“I thought kings could do anything they wanted.”
The kid shrugged nervously. She was so close to him now he was beginning to tremble. She was still wearing her stunning black jumpsuit. But she had long ago cut off the legs to thigh-high, and unzipped the front to halfway down her cleavage. On Chloe, it actually looked stylish.
“Does she let you see your friends?”
The kid shook his head sadly. “I don’t have any friends.”
She moved a step closer. “No friends?” she exclaimed. “Like you mean, you’ve got no playmates? No girlfriends?”
The Kid King actually laughed at this one. “My mother would never let me have a girlfriend,” he said.
Chloe was right up against him now. She bent forward slightly.
“How old are you?” she asked.
The kid let a tremor go through him. “I don’t even know that,” he admitted. “I suppose I’m fourteen or so.”
She reached over and ran her fingers through his tousled hair.
“Oh, you look twice as old as that,” she told him.
The kid was shaking like a leaf now. His breathing became heavy. He was moving like he had ants in his pants.
“Really?” he asked her, jittery.
She put her arm around him. He felt stiff as a board.
“I admire anyone who is a king,” she cooed. “I know it must be hard work…”
“It is…” the kid said, losing his train of thought as Chloe squeezed even closer to him. His eyes were now level with her chest. He was getting an awesome shot of her left one.
“And of course, a king’s subjects must do whatever he says, that’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes…” he gulped.
She reached down and unzipped her suit to just above the navel. “It’s so hot in here,” she lied—actually it was quite comfortable inside the cell. “I think if you ordered me to take off my top, I would have to do it, wouldn’t I?”
The Kid King looked up at her, his face a perfect combination of amazement and fear.
“Really?” he gasped. “Do you think so?”
She nodded and snuggled her near-naked breasts right into his plump little face.
“Yes, I think a king should get anything he wants, no matter what his mother or anyone else says,” she told him.
“Me, too,” he breathed, his nose now lost, in her bosom.
“So you could stop a spacecraft from landing here, if you wanted to, right?”
The kid suddenly withdrew and looked up at her. “A spacecraft? Here?”
She looked down at him, still fondling his pudgy ears. “One is coming, isn’t it?”
The kid shrugged—and thought for a moment.
“My mother has been talking to some people…” he said with some uncertainty. “It’s all about a special package or something being brought in here. But I don’t know much about it…”
Chloe now grabbed the kid so tightly, he nearly lost his breath. She buried his face even deeper into her breasts, and slowly began grinding his little belly with her hips.
“But whatever this thing is, you could prevent it from coming here, couldn’t you?” she asked him, her voice dripping with sex.
That’s when the Kid King felt his crotch begin to rumble for the first time ever. Finally, he’d caught on.
“I…I can do anything,” he declared, reaching up and at last boldly grabbing her lovely breasts.
She pulled him even closer still.
“So can I…” she whispered softly.
Hunter had almost dozed off when he heard the handle to the cell door begin to turn.
He was on his feet in an instant; Baldi was wide awake now, too. They looked at each other even as the door began to open a crack. What should they do? Jump the guards and attempt an escape? But to where? And what about Chloe?
The massive door did at last swing wide open to reveal a dozen gawky guards outside peering in. They suddenly snapped to attention though, as the dark shadow of another figure fell over them. This person walked into the cell and glowered at Hunter and Baldi.
It was the Kid King’s mother. She looked furious.
“Why did you have to come here now?” she asked them through angry, gritted teeth. “At this time…”
“We meant no harm, my lady,” Baldi tried to explain. “We were just…”
But the woman raised her hands over her head and let out such an ungodly shriek, she drowned out Baldi’s words. Then, suddenly, tears began to flow down her face.
“I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done!” she cried.
With that she snapped her fingers and the guards flooded into the room. Three grabbed hold of Hunter; three grabbed hold of Baldi. They had no choice but to go peaceably.
A minute later, they were being hauled into the court of the palace-fortress. The Kid King was there, as well as twice as many armed soldiers. Each one looked more nervous than the next.
As they’d been brought by the main door, Hunter had been able to catch a glimpse of the nearby air base. The runway was filled with the empire’s collection of MiG-23s and Viggens. Lined up two by two and stretching off into the haze, they were blocking it off completely. What was this all about? Were the airplanes getting ready to take off and provide an escort for the descending Zon? Or was it something else?
Hunter and Baldi were brought up close to the throne, the kid’s mother taking her seat and glaring down at them. The Kid King himself looked almost as confused as before—but oddly, Hunter detected a hint of contentment on his face.
Everything became very quiet. The dozens of soldiers in the hall became absolutely mute. Even the noise from the nearby air base disappeared. Hunter pulled himself up to his full height and stared up at the Mother and Kid team.
The son got to his feet.
“I am letting you go,” he said simply. “I want you to return to your home base and come back, in your super-fighter, just as you promised.”
The kid stopped to take a deep breath.
“And in that time, I will not let any kind of foreign spacecraft land here, until you return…”
Hunter was nearly struck dumb. This was definitely a turn of events he didn’t foresee.
“Will you do this?” the kid asked him.
