Tomorrow War (20 page)

This did not mean of course that Hunter was
still
alive. Or even that he and the others made it more than five miles down the track.

But that was what they had to find out.

In a rare lucid moment Y had made that quite clear—their mission was to find the B-2000 and its crew. They had accomplished one half of that order. Now it was time to fulfill the second half.

No matter what.

Zoltan finally reached his seat and began strapping himself in. This takeoff was going to be rather dramatic for a few reasons. The escorting AirCat airplanes had all landed in the valley with the aid of their reverse thrusters; they would take off with these same rockets assisting their ascent and cutting down dramatically on the length of ground needed to get airborne.

The Z-16 had no such capability. Its long gooney-bird wings alone were more than double that of the AirCat fighters. But it did have powerful engines and an ability to fly almost straight up when it got airborne.

But that was the hard part: getting out of the narrow valley and getting enough running speed to actually get into the air. This time there would be no flight plan to help—no ghostly hands on the stick and controls making sure their takeoff was a safe one, as was the case back at Long Bat.

No, this takeoff would be done under the tutelage of the Jones boys, ultraqualified pilots in whom Zoltan had tons of faith and respect. But it took more than that to get a beast like the Z-16 into the air.

And try as he might, Zoltan just could not see into the future for this one. Would they survive the takeoff or not? He’d literally whacked the side of his head trying to provoke that thought bubble of foresight to come to the surface.

He looked over at Crabb now, the big guy was strapping Emma into he seat beside Y. Y was unconscious, and even though he was a good fifteen feet and a half-deck below him, the psychic could still smell the boozy odor coming from the OSS agent

This was not from brandy, though—the drink of choice for the OSS agent for the first part of this trip—this was the after-stink of beer. Cheap beer. Zoltan had smelled its odor enough times on the Grade-C nightclub circuit to know it anywhere.

But where had Y found cheap beer in the middle of isolated Thailand?

Simple: inside the B-2000 itself.

Once the swami had told them that the superbomber was right before their eyes, the Jones boys were able to cut through the thick grass and bush canopy that had grown over the massive aircraft, and this led them to one of the many entry hatches found along the fuselage of the flying behemoth.

Once inside the airplane, they had looked for more clues as to why Hunter and his crew had set off on such an incomprehensible journey. But no leads were found. Walking around inside the darkened bomber was like walking around inside a cave. It was dark, with only flashlights to provide illumination. The fuselage was perforated with literally thousands of bullet and cannon holes, stark testament of the air battle the bomber had plowed through going in to its target over Japan and getting out once the superbomb had been dropped.

The interior had been stripped not just of the defensive arms—some 162 machine guns, cannons, and small antiaircraft guns, plus dozens of antiaircraft air-to-air missiles from the wings—but also of all its computers, navigation gear, and communications suites. Its main and secondary onboard power-generating double-reaction engines were gone, as was the small operating room, all of the medical equipment, and all of the food and provisions on board for the crew.

But what was not missing—and what Y found as soon as he entered the haunting fuselage—was a load of beer that had been carried into the air inside a cooler installed at the last minute on the B-2000 by one of its crew members, a guy named JT Toomey.

Though little was known about him—as was the case with just about everyone else in Hunter’s crew—Toomey was somewhat legendary around Area 52’s Bride Lake, where the B-2000 had taken off on its one-way bombing mission. While it was widely believed that each member of the handpicked crew had come to the mission with a special, if innate, talent to help fulfill the bombing run, it was well known that Toomey’s main contribution was to install a beer cooler aboard the superbomber just prior to its takeoff.

In this cooler, Toomey had stocked more than two hundred bottles of cheap beer—approximately three bottles for each man on the flight. Once Y got into this cooler, he discovered all of the bottles still within—there had been no celebration after the aircraft had dropped the ultrabomb and had survived the brutal air assault by defending Japanese airplanes.

Again, why not?

