Return of Sky Ghost (17 page)

Finally they topped out at a nose-bleeding 98,000 feet. All of it nearly straight up. They were barely seventy miles downrange at the end of two minutes. Finally the plane turned over, the boosters were discarded, and the primary liquid-fuel motors went throttle up.

That’s when the real fun began.

Suddenly they were going just as fast but in a horizontal mode. The R-plane was doing Mach 3 at the turnover. Now it was passing Mach 4. Then Mach 5. Then Mach 6. Outside, the clouds seemed like water flowing past. The light blue of the Caribbean was soon in evidence. The pilots made a slight right-hand turn and now the top of South America could be seen.

Hunter checked his watch—they’d been up for only five minutes and already they were leaving South America behind.

Y leaned over and gave him the heads-up sign. The area the pilots had promised for some good sight-seeing was coming up.

A minute later they roared over the eastern edge of the Japanese-occupied Panama Canal zone.

Even though they were at 95,000 feet, Hunter could clearly see the Japanese construction crews still rebuilding after so many months what it had taken their bombers just minutes to destroy.

He could also see much military activity in evidence—at least a couple of dozen warships protecting this end of the canal, with at least a half dozen air bases ringing its edge.

But what was most interesting was that the pilots were flying right over enemy-held territory, and doing it so brazenly. Rocket planes were not at all stealthy. Whenever an R-plane went overhead, everyone on the ground below was well aware if it. They made a lot of noise, burned very hot on radar screens, and produced sonic booms that were simply tremendous.

So the Japanese knew American rocket planes were going over Panama and doing so on a routine basis. There was simply nothing they could do about it. They had no aircraft that could break Mach 2.5, never mind Mach 7 or 8. The R-plane pilots could routinely thumb their noses at the Japanese and there wasn’t a damn thing the occupiers could do about it.

No surprise then that just about every Global Airways rocket plane jumping between South America and the States carried recon cameras in its nose.

Y leaned over to him.

“It’s a great way to say
fuck you,
isn’t it?” he asked Hunter.

Hunter watched as the last of the Japanese zone passed from view.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I can’t think of one any better.”

They soon passed over Mexico, and then finally crossed the U.S. border.

It was uncharacteristically cloudy here, and the R-plane flew the last few minutes totally enveloped in clouds. When the visibility cleared again, the plane had slowed to a relatively poky 500 knots and was losing speed and altitude very quickly.

They were over a large city, but this was strange: Even though it was barely midmorning, the glare of neon lights below was startling, almost blinding.

Hunter stared down at the city in some disbelief. This place was the opposite of Brasilia, the place they’d just left. This place was
very
people-friendly. It was a collection of barrooms, eateries, saloons, dance halls, strip clubs, and what could only be brothels. The strange thing was that each building had a sign on its roof which loudly proclaimed whatever wares were available inside.

Some of these garish billboards featured huge TV screens, on which digital women danced naked above the vast urban sprawl. The streets below were alive with vehicles, crowded with people, and slightly above, traffic jams of sky bikes. Though it would have seemed like an impossibility, Hunter could have sworn he heard music rising up from this neon heaven below him.

It really was a very different place.

The rocket plane got lower and slowed even further. Now they passed over apartment buildings, again their roofs crowded with X-rated signs. They went over vast swimming pools, each one with an army of topless women sunbathing around it. They passed over dozens of street parties, and more saloons, and more brothels, and more swimming pools….

Finally Hunter turned to Y and asked: “Where the hell are we?”

The OSS agent smiled.

“Boy, you really
are
from another place,” he said. “Below us, my friend, is the city of Dallas, Texas.”

T
HE ROCKET PLANE FINALLY
set down and Hunter and Y quickly deplaned.

The airport, called Love Field, was actually in Fort Worth, right next door to Dallas. It was an enormous place, bustling and incredibly crowded. Y and Hunter made their way through the throng, Hunter embarrassingly obliging several people who recognized him with some quick autographs.

