Return of Sky Ghost (33 page)

These new targets were especially vulnerable. The warships and the Japanese airplanes at least had the means to defend themselves, as ineffective as they had been. But the landing crafts were defenseless. They had no real guns, no AA capability. They were big open boats with 300 soldiers crammed inside. Like fish. In a barrel.

The white jet tore into the first three landing craft in such mechanical fashion, it was gut-wrenching to watch—even by the defenders. The three landing crafts were suddenly on fire, suddenly out of control, their helmsmen dead, the steering systems destroyed. Two boats immediately collided and began spinning around wildly. The third turned 180 degrees and then perversely headed back out to sea, its hold on fire, the flames searing the flesh of the unlucky Japanese soldiers trapped inside.

The white jet pulled up, twisted around, let out another sonic boom, and disappeared again.

The survivors in the first line of landing craft were now making their way around the burning wreckage; some were within 500 yards of the beach. The words went down the trenchline. “Ready … aim …
fire!”

A great puff of smoke roared off the beach and headed for the landing craft. While many bullets pinged off the raised front ramps of the landers, many more made it over the sides, hitting the crouching soldiers in their heads and necks. Blood and brains were suddenly flying into the winds.

Still the landing craft kept coming.

Another fusillade erupted from the shore. This time it was joined by HE rounds fired from each of the four SuperChieftain tanks. Again the combined wall of fiery metal and lead went through the invasion craft, killing more soldiers and causing one boat’s engine to explode.

Still the landing craft kept coming.

Another sonic boom echoed as another SuperZero came down in flames out of the sky. The white jet was right behind it, finishing it off with a quick burst of machine gun fire. The jet lifted itself nimbly over the tumbling flaming wreckage, leveled off and its machine guns began chattering again. This time the targets were the landing craft closest to the beach. Again, every tracer bullet spitting from the sleek jet’s gun found a target in an enemy soldier’s brain or heart. Once again the landing crafts’ helmsmen were the first to be killed. Once they were gone, the landing craft went out of control.

The white jet streaked by in less than two seconds, firing off nearly 300 rounds, and ripping through soldiers on five landing craft.

But still, they kept coming.

Now the defenders fired again. Bullets, antipersonnel rockets, tank shells, firebombs. The wall of death hit the landing craft just 100 yards off the beach. It took out three boats and heavily damaged three more. But still, the remaining landing craft kept coming.

More than half the landing craft of the first wave had been destroyed. But this still left six afloat and nearly 300 Japanese troops still alive. These men were now splashing through the high waves, trying desperately to get onto the beach. In their throats their screams were stopped madly as they ran into yet another wall of fire from the defenders.

All this was playing out to the soldiers on the farmhouse hill like a surreal movie, with all the lights, the sounds, the explosions. But suddenly the cries of the dying became very real.

Someone else was watching the battle too. Standing on the front porch of the farmhouse, his battle helmet strapped on, the man was following it all. His eyes were continually locked on the white jet and the impossible maneuverings of its pilot. Whenever the needle-nosed airplane was not visible, the man searched the cloudy skies frantically until he saw it again.

In all this time, he could only say the same words, over and over again, for he knew more about the white jet’s pilot than the pilot did himself.

“My God,” the man kept repeating. “He’s an angel….”

Hunter was doing six things at once.

He was flying the airplane, hands on the throttle and stick, feet on the pedals. He was firing his guns, his thumb going numb from tapping the firing button on top of the control stick. He was following his airborne radar, looking for Japanese planes hiding up in the clouds. He was also looking at his surface radar and trying to find the best angles from which to fire on the landing craft.

He was also banging his MVP mercilessly, swearing at it, punching it, spitting on it, he was so furious with the thing. It wasn’t working. It was full of power, but it was refusing to clear itself. Its screen was a jumble of numbers and letters, confused and confusing, just like most of the crap here in this advanced yet still tube-happy world.

The destruction he and his jet plane were wreaking was happening almost by remote control. See the target, aim at the target, shoot the guns. Simple as that. Flying the plane was simple too, no matter what impossible twist or turn he was performing, it was like second nature to him. It was trying to get the fucking MVP to do something that was draining most of his energy—and that was very frustrating.

For despite what was happening below, it was still absolutely critical that they get a message to the outside world. That had been Hunter’s real objective in getting his plane working and airborne again. To charge up the MVP and send an SOS. But now the damn thing was charged to the max and still it wouldn’t even burp for him.

While he was screwing around with it, he’d put the white jet into a long elliptical orbit; this was the most efficient way for him to fire his guns and hit targets. The fact that he was doing it just 300 feet above the ground and a speed approaching Mach 3 gave it all that unreal blurry image. In one second, he would find himself over the beach, firing on the landing craft. The next, he was over McReady, tearing up a few taxiing warplanes. Turning continuously to the left, he was suddenly over the warships, raking the second cruiser with cannon fire. A few seconds later, he was back over the beach again.

It was a crazy carousel of speed and fire and death and all the while he was banging the goddamn MVP and screaming at it to do something. Anything.

Finally, after his third pass over McReady, the MVP screen cleared itself and began blinking:
Send Message Now.

It was as if the sun and the moon came out at the same time. Suddenly, there was light before Hunter’s eyes where since he’d come to this haunted place, there had been nothing but darkness. He passed over the second destroyer, pumping a barrage into its foredeck, and kept screaming left. He began punching words into the MVP—a long, yet concise message. He’d been rehearsing it for a long time, so he wasted no time now. The words began spitting onto the MVP screen faster than he could turn the jet.

He was sending the priority message burst to Agent Y and OSS headquarters simultaneously. He was telling them his current position, the situation, and how dire it all was. It took him just one pass over the beach and another over McReady to complete the message. He was sure anyone receiving it would recognize the circumstances right away and send help—quick.

