War of the Sun (25 page)

To the rhythmic beating of a hundred drums, every pilot stepped forward, bowed, and took a
hachimaki.
Each one also took a small black-and-white photograph of Aja to be worn next to his heart. In turn, each left a tiny black lacquered box containing his nail clippings and a lock of his hair. When this ritual was completed, the drums ceased.

“You have been given a beautiful and wondrous opportunity to die,” she began again. “You shall fall like the sensuous blossoms from a radiant cherry tree. It is the way of the warrior.”

With that, each of the pilots solemnly tied his
hachimaki
around his forehead and then stood at attention.

“May your death,” she commanded, “be as sudden and clean as the shattering of crystal. You are all heroes.”

Rigid in attention, these pilots, to a man, could feel tears well up. While many bravely fought it, soon almost all of the three thousand faces were stained by tears.

The woman clapped her hands twice and all six doors of the giant freight elevators opened, one precisely after another. The first elevator revealed a sumptuous feast, cooked to perfection. There were roast pigs, venison, pheasant, quail, duck, caviar, fruits, vegetables, and every imaginable dessert. The second elevator contained gallons upon gallons of liquor: whiskey, wine,
sake,
and beer. The third contained nearly a quarter ton of drugs; China White heroin, Lebanese hash oil, amphetamines, cocaine.

But it was the last three elevators that made the pilots’ mouths water. Over a thousand naked female slaves, ranging from teenagers on up, stood tranquilized into submission, all ready to be ravaged by the hungry “gods” who stared wild-eyed at them.

For a moment it seemed to her that time had stood still. She could no longer hear the pilots’ screams of adulation. She could only see the thousand slave girls, shivering in anticipation of their 3-to-1 fate. By tradition they were all Korean.

Wasn’t she, not so long ago, just like one of them?
she thought.
Innocent? Sheltered? Protected?

Impossible, she quickly decided, pushing the thought out of her mind. That must have been just a dream. She willed herself to have absolutely no emotion toward the slave girls. She knew who she was. She was Aja—Supreme Leader of the Asian Mercenary Cult.

It was foolish to have thought anything else.

Once again she clapped her hands twice. Once again the huge chamber fell silent.

“Let the seven days of the ‘Celebration of Death’ begin,” Aja ordered, “and then, my heroes, you will fly away like sparrows, and await me in the Greater Place.”

With that, she turned and left the balcony to the screams of lust and joy below.

Little did she know that sixty-five thousand feet above her, a bird of prey was watching.

Even from this height, the island of Okinawa looked like a smudge of soot in the midst of an emerald-green sea.

Hunter buttoned the top of his flight suit; it might have been his imagination, but flying at this height, he found the Harrier’s cockpit rather chilly. He was already more than 15,000 feet above the recommended ceiling for the jumpjet, but he was sure the airplane could take it.

He reached a coordinate he’d previously determined was the exact center of the long, thin crooked finger of an island. At that point, he put the jumpjet into a hover and threw all his camera pods’ lenses to open.

Now, putting the Harrier into a slow 360-degree spin, Hunter studied the main screen on his cockpit panel.

It was showing an enhanced infrared image of the smog-clogged island. Just like his first quick sweep over the place, this
IF
image showed the enormous heatwave emanating from the underground aircraft factory, and specifically rising out of the massive opening to the hidden airstrip located halfway up the mountain. Also easy to spot were the dozen or so vent shafts, the pipes which brought all the dirty air to the surface of the island.

But now Hunter was looking for what he was certain would be far more subtle sources of heat, those indicating any smaller entrances to the otherworldly underground factory. He found a few, most about the size of a typical road tunnel, wide and high enough to accommodate a truck, but that was it.

He was heartened by what he
didn’t
find. Except for the huge maw that served as the entrance to the hidden airstrip, no other opening was large enough to accommodate aircraft.

