by Mack Maloney
It had been this. This incredible flying machine.
His airplane.
Another missing part, found.
“We don’t know where or how the AII guys got it,” St. Louis explained. “But those things in the other displays came from ‘somewhere else.’ So we have to assume this came from somewhere else, too.”
One side of the glass case had been taken down. Hunter walked up to the planeand gently touched it.
That’s when the lightning bolt hit again.
Suddenly he started remembering the strangest things: falling into the ocean “somewhere else” and encountering immense naval ships. Taking part in a titanic war, much like World War II, but entirely different. Trying to save America by fighting battles far from home. He’d even had a different name; he’d been called “Sky Ghost.”
Then suddenly he was in outer space, fighting against a huge galactic empire. He closed his eyes and saw constellations. Star clusters. They all looked so familiar, as if he’d flown between them, going faster than anyone could imagine. And he felt there were people out there whom he loved and respected, whom he’d fought with. But who were they? And, more important, where were they?
He didn’t know. And as soon as he took his hand off the airplane, the sensation quickly faded away.
He felt better, though, because half of the emptiness inside him had been filled.
But what about the other half?
The mysterious blonde, the angel who was always waving to him?
Who was she?
Again, St. Louis read his mind.
“They asked us not force memories on you,” he told Hunter. “But if you remember this airplane, then you should also remember … her.”
“You know about her?” Hunter asked.
St. Louis nodded. Everyone who knew Hawk Hunter knew his longtime girlfriend. She was beautiful beyond words, a girl he’d met on the battlefield of Europe after World War III whom he’d loved throughout all the calamities that followed.
St. Louis said, “That flag you had with you when you arrived. Do you still have it?”
Hunter had carried it with him everywhere since getting it back. He took it out of his breast pocket.
“Did you ever unfold it?” St. Louis asked.
Hunter shook his head no.
“I didn’t dare to,” he said. “I didn’t want it to fall apart.”
St. Louis smiled. “Don’t worry—that flag will never fall apart.”
Hunter turned it over in his hands. It almost seemed too fragile to unravel.
“It’s okay,” St. Louis urged him. “Unfold it …”
Hunter did—and inside he found an old, weathered picture of the mysterious blonde.
He was instantly transfixed.
And finally he knew who she was.
Dominique …
His long-lost love.
“You see, Hawk?” St. Louis told him. “We had to come all the way out here to find your airplane. But her? She’s been with you all along.”
Hunter couldn’t speak for a long time. Then he turned to St. Louis.
“All my answers,” he said, almost choking up. “Finally …”
Dr. Pott walked over to them.
“Everything in here is an example of things just slightly out of time,” Pott said to Hunter. “And that’s what I think you are too, my friend. The difference is, now you understand it.”
Hunter looked at the picture again. His heart was breaking.
He said, “I know who she is. But … I think she might be … dead.”
Pott looked at Dominique’s picture.
“She might have passed on in some other universe,” he said. “But there’s a very good chance she’s still with us in this one. Remember: infinite possibilities. I’m no shrink, but I suggest you go look for her as soon as possible.”
St. Louis nodded. “I agree—but right now, let’s get the hell out of here.”
It took only fifteen minutes to move Hunter’s F-16XL out onto the runway.
He checked out its systems himself—and to his astonishment everything was working perfectly, as though he’d just climbed out of it minutes before. He lit its powerful engines, and they were soon humming flawlessly.
He couldn’t remember feeling such joy.
He and his kick-ass F-16XL—together again.
“It’s good to be back,” he said aloud.
By this time, all of the homeless people had been loaded onto the C-119s and the Boxcars were airborne. The B-25s went next.
Then Hunter took off in the XL, saluting the old, battered, and now-burning base as he rose into the sky. Ben was flying the indefatigable F-86 beside him. Way off in the distance, they could see the trio of huge AMC cargo planes slowly approaching in the early morning light. But the Football City raiding party would be long gone before the AMC paratroopers arrived. The mission was over, as was the bloodshed.
The strange collection of airplanes formed up and, as one, turned east.
It was time to go home.
Dr. Pott and St. Louis wound up back on the B-25 that JT was driving.