There was no answer—but this didn’t bother Y a bit. While the Jones boys and the other AirCats were examining the B-2000, Y had had Emma and her companions help him load the cache of beer onto the Z-16, and it was now stuffed into the bunk he’d used to sleep through the first three days of the mission.

It was the stink of this beer that Zoltan now smelled wafting through the lower deck of the Z-16’s flight cabin. He sneezed once and looked over at Crabb. The big guy had just finished strapping the last “Brandy” in and was now locking himself into his jump seat.

Meanwhile the Z-16’s massive engines were already screaming at full throat. The Jones boys had about 4,500 feet of rolling meadow from which to attempt the takeoff. The AirCat fighters, as well as the HellJet cargo plane, had already taken off, using their rocket assists to ascend eerily above the river plain. The Jones boys had told their pilots that should the Z-16 not be able to get off—or if it crashed shortly after the takeoff—then they should proceed with the mission. They were to follow the railroad tracks until they found any credible evidence of the B-2000 crew’s whereabouts. And once this was uncovered, they were to fly home and brief the appropriate OSS authorities in the U.S.

Seth Jones called back one final warning for the Z-16’s passengers. Then there was a louder screech of engines, and the next thing Zoltan knew, they were moving very quickly.

But quick did not equal smooth, and soon, due to the bumpy meadow ground, the Z-16 was bouncing all over the place. The first thing to go was about a third of Y’s newly acquired beer supply. The airplane hit a large hump in the ground about ten seconds into its takeoff run that was violent enough to throw the plane about twenty feet into the air and send it crashing back down to earth again. When this happened, more than fifty of Y’s beer bottles slid out of his berth and smashed to the cabin floor below.

The Jones boys did not falter. They simply laid on more speed after the huge bounce and stoically continued the desperate takeoff run. The Z-16’s engines were positively screaming at this point Zoltan couldn’t believe there was any way they could generate enough power to give the plane enough speed to provide enough lift to get its big-winged ass off the ground.

Is this how it will end? That was the morbid thought flashing through Zoltan’s mind as the airplane began shaking so much he thought he could see some rivets in the fuselage beginning to pop. A brilliant if shaky career cut short on a isolated river valley halfway around the world?

As it turned out, the answer to that question was no—though it came close to becoming a reality.

The Z-16 was shaking so much during its last few seconds on the ground that any thing not strapped down went flying through the cabin at very high speeds. Zoltan could barely keep his eyelids open. Somehow he managed, and this allowed him to watch the Jones boys as they calmly and coolly raced the big plane along the bumpy ground until it reached its minimum takeoff speed.

Once achieved, they both yanked back on the steering columns and kicked in the double-reaction’s superflow. This felt like a foot in the stomach for Zoltan. The g forces were tremendous for an instant. But it was that kick in the ass that saved their lives as the big plane went up, faltered, and finally recovered just before it slammed into the wide railway span crossing the River Kwai.

The plane went straight up as advertised, and Zoltan was suddenly looking up at blue sky and the puffiest clouds he could ever remember seeing.

It took a long time before the plane leveled off and attained acceptable flight parameters. In those hairy seconds, whether they would stay airborne or not was still questionable, Zoltan was startled to see a vision.

He’d closed his eyes just for a moment to help relieve the g pressure in his chest. And when he opened them again, there was a person standing in front of him: pretty, middle-aged, brown haired, and sparkling eyed.

It was his late wife, Gwen! She was smiling at him in that very familiar way, where her eyes said it all: “Well, I pulled you out of another one!”

Then she blew him a kiss and disappeared.

The airplane leveled off for good a second later ….

T
HE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
inside the Z-16 were surreal.

Shortly after takeoff, the six aircraft formed up high above the River Kwai and, as one, turned west.

The railway ran a winding path for the next one hundred miles. It went through the heart of some very heavily forested jungle, passing little more than the occasional paddy or small lake. There was no sign of life below, no villages, no enemy guns. No hint of hostile forces anywhere.

As it turned out, this relatively peaceful first hour gave the six airplanes time to get into a solid formation and work out the best procedure by which to follow the rail bed.

