Death Orbit (44 page)

Even if the plan
did
work, they would still have to wait months, maybe even years, for any hope of a rocket being blasted off from the earth to orbit in order to take them back home. And all this time they would be under the yoke of the Nazis still inside the space station. What kind of life would that be?

But Hunter had vetoed the plan that they all go on the suicide mission together because he didn’t want to be personally responsible for killing four of his best friends. Knowing he was going to die with Elvis was hard enough. One soul on his conscience was already a load—four more would be unbearable, in this life or the next.

The most amazing thing about the past two days was that Hunter had come to a kind of truce with himself. It was not some acknowledgment of a tremendous inner peace that would give him the strength to go on this, his final mission. It was more an understanding that this was what he’d meant to do all along. All his skill, all his knowledge, all his adventures, and all his battles had been in preparation for this moment, this one-in-an-epoch chance of saving the entire planet. After all, he’d been trying to do it piecemeal for the past six years or more. He recognized the beauty in trying to do it all in one fell swoop.

There was also another kind of peace running through him as he sat on the Zon flight deck and watched the Nazi space techs string the line of space nukes together. In plain and simple terms, he had nothing to live for after this. Dominique was gone, just as his family and many of his friends had gone before, and now he felt it was his time to go, too. He made no pretenses that there was a warm, fuzzy feeling attached to such a tragic conclusion—the part of the soul where this idea had come from was a cold and dark place. But it was also a logical place—or at least, in Hunter’s present frame of mind, it seemed to be.

It had been a very strange 48 hours since he’d radioed Jones with his plan to let the Nazis come into the KSC and let them try to launch the nuclear warheads into orbit. The UAAF would have to step aside and let the goosesteppers do their thing.

That was exactly the same attitude shared aboard the Zon as the nuclear payloads arrived and the space station techs began stringing them together.
Let the assholes do all the work,
was how JT had put it over and over again.

The people on the Zon had better things to do—like say goodbye to each other.

They had devised a kind of reverse clock to count down the hours to the comet hitting the earth.

The string of space nukes was finally completed and pre-fused, and this clock stood at minus 6 hours and 32 minutes.

This gave the Zon crew absolutely no time for leeway—which was okay with Hunter. They had to collect the three bomb strings and be on their way. As it was, he was worried whether the Zon still had enough fuel in it to get them up to the place in high orbit where the triplet of bomb rings had to go. One thing was in their favor, though: they didn’t have to worry about conserving fuel for the return trip. There would
be
no return trip this time.

For this mission, the ticket was strictly one-way.

At minus 5 hours and 55 minutes, they got a report from the Nazi space-tech CO that the three strings had been separated as needed and if the Zon came over to the space station docking point, they would be able to fit it with the tow lines.

Hunter quickly drove the Zon the five miles over to the space station, positioning it next to the docking arm as requested, all the while being careful not to waste any fuel. The battery of space techs began hooking up the three strings to the three tow lines, a task they estimated would take twenty minutes at most.

But now came the hardest part of all.

It was time for those not going on the Zon’s final mission to transfer over to the space station.

Hunter was entrenched in the flight commander’s seat and Elvis, stoic as ever, was strapped into shotgun when the word went out that it was time for the others to go. Cook and Geraci were the first to come up to say goodbye.

They both shook hands with Elvis and then floated over to Hunter. There was really no sense in avoiding the issue. This would be the last time they’d ever see each other again.

“Wouldn’t have changed a thing, Hawk,” Geraci told him after a zero-G bearhug. “Not a blessed thing…”

“Thanks, G-man,” Hunter replied. “Tell all the guys in the 104 I said thanks… for everything.”

Cook came next. They’d known each other for a very long time.

“I’d do anything to trade places with you, Hawk,” the JAWS commander told him. “Be glad to do it, too.”

“Are you kidding, Cookie?” Hunter replied, trying like hell to be upbeat, but failing miserably. “You think the JAWS team would ever forgive me for that?”

Cook nodded sadly, shook his hand again, and was gone.

