War of the Sun

by Maloney, Mack;

  Crockett took a sip from his drink. “Maybe our original plan worked,” he said, grimacing at the bad yet effective booze. “Maybe by knocking off Hashi Pushi—or causing him to do the job himself, I mean—the Cult is literally falling apart. The officers out in the field just figured that when the Holy Word stopped dribbling down from Tokyo, it was time to pack up and go home.”

  General Jones sipped his drink too. “I only wish that was the case, Bobby,” he said gloomily. “But it doesn’t add up. If the Cult was disintegrating, would their people on Okinawa have stuck around and fought like they did? And where did all those battleships the Task Force reported go?”

  “And where the hell are those subs?” Jesse Tyler added.

  Jones downed his drink and poured out three more.

  “We’ve been looking for them around the clock,” he confirmed, “and we haven’t turned up so much as a bubble.”

  “That’s scary,” Crockett said. “They could be anywhere by this time.”

  “It’s all these Cult troops in Hawaii we’ve got to concentrate on,” Jones said, throwing a folder on the table. “Take a look at these …”

  He spread a dozen or so high-altitude photos across the desk. They showed the tens of thousands of Cult troops massed in and around Pearl Harbor.

  “Look at the fortifications these guys are building,” he told the chopper pilots. “And all those AA and SAM sites. We’ve also heard they’ve shipped out any civilians left on Oahu to the other islands, but not before stealing all of their food and water.”

  “Sounds like the bastards plan on staying for a while,” Tyler said. “And expecting a fight.”

  “That’s just what Hawk said when I talked to him,” Jones said. He went on to explain that he’d had a long conversation with the Wingman earlier in the day via a jimmy-rigged secure line set up in the Fitz’s CIC. The Task Force had been slowly limping eastward since the titanic battle on Okinawa. With the mysterious new developments on the West Coast, Jones had no choice but to order them to remain on combat alert and be ready for action—or as ready as they could possibly be.

  “And what are his thoughts on this situation?” Tyler asked. “Does he have any ideas on what the hell we should do?”

  “He certainly does,” the general replied, pouring out three more stiff shots. “Drink up, boys. You’ll need it after I tell you just what he has in mind …”

  Seal Cove, Old State of Maine

  Al Nolan, a.k.a. “Ironman,” was having a bad day.

  First of all, his right index finger hurt. He’d spent the last eight hours recording data on his hand-held electronic notepad, and all that button-pushing had strained a ligament or something.

  Second, he’d been standing before the 160,000-gallon saltwater aquarium for most of that time, and the damp conditions were already beginning to give him a head cold.

  But third, and most of all, he was bored.

  The big tank was the centerpiece of the New American Aquatic Institute, an organization devoted solely to the study of mammal marine life.

  In the tank were two dolphins, each about three years old.

  By trade, Ironman was an accountant, a numbers cruncher, and one of the best. He took the job as head accountant at the Institute simply because of the research conducted with dolphins there. In a matter of months, he had put the organization back in the black and showed them how to stay financially solvent for many years to come—no easy task in light of the catastrophic upheavals suffered by America in recent times.

  In gratitude, the Ironman was given complete run of the aquarium, for the Institute had also come to respect his self-taught knowledge of the intelligence potential of dolphins.

  Nolan was now probably the most knowledgeable researcher on dolphin intelligence on the American continent. In fact, he knew so much about them that he felt no further study was needed—and this was the source of his boredom. He felt it was time to act on the knowledge he’d gathered. Time to use the dolphins’ intelligence to solve one of the world’s most intriguing mysteries.

  But with the country and the globe still in a constant state of confusion, the priority for Nolan’s grand search was very, very low, to say the least.

  The dolphins in the tank began to cavort, possibly beginning a mating ritual. Al stepped closer to the eight-inch-thick tempered glass. He didn’t want to miss a thing.

