Tomorrow War (31 page)

“Nice little party you got going here,” Hunter told him.

Kurjan was not in the mood for jokes.

“They’ve got us by the balls and they know it,” he said. “They’re asking for a complete surrender of arms and an orderly transfer of all our troops to them as POWs—
before
the Black Army gets here.”

Hunter felt his heart sink a mile in his chest. This wasn’t going to be an armistice or a cease-fire. It was a call for an out-and-out surrender.

“Well, we can’t allow all your guys to fall into their hands,” Hunter told Kurjan in no uncertain terms. “Especially since we know what’s
really
going to happen once the Black Army arrives.”

Kurjan just nodded grimly.

“Well, that’s one little secret I have yet to tell them, simply because I know they won’t believe me when I do,” he said.

This got Hunter thinking. Was there an advantage in letting the Blues know what Von Baron had told them?

Possibly—if they could gauge the Blues’ reaction and then work around them.

Hunter turned back to Kurjan.

“Any of your superiors want another opinion on all this?” he asked the intell man, indicating the three grim-faced Red Army generals sitting at the table with the Blues.

“At this point I think they’d love one,” Kurjan replied.

Hunter turned back to JT and had a whispered conversation with him. There was an orgy of head nodding, and then the pilot sprinted back to the Bug and took off in a great whoosh.

“The problem here is,” Hunter began telling Kurjan, “we’ve been playing by the rules. And apparently, we’re the only ones who have been. We’re really facing a shitty stick here, and I think we have to break a few nuts to get out of it.”

Kurjan just wiped his tired brow.

“Are you suggesting that we fight on?” he said.

“Not exactly,” Hunter replied with only the slightest hint of a grin.

Kurjan returned to the table while the others stood silently nearby. In less
than
five minutes JT returned in the Bug—with a passenger.

It was Von Baron.

They brought the prisoner up to where Hunter and the others were waiting. Kurjan once again excused himself and walked over.

“Please tell me this is just one bit of a bigger plan, Hawk?” he said to Hunter.

“That’s a correct assumption,” Hunter replied. “I hope …”

They took Von Baron’s leg and hand irons off. Then Hunter grabbed him by the collar.

“OK, listen, Sluggo,” he began, pronouncing the man’s unlikely nickname with no little contempt. “I want you to go over there and tell those assholes in blue everything you told us—including the plans for the Blacks to bum-fuck them as soon as they arrive on the scene.
Capisce?”

A look of terror came across Von Baron’s face.

“Jeesuz, man, I-I can’t do that,” he stammered. “Telling you g-guys is one thing. Telling the Blues what the Blacks are going to do—they’ll cut my n-nuts off right here and now!”

“Rather take another ride in my jet?” Hunter threatened him.

Von Baron just stared back at him. Hunter’s grim expression left no doubt that if Von Baron went for another trip on the VTOL, it would be much longer and much higher and much colder than his initial journey.

Sluggo gulped and said: “OK, I’ll tell them. But what becomes of me after that?”

Hunter looked into Sluggo’s eyes and saw the lives of hundreds of innocent victims staring back at him.

“We’ll let them decide that,” he replied simply.

Von Baron gulped again and then was led to the table by Kurjan. A stiff wind blew across the trench line—hundreds of soldiers were standing all along the battered landscape watching these events unfold. It was like someone had pushed the pause button on the dirty, little war. No one doubted that it would continue again very soon, so the respite was not a very pleasant one.

Hunter and the others were out of earshot from the table, but they did not need to hear what was going on. Von Baron was telling his story to the astonished Blue Army officers—and it was obvious they were not taking the story well. At one point Von Baron was seen pleading with them to believe him, but it was clear that they did not—at first anyway.

Finally the Blue Army officers simply held up their hands and indicated they had had enough conversation. They packed their documents and their white flag and started walking back across the bridge toward their lines.