After trying several different alignments, the Jones boys decided that a 1-3-2 formation was the best. This called for the HellJet cargo plane, now serving as the formation’s long-range eyes and ears, flying way up at twenty thousand feet. At about 7,500 feet the three AirCat fighters flew. This position gave them the ability to climb swiftly, should the HellJet need assistance; or dive, should they be needed down below.

Flying at just five hundred feet were the Z-16 and the remaining AirCat fighter. This heart-stopping altitude was dangerous, but the Z-16 had a type of terrain guidance/avoidance system that kept it at exactly five hundred feet, no matter what. This device also allowed them to follow the track bed itself without the Jones boys having to steer every twist and turn of the meandering railway.

The Z-16 featured a unique clear-glass belly canopy. Like a glass-bottom boat, this gave those on board an extraordinary clear view of the track bed.

Zoltan, Crabb, the five girls, and a drowsy Y were now in place around this look-down observation bubble, scanning the jungle and the track below, seeing very little.

But that changed as soon as they reached a village called U Thang.

It was located in the far western corner of Thailand, and according to their previously stored recon photos, at one time this place was a bustling train depot, a place where fuel and water could be taken on.

But the village of U Thang no longer existed. When the aerial formation arrived above the place, all they could see was devastation. The railroad yards were torn up almost beyond recognition, every building in the place was either leveled or still smoldering. Many dead bodies—and parts of bodies—could be seen scattered throughout the site. It was clear something terrible had happened at the village—and had happened fairly recently. Just what happened was a mystery. But one clue remained.

The track beyond the destroyed city—the rail that was stretching farther west—was still intact.

They continued following the tracks. About twenty miles west of U Thang, they came upon what they would learn was a military outpost manned by Khen’s soldiers.

Again, there was nothing left.

The ruins spoke of a substantial military fort, built of thick trees and cement, a five-sided heavily armored four-story structure that had featured at least thirty-six gun ports, which looked out over the valley of A Sang and boasted a wide field of fire. This was a place that must have had a garrison of at least one thousand men. Yet it was leveled and still smoldering, even though whatever went through there must have done so sometime ago.

They flew on.

The next site they reached was the ancient castle of Sing Sang, thirty-three miles down the track. This was a huge teak and stone structure that had been built twelve hundred years before and had been turned into various military outposts over the years. Sing Sang had a commanding view of two nearby valleys. One grew rice, the other boasted an ancient rubber-plant field. Both valleys were dotted with gun posts and observation towers; obviously, the people who ran Sing Sang had built these structures to maintain order over the slave laborers who worked these fields.

Nothing remained of these gun emplacements now. Every one of them had been blown up—the bodies of their gunners still remained, skeletons whose bones had been picked clean. Like in the other sites, it looked like the devil himself had cleared a pathway through the countryside, destroying anything and everything in his path.

It was at Sing Sang that the crew of the Z-16 first saw civilians. People were still working in the fields, but it was obvious they were no longer being used as slaves. It was also obvious that whatever had passed through their twin valleys had been a welcome sight.

Many civilians waved at the Z-16 as it flashed by.

It went on like this for a full day.

They passed out of Thailand and into Burma, still staying true to the westbound railway.

They flew over the city of Nsing by nightfall. It had been a major military garrison: There was evidence that many heavy weapons such as tanks and APCs had been kept here. But like in the previous sites in Siam, there was little left besides smoldering ruins and destroyed equipment.

It was obvious to those inside the Z-16 that the armored train’s prime advantage was that it was arriving unannounced in these strongholds of Khen. Combining surprise and its huge parcel of weapons, Khen’s men had little time to mount a defense. That’s why the destruction of their strongholds was so complete.

They flew over Mandalay just as the moon was rising over the eastern mountains. This once-bustling city, and obvious major strong point for Khen, was now a ghost town. The train had apparently gone through while a major shipment of ammunition was on hand because about a third of the city had been flattened, and the pattern of the craters indicated some kind of large ammo supply had been blown up.