War of the Sun (37 page)

Even hopes of escape by air had been quickly dashed by the Cult themselves. They had little in the way of large aerial transport in the first place, and the pilots of the few large airplanes that did exist had been too fearful to take off after the battle, so rampant was the belief that UA jet fighters were nearby, waiting to pounce. In reality, no UA jet aircraft from the mainland had come anywhere near the Hawaiian battle area—per Hunter’s plan, none was needed. The Cult’s simple yet incorrect assumption that the UA would attack from the air was enough to divert the Cult’s energies into building their vast SAM and AA defense around Pearl Harbor, a mammoth effort that turned out to be a complete waste of time.

Now, as JT sipped his coffee, he passed a set of photographs to Ben. They were high-altitude snaps taken on Oahu by the Kephart Brothers in their SR-71 Blackbird and just transmitted over the radiofax to the
Fitz.
Some clearly showed gangs of Cult soldiers aimlessly wandering the countryside, obviously foraging for food, for water, for shelter. Other photos showed dozens if not hundreds of bodies floating at the bottoms of Oahu’s many cliffs, evidence of the mass suicides that were inevitably taking place on the island.

Ben was horrified at the photographic depiction of the wide-scale
hari-kari.

“Those are all the cowards,” he said, pointing to the clumps of dashed, floating, broken bodies. “The cowards and the lazy bastards who don’t want to put the effort into living.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” JT said. “They did the crime, but now they don’t want to do the time. I say, the hell with them. Maybe in a few years we’ll go and help those tough enough to survive. But it ain’t going to be anytime soon.”

Suddenly, one of the carrier’s corpsmen ran onto the bridge. His face was furrowed with equal parts of confusion and relief.

“Sirs, come quickly,” he shouted to JT and Ben, all pretense of military protocol gone. “Something’s happening in sick bay …”

JT and Ben burst through the door of the sick bay less than a minute later.

Crunch was there, as were the ship’s two doctors, and their small staffs.

They were all gathered around the bed in the center of the room. The gaggle of wires, tubes, and IV lines had been pushed away from it. The oxygen tent was also gone. And sitting up in the middle of the bed, wearing a wide but weary grin, and eating a bowl of ice cream, no less, was a very conscious Yaz.

Ben and JT were pleasantly astonished. “What the hell has happened?” Ben asked.

“He’s back,” Crunch said, smiling broadly himself. “I was sitting here with him. One minute he’s still out like a light, the next he’s sitting up and staring at me with that shit-eating grin …”

JT and Ben both reached over and enthusiastically patted Yaz on the back. The relief that their friend seemed to be recovered was overwhelming.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” JT told him. “Have a good nap?”

Ben turned to the doctors. “Is he as good as he looks?” he asked.

“Better,” the first doctor replied. “All his vital signs are stable. Heart rate, pressure, breathing—all normal, or better than normal. The only problem is that he’s hungry—but only soft food first.”

“Means no booze,” JT told Yaz.

“After the dream I’ve had,” Yaz replied, never losing a bit of his smile, “I never have to drink again.”

The second doctor was nodding in agreement. “He’s told us what happened to him,” he said. “And it’s the most extreme case of hypnotic suggestion I’ve ever heard of. One for the books …”

“‘Hypnotic suggestion’?” JT asked, mystified. “How in hell …?”

Yaz suddenly did lose part of his grin. “It was from the videotape of Hawk’s first flight back from Okinawa,” he said. “I was watching it in the CIC when this whole thing hit me. It was like a kick right in the fucking head. It took me a while to realize what had happened exactly—I’m not really sure I even know now, at this moment. But I saw a face somehow projected on the storm clouds—maybe by a laser beam or something. But it was definitely caught on Hawk’s videotape. And then, when I realized just
whose
face it was, well, I guess I couldn’t take it. I guess I just went under and …”

Both JT and Ben interrupted at the same time. “Whose face was it?”

Yaz began to answer when one of the doctors intervened.

