Return of Sky Ghost (36 page)

There was nothing left. No woods, no beach. No farmhouse. Everything was black. Burned to a crisp. Tanks. Big guns. Bodies, everywhere. Dull black skeletons were all over the scorched hillside, some with the rifles still in their hands, like ghostly warriors still trying to take the hill.

He knew this was what the ground’s-eye view of a massive firebombing looked like. For once, he was on the other side.

He trudged down into the small valley between the hills and reached the periphery of the square half mile of smoldering soot.

What was the sequence of events here? Somehow the bombers at Xwo had gotten word of the battle on Tin Can beach. That much was clear. Hunter even guessed that they had probably been on their way to another bombing mission when a divert order got to them somehow—thus making their time to target very short. As well as their time
over
target. That’s why all the airplanes had departed so quickly after the conflagration.

But why would the normally pinpoint firebombers lay down such a wide swath of destruction? Had something been missed here? Had the bombers been mistakenly told that only enemy troops were on the ground?

He didn’t know, and at that moment he felt he would never know. Now, looking up the scorched hill, even the smell of death was not in the air. Like everything else, it had been burned away.

Hunter collapsed, falling in a heap onto the seat of his pants.

This was alone, man.
Really
alone. He was here in the middle of nowhere, probably the only living person left on West Falkland. Or maybe even on the pair of islands.

Alone, in the middle of nowhere. A wave of gloom came over him. Not only was he absolutely isolated here in this world—he was actually an entire
universe
away from where he was supposed to be. You couldn’t get more isolated than that.

His head sunk into his hands. His stomach turned itself up into knots. The glum feeling was hitting him with double punches now. When you really got down to it, even Back There, he’d been all alone. He didn’t have any family in the last world. His mother and father had been lost in a plane accident when he was just a kid. He had no brothers, no sisters, no uncles, aunts, or cousins. Back There he was as alone as one could get, as far as the family tree went.

Here, he was even more so.

It was strange then, that at that moment, when he was just sitting there, dejected by a factor of a trillion or so, he heard someone calling his name.

“Major? Major Hunter?”

Hunter shook his head at first—he was so sure it was his bruised brain playing tricks on him, he didn’t even bother to look up. It was the wind, he told himself, sounding like a voice calling his name.

“I say … Major Hunter? Is that you down there?”

Finally he did look up. And he knew that if this was an illusion of some kind, it was a dandy.

He scanned the unburned hill. Nothing. He looked down toward the water. Again, nothing.

Then he looked up at the pile of smoldering rubble that once was the farmhouse.

There was a man up there, holding up a cup in one hand and smiling broadly.

It was Colonel Asten. He looked no worse than if he’d just come home from a brisk walk. He was holding a white cup and saucer in his hand and beckoning him with it.

“I say, Major Hunter,” he yelled down to the man some people called the Sky Ghost. “Why not climb on up here and have a spot of tea?”

Ten minutes later, Hunter was sitting at one end of a long table.

In the other chairs around it sat six men, all in lab coats, all wearing glasses, all with the same haircuts and the same facial expression.

On the table in front of them, next to Hunter’s cup of tea, was the Bomb.

It was small. Smaller than he’d ever imagined. Smaller even that the six he’d hauled out of Germany. This was in fact one of those bombs, but it was in a different, more diminutive casing and its shape had been altered.

The men in the lab coats were trying to explain something to him about ions or quarks or quakes—or quacks. Did they really call subatomic particles “quacks” in this world? Hunter wasn’t sure, and he wasn’t going to ask. These six scientists might have been the most earnest collection of people he’d ever seen in one place at one time. To ask them a question such as that just wouldn’t be cool.

So he sat and listened about the little bomb with the big bang, and whenever he could, he would steal a glance at this fantastic place he’d just found himself in.

Sixteen levels below the earth. No wonder all of Asten’s men had lived through the firebombing. As intense as it had been, the STS men—only one of whom had died during the battle, remarkably—had been drinking tea by the time the carpet bombing up above had reached its full intensity. This was one time that calling in an air strike on one’s own position had actually worked.

