War of the Sun (28 page)

“Do you then know where Island Facility Number Two is, Soho?”

“I do,” the ensign replied, out of breath, but finally dressed again.

“You must go there,” she said, her voice suddenly returning to its former girlish squeak. “You must go in the Sukki.”

The young pilot was stunned. “Alone, my lady?”

“Yes, alone …” she replied, her face all of a sudden going very pale. “Believe me, you will know what to do when you get there. But you must hurry …”

But the young ensign didn’t move, he seemed frozen to the spot. At this point, the major general stepped forward again.

“For what purpose is this, my lady?” he demanded, a little too heartily. “Surely there are more important officers who should be evacuated.”

She never replied. Instead, she reached under her gown and pulled out her razor-sharp shortsword. In one swift motion, she reached out and slashed the startled major general’s throat. He let out a blood-chilling cry and slumped to his knees, not quite believing what had just happened to him.

The young pilot was aghast. He immediately vomited into his hands.

She turned to him, her face now again that of a young girl.

“My name was once Mizumi,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

With that she plunged the knife into her own stomach and ripped it sideways. She, too, let out a chilling scream and then crumpled to her knees. She looked up at the ensign, her face instantly stiffening, her mouth going up in a nightmarish death grin. Then she fell over, dead.

Nearly gagging with fright, his uniform covered with vomit and blood, the young ensign finally got his feet moving. He ran out of the chamber and up the dark passageway, his eyes teary and wild at what he’d just seen.

“If they will not let me get into the Sukki,” he thought madly. “I will kill them!”

Back in the chamber, the major general was gasping for his last breaths. He was bleeding profusely, the severed major artery in his neck spraying out his blood in a horrible rush of pressure.

With the last of his strength, he crawled over to the nearest wall, and using his own blood as paint, appeared to scrawl in English the word “Victory.”

But he was dead before he was able to write the last letter.

It was the Free Canadian pilot named Kenny Hodge who saw them first.

He’d just arrived over Okinawa, leading the
Fitzgerald
’s second-wave airstrike in his small Alpha Jet. He had already been in radio contact with Hunter, who was presently orbiting 50,000 feet above the island, taking more
IF
and Juice readings. He’d also spoken with the commanders of both the 104th and the JAWs team. The situation on the ground was close to ideal: both groups were advancing toward their objectives with virtually no resistance. The hours of planning seemed to be paying off: thanks to the
New Jersey
’s guns, the first wave of selective airstrikes and the surprise painless insertion of the CLF landing parties, the Task Force had yet to suffer a single casualty.

But now a new twist was about to be added.

Hodge had just roared over the beach when his targeting warning system began blinking. There was an indication of unidentified airplanes on the northwest side of Shuri Mountain.

He booted his tiny jet’s powerful engine up to max and was soon closing in on the mountain, which even from a height of 2500 feet seemed to be entirely socked in with smog and smoke. He passed down through the polluted mist, his radar virtually burning with targets. Lowering his speed to 150 knots, he was soon within close visual range of the mountain itself.

That’s when he saw them.

They
did
look for all the world like bees leaving the hive. Streams of propeller airplanes—he was sure they were Zeros—were pouring out of the side of the mountain, sometimes as many as four abreast. Hodge was astounded.

He activated his lip mike. “Flight commander, this is Alpha One …”

“Alpha One, this is Flight Commander,” came Hunter’s acknowledgment. “What’ve you got?”

Hodge didn’t quite know how to say it. “Can you get down here quick, Flight?” Hodge said finally. “You’ve got to see this for yourself …”

Aboard the
Fitzgerald

Not a minute later, JT’s helmet speaker crackled to life.

“Delta Green Flight, this is Flight Commander.”

“This is Delta Green. Go ahead, Hawk.”

“Activate Plan Beta Two. Your heading is seven-five-zero south; four-four-six west. You’ll get a lot of indications once airborne. Call when you need any help.”

JT signed off and took a deep gulp from his oxygen mask. He’d been sitting on the deck of the
Fitz,
in Tornado Two, for almost a half hour waiting for this particular call and antsy to get into the action.

Finally, it was time to go.