That’s when Hunter looked up and saw Ben. His heart caught in his throat. It was going to get progressively harder.

They shook hands vigorously.

“See you, Hawk,” Ben said, trying to make it as quick and painless as possible.

“You got it, pal,” Hunter was just barely able to croak out. He looked away for a moment, just to clear his eyes, and when he turned back, Ben was gone.

At that moment, one of the Nazi space techs appeared just off the Zon’s portside window. He gave Hunter and Elvis a stern thumbs-up. They took it to mean the three strings of nukes were attached to the tow lines.

“We can get going any time now,” Elvis told Hunter.

Hunter began pushing buttons and clearing computer screens in anticipation of the huge main engine burn they would have to accomplish if they had any hope of getting up to higher orbit.

As he was doing this, Hunter was aware of someone else looking over his shoulder. It was JT.

“So, how long do you figure
this
little adventure is going to take?” he asked Hunter, in his usual nonchalant way.

Hunter was momentarily stumped. Exactly
how
should he reply to that?

“About a lifetime, I suppose,” he finally answered.

But JT was shaking his head.

“C’mon, Hawk,” he said. “This is JT you’re talking to. You know how this book will turn out just as well as I do. You guys will go up there, blast the big snowball to smithereens, somehow have just enough gas left to get back down here, rescue us, capture that asshole Viktor again, and bring him back to
terra firma
—just like we planned to do. I mean, this is all just a mild diversion. You know, to make the plot more interesting…”

Hunter just stared up at his friend in disbelief.

“Your powers of denial are rather strong,” he told JT with a grim smile.

“What denial?” JT insisted. “I’ve been with you through the whole kit and kaboodle. Don’t you think I know how it’s going to end? Sure, it will get hairy. And sure, it will come right down to the last second. And you’ll have one last nuke that won’t go off like it’s supposed to, and you’ll have to do a quicky EVA to get it back in line. But you know, and I know, and everyone knows you’ll pull something out of your hat and save the day and come back in one piece, and then, we’ll all live happily ever after…”

Hunter was laughing at him now—so was Elvis, a rare treat. They just couldn’t help it. JT was actually being funny.

“So, just remember one thing,” JT concluded. “While you’re up there icing the biggest hero-move in history, we’ll be sitting aboard the floating
Reichstag,
doing God knows what. So get it over with in a hurry, will you? Save the planet and then scoot back and save us, okay?”

Hunter just continued staring up at his old friend; his face looked like he was completely serious.

“Okay, buddy,” Hunter finally told him with a handshake. “We’ll try to make it as quick as we can.”

JT smiled and then mock-saluted them both. Then he was gone, too.

Now an eerie silence descended on the flight deck. The lights were dimmed as the main power systems began coming on-line. Elvis had a long conversation with the Nazi space-tech CO. They’d done everything they were supposed to, was the gist of this guy’s message. Now it really was up to Hunter and Elvis.

The clock was at minus four hours and forty minutes now. Hunter leaned forward and then looked out the window back at the rear of the Zon. He could see the three strings of space bombs floating in three straight lines right beyond the tail section. Beyond that, the glare of the unnamed comet was rising like the sun over the edge of the earth.

It was so bright, it hurt his unprotected eyes. They said it would soon be brighter than the sun, he thought, and they were right.

He looked over at Elvis who had just completed the last diagnostic check. Everything that still worked onboard the Zon was up to near-peak efficiency. Hunter suddenly felt a pang of grudging admiration from the all-thumbs spacecraft. There was certainly a lot to complain about in its design and construction. But it had stayed together for them this long, and there was some kind of beauty in that, he supposed.

Elvis finally completed his check and gave Hunter a solemn thumbs-up. The others had already transferred over to the space station, and now it was time to break the docking connection, turn the Zon around, and begin the last main engine burn. But just as they were about to do this, they saw the airlock activation indicator light up on their control screen.

Someone was coming back aboard the Zon.

“Who the fuck is this?” Elvis blurted out.

They heard the commotion below as the airlock sprung open and first one, then two, then a third person got out. Then the first person floated over to the hatch leading up to the flight deck.

