War of the Sun (7 page)

The soldier smiled cruelly.

“We have found our treasure,” he declared.

With that he gestured to the two other men. They rushed forward and grabbed Mizumi by the hands and feet. She struggled with them as they carried her out of the house and down the road toward their troop truck. She was screaming uncontrollably for her neighbors to save her, but it was no use. No one dared to challenge the soldiers.

Mizumi was now screaming desperately for her parents. But suddenly there was the sound of two rifle shots coming from within her house. At that moment, everything seemed to stand still. Mizumi was able to turn her head and see the soldier who’d struck her father come out of the door, his rifle still smoking.

That’s when she fainted. Thus she was only dimly aware of being dumped into the back of the truck and driven away.

For Mizumi, nothing would ever be the same again.

Four days later

T
HE USS
FITZGERALD
WAS
coming apart at the seams.

Or at least, that’s what it felt like.

The massive carrier was shuddering, creaking, and groaning, all at the same time. It was caught in a cataclysmic pattern: giant waves would hit it broadside, allowing tons of water to crash down onto its huge flightdeck and knocking the vessel almost thirty degrees to port. Then, not a moment later, even larger waves would crash against its port side, serving to right the carrier again.

Alone in the hangar deck, Hawk Hunter was hanging onto the nearest stable piece of hardware, a fairly heavy support beam. Inside the cavernous deck, lit only by the soft red glow of the emergency lights, he could hear the sounds of unsecured gear clattering all around the decks.

Or were those really rivets popping?

They were sailing right through a full-scale tropical depression, a storm just one notch below an authentic typhoon. The winds were clocking at close to 70 mph, and the seas were running at fifty feet and more. The ship was being battered so badly that all but essential operations had been shut down, even to the point that no food could be served in the galleys. Not that anyone on board wanted to swallow anything more than antiseasickness tablets.

It was now 0300. The Task Force had first encountered the bad weather nearly twenty-four hours before, just as they’d passed the two-thirds mark on the way to the target area. And though the tempest was rough on the four ships and their crews, running smack into it actually turned out to be a beneficial twist of events: Nature’s elements, though stomach-turning, had provided excellent cover for the Task Force to close in on their destination without detection.

Indeed, all indications were that the Task Force hadn’t been spotted—yet …

Once the carrier finally stabilized, Hunter was able to let go of the support beam and resume his slow pacing. He’d been at it for nearly two hours now, walking, thinking, holding on, then walking and thinking again. He had much on his mind—too much—and he had sought the quiet peace of the hangar deck in an attempt to sort it all out.

So far, he’d been unsuccessful.

He was wrestling with the unorthodox mission that was before him, a mission that only he could undertake. For the dozenth time in two hours he took out the now-dog-eared sheet of paper that read “special targeting mission,” and once again read the sealed “
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
” orders that Jones had given him shortly before the general had flown back to Washington from Vancouver.

The orders were brutally simple: while the Task Force air strikes were going on, Hunter was to land inside Tokyo, find Hashi Pushi, and execute him.

Once again those words burned their way into his overtaxed brain, this time even deeper. He was no stranger to the death and destruction of war. He had sent many enemies to their deaths in aerial combat and in hand-to-hand fighting. But there was a distinct difference here. Those men had been soldiers, too, fighting on a battlefield, with weapons on hand. As such, they at least knew what they could be in for once they stepped into that arena of combat, and they were prepared for it.

But this killing would be different—this killing, Hunter felt, might change him forever. For this was not going to be a typical combat situation.

This was to be an assassination.

He knew Jones was right when he had first explained the mission to him back in Vancouver. He knew that Wolf was right too; getting rid of Hashi Pushi would probably save countless lives on
both
sides. It would rid an already overly-troubled world of yet another set of catastrophic problems, akin to popping Hitler in 1933 or Saddam Hussein in 1991.

But was it right?

Bombing Hashi Pushi’s palace might do the trick, but that wasn’t the point. This was a case of making sure—
one hundred percent
sure—because there was no way they’d have the chance again.