“Not now,” he said, almost sternly. “Maybe later, but not now. We’ve got to be careful. There’s always the chance of a relapse. Just make sure no one views that videotape until we get back to the mainland and get it into a controlled situation …”

A tense silence was broken when Yaz scooped up another huge spoonful of the vanilla ice cream and began devouring it. He was halfway through when he suddenly stopped and looked around.

“Hey, wait a minute—where
is
Hawk?” he asked.

Those in attendance shot sudden nervous glances at each other.

“Can we tell him?” Ben asked the doctors.

“Going to have to do it sometime,” one said. “We’ve already filled him in on the Okinawa and Pearl Harbor actions.”

Ben leaned in a little closer to Yaz.

“Hawk took off in the jumpjet yesterday,” he began slowly. “Said he had an appointment to keep, back on Okinawa. We haven’t heard from him since. He’s long overdue …”

Yaz was astounded. “He’s overdue?
Again?”
he asked incredulously.

“We’re searching for him now,” JT replied somberly. “But, as you know, with each hour, it gets a little …”

Yaz suddenly held up his hand.

“Wait a minute,” he said, closing his eyes and straining his face as if he were deep in thought. Suddenly he stopped moving completely, his eyes shut so tight, the lids were turning a shade of blue.

Then he smiled again. “You want to know something?” he said, “I can tell you
exactly
where he is …”

Washington, D.C.

G
ENERAL DAVID JONES PULLED
a bottle of whiskey from his desk drawer and uncapped it.

Before him was a well-worn, unopened file. His hands shook slightly as he reached for a paper cup and prepared to pour himself a drink. He never thought he would ever have to review this particular file again, never thought he would ever even have to pull it from his secure safe again. For the information contained within had so much potential for bad news, it could effect not just the United American cause, but freedom-loving people around the entire globe.

He picked up the whiskey bottle and poured a stiff shot into the paper cup. It was early in the morning—he wasn’t even sure of the time—but he’d been behind the desk for at least ten straight hours now. In that time, he’d been accessing the UA’s central security computer files, going over the names and profiles of various criminals and terrorists the UA had come up against in recent times, trying to determine who, if any of them, was responsible for the recent carnage in the Pacific.

But nothing was adding up. Not yet, anyway.

The only thing Jones
was
sure of was that the whole episode in the Pacific was not what it appeared to be. He was, in fact, absolutely convinced they’d all been hoodwinked. Fooled. Played like a violin for someone’s hidden agenda. After studying the results of the recent actions in Japan, Okinawa, and lastly, at Pearl Harbor, his conclusion was that the Asian Mercenary Cult, though brutal, though powerful beyond all expectation, was not what it had first seemed to be. It was, he now believed, little more than a front, a facade for something else. Something even more sinister.

And Jones knew that after his analysts studied everything that went on in the Pacific, and debriefed all the principals involved, they would conclude that what had begun as “Operation Long Bomb” had not been a conventional combat engagement at all. Rather it had been orchestrated to
look
that way. Its intention was never really for one side to battle the other to gain territory or power or prestige. It had been simply a vehicle to take lives, to destroy both sides, militarily and morale-wise.

Furthermore, he was certain now that the man they knew as Hashi Pushi, the man they had targeted in the first place as being the be-all and end-all of evil in the Pacific rim, was, in fact, a front man drawn into the weird drama by God-knows-what forces to simply play a part, and then, when his usefulness was drained, eliminated to make room for the next player, and so on.
This
was why the Cult didn’t collapse after the airstrike on Japanese Home Islands.
This
was why they kept on fighting even after losing the massive facility on Okinawa.
This
was why the Cult pulled out of occupied California, against all standard military operating principles, and redeployed to Hawaii only to be used as sacrificial lambs.

And someone was behind it all.
Someone with incredible power—both persuasive and military, psychological and physical.

It was a scary thesis. But Jones was convinced he was right.

He’d spent hours going over and over in his head who this villainous mastermind might be.