“If this is JT to finally kiss goodbye I’m going to slug him,” Elvis said. Like Hunter, he was understandably anxious to get the show on the road.

But then they saw the figure rising up through the hatch from below and both of them felt their breaths catch in their throat.

It wasn’t JT or Ben or any other part of the Zon crew coming for the one last goodbye.

It was Viktor.

He was rising out of the hatchway like a vampire rising from a coffin—except that he was going straight up.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Elvis cried out.

Viktor smiled as his pointed head touched the top of the compartment and he hung there like some kind of strange animal. He was dressed in all black, of course, his outfit complete in all its Luciferian regalia, from the foppish satin slippers to the long silk cape.

Both pilots were infuriated to see him.

“If you’re here for a pep talk, it’s a little too late,” Elvis told him sternly.

Viktor waved his protestations away. “Be still, you hillbilly,” he said. “I’ve come to chat with the man who will soon be the earth’s greatest hero—posthumously, of course.”

Hunter chose to ignore him. In light of the circumstances, all the hate he’d had inside for this man had dissolved into indifference. When compared to what lay ahead of them, Viktor was rather insignificant now.

“You’re using up our air being in here!” Elvis shouted at him. “You’re smelling up the place, too!”

Once again, Viktor just waved his words away.

“I’ve not come to speak with you…” he sneered at Elvis. “So just shut up.”

He drew closer to them. His shadow cast a dark silhouette across the control panel.

“Nothing to say on this momentous occasion, Mister Wingman?” he taunted Hunter. Elvis was right—Viktor did smell. It was a perfume-thick scent that tried to mask the undeniable stink of the body odor of someone who’d ingested a lot of drugs. Viktor’s eyes were as red as the warning lights on their control panel.

“You know, I do have a question for you,” Hunter told him suddenly.

“You mean, like a last request?” Viktor mocked him. “Go right ahead…”

Hunter pointed out at the huge swastika-shaped station hanging in space before them.

“Where the hell did you get
that?”
he asked directly.

Viktor looked out at the space station, and then to Hunter’s complete surprise, just shrugged his shoulders.

“You know something,” the superterrorist said, in a voice that sounded so sincere it was frightening. “I have no idea where the hell it came from…”

Hunter turned around and looked him straight in his very red eyes.

“I really don’t,” Viktor continued. “It was up here when we got here…”

Hunter stared at him and found his jaw dropping.

“Jesus Christ,” he swore. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

Viktor just nodded. He seemed genuinely mystified by it, too.

“We needed a place to go, and suddenly there it was,” he said. “One moment it was just empty space. Then we went around in the Mir and the next orbit, it had appeared. Empty, powered up, ready for us to use. Even the design was just right, if a little too Forties for my taste…”

“You have no taste!” Elvis screamed at him.

Again Viktor infuriated the pilot by ignoring him.

“But that was certainly a good question, Mister Wingman,” he continued, talking to Hunter. “A good parting mystery, no? I’m sure you would have been able to drag out a whole new series of your adventures just finding out where the hell it came from. Too bad you won’t have the chance.”

“Like hell he won’t!” Elvis suddenly screamed.

The red-faced pilot was out of his seat and hovering next to Viktor. His face was crimson with rage. Suddenly the superterrorist looked terrified himself. He tried to get away and call out for the two guards who had come aboard with him and stayed below. But Elvis yanked on his floating cape, pulled him back, and cuffed him hard across the mouth.

Hunter just stared at Elvis, who looked like he was about to pop a vessel, he was so angry.

“I’m sick of this fucking guy,” Elvis screamed, as he continued to pummel Viktor in the kind of violent slow-motion of zero-G. “Sick of every thing he’s done to me. To you. To everyone.”

He was wrapping Viktor’s cape around his neck now. The terrorist was so aghast at what was happening, he couldn’t even cry out.

Elvis looked up at Hunter. He was crying, he was so furious.

“And you know what I say, Hawk?” he whispered angrily. “I say if we ain’t coming back, then we take this asshole with us.”