Sky Ghost (39 page)

He did a quick count, just of the bombers he could see, and came up with 554. God knows how many were behind them.

He cranked up the Boomer, snapped on the short-wave radio and started twirling the dials. Above him now, the sky held more contrails than stars.

It would take him more than half an hour of trying, but then finally, he actually got someone to answer his call.

It was a bomber pilot attached to what once was the old, sodden 999th, now flying off the
Cape Cod.
Hunter read out a list of code words he remembered from his time riding shotgun for the bombers, and finally the pilot believed Hunter was who he said he was. A fellow American who was on the ground looking up.

The pilot said he had about a six-minute window to talk so Hunter had to be quick. The pilot assumed Hunter wanted to arrange for a rescue pickup.

“No,” Hunter replied. “I have a target down here that has to be hit.”

“How big is the target?” the pilot asked. “You know we’re restricted to one-square-mile hits. Anything under that can’t be done by one package.”

“I don’t want a package,” Hunter told him. “I want one bomber with six bombs. No firebombs either. Someone will have to round up some iron bombs.”

“This all sounds highly unusual,” the pilot replied.

“It’s a highly unusual target,” Hunter called back, running out of time. He quickly gave the pilot the coordinates and then asked him to repeat them.

“Hang on,” the pilot replied instead.

Hang on?
Hunter wondered.

There were 20 long seconds of static, then finally another voice came on.

“This is Captain Dan Raycroft,” said the new voice. “I’m the air intelligence officer for this group. Please repeat your code signs.”

Hunter did.

“This is unbelievable,” Raycroft exclaimed.

“What is?” Hunter wanted to know.

“If you are who you say you are, then you are the most famous person in the world right now.”

“What? Repeat?” Hunter couldn’t really hear too clearly. But he could tell the guy at the other end was flipping out.

“You are everywhere, man,” Raycroft told him. “You’re in every newspaper. On TV. On Radio.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hunter said. “But…”

“You’re the guy who blew the dam, right?”

“Yes, but…”

“And you gave an interview to the press recently, right?”

Hunter had to think a moment. Did this guy mean the camera crew he’d met on the flight deck of the
Cape Cod
?

“Yes, I did,” he replied. “But listen…”

“Well pal, that’s been playing everywhere,” the intell officer interrupted him again. “As your last words.”

“What?”

“Yeah, man,” Raycroft replied. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

Hunter was stunned. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Turn your TV receive button to quick-flash,” the intell man told him. “Hurry…”

Hunter did as told and soon the little screen on the Boomer was showing bits and pieces of news footage—obviously some kind of an animated briefing reel the intell officer was carrying with him. The first image was Hunter’s picture. Then the same old clip of him climbing into the Mustang-5 jet in the snow and taxiing away. Then a clip of damage to Ruhr after the dam break. It was even more catastrophic than he’d thought. Then came his brief comments on the deck of the carrier to the camera crew. Then a huge memorial service in Washington, D.C. And then a casket burning in the middle of Berlin square!

Hunter could barely speak.

“The country is in 30 days of mourning for you, man,” Raycroft told him. “You’re as dead as dead can be. In fact, the Germans are calling you the
Himmelgeist.”

Hunter Just couldn’t believe it. There was only one thing better than a real live hero to perk up a country’s morale—and that was a dead one. And now, he was it.

“Well, you’ve got to let people know I’m still here,” Hunter told the man in the plane high above him. “That I’m still alive.”

But then the transmission began to fade.

“I’m losing you,” he heard Raycroft’s voice say, weakening with each word.

“Jessuzz, wait!” Hunter yelled into his microphone. “Did you get my message. About the air strike?”

“Air strike? What air strike?”

Hunter nearly dropped the phone.

“I told your pilot,” he yelled back. “I need a bomber to drop six bombs, low and slow on a very important target down here. I gave your pilot the coordinates. Is he going to pass them on?”

