War of the Sun (24 page)

“We have a dozen semiautomatic five-inch guns which can serve as both shore attack weapons or in an antiaircraft mode. Our four Mkl5 Phalanx Gatling guns—one port, one starboard, one fore and one aft—are each capable of firing one hundred rounds per second. We have adapted them for long-range firing. In addition, we have the ability to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon antiship missiles.

“All this,” he concluded, “including the lives of myself and my men, are, of course, once again at your disposal.”

The JAWs commander, Captain Jim Cook, was next.

“We’re packing our fire suppression gear,” he reported. “Each of the guys will be carrying two major weapons: his rifle, and anything from a grenade launcher, to a small mortar, to an antitank gun, to a flamethrower. We’ve drilled extensively in attacking what we call ‘natural hardened positions’—caves, cliffs, and such, natural terrain where an enemy can dig in. I’ve got to admit, we’re pretty good at it.”

Major Geraci of the 104th now had the floor. “As a complement to the JAWs, we brought our blockbusting equipment. We work in teams of eight. Each team can clear a man-made obstacle—pillboxes, tank berms, barbed-wire barriers—in about a minute. When this is accomplished, the next team comes up and moves up to the next barrier, and so on. The objective is to leapfrog our way up and seize the objective faster than the time it takes the enemy to figure out what’s happening. After all, that’s a specialty of ours.”

Throughout these reports, Hunter just sat back and drank it all in. He was proud of these men—and damned proud to be part of their common cause. The past success of the United American Armed Forces were not based entirely on weaponry, or skill or expertise, really. No, the rock-solid core of their success was that these men were Americans.
True
Americans. Their lives were simply dedicated to preserving the self-evident truths spelled out in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and they had little time or patience with anyone who sought to muddy those waters. They knew these near-holy writs said all men are created equal—and that was that. No arguments. Everyone has a right to privacy—and that was that. Everyone has the right to be religious or not, everyone is entitled to a fair trial, everyone can go out and make as much or as little money as he wants. These were simple things to understand, for they are rooted in common sense and humanity.

Defending them was the hard part.

In the end, Hunter knew that these were smart men. They would no sooner fall for “patriotic” malarkey from right-wing conservatives who were actually closet racists as they would from left-wing Let-the-People-Rule-pretenders who were actually totalitarian wannabes.

And they believed in these ideals so deeply, he knew it was practically impossible for them not to give their all in this constant battle with both sides. This engagement would be no different, even though it was evident to all that they were a small, battered force, thousands of miles from home, with their butts hanging way, way out.

And if they did taste defeat, then they would have all died in a noble cause.

The discussion had come right around the table and now it was back to him. Everyone knew he had a plan. They were very eager to hear it.

“Okay, then,” the Wingman said. “This is how I think we should do it.”

In a darkened room two decks below the CIC, there was a flicker of life.

Yaz’s eyes opened.

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. But he
was
awake.

The long nightmare was still dancing in his brain. Rodents. Were they rats? Or mice? There were thousands upon thousands of them, all chanting in what sounded like squeaky, twisted English.

What were they saying? What were they doing?

They were throwing themselves off the White Cliffs of Dover, the tall sheets of chalk that circled around above him. Or was it La Jolla? They were landing on him, biting him. Gnawing on his bones, sinking their tiny pointed teeth into his flesh. They would not let go! No matter how hard he tried to shake them off, they held on with their bloody little mouths.

He closed his eyes and saw millions of the rodent bodies washing up on the beaches of California. Santa Monica. Malibu. Pomona. That’s when he got a look at them close up for the first time.

That’s when he realized they were lemmings.

He was covered in blood—or was it sweat? There were knives sticking in his arms and legs—or were they needles? And someone was trying to slowly choke him. Or was that a breathing tube? Did he really need air? Was he underwater?

He tried to talk out loud, but couldn’t. He tried to focus his eyes, but saw only plastic—plastic sheets that were smothering him. Or were they protecting him?

