War of the Sun

by Maloney, Mack;

  He activated his lip mike. “Flight commander, this is Alpha One …”

  “Alpha One, this is Flight Commander,” came Hunter’s acknowledgment. “What’ve you got?”

  Hodge didn’t quite know how to say it. “Can you get down here quick, Flight?” Hodge said finally. “You’ve got to see this for yourself …”

  Aboard the Fitzgerald

  Not a minute later, JT’s helmet speaker crackled to life.

  “Delta Green Flight, this is Flight Commander.”

  “This is Delta Green. Go ahead, Hawk.”

  “Activate Plan Beta Two. Your heading is seven-five-zero south; four-four-six west. You’ll get a lot of indications once airborne. Call when you need any help.”

  JT signed off and took a deep gulp from his oxygen mask. He’d been sitting on the deck of the Fitz, in Tornado Two, for almost a half hour waiting for this particular call and antsy to get into the action.

  Finally, it was time to go.

  The plane was surrounded with steam, its specially-adapted undercarriage attached to the Fitzgerald’s side catapult. JT immediately gave a signal to the Fitz’s launch officer, who sprang into action. Soon, there was a gang of yellow-jacketed deck crewmen swarming around JT’s aircraft, making last-minute checks before launch.

  He did a quick check of his cockpit essentials and found his engines were properly warmed, his flight systems up and green. He checked his weapons computer and found everything in order, so too with his fuel systems.

  He gave the launch officer a thumbs-up, which was returned with a sharp salute. Then JT braced himself, lowered his head slightly, and took another deep breath. An instant later the Tornado was violently jerked forward in a rush of steam and pure engine power.

  Two seconds later he was airborne.

  He quickly brought the powerful Tornado up to 3000 feet and then turned toward Okinawa. He’d been held in reserve for this special mission, and now that it was happening, he wondered exactly what the result would be. Even a hipster like him worried about the future.

  He looked to his right just as he was passing over the beach and saw Hunter coming up right beside him. JT flashed him a smart-ass peace sign. Below them, half the island of Okinawa seemed to be engulfed in flames.

  “I’m fashionably late again, Hawk,” he radioed over to the F-16XL.

  “I’ll remember that for the memoirs,” Hunter replied.

  Then they got down to business. Flying through the sludge that passed for air around Shuri Mountain, they could see the Zeros still leaving at a rate of about forty a minute.

  “About eighty or so have already flown the coop,” Hunter told him. “So far they’re all heading south-southwest.”

  JT acquired the radar indications of the prop planes on his radar system, locking in the rather faint radar blips.

  “Eighty should be enough,” JT told Hunter. “There are only so many places they can go.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Hunter replied.

  With that they broke off. Hunter immediately swooped in and delivered a Rockeye cluster bomb directly on the lip of the cave’s opening. The explosion shredded two Zeros that were just exiting the mouth of the cave, knocking one of them back into the hidden facility.

  He roared back over the target and then launched a Maverick missile, guiding it right into the mouth of the enormous cave. The fire and damage resulting from both bomb hits immediately brought a halt to the Cult’s launching efforts. Now only smoke was pouring out of the cave opening.

  But Hunter knew this was only temporary. He had long ago determined that because of its location and sheer size, it would have taken many, many airstrikes and many, many smart bombs to close the cave opening completely, and because of its position, there was no way that even the New Jersey’s 16-inch guns could have done the job. So while his two air-launched weapons had halted the flow of Zeros for now, he knew that the Cult would be able to clear the damage and begin launching again within thirty minutes. He hoped that was all the time he needed.

  They had let the 80-odd Zeros go for one simple reason: they wanted to find out just where the Cult airplanes were deploying to. Most important was determining how many places they could escape to. By letting only a dozen or so go before temporarily sealing the cave mouth, there was a chance they would fly to just one of what could be a nightmarish number of bases.

  By letting a good-sized number like 80 planes get out, the potential risk was balanced by the fact that they would probably deploy to many bases if given the option.

