Tomorrow War (3 page)

Y’s first assignment for Zoltan was to find a team to use in searching for the missing B-2000 bomber and its crew. Zoltan had just about the entire U.S. military to choose from, and Y had really thought the psychic’s ability would locate a team of tough, combat-hardened, special-forces types who would be just right for the job. Now, one week later, Y was, to say the least, skeptical about the group Zoltan had chosen.

They were standing nearby on the flight line, bags packed, ready to go. And indeed Zoltan had rustled up some special forces. But instead of arranging for an attachment from some famous Army teams such as the 882nd Airborne or the Air Corps Blue Berets, he’d somehow uncovered a fairly obscure unit of Sea Marines reservists called Unit 167.

There were twenty-six of them in all, and they were essentially shock troops. The odd thing was their specialty was not exactly combat search and rescue, rather it was taking over enemy ships on the high seas, and if need be, sailing them to friendlier ports. Why Zoltan felt the need to bring them, Y wasn’t sure, and with time running out, there was nothing he could do about it anyhow. Like it or not, Unit 167 would have to do.

Standing in line with them now was another person Zoltan felt should go on the mission: Colonel Crabb himself. Crabb was not a military officer, his “colonel” rank was one of pure invention. And while Crabb was an outstanding guy and certainly had a perceptive and level head on his shoulders, Y wasn’t really sure that the search mission would be something he’d find to his liking. After all, Crabb was in his late forties, and looked more at home with a drink in his hand and a blonde on his knee than a Fritz-style battle helmet and a double-barreled assault rifle. But when Y asked Zoltan why he’d selected Crabb to join them, the psychic had simply replied: “Two reasons: he’s a friend of Hawk’s, and my vibes tell me we’ll need a morale officer.”

Y chose not to argue the point.

Now they were all waiting for their air transport, and that would prove to be the oddest aspect of all.

When Y was first ordered to organize the search party, he was torn between going to Asia by air or sea. Flying would be quicker, of course, but there was always the pain of trying to find a place to land and refuel, especially in what might be a hostile environment. A surface ship would be slower, but their mobility options would definitely be increased.

When Y told this to Zoltan, the psychic did his fingers-to-the-temple routine and shouted, “Ah ha!” He then said he had just the dude they needed.

They were all waiting for this “dude” now.

He was late.

Y finally walked over to Zoltan. The sun was climbing higher, the air was blistering, and everyone was dressed in heavy jungle fatigues. It was getting very uncomfortable. And they were already one hour behind schedule.

“OK, swami,” Y said to him. “Where’s our ride?”

Zoltan was stung by his comment—it was a grave insult to call him “swami.” But instead of getting angry, he just closed his eyes, put his fingers to his temple … and smiled.

Then he turned to the east, pointed, and said: “Here he comes now.”

Y heard it a few seconds later.

It was a deep, growling noise, definitely an airplane but not like one he’d ever heard before. He keyed his radio phone and buzzed the Edwards tower.

“You have something coming in for us?” he asked.

“‘Something’ is the operative word,” the tower man responded wryly.

They saw it a few moments later. It was huge, it was airborne, and for a moment Y thought he’d at last been the beneficiary of Zoltan’s peculiar genius.

While Y had been torn between needing a ship or an airplane, Zoltan had cooked up a combination. What was now approaching them was a seaplane. But a very strange one.

It looked like an airplane Y was familiar with called a UVF-100 Super Albatross. But in this universe of bigger-is-always-better, this flying beast was at least ten times the size of the substantial UVF-100.

It carried twelve double-reaction jet engines on its top-wing assembly, with four wing float-pylons below, and a fuselage curved into a distinctive amphibious bottom. The plane was studded with dozens of observation bubbles and blisters, and was painted in a garish tropical-style yellow-and-green color scheme. Y could feel the eyeballs popping out of his head. This airplane seemed much too large to fly. If the missing B-2000 bomber looked like a flying battleship, then this airplane looked like a flying cruise liner.

The massive aircraft circled the air base twice—eating up ten minutes—and then came in for a landing, taking all of Edwards’s ten-mile landing strip to do so. Hundreds of wheels extended, its dozen jet engines screaming in reverse, it slowly rolled to a gentle stop right in front of them.