So the motive was there.

The real question was:
Could
he do it?

He’d never shot anyone in cold blood before. Would he have time to look his target directly in the eye and squeeze the trigger? Would he keep squeezing until every breath of life had left his quarry? Would he have to pull that trigger one last time to administer the
coup de grâce?
Just to make sure?

He needed a plan—his own secret plan. Was there a way that he could accomplish the special targeting mission and still preserve his sanity and his honor?

Perhaps there was …

At that moment, the hair on the back of his neck bristled, instantly snapping him out of his gloomy meditation.

Deep inside him, his psyche had just received a very powerful message:
Something is wrong.

He turned and began running. Across the hangar deck, through the fire door, and up the ladder to the next deck. Suddenly he heard the Phalanx Gatling gun on the port side of the flight deck open up with its distinctive, bone-rattling, mechanical burp.

Bolting up the next stairway and heading for the bridge, he literally ran right into JT, who was on his way down to the hangar deck to find him.

“We’ve got big trouble, Hawk,” Toomey told him excitedly.

“I know,” Hunter replied.

Yaz was going in five directions at once.

It seemed as if every light, bell, and buzzer was going off on the bridge simultaneously. All seventeen men in his bridge crew were at their stations, properly calling out information that somehow was pertinent to the sudden crisis.

But all Yaz could do was concentrate on the tiny colored light which was being tossed around on the rough seas about two miles off the port bow. His fire-control men said the light probably belonged to a Cult patrol boat, one which easily could radio back the discovery and position of the Task Force. If that happened, then the Task Force would lose its one and only advantage: that of complete surprise.

Yaz had given permission for his fire crews to open up on the wildly bobbing colored light in order to get a range on it, and now there were two lines of red-tipped 20mm cannon shells streaking out of the rotating six barrels of the
Fitzgerald’s
Phalanx. At 600 rounds a second, their combined five-second barrage was simply awesome as it lit up the stormy darkness.

“They’ve got the range on him, Skipper,” his fire control officer reported. “Next burst will nail him. Shall I give the order, sir?”

Yaz bit his lip for a moment. This was his first authentic combat decision since being crowned captain of the aircraft carrier. He had to make sure it was the right one.

“Are the
Tennyson, Cohen,
and
New Jersey
clear of the target area?” he called to his fire control officer.

“Yes, sir,” came the immediate reply. “All three are running off our stern.”

“And are we certain that’s an enemy
military
vessel out there?” Yaz asked his radar men.

There was the briefest of pauses before the target-ID man replied, “I’m almost ninety-percent sure, Captain.”

“Either way, it probably has a radio, Skipper,” his fire control officer said.

Yaz put the NightScope glasses back up to his eyes. He could clearly see the small boat now, its engine pumping furiously, as it fought the windswept sea in an effort to get away. It seemed to be painted in odd colors. Its gunwales were yellow, while its mast was bright orange.

Yaz gritted his teeth. He couldn’t wait much longer. Still, he knew that with his next order, he was sealing the death warrant for whoever was on the boat.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Open fire …”

The Phalanx Gatlings immediately roared to life again and sent thousands of rounds of 20mm cannon shells ripping through the thin-skinned deck of the small boat, instantly exploding it into thousands of tiny splinters.

Yaz was startled by how quick it took. In less than three seconds, the small boat had been obliterated, leaving behind barely a wisp of smoke which was quickly taken away by the screaming high winds.

Yaz searched the waters for any sign of survivors—or bodies—but could spot nothing.

He finally lowered the glasses and slumped back into the captain’s chair.

“What the hell is anyone doing way out here in the first place?” he whispered to himself.

The activity on the bridge did not cease with the destruction of the small boat. On the contrary, it increased twofold.

