the jet just as another barrage from the battleships struck the forecastle.
“Hunter, are you daft, man?” Heath screamed up at him. “Get the hell out of here!”
“I can’t let you guys go down with the ship!” Hunter yelled back to him. “Tell them to pull the S-3A up here. We can jam at least seven of us into it!”
“Impossible, Hunter,” Heath said, ducking from another explosion. “The elevator took a hit five minutes ago. It’s gone, ruined. Plus we’ve got fires below. All the airplanes down there are destroyed.”
“Well, what the hell are you guys still doing here?” Hunter yelled back to him. “Get your asses in a lifeboat!”
“No … ” Heath called back. “I must stay here with Sir Neil. He’s too banged up to move … ”
“You frigging British!” Hunter finally yelled at him. “Will you knock off this crap about going down with the ship! This isn’t a goddamn movie!”
Suddenly four huge shells hit the Saratoga in succession, two on the conning tower, two on the hull. Hunter felt the flattop rock back and forth. The deck was filled with fire and smoke. Suddenly Yaz ran out of nowhere and was climbing the F-16’s access steps. He was carrying two items.
“Not you too?” Hunter yelled at him. “Just because these crazy Brits are willing to go down fighting, doesn’t mean you have to!”
“Don’t worry about me,” Yaz said. “Just take these with you and get out of here!”
He dumped two bundles into Hunter’s lap and was gone, disappearing into the smoke. Not Heath nor anyone else was in sight.
Hunter looked at the two bundles. One was a bunch of videotapes, strapped together with a piece of wire. They had to be the BBC videos. The other bundle was the huge Stars and Stripes that Hunter knew belonged to Yaz’s unit. It was the flag he first saw flying over their camp back in Algiers.
But then, through the flames, he saw a helicopter rising from the second battleship. It was white and gold and he knew immediately that it was Lucifer’s personal chopper.
He had to go after it.
He didn’t have time to look around for someone to hook him up to the burning carrier’s catapult. He doubted it was working anyway. Instead he revved up the F-16’s powerful engine, while keeping his brakes locked on. He watched the RPM build up and, at the right moment, he popped the brakes. The F-16 burnt up a cloud of smoky rubber for two seconds, then instantly screeched forward. Hunter hit the throttle at full power and yanked back on the side-stick controller. The airplane roared off the carrier, then dipped as its speed was nowhere near that needed for unassisted takeoff. But Hunter coolly kicked in the afterburner, and the engine responded with a burst of flame and power. Soon he was climbing.
Just as the fighter cleared the deck, a barrage of six shells struck the ship square on the flight deck. Two of the high-explosive shots blew out a pair of huge holes in the deck. Four of the shells crashed on through to the below-decks, exploding there. It was the death blow for the flattop. Ammunition left over in the hangar area blew up, causing a raging fire to roar through to the reactor room. Another incredible explosion followed, nearly lifting the mighty ship clear out of water. It settled back down into the thirty-foot depth of the Canal, and continued to explode.
Hunter looked over his shoulder and saw the carrier going through its death throes. He still couldn’t believe it was happening; the carrier they had all worked so hard to bring to the Canal was now in the process of blowing itself up. And Sir Neil. Heath. O’Brien. Probably Yaz. All gone …
There were still some Hinds in the area, many of them mercilessly firing on the carrier evacuees. Now the battleships, seeing the Saratoga had received enough punishment, also started hammering away at the western shoreline.
Hunter didn’t want Lucifer’s chopper to get away, but neither could he leave the helpless carrier survivors at the mercy of the Hinds and the battleships. As if to underscore his point, he saw three Hinds swooping in on the beach where the carrier survivors were and start to strafe them.
Suddenly he felt a ringing start in his brain.
More aircraft. Nearby. Heading this way.
He dove toward the Hinds, blasted one from the air with his cannon Six Pack, then sheared the main rotor off another one. But just as he was about to open fire on a third, it seemed to explode on its own.
“What the … ?” Hunter then spun around and saw that there was a very familiar F-4 flying right above him.
“Hey, Hawk!” He heard Crunch’s voice come over his radio set. “Where you been? We’ve been all over the goddamn Med looking for you!”
“Crunch!” Hunter called back. “I should have heard that Phantom coming a hundred miles away!”
“Well, we got a bunch of friends on the way,” Crunch said. “Gunships and F-20s. Now just tell us who the bad guys are.”
“You were right the first time,” Hunter told him. “The Hinds and the battleships belong to Viktor’s armies. Cover those people on the beaches, will you? I got to catch that bastard.”
“Go, Hawk!” Crunch called back, diving toward the battleships. “We’ll take care of things here!”
