Return of Sky Ghost (24 page)

The needle-nosed Z-3/15 could carve through the clear air up here almost effortlessly. Hunter was fully aware of the plane’s capabilities now. Not quite its limits, but definitely its jack. The plane was incredibly fast. Close to Mach 7 fast, and that was with only two-thirds of the double-reaction engine power fully engaged.

Hunter didn’t want to open the plane up all the way, because fuel was at a premium and he really wanted a closer look at the power plant before he went burying the speedometer.

At the moment, though, for this flight to nowhere, Mach 3.5 was just fine.

His mind was not quite numb, yet not quite engaged, as he rocketed above the mid South American continent. If he closed his eyes for more than a second or two he saw the image of Sara propped up in bed, looking sexy, looking beautiful—with the equally-erotic equally-topless network reporter snuggling beside her. That image was emblazoned indelibly on his memory now.

A loved one will surprise you.
It was another bingo for the crazy street psychic. Already he was wondering just how long it would be before he’d be able to get back to Xwo Mountain.

But now it was 0510 hours—ten minutes past five in the morning. Time to get to work.

He had his own MVP now, and it was plugged into the
Stiletto
’s control panel. A numeric readout was counting down to 0515, the magic time when he would receive his next set of orders. With them, he would finally learn exactly where he was to pick up the Bomb. The Z-3/15 was so loaded up with fuel—and topped off at Xwo Mountain—that he had a current radius of nearly 6,000 miles, meaning he could probably go to where he was going and get back to a friendly base without loading up on fuel again.

But he was flying over the middle of South America—where could he possibly go from here? Antarctica? Africa? Easter Island?

Three minutes to go.

There was a massive break in the clouds up ahead and Hunter suddenly had a clear view of the central part of Bolivia and northern Paraguay. These too were Japanese puppet states and even from this height the Nippon influence was apparent.

In among the trees and mountains and rain forests—places that had been inaccessible for thousands of years—now were dots of towns made up of luxury-style homes and huge pagoda-like structures. Roads had been plowed through the dense forests and highways built to tie them together. Many small but capable airports were in evidence as well. As vile as their motives may have been, the Japanese had done to South America what no one—not even its inhabitants—had ever been able to do: Tame it. Exploit it.
Civilize
it.

In less than a year.

Quite a feat.

Too bad it was not long to last. Of this, Hunter was sure, as he zoomed over dozens of new villages and settlements, all of them bearing an Asian imprint in design. Because here and there he would come upon a city, and there would inevitably be firebomb damage somewhere within it. This was the evidence of the relentless bombings from Xwo Mountain. Soon, when the other three hidden air bases became active, this bombing campaign would quadruple in intensity. Then, if Brazil really did come into the war …

But was that going to happen now? Was the Brazil operation still on? Hunter wasn’t sure. If the upcoming Panama invasion plan was simply a massive deception to cover for his upcoming secret mission, then what the hell was the massive buildup in Brazil all about? Again, he didn’t know, and something inside him was telling him he really didn’t want to find out. He had to concentrate on the matters at hand here. Get the Bomb, drop the Bomb. Whatever else was going to happen, it would have to happen without him.

So he flew on.

Two minutes to go. While he wasn’t quite clear on many things from his time Back There, he had a feeling that wars were not fought in the same way as they were Here. In both this conflict and the last war against Germany, there never seemed to be any middle ground. One side was usually destroying the other. One side was always on the verge of victory, only to be tripped up by some quirk or incident, and then see the scales tipped all the way back to the opponent again.

Just a few months before, it appeared that Japan was unstoppable in its conquest of South America. Now, while the conquering of the land still went on, and Japanese citizens were still pouring into the country for the repopulation programs, it was not like landing in some foreign paradise anymore. Hunter and the people atop of Xwo had made sure of that. They had turned the place into a battleground, and that had changed everything. Now the pendulum was swinging very quickly in America’s favor. Hunter knew—and he hoped the OSS realized—that they would be wise to take the momentum and end this thing before the inevitable swing happened again and they were all looking back down the wrong end of the Japanese sword.

