Tomorrow War (19 page)

“And that’s where our friends took this huge armored train?” Seth Jones asked.

Swami just nodded. “Right into the heart of the Badlands,” he said. “That railway link, which the Japanese built on the backs of millions of slave laborers, stretches all the way to Europe. I don’t know how far your friends went in their journey—or why. But my best guess is that you will find them dead not too far up those tracks.”

Swami sighed. “It’s too bad,” he said sadly. “They seemed like such valiant chaps.”

There was another silence and everyone involved realized that there really wasn’t too much more to say.

So the Americans got up, and the Jones boys thanked the monk politely.

Then they started down the hill again.

But they got only halfway down when they stopped and had a quick animated discussion. Then Dave Jones came running back up the hill.

“One last question, sir?” he asked the monk. “If all of our friends left on the train, where is the big airplane?”

The monk just smiled and pointed to the rolling hills on the valley floor before them.

“Your big airplane,” he said, “is right in front of you ….”

Jones spun around but could see nothing but the rolling hills of the small river valley.

But then he took a closer look and—like a puzzle that suddenly comes together before one’s eyes—Jones started seeing the outline of something at the far end of the long, thin valley. What appeared to be the tallest hill was about the same size as the tail fin of the B-2000. And the rolling hills in front of, and branching out from east to west—they were in proportion to the size of the B-2000’s fuselage and wingspan.

He spun around to the swami.

“Are you s-saying …?” he stuttered. “Could it be?”

“The grass grows very fast here,” the swami replied. “Especially when the earth wants to hide something very badly.”

S
AND.

It was everywhere. In his eyes. In his mouth. In his ears. In his beard. Up his nose. This is the first thing Viktor was aware of. Sand. In his pants, between his toes, sloshing in his boots.

He opened his eyes and saw sand like he’d never seen before. It was pure white—like billions of tiny diamonds. The glare was enough to cause him to shut his eyes again, and this only caused him further discomfort. With a shaky hand, he reached up and tried to wipe the sand from his eyes. He was only partially successful—but his vision cleared enough to allow him to see his surroundings.

That’s when he thought he had died and gone to Heaven.

He was lying on the beach of a tropical paradise. The sun was shining, he could feel its warmth drying out his soggy bones. The water trickling down around his feet was crystal blue. Never had he seen water like that. And up on the beach, palm trees were swaying. Bright red and yellow flowers were everywhere.

So this is what Heaven is like, he thought, still extremely groggy. Not bad. Not bad at all ….

It was early dawn and he was on the beach alone, and though he was conscious at the moment, he felt like he was halfway between being awake and still dreaming. His head felt like there were a million flies buzzing around inside. He picked up his hands again and realized that he was feeling pain—and this fact alone brought him back to reality and told him he was not in Heaven because he would certainly not feel pain in Heaven.

But was this Hell, then? With crystal water, diamond sand, and the brightest flowers he’d ever seen? Not likely.

So where was he?

The part of him that was still unconscious and dreaming felt something sharp against his right hand. He was able to move a bit and see that he was actually lying atop a piece of wreckage. It was metal and heavy and had very sharp edges. Even in this dreamlike state, Viktor knew something was wrong. How could this piece of whatever be able to float? It was physically impossible.

This intrigued him, so he began moving off this impossible life raft. It took some effort, but he was able to wiggle and roll and snake his way to the beach itself. Then, barely looking up, he realized this thing he’d floated in on was part of a ship’s hull. It was evident by the construction and the number of rivets. In fact, it looked like it was a piece of hull torn off with a gigantic hand. But how did he come to find himself on it?

He remembered nothing since being swamped by the wave off of Cape Horn. How much time had passed since then? He felt his beard—two days of growth, maybe three. Had he really been floating unconscious on this piece of heavy metal for three days?

The thought of that was so bizarre, so impossible, he felt a jolt of panic run through him.

He crawled closer to the piece of wreckage and was amazed that he could actually read some lettering, which had been bonded into the metal. It was done in gold leaf, with very distinctive scrolling letters. It consisted of two words, two words he did not understand, yet felt were vaguely familiar to him.