Then the
real
nightmare came back to him. He is sitting in the CIC conference room. He is watching the videotape of Hunter’s descent into the typhoon. There is a crack of lightning. And then …

He opened his mouth wider than the breathing tube and tried to scream. But nothing would come out.

“I’ve seen … his face,” he wound up whispering to the empty room.

I
T WAS MIDNIGHT.

High above the slowly-cruising Task Force, a full moon was painting the sea with a pale orange glow.

The four ships were moving southwest at ten knots; each vessel was on complete radio silence, with all but essential lights doused.

This was why the service crew for Hunter’s Harrier was working under the relatively-weak illumination of ordinary flashlights. They had brought the specially-adapted jumpjet up on the side elevator, its fuel tanks topped, its wings heavy with four Sidewinder missiles, its recon cameras full of fresh film and video. Hunter had helped the crew get the airplane flight-ready. Now he was sitting in the rather spacious AV-8F cockpit, bringing up his avionics and snapping his flight controls on line.

He had a dual mission tonight, both halves of equal and critical value.

Although he had related to those gathered in the CIC conference room his thoughts on how best to do the shoestring Okinawa operation, if his hand was held to the fire, he would have been hard pressed to call it “a plan.” It was more a notion. A theory. But like all theories, it had to be tested. That’s why he was preparing to launch on such an eerily quiet and still night.

But once again, Fate would momentarily intervene.

He was about halfway into his engine preflight checklist when he saw the launch officer walking briskly across the dark deck, giving Hunter the “cut” signal.

What the hell is this,
he thought, putting his startup procedure on hold.

Hunter popped the canopy and the officer was up the access ladder in a matter of seconds.

“Captain Wa wants you to hold up, Major,” the officer told him. “He says it’s urgent.”

Hunter sat there for a moment, wondering what could possibly be so important that Ben would want him to delay his mission.

The officer seemed to sense this. “It’s Captain Yastrewski, sir,” he quickly added. “Something’s happening down in sick bay.”

Not a minute later, Hunter was coming through the door of Yaz’s intensive care unit.

The room was dark, just as it had been the several times Hunter had come to sit beside his comatose friend in the past few days. But this time there was a crowd of people inside.

It took him a few moments to realize that Ben and JT were standing over in the corner, purposely hidden in the shadows. Two doctors were hovering over Yaz’s bed, the flaps of his plastic oxygen tent having been tied back with tape. One was leaning right over Yaz’s body, his ear pressed to Yaz’s lips.

“What the hell is going on?” Hunter whispered over to Ben and JT.

“Ask the Bones brothers,” JT said, pointing to the doctors.

Hunter walked over to the bed and did just that.

“We’re not sure what has happened,” one of the doctors told him in a hushed voice. “But in some small way, he may be coming out of it.”

Hunter felt a surge of positive energy go through him. Yaz was a tough guy, someone who’d gone through a lot in the past two years. He was also a very close friend. The hopeful news, although small, lifted Hunter’s spirits a notch.

But soon enough, his good feeling dissolved into one of bafflement. He could see Yaz’s lips moving—but was he really trying to say something?

The doctor leaning over the bed finally straightened up and shook his head.

“This is the damnedest thing,” he said. “Believe it or not, people are usually conversational when they come out of comas. But all he keeps saying is the same word, over and over.”

“Well—what the hell is it, doc?”

The doctor shook his head.

“It’s weak and barely audible,” he said. “But it seems to me that he keeps saying something like: ‘Victory…’”

Ten minutes later, Hunter was back in the Harrier, waiting as the thrust from his
VTOL
engine built up to takeoff power.

As if he didn’t have a hatful of things to worry and wonder about, now he had another. Previously the doctors admitted they had no idea why Yaz had gone into shock; now they were admitting they had no idea why he would come out of it just to repeat the same word over and over again.

Victory?
The word itself was a strange choice. Was it the ranting of a man whose brain activity was admittedly out of whack?

Or was Yaz somehow trying to tell them something?

Hunter just didn’t know.