He was sure his whole secret mission was the first step in that kind of plan. In fact, maybe it was the only step …

At exactly thirty seconds to go, Hunter came out of a cloud bank at 80,000 feet. Once again it was just him, the moon, and the stars.

The mission screen began blinking green at ten seconds out, red at five seconds out, and then it finally went all white.

Slowly, the animation began to form. It was a map, outlining the lower half of the South American continent. A little cartoon version of his airplane appeared and began moving South. He was being told to proceed to a coordinate shown on the map’s grid as Tango Point Charlie, a location just off the coast of southern Argentina. From there, he was to head in an easterly direction for nearly 500 miles. At that point he would intercept a homing beacon which would lead him to an airport. Here he would land and go AFI—await further instructions.

At first the directions off the coordinate seemed simplistic. Basically the MVP was telling him to get down to the tail of South America and take a left. Then fly for a few hundred miles. But what exactly was out there?

Hunter pushed the grid map extension and got his answer right away. Two oddly shaped islands riding amidst the high waves of the South Atlantic.

Yes, he had heard of them. They were actually infamous in a way.

They were called the Falkland Islands.

Nevada

A
GENT Y WAS SITTING
in a control room in the heart of the Area 52 command center.

Before him was a bank of six TV screens. His ever-present MVP was plugged into the console beneath these screens and connected to an interface which tied into the room’s gigantic Main/AC computer. The thinking machine was whirring away, blinking and burping as usual. On the six TV screens there was a small clock in the right-hand corner counting down to 0100 hours mountain time.

This was a big night for Y, a big night for this audacious plan which had Hawk Hunter flying somewhere down at the bottom of the planet, thousands of soldiers sitting on the border of Brazil, thousands more getting ready to jump off for the Panama Canal—and Y sitting here alone in a TV control room.

This was Phase 3 of the Big Plan; in Y’s own language, the Gathering of the Associates, possibly the strangest part of all.

At that moment, there were six OSS “hit squads” scattered across the country. Each one was waiting for the small clock in the corner of their MVPs to click down to 0100 hours. Each group was equipped with an insta-camera which would feed live visuals to the control room monitors arrayed in front of Y.

Y didn’t smoke cigarettes, but if he did, he would have lit one up now. Trying to pull all these strings—while the Main/AC was pulling his—was a nonstop juggle. The multilevel diversion plan, Hunter’s suicide mission, this mysterious Bomb.

It was strange, though, because in all this, it was the odd disappearance of his estranged colleagues, Agents X and Z, that kept coming back to him. In some ways it made everything that much stranger.

Where were they? Alive or dead? Free or imprisoned? On the inside or on the out? The fact that the agents were missing was the best-kept secret on a planet overloaded with top secrets and intrigue. Could they have been kidnapped by Japanese agents? Y doubted it. His colleagues were not so foolish as to leave themselves exposed to a snatch. Were they dead? Assassinated maybe? By an enemy hit squad? Y doubted that too. The cosmos just didn’t feel like X and Z were gone.

So where the hell were they? At this, the most critical time in the country’s history since the last critical time in the war with Germany, two of the most valuable spies around had decided to go underground. It was all so very odd …

Y checked the time again. It was the last minute of the countdown. He really didn’t have time to worry about X and Z’s whereabouts now. He had more important things to do.

The clock finally ticked down the last few seconds, then instantly the six TV screens came to life.

Y immediately activated his microphone and was talking to Squad A. They were located in a section of northeastern Pennsylvania known as the Endless Mountains. They were in front of a nondescript, pleasant-looking house.

“OK, go,” Y told them.

Two agents got out of their car, one carrying the insta-cam with him. Whatever was to happen next, Y would see it in real time.

The agents approached the front door and hesitated a moment before knocking. There was a noise in the background. A high-pitched whining. Electrical. Possibly a power tool of some kind.