  And it was JT’s job to find the Jokers in the deck.

  Even as Hunter was launching his weapons at the cave opening, JT had already caught up with the last of the fleeing Zeros and was now tailing them from 60,000 feet, well above the eyes of the Zero pilots or any rudimentary radar gear they might employ. He was especially relieved that the Tornado was flying so well. He and Hunter had worked through the night stripping the ballsy airplane of all unnecessary weight and adapting it with extra-long-range fuel tanks, additions that were not always so pilot-friendly once in flight.

  They had also worked for some time on the high-tech jet’s weapons-carrying system. For in JT’s mission, he not only had to be able to fly for a long time, but also deliver a whammy of a punch once he got there.

  It was not an enviable assignment.

  Okinawa

  Lieutenant Colonel Frank Geraci checked the time and then checked his map.

  It was 0645. The sun was finally up, its morning rays distorted by the dense pollution all around him and his men. Every once in a while, one of the Task Force jets would roar over, either zooming in on a target or just pulling up from attacking one. Off in the distance, they could also hear the deep rumbling of the Great Wall weapons still firing, their gunners blindly firing out to sea, apparently convinced that a larger landing force was on its way.

  The 104th Engineering Battalion/Combat of the New Jersey National Guard had returned to Okinawa. They had moved down from the beach at Nin intact and without firing a shot. Now they were huddled in a small ravine, about a hundred yards south of the Si River. Though it was difficult to see through the smoke and smog, the terrain ahead of them appeared to rise dramatically, and this was good news. Because according to Geraci’s map, they had reached their objective, the base of Shuri Mountain.

  He called the other officers together. They had the forty-man unit broken down into five teams of eight combat engineers, each team identified by the last name of the officer in charge. Each team had enough firepower and expertise to break through an obstruction and hold it long enough for the next team to push through and take on the next obstruction. Then the third team would move up and break their obstruction and so on, all the way up until they reached the objective. To keep the movement somewhat self-perpetuating, each man started out with nearly three full packs of weight, mostly explosives. As each team moved up toward the objective, they would leave behind supplies for the last in-line team, who would use them when it became their turn again.

  The team led by Captain Don Matus would go first. The target was a line of chain wire reinforced with concertina wire, an obstruction which ringed the base of the mountain and was close to twenty feet thick. Matus’s men silently crept out of the ravine, the heavy packs further weighted down by long sections of stainless-steel pipe. Reaching the objective, they quickly constructed two sixty-foot lengths of the metal tubing, stuffing the first twenty feet with HE.

  Crawling through the rubble and discarded industrial waste, they managed to slip the powder-packed ends of the piping under two sections of wire about ten feet apart. On the quick count, the fire team ignited the end of the tube via a long firing cord. There was a great burst of fire, debris, and smoke—when it cleared, they could see they’d blown almost a straight path through the razor-sharp wire.

  Matus’s team was quickly up and through the hole, a team led by Captain Roy Cerbasi close behind. Both teams were horrified as they got on the other side of the obst
ruction and found the rear layer of barbed wire draped with dozens of bodies, some little more than skeletons, stretching for as far as the eye could see. Now the mystery of just why the mountain was so fortified had been answered. It was obvious that these were slaves of the Cult who had somehow managed to get out of the mountain only to die clawing their way over the sharp and deadly barrier. In other words, the obstructions weren’t to keep people out; they were to keep people in.

  Even though the men of the 104th were all hardened combat vets, the sight was unnerving to them. It was a true vision of Hell. They pressed on.

  Cerbasi’s target was a long line of concrete mounds arranged in such a mazelike way, it was impossible to pass through them quickly. After first checking the area for mines, two of Cerbasi’s men zigzagged up the first row of stanchions, planted two packs of explosives, and ran back and ignited them. After making sure they’d done sufficient damage, they signaled the next pair of men to move up. Then the next, and the next. Within ninety seconds, Cerbasi’s barrier was breached.