Five minutes passed, Y imagined it took that long for the plane’s commander to unstrap and climb down to earth. The hatch did eventually open and the seaplane’s commander dropped out. He was in his forties, a rugged individual, but with long nonregulation hair stuffed back into a ponytail, an ancient aviator’s cap on his head, a desert camo flight suit, and black sneakers. He was drinking a beer.

Y looked at him in amazement.

Zoltan was beaming. He greeted the pilot like they were long-lost brothers. Then they walked over to Y.

“I’d like to introduce Bro,” Zoltan said.

“‘Bro’?”

The pilot stuck his hand. “Yeah, Cowboy Bobby Baulis. But most people call me Bro, like in ‘brother.’ You dig, man?”

Y finally shook hands and found that the man’s grip nearly crushed his fingers.

“You’re the guy who wants to hop over the pool, right? You got your doodles packed?” he asked Y, sipping his beer.

Y turned to Zoltan for translation.

“He wants to know if we’re ready to go, for a trip over the Pacific.”

At this point Y pulled Zoltan aside.

“Are you certain about this guy?” he asked him sternly.

“Certain in what way?” Zoltan replied. “Is he a competent pilot? Will he stick with us? That sort of thing?”

Y just shook his head in frustration. “No,” he replied. “Are you certain that he is sane? That he has all his cards? You know?”

Zoltan just waved away Y’s concerns. “Believe me, Bro is as good as gold. I did an intense psychic background search on him. Just like Unit One-sixty-seven and Crabb, this man will be a vital part of the team. You’ll see.”

“It’s
essential
that he become a vital part,” Y told Zoltan. “We’ve got an important job to do and the lives of many people are in his hands. If he fucks up, it will be your head.”

Zoltan’s hand unconsciously went to his neck. As a youth he’d had the words “Cut along dotted line” tattooed around the back of his neck. Since then, any mention of his head leaving his body in an unnatural manner sent chills through his spine.

Y studied the enormous seaplane and had to admit it appeared well-kept, sturdy, and rugged enough. And it certainly looked nonmilitary; in fact, there were no numbers or markings on it at all. But even if it was falling apart, he had no choice but to use the winged beast for transport. Time was running out. They had to leave right now.

“OK,” he said finally. “It will have to do.” He gave the nod to Unit 167’s CO and soon the Sea Marines were trooping up the cargo ramp and climbing into the vast seaplane. Crabb climbed aboard with considerably less elan. This bothered Y. He knew that when the easygoing Crabb looked worried, it was usually time to be concerned. And at that moment the colonel looked
very
worried.

I
T TOOK ALMOST TWENTY-FOUR
hours for the “Bro-Bird” to make the Pacific crossing.

The airplane sailed through the sky like a huge clipper ship sailing across the sea, a slave to the shifting winds. At some points on the journey, its airspeed dipped to a perilously low eighty knots. Most times, though, it cruised at about 140 and change.

Still, the Bro-Bird was quite an aircraft. Besides having an enormous cargo hold, the huge amphibian held a crew of twenty-four, had room enough to accommodate the entire twenty-six-man Unit 167 with their own private berths, had a large galley the size of a midtown restaurant and a midlevel “function room” that was decked out like a nightclub. This place was called, appropriately enough, “Cloud Nine.” Colonel Crabb took to Cloud Nine right away. Show biz was in Crabb’s blood, and a few of Bro’s crew doubled as passable jazz musicians. Once airborne, Crabb soon had them up and playing his favorite songs. Drinks were served, tables put together. It was like being in the famous Blue Note—just four miles up.

No amount of music, however, could drag Y out of the funk that overtook him shortly after takeoff from Edwards.

For some reason, just as they got airborne, it hit him like a punch in the stomach: There was a real possibility that Hawk Hunter and the rest of the B-2000 crew were dead. Zoltan was convinced of it, and Crabb was, too.

Now sitting alone at a dark corner table inside Cloud Nine, nursing an ice water, Y found the same somber thoughts going through his mind.

