Sky Ghost (40 page)

There was a crackle of static.

“Got it,” came the pilot’s reply, but Hunter thought a moment. Does he really? He searched the next bomber stream, way out, figuring at any moment he would see one plane start to drop down and…

“Zebra Delta? What is your position right now?” he asked the pilot.

“We are approximately one half mile away from target…”

One half mile?

“Jessuzz, what is your altitude?”

“Altitude at 100 feet, coming in from the west…”

Hunter shook his head and then looked west, and sure enough, here was a huge B-24/52 coming in, full engines, smoke billowing, rocking back and forth in the thick air. Right at that instant, Hunter knew the plane was too big, too fast, too low to attempt this mission.

“Jessuzz, you’re way too low!” Hunter screamed into the Boomer, but it was way too late. The huge airplane was bearing down on the target at more than 500 knots.

“Roger,” the pilot continued radioing mindlessly. “Line up our nose on the white hanger and let bomb string walk right up the waterfall…”

Hunter’s jaw dropped.
What did the pilot just say?

“No, abort! Abort!” he started screaming again, but it was too late.

The bomber went right over the pillbox. He saw the bomb bay doors open and a string of bombs tumble out. They missed the white hangar by a mile, impacting—all 4800 pounds of them—up the side of the waterfall.

The explosion was tremendous—the waterfall was instantly blasted apart. Tons of rock and dirt were thrown high into the air. Fire and smoke filled the sky. It seemed like the whole mountain came apart, which is exactly what happened. And over the top of the dirt and rock came a tidal wave of water as high as the waterfall had been. It hit the previous mound of rubble first—and kept on coming. It hit half a dozen rolling hills next—and kept on coming. It hit the outside of the base, then the fences and the support buildings and tower—and kept on coming. It swamped the white hanger and tore it right off its foundations.

Then, maybe two seconds after the explosion, the water hit the pillbox where Hunter stood simply transfixed.

And then, for the third time in six days, he found himself tumbling again, out of control, being swept along by the deep, dark water.

W
HEN HUNTER WOKE UP
this time he was absolutely, positively convinced he was in Heaven.

The sun was shining. The birds were singing. He was laying in a pool of warm water, some of it trickling over his face. It felt so good against his skin. And there was a beautiful girl standing over him. She looked just like an angel was supposed to look. Golden-red hair, soft skin, almost luminescent. The sun was hitting her in such a way that she even seemed to be wearing a halo.

This is cool,
Hunter thought hazily, knowing somewhere deep in his mind that beating the flood three times would have been just too much to ask. So he was dead, for real this time.

At least now he could get some sleep.

But then someone was talking to him, trying to get him to move, but he really didn’t want to move. The water was warm and comfortable and…

“Please!” he heard a voice plead, and this got him to open his eyes again. “We don’t have much time.”

It was the girl standing over him.

Hunter lifted himself up and for the first time got a good look around.

He was in a small stream, one of many that were coursing through a wide, flat, now treeless valley.

But what kind of a place was this? He looked around and saw that the muddy path of destruction stretched for miles. And odd as hell, on the stream banks all around him were the 12 crumpled F-16s. Nearly all of them were sticking nose down into the mud, though a few were flipped belly-up, or resting against downed trees, their noses pointing skyward, as if they were ready to take right off.

Hunter’s eyes almost watered on seeing the airplanes. They were all total wrecks, twisted and battered and in pieces from the water’s incredible force. He and they had tumbled down the same flood together.

Finally he had to look away.

But then he saw scores of other wrecked military equipment littering the soggy valley as well. Tanks, armored cars, helicopters, artillery pieces. They were all twisted and torn and battered and ripped up worse than the F-16s. They all bore the Iron Cross of the German Army.

He stared up at the sun and the young girl again.

“Please,” she was saying again. “We don’t have much time.”

She was cute. Delicate features, petite body wrapped in only a soaked nightgown. But Hunter had to blink twice. Damn, he couldn’t believe he was thinking this, but this girl looked very familiar to him too.