The plane was surrounded with steam, its specially-adapted undercarriage attached to the
Fitzgerald
’s side catapult. JT immediately gave a signal to the
Fitz
’s launch officer, who sprang into action. Soon, there was a gang of yellow-jacketed deck crewmen swarming around JT’s aircraft, making last-minute checks before launch.

He did a quick check of his cockpit essentials and found his engines were properly warmed, his flight systems up and green. He checked his weapons computer and found everything in order, so too with his fuel systems.

He gave the launch officer a thumbs-up, which was returned with a sharp salute. Then JT braced himself, lowered his head slightly, and took another deep breath. An instant later the Tornado was violently jerked forward in a rush of steam and pure engine power.

Two seconds later he was airborne.

He quickly brought the powerful Tornado up to 3000 feet and then turned toward Okinawa. He’d been held in reserve for this special mission, and now that it was happening, he wondered exactly what the result would be. Even a hipster like him worried about the future.

He looked to his right just as he was passing over the beach and saw Hunter coming up right beside him. JT flashed him a smart-ass peace sign. Below them, half the island of Okinawa seemed to be engulfed in flames.

“I’m fashionably late again, Hawk,” he radioed over to the F-16XL.

“I’ll remember that for the memoirs,” Hunter replied.

Then they got down to business. Flying through the sludge that passed for air around Shuri Mountain, they could see the Zeros still leaving at a rate of about forty a minute.

“About eighty or so have already flown the coop,” Hunter told him. “So far they’re all heading south-southwest.”

JT acquired the radar indications of the prop planes on his radar system, locking in the rather faint radar blips.

“Eighty should be enough,” JT told Hunter. “There are only so many places they can go.”

“Let’s hope so,” Hunter replied.

With that they broke off. Hunter immediately swooped in and delivered a Rockeye cluster bomb directly on the lip of the cave’s opening. The explosion shredded two Zeros that were just exiting the mouth of the cave, knocking one of them back into the hidden facility.

He roared back over the target and then launched a Maverick missile, guiding it right into the mouth of the enormous cave. The fire and damage resulting from both bomb hits immediately brought a halt to the Cult’s launching efforts. Now only smoke was pouring out of the cave opening.

But Hunter knew this was only temporary. He had long ago determined that because of its location and sheer size, it would have taken many, many airstrikes and many, many smart bombs to close the cave opening completely, and because of its position, there was no way that even the
New Jersey
’s 16-inch guns could have done the job. So while his two air-launched weapons had halted the flow of Zeros for now, he knew that the Cult would be able to clear the damage and begin launching again within thirty minutes. He hoped that was all the time he needed.

They had let the 80-odd Zeros go for one simple reason: they wanted to find out just where the Cult airplanes were deploying to. Most important was determining how many places they could escape to. By letting only a dozen or so go before temporarily sealing the cave mouth, there was a chance they would fly to just one of what could be a nightmarish number of bases.

By letting a good-sized number like 80 planes get out, the potential risk was balanced by the fact that they would probably deploy to many bases if given the option.

And it was JT’s job to find the Jokers in the deck.

Even as Hunter was launching his weapons at the cave opening, JT had already caught up with the last of the fleeing Zeros and was now tailing them from 60,000 feet, well above the eyes of the Zero pilots or any rudimentary radar gear they might employ. He was especially relieved that the Tornado was flying so well. He and Hunter had worked through the night stripping the ballsy airplane of all unnecessary weight and adapting it with extra-long-range fuel tanks, additions that were not always so pilot-friendly once in flight.

They had also worked for some time on the high-tech jet’s weapons-carrying system. For in JT’s mission, he not only had to be able to fly for a long time, but also deliver a whammy of a punch once he got there.

It was not an enviable assignment.

Okinawa

Lieutenant Colonel Frank Geraci checked the time and then checked his map.

It was 0645. The sun was finally up, its morning rays distorted by the dense pollution all around him and his men. Every once in a while, one of the Task Force jets would roar over, either zooming in on a target or just pulling up from attacking one. Off in the distance, they could also hear the deep rumbling of the Great Wall weapons still firing, their gunners blindly firing out to sea, apparently convinced that a larger landing force was on its way.

