Tomorrow War (32 page)

But while Hunter and his colleagues were carrying substantial weapons stores, they knew they couldn’t make a dent in the number of Blue troops that would be involved in such an assault. Four jets against one hundred thousand troops was not an even match. Bombing and strafing a few barracks would do little to alter the course of what was to come.

No, what they had to do was disrupt the Blues’ lines of communications. For if a large number of Blue troops were soon to be on their way to attack the Reds’ southern line, the Red Forces would be in better shape if the pilots somehow made it as difficult as possible for those troops to get to the battlefield and know what they should be doing once they got there.

But how to do this? The simplest way would have been to somehow knock out the Blues’ central command station, a place Hunter suspected was hidden beneath a block of several unassuming buildings in the middle of Kabul Downs. But attacking such a hardened target would have been simply unreasonable. It simply was not an option.

Not yet anyway …

Another, simpler way had to be found. And in one respect, the four pilots were lucky. Kabul Downs was crisscrossed with canals. This was especially true on the outer limits of the city. Canals meant bridges to cross, and there were many of them, too.

So it really came down to basic military doctrine. The term “lines of communications” didn’t mean just radio lines; it meant the lifeline of an enemy from its rear areas to its forward positions. Any way that one could make it difficult for his adversary to move men, ammo, supplies, and fuel via his lines of communications, meant one more advantage you had on him.

That’s why the mission of this night was for the four jets to take out as many bridges as they could inside Kabul Downs.

They decided to split into pairs. Hunter and Ben went east; Fitz and JT went west.

After studying the maps of the city all day, Hunter knew there was a set of bridges on the east side of Kabul Downs, which ran right up to the truck park he’d attacked earlier that day.

Within two minutes, he and Ben were orbiting high above these bridges. While most of the residents of the embattled city were already awake due to the nonstop artillery battle, the sound of the two jet fighters suddenly arriving overhead only added to the substantial racket. This gave them the cover they needed.

Ben went in first. He peeled off in a classic manner, and put the first bridge in his sights. It was a forty-foot span made of wood and iron. He launched six air-to-ground missiles from his speedy little Bantam jet, directing them right into the bridge’s center truss. There were six simultaneous explosions, and the bridge went down in a cloud of smoke, fire, and water.

Hunter went in next. The second bridge was all-steel, about sixty feet in length. He let go a long burst from the VTOL huge cannon and neatly sliced the center span in half.

Now it was Ben’s turn again. The next target was a drawbridge, holding four lanes of traffic. He put two rockets into the control house and another two into the bridge itself. The twin explosions lifted the crucial gear works twenty feet in the air destroying them utterly.

The next target was much bigger: a 250-foot steel and girder bridge that led into the heart of the city. Hunter and Ben lined up side by side and went with cannons blazing. It took four passes, but their combined fusillade finally dropped the bridge with one big
whomp!

The attack took about two minutes. The bridges were lined up like targets in a shooting gallery. The city defenders apparently were not yet hip to what was happening. That’s why Hunter and Ben had not run into any AAA fire as of yet.

Or so it seemed.

The same was true for Fitz and JT. They had dropped no less than ten smaller canal bridges on the other side of the city in five minutes—all without receiving so much as a single AAA shot back at them.

During all this, Hunter could not get rid of the feeling that he’d done this type of thing before. Back There. The entire memory wasn’t exactly clear, but the key points were.

He was fighting a battle for a city. Bridges were the key to a coming action. So he had to go out and destroy as many as he could. Where did that happen? Was it in a place called … Football City?
Really?

He felt a cold chill go through him. Yes, he’d dropped some bridges at a place called Football City—-just as a huge army called the Family was moving into attack it.

But what happened after that?

He felt his hands tense on his steering column. He had a very bad feeling going through him right now, so much so, he pulled the VTOL straight up and gained one thousand feet in altitude in a matter of seconds.

It was such an abrupt maneuver, Ben called over to him.

“Hawk? You OK?” he asked, concerned. Hunter just clicked his microphone twice—an indicator that he was all right. But that wasn’t the truth. Not exactly. Because suddenly … everything just stood still.

The superbomb went off and he saw the bright light … and then he couldn’t see anything else … even though his eyes were wide open …. He was the only one who looked at the blast and he was the only one who saw the light … and now he was the only one who was blind ….

It was strange … everyone back at Bride Lake thought that the bomb blast would be too powerful for the airplane to get out of the way … but it didn’t happen like that at all.

The blast was widespread … but it only shook the plane. It did not destroy it … What a laugh! … All the worry about the biggest worry, and it never even happened. The superbomber held together … Mission accomplished … all hands on board remained safe.

But now he cannot see …

Ben and Fitz lead him back to the aircraft commander’s stateroom … JT puts a cool beer against his eyes, but this does no good … The Japanese are still firing at them … but the B-2000 Colossus is moving so fast, the Zeros can barely keep up with them … Fitz is saying don’t worry … the blindness will pass …

But it does not.

He was alone … in this small room, feeling every bump and shake of the plane … turbulence was a funny thing … it was invisible … you could not see …but it could be a killer.

The rest of the crew is busy … flying the plane … defending the plane … the noise of so many machine guns firing at once sounds like the drone of monks, chanting on a faraway Himalayan peak … How many Japanese Zeros does it take to shoot down a plane named Colossus? … Only the monks would know.

He is seeing white not black … but what does a blind man really see? Somewhere inside his brain, the Wingman sees faces. Women … smiling … laughing … crying. What is your favorite memory, one asked him … you know, back when you could see?

That’s easy, he replied … He is standing in front of a huge crowd of people and the place known as Football City is burning but free in the background … and he is holding up a small American flag taken from the body of a patriot named Saul Wackerman and he is chanting: USA! USA! USA!

