Thunder in the East (13 page)

"C-5, prepare to be boarded by our landing fee collection officers . . ." came the reply.

The Irishman looked over at his friend in the copilot's seat and shrugged.

"Can't get away with anything these days," Hunter 148

said to him.

Fitz switched his radio over to intercom and called out: "OK guys, get ready.

The New Order Cosa Nostra are coming aboard . . ."

Next to The Circle, the overlords of New Chicago-known as The Family-were the Westerners' bitterest enemies. Soviet-backed and supplied, the criminals who ran New Chicago and the surrounding territories were still smarting from their defeat at the first Battle of Football City. Hunter himself had led a devastating air raid against the city at the height of that war, a raid which KO'd the city's once vast railroad system and fuel depot facilities.

So when the Circle took over the eastern half of the continent and more, the Family, still licking its wounds, simply sat back, signed a non-aggression treaty with them and let the conquering army pass them by.

Now The Family was working to regain its strength, just as The Circle was losing theirs. Its army-decimated at the first Battle for Football City-was now being rebuilt. Its war chests were again beginning to fill up; its tentacles were again beginning to spread.

When the Circle Army retreated from Football City, they headed north, toward New Chicago. Now the bulk of that force was camped 30 miles south of the center of the city-and paying The Family a fortune in gold for the privilege.

Allies like these The Circle could do without. It was only because Moscow was footing the tab that The Circle could afford the high-rent prices.

The moral of the story: Everything was for sale in New Chicago.

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There was a sharp knock on the bottom hatch of the C-5, and soon, two Family majors were standing on the flight deck, palms outstretched.

"What's the price, gentlemen?" Fitz asked them after introducing himself and Hunter as "merchants."

The two men looked at Hunter very closely, but the pilot knew he wouldn't be recognized. Although his face was well-known even before the big war, he was an expert at changing his appearance. For this occasion, he had dyed his blond hair to black, cultivated a two-week beard and popped in brown contact lenses to discolor his blue eyes.

"Ten bags of gold for landing," one of the officers ' finally said to them.

"And ten bags of gold per day • for parking fees."

"Is this negotiable?" Fitz asked them.

j

The two officers looked astonished. "Of course | not!" one of them said sternly. "Now pay up, Shamrock, or we got to call the Boss."

Fitz paid them twenty bags of gold, a fortune in New Order America.

"Now what are you doing here?" the other officer asked. "Business or just a stop over?"

"Business . . ." Hunter told them, pointing to the plane's cargo hold. "Some of those crates you see are filled with 50-caliber ammunition. We're meeting a guy here tomorrow who's going to buy them."

The Family officers studied the cargo hold for a few moments, then asked: "Why here?"

"Know a better place?" Hunter replied. "We don't need any flag-wavers mucking up our deal."

The officers shook their heads. "Well, you know there's going to be a transit fee," one of them said. "Plus a city tax."

"All of it up front . . ." the other added.

"But we have to get our money from them

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first . . ." Fitz started to protest.

"Up front. . "the Family officer said. "Those are the rules. And people who question them wind up in trouble."

Fitz shook his head in disgust. "How much?" he asked.

"Thirty bags of gold," came the reply.

The Irishman nearly went nuts. "Thirty bags!" he shouted. "The whole shipment is only going for sixty bags."

The officers smiled. "That's the price you pay for coming here," one said.

/

The other turned very serious. "Now pay up or we have our boys break the wing off this monster . . ."

Fitz came up with the gold. The Family officers then inspected the front of the cargo hold, and finally left.

"Whew!" Fitz said, stage-mopping his brow. "Did they fall for it? Was I convincing, do you think?"

Hunter patted his friend on the shoulder. Fitzie was a notorious skinflint.

"You acted like they were taking your own personal gold, Mike," he told him.

"Damn they would," Fitz replied. "I'd have shot them both if it were my own money . . ."

Three hours passed. Then, right on schedule, a battered old C-46 cargo plane came in for a landing at New Chicago airport.

The airport security force that had formerly surrounded Nozo now formed a ring around the unmarked cargo carrier. Watching intently from the C-5's portholes, Hunter, Fitz and the 12 crewmembers saw the same two Family officers board the C-46, no doubt to extract the various fees from them too.