The 104th Engineering Battalion/Combat of the New Jersey National Guard had returned to Okinawa. They had moved down from the beach at Nin intact and without firing a shot. Now they were huddled in a small ravine, about a hundred yards south of the Si River. Though it was difficult to see through the smoke and smog, the terrain ahead of them appeared to rise dramatically, and this was good news. Because according to Geraci’s map, they had reached their objective, the base of Shuri Mountain.

He called the other officers together. They had the forty-man unit broken down into five teams of eight combat engineers, each team identified by the last name of the officer in charge. Each team had enough firepower and expertise to break through an obstruction and hold it long enough for the next team to push through and take on the next obstruction. Then the third team would move up and break their obstruction and so on, all the way up until they reached the objective. To keep the movement somewhat self-perpetuating, each man started out with nearly three full packs of weight, mostly explosives. As each team moved up toward the objective, they would leave behind supplies for the last in-line team, who would use them when it became their turn again.

The team led by Captain Don Matus would go first. The target was a line of chain wire reinforced with concertina wire, an obstruction which ringed the base of the mountain and was close to twenty feet thick. Matus’s men silently crept out of the ravine, the heavy packs further weighted down by long sections of stainless-steel pipe. Reaching the objective, they quickly constructed two sixty-foot lengths of the metal tubing, stuffing the first twenty feet with HE.

Crawling through the rubble and discarded industrial waste, they managed to slip the powder-packed ends of the piping under two sections of wire about ten feet apart. On the quick count, the fire team ignited the end of the tube via a long firing cord. There was a great burst of fire, debris, and smoke—when it cleared, they could see they’d blown almost a straight path through the razor-sharp wire.

Matus’s team was quickly up and through the hole, a team led by Captain Roy Cerbasi close behind. Both teams were horrified as they got on the other side of the obstruction and found the rear layer of barbed wire draped with dozens of bodies, some little more than skeletons, stretching for as far as the eye could see. Now the mystery of just why the mountain was so fortified had been answered. It was obvious that these were slaves of the Cult who had somehow managed to get out of the mountain only to die clawing their way over the sharp and deadly barrier. In other words, the obstructions weren’t to keep people out; they were to keep people in.

Even though the men of the 104th were all hardened combat vets, the sight was unnerving to them. It was a true vision of Hell. They pressed on.

Cerbasi’s target was a long line of concrete mounds arranged in such a mazelike way, it was impossible to pass through them quickly. After first checking the area for mines, two of Cerbasi’s men zigzagged up the first row of stanchions, planted two packs of explosives, and ran back and ignited them. After making sure they’d done sufficient damage, they signaled the next pair of men to move up. Then the next, and the next. Within ninety seconds, Cerbasi’s barrier was breached.

On and on they went. A team led by Captain Ray Palma took out another line of concertina wire, this one wired for deadly electrical shock, which was luckily not working because of the island’s nearly total power blackout. A team led by General Tom McCaffrey—a man who’d come out of retirement to take part in the operation—quickly bore a path through a vast field of dung-covered punji sticks.

By the time this target was breached, the 104th was nearly a third of the way up the mountain.

That’s when the team led by Geraci himself took on Barrier Number Five.

That’s when things began to go horribly wrong.

Major Keni Hachomachi couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

From his position on the side of Shuri Mountain, it seemed as if the entire island of Okinawa was aflame. Explosions were rocketing up through the smoke and smog, their fireballs reaching 200 feet and higher. The noise was just deafening, enough to cause his ears to begin bleeding.

He had more immediate concerns, however. He was commander of the Shuri Mountain defense teams, a poorly-equipped yet good-sized unit whose job it was to deal with slave escapees and protect the defensive integrity of the mountain itself. In the haste and confusion of the early morning attack, he and his men had been delayed in deploying to the battle positions. Now he was looking down at the result of that dawdle. A heavily-armed unit of soldiers he assumed belonged to the United American Army was moving up toward his position with both speed and ferocity. Hachomachi had eighty men hidden in the immediate area, another eighty or so close by, many of them equipped with old rifles, and some with only sidearms.