War of the Sun (30 page)

By the time the Cook-Clancy-Higgens team reached the entranceway opening with 600-odd female slaves, the F/X team had already activated their last series of fake explosions.

Using the ersatz explosions as cover, the JAWs team slipped into the jungle too, shepherding their rescuees safely out of harm’s way.

According to JT’s map, he was looking at a place called Iko Shima.

It was an amazingly square island about 210 miles south of the southern tip of Okinawa.

Unlike that smoky place, Iko looked like a prime piece of pristine Pacific real estate. Clear air. Lots of beaches. A cooling mountain. Lush jungle growth. Everything seemed perfect and natural.

Everything except the huge Cult air base.

He’d tracked the Zeros for nearly an hour, staying high and far behind them to avoid detection. At 53 minutes into his flight, the huge formation of Zeros began breaking up and diving out of their 15,000-foot cruising level. Soon the eighty or so Zeros began orbiting the small postage stamp of an island. The place was probably six or seven square miles in all, and at least one-third of that was taken up by the vast triangular parking areas that had obviously been constructed for the newly-built Okinawa Zeros.

Just as predicted, the place had only three runways, each running parallel to the one edge of the huge triangle. There were three separate oil storage tank farms, one at each corner. There were even three separate control towers.

The bad news was that the place was ringed with hundreds of antiaircraft weapons—fixed SAM sites, mostly, many surrounded by AAA batteries and some smaller mobile missile units. JT felt his heart sink a notch. Their job would have been much easier if the Cult had neglected to provide for air defense for Iko as they had done completely on Okinawa.

He keyed his lip microphone and sent a coded message back to the air control center on the
Fitzgerald.

“Delta Green Flight to Task Force Command … we’ve got stormy weather. Repeat … stormy weather.”

Hunter was orbiting very high about thirty miles east of Iko Jima twenty minutes later.

He and JT had already worked out their strategy. They couldn’t possibly hope to wipe out all of the Zeros on the island—the eighty from Okinawa had now joined approximately 400 or so on the ground. Their only chance was to damage the air base to such an extent that it would be inoperable.

JT’s Tornado carried a weapon designed for just that: it was a weapons dispenser pod attached to the hotshot airplane’s underbelly. Inside were packed 600 bomblets, each the size of a ping-pong ball. Though diminutive in size, each bomblet packed a wallop equal to several sticks of dynamite. They were also weighted in such a way as to blow downward on impact, driving themselves into a concrete runway and cratering it.

Hunter was carrying a different kind of anti-runway bomb. It was a French-built Super
Martielle.
Half-bomb, half-rocket, once launched, the weapon powered itself straight down, striking the concrete with enough force to drive into it at least six feet. At that point, the warhead would explode, leaving a crater that could be as large as twenty-five feet across.

The problem facing them was that they would have to attack the base and create substantial damage—all in one pass. To loiter over the target for very much longer than that would put both of them past their bingo point, as well as at the mercy of the vast arrays of AA weapons.

Hunter went in first. He selected the northernmost runway; several of the recently landed Okinawa Zeros were still parked on its end. He was down to fifty feet and screaming across the base before the Cult gunners had any idea what was going on. Just as on Okinawa, the defense system on the island, though elaborate, was slow to respond. This told Hunter something very important: obviously the hardware was there to do the job. Apparently the training and readiness for the troops manning the high-tech weapons was lacking.

He deposited the Super
Martielle
halfway down the 800-foot runway, its warhead boring into the concrete and exploding as advertised. Because traditionally the Zero A6M needed a longer than usual takeoff run, the midshot had rendered this airstrip unusable.

Hunter opened up with his nose cannons on his pullout, scoring a barrage of hits on the control station for the runway’s oil storage facility. The air was filled with AAA fire by this time, but Hunter was able to twist the F-16XL straight up with enormous acceleration, causing all of the AA shells to fall short.

