War of the Sun (3 page)

Jones held up his hand and said, “There’s another way.”

All eyes were on him.

“We know that Hashi Pushi doesn’t allow his officers any initiative or real authority,” he went on. “He
is,
in effect, their entire command and control. His boys can’t make a move without his okay, but they must think he is as unstable as we do.

“Now, if we were able to disrupt that situation, maybe his armies would be thrown into confusion. Maybe his officers would lose some of their willingness to jump on their swords at his every whim. Or launch a nuke.”

Another silence enveloped the room.

“We also know that he never leaves his palace, never leaves Tokyo,” Jones continued. “He’s obviously well guarded, and our intelligence tells us the Japanese Home Islands themselves are heavily defended, with better equipment and men than they have running around half the world raping and pillaging.

“But Hashi Pushi is so well insulated from what is happening, it’s like he has a big balloon around him. He’s always drugged up, he’s into everything from screwing little girls to ordering mass suicides. I’m sure he considers himself invulnerable.”

Jones took another deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Now, if we were able to prick that balloon …” he said, his voice trailing off.

The comment was met with somewhat confused stares.

Toomey tried to say something, “Are you suggesting General, that we …”

Jones nodded. “I’m suggesting that we go after Hashi Pushi right where he lives.”

Jones straightened in his chair slightly, and cleared his throat.

“I’m suggesting that we bring the battle right to him,” he went on. “I’m suggesting we launch a surgical air strike on Japan itself.”

Now a shocked murmur went around the room.

“But General, you’re talking about committing our forces thousands of miles away,” Jesse Tyler said in a thick Texas drawl. “I mean, we don’t have the transport. We don’t have the supply or the backup. And even if we did, we can’t afford to dilute our strength here, on this continent.”

Jones held up his hand and gently interrupted Tyler. “We have enough transport for a small force,” he said. “And we’ve rounded up a small but capable unit of aircraft.
And,
we’ve organized a crew of volunteers to go on the mission.”

The general stopped speaking for a moment, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling.

“But, as you may have noticed,” he said soberly, “this operation is shaping up a little, well … differently.”

Everyone around the table
had
noticed. In the past, whenever danger aroused to threaten America, this group of advisers was called together to plan the response. Now, for the first time, the plans were already done. But why? Only Jones knew.

“My thinking is that we run a kind of Jimmy Doolittle raid,” he began again, slowly. “Remember?
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo … ?”

He was referring to the American bomber attack on Japan in the early days of World War Two. Led by Colonel James Doolittle, the raid launched a unit of B-25 medium bombers from the aircraft carrier USS
Hornet
and attacked Tokyo. Though not very militarily significant, the Doolittle raid sent a powerful psychological message to the Japanese, demonstrating to them that their Home Islands weren’t invulnerable, and for Americans, it was a gigantic morale-booster.

At that point, Jones handed a thick envelope to each man. The packets were black with red tape running along the edge. Each was stamped “
TOP SECRET
.”

Hunter and the others quickly scanned the four-page directive. They detailed a highly-ambitious mission calling for four ships—the
Enterprise,
two supply ships, and a “covering fire” vessel—to proceed to the east coast of Japan, where a small group of jet airplanes would launch, hit key targets, recover, and leave the area.

“I suggest we break up and study this and meet again in an hour,” Jones said.

Immediately everyone stood, saluted and left—everyone except Hunter.

Without a word, Jones handed him another
TOP SECRET
document. Hunter opened it and quickly read it.

The one-page paper was titled “Special Targeting Mission.” Hunter was not familiar with the term. But after he’d read just the first paragraph, the meaning became quite clear.

He felt a chill run through him.

Throughout all the years of war and violence, Hunter had always thought of himself simply as a soldier, a patriot, someone forced to become a warrior to defend his homeland. He’d led many major campaigns and planned many more.

Yet, the idea laid out in this paper was different. It did not inhabit the usual realm of war. Worse yet, the person slated to perform the mission was identified as Operative Blue One. That had been Hunter’s code name in the past.