Yaz was informed by the radio room that no last signals of warning had been sent out by the doomed boat. Radar and sonar was reporting absolutely no contact with any other ships in the immediate area. Technically, it appeared that they had not been discovered. But Yaz knew from experience that there might be other enemy boats somewhere out there, and their luck might be better than the one whose pieces were now scattered across the surface of the water.

He also knew that the carrier was much farther out of range than what the plan had been designed for.

As captain he had to make another decision—this one much bigger than the first. Their “time and supply” strategy, when you came right down to it, was a simple math equation with no room for error. The trick was to keep the equation the same, even while changing the numbers. If the strike planes left early, they would use more fuel on their approach to target. But he would be able to increase the carrier’s speed and get closer to the Japanese mainland, allowing the jets a shorter trip back to recovery.

The only thing that would change would be the odds for success.

They would be worse.

Then there was the question of the weather. It was also clear that the storm was starting to die down. It was still two hours before dawn, yet the dark sky had just become a shade brighter. They were losing the cover of the bad weather. If he gave the “go” now, the pilots would be over their targets in broad daylight, and not dusk, as was called for in the original plan.

He turned to find Hunter and JT were standing behind him.

“Can we go eighteen hours ahead of the plan?” he asked them.

“We’ve got no choice,” JT said. “If those ja-mokes on that boat dropped a dime on us, they’ll be waiting for us with open arms in eighteen hours.”

Yaz looked at Hunter, who was nodding in solemn agreement.

“It’s what Jones would do,” Hunter told him. “It’s what Fitz would do.”

Yaz finally nodded himself.

“Then it’s going to be what we do,” Yaz said. “Let’s alert the crew. We’ll shoot for launch in ninety minutes.”

W
ITHIN AN HOUR OF
sinking the small boat, the USS
Fitzgerald
’s flight deck was abuzz with activity.

It was now 0530 hours. The storm had completely dissipated by this time, and though the seas were still very high, with the coming of dawn, the dark sky was brightening by the minute and the thick clouds were finally breaking. For the first time in a long time, sunlight was touching the carrier’s deck.

But this was not the best of circumstances. The original plan had the TF Squadron arriving over the targets just after dusk; now they would be going in just after dawn. In bright, clear skies.

Right out of the rising sun.

It would be one of the Viggens going first. The
Fitz
’s flight deck crew had already directed the Swedish fighter to the number one catapult and hooked it up. Beneath the launch channel the steam pressure was building. When it reached proper launch mode, the flight deck officer held his hand high over his head. This was the standby signal and it seemed that with his action, everything on the carrier deck did stand still for a moment. Once the first plane was launched, there would be no turning back.

Nearly all of the crew not working on the deck was crammed onto the carrier’s side walkways or huddled along the side of the island, watching and waiting. The same collective thought was running through everybody’s mind: Are we really ready?

It was not by chance that the delta-winged Viggen was selected to be the first airplane in the air. It was, in fact, the guinea pig of the group. With its 26,000-pound thrust turbofan engine, it was a powerful, dangerous fighter. It could achieve a maximum speed of 1,320 mph and normally was capable of carrying up to 13,200 pounds of bombs.

But because of the nature of Jones’s plan, it was necessary for the TF Squadron to carry as many bombs to their targets as possible. To this end, the undercarriages of all strike craft had been heavily modified by the
Fitzgerald
’s air service crews to rack up many more pounds of armament weight than normal.

Viggen One was a good example. It was now loaded with nearly 17,000 pounds of ordnance, a combination of Mk82 GP 500-pound bombs and Mk82 Snakeye retarded bombs. Viggen Two was similarly overloaded. In fact, after the
Fitz
’s air crews got through with them, the ordnance weight of every plane in the TF Squadron had far exceeded “manufacturer’s recommendations,” some beyond dangerous proportions.

The intentional overloading was a risk everyone in the Task Force planning operation had to take. If they had put the question to a roomful of aerodynamic experts, they would have probably found it technically impossible for any of the TF Squadron airplanes even to be able to lift off, catapult assisted or not, and stay in the air long enough to reach their targets.