  Just then, the radio-phone down the hall rang. Nolan, the only one around, was momentarily torn between getting the phone and continuing to watch the dolphins. Finally, he grudgingly tore himself away from the tank and answered it.

  He would soon be very glad he did.

  “Ironman? Hey, Ironman? Can you hear me?”

  Nolan couldn’t believe it. “Hey, Hawk—is that you?”

  “Sure is. But I don’t have much time to talk, and I’ve got to ask you a big favor, old friend …”

  Fifteen minutes later, Nolan hung up the phone, completely overwhelmed by what he had heard. Suddenly he wasn’t bored anymore.

  Without hesitation he went to his quarters, threw together a suitcase of clothes, and grabbed a fresh box of Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils. Before he left, he lifted up a loose floorboard in his bedroom and took out a small steel box. In it was his most prized possession: his Rolodex of names from the old days, when he’d worked as the top logistics man for the U.S. Navy’s most secret projects.

  Once packed, he went back to the tank. The Institute assistants would have to care for the dolphins for the time being—but he needed one last look. He loved the animals so much, tears came to his eyes. It was no surprise that the Greeks believed dolphins were once human beings. The animals’ intelligence, and especially their individual personalities, were indeed quite human-like.

  And though he knew his scheme to use them to unravel one of history’s most perplexing riddles would have to be put on hold for now, he was more confident than ever that it would indeed happen someday.

  This was because in return for his unique services, Hawk Hunter had promised to help him do so.

  Ten minutes later, Nolan was heading for a tiny nearby airstrip where an unmarked T-45A Goshawk Navy Trainer and pilot were waiting for him. It was ready to whisk him down to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C.

  Then it would be a quick trip to the underground command center of the Pentagon, where a simple room with several telephones awaited him.

  From there, the Ironman would work his magic.

  Forty

  Panama

  IT WAS AS IF they’d come out of nowhere.

  One moment the lust-sticky streets of Sin City were being plied with their usual disreputable patrons of pimps, hookers, drug dealers, and insurance salesmen.

  In the next, they were filled with heavily-armed soldiers running from doorway to doorway, waving their weapons at anyone who dared to stop and question what was going on.

  Edsel Xavier was the chief of the small security force employed by the criminal cartel which ran Sin City. It was his bad luck that all of his bosses were vacationing in the Kingdom of Brazil this day. Their absence made Xavier the acting mayor of the canalside hedonist heaven. It was a position he accepted with the utmost reluctance.

  When the soldiers came for him, Xavier was where he always was on early Monday mornings: playing cowgirls and cattle rustlers at the Happy Accident Motel, with his hired guests the Sin City triplets. The soldiers didn’t knock before they kicked the door in. In a flash, Xavier went from sucking on STT Number Two’s garishly-painted breasts to staring down the barrels of six very recently greased M-16s.

  Two of the triplets fainted dead away at the sight of the black-camouflaged soldiers; the third wet her pants. Xavier tried vainly to escape by an open window, but was cuffed by two of the soldiers and thrown back onto the disheveled, modality-scattered bed. The women were revived and permitted to go. Xavier was allowed to put on his pants, boots, and undershirt, but his cowboy hat, spurs, and plastic bull horns were left behind.

&n
bsp; Placed in the back of a HumVee, Xavier was driven at high speed to the Sin City’s mid-sized airfield, two miles away. The two-runway airstrip was now servicing both a wide array of attack helicopters and large C-141 troop-laden cargo planes. A huge Chinook helicopter was parked at the far edge of the airstrip. Xavier was taken inside. The big chopper was outfitted inside as an aerial battle command center. At one end was a large desk jammed with computers, maps, and communications equipment. Behind this desk sat an enormous black man wearing a major general’s uniform of the United American Armed Forces.

  He politely but firmly explained to Xavier that the shock troops which had descended on Sin City were members of the elite 23rd Battalion of the Football City Special Forces Rangers. He was their provisional commander. His name was Major Catfish Johnson.