It was in the lead of the prop-driven planes. Hunter’s XL was off to its left, going slow and protecting the air convoy from any potential threats. Ben was doing the same thing in the Sabre, flying off to their right.
Pott had had a very unusual experience on the ground at Groom Lake. Even while battles raged above and below ground, he’d spent the time reading through the recovered AII data. He’d come upon some incredible findings.
Once they were safely away from the Groom Lake area, he started going through some of the written files taken from the AII storage room and stayed at it over the next few hours.
Finally he made his way up to the B-25’s flight deck and, in bits and pieces, related what he’d found to JT and St. Louis.
First of all, he confirmed that the AII team members had indeed been jumping universes.
But how?
“Believe it or not, they were doing it by getting ‘shot’ by the big ray gun,” Pott revealed to them. “I don’t know where they got it or how it was built, but that apparatus was not designed to kill people like the AMC thought, but to send them ‘somewhere else.’ ”
St. Louis couldn’t believe it. “So you mean in some other universe, there’s a bunch of homeless people and a bunch of old army trucks?”
Pott nodded. “That’s seems to be the case.”
St. Louis groaned. “Damn—and we just made a grilled cheese out of that thing.”
JT piped up, “Does it say in there anywhere why we would see that guy in black jump into the bottomless pit with a parachute? Who was he? And where does that hole go anyhow? We saw them blowing embers down there. Maybe they weren’t embers at all.”
Pott just shook his head. “I haven’t found anything on that yet,” he said. “I’ll keep looking. But, hold on tight, because I’ve got more bombshells to lay on you …”
Pott said he’d found some of the last reports written by the AII team before the project folded. As it turned out, they’d stayed out at Groom Lake for at least several years after the Big War, continuing their research until they themselves suddenly vanished.
“It also turns out they had a lot of data on our friend, Major Hunter,” Pott told them, looking through one of the last boxes he’d recovered. “They followed his exploits through a number of different universes even though Hunter himself isn’t aware of these adventures, as evidenced by his confusion and memory loss when he arrived here.
“But the strange thing is, no matter where he wound up, he was always on hand to help save the day for the forces of good against the forces of evil.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” JT asked.
Pott went on, “But here’s the scary part: while we know there might be an infinite number of you and me and everyone on this plane in an infinite number of universes, the AII team came to believe there was only one Hawk Hunter and that he was continually bouncing back and f
orth between universes, always showing up in times of need and saving the day.
“In other words, there’s not an infinite number of Hawk Hunters. There’s only one, in an infinite number of universes.”
St. Louis and JT just shook their heads upon hearing this. It seemed very way-out, yet Pott seemed deadly serious.
He continued, “My AII colleagues looked into this further and discovered that the odds of having just one person falling from universe to universe by chance and always saving the day were astronomically incalculable, or better put, literally ‘inconceivable.’ ”
At that point, he stopped to reread a note that had been included at the bottom of the last AII report he could find on Hunter’s exploits. It said his colleagues had concluded that in the scope of all human science and history, only two words could describe why Hunter was doing what he was doing.
But their conclusion was so mind-blowing, Pott couldn’t even read it aloud. So he handed the report to St. Louis instead.
Hastily scrawled at the bottom, it read: “Only conclusion possible: Divine Intervention.”
At that moment, they finally saw Football City on the horizon.
They were back home.
They saw the F-16XL pull out in front of them and do a series of eye-popping spins. Then Hunter boosted the plane’s power plants to full throttle and was off, heading east at full afterburner.
“He’s going to look for her,” JT said simply. “I hope he finds her.”
As the F-16XL climbed into the sky, St. Louis, still awed by what he’d just read, managed to say, “I just hope he doesn’t wait another ten years before he comes back again.”
About the Author
Mack Maloney is the author of numerous fiction series, including Wingman, Chopper Ops, Starhawk, and Pirate Hunters, as well as UFOs in Wartime: What They Didn’t Want You to Know. A native Bostonian, Maloney received a bachelor of science degree in journalism at Suffolk University and a master of arts degree in film at Emerson College. He is the host of a national radio show, Mack Maloney’s Military X-Files.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Mack Maloney
Cover design by Michel Vrana
978-1-4804-1100-5
Published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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