Tomorrow War (2 page)

Chicago, South Side

I
T WAS A SWEATY
night inside the King Krabb Klub.

The place was packed as usual. A line of limos and taxicabs was stalled outside. Passengers were climbing out; a longer line formed at the door. Greasy blues were flowing out of the place. The streets were still littered with red, white, and blue confetti, the remains of the huge celebration ending the Great Pacific War, as the recently completed conflict against Japan was now called.

Details were few on exactly how the war ended—but people in this place weren’t as inquisitive about such things as in other universes. The war was over, ended by some secret military operations, and that was good enough for them. For the first time in nearly six decades, the United States was not in the midst of a global conflict. To them, peace was a very unusual state of affairs.

So the celebrating had been going on for nearly a week, and the King Krabb Klub, like the dozens of other blues bars along McKinney Street, had been packed around the clock since the announcement of Japan’s surrender.

There was no sign that the revelry would slow down anytime soon.

It was about midnight when a military vehicle known as a Jeepster pulled up in front of the King Krabb Klub.

Three men got out. Two were soldiers of the OSS’s military wing; the other was Agent Y.

One look from the doorman and the crowd parted for the three men like the Red Sea. Y left the two OSS soldiers at the door with orders to stay cool and not bother anybody. Then he stepped inside the foyer of the small but very hip South Side club.

As always, the man known as Colonel Crabb was sitting in a huge chair right near the front door. As always, he had a young beauty on each knee—short skirts, long curly hair, one was a blonde, the other a redhead. Like his knowledge of the blues, Crabb’s taste in females was always impeccable.

Crabb looked up and recognized Y right away. Their paths had crossed more than a few times in this universe—as well as in others.

Crabb was a big man, but he lightly lifted the two females from his lap and gave Y a hearty handshake. “Here to celebrate, I hope?”

Y just shook his head. “Have you ever known me to celebrate anything?” he asked.

Crabb took stock of the man. Y was small, wiry, tough-looking, perpetually twenty-seven years old. Crabb knew Y’s reputation inside the OSS was exemplary. And it was true, he’d never seen the man in anything other than an all-business mode.

Still that was a mold Crabb might break.

“Take a look around,” he told the OSS man. He swept his hand to indicate the bustling club. Beautiful women were everywhere. The blues band on stage was superb, the smell of Creole food and the aroma of fine liquor was thick in the air. “It’s criminal not to enjoy yourself here. At least have a drink ….”

Y shook his head again.

“I don’t drink,” he said. “Besides, I’m here on official business.”

Crabb’s shoulders fell a bit. It hurt him that anyone would not be seduced by his establishment.

“How official?” he asked Y.

The OSS man looked him straight in the eye.

“Hawk is missing,” he said. “And I need some help in finding him.”

Crabb just stared back at Y. Suddenly he knew exactly why the OSS man had come.

“Our friend is playing cards in the back room,” Crabb said. “I’ll bring you to him.”

Zoltan the Magnificent was in the process of pulling an inside straight when Y and Crabb walked in.

If possible, the small room at the rear of the club was smokier and smelled more of alcohol than the main room. Five men were seated around the table, ten young girls, in various stages of undress, lingered around the periphery. The walls were adorned with photos of old blues greats and long-ago sports heroes. A single bare bulb provided the only illumination. It cast odd shadows everywhere.

There was more than one thousand dollars on the table. The atmosphere was friendly but tense.

That all changed when Y and Crabb appeared.

The players saw Y’s uniform and gasped. Gambling was against the law, and no one wanted to have the OSS anywhere near such illegality. Some players went to hide their cards—but Y just raised his hand.

“Everyone freeze,” he said.

Then he looked at Zoltan’s cards and shook his head.

“This man is clairvoyant. He was once an officer in the U.S. Psychic Corps. You are foolish to play with him….”

The other four men just stared at Y and then over at Zoltan. It was true of course—Zoltan
did
hold a reserve officer’s commission in military psychic ability. He couldn’t read minds very well, but he did have success at correctly guessing which cards were going to be drawn at any given time from a deck. And he had just drawn an inside straight.