  On and on they went. A team led by Captain Ray Palma took out another line of concertina wire, this one wired for deadly electrical shock, which was luckily not working because of the island’s nearly total power blackout. A team led by General Tom McCaffrey—a man who’d come out of retirement to take part in the operation—quickly bore a path through a vast field of dung-covered punji sticks.

  By the time this target was breached, the 104th was nearly a third of the way up the mountain.

  That’s when the team led by Geraci himself took on Barrier Number Five.

  That’s when things began to go horribly wrong.

  Major Keni Hachomachi couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  From his position on the side of Shuri Mountain, it seemed as if the entire island of Okinawa was aflame. Explosions were rocketing up through the smoke and smog, their fireballs reaching 200 feet and higher. The noise was just deafening, enough to cause his ears to begin bleeding.

  He had more immediate concerns, however. He was commander of the Shuri Mountain defense teams, a poorly-equipped yet good-sized unit whose job it was to deal with slave escapees and protect the defensive integrity of the mountain itself. In the haste and confusion of the early morning attack, he and his men had been delayed in deploying to the battle positions. Now he was looking down at the result of that dawdle. A heavily-armed unit of soldiers he assumed belonged to the United American Army was moving up toward his position with both speed and ferocity. Hachomachi had eighty men hidden in the immediate area, another eighty or so close by, many of them equipped with old rifles, and some with only sidearms.

  But their lack of armament didn’t matter: his soldiers were not trained to repulse invaders by shooting at them.

  “Squad one up!” he yelled, prompting six terrified young troopers to scramble up to him.

  He took each man’s meager weapon and checked all knapsacks. Then he pointed down to the soldiers who had just blown through yet another wall of barbed wire, and were now merely fifty feet away and moving quickly up the ever-steepening cliff. Hachomachi barked his order. With only a moment or two of hesitation, the six men of squad one went over the top.

  The Mountain Defense soldiers had been instructed to scream at the top of their lungs when attacking, but the half dozen men now running down the mountain at Geraci’s team remained silent, or perhaps they were unable to scream. The first one tripped and fell about twenty feet away from the startled American soldiers, the pack on his back exploding in a ball of flame, smoke, blood, skin, and bone. The second Cult soldier was cut down by the combat engineers’ combined fire about thirty feet away, his knapsack igniting and blowing the man’s headless torso right into the Americans.

  The third and fourth Cult soldiers made it to within twenty feet of Geraci’s men before they, too, were shot down. Only one of the soldier’s knapsacks exploded, the resulting conflagration turning his body to bloody cinders. The fifth soldier hurled himself onto the concertina wire itself, inexplicably blowing an even larger hole in it. The sixth man, after seeing his comrades die so quickly, and for no particular purpose, simply skidded to a halt and detonated his own explosive charge, raising his arms in triumph or pain as he was obliterated in a wash of fire.

  The 104th were stunned. They were trained for combat, they had the ability to take on an armed enemy and defeat him. But this was not combat. This was mass suicide.

  Geraci wisely had his men withdraw to the other side of the wall of concertina wire to protect them from the human bombs. The other teams had moved up to the position by this time, and now all forty-two men of the 104th were hunkered down and protecting themselves, waiting for the next attack.

  The deadly beauty of the suicidal tactic was becoming all too obvious. The American commander correctly guessed that the Cult had more soldiers willing to kill themselves to throw at him than he did troopers who were trying to get up to the objective. What was worse, if the Cult was able to punch a hole in the barbed wire barrier—ironically, it was now the 104th’s only means of protection—then they’d be able to throw themselves right onto the engineers’ position itself. Surely such a close-in fight between bullets and bombs would result in heavy casualties for the 104th.

  Geraci checked his watch. It was now 0710. On top of everything else, they were running way behind schedule. If the 104th didn’t reach their objective in time, it could prove deadly for the rest of the operation.

