Return of Sky Ghost (29 page)

But Hunter would soon discover the Cosmos had one last joke to play on him.

Just as he checked the horizon again, Hunter heard a mechanized noise coming down the beach. It was the Roamer, the gigantic half tank, half trailer truck, slowly making its way down the shoreline. Inside, Hunter knew, were the dozen or so civilians evacuated from the small fishing village of Summer Point nearby. Colonel Asten had decided that they would be safer inside the farmhouse, where the last of the tanks and a reinforced squad of STS soldiers were holding fast. These particular commandos and their equipment would be the very last line of defense against the invaders, and the fact that Asten had them stationed around the farmhouse told Hunter something else too. As odd as it sounded, what he had come for—the Bomb—and maybe other even more secret things were probably inside the little structure.

The Roamer stopped nearly in front of him and began discharging its civilian passengers. From here they would walk up the hill, gaining the road and the way to the farmhouse. The first to come out were two old-timers, retired fishermen in their eighties. They were followed by a bevy of elderly women, then two middle-aged couples.

The last person out was a young girl. Hunter took one look at her—and suddenly he couldn’t move. He was frozen to the spot. He couldn’t have lifted his shovel, spoken a word, blinked his eyelids, even if he had tried.

This girl. Blond. Young, fresh face. Beautiful skin. Beautiful eyes. Beautiful everything. She was dressed like everyone else: old jeans, heavy wool overcoat, waders, and a thick wool hat. Yet somehow she actually looked sexy, alluring, erotic even, in that getup.

But it was not this miracle of fashion that had turned Hunter to stone. No, it was her eyes when she glanced up at him. Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, she was the last ounce of beauty in this desolate cold place that might very well soon be his grave.

But it was more than this.

Much more.

Because he was shaking again. And it was with the feeling he’d experienced whenever he saw people in this place that somehow reminded him of people Back There.

And while it usually came to him with the ferocity of maybe a sneeze, or a cough, right now his body was absolutely vibrating with the sensation, so much so, his teeth were actually chattering.

Now looking down at this young girl and she glancing up at him, everything just froze. In his mind’s eye he saw a lake, shimmering. Cold. Mountains all around. He was in the Swiss Alps. He was walking along the shore, and he saw her. She was in the frozen water, bathing. Completely nude.

Flash forward. He was at the top of a mountain, peering into a building that looked like an artificial igloo. Inside were three men, armed, dangerous. Inside as well, this beautiful creature. Gunshots. A scream. A laugh. He’d rescued her from them.

Flash again. They were in the cockpit of a huge airplane, almost as big as the monsters that fly here. Flash again. They were kissing. Flash again, they were sleeping close. Flash again they were in prison. Flash … they were out. Flash … they were on another mountain, this one in the Himalayas. Flash … they were kissing. Flash … then there were tears.

Yes, that face. That hair. Those eyes. Those curves.

He knew them well. And he knew who she was, because even a trip across universes could not erase this memory.

It was Chloe.

Then a pull came on his shoulder and he looked away and saw it was Colonel Asten. He was pointing out to the horizon. Twelve ships. Dotting the horizon. Smoke pouring from their stacks, wide white wakes behind them. They were heading their way at top speed.

Another jolt went through Hunter and he knew it was time to switch into his desperate-last-battle mode.

He took one more moment to turn back, to look at her again.

But Chloe was gone.

The word went down the trenches that all weapons should be powered up.

The Japanese ships were moving very fast. The storm clouds behind them seemed to be pushing them along. There was a line of three destroyers in front, then came the small aircraft carrier. Next were the six troopships. Flat, squat, and plying through the water as opposed to sailing on its surface, they looked more like seagoing barges than warships. Bringing up the rear were a pair of cruisers, both heavy with guns and rocket launchers.

Hunter was flattened out atop the sand dune now, a pair of binoculars glued to his eyes. There was no activity that he could see on the aircraft carrier. All of its planes were either on deck or below. He was sure of this simply because his psyche would have been buzzing wildly if there had been any enemy aircraft about.