“I’ll be glad to…” Hunter managed to blurt out, trying his best not to let his astonishment show.
Then he looked over at Baldi. “But what about my friends?”
The Kid King pointed at the Maltese officer. “He may stay or he may go,” the kid said. “Either way, it’s okay.”
Baldi now straightened himself. He couldn’t imagine any circumstance in which he would want to stay in this weird, Oedipus-mad world.
Hunter looked back up at the kid. He seemed to have matured a couple of years in just a couple of hours.
“And my other friend?” he asked gravely.
At that moment everyone in the hall turned eyes right—to the door from which the royal family came and went. Standing there, dressed in a tight, sheer, Asian-style silk gown was Chloe.
She looked beautiful.
“She’s staying here,” the kid declared as Chloe joined him on the throne. “With me.”
Hunter felt like someone hit him in the head with an anvil.
“No…she can’t…” he began to say.
“She will,” the kid told him forcefully, adding: “Besides, she wants to…”
Hunter took a step forward—so did the two hundred soldiers stationed inside the hall.
At that moment, Chloe whispered something to the Kid King. He nodded and allowed Chloe to approach Hunter.
“I’m not letting this happen,” Hunter told her before she could say a word. “I just need a few minutes to figure out how we can all…”
She put her fingers to his lips.
“No, he’s right,” she said. “I want to stay…”
That’s when the second anvil came down on Hunter’s head.
He stared at her—he never quite knew what
to expect from her. But this?
“Why?” was all he could ask.
“Because, you’ve got a mission to do, and you can’t do it until you get out of here,” she said, very authoritatively. “Now, here’s my chance to make that happen. My chance to make up for all those terrible things I did to you. You know, back in St. Moritz.”
Hunter reached out and clasped her shoulders.
“What terrible things?” He really couldn’t remember.
But she didn’t answer him. Instead she got closer and whispered in his ear. “Just go,” she said. “And don’t worry about me.”
But Hunter knew that was impossible. If he left without her, that’s all he would wind up doing: worrying about her.
“I can’t…” he said defiantly. “Screw the mission. I’m not letting go. Not this time…”
She was right up close to him now, looking deep into his eyes.
“If you really care about me, then you have to go,” she said. “Now. While you’ve got the chance…”
Hunter was shaking with anger and frustration—not the usual state of affairs for him.
“But I just can’t leave you here all alone,” he was saying. “Who’ll look after you? Who’ll protect you if…”
“I will…” they both heard a strong voice say. Hunter and Chloe looked over at Baldi.
“I will stay here, with her,” the Maltan was saying, tears almost forming in his eyes. “Nothing will happen to her…nothing she doesn’t want to happen.”
Hunter stared at him, speechless. Then he looked back at Chloe.
She kissed him lightly on the lips and then turned and walked up the steps to the Kid King’s throne. She immediately took her place at his feet and began rubbing them provocatively.
Hunter was absolutely crushed. But he had to face the reality of the situation—and think quick. Two seconds later he had the basis for a long-term plan already figured out in his mind.
“Okay, I’ll go,” he told the Kid King, “but if you want me to come back here with my airplane, then there’s one thing you must do for me.”
Suddenly the innocence returned to the kid’s face.
“Like what?” he asked.
Hunter climbed up onto the bottom step of the throne.
“You must let me borrow one of your airplanes…” he said.
In orbit
The pilot of the Zon space shuttle was in such bad shape now, he didn’t know if he was hot or cold.
He’d been tucked inside a pressure suit ever since accomplishing a nerve-wracking yet successful breakaway from the Mir. The problem was the suit, which was two sizes too small for him, and had no heating or cooling capability. Even worse, it had a faulty oxygen valve and its urine venting tube was cracked and frayed around the connecting ring. This was actually the most critical of his problems at the moment. He had to go—badly. But they were now less than one hundred minutes from reentry; at this point every second was precious. For him to climb out of the spacesuit, attach himself to the flight compartment’s “pee pack,” do his thing, then squeeze back into the suit and back behind the controls of the shuttle would just take too much time. So he would have to hold it as long as he could, and when he couldn’t any longer, well, he would have no choice but to go in his pants.
He had already convinced himself that this would be his last flight in the Zon. One way or the other, he felt he would not fly in space like this again. One reason for this gloom: the chances were very high they were all going to be killed on reentry—there were so many things wrong with the spacecraft now, he couldn’t imagine it coming down in one piece.
Even if they did somehow make a successful return, the whole question of their landing site could prove problematical.
This was due to their wacky orbital status, the one that had sent them staggering through space rather than zipping through it. The cockeyed course dictated that they could come down only within a very narrow burn corridor. The pilot’s original orders had him plotting reentry for a site in the eastern Mediterranean. Then this was changed to somewhere in the Arabian desert. When this was nixed, he had his computers—what was left of them—work on a site on the northwest quadrant of the subcontinent. Then this was scratched in favor of a West Asian strip, somewhere in Burma.