But now the thousand-dollar pot was vaporizing before his eyes. On a nod from Y, the other players began quickly pulling their money out and slinking from the table.

Crabb nodded to them. “Drink free for the rest of the night, guys,” he said. “Just keep your mouths shut, OK?”

The four men left the small room quietly, taking the girls with them.

Y sat down next to Zoltan as Crabb stood watch by the door.

The psychic was crestfallen, but not that surprised to see the OSS man. He’d had a quick flash of Y’s face about thirty minutes earlier.

“I could have used that grand,” Zoltan told Y as he rustled through the few dollars he still had on the table.

Y just shrugged. “Something more important has come up,” he said. “I have an assignment for you.”

Zoltan’s spirits should have soared at this. In civilian life he was a professional psychic/nightclub hypnotist. But his bookings had been very sparse lately. With the war over and everyone seemingly certain about the near future, there was no need for the services of a psychic. Oddly enough, that had been the attitude while the war was on, as well.

Now Y was offering him a job—maybe. But it would be for the Government and worse yet, the OSS. Not only did the intelligence service pay notoriously low wages, their assignments were usually fraught with danger.

“What if I’m not interested?” he asked Y.

Both Y and Crabb laughed. All three of them had spent time during the war against Germany in a place called Dreamland, up in Iceland. They all knew each other pretty well. And they knew if the gig was a paying one, Zoltan would be interested.

“Here’s the dilly-oh,” Y began, looking across the smoky table at the middle-aged, goateed psychic. “Hawk Hunter is missing. I’ve been ordered to find him. I can pick anyone I want to help me. My own psychic instincts are telling me I should pick you.”

Zoltan just stared back at him. He knew Hunter of course. They were friends—sort of.

“Missing?” he asked. “Missing where?”

“That’s top secret … ,” Y replied.

Zoltan looked deeply into the OSS man’s eyes. Then his face turned a bit pale.

“Aw, shit … that huge bombing?” he gasped. “The bomb that sunk Japan? Hunter was in on that?”

“He sank Japan for Christ’s sake, who else could have done that?” Crabb said from the door.

Zoltan closed his eyes and felt a shiver go through him.

“Man, he wasted the place …,” he said slowly, conjuring up a mental image of the newly expanded Sea of Japan. “I can’t tell you how many dead. But the vibes I’m getting tell me they were mostly military. Could that be so?”

Y nodded. “Most of the main island is gone. That’s the reports we get. And that it was totally under military control. Most civilians had been deported about six months before.”

Zoltan nodded. “Yes, somehow I knew that.”

Y looked up at Crabb, who opened the door and magically reached out and retrieved a tray carrying a bottle of scotch, a pot of coffee, and three huge mugs. He set it on the table, poured out three cups of thick joe, then added a gigantic splash of scotch to a pair of the steaming brews. He pushed one of the booze-laden mugs in front of Zoltan, taking the other laced coffee for himself.

All three men took a huge swig. Zoltan more than the others.

Then Y reached inside his uniform pocket and came out with a photo of the huge B-2000 bomber that had dropped the superbomb on Japan.

Zoltan took one look at the airplane and felt another series of shivers go through him.

“Oh, man, them is some bad vibes,” he said, nervously pulling on his goatee. “Talk about the angel of death. And look at the size of that thing!”

“Are you saying it will be easy to find?” Y asked.

Zoltan studied the photo. The airplane looked like a battleship with wings.

“Even the moon is hard to find if you don’t know where to look for it,” he replied solemnly.

“OK,” Y said finally. “Here’s what I have to do: I’ve been ordered to assemble a small—a very small—expeditionary force. We transit to Asia and look for, and hopefully find, Hawk and the rest of his crew.”

Zoltan looked up at him. “And … ?”

“And your government has requested that you come along,” Y told him.

Zoltan’s mind flashed through a series of images: bowls filled with rice, stagnant water, and snakes. Lots and lots of snakes. He shivered again.

“What would be my role exactly?” he asked.

Y thought a moment. “As an advisor,” he replied. “Help me pick the rest of the unit. Help me get the right kind of transportation. Then come along and use your, well …
unique
abilities to aid in the search. Simple as that.”