The fleet was now about four miles offshore, and sure enough the ships were slowing down perceptibly. Hunter tried to conjure up a vision as to how the invasion would proceed. He could see the capital warships slow to a crawl, then the troopships turn toward the beach. The troop carriers looked to have shell doors in their bows—from here Hunter could imagine dozens of amphibious vehicles heading for the long, thin strip of sand.

The only hope the defenders would have—and it was a slim as well as a temporary one—would be for the landing craft to bunch up while sailing into the small bay. Here they would make economical targets for the tanks and the big guns. And maybe the initial wreckage would block off the rest of the bay. But it would only take a little while for the Japanese to either clear it or find another place to land nearby, one which the STS had no hope of defending.

So, this was it. The invaders would come into Tenean and here they would be met by the motley crew of defenders and there would be a short, bloody fight—and then, they’d all be dead. And whatever secrets were up in that farmhouse would be gained by the enemy. Then the world would probably turn upside down for real.

Oddly, in this rather desperate moment, Hunter found his thoughts going back to the young girl he’d just seen.

What would happen to her,
he wondered.

Colonel Asten was running the thin defense line one more time, taking a moment with each small group of STS men, bucking them up before their world came to an end. Hunter was checking the M-18 the Brits had given him. It was a long-range combat rifle, with a five-shot auto feature and a long belt of ammo. It was a powerful weapon, but this last firefight would be a particularly frustrating one for him. For any battle, his place was in the air. That would not happen here. The Z-3 was useless where it was, in the cow pasture, three miles and a large body of water away from any appropriate runway. No runway, no takeoff. The plane was useless.

It was strange because just as the storm clouds joined completely over their heads and the cold rain began to fall and the troopships grew closer to the shore, Hunter felt another odd sensation go through him. It was familiar too. Its meaning was not quite as clear though. It was almost like the cosmos was telling him to stand by, watch what happens next.

Whatever the meaning, the vibration rang true.

Because just as the defenders were beginning to count their last minutes, just when it seemed they would soon be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of heavily armed amphibious troops, just as it seemed like the troopships were ready to stop and start discharging troops, something very, very odd happened.

The ships just kept on going. The destroyers, the carrier, the troopships, and the cruisers went right by the entrance to Tenean Beach, right by the sandbar, by the rocks at its tip, and kept on sailing.

There were gasps of disbelief and no little relief from the slit trenches. Asten was immediately on his radio, shouting at a squad of lookouts he’d posted on the hill.

“What’s happening?” he was yelling into the mouthpiece. “Where are the ships going?”

Hunter had already scrambled up the highest dune and he now had the Japanese ships in sight as well. He watched as they went right by West Falkland point, and into the middle of the sound. They all bore to starboard and soon they were steaming down into the sound itself. Only then did the ships begin to slow down. Hunter and Asten jumped into the only jeepster available to them and tore up the road to the nearest cliff. From here they could see the whole sound and the coast of East Falkland beyond.

Over the next few minutes they saw the ships stop, throw out anchor, and begin to discharge in their landing craft. These amphibs were heading southeast and entering a place that according to Asten’s map, was called San Carlos Bay.

Asten and Hunter stayed on this cliff for the next two hours, watching the invaders dislodge their troops and supplies, not quite believing what was happening.

But after awhile it was clear.

A miracle of some sort
had
happened.

The Japanese had invaded the wrong island.

T
HE PLACE WAS CALLED
Casket Island.

It was a small piece of land located in the middle of Falkland Sound, nearly equidistant from West and East Falkland.

The island was not much more than sand, rocks, and a few scrub trees. An ancient wind sock erected on its northwest edge provided the only evidence of human contact. In years gone by, the directional aid had been used by pilots flying into McReady field, one mile to the east. Now the sock was ripped and tattered, its pole barely winning the battle against the constant gales which swept up the sound.

