Sky Ghost (44 page)

The end came when five B-l7/36s left the deck of the
Cape Cod
and headed for five separate targets around Occupied Europe. At precisely midnight, May 1, each plane dropped an MK-75 thermonuclear bomb on its targeted city, the same weapons Hunter had discovered in the washed-out ammo bunker in the Ruhr.

Berlin, Rome, Madrid, London, and Moscow had been utterly destroyed, any last vestiges of Germany’s High Command reduced to radioactive sizzle. Millions had been killed as well, of course, and millions more wounded or burned by radiation. The war was over simply because there was no more Reich; no one was left to tell what remained of Germany’s troops what to do. So they surrendered in droves.

Added to this were the tens of thousands who had died in the Great Ruhr Flood, and the hundreds of thousands who had died in the firebombing campaign, and the death toll for the victory went into the tens of millions.

Not exactly something Hunter would consider throwing a parade for, but such was life here in this strange but not so strange place.

He rolled out of bed and quietly padded into the other room. The suite was enormous, but frankly it reminded him of a mausoleum.

He stared out the window at the crowds already starting to gather below. They said he was the man who won the war because he was the one who brought the battle back to Germany, the one who firebombed the cities, the one who caused the great flood, the one who found the H-bombs. But Hunter did not feel like a hero.

His mind had ached so much in these past two weeks, he believed his head was about to burst.

No one really knew what he had lost in this long strange adventure. He’d lost an entire universe, full of friends, life, history. And the only friend who had come through to this place with him was now dead, an innocent victim of the unpredictable twists of transuniversal travel.

He shook his head and felt the sick feeling in his stomach again. No, he was not a hero, and anything he might gain from this day, or whatever days lay ahead, would not change his mind one bit. For what he wanted, he believed he could never get—that was, a way back to where he had come from.

He just wanted to go home.

A knock at the door disturbed these thoughts. He threw on a bathrobe and answered it.

It was a man wearing a pair of huge sunglasses and carrying an easel covered by a small curtain.

He introduced himself as the person who was writing the story of Hunter’s exploits in the war. Though the details of how Hunter actually got here to this world were still top secret, everyone across the country knew just about everything he’d done since being assigned to the Circle Wing, thanks to America’s rabid media.

Which led him to ask this writer a question: If everyone knew how many times he’d blown his nose in the past 10 months, and everything else in between, why would anyone want to publish a book detailing all these events?

The writer just shrugged and said: “Beats me, that’s just showbiz, I guess.”

He unveiled the easel to display the cover art for this book. It showed a huge air battle taking place over London. Big Ben was in evidence, surrounded by lots of smoke and fire, and two German warplanes were zooming around, all seen from the view of a third airplane’s cockpit. But if this was meant to depict one of Hunter’s many exploits, then somehow, something had been lost in the translation.

“So, how’s it look to you?” the writer asked him.

Hunter just shrugged. “Well, if it’s supposed to be me, that looks to be the inside of a Pogo’s cockpit. I didn’t fly any Pogos overseas. And we never really bombed London. And those German planes, they’re not Natters, or Me-362s, or Horton flying wings, which were the airplanes that we usually fought against. And I’m not sure London even looks quite like that.”

The writer laughed. “Well it doesn’t look like much of anything anymore,” he said.

With that, he shook Hunter’s hand and quickly went out the door.

Hunter closed it behind him, but then heard another knock.

He opened it to see his old friend, Zoltan the Magnificent.

“What am I disturbing?” the psychic asked him with a smile.

“You should know,” Hunter told him. “Absolutely nothing.”

Zoltan stepped inside but indicated he was only going to stay a moment.

“I had to tell you something I heard from a friend of mine who is still in the Psychic Evaluation Corps,” the mystic began. “Apparently there is a very secret project the government has been working on that may be related to your experience.”

Hunter ears started burning when he heard this.

“Jessuzz, where is it?” he wanted to know.

“That’s just it,” Zoltan told him. “No one really knows. The location is so secret because of the sensitive work they do there. But I hear it is a group of researchers trying to find other people who have fallen in, just like you. In fact, what they are trying to prove is that people have been doing this throughout our world history. And get this: they think these incidents are the origins of all stories about angels.”

“Angels,” Hunter exclaimed, the very word having some difficulty rolling off his tongue. “Tell me more…”

But Zoltan put his hand to his lips, indicating the universal sign that now was the time to shut up.

“I will find the location of this place, I promise you,” he told Hunter. “Until then, be well my friend. And don’t think too much. It’s bad for you.”

Then he shook Hunter’s hand and went out the door again.

Head swimming now, Hunter went to close the door once again when suddenly, there was another person knocking on it.

Hunter opened it and found himself staring into yet another familiar face.

It was, of all people, Captain Wolf, the commander of the Navy destroyer that had scooped him up from the middle of the ocean that day long ago.

“I’m sorry to bother you on this busy day,” he told Hunter, his voice reverent and low. “But I felt I had to come and see you.”

Hunter let him in.

“I’ve been following your exploits, of course,” he told Hunter. “Just like everyone else. It really makes me wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t picked you up that day.”

“You and me both,” Hunter told him. “And I don’t think I really thanked you properly. So let me do it now.”

He shook hands with the man, who finally broke into a smile.

“Well, thanks,” Wolf said. “But that’s not why I came up here.”

“Why then?” Hunter asked him.

The Navy officer reached into his pocket and came out with a small cloth bundle. He handed it to Hunter, who slowly unraveled it.

It was a tiny American flag, one with 50 stars on it. Inside was a picture of Dominique.

