Sky Ghost (22 page)

Crabb turned off the car, flipped the auxiliary heater on, and lit a cigar. Two of his girls crawled up to the front seat with him and took up positions on his lap. It would be warmer that way.

“Sure,” he said, turning up some cool jazz on the car’s boss sound system. “I’ve got a little bit of a wait here too. Take your time.”

Hunter disengaged himself from the girls in the back and climbed out of the DeSoto. Crabb was right, the base was very quiet. This was the home of the 3234th Bomber Squadron, the people he’d covered on the haunting mission over Ireland. Their bullet-scarred bombers were lined up nearby. The wind was whistling through the holes that hadn’t been patched yet.

The line of bombers out on the tarmac was cold, dark, silent. Covered with snow. Maybe they wouldn’t have to fly tomorrow either.

There was a glow coming from the ops hall that was flickering, orange. Eerie. Hunter walked around the back, unlatched the rear door, and slipped in. Down the darkened corridor was the ops hall. The door was open.

Hunter quietly walked over and peeked in.

He’d come in the middle of a memorial service. The hall was about one-quarter full. There were lit candles everywhere. The room was very dark. Everyone inside had their heads bowed. All seemed deep in silent prayer. Leading it, hidden in the shadows, was the squadron’s commanding officer.

This was obviously a tribute to the crews of the two planes that went into the Irish hillside the day before. Hunter took off his cap. He believed it would be a long time before he saw valor and heroism like that again.

This made the flurry of punches to the mouth of the 13th’s CO even more appropriate.

Hunter thought a moment about what he wanted to say to these pilots and crews.

That they were the best he’d seen since coming to the Circle? That they were the bravest? The most fearless? He could tell they were also one of the smallest units left in the Wing—next to the 2001st, of course. There was a sad connection to size and bravery here, in this frozen, Godforsaken place. Among the bomber groups, the 3234th had probably lost more people than anyone else.

But actually, these people had a big place in the plan Hunter was formulating in his mind. Perhaps the linchpin.

So he waited until the prayer service was through and then stepped back to let the private moments within the hall really be private.

It was over in another minute or so. Some murmured voices, some scattered sniffles, then a final amen.

Then the crews picked up one candle each and filed out of the front of the hall. Only when he was sure they were all gone and only the commanding officer was left on the stage did Hunter go in.

The lights were still low and Hunter was so quiet on his feet that the squadron CO didn’t hear him until the last moment.

“Excuse me,” Hunter half whispered. “Do you have a minute?”

The CO spun around—this was very strange—and Hunter found himself staring into two of the deepest, most beautiful blue eyes he could ever recall seeing, in this world or the last one. And that’s when it fell into place. Now he realized why the mission over Ireland had haunted him so.

Yes, this was a strange place he’d fallen into.

The sterling aviators were cowards; the effective ones were drunks.

And the brave ones were women.

Much to his surprise, five minutes later, Hunter was in the officers’ club of Base Six sharing a drink with the very lovely, very female squadron commander.

Her name was Captain Sarah James. She was beautiful. Brown hair cut short, but attractive. Big eyes. Big lips. Big smile. She was solidly built, yet still very feminine. She was sweet. A real flower. Hunter liked her.

They talked. About the mission over Ireland. About the Circle Bases. About the cowards at the 13th and the drunks at the 999th. They talked about the war. And about General Jones.

But mostly Hunter wanted to know how she and her women pilots wound up here.

“We were transit pilots,” she explained over their second glass of watery beer. “They had us humping new bombers out of here about half a year ago—back when people thought things were winding down and the war would soon be over. We wanted flying time, a lot of the men pilots wanted early muster—so that’s how it started.

“Then, when things went so badly, so quickly, the Air Corps began scrambling for pilots. We flew in those shit-kickers you saw us flying and they told us to stay. We remained intact as a whole unit, and to our surprise, they activated us. Gave us a week to drop flour sacks in the snow and sent us into action.”

Her eyes went down to the table.

“Everyone in your squadron is a woman?” Hunter asked.