  The conversation with Johnson was brief: he asked Xavier how many armed men he had under his command. Xavier replied the number was fifty-seven within Sin City’s city limits. Johnson then made a fifteen-second speech telling Xavier that it was in his best interests to order his men to report to the airport immediately and surrender their weapons. Xavier didn’t argue. A radio was provided and he quickly put out the word to his small security force.

  His men came straggling in just as the troops massed at the airport were moving out, a long stream of M-1 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and standard APCs leading the way.

  Xavier was handcuffed and put in the back of Johnson’s HumVee. With the general himself behind the wheel, they tore off after the convoy heading toward the main locks of the canal three miles away.

  Xavier’s spirits sank lower as they roared back through the heart of Sin City. All major intersections in the city were now under control of the heavily-armed invaders. The small radio station was surrounded with APCs and Bradleys, as was the satellite TV uplink facility which had provided Sin City with a wealth of pornographic films and features over the years.

  Hungover and drug-starved, Xavier was slipping into a state of shock. The scale and precision by which the American troops had captured the city was mind-boggling. Even worse, it appeared they were intending to stay for good.

  “This party is kaput,” Xavier kept mumbling over and over.

  That he was not exactly correct would be his first big surprise of the day.

  They screeched past the enormous hole in the ground which at one time had been the site of the tower used by the men operating the main lock control station of the stretch of the Panama Canal nearby and soon arrived outside the control station itself. Advance elements of United American troops had completely encircled the large, washed-brick facility by this time and the sky above the station was filled with circling helicopter gunships.

  Xavier was taken out of the HumVee and marched up to the front gate of the facility. Inside he could see the confused faces of the station’s guard force staring back out at him. These men were employed by a private mercenary guard force totally independent from the town’s security units. These men were tougher, better-armed, and technically better motivated. In fact they were under contract from Sin City’s ruling cartel to hold the station with their lives should the occasion arise.

  Xavier was given a bullhorn by the officer in charge of the American troops encircling the building. He didn’t need to be told what to do. He simply turned the thing on and told the men inside to give up.

  After a short delay, a similarly-amplified voice replied that they were all hired to go down fighting. It added that their commander was at that moment trying to raise their main office located on the old island of Cuba for instructions, and most probably, reinforcements.

  Xavier turned to Johnson and shrugged. The general, in turn, gave a signal to his communications man, who spoke three words into his radiophone. Within a few seconds, one of the circling Cobra gunships swooped down and laid a frightful barrage of 6.76 rockets on top of the main control house, vaporizing the large radio antenna there. A second Cobra delivered a second barrage to the station’s small satellite dish. A third gunship riddled the small shack which housed the station’s automatic telephone switching computer.

  The firing lasted ten incredibly noisy seconds. By the time it was over, the control station and the men inside were cut off from the outside world. No sooner had the smoke cleared when the holed-up security troops were walking out with white flags above their heads.

  Fifteen minutes later, the canal locks and the immediate area surrounding them were under the control of the Football City 23rd Battalion.

  Xavier was brought up to the main control house and kept there under guard as American soldiers began working the control of the main locks, using elaborate operating manuals as their guides. Within minutes, Xavier saw a large gray-black cargo ship enter the small lake east of the canal and approach the locks. There was a similarly-sized ship behind it, and another one behind that.

  The first ship was successfully guided into the main lock, raised up, and sent on its way to the Pacific. Xavier got a good look at the ship and saw that it was stocked to the decks with wooden crates and black-tarped containers. The second ship was similarly loaded, as was the third.

  By the time the trio of cargo ships was processed, three more appeared. And then four more, and four more after that. Each one was stacked with what had to be tons of military supplies, all of it covered, all of it under the watchful eyes of heavily armed sailors.

  Five hours later, Xavier had counted thirty-three ships having gone through the locks, their decks packed to capacity, all heading quickly to the Pacific, all of them flying the American flag.