Hunter tried to say something, but couldn’t. He tried to take a breath, but had a problem doing that too. He tried to move, to do something, but he was frozen, staring down at the picture wrapped inside the flag.

“We took these off you that day,” Wolf explained. “I just thought you should get them back.”

Hunter finally looked up at him; his eyes were really misty now.

“Thanks,” was all he could say.

Wolf smiled again, saluted, and then went back out the door.

Two hours later, Hunter was dressed in a uniform of Air Corps blue. He was standing at the mirror, and Sarah was brushing the lint from his jacket.

A knock came at the door. Hunter opened it, and Agent Y—his friend, Yaz—walked in.

“Ready?” he asked Hunter. “All of New York City is waiting to see you.”

Hunter just shrugged. Inside his breast pocket was the photo wrapped in the flag. He tapped it twice.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said.

Yaz checked his watch. “Well, good, because it’s time to go.”

Hunter turned back to Sarah and gave her a quick kiss.

“You’ll be here when I come back?” he asked.

“You can be sure of it,” she replied sweetly.

He kissed her again and then followed Y out the door.

They rode the elevator down to the lobby which was now cordoned off by hundreds of New York City police. A huge jeepster limo sat idling outside the door. A giant crowd waited beyond. Hunter took a deep breath, tapped his pocket again, had one more fleeting wish to be back in his cell at Sing Sing, and then walked out with Yaz.

The crowd erupted at first sight of him. He waved and then ducked into the limo, Yaz right behind him. Here they would wait until the front part of the parade passed them by. This gave Hunter a rare opportunity to talk to the OSS agent, who he hadn’t really seen much of since that day on top of the flattened German mountain.

“So, how are you adapting?” Y asked him. “Figuring out things?”

“Trying to,” Hunter replied, still uneasy.

“I can understand your predicament,” Y told him. “And who knows what theories our people will come up with concerning universe transfer once you’ve talked to them.”

“It should be interesting,” Hunter murmured, wondering if Y knew of the secret research project Zoltan had just told him about.

Y continued: “But you should be aware. Though everything here might seem almost the same, I suspect you’ll be finding differences, both big and small, for many years to come.”

“That’s for sure,” Hunter said.

In fact, that was the most encompassing thing on his mind at the moment. And it prompted one question he’d wanted to ask Y for a long time.

It had to do with several incidents that had happened to him in the Ruhr. The Lysander pilots, he saw them, but they were never found again. He explained this to Y, telling him exactly what happened after the dam broke. Then he told him about the young red-haired girl who had led him to the H-bombs. This was stuff Yaz had never heard before, and his eyes went wide with each word.

“It’s true about those pilots,” he said. “We searched for them, just like we searched for you. But we never found them, and they certainly didn’t tell us you were on the mountaintop.”

“But I saw them, they were flying off in the distance during the flood,” Hunter insisted. “And they landed on the mountaintop. And then this young girl. I swear I saw her in a photograph hanging in a house I’d taken food and clothes from. Yet, it couldn’t have been her, because…”

Hunter let his voice just trail off. He didn’t want to speak the words.

Agent Y pulled his chin in thought.

“This is very interesting,” he said as the limo finally started to pull away.

“Why?” Hunter asked him.

“Well I guess I should be the one to tell you if no one else has,” Y replied. He turned to Hunter, lowered his voice and said, “You see, in this world, we see a lot of ghosts.”

The parade wound its way down Broadway. The throngs of people were screaming and waving at the sight of Hunter, a blizzard of ticker tape raining down on his car.

From a window in a building high above it all, two men were sharing a drink and looking down on the festivities with a measure of bemusement and disdain.

It was Agents X and Z.

In front of them was a very secret OSS report that surprisingly enough, had nothing to do with Hunter, nothing to do with the recent defeat of Germany. What it said, was that in the next two months, a far-flung American naval base, way out in the Pacific, would be attacked by Japan. The place was called Pearl Harbor.

Both men were trying to digest the report which they had just read. Was America ready for another war so soon after this one? Neither man could tell. But more importantly to them was what their role would be in the upcoming conflict.

“It will certainly be a rich payday for us, if the Japanese go ahead with this plan,” Z said. “But how can we be sure we’ll be on the winning side?”

X looked out the window just as Hunter’s limo was passing by.

“Well, we know what kind on an effect
he
had on the last one,” he said. “And with the second man dead, I guess that leaves us with only one thing to do, if we want our futures guaranteed.”

“And what is that?” Z asked him.

“Well, there were three men in the Atlantic that day,” he said. “Each one extremely valuable in his own way. We know where this Hunter guy is. We know what happened to the guy in Germany.”

“True enough,” Z agreed.

“Then,” X said. “I suggest we try like hell to find the third one.”

Somewhere in the South Atlantic

The ship was the strangest one in a whole fleet of strange ships.

It was huge, an old cruise liner, and it was powered by steam engines, sails, and oars. It was crewed, like all the ships in the fleet, by the descendants of Jewish people who had been released from Germany’s extermination camps years before and had been sailing the seas looking for a homeland ever since.

At the bottom of this ship, where no less man 500 men and young boys rowed for up to 12 hours a day, two officers were talking. There was an opening for a job on the upper decks. The women up there needed someone who would help them watch over the hundreds of young children who lived on the great ship. The person had to be kind, trustworthy, a hard worker, and willing to sacrifice long hours in service to the women and the kids.

“Do you have such a person down here?” one officer asked the Oarmaster, the man in charge of the rowers.

The Oarmaster thought a moment and then replied yes, he did.

He recommended Rower #1446798.

“Ah, the man we picked up at sea that day?” the officer said.

“Yes,” the Oarmaster replied. “He’s the best man we’ve ever had.”

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