At the same time, JT was sneaking in from the west. His weapons pod crackling with flame and smoke, he neatly dispensed half his load of bomblets on the north-south airstrip, then banked to the right as only a Tornado could do at such a low level and dropped the rest on the west-south strip. He, too, had his nose cannon firing throughout the bomb run, strafing a control tower and a fuel truck parking area. Unlike Hunter, he stayed low, below the AA fire going off all around him, and exited the area to the southeast.

He and Hunter formed up about six miles off the island. They had one last duty to perform before scooting back to the Okinawa battle zone. Hunter had to take a recon photo image of the base for poststrike assessment.

But when he did and checked the results, he realized that although he and JT had indeed made all three runways unusable for at least several days, they had apparently arrived just minutes after a large force of Zeros had taken off. Hunter knew this by studying his infrared scan. Not only could the device detect objects giving off heat on the ground, but it was also able to detect “heat ponds”—pools of heat left behind by an aircraft which had warmed its engines on a certain spot and had now departed.

His
IR
scan showed at least 200 airplanes had been on the island as little as forty minutes before. He radioed the grim news over to JT even as they formed up again and headed eastward at full throttle.

Both pilots knew there was only one place the 200 Zeros were heading.

F
OR LIEUTENANT KAWISHI WAKI
, this was to be his final day.

He was flying the lead airplane in the first wave of a formation containing more than 200 Zeros. Each wave contained twenty airplanes, and as they were now in the preattack formation, each wave was separated from the next by about ten miles.

The Zeros carried no weapons—no torpedoes were strapped under the fuselages, no machine-guns decorated their wings. Rather each was packed with nearly a ton of high explosives, most of it located in a compartment just behind and below the pilot’s seat.

They were from Iko Jima. They had launched within an hour of receiving word that Okinawa was under attack. For many of the pilots, it would be their first test in combat. Nearly all of them were actually pilot-trainees, men hastily instructed in how to fly the Zeros out of Shuri and over to Iko.

In a short ceremony before they left, their commander exhorted them to do their duty. He also made it quite clear that each Zero was fueled with just enough octane for a one-way trip. There was no discussion. The pilots were ordered to thank their commander for sending them on this death mission, a long bow from the waist and a mumbling of words. Then they tied their
hachimakis
around their foreheads and each received a shot of
sake.

They toasted in unison to the spirit of Aja, downed the rice wine, and climbed into their cockpits.

Then, one after another, they flew off Iko Jima and headed north and east.

Lead pilot Lieutenant Waki didn’t even know the nationality of this enemy they’d been sent out to kill. Their commanding officer never bothered to tell them. All he knew was that he was but one cog in millions within the enormous industrial and military giant known as the Asian Mercenary Cult. And now someone had attacked them, someone trying to prevent advancement, to hinder production, to stop flow.

And Lieutenant Waki had been ordered to give his life to stop it.

Aboard the
Fitzgerald

Ben looked into the CIC’s long-range radar screen and counted 200 airplanes in all.

They were coming out of the southwest, flying in ten waves of twenty each, and at the moment the closest wave was about thirty miles from the Task Force.

He immediately sent word to Wolf, who had already activated the
New Jersey
’s massive antiaircraft arrays. At the same time, the captains of the
Tennyson
and the
Cohen
were told to prepare for an aerial attack.

The eleven fighter jets lined up on the carrier’s deck were ready for launch. One by one, they were catapulted off the
Fitzgerald,
each one quickly gaining altitude and heading for the oncoming enemy armada.

They met them head-on about two minutes later.

Hunter had briefed the
Fitz
’s pilots on tactics to use when dealing with the slower-moving Cult planes. It proved to be time well spent. Attacking with superior speed and agility, the jets plowed through the first formation of unarmed enemy planes, nose cannons at full bore. With their unprotected explosives compartment needing only the slightest spark to erupt, the cheap, flimsy aluminum Zeros began exploding all over the sky.

Soon the air was filled with twisted, fiery chunks of steel, glass, and flesh, all falling into the calm waters of the Pacific below.

The eleven jets never let up—they continued to pounce on the Zeros, many of which were valiantly flying on. After three passes though, the Zero formation finally disintegrated. Now the jets were able to blast away at the individual enemy pilots breaking away from the pack.