  He was still there twenty-four hours later. And the ships were still coming.

  Vancouver, Free Canada

  The airplane was spotted on Free Canadian air defense radar at ten minutes after midnight.

  Two controllers stationed at Ladysmith on Vancouver Island tracked the aircraft as it passed within fifteen miles of the entrance to Vancouver Bay. They watched as it swept back and forth in an irregular search pattern, cameras in its nose cone undoubtedly snapping off hundreds of feet of infrared film. They were certain it was a long-range recon aircraft owned either by the Asian Mercenary Cult or someone in their employ.

  Yet they did not pass an emergency report on to their commanders which would have triggered a scramble order to the nearest unit of Canadian jet interceptors. Rather they watched the airplane for the next ninety minutes as it went about a normal long-range photo reconnaissance mission undisturbed.

  Its cameras had plenty to record: out from Vancouver Bay, through the Straits around Vancouver Island, and out into the cold North Pacific was a convoy of full-to-the-gunwales cargo ships that stretched for more than 150 miles. All of them packed with crates typical of military cargo. All of them heading toward the Hawaiian Islands.

  Forty-one

  Oahu, the next day

  IT WAS A VERY happy group of Cult officers gathered around the large war table.

  There were seven of them in all, the top commanders of the Asian forces who until recently had brutally occupied both the West Coast of America and the scattered islands of the South Pacific rim. Two officers were in charge of all the Cult land forces. Two represented the Cult’s naval arm. The remaining three were connected with the Cult air force.

  Before them was a large composite photomap of the Pacific Ocean, highlighting the broad expanse of water between the American continent and the Hawaiian Islands. It was quite easy to comprehend the current situation. The map clearly showed a long stream of ships heading toward Hawaii from the Panama Canal Zone, and an even longer line heading down from Vancouver. Sailing in classic convoy fashion—spread out for antisubmarine defense—the lead ships of the twin convoys would be within 100 miles of Hawaii within 24 hours.

  The officers had just heard a presentation from the officer in charge of aerial photo recon. His analysts had concluded that most of the vessels flowing out of Panama were cargo ships, and that most of those coming from Canada appeared to be carrying troops.
There were more than 150 ships in all—some fairly modern military vessels, others little more than the no-frills, slapped together Liberty Ship-style cargo vessels popular in the post-Big War world.

  By calculating their average displacement, cargo capacity, and range, the Cult’s top intelligence analysts determined that ten divisions of American or allied troops—210,000 men—and 23 million tons of ammunition and supplies were on their way to attack the Cult forces deployed on Oahu and in and around Pearl Harbor.

  “It is Providence,” the top army officer declared. “The wisdom of our redeploying to this location is now very clear. We were unwise to doubt our new leader.”

  “We can redeem ourselves,” said the air force commander. “It is the divine intervention we have been seeking.”

  “It is true,” the naval commander added. “The foolish, lazy Americans are falling right into our trap.”

  It was now three A.M.

  Major Sisan Mushi was hot, hungry, and tired. He’d been shouting orders at his men for nearly eighteen straight hours, and his voice was beginning to crack. He couldn’t really remember the last time he’d eaten anything—maybe it was the raw smelts he’d consumed with his morning tea two days ago. He’d taken a nap sometime after that, though it hadn’t lasted too long, for the noise of the commotion going on around him was much too loud for any kind of restful repose. And he hadn’t bathed in four days.

  But work was progressing, though, and this is what made him happy.

  He was in command of an 1800-man Cult construction regiment. At that moment, his men were putting the finishing touches on the second of two temporary airstrips they’d been building nonstop for the past seventy-two hours.

  The irony that the site of these runways was close to what was once known as Hickam Field was lost on Mushi—he was not a student of history. A distant relative had flown a torpedo plane on December 7, 1941, but that’s about as far as his interest went regarding the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on that fateful day so long ago.