With that, Hunter climbed and headed south, adjusting his long-range radar hoping to pick up Lucifer’s chopper.
The Brazilian captain, the man who had been in charge of Lucifer’s personal battleship, now sat bound hand and foot in the jump seat of the Hind helicopter. They were flying at 7000 feet, heading south toward Lucifer’s headquarters at Rub al Khali.
“You stupid fool!” Lucifer was screaming at the captain, the horribly scarred face just an inch away. The captain could see little bubbles of foam forming at the sides of the madman’s mouth. “You have personally destroyed half this fleet. You have set back our timetable by weeks!”
“But Your Excellency,” the captain said in his own defense. “You approved my idea to bring the battleships up to the war zone. In fact, you suggested it.”
Lucifer put his face even closer to the captain’s. “How dare you speak that way to me, you bush-man!” the black-cloaked man said. “If it weren’t for you, we would still have a complete fleet. We would not have lost seventeen thousand men to those goddamn Moroccans, and we would not have lost our only aircraft and my laser imager. That was our most powerful weapon!”
“But Your Highness,” the captain plunged on, “I had nothing to do with all that. It was Hunter and those Englishmen. How could I have known they would have stuck it out so long? How did I know they were so crazy?”
Lucifer closed his eyes and rubbed his burned face. “Captain,” he said in a slight, whiny voice, “You have just admitted your guilt to me. In front of witnesses!”
Lucifer spread his hands out to indicate his ever-present entourage of bodyguards.
“Because, captain,” he continued, “if you say that Hunter caused all these losses and I say that you did, then that must mean you were, in fact, allied with Hunter and the Britishers!”
“That’s preposterous!” the captain screamed.
“Is it?” Lucifer said, turning toward him again. There was more foam coming from the corners of his mouth now. “Then why is it that you keep bringing up Hunter? Why!? Don’t you understand I screwed his woman? I have that much power over him.”
The captain had had enough. He knew he was to be executed anyway. He decided to cash in his chips.
“Oh, fuck you,” he screamed back at Lucifer. “Everyone in the world knows that Hunter kicked your ass in The Circle War and got his broad back. In fact, he kicked your ass so bad, you had to change your name!”
Lucifer’s bodyguards thought the boss was going to pop a vein. No one, but no one, had ever talked to him like that. They half-expected to see steam coming out of his ears.
But Lucifer fooled them all. He simply turned to the nearest bodyguard and offhandedly said, “Get rid of him.”
The bodyguards unhesitatingly stood the captain up and pushed him towards the open door of the Hind. Lucifer turned his back as the bodyguard kicked the captain hard in the back. The officer tumbled out of the chopper, screaming as he fell.
Chapter 45
HUNTER WAS LOSING FUEL fast.
He had more than a dozen holes in his starboard wing, and possibly more on his portside. His canopy was cracked in three places and his radio was cutting in and out. What was worse, only a third of his cockpit devices were functioning, all his navigational units were out, and his left rear stabilizer was all but shot off. With all the 16’s maladies, Hunter was lucky if he could keep it going at half its normal cruising speed.
Still, he pressed on in pursuit of Lucifer. He had a good idea of where the madman was heading. He knew his headquarters was near Jidda, in the southwest part of old Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea. He was just hoping he’d find out where before his JP-8 gave out.
Flying more on instinct than anything else, Hunter navigated by the Canal and then the Suez estuary itself. Along the entire way he saw the results of the bombing raids by his now-lost air wing. He flew over a gang of ships two miles south of the Canal’s southern entrance. An earlier air attack had clogged the entrance. No ship could get in, no ship could get out. The ships on the outside were simply at anchor, awaiting orders. The world’s most powerful fleet had fallen victim to a traffic jam.
Hunter continued flying until he saw the outline of a city about forty-five miles to his southeast. His acute vision detected several gas-flare tubes, indicating a refinery was working at the city. Cities were few and far between in the area—inhabited ones especially. He steered toward it.
The closer he got, the more he was convinced this was Lucifer’s destination. There were hundreds of military vehicles parked on the roads below him, and even more barracks—all empty, he imagined. He flew over an open area near a dock and saw what looked to be an execution ground. As many as 700 bodies lay rotting in the sun. He didn’t even want to think about what had happened there.
He continued on over the typically Arabian city, over the barely working refinery, over its substantial port facilities. Yet he hadn’t seen a person or any movement below.
But then he saw Lucifer’s helicopter …
It was just going in for a landing at what looked to be a military base on the edge of the city. Hunter immediately put the hurting F-16 into a dive. There were definitely people at the base—armed people. And Hunter knew they had spotted him.