That’s when one of them stopped, thought a moment, and then walked back to the table where the Red Army generals and Von Baron were still seated. Without a hint of warning, the Blue Army officer took out his pistol, put it against Von Baron’s ear, and pulled he trigger. Sluggo went over like he’d been hit by a two-ton weight. Head blown away, he was dead before he hit the ground.

The Blue Army officer then holstered his weapon and walked back across the bridge.

“Well, I guess they finally believed him,” Fitz observed dryly.

“But what has any of this bought us?” Ben asked Hunter.

Hunter scratched his own weary face.

“It’s bought us the one thing we need now more than anything else,” he replied.

“And that is?” Ben wanted to know.

“Time,” Hunter replied quietly.

H
UNTER NEVER DID GET
back to sleep.

He returned to his billet, with a stack of maps under his arm, and spent the rest of the daylight hours studying them.

Meanwhile, the artillery duels began anew less than thirty minutes after the abbreviated surrender talks concluded. Fighting broke out up and down the trench line once again. Fighter planes took off from both sides, and screaming dogfights were now under way just about everywhere over the front. It was business as usual in the fight for Kabul Downs. But Hunter knew these days of routine combat were quickly coming to an end.

Things were changing very rapidly, and if he couldn’t cook up some logical plans, then the Red Army was going to be squeezed like a melon in a vise—and he and his friends would be squeezed right along with it.

So he tried to block out the sounds of the combat while he studied the maps, but it was not working. Maybe his head was too full of things he was trying to keep down, because if anything the sounds of the fighting seemed louder this day than any other time he could recall.

Why had he come here? It was the question that ate at him nonstop.

He’d come on the advice of a ghost. But, really, that was not an answer. Was there a
purpose
to his being here, and to his dragging just about every friend he had in this new world to this place, possibly to die like dogs in these bloody trenches?

The fighting seemed very loud as he considered the dangerous selfishness that had been running his life lately. And the questions just would not stop dogging him.

Why was he here? To help the Reds fight for their way of life? No, that wasn’t it. To help them free some mysterious princess that few people had even seen? That sounded like a bad video game. What was it, then? Was he here because there were no other wars for him to fight? Was he here simply so he could play hero yet again?

Those last two questions chilled him right to his bones. Maybe the whole ghostly encounter on the superbomber had been some kind of self-induced hallucination, a way for him to rationalize his thirst to be in combat, to play the hero, to always be seen as the savior of the day. If that was the case, then his selfishness ran miles deep and miles high. To endanger his comrades, half of whom came with him on the most dangerous mission ever planned, and the other half came looking for him after he essentially went AWOL—to endanger all of them and wreak havoc on their families, just for another shot of glory, there was no more selfish act in the world, if all that was true.

But was it?

Was that really why he’d been compelled to come to this place at this time?

The simple answer: He just didn’t know.

Night fell and the sounds of the war got even louder. There’d been no slacking off with the sunset today. The Blues knew they would soon have a vast advantage over the Reds—what Von Baron told them notwithstanding. If the Blues were to make their move soon, it would have to come tonight. Only an attack on the Reds could solve both their problems; in effect, only that could work to defeat both their enemies.

Hunter walked out of his tent and looked back at the city. The night sky was already afire with the ongoing artillery duel. Sirens were blaring, smoke was rising up in many places along the war-torn landscape. What secret lay for him inside that place? Would he ever know?

He walked over to the volunteer officers’ billet. The first person he saw was Y. Slouched over a map table, he was drunk again. The Jones boys were there. Hunter approached them. He was sure of very few things these days, but when it came to these two, there really was no question: he’d known them both Back There. And like now, they had been valiant, heroic, brave, and loyal soldiers. It was on those attributes that Hunter now had to make a request—one that had to be fulfilled if the Red Army on the southern flank had any hope of escape.

The conversation with the Jones boys lasted but five minutes. The two pilots agreed to perform their part in Hunter’s bold plan to save as many Red Army soldiers’ lives as possible. They all saluted each other and then the two pilots ran out to the base auxiliary hangar, dragged out the last working Bug copter, and immediately took off. They disappeared over the southeastern horizon.