He turned his attention back to the airstrip opening. It was located about halfway up the northeastern side of the 1500-foot Shuri Mountain. Just above it was an artificial cliff overhang that jutted some fifty-five feet out from the side of the mountain and served to anchor the Cult’s elaborate camouflage net. Above that was another series of smaller cliffs leading all the way to the summit where the remains of Shuri Castle had long ago crumbled.

Once again, Hunter was encouraged by what he didn’t find. There were no indications of heat at the top of the mountain itself, meaning the Cult had little or no presence on the peak. Even better, there were few defensive weapons arrayed on the mountain itself, the Cult choosing—and rightly—to concentrate its ribbons of massive gun emplacements on the lowest line (or “first line”) of what would be considered the high ground. Indeed, the highest indications he could see of any weapons activity was at about the same elevation as the airstrip opening, and most of these were on the opposite side of the mountain.

He was now batting two-for-two.

His third objective, however, would most likely prove to be the toughest pitch. He switched off his main IF detector and then snapped on a jerry-rigged detection device of his own concoction. He’d nicknamed it the Juice Machine. What it did was locate surges in electricity, based not on heat sourcing, but on tiny electromagnetic measurements.

With this device he was concentrating on the miles of Cult gun emplacements ringing the smoggy island. Every gun down there had one thing in common: some kind of power supply. By activating the Juice Machine, Hunter was provided with an enhanced image of the powerline network stringing the guns together. The readout picture of the thousands of separate yet interwoven power lines looked like nothing less than a massive coil of spaghetti strands.

This information would take more processing, but on first glance Hunter was encouraged by what he saw. By studying the routes of the power line trunks, he would be able to determine not just the weapon type, but also its range, and most important, the limits of its fields of fire.

He stored as many as fifty separate images of the Juicer’s readout into his main flight computer, and then finally took the Harrier out of its nosebleed-high altitude hover.

So far, so good, he thought, putting the jumpjet into a steep power dive.

Now for part two.

Sergeant Andrei Kartoonov was in the middle of a late tea break when he heard the noise.

He was taking a rest beneath the decaying limbs of a Pacific cypress tree, his camouflage uniform, his carefully painted face, and the dark night rendering him all but invisible to anyone more than a foot away. Starting out at midnight, he’d been on the trail toward the Great Wall for two hours now, and like his superior, Lieutenant Karbochev, who also frequently came this way, he had stopped slightly above the thick smog line to take a blow and prepare to descend into the polluted atmosphere of the valley below.

The noise had started as a high-pitched whine, and seemed so far off in the distance, he’d just assumed it was coming from the aircraft factory deep in the bowels of the mountain.

But the noise gradually got louder, and it was soon evident that it was drawing nearer to him. Carefully repackaging his mess kit, he slipped the safety off his AK-47 and waited. His field of view included a large, irregularly-shaped plateau of sorts which the trail skirted off to the right as well as a grove of red banana trees off to his left. He activated his rifle’s
IF
scope and scanned the tree grove. He immediately got heat readings on six individuals who were hiding in the high brush at the base of the trees.

At that moment, the high-pitched whine grew into a loud, throaty roar. He searched the dark sky and was startled to see a speck of smoke and flame hurtling almost directly at him.

What was this? A comet? A meteorite?

It took Kartoonov a few moments to realize the object was actually a jumpjet, coming in for a high-speed vertical landing.

He crouched down further into his hiding spot and watched the
VTOL
airplane drop like a rock; it was going so fast, he was convinced it was going to crash. Only when the strange airplane got to a hundred feet above ground did its pilot gun his engines, in effect slamming on the brakes. Suddenly its speed was decreasing faster than its altitude, and by the time it was twenty-five feet above the ground, it was almost into a hover. It finally touched down without the slightest bounce, and with a great deal less noise than if it had made a typical jumpjet vertical descent.

He wasn’t surprised to see the six individuals who’d been hiding in the tall grass come out to meet the airplane. Obviously he was watching a predetermined rendezvous.

But what was its purpose? Were these people allied with, or fighting against the Cult? His superior, Lieutenant Karbochev, had filed a report several days before, indicating he’d seen a jumpjet during his last reconnoiter of the Great Wall, and had witnessed its pilot being “captured” by some locals.