He saw the go-light flick on, courtesy of the deck crew chief. It was time to launch.

With these thoughts in his head and a tap to the breast pocket, Hunter popped the Harrier’s brakes. In less than a half second, the strange airplane was rolling down the deck, using a short takeoff roll to conserve fuel.

It rose slowly, banking to right as it did so. Then, once it was clear of the carrier, it accelerated quickly and disappeared into the night.

Okinawa

T
HE KNOCK AT HER
private chamber door shattered the last peaceful dream the woman once named Mizumi would ever have.

She rose from her bed and lightly powdered her small, naked body. There was another knock which she completely ignored. She began her teakettle and slowly climbed into her cherry-red blossom gown.

For the first time in a long time, she actually felt good. Strong.
Powerful.
These were new and strange sensations.

She was finally coming to understand what was happening to her—it was easier once she realized that there was nothing she could do to stop it. So why not surrender to it?

It was simple, really. It all came down to the fact that she, as Mizumi, had no destiny—not anymore.

Rather, it was the destiny of another that she had been selected to fulfill.

She poured her tea and knelt down on the bamboo mat next to her tiny stove. Numbers suddenly filled her head; where did they come from? Airplanes. Production in the underground airplane factory had tripled in the past forty-eight hours. Slaves. Her minions redoubled their efforts to put more slaves on the assembly lines of the great machines. They were even using Chinese and Koreans in key spots now—something unheard of before.

Now, on this evening, she knew they were truly ready. Within the week she would unleash a firestorm of conquest on the rest of the Greater East Asian Pacific, and eventually beyond. All of the vital resources Nippon needed to fulfill its destiny would soon be theirs again. Anyone of a lower race who was not enslaved would soon be dead. It was as elementary as that.

There was another knock.

“My Lady, the ceremony is about to begin …” a nervous voice from the other side called out. “We must go very soon …”

Gathering her gown around her, she finally went to the door and opened it. Two officers of the Imperial Guards sent to escort her to the main hall were waiting outside.

“Which one of you was doing all the knocking?” she asked.

“It was I,” one of the officers nervously answered.

“It was too loud.” Turning to the other officer, she simply said, “Shoot him.”

The other soldier immediately raised his sidearm, put it against his comrade’s throat, and squeezed the trigger, just as the hapless officer croaked out the words “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” the woman said as she stepped over the lifeless, and practically headless, body.

Petrified to the point of numbness, the remaining officer led her along the long stone passageway and into the center of the mountain. The route was lined with soldiers of her Imperial Guard; each one snapped to attention as soon as she passed.

Finally she reached her destination, the access doorway to the largest chamber in the subterranean complex, Underground Hangar Number One.

“Open it,” she hissed at the three soldiers manning the doorway.

They immediately did so, and the woman once known as Mizumi, and now the Supreme Warlord of the Asian Mercenary Cult, stepped out onto a balcony that overlooked the vast Hangar Number One.

Three thousand pilots, each with a face made red by the hundreds of torches used to light the gigantic cavern for this special ritual, leapt to their feet and began to shout for her over and over again. The screams fell into a chant that grew louder and louder as the pilots were swept up into a blood-lust frenzy. Their short symbolic samurai swords were now drawn, and with each thundering call of
Aja!
thousands of these swords would stab through the air toward her. She smiled, and the pilots screamed even louder.

With a slight raising of her hand, each pilot’s rabid cheering immediately ceased. The chamber instantly fell into silence.

Then she spoke, and as she did so, she knew that the simple native girl that she once was would be lost forever.

“My warriors!”

The pilots again screamed her name in delirious joy.

She raised both hands to quiet them once again.

“My warriors,” she began, “you are already gods without earthly desires. I am proud of you!”

On cue, silk that covered the hundred long tables that ran through the hangar were lifted off to reveal thousands of individual
hachimakis,
the sacred white headcloths of samurai warriors of old. Each of these
hachimakis
was folded to emphasize the infamous insignia of the Cult: three red dots forming a triangle within a larger circle.