Hunter watched them go, hoping against hope that they could find exactly and quickly what he had asked them to look for.

Next he walked over to the intell hut where Kurjan and his men were still poring over maps of the battlefield.

Hunter laid out two of the maps he’d been studying all afternoon. One showed the Red Army’s western flank, the other its eastern. Hunter’s suggestion was that both flanks start withdrawing immediately. Under the cover of night, the western flank soldiers could move up into the mountains west of Kabul Downs, the eastern lines could move into the relative safety of Pakistan. If the timing was right and the Blues were otherwise occupied, the withdrawal could go smoothly and nearly ninety thousand men would be spared. But that still left about five thousand inside what Hunter had termed the “southern pocket.” With the expected advance of the Black Army from the south, and the anticipated offensive from the Blue Army to the north, there would be little room left for these troops to maneuver once the battle began in earnest. That’s where Hunter would have to become the most creative.

Kurjan agreed to send the withdrawal plans up to his high command, where he was confident they would be put into action. As to the fate of those left inside the pocket, Hunter knew that small groups of soldiers would be able to get away while the big fight to come was going on—but there would always be some leftover soldiers who would have to take the brunt of the combat while allowing these comrades to slip away.

What fate these men would face was impossible to say. At this point, only the Cosmos knew, and at the moment, no one from that place was doing any talking.

Finally Hunter walked over to the flight line. Fitz, JT, and Ben were waiting for him here, just as he had asked them to be earlier. The two VTOL jets and the pair of Bantams were also waiting, fueled up and guns chock-full of ammo. The Red Army ground personnel had just completed a tentative inspection of the four unusual jet fighters. They had pronounced them ready for combat.

“Everyone ready?” Hunter asked his three friends.

There were three solemn nods in reply.

But there was one thing they needed before they all took off: adequate head protection. There were no crash helmets in the jets. The four men finally had to settle for battle helmets of the type worn by Red Army soldiers.

They were more reminiscent of a German Army helmet from Hunter’s version of World War One, a kind of oversized Fritz helmet, bright red with thick netting inside and out.

“We won’t win any fashion awards with these,” Hunter said, trying on several helmets before finding one that fit. “But they should do the job.”

With that, they all prepared to climb into their respective airplanes—Hunter and Fitz in the VTOLs; Ben and JT in the Bantams.

Seeing this gave Hunter pause. He actually felt a lump grow in his throat

Been awhile since we’ve all flown together,
he thought to himself, watching as Fitz, Ben, and JT climbed into their airplanes.

What were the chances, he thought, that his three closest friends in his previous life, would also be pilots in this one, even though one was a family-man hobbyist, one a professor, and one a near-retirement reservist?

Actually, knowing a bit now about transuniverse movement, Hunter realized the chances for these stars to be so aligned were pretty good.

Hunter and Fitz waited for the two Bantams to taxi over to the runway and take off. The small fighters seemed to be going fast even while standing still. In flight they were so small and so swift, they looked more like large insects than small jet airplanes.

Once the Bantams were up, Fitz and Hunter started their own power plants. The VTOLs were noisy aircraft, but their overloaded engines made up for the racket with pure flying power. Hunter watched the critical systems run up to snuff on his control panels, an exercise resulting in five green lights popping on. A weapons check proved his systems were also in good shape. He looked over at Fitz, who was waving thumbs-up back to him.

“Time to shake things up,” Hunter said to himself, applying power and allowing the VTOL to begin rising slowly into the air. “While we still have the chance.”

So began a very strange night in the battle for Kabul Downs.

In the next few hours, events would suddenly begin moving more quickly than anyone could have imagined—including Hunter. Even he could not foresee what would take place before the sun rose again.

Once airborne, the four pilots discussed a rather loose strategy.

The Blue Forces would soon attack the Reds’ southern flank—that was a given. The southern flank represented the piece of terrain closest to where the Black Army troops would be advancing, so clearing a path for their paid “allies” would be the most likely move by the Blues. This meant an all-out land assault by the blue bloods was inevitable.