There was no shortage of suspects: there was Duke Devillian of the fascist Knights of the Burning Cross, the unbalanced white supremacist who had brought wanton slaughter and unbearable suffering to the America Southwest less than two years before; there were the surviving leaders of the so-called Canal Nazis, the fascists who had mined the Panama Canal with nuclear explosives not three years before. There were the surviving members of the Family, the Super-Mafia that had once ruled a large section of the American Midwest with a corrupt and iron fist. There were any one of a number of officers known as the Mid-Aks, the wacko murder-for-hire army that rampaged throughout the eastern part of America shortly after the Big War and the deceitful disarmament and fractionalization of the United States that followed. Even Elizabeth Sandlake, the beautiful but highly unstable villainess, who’d aided the men behind the Norse invasion of America not a year before, and who, more than anyone else, was responsible for the presence of the still-missing nuclear-armed
Fire Bats
submarines.

Anyone in this gallery of rogues could have been responsible for pulling the strings behind the tragic events which had unfolded recently in the Pacific, except for one thing: all of them were either dead, or incarcerated in a United American prison.

This was why Jones now had the last unopened computer file before him. It contained the profile of the only villain the Americans had fought since the Big War who had the sheer bombastic mesmerizing charisma to pull off such a titanic feat of evil. And though he was thought to be dead, Jones knew that if anyone had the power to expertly fake his own death, it was this particular individual.

For unlike the others, this person could actually affect men’s minds, he could actually steal their souls. He was, in fact, the walking symbol of Evil itself.

And if he was somehow loose again, in whatever form, then the entire planet was in dire circumstances.

Jones raised the paper cup full of whiskey to his lips, thought briefly about his brave men in the Pacific, who had just scored yet another victory for freedom, and then downed the shot of powerful no-name booze.

Thus bolstered, he opened the file and found himself staring at a photograph of a thin-faced, hard-featured, absolutely sinister goateed man.

Instantly Jones felt a shot of revulsion rip through him.

As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph of the bearded devilish figure.

“God help us all,” he whispered.

Somewhere in the Pacific

Hunter didn’t know whether he felt more foolish or embarrassed.

“Bonehead,” he muttered to himself. “Dumb. Amateur.
Rookie.”

He was trudging up the side of a steep hill, carrying two containers full of engine oil drained from the Harrier. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was—his best guess was Lisianski Island, a barren spit of rock and vine-covered cliffs about seventy miles southeast of famous Midway Island and a few hundred miles northwest of the larger Hawaiian Islands.

He had run out of gas. It was the first time it had ever happened to him, and this was why he was so mortified. He wasn’t quite sure
how
it had happened—one moment he was breezing along, heading back to the Task Force’s location, the next, his bingo light was flashing. He tried every trick in the book to limp along, but Lisianski was as far as he could get. His engine, in fact, cut out on him while he was still in his landing hover, dropping the jumpjet twenty-five feet and causing it to bounce almost half that high before finally coming down for good on the island’s rocky upper beach.

With no radio and no locator beam, he had little choice but to climb to the high ground, light a signal fire, and wait. This was why he’d drained about ten gallons of lubricant from the airplane’s engine. Once he reached the top of the island’s tallest peak, he would start a smoky fire and then cool his heels until help arrived.

His only consolation was that he wasn’t on a combat mission. Rather it had been a make-good trip. He’d returned to Okinawa, not to survey what was left of the Cult’s Shuri Mountain facility, but to land back at the movie set village. Once there, he’d found the gray-haired woman who had been so helpful earlier in his Pacific adventure.

And with little prompting, he’d brought her on her first airplane ride ever.

They had soared high above the still-smoggy island of Okinawa, past the former, now devastated Cult base on Iko, and back again. Throughout the high-speed romp, the woman sitting in the backseat of the AV-8F gasped in amazement and roared with delight.

“My mother would never believe this!” she yelled on several occasions.

After thirty minutes or so, Hunter returned her to the movie-set village and promised to report their location to a Free Canadian relief convoy he knew would soon be passing through the area. Then he headed back for the Task Force, making it about halfway before inexplicably running out of fuel.

He finally reached the top of the island’s tallest peak and within minutes got a black, smoky fire going.