“Fire Bats?” he
whispered to himself, reading the words before he went unconscious again. “What the hell does that mean?”

When Viktor woke again, he convinced himself again that he was in Heaven.

This time he had more proof …

He was surrounded by six young females, all of them beautiful, all of them topless.

One had half a coconut filled with water and was gently caressing Viktor’s head and trying to sprinkle a few drops into his very dry, salt-caked mouth.

As it turned out, Viktor’s mouth was closer to this girl’s naked right breast than the coconut, and even in his deteriorated state, he found a thrill run through him.

Yes, he told himself, this is Heaven.

Then he slipped back into unconsciousness.

When Viktor awoke a third time, he was lying on a straw mat, staring up at a thatched ceiling.

His head was bandaged, his wounds had been cleaned, and his body had been washed.

He turned his head and focused his bleary eyes. Nothing he saw dispelled this notion that he had died and gone on to some eternal reward. There were now two dozen topless beauties sitting nearby, watching him intently. Some were holding half coconuts filled with water, others had more bandages and clean clothes, waiting to tend him again. One was holding a huge tray of food—fruit mostly. And of all the things ailing him, hunger was paining Viktor the most.

He must have made some motion to his mouth because this girl was soon at his side, gently inserting pieces of a pearlike fruit between his lips. She smiled so sweetly as she did so, Viktor must have smiled back, because she was soon kissing his cracked and balmed lips.

Multicolored lights filled his eyes now. There were red flowers everywhere and their perfume filled the air. He could see out the front door of the grass hut for the first time and realized it was located on a cliff overlooking a glorious beach. In the distance, near the edge of this cliff, he could see a crude wooden structure that looked a bit like an airplane, covered with dead flower petals, nose pointed skyward. A half-dozen very small firepots sat smoldering around this odd sculpture, dispensing a sickly sweet cinnamon smell.

The young girl kissed him again, and in the movement, Viktor felt her tiny breasts brush against his bare shoulder. Another thrill ran through him. Then a second girl appeared at his feet and began rubbing his legs. Then a third began massaging his arms and fingers. All of the blood in Viktor’s body was now rushing toward his groin.

Yep, he thought. This
is
Heaven ….

But then a man’s voice broke the spell. The kissing stopped, as did the hand and foot massage. The sweet smells that had filled the hut suddenly disappeared, to be replaced by the acrid stench of body odor. The girls that had been surrounding Viktor a moment before simply vanished—he saw them flee to the corner of the hut and begin cowering there.

Viktor wiped his eyes again—he didn’t think things like BO and cowering young girls were fixtures in Heaven. At least, he hoped they weren’t.

He managed to prop himself up on one elbow and looked behind him, only to discover a man was standing there, staring down at him. It was from him that the body reek was emanating. He was very large and very dirty, his face oily, his chin covered with all sorts of unidentifiable stains, his beard containing bits and pieces of food, all of which appeared to have been harbored there for a while.

This man was gaping at Viktor, his mouth wide open, displaying a set of very rotten teeth.

“Who … who are you?” he began babbling in broken English.

“I have to ask you the same thing,” Viktor replied. “And I must ask where I am.”

“You … you were brought up from the beach?” the man stuttered again. “I heard there was a drowned man down there—but you … you’ve managed to come back ….”

Viktor’s back was beginning to tighten up. He shifted from his elbow and sat up on his knees. The man jumped back at least three feet upon seeing this.

“My goodness!” he cried. “You can raise yourself back from the dead!”

“I wasn’t dead,” Viktor shot back at him. “At least, I don’t think I was.”

He checked his own pulse—a funny gesture when one thinks about it. It was beating so hard, Viktor had to believe he was still alive. So if this was not Heaven and it was not Hell, where was it?

“You are on the main island of Fiji,” the man said suddenly as if he’d read Viktor’s mind.

Now it was Viktor’s mouth that dropped open. He stared back at the man as if the words he’d just spoken were still hanging somewhere in the suddenly putrid air.