Finally they made it to the curb, where Y was able to hail a jeepster cab. The driver squealed to a stop, Y and Hunter quickly climbed in, and the cab squealed away again.

Y had been consulting his MVP throughout the trip, constantly receiving updated instructions on the handheld screened device. This was for security reasons. Wherever he and Hunter were headed, it was so secret, the OSS brass in Washington were taking them one step at a time. Plus, as Y had pointed out to Hunter several times, OSS agents were always prime targets for assassins. The Japanese were known to have several hit squads roaming the U.S., looking for OSS and top-level military people to kill, just as the OSS had agents in Japan and occupied South America, looking to whack high-level Nipponese officials.

So security, both for the upcoming mission and personal safety, had to be at a maximum. That’s why Y’s instructions were being doled out to him just a little at a time. The reasoning was, if he didn’t know where he was going, how could a potential assassin?

So far, the MVP had brought them from Brasilia to Dallas. Now Y asked it what they should do next.

The instructions came back with the address of a hotel in downtown Dallas, where they were to check in. After that, they were to “AFI,”—“await further instructions.”

Y yelled the address to the cabdriver, who nodded and made his way out of the airport. The cab was very long and black and had its convertible top down. Its driver was a stone-cold silent type, hat and sunglasses hiding most of his features. He seemed to have trouble lighting his cigarettes.

The trip toward the center of the city quickly turned into a real slow-boat affair. Apparently there was a never-ending street party going on in Dallas. People were simply everywhere—on the streets, on the sidewalks, in the alleys. It made driving extremely slow.

The big limo wound its way through the celebrating, the drinking, the carousing. Past the hoariest of whorehouses, the loudest of dance halls, and the largest barrooms Hunter could ever imagine. Their cab was soon caught up in a traffic jam of limo cabs, all of them black, all of them with convertible tops down, and all of them going painfully slow.

Rarely moving at more than ten miles per hour, this was closer to what Hunter recalled of New Orleans during Mardi Gras. Actually, what was happening here made Mardi Gras look like a kids’ birthday party.

They reached an intersection that was only slightly less busy and congested. Here the parade of limos came to a complete stop. The driver in the lead car got out and talked to a pair of policemen standing on the corner. Quite brazenly, the limo driver pulled a few bills from his pocket and handed them to the cops. Then he ran back to his car.

The policemen climbed onto their motorcycles and fired up their engines. All of the limo drivers put their cars in gear and got ready. It was obvious they’d been through this drill before.

The motorcycle cops pulled out in front of the cabbies and then with the wail of their sirens, took off in a screech of smoke and rubber. All the limo drivers did the same, and soon the string of cabs was gaining speed very quickly. This was good old police work, Texas style. A few bucks in the right palm, and boom!

With a high-pitched wail cutting a path through the partygoers on Main Street and then Delmont, the twelve convertible limousines now had a police escort to downtown Dallas.

The partygoers had seen this type of thing before too.

Whenever the wail of the motorcycle sirens first appeared, the boozy citizenry would scramble to either side of the street and wait for the police escort and its entourage to plow through. Once the people got to the curb, they would usually wave wildly as the police and their special party roared by, and then retake the street and resume their revelry. Hunter saw hundreds of people lining both sides of the street, waving and cheering wildly. Many of the other passengers in the other limos were waving back to them, as if they were heads of state ceremoniously waving back to the peasantry.

Hunter and Y just sat back and enjoyed the ride. It was a bright blue November day in Dallas. The crowds seemed very happy, if spirited.

“Is it like this all the time?” Hunter yelled over to Y.

“It can get worse,” Y yelled back.

But Hunter really wasn’t sure what he meant.

Up ahead the motorcycle cops had decided to take a right hand turn toward Congress. The parade of limos slowed down a little bit as each wide-body car had to make the turn at less than top speed.

This brought the caravan past a few buildings, then to another left turn, which would carry them by a grassy knoll, under a railroad overpass and then onto the freeway. It would be much quicker traveling up there.