Hawk Hunter.
Dead.

What did that mean exactly?

Y knew from his experience with the mysterious fighter pilot that his being in this universe was not at all typical. Hunter’s very presence affected the world in odd, subtle, and sometimes not so subtle ways. And there was proof. Over the years those rare persons who had claimed to see “angels” just assumed they were messengers from God, beings from On High. Most people, though, believed this was rubbish. But Y was privy to a secret study the OSS had undertaken after Hunter’s sudden appearance in this world about a year before. Combining information from his experience with reported “angel sightings” over the years, they concluded that somehow, some way, certain individuals had been able—maybe without their knowledge or through no fault of their own—to pass from one universe to any other. How or why was not known. But while these people looked and acted like anyone else on Earth, by their very presence they were just
different
and could have an effect on everything from raising the dead to winning global conflicts single-handedly. The study concluded that these people were what had been termed down through the ages as “angels.”

And Hunter was probably one of them.

Trouble now, this particular angel was, at the very least, missing in action. So what was really up to Y and the odd collection of personnel he’d pulled together: Find out whether or not angels can actually die.

And if they could, where did they go?

And what did that mean for the rest of them?

And what if …

Y shook away these disturbing thoughts and had them replaced by a sudden, very unusual craving for a drink of alcohol.

That’s when he saw Crabb approaching. “Bro says we’re over the G-spot,” he told Y. “I suggest we get up to the flight compartment.”

Y agreed and together they left Cloud Nine and made their way up through the gigantic airplane.

After a ten-minute climb, they reached the huge flight deck and found Bro hovering over the controls. No less than six of his men were at various stations around the cockpit, manning various instruments and monitoring gear, all of them necessary in keeping the mammoth plane airborne.

There was a massive tracking screen next to Bro’s control suite. It had long-range insta-film TV-projection capability, and at the moment it was broadcasting a wide swath of ocean, four miles below them. Bro’s navigator was at his side doing calculations on an immense laptop computer. The man looked slightly perplexed.

“The coordinates check out,” he was saying, with a tone that indicated this was not the first time he uttered these words. “But the visual doesn’t match. There’s supposed to be a huge landmass down there.”

Y looked at Crabb; Zoltan had now joined them. “The rumors?” Crabb whispered. “They could be true?” Bro just looked up at Y. Neither he nor his men had been briefed on this part of the mission. Indeed, it was still very top secret. But Y knew the time had come to let them in on it.

“Everyone on this airplane will have to sign a security agreement,” Y told them.

Bro just nodded; his men did, too.

“Wouldn’t be the first time for us,” Bro said. “We’re trustworthy.”

Y just shrugged and looked at the TV screen again.

“Well, if you’re not, my office will track you down and have you all killed,” he said matter-of-factly, adding, “Though I don’t know how they can keep such a thing secret very much longer.”

Now all of the crewmen were staring at Y. They had no idea what he was talking about.

Y walked over to the huge TV-projection screen.

“Gentlemen,” he said, pointing at the vast tract of ocean below them. “If our calculations are correct, that’s where the island of Honshu used to be. And right here, is where the city of Tokyo used to be ….”

Their reaction was a laugh at first. How could that be? they all seemed to say at once.

Then Y gave them a very quick version of the events from earlier that month: The U.S. had dropped a superbomb on Japan, and this weapon had exhibited more destructive force than anyone ever imagined.
Much
more.

“We still don’t know why,” Y said. “But that bomb apparently leveled everything and … well,
sank
most of the main island of Japan. As crazy as that sounds.”

Silence.

“And took several million military personnel with it,” Y added solemnly.

He felt a crushing sensation inside his chest as these words tumbled out. Even though the U.S. had been at war with Japan at the time of the superbombing, and even though the Japanese troops occupying South America and the Panama Canal had displayed sadistic excess in their domination of the South American and Central American people, the thought that the U.S. had dropped one bomb that
sank
quite nearly an entire country and killed at least three million people—it was almost too much to bear.

Y looked up again.

The crew wasn’t laughing anymore.

“I need a drink,” Zoltan said, breaking the silence.

“I do, too,” Y finally agreed.