“Please,” she was saying to him, “I will run out of time and then it will be too late.”

Finally Hunter got the message.

He rolled over and finally got to his feet. He was very wobbly, and his hands were scraped and cut But he didn’t think he was badly injured and a quick self-diagnosis confirmed this. And somehow he’d had the presence of mind to strap the rifle onto his back before the waters came, because it was still tied around his neck. He still had his steelpot helmet on too. But everything else was gone.

He shook his head and got his bearings and caught his breath and then looked at the girl who looked familiar to him and asked:

“What are you doing out here?”

But she ignored him. She turned instead and began walking out of the stream.

Hunter followed her and briefly collapsed on the bank. It was now just sinking in—the girl had saved his life. Somehow she had made her way through the devastation to reach him.

“What is your name?” he asked her.

But again she didn’t answer him.

“We don’t have much time,” she said instead. “We have to hurry.”

Hunter got back to his feet, gave his injured ankles a few steps and, though a little woozy, knew he was OK.

Where the hell am I?
he asked himself, looking around at the field littered with wrecked equipment again. It was almost as if some huge battle had been fought here. But how? And when? Hunter had no idea.

He pulled the rifle from his back. He checked the chamber—two dry charges were inside.

“Come with me,”
the
girl was telling him, standing about 20 feet away from him now. “Hurry. I don’t have much time.”

“OK, OK,” Hunter said, trying to stretch some of his aches and pains away. “I’ll go with you.”

With that, the girl started running.

What followed now was a foot race. The girl was running as fast as her bare feet could carry her. At times she looked like she was gliding above the devastated ground, that’s how fast she ran. Hunter tried his best to keep up with her. But no matter how fast he moved, the girl always managed to stay about 50 feet or so ahead of him.

They ran over hills, into valleys, across washed-out riverbeds, and through fields of wheat and corn that had been shorn away.

Finally they topped one hill and Hunter came upon an astonishing sight. Before him, stretched throughout a wide valley, were at least two dozen enormous wrecked airplanes. They were as big as the seajet he’d shot down over Iceland, bigger even. He quickly studied one of them. Inside he could see dead crewmen, still strapped to their seats. Equipment, tools, boots, helmets, and other supplies filled the wrecked cargo holds.

These monsters were obviously troop carriers. And he had no doubt they had been intended to be used in the rumored invasion of the U.S. that Pegg had spoken about. But, just like the devastation he’d seen back in the other valley, no battle had wrecked these airplanes. The flood waters had done it instead.

The girl was standing at the top of the next hill by now, beckoning Hunter furiously. He left behind the graveyard of monster airplanes and scrambled up the hill. But when he reached the top, the girl was not there. And now he was looking down into another valley. This one was full of bodies. Dead soldiers. Thousands of them.

He slid down the hill and made his way over to one clump of corpses. He looked into the eyes of three dead men and realized they were German paratroopers. They were in combat uniform, parachutes still attached to the backsides. They were wearing full equipment belts and ammo loads. There must have been at least 10,000 of them scattered throughout the valley, most floating in the many pools of water the flood had left behind.

He reached inside one man’s pocket and came out with a map. He opened it and saw it was not for anywhere in Germany or Europe, but for the state of Maryland. That was all he needed for proof. These soldiers were obviously connected to those wrecked airplanes, possibly even the advance landing parties for the U.S. invasion. Yet the flood had killed them all too.

Hunter’s stomach was nearly turned inside out by this time. Some kind of animals had already been feeding on the bodies and he imagined what a nightmare this place would be once all the water was finally gone and the sun got around to baking all these corpses. He began running again.

The girl was at the top of the next hill by now and yelling to him.

“Hurry! I don’t have much time left…”

It took Hunter 10 minutes to climb out of the field of death.

Finally, he reached the top of the last hill and saw before him a long concrete bunker. Two wrecked vehicles were smashed against its front door. A huge antenna lay crumpled across its roof. Two rings of high concertina wire had once surrounded the structure, indicating that it, just like the hangar containing the F-16s, was probably a very secret place.