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"Just as long as they don't snoop around in the back of that rig, well be OK,"

Fitz said to Hunter.

"Don't worry," the Wingman replied. "J.T. will be flashing that gold under their noses before they're even in the doorway . . ."

Hunter's prediction seemed to come true. No sooner had the Family officers climbed aboard the C-46, when they were leaving again, all smiles.

"That looks promising," Hunter said, as they watched the officers and the security tanks and APCs pull away from the old cargo plane. "Ready for part two?" he asked Fitzgerald.

It was just an hour before sundown when the chief of New Chicago's airport security, a colonel named Crabb, received an urgent call from one of his captains.

"Boss, you got to get over to that C-46 that came in today," the captain told him. "I think the deal between them and the C-5 just went bad."

"How bad?" Crabb asked the man. He was busy at the moment with a hooker named Irene.

"Real bad," came the reply. "The guys from that C-5 went into that ship about five minutes ago and they were packing the heavy artillery. Now we just heard a lot of shooting . . ."

Crabb shook his head in disgust. "I'll be right there," he told the captain, hanging up the phone.

He turned to the beautiful redhead. She had just finished undoing his buckle and zipper when the call came in. "Got to put you on hold, baby," he told her, redoing his pants and putting on his uniform jacket. "Got some trouble out on the flight line."

Irene looked authentically disappointed. "How long will you be gone?" she asked.

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"Not long," he said, putting his .357 Magnum into his shoulder holster. He reached inside his desk and retrieved a vial of cocaine and a gigantic dildo that had been left behind by another of his hired girlfriends.

"Here," he said, giving Irene the coke and the obscene modality. "Use these until I get back . . ."

Crabb walked out of his office at the airport's control tower and found his limo waiting for him.

He was upset and in a bad mood. If it were up to him, he wouldn't allow any outsiders to land at the airport to do business. The money extorted from the traders was usually substantial, but it never made up for the trouble that always seemed to break out between the buyers and sellers.

But as his limo pulled away and streaked across the tarmac to the C-46, Crabb knew that he couldn't change the rules of order at the airport. They were blessed downtown, at City Hall. And to question the mayor-whoever that may be this week-was dangerous.

Crabb arrived at the C-46 and was met by the captain who had summoned him.

"What's the situation?" Crabb asked him.

The captain gave him a shrug and said: "These C-5 guys play rough. They just took out every guy on the C-46 except the pilot."

"Just like that?" Crabb asked, mildly shocked upon hearing of the violence.

The captain snapped his fingers and repeated: "Just like that."

Crabb climbed the access steps and walked inside the C-46. He looked in the cargo hold and saw twelve-bullet ridden bodies scattered about.

"Jesus Christ," he said with disgust. "What a mess . . .

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It wasn't like he hadn't seen it all before. The deal goes bad, someone gets shot. But 12 guys machine-gunned to death? His captain was right. The C-5 guys did play rough.

"Where's the pilot now?" he asked his captain.

"Went back to the C-5," the man replied. "I think he was in on the deal from the beginning. He seems to be pretty buddy-buddy with that Mick and his friends."

A few minutes later, Crabb and six of his heavily-armed security guards were walking into the flight deck of the C-5.

"You boys made quite a mess back there," he said to Hunter and Fitzgerald.

Hunter shrugged. "Just a little disagreement," he replied, nonchalantly.

"Well, things like this are bad for our reputation here," Crabb told him. "The mayor doesn't like violence, especially when it's so out in the open."

"We don't like violence either," Fitz told Crabb. "So we have something in common with your mayor, now

don't we?"

Crabb looked at Hunter and Fitz and at J.T. who was lounging in the background.

"What was the scam, guys?" he asked them. "You really hauling fifty-caliber ammo? Or did you just tell that to those guys in the C-46?"

Hunter laughed. "Sure we're hauling it," he said. "We've been hauling it around for a year . . ."