The AA guns opened up with a ferocity that surprised him. This must have been a heavy-duty HQ for Lucifer, he thought, as he twisted and turned around the ack-ack shells. At once Hunter knew that he had to prevent the chopper from landing. Because if it did, he’d need an army to get Lucifer out.
He roared in and peppered the two minaret gun posts with his Six Pack. There was a courtyard nearby and that was the intended landing site for the chopper, now hovering about 150 feet above. Hunter swooped down underneath the copter and raked the courtyard with cannon fire. As he streaked by he noticed several barrels sitting on one side of the landing pad. They looked like they contained fuel.
He pulled back up, did a loop, and came back in on the courtyard. A push of the cannon trigger and the barrels of fuel went up like fireworks. The courtyard was instantly enveloped in flames. The chopper got the hint and backed off.
But as he pulled up, a burst of AA fire caught his tail section. He felt the F-16 yaw out of control temporarily, and he nearly lost it avoiding a radio tower. He brought the plane under control, although it took all his might on the foot pedals to keep it level.
He spotted the chopper once again, this time flying out away from the city and toward the desert. Hunter turned the 16 around to pursue, only to see a small SAM flash up toward him. He peeled off instantly, but the warhead exploded close by, shattering his already cracked canopy. Hundreds of pieces of the exploded missile got sucked into his jet’s air intake. The plane stalled, but he quickly restarted the engine. It stalled again, and he pumped the emergency fuel-release lever and started the engine again.
“C’mon, baby,” he said under his breath. “C’mon, stay with me.”
His airspeed now was down to less than 100 knots. The noise inside the cockpit was deafening, and things were flying in and out at alarming speeds. He felt like he was losing his beloved F-16 piece by piece. Still, he kept the chopper in sight ahead of him.
His engine coughed once again, and the 16 pitched to right. He regained control and throttled up a little more. The chopper was going at about the same speed as the crippled jet fighter. He throttled up even more and started to gain on it. He had no more Sidewinders—he couldn’t have used one anyway. This was a job for his cannons.
He placed himself on the chopper’s tail and fired a short burst. The shells streaked by the white and gold Hind’s tail rotor, several of them finding targets.
He closed in on the copter and fired another burst. The force of the powerful cannons going off nearly jolted the 16 out of control, but he quickly regained level flight. This time the cannon fire found its intended target, the chopper’s fuel tank.
Now, as the misty cloud of fuel flew back into his open cockpit, he fired a third time. He saw pieces of the Hind’s tail rotor fly off. Just as the chopper started to drop, the F-16’s engine stalled again. Hunter put the jet into a shallow dive and crossed his fingers. The engine came back on again.
He was now at barely 1000 feet, the chopper was at 700. Its rear end was smoking and its fuel leak getting worse. They were getting farther out in the desert with only an hour of sunlight left—he had to wonder if Lucifer knew where he was going.
He dropped down even farther and put another burst in the Hind. That did it. The smoke started pouring out of the chopper now and it veered out of control. He followed it down. The pilot put the burning craft into a semihover, and Hunter shot by it, his own plane doing a fair amount of smoking.
He did a careful loop and came back just as the copter was going through a controlled crash. It sl
ammed into the side of a large sand dune, bounced hard, and came down for good.
One more loop and Hunter spurted right over the Hind. Two figures jumped out of the chopper, one of them wearing black robes and a hood, the other a standard flight uniform. He had no trouble figuring out which one was Lucifer.
But now the F-16 stalled again, and he knew that this time it was for good. He pulled the nose up and started looking for a level piece of sand to set down on. The engine coughed a couple times, telling him he couldn’t get fussy about a landing spot. A fairly flat stretch of desert just below the dune where the Hind went down looked to be his best bet.
He glided in, wheels up, the cracked canopy obscuring his view somewhat. Then he hit—hard. He was jostled around the cockpit, as every light and buzzer went off at once. Waves of sand flew everywhere as the jet plowed into the soft ground.
“There goes the paint job,” Hunter said grimly.
The battered fighter finally came to a stop. Its nose was buried three feet into the sand, its tail end was smoking. But he didn’t have time to think about it.
He jumped out of the cockpit, grabbed his M-16, and looked around. Lucifer and his pilot were climbing the dune in front of him. He couldn’t lose them now. He checked his rifle’s magazine. It was full. He pulled his helmet visor up and took off after the two men.
The chopper pilot foolishly took a shot at him as he was coming around the back of the smoking F-16. Hunter aimed and pumped off three rounds, dropping the pilot with three bullets through his heart.
Lucifer picked up the dead man’s rifle and continued climbing the top of the dune. Hunter double-timed it up the dune, drawing even with the heavy robed man just as they reached the summit.