“Yes,” she replied, adding with a smile, “as far as I know.”

But then her smile faded; she knew what his next question was going to be.

“How many?” was all Hunter had to ask.

“Well, I prefer to say there’s forty pilots and twenty crews left.” she replied. “But there were four hundred and eleven of us when we first arrived.”

And now in those beautiful blue eyes, Hunter could see the pain of every loss.

“You know what the problem is,” she said, bucking up with a swig of beer. “The problem is no one wants to really win this war. They just want it to end. There’s a difference.”

Hunter swigged his beer too. “I’m with you on that,” he said.

She went on: “The whole concept of victory has been lost to us. People don’t realize that to really end the suffering and misery, you’ve got to swing a wide path. Not just drop a few bombs here and there and hope it will go away.”

As she spoke, Hunter’s mind was going in two directions at once. He admired her for her stand, her character, her guts. And what she was saying made sense on many levels. But she was also very attractive, and extremely sexy in a way he was sure she didn’t even realize.

Yes, now the vibrations he felt in his body weren’t all coming from his cerebrum. These were emanating further south.

But he was drunk and the adrenaline was still rushing through his body, and he knew himself well enough to recognize that now was the time to retreat.

He finished his beer. Then he got up to go.

“Duty calls,” he said. “If the weather breaks, I’m sure I’ll have an early flight tomorrow.”

She was sad, he could tell.

“We’re on stand-down for two days,” she told him. “Got to fix the planes.”

Hunter was suddenly very glad to hear that. Suddenly he didn’t want anything happening to her, or her squadron.

“Things might be shaking up around here,” he told her, talking completely off the top of his head. “I figure the best way to get out of this thing is through the front door. You interested in hearing more about that sometime?”

She looked up at him and her eyes actually glistened. Damn, she was nice.

“I’m interested in hearing anything you have to say, Flight Officer Hunter,” she replied.

Her words hit him like a piece of three-inch flak to the chest.

“I’ll make sure of it then,” he replied.

Then he shook her hand and went out the door as gracefully as he could.

Crabb was still waiting outside. Hunter walked over to the cab and climbed in. At about the same time, two of Crabb’s dancers were coming out of the back of the 3234th’s officers’ club, leaving from a separate room in the back. It was obvious they had just “worked.”

It took Hunter a few seconds to put two and two together.

Crabb’s dancers were all females—the 3234th was made up entirely of females. Interesting…

Crabb knew what he was thinking.

“Hey, everyone likes ice cream,” he said, as the two girls climbed in and added to the crowd in the back. “But not everyone likes the same flavor.”

Hunter could only nod in agreement. He closed his eyes and saw those big blue ones again.

“Yes, I guess you’re right,” he said finally.

It was strange how it happened.

How the second-to-last piece of a big puzzle Hunter was trying to put together in his head just fell into place—and all because Colonel Crabb took a wrong turn.

But if there are no coincidences here, then why did Crabb, who’d driven these roads many times before, take a right instead of a left?

There was no way of knowing, but that’s what happened. He went right, not left, and soon they rumbling down a snow-covered roadway that got seriously narrow very quickly. It was so slim Crabb had no room to turn around. He cursed, he spat, he cursed some more.

Nearly asleep, cuddling with Crabb’s beauties in the back, Hunter hardly noticed anything at first. Only Crabb’s profane rumblings alerted him that something was amiss.

They topped a hill, and Crabb finally stopped the car.

“Not a fucking snow flake falling and I get lost?” he was swearing. “I’ve driven these roads in blizzards before and I’ve never gotten lost.”

Everyone looked out the windows. They weren’t really lost. Not technically, anyway. All the bases of the Circle were glowing, and it was just a case of picking which one was Dreamland—where the 2001st was stationed, and where Crabb and his nubile employees usually laid their heads.

Dreamland had a reddish tinge to it. That could have been it right over there. But the 999th’s base next door had an orange tinge and that looked to be all the way over the other side of the mountain. And the appropriately yellow-tinted home of the 13th Squadron looked to be even further east of that. It didn’t make sense.