The limo that Y and Hunter were traveling in made the left very slowly, but now was picking up speed again. There were fewer people standing on the sides of the road here, but those that were, were waving enthusiastically. Some were even taking pictures.

They were just passing the grassy knoll when Hunter turned to say something to Y. But before he could say a word, there was a loud
pop! pop! pop!

And then everything went into a freeze.

This sort of thing had happened several times to Hunter since arriving in this new world. He wasn’t sure what had caused it exactly, or under what circumstances this sensation came over him. But to his eyes, strange as it seemed, everything appeared to stand still.

He looked over at Y, who was looking back at him, absolute horror in his eyes. His head had been blown apart and he was actually holding a bloody piece of his own skull in his hands. He was staring over at Hunter as if to say
why?

Blood was everywhere. And yellow gelatin-like matter too. Then Hunter could hear screams, and maybe a few more pops. And then …

And then, Hunter blinked and everything went back to normal. Yaz’s head was back in one piece. There was no blood, and the limo driver had finally lit his cigarette with his very noisy butane lighter.

Hunter felt one last quake go through him then he relaxed again. Y saw that his eyes had just come back from some faraway place; he actually asked if Hunter was OK.

The pilot replied in the affirmative and then asked Y: “Do you like politics?”

The agent thought for only a half second.

“Hate it and love it,” he replied as the car roared under the overpass. “I’ve actually thought of running for something someday. Why?”

Hunter considered this for a moment and then just shook his head.

“Take my advice,” he told Y. “Don’t ever run for President.”

They finally reached downtown Dallas and the parade of limos dispersed. The police went on their way and the twelve limos headed in twelve different directions.

Y was consulting his MVP again and directing the driver which way to go. The crowds were no less numerous down here, traffic was simply moving better because the streets were wider.

Finally their cab arrived in front of what had to be the largest brothel/saloon/casino complex in the whole wide world. It was six blocks long, four deep, with several huge marquees and a gigantic TV screen on its roof displaying dozens of images of beautiful naked women dancing. The neon glare from this sign alone was so blinding Hunter yearned for sunglasses.

The name of the place was
Happy Valley.

“You sure about this place?” he asked Y “Not exactly the subtlety I expected.”

Y rechecked the MVP and confirmed the address.

“Yep, this is it,” he declared. “Our home, for a little while anyway. Those are my orders.”

Ten minutes later, Hunter was sitting in a room on the twenty-sixth floor. The place was clean, not too small, and, thank God, soundproofed.

The entire casino/brothel mall was actually first-rate. The first two floors were devoted entirely to gambling; floors three through six could only be described as a department store of sex. Anything could be had for a price. From the seventh floor up, the place resembled a four-star hotel. And the staff was superb. They were all female, all built for action, and all just dripping with Texas charm.

Happy Valley was as far away from Xwo Mountain as one could get. Maybe that was the point, Hunter thought, looking out the window at the ocean of neon beyond. Deep inside, a small voice was telling him this might be a sort of planned distraction, a way to allow him to decompress before whatever was about to happen happened. Or maybe the OSS just fucked up and booked them into the wrong place. Either way, as far as their quarters were concerned, they would have little to complain about.

There was a bundle of clean clothes and toiletry items waiting for him, courtesy of the OSS he guessed. Hunter showered, shaved, and climbed into the new duds. It was an all-black combat suit, freshly starched and pressed, with a baseball cap, a pair of spiffy new combat boots, and cool sunglasses for keeping somewhat anonymous. Everything fit Hunter perfectly, making him think that maybe being at Happy Valley was not a mistake after all. Once dressed, he realized he was famished, and thirsty as well. A moment later the phone rang. It was Y. He had read his mind again. He was ready for chow too.

Hunter met Y in the casino ten minutes later. The agent was standing near a blackjack table, one fifty-dollar chip in hand.

“I’ve got to get some funds,” Y told Hunter.

With that he walked over to the blackjack table and sat down. Hunter scanned the table. There were four other players; each with a huge stack of fifty-dollar chips in front of them. The stakes at the table were very high.