“Fiji?”
Viktor heard his voice roar. “That’s impossible.”

“Yes, it is,” the man replied. “Just as a dead man can raise himself from the dead ….”

Viktor finally got to his feet. His entire body was aching from head to toe. The girl’s work on him had been all too brief.

He turned toward the smelly man. He was short and stooped, and Viktor towered over him. But oddly, he looked somewhat familiar to Viktor.

The smelly man stepped back another few paces as he stared up at Viktor.

“You … I
know
you,” he mumbled. “But I don’t know from where.”

“I feel the same way about you,” Viktor confessed. “What is your name?”

The man smiled for the first time, displaying even more of his rotten teeth.

Then he bowed deeply and said: “My name is Soho. And I think I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time ….”

Kwai River Valley, Thailand

“I
S HE STRAPPED IN YET?”

Zoltan checked the safety belts holding Y into his takeoff seat. Leg straps were fine. Body and shoulder straps … check. Neck strap, needed just a bit of tightening. His helmet strap was on and snug.

“OK, he’s tight,” Zoltan yelled back up to Dave Jones.

“Is he ever,” was the Jones boy’s reply. “OK, get in yourself,
this
is going to be more like a rocket launch than a normal takeoff.”

These were not words that Zoltan wanted to hear. No big fan of aircraft, he’d spent way too much time away from
terra firma
lately. When the aerial search party set down on this river valley the day before, he was secretly hoping that their quest would end here—that they would find the missing American fliers, hopefully alive—and that they could all go home.

But of course, he didn’t foresee that just the opposite would happen.

Their quest was just beginning, that much was clear now.

Though many unanswered questions still remained, there were some grim facts that were all too clear.

Hunter and his band of aerial adventurers had somehow made it here to the Kwai River Valley after the bombing mission on Japan, stopping first to drop off the tow plane at the battered plain at Long Bat.

Once here, and acting under God-knows-what premonitions, Hunter’s gang somehow secured a train several miles long, and stripped the huge B-2000 superbomber of all of its defensive armaments. They mounted them on the train and then left, heading west, for parts unknown, but most certainly into the most dangerous territory on this very troubled earth.

Why had Hunter done this? It was a question that Zoltan had prayed over since hearing the story from the swami. The real one.

Hunter was a special case. Very few people knew that he was a man who had no past in this particular world—but a very storied one in the place from where he had come. Zoltan was one of the select few who knew Hunter’s rather unnatural origins—and still, he did not know all, nor did he want to. (Only Y knew Hunter’s entire story, and look where it had gotten him!)

But Zoltan knew that the Sky Ghost, which was what just about everyone in America called Hunter these days, almost always acted on instinct and pure intuition. Indeed, he had a high degree of premonition, much higher than Zoltan, though he would be the last one to admit that fact to anyone but himself.

Even examining what he
did
know was of little help. It appeared now that after dropping the bomb that sank Japan, the superbomber had continued south, and that it put down at Long Bat about six hours later. But what happened in those six hours? This was another question on everyone’s mind. For it was in this period of time that Hunter had received his intuition. The airplane could certainly have made it back to friendly territory. If it had enough stability to make it to Vietnam, it could have just as easily turned east and made it to the Hawaiian islands. Why didn’t it do this? What happened to Hunter in those half-dozen hours? What did he see or hear that made him want to continue south—to Vietnam and then to here, in Kwai, and then to push on into the treacherous west?

No one knew.

Least of all Zoltan.

But still, what jolt of ESP would cause Hunter and his band to land here in this desolate piece of Siam, steal a train, arm it, and take off helter-skelter into what would also be certain death? What calling had caused him to take such a mysterious action?

What voice in his ear—or in his head—would even suggest such a thing?

Again, Zoltan just did not know.

But the story did confirm a few important things: Hawk Hunter was alive, or at least he was when the big plane came down here. From the swami’s story, that seemed almost a certainty now. No one else in Zoltan’s opinion could rally the manpower and dedication needed to do what the American fliers had apparently done.