But now, he’d just learned, even that option was gone—and therein lay the problem. As far as he knew there was only one possible site left, this one lying further along the burn-line from Burma, a place that was, in the shuttle-speak, a “Grade-Delta receiving plot.” In other words, it was a highly unprepared landing strip, probably just recently built, with little or no crash protection or emergency services in place.
Also, according to a report handed up to him by one of the disgusting passengers below, this landing site was currently graded as being under “dubious security.” Translation: it was not yet fully in the hands of people allied with Viktor’s Legions.
Oddly, this aspect didn’t bother the pilot all that much. Certainly the image of an opposed landing of the Zon was enough to give anyone the shakes—after all, once the shuttle returned to the Earth’s atmosphere, it was little more than a big glider; there was nothing it could do if someone was trying to shoot it down. But the pilot didn’t think this was a real possibility, simply because Viktor’s Legions were so cash-rich he knew they would hire every available mercenary crew in the area to rush to this landing site—wherever the hell it was—and nail it down quickly, no matter what the cost.
No, coming down on an insecure landing strip would be the least of the pilot’s concerns, he thought as he began working his computers for the new burn site. Just as long as the place was long enough and hard enough, he could set the Zon onto it.
That is, if there was anything left of the shuttle to land once they began the long burn-down.
Twenty-six
HIS NAME WAS DONN Kurjan.
He was a colonel, a special operations officer attached to the United American Armed Forces Joint Command Staff. Kurjan was an advance man, the first guy sent into an area that soon might be the site of military action involving the UAAF. He was, in effect, the scout riding ahead of the cavalry column. His eyes were their eyes in the most important part of the battle: the opening minutes.
Kurjan also had a reputation for coming back from the dead. He’d been in many situations in the past when he was literally given up for lost, only to return time and time again. This is why his code name was “Lazarus.”
At this moment, he was lying in a deep hole on the east beach of Lolita Island, systematically picking the sand fleas off his hands and face. The cleverly disguised hiding spot, built to the exacting specifications of the old SEAL units, was just about invisible to the naked eye. It was five feet by five feet, covered with netting and papier-mâché the combination of which looked like real beach sand. Inside Kurjan had two rifles, a camera, two radios, a sat-com locater, several flash grenades, and a gallon of water. His most important piece of equipment however was his Peeping Tom, a hybrid IR/electronic telescope which allowed him to see as far as twenty miles away in any direction, day or night.
Before him was the vast South China Sea; its oddly green water stretching far as the eye could see. There was no other land mass of any discernible size within two thousand square miles of this place. Kurjan was literally out in the middle of nowhere.
He’d been on Lolita for twenty-four hours now, dropping in soon after Toomey and Wa returned to Da Nang with the startling news that fake foliage actually covered the island. The speculation about the mysterious Lolita had been running rampant when Kurjan left Da Nang; he couldn’t imagine what it was like now.
His own guess was that the island had been converted into a secret, though temporary air base, a place where several squadrons of heavy bombers or dozens of fighters could land, get refueled and then go on to a primary objective. Where would all these airplanes be going? An attack on South Vietnam was the best possibility. Perhaps the thugs of CAPCOM were able to hire a m
assive bombing strike on the already battered country as an attempt to reignite the war they’d just recently lost.
But Kurjan knew there were problems with this scenario, the first thing being that Lolita was still hundreds of miles away from the Vietnamese mainland. There were many other islands just as isolated, that could serve as a disposable landing strip, and be closer to their targets. Plus, besides being a huge concrete slab out in the middle of nowhere, there was nothing else on Lolita—no set ups for fuel tanks, pumps, generators or anything essential for a refueling base, temporary as it may be.
So why did someone go through all the trouble of laying a huge concrete slab on such an out-of-the-way speck in the sea? No one in the UA command had any firm idea—yet.
But as it turned out, Donn Kurjan, would be the first one to find out.
The battleship appeared out on the eastern horizon just after noontime.
Kurjan had seen its smoke trail even before it appeared out on the sea line. He’d crawled deeper into his observation post even before the ship’s stacks broke the azimuth, pulling his sand netting up and over his head and settling down into invisibility.
He had his PeepScope warmed up by the time the battleship was ten miles away. The ship’s appearance was not unexpected—that the Asian Mercenary Cult might be behind the activities on Lolita would come as a surprise to no one. The trouble was that the Cult was still a formidable force in the Pacific and beyond. The United Americans had sunk nearly a dozen of their battleships over the past year. The Cult still had up to thirty of them left. This in addition to more than five hundred thousand men under arms and a substantial sea invasion capability. The guns on their battleships alone could hurl a shell the size of a small automobile more than twenty-five miles. Moreover, the Cult was cash-rich; they were capable of hiring any number of mercenary outfits around the world, whether they be airborne, seaborne or strictly ground units.
The cold truth was, far from home, their lines of communications stretched to the limits, the United American Expeditionary Forces were outnumbered by the Cult more than ten to one.
Kurjan studied the battleship as it sailed quickly towards the island. It was moving at all out flank speed, its stacks were belching huge amounts of black smoke into the otherwise pristine sky. This told Kurjan that not only was the battleship in a hurry, but that the people running it didn’t care who saw them doing it.
Target: Point Zero Page 26