But all that seemed oddly secondary now. The place he was in looked like a movie set—a common impression, he was sure. It had everything Frankenstein’s lab had, but all of it much bigger and much scarier looking. Electrode tubes. Strange bubbling liquids. The cranking sound of weird machinery.

“More secrets here than anywhere else in the universe,” was how Asten described it to him as they rode the elevator down into the belly of the Earth. The lift’s solid metal casing was the only thing left standing of the farmhouse.

It would hold secrets still. The first thing Hunter asked Asten was how in the world word had gotten back to Xwo Mountain to send the cavalry.

“I asked them that very same question down here,” the STS man confided in him. “They told me it was classified.”

Hunter sipped his tea and went back to staring at the Bomb.

“So you see, Major,” one of the lab coats was telling him, “the warhead has an ultrasensitive magnetic targeting device in it. It is keyed to vibrations in the Earth’s inner core. Therefore the Bomb will go to the exact spot it must go to
only
if it is released at exactly the right height and exactly the right moment. It’s a sort of an intellectual process we’ve been able to build into it. We like to call it the world’s first intelligent bomb.”

“Do you mean ‘smart bomb’?” Hunter asked.

“Whatever,” the coat replied.

“Thus the transpolar route you and your airplane must take,” another scientist began telling him. “The timer built into the warhead must take a full global reading to arm itself properly. It’s really a matter of basic magnetism and …”

Hunter wasn’t listening anymore.

His eyes were wandering again—his ears, too. He was certain there were more people down here than just those he could presently see. All of Asten’s men were jammed into a room with heavy glass windows nearby, drinking gallons of tea and reveling in the fact that they were still alive.

Hunter had the definite impression that other souls were close by as well, maybe just a door or two away. The people from the fishing village at Summer Point. He’d seen them being evacuated. Where were they now? And the girl, Chloe. What had happened to her?

There was another strange thing tugging at his psyche, too. Far down at the other end of the lab, there was a door that looked like it should be protecting all the gold in China, it was so big and thick and its locks were so elaborate. What lay behind it? Hunter strained his battered ears and listened very hard, his scrambled brains thinking that he could actually hear something coming from behind the thick door.

But the only sound that reached his ears—or seemed to—made no sense. To him, it just sounded like the blowing of the wind.

“… so as you see, Major, timing on this will be everything. Any questions?”

Hunter just looked up at the lab coats again.

“Well, just one,” he said. “If I’m really flying this weapon back to Area 52, then I need a plane to do it in. If you want it back there as
quickly
as possible, then I will need
my
plane. The problem is, it’s stuck in a mud hole about five miles from here.”

“No, it’s not,” one lab coat told him. “Your friend, Mr. Duggen, has already picked it up with his Beater and carried over to McReady—which is completely abandoned, by the way. The savages ran like dogs after the bombing. Mr. Duggen reports your airplane is in very good shape. You’ll be ready for takeoff as soon as you like.”

Hunter just shook his head. He was still somewhat convinced this was all just a dream. So why not play along?

“OK—well, then what about fuel?” he asked. “I can’t imagine there’s any extra aviation gas over at McReady, is there?”

The lab coats seemed worried for the first time. But then one stuck his finger in the air and actually said, “Ah!”

He disappeared into a workroom for a moment and reemerged with a small steel box. He put the box on the table and opened it. He took out what looked to Hunter to be a big, thick, white antacid pill.

“Fill your tank with water,” the lab coat said, giving Hunter the pill. “Drop this in. Wait five minutes and you’ll have a full tank of gas.”

Hunter stared at the pill then back at the lab coats.

“You sure?”

They all nodded as one.

“Trust us …”

They all checked their watches at the same time, and came to the same conclusion.

“It’s really time for you to get going, Major,” one said.

Hunter didn’t want to get going. He wanted to stay here and discover the secrets behind all the secrets and drink some more tea and look for the girl he thought was Chloe.