Zoltan just laughed. Nothing was simple in this universe.

“And if I refuse?” he asked Y.

Y just smiled. “Then I’ll have to reactivate your military status—and
order
you to go. That way you’ll not get paid a dime over minimum wage.”

Zoltan looked up at Crabb for help, but the burly nightclub owner was deep into his booze-laced coffee cup.

Zoltan turned back to the OSS agent.

“Well, I guess I have no choice,” he said.

Y shook his hand. “Welcome aboard,” he said quietly. “Let’s set up a time tomorrow so I can brief you.”

Zoltan wiped the sweat from his lip. He had a very bad feeling about all this.

“Are you talking about a search party or a body-recovery team?” he asked Y.

The OSS man just swigged his coffee.

“Well, that’s the first question I want to ask you,” he said.

Y moved a bit closer to him. Crabb made sure the door was locked.

“Can you tell … ?” Y asked, his words trailing off. Zoltan just looked at him. “What? If Hawk is still alive?”

Y nodded solemnly. “Are any of them still with us?” Zoltan felt a sweat break out on his forehead. “I’m not so good at that particular aspect of thought transfer.”

Y’s face became grim. “Take a guess.”

Zoltan wiped his brow, closed his eyes, and put his hand to his right temple. He stayed like that for a very long time.

“If I had to guess,” he finally replied slowly, “I’d say ‘no.’”

A cold chill suddenly swept the room.

Zoltan was shaking his head.

“Nope,” he said quietly. “I’m afraid none of them are still alive”

Y stared down at his hands for a moment. “Will that make our job harder or easier?”

Zoltan laughed grimly.

“You should know by now, my friend, that looking for the dead is much more difficult than finding the living,” he said.

He paused a moment, then saw quick visions of an empty ocean, a jungle on fire, and a very long railroad track.

“Yes,” he added. “Dead men always leave a cold trail. And this one seems very cold ….”

Edwards Air Corps Aerodrome California

One week later

I
T WAS A BLAZING-HOT
day.

There were high clouds off to the west, gathering with a slightly ominous look to them.

Agent Y was standing out on an auxiliary flight line of the huge, bustling Air Corps base, sweating his ass off. All around him, gigantic Air Corps bombers were being decommissioned and put back into their hangar storage areas, possibly never to see combat again. He nervously checked his watch. Timing was everything in this world. And unlike the big bombers and their crews, so soon returning from war to the rest of their lives, Y’s future was now being compressed into a very small window of time, one that would keep closing at a very rapid pace.

One week had passed since the meeting in Chicago at Crabb’s club. It had been a hectic seven days for Y. He had spent the majority of it in Washington getting briefed for his impending search mission by a legion of military and OSS higher-ups. Listening patiently to their cautions and advice, he’d pretended to take copious notes at each session—only to throw them all away once he’d left the Beltway.

The main concern in D.C. was one of appearance—that was the bottom line. The greatest fear of everyone he talked to was that the story of the whole superbombing affair would reach the media before the B-2000 and its crew were found. Hawk Hunter was a high-profile, if somewhat mysterious, war hero, and the public would demand to know what happened to him when word of the super-bombing eventually did leak out. The Government did not want to be put in the awkward position of having to say: “We don’t know what happened to him.” To do this would signal the country’s rabid celebrity-driven press to look into security matters that no one in the military or the OSS wanted them to see. It would also revive the biggest question of all: Where did Hawk Hunter come from in the first place?

And that was a secret no one who knew the truth ever wanted to reveal—Y included.

So Hawk and the B-2000 crew had to be found—and found quickly. Dead or alive, it really didn’t matter. The affair just needed closure, and it needed it now. Then it would be up to Y to write the last chapter in the history of the country’s sixty years of war. Like the huge bombers being put into mothballs, maybe for forever, this story finally had to have an end.

However, with Y tied up in Washington, it had been left up to Zoltan to gather together the resources they would need for the mission to proceed. There were a few times when Y had wondered if he would come to regret his decision to include the psychic in his search plans. Like it had once been said about someone else, Zoltan certainly worked in mysterious ways.