They rang the doorbell and a pleasant-looking Asian woman answered the door. Two young girls were in the background watching TV. The agents identified themselves. The woman looked over their ID cards.

“We’d like to speak with your husband,” one of the agents told the woman as politely as possible. She showed them in, they passed through the living room where the two young girls politely said hello. They proceeded down a set of stairs to the basement where a workshop was located. The husband, wearing a protective mask, was leaning over a large power saw, cutting a length of very thin material, half plastic, half wood. Before him was a large, incomplete—well, something. Y could not tell what it was from the camera’s angle.

The two agents walked forward and finally the wife got the man’s attention. The power saw stopped. The object he was working on came into better view. It was an airplane—a small one, but one that looked to be jet-powered and highly advanced in its stunning design.

The man lifted his protective mask; he was slightly startled, slightly confused. The agents showed their IDs. The man read them and relaxed somewhat.

Finally one agent spoke.

“Is your name Ben Wa?” he asked.

At nearly the exact moment, Squad B was approaching the door to a teachers’ residence on the campus of J. Kathryn College, outside of Chicago.

The pair of agents, camera running, went through the main door, up two flights of stairs and stopped at Room 1333. They knocked twice. The door eventually opened, but very slowly.

Watching TV monitor 2, Y got an unexpected eyeful. The dormlike room was filled with young coeds, all in various states of undress. Some were awake and engaged in animated conversation; others appeared to be napping. Four were playing cards in one corner. Another pair were kissing and fondling one another nearby. One side of the room had been turned into a photography area with a large white backdrop, low-intensity lights, and an expensive portrait camera set on a tripod. Here, a group of semi-naked beauties were taking pictures of each other.

In the midst of this harem sat one man. He was in his mid twenties, fashionably if comfortably dressed, with tousled hair and a professorial beard. This is a teacher’s residence; he is the teacher.

He is also the man the two agents have come to see.

The agents make their way over to the man, show their ID cards, and ask him a single question:

“Are you J.T. Toomey?”

On TV monitor 3, very nearly the same sequence was playing out.

A pair of OSS agents were walking toward a bar located in the northernmost city of New England, a place called Loring, Maine.

The weather was so cold the vapor was fogging the lens of the insta-camera, even in the few seconds it took for the agents to cross the street and go into the saloon. The place was loud and rowdy, but warm. A pool game was going on in one corner. Many dancing girls were in evidence. Many patrons were carrying firearms. From Y’s point of view, it looked like the Old West, except it was really the cold Northeast.

The agents threaded their way through the crowd, finally coming to a table where a man sat counting out huge stacks of money.

Beside him were two enormous female bodyguards, armed with shotguns, hand-cannon pistols, and dressed entirely in black leather.

The man looked up at the OSS agents, and like the previous two subjects, greeted them with a facial expression that was a mixture of surprise and bemusement.

“Trouble with your bill, gentlemen?” he asked with a thick Canadian accent.

The agents ignored the jibe and got right to business.

“Mr. Frost, we presume?”

Oddly enough, the fourth TV monitor was broadcasting from a place that Y had just left.

It was in a squad car parked outside the Visiting Players entrance to the huge Dallas football stadium.

As always, there was a crowd of fans and general street partiers passing by, even though it was fairly late in the evening.

The agents left their car, going quickly through the merry crowd and gaining access to the Visiting Players door via a door-unlocking tool carried by all OSS operatives.

They walked down a long tile corridor and finally found themselves looking at the door to the visiting team’s locker room. The temporary sign on the door read: NEW JERSEY GIANTS. NO ADMITTANCE.

The agents went in without knocking and were confronted by what appeared to Y to be an entire professional football team, all suited up, just seconds away from running out onto the field. There were about fifty people in all. Some stared blankly into the insta-camera lens. Most ignored it entirely.

The agents approached the man who was obviously in charge of the team. He was surrounded by five other coaches. They had their names sewn into their workout shirts: Matus. Palma. Cerbasi. Vittelo. Delusso. McCaffery.