Jones sensed his misgivings right away.

“This kind of thing
is
a first for us,” he said, his voice still stone-cold serious. “And, believe me, I regret having to come up with such a plan. It’s caused me many a sleepless night already—and I expect many more.
That’s
why I decided to keep the planning of this one under wraps until everything was in place.”

There was a long tense silence between the two men.

“Let’s face it, Hawk,” Jones said to his old friend, “things are desperate. If we can pull this off
while
the bombing raid is going on, we’ll go a long way to solving this very big problem. And maybe save millions of lives in the process.

“And you’re the only one who can do it.”

The meeting resumed one hour later.

Jones started off by explaining the “special targeting mission” to the rest of the group. Upon hearing the news, each man had the same reaction as Hunter: shock, followed by a grim realization that desperate times require desperate measures.

Jones smartly moved the discussion along to the specifics of the air-raid portion of the secret mission: sailing dates, tide levels, aircraft available, recon photos of the target, psy-ops, SigInt and air-strike particulars.

As far as the purely military end of the operation, Jones’s plan was as innovative as it was daring. The stakes, however, were very high. The air strike on the selected Japanese targets would have to be hit-and-run; any delay could prove disastrous. Yet the targets were so heavily defended by the Cult, the American strike craft would have to perform all kinds of aerial tricks in order to get in on their targets, hit them, and get the hell out.

Still, the whole operation was so intensely dangerous, the casualty rate among the attacking pilots could be expected to be as high as fifty percent—or even higher.

There were other risks, and not just in human terms. It was obvious that it had taken a major concentrated effort to get the
Enterprise
operational again. It was once more a fairly formidable weapon. Though nowhere near the power projector it had been in its heyday, it was still not an entity that the general would put at risk lightly. Yet if something went disastrously wrong, the carrier could be sunk, or even worse, captured intact.

Over all, the most important element of the operation would be its timing. The four ships of the newly-created Task Force would have to sail to their attack coordinates very quickly and under the cover of absolute radio silence for secrecy. They would have to launch the airplanes with just the precise amount of fuel to carry a precise number of bombs. The air strikes would have to be pinpoint and accurate, yet done without much air cover. The strike craft would have to return to the carrier as soon as possible so the Task Force could exit the area just as quickly.

Getting the timing right also meant dealing with supplies. Since the mission wasn’t an invasion or an attack in force, they could cut the risk factor down by taking only the minimum necessary. But this also meant there could be no room for error, waste, or delays.

Then there was the problem of Task Force security, specifically, the ship that Jones’s directive identified as the “covering fire vessel.”

As Yaz put it, “We’re going to need something packing a lot of firepower. Who’s it going to be?”

Hunter had been silent all during this second meeting, the words “Special Targeting Mission” still burning into his brain. But now, after hearing Yaz’s question, he spoke up for the first time.

“I think we all have just the ship in mind,” he said.

T
HE BATTLESHIP USS
New Jersey
lay in the dark, still waters of the Panama Canal. Above it glowed a full moon.

It was nearly midnight. Inside the bridge of the ship’s immense superstructure, its captain sat alone, brooding, as usual.

The enormous ship had been waiting to pass through the canal since noon that day. Repeated attempts to strike a deal with the people who controlled operation of the canal locks—they were ensconced in a gaudy, heavily-guarded 200-foot tower which looked out over the canal and the seedy city nearby—had proved frustrating. Some radio replies from shore claimed the main set of locks were not working. Others said the technicians needed to operate the locks were unavailable. Still others claimed the locks could operate only at unpredictable hours or by an ever-changing schedule.

The captain of the
New Jersey
knew this odd behavior was actually a not-too-clever means of keeping him and his crew captive in the locks. One message, received shortly before sunset, said it all:
LET YOUR CREW COME ASHORE AND ENJOY THE PLEASURES OF OUR CITY WHILE WE SORT OUT THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES WHICH DELAY YOUR PASSAGE.