He saw the Light that day, too.

“Hawk?”

Hunter shook his head and felt the heavy battle helmet joggle just about every fluid inside his cranium.

“Hawk? You with me, buddy?”

Hunter blinked and realized he was back flying above Kabul Downs. Ben was trying to get him to answer his radio call.

“Roger, Ben … I’m here,” he finally responded.

“I just got a weird call from base,” Ben said. Hunter noted a high degree of anxiety in the normally calm pilot’s voice.

“Weird as in …?”

“Weird as in they have a hot read on their ADR system,” Ben told him.

ADR system? As in air-defense radar? Hunter almost laughed. The Red Force had exactly two radar sets. One on the south side of their lines, the other over on the east side. They were positioned as close as possible to the main Blue Force air bases.

“What are they reading exactly?”

Ben hesitated. Hunter took the pause to get back down to the deck and blast another canal bridge with a surgical fusillade of just sixteen shells.

“Ben? Come in …”

“Well, this has to be wrong,” he heard his friend say.

“But they are getting hot reads from every Blue air base … full squadrons already in the air or lining up on every Blue field …”

Hunter needed a moment to digest this piece of disturbing information. The Blues never flew at night. But if what Ben was telling him was confirmed, they were suddenly throwing airplanes into the air at an incredible rate.

“There’s more,” Ben went on. “Kurjan just radioed to say that huge concentrations of Blue troops are massing near bloody bridge. At least two divisions. They appear to be ready to attack at any moment.”

Hunter’s head was spinning now. This was not good. The Blues were moving faster than he’d ever imagined. And while dropping the bridges had been a sound military tactic, he realized now that it might have come too late to do any good.

Way too late.

When you are blind, you see many things … faces, places … things that went before … Yes, the battle for Football City was a victory … but what went on before that?

He blinked … and even though he could not see, the ghostly image of one hundred airplanes became very clear in his mind …

It was Fitz, Ben, and JT who were in the best position to see what happened next.

There were two separate swarms of Blue Force airplanes now darkening the sky. One had arisen from the major Blue air base on the west side of the embattled city, the other was a combination of planes that had taken off from several smaller airfields in the north and east sections.

The main force, which numbered at least one hundred aircraft, was forming up directly above the center of the city at approximately 7,500 feet.

Once gaining this altitude, the SuperSpad bijets began a slow orbit around the city. As more units joined up, this bizarre carousel of airplanes became larger and larger. It seemed like such a foolish thing to do—launch so many airplanes at once, only to have them waste time and fuel by flying in one enormous circle until every last straggler was airborne.

But this was exactly what the Blues were doing—another indication that all of the orders for the city’s defenders were coming from one central point of command.

After their spree of bridge busting, Fitz, Ben, and JT were all low on ammunition and fuel. As was Hunter. And the wise thing to do would be to dash back to base, do a hot fuel up, and a quick ammo resupply, and then get back into the air to meet this sudden massive air threat.

But even under that kind of rationale, all three pilots knew it was too late—by the time they landed and began their replenishment, the Blues would already be on their way to bomb and strafe whatever targets they had in their little minds this night, no doubt in coordination with the impending Blue Force ground attack.

No, time was on the side of the blue bloods now.

The three pilots were in a quandary. They had little ammo and less fuel, they were flying aircraft that were totally unfamiliar to them—especially Fitz in the other VTOL jet—and they were looking up at an enemy air force that was getting larger by the second. What could they do against such a storm of hostile aircraft?

As it turned out, all they had to do was watch.

As soon as the word came across that the Blues were launching massive numbers of bijets, the three pilots lost sight of Hunter. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. It was as if he simply disappeared.

They tried desperately to raise him on their radios, but to no reply. They called back to the Red Force One air base—had Hunter returned there? No, was the answer from the very panicky air controls officer. They, too, had spotted the carousel of Blue Force airplanes circling high above the city, as well as the enemy troops massing near the bloody bridge.

Where could Hunter be then? He was just as low on fuel as they. Just as low on ammo, too.

So where did he go?

They soon got their answer.

The three pilots had decided their best strategy was a slow withdrawal back toward Red Base One. This way, they could at least put up some kind of a fight once the blue bloods stopped their grouping-up and finally attacked.

But just as the three jets reduced speed and turned for home, they saw a streak way up in the sky, high above the carousel of Blue Force airplanes. At first Fitz thought it was a meteorite, flashing through the Earth’s atmosphere, a harbinger of the doom that seemed to be awaiting
the
Red Forces. But then he and the others saw this streak of light make a somewhat radical parabolic turn. And from that, they knew it was no natural phenomena. This was something being steered and controlled.

They saw a small ball of flame erupt from the center of the gang of orbiting Blue Force planes. Then another and another.

Fitz turned his airplane around 180 degrees to get a closer look. These balls of flame were Blue Force bijets falling out of the sky. There went another. And another. And another.

Now the streak of light was flying a crazy pattern. It was weaving in and out of the orbiting fighters, a short burst of fire from its muzzles always followed by another ball of flame dropping out of the sky.

“My God,” Fitz whispered, when he realized exactly what was happening. “It’s Hunter. He’s taking them on alone.”

Ben and JT had also turned their airplanes around and were now slowly heading back toward the city. Between them they counted thirteen balls of flame falling from the carousel of fighters—an astounding achievement, a lifetime’s worth of kills for a normal fighter pilot. Yet Hunter had accomplished it in less than two minutes.

The strange thing was the Blue Force airplanes had yet to break formation. They kept circling and circling, apparently under orders to hold their patterns and not return fire. This was lunacy of course, and more evidence that the blue bloods were so ingrained in a central command they were willing to sacrifice pilots and planes until someone high enough up the ladder gave the word to disperse and defend themselves.