The lab coats had other ideas. They brought out a large metal pod which had two hooks on it. It looked similar to the fuel tank that he’d carried on his airplane, only much smaller.

They picked up the Bomb, not at all bothering to handle it gingerly, and put it inside the pod.

“This should fit nicely on your wing pylon,” one coat told Hunter. “You should have no problem transporting it safe and sound from here.”

Hunter kind of shrugged. His head was still spinning, he felt almost high. Maybe it was the tea.

“So, if there are no further questions, then …” one coat said. It was obvious they wanted Hunter on his way so he could deliver the bomb in a timely fashion.

“OK, one last question, then I’ll go,” Hunter said.

“Ask away …” two scientists said at once.

Hunter studied the six of them again. “You guys are all Americans, right?”

The scientists nodded their heads as one.

“And this is a very secret place, correct?”

They all nodded again.

“Then how come the Brits are defending it?”

The men laughed, all six of them. “Who do you suggest we get?” one asked.

Hunter just shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The OSS, I guess. They could certainly …”

But Hunter’s words were interrupted by the six men laughing again.

“The OSS?” one lab coat said. “With all the stuff we got here? Who the hell would trust
those
guys?”

Hunter visited the men’s room—it too looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. He washed his face and hands. He put his ear to all four walls, thinking again he might hear a voice or a sound or anything. But all he could hear—or
thought
he could hear—was the wind blowing.

He finally reemerged to find two STS men were waiting for him, as was his friend Duggen, the Beater pilot. He had watched the wild battle from the air, thinking that he might somehow help again.

“I thought I might catch you in flight—when you ran out of gas,” he told Hunter.

Hunter just stared back at him. Was he kidding? He didn’t want to ask.

Colonel Asten was suddenly there too. He shook Hunter’s hand.

“Thanks for everything, Major,” he said. “I understand you’re a famous one, back in the real world. Maybe we’ll see each other again some day.”

Hunter gave him a salute and fell in step behind the two STS men and Duggen.

Maybe we will,
he thought.

They walked back toward the big door which would carry them out of the lab and down the long corridor to the elevator.

As they reached the big door, Hunter was able to catch a glimpse of another room, one that he hadn’t seen on the way in. This room too was glass-encased and soundproofed, he was sure. And that’s where he saw her. The young girl, Chloe, was sitting in this room with the other civilians from Summer Point.

Hunter stopped. She looked up. Their eyes locked again. Her face lit up. So did his. He broke ranks and walked over to the window. She stood up and put her hand to the glass. He touched it—and damned if he didn’t feel the warmth of her skin through the thick pane. It was as if there wasn’t any glass at all.

She smiled. It was like she was recognizing him too. The other civilians were looking at this little display with a mixture of humor and confusion, but the two of them didn’t even know they were there.

She mouthed four words: “Is your name Hawk?”

Hunter nodded enthusiastically. Few people called him by that name here. But why had she? By cosmic design? Or had she simply read a newspaper sometime in the last nine months?

He didn’t know.

One of the STS men nudged him, at the same time looking at his watch. The meaning was clear; Hunter had to go.

He pressed his hand closer to the glass, and the sensation of touching real skin never left. She smiled again and he smiled and said, “I’ll be back someday.”

Then he turned and resumed walking with the STS soldiers.

In all that had happened to him here in the cold, cold Falklands, that encounter might have been the strangest of all.

They rode the elevator back up top, the smell of the scorched earth reaching them even before the doors opened.

They all stepped out. Duggen had landed the shit box Beater very close by. A chill went through Hunter at his first glimpse of it. What if he had made it this far, only to go down in a Beater crash during the short four-mile hop over to McReady?

Could the cosmos be
that
cruel?

The STS men loaded the pod onto the Octocopter, shook hands with Hunter, and bid him farewell.

At that moment, Hunter realized two other people were nearby. They were picking through the ruins of the farmhouse. They seemed overjoyed at the moment because they had found two framed pictures in the smoldering rubble. Somehow these two items had survived the massive firebombing.