In other words, “Deliver your crew into the hands of the thugs and harlots of our city for one night, and then we will let you pass.”

It was an offer the captain chose to refuse. Yet he was not a man of rash action or judgment. He knew that time itself could be a potent weapon. This is why he was waiting.

Ever since the sun had gone down, both sides of the canal had been ablaze with harsh neon signs. Bright reds, explosive greens, deep, throbbing blues—nearly all of them promised fulfillment of unimaginable sexual fantasies. Their garishness constituted a direct assault on the captain’s dour sensibilities, not to mention his corneas. In fact, the bright lights hurt his eyes. He’d seen full-scale naval battles that looked less threatening.

Added to this visual pollution was a background strain of equally harsh sounds that drifted up into the night. Raucous music. Women laughing. Screams—of both delight and agony, mixed with occasional bursts of gunfire. Way off in the distance, a recording of a sultry voice, moaning in continuous orgasm, echoed through the hills.

These were well-orchestrated sirens, calls to entice men to leave their ships and sample the pleasures from the many bars, crack houses, bordellos, and sex palaces crowding the sleazy little town close to the canal’s main locks.

The captain was determined to keep his crew aboard, however, and he had stationed several of the ship’s burly security squads on deck to help enforce his order. These men patrolling the deck were a little older, more experienced than the rest of the crew. Years of sea duty had made them disciplined and, like the captain, they knew the dangers that lurked ashore.

Still, the captain knew his crew—and they were as professional as they were independent. He realized that some of the nearly 750 men aboard would inevitably get by the guards and swim to the place appropriately known as Sin City.

And indeed, he realized any sailor who made it stood a good chance of not returning.

In fact, he knew this firsthand.

The captain was known simply as Wolf. He wore a uniform which included a long black cape and a black mask which covered more than half his face. Who he had been before he assumed this identity was a mystery, to his crew and his various allies. He was, like most of the men on board, a direct descendant of the original Vikings. As such, he was a man given to dark moods, and his officers knew when to leave him alone with his thoughts.

This was one of those times.

It was a strange set of circumstances which had led to his being here in the Canal Zone. He was trying his best to get to the Pacific Ocean as quickly as possible—this at the request of a very special ally.

Wolf had first met Hawk Hunter a little more than a year ago. He had felt an immediate kinship with the legendary Wingman. They were, in fact, brothers of the same cosmos. Neither of them quite understood what it was that made them shoulder the burden they did as they struggled to liberate the world from the forces of oppression. Like Hunter, Wolf could have used his warrior skills and the high-tech weaponry under his command to be an outlaw or a pirate and enrich himself beyond imagination. Yet neither Wolf nor Hunter chose this way, nor did they choose to retire from the world’s strife and live the quiet life of peace, security, and the love of a woman that surely their prior service had already earned them.

It was this kinship with Hunter and the cause he served that had brought Wolf to this godforsaken place—again. And, as terrible as this place was, even greater dangers no doubt lurked ahead. The conversation he’d had with Hunter over the
COMSAT
link had been brief. Hunter had asked that Wolf join the United American USS
Enterprise
and embark on a mission against the Japanese Home Islands and the Asian Mercenary Cult. Upon receiving the message, Wolf had smiled to himself, not the sort of thing he did too often. The Americans had conjured up an insane, impossible plan—just the sort of thing that would bring him and the battleship
New Jersey
halfway around the globe to help.

It was now 0130 hours.

Wolf had spent the time staring out at the spectacle that was Sin City.

Though towns like this had sprung up all along the canal, Sin City was by far the worst. Although the canal itself was under protection of the United Americans, troubles up north had forced most of the troops to withdraw, leaving a vacuum which was quickly filled by various outlaws and other assorted lowlifes.

Yet as disturbing as Wolf viewed the place, it had, alas, an irresistible draw.