The island was usually home to thousands of seabirds—terns and gulls mostly. But they were nowhere to be seen now. They had scattered during the brutal air battle at McReady the day before. At the end of that battle, an odd six-engine long-range-type aircraft had been shot down and crashed on Casket Island. Since that happened, the birds had yet to return.

The wreckage was fairly intact. The left wing had been partially ripped from the fuselage and the tail had separated after coming down. But the flight compartment was still in one piece. Indeed very few of the large array of window-panes in the craft’s bug-eye nose were even cracked. More importantly, the insides of the airplane had not been too seriously damaged.

This was one reason that Hunter and six of the STS commandos were now approaching Casket Island in a small rubber boat. There were things inside the airplane they might need.

Hunter had spent the day secreted atop a Point Curly cliff looking across the sound at San Carlos Bay where the Japanese were still unloading their invasion troops and provisions. The invaders could be clearly seen fanning out over the rugged landscape of East Falkland, setting up command posts, cutting slit trenches, installing weapons. Watching them for hours on end through his binoculars, Hunter’s intuition was that the Japanese were looking for something—but having a hard time finding it. He wasn’t sure how he knew this. There just seemed to be an air of desperation and frustration emanating from the Japanese beachhead.

Too busy invading the wrong island, the Japanese had not paid any attention to the plane wreck on Casket Island. There was a chance they didn’t even know it was there. The way the plane had come down, the wreckage could be seen more clearly from West Falkland than from the east. But it was probably just a matter of time before the Japanese did find the wreck. Hunter wanted to beat them to it.

The defenders of West Falkland all knew that the reprieve they’d received earlier in the day would be a temporary one. Eventually the Japanese would realize their mistake, and come across the sound to West Falkland. At the moment, the defenders needed every piece of weaponry they could get to bolster their defense. Hunter was fairly sure the bug-eyed airplane had intended to land at McReady in advance of the seaborne invasion troops. If that was true, then there probably were some special ops troops on board and these people would have weapons and ammo that the STS defenders on West Falkland could use. He’d convinced Colonel Asten of that fact; thus he was made lead man of this special mission.

There were other things inside the airplane that Hunter thought they could use too. Besides weapons, he hoped the airplane was carrying a radio, possibly one powerful enough to get a message to a friendly base and tell them of the suddenly desperate situation unfolding on the Falklands.

But most of all, Hunter wanted to examine the bodies on board.

Ever since he’d first spotted the invasion fleet heading for the Falklands he’d had a strange feeling about the whole thing. Things just didn’t add up, especially the motive for such an operation. If he was able to get to the wreckage of this plane, and get a look at the people who were flying in it, his gut was telling him he might uncover some answers.

The rubber boat made landfall right where they wanted to be: on the edge of a rocky beach about 300 yards from the plane wreck.

The STS commandos silently moved into the high shore grass, weapons up, heads low; like Hunter they were wearing black smudge camouflage on their faces and hands. It was a waning moon this night and the shadows were stark and bare. Still the STS men managed to make themselves invisible. They were so good at this, Hunter could barely see them and he was only a few feet away!

Once everyone was up on the beach, two troopers went ahead to scout the area in front of the crashed plane. The word came back that it was clear. Hunter and the others took their cue and ran the final 100 yards to the airplane. They made it with no problem.

Hunter was the first to reach the wreck. It was still smoldering in places. The crash was now about twenty hours old, yet some parts of the crumpled fuselage were still warm.

Hunter kicked in a side access door and immediately saw the first goal of this mission had been a success. The airplane was full of rifles, machine guns, and firebomb rocket launchers. It was also full of bodies.

The STS commandos immediately began hauling the cache of weapons out of the wreck and running them back to the waiting boat. Hunter stepped into the gory hold and made his way up to the mid fuselage. Here he found the plane’s long-range radio and receiver. The device was a total wreck, split in several places in the crash, impossible to repair. Next to it was a computer which looked a little like a Main/AC, all lights and knobs and buttons and things. But it too was smashed beyond repair.