Obviously, Kartoonov was now watching a replay of that incident. Except this time, it appeared as if the pilot and the people on the ground were working together.

Using his rifle scope on simple magnification, Kartoonov was able to zoom in on the jumpjet’s canopy just as it popped open. The pilot quickly unstrapped himself, crawled out of the cockpit, and jumped to the ground, where he was met by handshakes from the six men, who were attired in extremely well-tailored black camouflage uniforms.

The group of seven men then began a very intense discussion. The men in black were gesturing wildly, their orgy of finger-pointing seemingly indicating things far off in the highlands. The pilot, on the other hand, was pointing to various gadgets under his airplane’s wing, and then every once in a while, to something far out at sea. Despite all the animation, though, Kartoonov didn’t have the faintest idea what the mysterious figures were talking about.

So, like any good intelligence agent, he took out a pencil and some paper and began to take notes. He indicated the time, weather, and amount of covering at his location. He described as best he could each of the seven individuals, who were now sitting on the ground and exchanging what looked like photographs. He even made a rough drawing of the jumpjet.

About ten minutes into the discussion, one of the men in the black uniforms retrieved a knapsack from the high grass nearby. After working over this sack for a minute or so, he placed it at the far end of the landing area and then rejoined the main group. A few seconds later the knapsack exploded in a great ball of flame. Yet there was no noise. Kartoonov was at first startled and then completely bewildered.

What was this?
he wondered.
How can there be such an explosion with no noise?

He’d seen enough. He quietly but hastily packed his gear and slipped deeper into the dense overgrowth. There was now a change in plans. He would not be going down to the Great Wall this trip. Instead, he would begin the long journey back to his faraway base immediately.

He had to tell his officers what he’d just seen.

Okinawa, one hour before dawn

N
OT MANY OF THE
20,000 Cult soldiers manning the Great Wall saw the RPV fly over. And those who did weren’t sure exactly what it was.

Barely six feet long, with a thin wing and a whining propeller, the RPV looked and sounded like nothing more than an elaborate model airplane, a child’s hobby toy.

But the RPV was not a toy. For many of the Cult soldiers who saw it, it was nothing less than the remotely-controlled eyes of their own impending deaths, staring down at them.

The RPV (for Remote-Control Vehicle) was a robot version of an old-fashioned spotter plane, and the crew of the
New Jersey
had been using it for years. Launched from one of the battleship’s scout boats and remotely controlled by its crew, the RPV contained video cameras that could send back live pictures of enemy positions. The gunners on the huge battleship would view the broadcast and divine from it such critical things as target size, location, precise range, even weather factors—everything needed for the most accurate and therefore most deadly shot.

The
New Jersey
had nine big guns in all, arranged in three turrets of three each. The guns were massive—16-inch cannons capable of firing an explosive-packed projectile the weight of an old Volkswagen Beetle a distance of twenty-four miles. Whatever this warhead hit was usually vaporized, leaving behind a crater sometimes several hundred feet across. If all nine of the battlewagon’s guns fired at once—which could be done, even though the recoil was almost enough to actually move the dreadnought sideways—the post-barrage landscape of the target area would look like it had been hit by a small nuclear bomb.

Combining the eyes of the RPV with the massive firepower of the 16-inch guns created a weapons system that could near-perfectly deliver, and in a rather cold and calculating way, a frightening amount of death and destruction.

Yet, it was all in a day’s work for the crew of the
New Jersey.

The battleship was cruising due north, eighteen miles east of Okinawa. It had been on this station all night, launching and retrieving the RPV three times in an effort to gather as much battlefield intelligence as possible. What the RPV’s cameras showed the gun crews was that the ribbons of weapons ringing the island were as frighteningly interconnected as Hunter’s high-altitude recon had indicated.

But the video also told them something else: that though the guns were manned and ready, there was no special activity going on—no ammo cars rushing about, no double-manning of the myriad of gun positions.