Within two minutes, the
Fitzgerald’
s pilots had expertly broken the enemy’s first wave, destroying all twenty enemy planes.

But no sooner had they accomplished this than another wave of twenty Zeros came into view.

Once again the jets tore through the chevrons of enemy planes, mercilessly firing and scoring kills at will. Once again the Zeros began exploding and falling. Indeed, the biggest danger for the jet pilots was avoiding all of the flaming debris that had filled the sky. These twenty Zeros were dispatched in less than a minute.

But then another twenty arrived. And after that wave was dispersed, another appeared. And after that, there was another. And another. And another. On and on it went for nearly fifteen minutes, the jet pilots shooting the bomb-laden yet completely defenseless Zeros only to have twenty more appear.

It was a turkey shoot in all senses of the term, but it would not be a total victory for the United Americans. For although the jets continued to shoot down the Zeros, they were all running low on fuel and ammo.

And that had been the Cult’s plan all along.

After twenty minutes of the aerial slaughter, Tornado One was forced to return to the
Fitz.
The Viggens were close behind, as were the Orao and the Fiat. The Alpha jets were able to stay for about twenty-five minutes, the Morat about a minute more. In the end it was the A-4 and the Strikefighters that lasted the longest, but even their larger fuel tanks began to run dry.

They managed to scatter the eighth wave of Zeros, but then were forced to return to the
Fitz.

The antiaircraft crews on every ship were ready when the first line of surviving Zeros appeared high above the Task Force about ten minutes later.

The chevron of propeller planes quickly broke and one by one came screaming down at the four ships.

The gun crews opened up. Dozens of 40mm Bofors, two-pound Pom-Pom “Chicago Pianos,” Phoenix Gatling guns, 5-inchers, and heavy machine-guns let loose at once.

The wall of fire put up by the ships—especially by the
New Jersey—
was frightening. So many explosive-packed Zeros were blowing up above the Task Force, it looked like a fireworks display.

But for
Cohen,
it wasn’t enough.

Hit dozens of times on the way down, one kamikaze pilot was still able to steer his burning craft into the supply ship’s main cargo hold. The airplane exploded on impact, blowing a gaping hole in the side of the ship just above the waterline. A few seconds later, a second Zero got through and impacted directly on the
Cohen’s
bow. Almost simultaneously a third explosives-packed kamikaze slammed into the ship’s stack, continued down through two decks, and detonated into its main engine room.

Within seconds, huge secondary explosions began to rock the supply ship. She was quickly on fire in a dozen places—so many her crew had no chance to fight all of the spreading flames.

Twenty seconds later, another Zero plummeted into
Cohen,
glancing off the bridge and impacting into the center cargo hold. The resulting explosion literally lifted the ship out of the water and slammed it back down again. The ship went to a 60-degree list, allowing seawater to flood into its lower compartments. Smoke was pouring out of every hole in her, and the flames were so intense they actually melted large sections of the superstructure.

No one would ever know whether the order to abandon ship was ever given—some of the
Cohen
’s crew were already in the water around the dying ship, most of them had been blown overboard in the initial explosions. The
Tennyson
had valiantly moved up alongside its stricken sister, its crew sending streams of water on several of the fires. Others were trying to pluck the
Cohen
’s sailors from the sea even as the battle still raged around them.

But it was clear that the supply ship was mortally wounded. When the fifth Zero dropped out of the sky and exploded directly on the ship’s aft cargo hold, it was the final blow. The ship’s rear end literally disintegrated. The
Cohen
went down in less than five seconds.

Of the 338 men on board, only twenty-seven survived.

It was 0810 when the 104th finally made it to the top of Shuri Mountain.

Almost miraculously, they’d reached their objective virtually intact, suffering only two wounded.

Their triumph in reaching the 1500-foot summit was quickly dampened, however. For it was from this vantage point that they had watched the titanic air battle between the
Fitz
’s pilots and the waves of Zeros, and eventually, the sinking of the
Cohen.