  Geraci quickly discussed the situation with the rest of his officers.

  Together, they all decided there was only one thing to do.

  Hunter was at 2500 feet when he got the call.

  He’d just thrown another Maverick missile into the side cave entrance, the resulting explosion igniting a large section of the camouflage netting which hung out over the cliff above the opening itself. With this section of netting gone he had been able to get a good, unobstructed glimpse inside the cave itself—the Cult service crews were frantically running around inside, trying to clear the damage he’d caused and get the Zeros launching again.

  Geraci’s request for assistance had Hunter on station in less than a minute.

  The 104th was in the midst of its second full-fledged suicide attack when he arrived. At least a dozen enemy soldiers had already thrown themselves onto the barbed wire barrier in an effort to blow another hole right through it, and they were now about halfway to their goal, with more human bombs on the way. The combat engineers were firing at the Cult soldiers when they could, but the continual human detonations made it all but impossible to hit anything. The situation was quickly becoming desperate. Should the barbed wire wall be breached, the forty plus men of the 104th would be in a very precarious position, unable to stem the flow of human bombs that would surely come.

  Hunter knew he didn’t have time to think about it. He was down to the deck in an instant, his nose cannons blazing. Two Cult soldiers ran right into the murderous fire, their explosives-laden knapsacks detonating before they could reach the ever-weakening wire barrier. He pulled up and out to the left, putting the ’XL into a lung-crunching turn and coming back onto the killing field from the east. Two more Cult soldiers had sacrificed themselves on the wire, and three more were on the way.

  Hunter opened up once again, spraying the enemy soldiers with 20mm fire. There were three simultaneous explosions as the cannon shells found their marks, but the suicide troops had come within fifteen feet of the 104th’s position before Hunter could cut them down. And now six more were running down the hill.

  He put the ’XL into an even tighter gut-crushing turn, and opened up on the half dozen human bombs. He got five, but one got through, blowing away yet another section of the 104th’s ever precarious protective barrier. And now, ten more were on their way down the hill.

  The dangerous situation was escalating very quickly. The Cult seemed to have an unlimited number of suicide soldiers. Hunter was the only thing between the 104th and certain annihilation, yet he
could only cut down the enemy troops for so long until his ammunition ran out. Then what?

  He quickly screeched around and strafed the horrible battle zone again, exploding eight human bombs, but missing two. Their explosives detonated no more than ten feet from the 104th’s position. Pulling up, he saw ten more human bombs were on the way.

  He put the ’XL into the sharpest turn of its career, an afterburner-assisted eye-popper that pulled his face back into an involuntary grin. While opening up on the latest wave of human bombs, he managed to activate his radio.

  “Task Force Command, this is Task Force One,” he gasped, yanking the Super Falcon into yet another rivet-popping turn. “We need your assistance—quick.”

  The 104th got the order to “get low” less than a minute later.

  Most of the combat engineers were already taking cover in the many craters on their side of the barrier; for some, getting any lower to the ground would have been impossible.

  They heard it coming, of course, the long shrill whistling sound getting closer by the second. The ’XL had just completed its eighth strafing run in no more than a minute and a half when it suddenly pulled up and accelerated out of the area extremely quickly. Geraci had just enough time to yell to his men once more when the whistling became almost deafening.

  Three shells from the New Jersey’s 16-inch rear turret slammed into the side of Shuri Mountain a second later.

  The resulting explosion and concussion was so intense, it gave many of the combat engineers nosebleeds. But they all survived. The enemy soldiers were not so lucky. When the fire and debris cleared, the members of the 104th looked up and saw there was nothing left of the Cult’s positions except an enormous smoking crater.

  Thirty-five

  CAPTAIN JIM COOK AND the rest of the JAWs team felt the rumbling of the New Jersey’s shelling clear around the other side of the mountain.

  Though there were hundreds of deafening explosions going on all around them, it was easy to pick an authentic one and the battleship’s fusillade had literally shaken the earth.