“The place is laid out in a fucking Circle!” Crabb was grumbling. “How can you get lost?”

But Hunter really wasn’t listening. He was looking down the road instead. There was another base down there—perhaps Base Eight or Nine, one of the places no one ever talked about.

Hunter could see the runway from here, but obviously this was not an operational place. It was simply an airstrip and a few buildings. But flanking the runway were dozens of large, low-level structures. They were built of gray cement. Iron bars crossed the steel doors. Each one was built about 100 yards from the next, and there were rows of them. For some reason, Hunter recognized the pattern. These were magazines. Buildings where bombs were kept

He was mystified by this. There was a well-known shortage of aerial bombs at the Circle. If these magazines were full, then why was there a shortage? Had someone forgotten what might be stored out here? It was entirely possible in this very crazy place.

He told Crabb he’d buy him dinner if he proceeded further down the road. Dinner at the Dreamland OC was no enticement, but Crabb drove down onto the base anyway.

“I’ve never been down here before,” Crabb said, a little amazed at himself. “I’m not even sure what base this is.”

There was no security, no sentries or guardhouses or roadblocks. They drove right on to the runway and headed for the first row of bomb-storage houses.

Hunter got out and examined the door of one with the aid of Crabb’s flashlight. It was padlocked, but that proved no problem for Hunter. He had the lock picked and sprung in a flash.

As soon as he opened the door, part of the mystery was solved. This magazine did indeed contain bombs—lots of them. So did all the other magazines here. And yes, they’d been forgotten in the crush of paperwork and madness and apathy which had descended on the Circle Bases.

But these weren’t iron bombs or antipersonnel bombs or cratering bombs left here to be buried by the snow.

They were firebombs. Incendiaries. Weapons whose sole purpose was to start fires.

And there were thousands of them.

Major Payne was sleeping when he heard the knocking on his billet door.

He thought he was dreaming at first. In his dream, he was here in Iceland, but he was in a huge cavern underneath it and there were two submarines there. They had brought a huge, very unusual looking jet with them, and for some reason it was hidden underneath the ice.

And then he discovered he was the pilot of this plane, and that it was smaller now and had wings that moved and might have had a name like B-l or B-2.

And he was given orders to fly this plane out of the ice cave and go bomb a place in Russia. The fate of the world depended on the success of his mission.

And so he got into the airplane and started the engines and the ice began to fall, and he turned to his copilot, whose face he could not see and asked: “Why are we going to bomb the Russians? There are no more Russians…”

And the copilot just reached over and started rapping the top of his flight helmet really hard, and that’s when Payne woke up and realized someone was knocking on his door.

He stumbled out of bed, took notice of the invigorated gale outside, had a stray thought that no one would be flying again tomorrow, and then finally opened the door.

It was Hunter.

He looked drunk. He looked cold. But his eyes were on fire.

“Christ, it’s two in the morning!” Payne whined as he fumbled for his glasses.

“I want you to read something,” Hunter was telling him.

“There are no flights today,” Payne kept right on going, grabbing his bathrobe. “Go back to bed.”

But Hunter boldly stepped into the officer’s billet.

“Read this,” he was telling Payne. He was now holding a piece of soggy paper in his hand. Payne could barely see it.

“What the fuck is it?” he demanded of Hunter.

It was the letter of authorization from the Wing Group CO, the man who still sat frozen to his seat a few buildings away.

Payne gave it a cursory once-over. He’d seen it before of course.

“Yes, so?” he asked Hunter.

“So you told me the other day that all you wanted was to bring everyone home, right? Everyone in the squadron who was left alive?”

Payne just nodded. “Yes, so?”

“So this paper will make it happen,” Hunter said. “There’s only one way out of here—and it’s not in retreat. There are people here that are so brave they don’t know what day it is. They are risking their lives—and losing them—for nothing. Don’t you see? It could go on like this for years—and in the end the result will still be the same. For whatever reason, the Germans made a comeback. It was dramatic, that’s true. But we haven’t done a damn thing to stand in their way. We are rolling over like puppy dogs because historically that’s the way things have always gone.