“I’ll pass them on,” Raycroft said, his words fading badly.

“And are you going to get someone out here to rescue me?”

But that’s when the connection finally died away. Hunter tried and tried and tried, but he could not raise Raycroft again. The line was dead. He looked up at the million or so contrails passing right over his head. Which plane exactly had he been talking to?

There was no way he would ever know.

He started beating on all the switches and buttons on the Boomer—looking for a replay button. But this particular machine didn’t have that function. So the clip showing his memorial services in both Washington and Berlin was lost forever.

Finally, he just sat back and began sucking in the night air. How weird was this? Every time he thought things couldn’t get any stranger here, they did.

He waited a couple of hours, then began trying again to raise one of the hundreds of bombers that were going over his head, this time heading northwest, going home.

But he couldn’t get through to any of them.

By morning he knew he had to prepare for the air strike, even though he wasn’t too optimistic that his message and the important coordinates all got through in one piece.

He climbed back down the mountain, regained the base, and went to the white hanger. He closed the windows and any doors he could find. He did this to the six other buildings as well. Closed windows and doors spread bomb blasts around better than open ones, and Hunter wanted as much destruction at this base as possible.

His work done, he went back to the white hanger one more time and gave the 12 F-16s one long last look.

He felt like a man throwing his family off a bridge.

Finally he just turned and walked away.

Another debate he’d had with himself was where exactly he should stay for the air strike.

Good sense said as far away as possible, but Hunter knew that couldn’t be the case. Air strikes were always chancy things, even if the pilot knew what he was doing. Hitting a ground target from any airplane was just not an easy thing to do.

There was a chance then that all of the F-16s would not be destroyed in the first attack; a follow-up might be needed. If this was the case, then Hunter would have to do a quick bomb damage assessment and then call in a follow-up strike if necessary, meaning he would have to contact the attacking bomber before it left the area.

So he had to find a place not too close to the target, but not so far away as it would take him a long time to do the poststrike evaluation.

As it turned out, there was just the perfect place about 2000 feet away from the hangar.

It was a pillbox, an old one, possibly dating back to World War I. It was built into the side of a hill nearby. Maybe at one time it guarded the approach road to the secret base. It was made of cobblestone and mortar and wood, and it looked damn sturdy.

It faced the white hangar, so Hunter would have a good view of the bomber’s approach. If he was able to make contact with the pilot beforehand, he could walk him right in. Plus, if one or two bombs fell short, the thick walls would protect him from harm.

So this is where he would stay and wait for the bomber’s approach.

He had salvaged the last of the porridge and the orange drink from the mess hall and brought this as his meal to the bunker. He also had his flight suit dried and repaired by this time, so he climbed out of the denims for the first time in a while and into the more comfortable speed jeans.

His gun was holding up well too. The ammo was still dry, and a quick cleaning brought the barrel and muzzle up to snuff.

He used the denims as a mattress and pillow and sat down for the first time in a very long time. He ate the hardened porridge and sipped the orange drink. He had the Boomer nearby, turned on with the batteries switched to low.

He positioned himself so he could look out one opening of the pillbox and see the secret air base, look out another and have a clear view of the northwestern sky, the direction from which the air strike bomber would come. Out the third opening he could see the tall, narrow waterfall, its water falling hundreds of feet, still kicking up a perpetual cloud of vapor and spray several miles away. It looked rather peaceful at the moment.

He finished the porridge and drained the orange water. He set the Boomer’s DHF radio to scan and leaned back. The sun was coming through the western opening now and hitting Hunter right in the face. It felt warm, drying. Drowsy.

He tried to fight it, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t stopped in what—seven days? Heroes had to sleep too.

Even dead ones.

Still, Hunter never felt his chin hit his chest, or his eyes begin to close.

He was asleep before the empty cup of porridge hit the floor.

Hunter dreamed many things that long afternoon.