But the fences had been washed away. And the front door was wide open. And the girl was standing next to it, beckoning him inside.

Hunter stumbled down the hill, fell once, got up, fell again, and got up again.

He climbed over the two rolls of barbed wire and the wrecked fence and was soon standing at the front door. The girl was inside. Her voice was echoing now.

“Please, look in here, I have to go…” she was insisting.

Hunter stumbled inside. The first thing he saw was a BMW FlyBike, a kind of combination motorcycle and small airplane. He’d seen a few of them around the Circle bases, though they weren’t the transportation of choice in subzero temperatures. They had big motors, loud mufflers, lots of chrome, and a twin set of turbine jets which could move the bike through the air at about 40 knots, pretty fast considering it was an open ride.

Beyond the bike were six boxes. They were made of plastic and wood and each one was broken open at the seal. Hunter examined the first one. Beneath loads of packing paper and straw matting, he found another smaller box inside. It was black and made of lead. It was also very heavy. He managed to lift it out and get it open.

Inside was a bomb.

It was about 30 inches long, maybe seven inches around, and had small wings in the back and a tiny fusing propeller on the front.

But this was not a typical aerial bomb, as even Hunter’s groggy, spinning head could tell him. He lifted the thing out of its case and cradled it on his lap. There was lots of yellow stenciled lettering on its side. Some of it identified the bomb as an Mk-175, low-detonation, high-yield strategic weapon. Low-detonation? High-yield? Hunter almost let the thing roll off his lap. He was that startled.

These words, and words like them, he had not heard here in this strange world. Why? Because nuclear power—and atom bombs—didn’t exist here.

At least, not until now.

He turned the bomb over, trying to divine more information from all the letters and numbers stenciled on to it. But the only phrase he could make out clearly was both simple and ominous. Up near the nose, there was a yellow box with these words in German printed within it:
READY FOR USE.

He opened the rest of the big boxes and found five more bombs, all of them exactly the same. He just couldn’t believe it. In this building was probably more destructive capability than all the bombs both sides had dropped on each other for the entire 59 years of this version of World War II!

And obviously, just like the F-16s and the other so-called German wonder weapons, these bombs had been introduced to this world by the same person who’d revived the Reich shortly after arriving here.

“How did you know to bring me here?” Hunter called out for the girl. The last he’d seen of her, she’d walked deeper into the bunker.

But he got no reply. So he started walking toward the end of the structure himself. It was pitch-dark and empty except the bomb crates themselves. Perhaps they’d been carried here in hurried anticipation of the flood.

He walked all the way to the end—and found no sign of the girl.

He called out to her, but got no reply.

He went back to the front of the building. She was not there either. He looked in all directions, but could not see her anywhere against the absolutely flat terrain. He went back into the bunker, walked its length again, and found nothing.

She was really gone this time.

Vanished into thin air.

Just like that.

I
T TOOK HUNTER MORE
than two hours to fasten the six bombs on to the aerial motorcycle.

Ever since he’d been here in this other place, he’d been able to tap his ability to fly just about any kind of aircraft he’d been faced with.

From the Pogo to the Mustang Jet to test-flying the Bomber Gunship, Hunter had been able to climb in, take a look at the instruments, and go.

But this strange machine, this was different. This flying bike had no instruments, save a fuel gauge and a speedometer. It really was like a kid’s bicycle or even an earthbound Harley; it came with no instructions, no parameters. You learned at your own pace.

Trouble was, Hunter had to learn this lesson real quick.

Plus, he’d be doing it with a terribly overloaded takeoff weight, assuming, of course, that he could get it off the ground at all.

These bombs, he realized, were compact hydrogen weapons. Each weighed at least 80 pounds—not bad for a potential destructive power of many thousands of megatons. But for Hunter’s purposes they were way too heavy, especially since he had to carry all six of them. There was no alternative to this. He couldn’t leave any of them behind, not as dangerous as they were. He
had
to bring all of them with him, somehow, some way. And that way was on this flying motorbike.