Death Orbit
Page 37
“Do you have any idea how you got to be out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?” Wolf asked the man.
The man just shook his head. “No idea.”
“Were you part of a ship’s crew? An officer maybe?”
The man shook his head again. “I don’t know.”
“Were you in an airplane? Are you an aviator?”
“Could be one of those top-secret flyboys, skipper,” Zal interjected. “You know, the Air Corps Commandos.”
Wolf thought about this and nodded slowly.
“How about it, sport?” he asked. “You a secret Air Corps guy? Under orders not to speak?”
“He could have been flying one of the new doodlebugs,” Zal added. “Those guys ain’t supposed to talk to nobody.”
“Any of this ringing a bell, pal?” Wolf pressed.
But the man just shook his head again.
“None of it,” he replied.
Wolf stared back at him. Even his voice sounded weird. Yet, just like the man’s overall appearance, he wasn’t exactly sure what was different about it.
The man was studying some of the papers on Wolf’s desk. “Can I ask a question now?” he wanted to know.
“OK, sure, ask away,” Wolf told him.
“What year is this?”
Wolf and Zal just looked at each other.
“Well, it’s 1997, sport,” Wolf replied.
A look of surprise registered on the man’s face—but it disappeared just as quickly.
“And you are at war, correct?” he asked Wolf.
“You saw that firsthand, didn’t you?” Wolf replied.
“But who are you fighting exactly?”
Wolf and Zal looked at each other again. It was a strange question to ask. Maybe it was best to ignore it, they thought.
“Hey, what’s with your hair, man?” Wolf asked him instead. “What army or navy would let you have hair like that?”
The man just stared at the floor. He was confused.
Wolf looked over at Zal.
“Well, this is going well,” he said sarcastically.
The XO came over and sat on the desk in front of the man. He lowered his voice slightly.
“Look, you ain’t a German, are ya, pal?” he asked him.
The man shook his head no.
“Well, now we’re getting somewhere!” Zal exclaimed.
Wolf leaned forward in his seat a little. “Are you an American?” he asked.
The man thought a moment and then replied. “Yes.”
“Are you a member of the armed forces of the United States of America?”
The man thought another few moments. “No, I am not,” he finally replied.
This sent Zal scratching his head.
“So you’re a member of the armed services,” he said. “And you are an American. But you are not a soldier of the United States?”
The man just nodded. “That’s right—I think.”
Zal kept on scratching. “Well, now I’m confused,” he said.
“Me too,” Wolf added.
He turned around in his chair to his computer. He popped the keyboard out, typed in a few quick notes on the interview and then pushed a button that would convert his words into an alpha-numeric language only the computer could understand. Basically he was asking the machine what he should do next.
The computer whirred and blinked and burped and blinked some more. Finally the answer came out on a long piece of ticker tape.
“Terminate interrogation,” it read. “Return to port immediately.”
Wolf showed the message to Zal, who nodded.
“Listen pal, we’ve got to stop this right here,” Wolf said. “We’ll be bringing you back with us. I have a feeling someone higher up the ladder will be very interested in you.”
The man just shrugged. “Do what you’ve got to do.”
Wolf nodded to Zal. “OK, get him fed. And keep him away from the crew. It will take us about four hours to get back into port.”
Zal tapped the stranger on the shoulder.
“Let’s go, pal,” he said.
The man stood up. He really was a strange-looking cat.
“Just one more question,” Wolf said. “How about your name? Do you remember that?”
The man thought for a moment, then he finally replied:
“Yes, I do. My name is Hawk Hunter.”
Wolf looked at Zal, who just shrugged.
“Never heard of you,” Wolf said.
Out at sea, on the edge of the Demon Zone, one man was still floating.
Up until a little while ago, two other people had been in the water with him. But one had been picked up by an ultraspeedy warship; the other by a floating iron castle.
The gray, speedy vessel looked like a destroyer—but it was sleeker than any destroyer he’d ever seen. And the iron castle looked too big, too cumbersome to even stay afloat.
But the airplane that had circled above him the whole time was the strangest thing of all. It was the biggest, slowest, oddest-looking airplane he’d ever seen.
But they were all gone now. The destroyer had left the area at incredible speed carrying away one guy, and the black floating castle had departed in slower fashion towards the south carrying another. And then the gigantic airplane had simply flown away, leaving him here, all alone.
He had a huge bump on his head and a long scrape on his left arm. He’d been bobbing in the water for more than an hour now, and he was getting damned cold. He wasn’t sure how he got here; his memory was very foggy. In fact, he couldn’t even remember his name.
But he was coherent enough to know he was in very dire circumstances. He looked in all directions and saw nothing but water. He could tell by the cloud formations there wasn’t any land mass for hundreds of miles. But what could he do?
He couldn’t last much longer like this. He had to do something.
So he looked up at the sun and determined which way was west.
And then he started swimming.
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 under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, 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, 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 © 1997 by Mack Maloney
Cover design by Michel Vrana
978-1-4804-0678-0
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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