Things that his mind would only allow him to deal with in a sleeping state, things too troubling to come to the surface, even now. One was the fact that he had met several people since arriving in this world that reminded him of people he’d known back in his old one.

Now, in his dream, he met them again briefly. Captain Crunch. Colonel Crabb. Even Wolf, the commander of the destroyer that had picked him up out in the Atlantic. Was it possible that they were here, as different people, but at the same time like the person he knew? He didn’t know, so he began asking each one. But after a while, this became too complicated for his psyche, even for his dream state. So his subconscious urged him to move on.

He dreamed next about swimming in very cold water, even though his hair and hands were on fire. Then he saw the dead horses near the huge red plastic German target again. They were encased in ice, legs sticking up, but now they were breaking through the frost and coming back to life. Then he was back in the Pogo, and feeling that exhilaration of flight running through him for the very first time in this lifetime. Then he was suddenly back in his old F-16, flying the same heart-stopping maneuvers, yet this time, he was over his old base at Cape Cod, back in his ZAP days. Damn, it had been Otis Air Force Base! he just realized. The same place that he’d been brought and questioned soon after appearing in this world.

But the strangest dream of all came at the end. He dreamed a swarm of bees had flown into his left ear and were coming out the right. Their buzzing was far off—but getting louder.

Closer.

Hunter shook himself awake a second later and oddly the first thing he did was grab the rifle and sweep the room.

He was alone, but was still frozen in horror. The sun was gone, it was night. The buzzing, far off, was the American Air Corps coming back to firebomb Germany.

Hunter couldn’t believe it—he’d fallen asleep!

He grabbed the Boomer and turned it on full scan. What he heard was a wave of voices getting stronger, clearer as the hundreds of contrails approached again from the northwest.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

Hunter screwed back to the frequency on which he’d spoken with the bomber the night before. But it was empty. There were people talking on just about every other channel but the one he was concerned about—the one that he should have been monitoring all afternoon instead of falling asleep. It was clear.

But to Hunter’s way of thinking, that was a good sign. The omission of voices on that channel might mean his message had gotten through and the air strike was on its way.

He carried the Boomer over to the window and studied the huge air armada scorching
the
night sky once again with long white tails above his head.

He could see red streaks off to the west—flak rising not quite high enough to affect the swarm. Then he saw blue and green streaks falling through the bomber streams—these were the fighters, their guns full of ammo, going in to attack the flak sites. A series of explosions just over the horizon told him some hits were made. The flak stopped rising after that.

The first line of bombers was nearly right over him now. He checked the Boomer again and found the specified frequency was still silent. He briefly visited the window looking out on the secret base. Everything was still, and the slight wind blowing through the place, gave off an eerie howl.

And beyond, the majestic waterfall was still throwing clouds of mist up into the night sky.

That’s when the Boomer finally crackled with life.

He was back at the window looking out on the bomber stream. He zeroed in on the Boomer’s frequency, then slapped the scramble arm down.

“This is Zebra Delta…are you here?”

“I’m here,” Hunter replied hastily. “Are you my air strike?”

“Yes we are,” the voice came back. It sounded confident, very self-assured.

“You got my coordinates? You got the dope on the target?”

“Yes, we do…”

Hunter was surprised. It seems like his request had been filled to order. But what were they carrying?

“May I ask what your bomb load is, please?”

“We are carrying six eight-hundred-pound bombs, high explosive,” was the reply. “Is that what you asked for?”

Hunter was amazed.

“Yes, it is,” he said, looking up at the second wave of bombers and wondering which one he was talking to.

“Let’s talk this through, OK?” Hunter asked. “You got the map coordinates. Let me give you some landmarks. You come in from the dead west, you’ll see a rise out of a valley. Then the target—it’s a two-runway base with a bunch of support buildings and one big white hangar. Beyond that, there’s the biggest waterfall you’ve ever seen, and after that the flood. OK?”

“OK…”

“Now, line your nose up with that waterfall and put your bombs into the white hanger, then we’re money, get it?”