Crabb laughed himself now. He could appreciate the simplicity of the double-cross. Entice a buyer for the ammo, agree to make the deal at a neutral spot, get the sucker's money then machine-gun him. Crabb knew these guys were real pros-they had even taken the added precaution of planting their own guy as pilot of the sucker's airplane.

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"Where you guys work out of?" Crabb asked.

"Been down in Mexico for a while," Fitz told him. "This operation works like a charm down there. It gets hot south of the border though, so we moved up to a more comfortable climate for a while."

Crabb looked around the cabin of the C-5. "This is one motherfucker of an airplane," he said. "What else can you do with it?"

A little bell went off in Hunter's head. Bingo . . .

"What do you have in mind?" he asked the man.

Crabb just shrugged. "Nothing in particular," he said. "But the mayor might be interested in hearing about you. If the right person mentioned you to him . .

."

Fitz already had the bag of gold in his hand. "Will you be talking to His Honor soon?" he asked, smoothly passing the bag of gold to Crabb. At the same time, Hunter was distributing a bag of silver to each of the lowly Family guards.

"Ill be talking to him tonight as a matter of fact," Crabb said pocketing the gold like an expert.

"Well, what a coincidence," Hunter smiled. "Be sure to tell him we said hello

. . ."

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It was midnight before Hunter climbed into his bunk in the nose of the C-5, determined to get some sleep.

But it came hard to him these days. Hundreds of thought were ricocheting around his head like so many billiard balls. The sudden "victory" at Football City. The mysterious cargo in the trailer trucks. The calculated race to the East Coast, using a plan where the slightest glitch could ruin the chances for liberating the eastern half of the country. Also he hadn't flown -really flown-in so long, his bones were starting to ache.

But it was this goddamn ache in his heart that bothered him most . . .

He reached inside his pocket and took out the small American flag. Carefully, he unfolded it, then took out the picture he always kept there. It was of his girlfriend, Dominique. This was the same picture The Circle had distributed to its drug-crazy troops during the Circle War when Dominique had been forced to be Viktor's mistress. Hunter had rescued her then, and 156

sent her to a safe haven in Free Canada. And although he knew she was in safe hands these days, it still did nothing to end his longing for her.

He looked at the picture, now dog-eared and faded. She was posing in a black tuxedo jacket, low-cut silk blouse, black nylons and short black boots. Her Bar-dot-like face, that blond shagged hair. She looked like a queen and that was exactly what Viktor had told his troops. Through no fault of her own, men died for her image. And in his twisted perverted plan, Viktor had taken her, both physically and mentally. Now Viktor was dead, and all rational thought would suggest that Hunter should hate the photo, hate how she had been posed by the super-terrorist. But the truth of the matter was that he didn't hate it. Quite the opposite. He felt an erotic charge run though him every time he looked at it. The best of both worlds is when your lady is also your fantasy.

He shivered at the thought of it. There were other women, but nothing like Dominique. He loved her. He wanted to be .with her. But when would he see her again? He couldn't answer the question and that was partly what the ache inside him was about.

It seemed like it had been this way forever. The two great loves of his life: his country and his girlfriend. He knew he had to fight to protect both-to the death, if necessary. But his country was at peril now, so he knew his place was here, fighting for it. But every minute he spent away from her, he felt that she was slipping that much farther away from him.

He softly kissed the photo, did the same to the flag, then carefully placed them back inside his pocket. He knew he had to think of other things or he'd never get to sleep . . .

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The A-37 Dragonfly streaked up the eastern edge of the Illinois River, no more than 50 feet above the ground. Ben Wa was at the controls of the small, yet rugged jet; Yaz was sitting in the right hand side copilot/gunner/navigator seat. Usually used as a COIN-for counter-insurgency-aircraft, this Dragonfly was on a different mission. Its two jet engines were quiet, its small size to its benefit, and still, it was able to carry a lot of gear.

In other words, it was easily converted into an armed spy ship. N

Ben and Yaz were looking for the Circle's convoy of trailer trucks. United American Army spies in the New Chicago area reported to them shortly after the retaking of Football City that although the bulk of the Circle Army was now camped just inside New Chicago's secure defense perimeter, the mysterious convoy of trucks-and the elongated APC-were not with them. Therefore, they could only assume that for