But, after he scrambled the message and hit the Send button, the usual screen-blink from green to white did not happen. The screen blinked blue, and then came back as all red. The words it was showing now were:
Access Not Possible. Overload situation. Try later.

Hunter was barely able to contain his fury. Calm down, he told himself. Stay cool. Stay tight. After all, this might be a temporary thing. He tore up two more landing craft and hit the MVP’s send button again. Again, he got the overload message. He tried again, but to the same result.

He just couldn’t believe it. He was getting a fucking busy signal!

He tried again and again and again—to no avail. He imagined every goddamn Main/AC computer in the United States was plugged in at the moment, everyone feeding off the thing on the eve of the great American counterstrike and thus causing the electronic logjam. But the fools were cutting their own throats because down here, where it was all happening, the one message that
had
to get through wasn’t going anywhere.

He tried again and again and again—and finally the screen began blinking with a new message. It repeated the overload problem again, and then, in big red letters, it informed him that the next possible access wouldn’t be for three hours. Then it blinked off for good.

For Hunter, that’s when the sun went down again.

Colonel Asten knew the time had come.

Despite the grand heroics of his men in the trenches and the slightly frightening performance of the crazy American in his slightly unreal jet, the reality of the situation was now quite clear.

At least 200 enemy troops were now firmly established on the beach. Dug-in on the soft sand or using the many wrecked landing crafts littering the beach as cover, this vanguard was hanging on, at great cost, for the second wave of the invasion to come in.

The landing craft of that wave were no doubt still within the belly of the Japanese troopship which had just appeared offshore. Called up from San Carlos Bay at the first sign of things going badly, there was no reason for Asten to believe it contained anything less than another 1,000 or more heavily armed Japanese troops.

His men were preparing to fall back. Behind the beach was a small forest of scrub trees, then a large peat bog, then the east road. About a third of a mile up that road was the farmhouse they’d all been sent here to protect.

There was a series of booby traps and mines set in the woods behind the shoreline. Defending the road to the farmhouse would give Asten’s men an advantage, as they would be in possession of the high ground at all times. But these would simply be delaying actions. It would be just a matter of time before the enemy overcame them and marched up the hill to the farmhouse itself.

The problem was a failure to communicate, the cause of most major defeats. All attempts by Asten’s radiomen to get a message out on their field Boomers had been fruitless. Asten was sure that Hunter’s communications gear was not working either. They were all isolated here at the bottom of the world, fighting a battle which could literally turn the current war and perhaps affect history for decades, even centuries to come. Yet they were losing simply because there was no way to get an SOS out to any friendly ears.

At least no way that Asten knew of.

But maybe there was someone else on the island who knew of another way….

The STS commander figured the enemy was less than an hour from overwhelming his small force. It really was time for desperate measures. He left the defending force in the hands of his seconds, and jumped into the unit’s only jeepster. Ducking bullets that were pinging off his bumper as he slammed the vehicle in gear, he was off the beach, through the woods, and roaring up the road to the farmhouse in a matter of seconds.

The men of Third Squad were startled to see him coming; even more so when he crashed the jeepster into the farmhouse’s front gate, he was so much in a hurry.

He jumped out of the vehicle unhurt and ran up the path to the farmhouse. Gaining the front porch, he stopped before the front door, took a deep breath, and then began knocking loudly.

The man answered right away. Helmet in place, a look of concern was drawn on his face.

There were none of the usual pleasantries between them now. Asten got right to the point.

“Sir, we have about one hour left and …”

The man held up his hand. He’d been watching the battle from the porch or from inside. He knew how desperate the fight was becoming.

“I know you’re doing the best you can,” he told Asten.

“Sir, I must ask you an important question,” the STS commander went on. “Even if it breaks every security rule in the book, I must ask it anyway.”

The man nodded. “Go ahead….”

Asten cleared his throat. A series of huge explosions from the beach rocked the small front porch.

“Sir, do you have in your possession,” Asten began, “any method of communication—maybe a highly classified one—that we might use. We
must
get a message out for help immediately, sir, or …”

Asten let his voice trail off. He didn’t want to say the final words—and from the look on the man’s face, he didn’t have to.

The man steeled himself. This really was a desperate act. The facility beneath the farmhouse held many, many secrets and there was a means of communication he could use. But it was most unusual and he had sworn he would never resort to it, no matter what. But now, he had the lives of so many people in his hands, it would have been sacrilege not to attempt it. Though he doubted he would ever have peace again, once the deed was done.

There was another round of explosions from the beach. These sounded louder, closer. A Japanese SuperZero streaked directly overhead; Hunter’s Z-3/15 was right on its tail, firing madly. They disappeared into the low cloud cover an instant later, like they were phantoms fighting some other distant war.

Both Asten and the man had to hang on to the porch railings now, the vibrations all around them were so intense.

Settled that he was going to go ahead, the man had to ask the STS commander a very strange question first.

“Colonel, among your men, is there someone who is an orphan? Who has no family? No wife, no children?”

Asten just stared back at him. “Excuse me, sir?”

The man nearly lost his nerve. This
was
a hard decision to make.

But he repeated the question. Asten took in the words, thought about them, then replied: “Yes, sir. Private Andy McShook. He just came in three months ago. I happen to know he has no family. No relatives. He was raised as a ward of the state.”

“And if he should die,” the man went on, “the impact would be less than if it happened to one of your other men?”

“Yes, I believe that’s true, sir,” the STS commander replied.

The gunfire was getting closer.

“And Colonel, is it your opinion that
all
of your men will be killed within the next hour? Every last one of them, if something isn’t done?”

Asten didn’t even have to think about that question.

“Yes, sir,” he replied truthfully. “They will be dead. We all will be.”