The Circle War (19 page)

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saloon. "The city is deserted, of course. But the airport's big and it's got good mountain cover all around. We've found places to stick our mobile radar units and our own SAMs. The runways are still in good shape as are the maintenance shops."

"What's the word from Fitz and St. Louie!" Hunter asked. He was anxious to find out about his two friends.

"All reports are go," Jones told him. "Everyone got out clean in both Syracuse and Football City. The F-20s are down in Dallas and Fitzie's '105s are sitting up in Winnipeg, waiting for us to tell them where to go."

"Anything else from the Texans?" Hunter asked as they reached the mess hall.

"They were raided again during the night, I'm afraid," Jones said, claiming the first table they could find. "They hit a place called Pampa, up near Amarillo. Really tore it up."

"Same pattern?" Hunter asked.

"Yep," Jones said. "Cavalry. Yaks. Hit and run. The town is fairly large, so they would seem to be getting bolder. More willing to take on big targets."

"This is not good news," Hunter said, reaching for the coffee pot a waitress had produced.

"It gets worse," Jones said grimly. "The Texans did a photo recon overflight of New Orleans harbor this morning. The place is lousy with Russian subs."

"Holy Christ," Hunter said softly.

"And they weren't little tin cans either," Jones continued. "Those were big boys. Nuclear jobs. They

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took a shot of them hauling long metal cylinders out of the missile tubes.

They're probably bringing either more mean high-explosive, or SAM fuel."

"Probably," Hunter agreed. "They figure the tubes would protect them if something went unstable."

"There is some good news," Jones said. "Word's getting around pretty quick.

Not just about The Circle, but about the Russians, too. We have guys-volunteers—pouring into San Diego. Small militias and stuff, looking to sign up. And, the Texans tell us that people are crossing over from Louisiana and Arkansas who want no part of the Reds, or The Circle or Viktor. Canadians say the same thing. To make it easier, we've agreed to be known as the Western Forces."

"Well, every last guy will help," Hunter replied. "What about the regular Free Canadian Army?"

"Frost is up in Montreal right now," the general told him. "The Canadians, want to help —but they can't send their entire army down. It would leave them too unprotected."

"I can understand that," Hunter agreed. "There are a lot of people from the USA up there. It's risking too much."

"They did say they'd have two divisions waiting at the border near Winnipeg.

They'll intervene if we need them. They'll also 'encourage' volunteers and they'll take up our Northwest Approach air patrols."

Hunter was glad to hear that. With the Free Canadians watching over the territory from Alaska over to Siberia, more PAAC aircraft would be freed 195

up to join the fight over the Badlands.

Their waitress reappeared with a bowl of scrambled eggs and a string of sausages. Hunter immediately dug in.

"How are things at Eureka going?" he asked between mouthfuls.

"Slow," Jones said, lowering his voice a meter. "They finished all the engine work, no problem, and began to work on the avionics. But it's so complicated they have to start at square one just about. We have some great guys working on it. Wa and Twomey are there, as you know, plus a lot of former CalTech people. But they're expected to figure out in a matter of weeks what it took the U.S. Government years to put together."

"I don't envy them," Hunter said. "Compared to what they have to do, I've got the easy job, just getting the boxes."

Jones nodded gravely. "All we can hope for is that you get Boxes three, four, and five and when it gets down to the nitty-gritty,—the final battle, so to speak —we'll have the B-ls up and operating."

Hunter wolfed down the rest of the eggs, drained a cup of coffee and prepared to leave. "Well, I'd better get the '16 up and running. I'd like to be down by the Grand Canyon by noon."

He looked at the general and was troubled to see an especially grim look come across his features. "There's one more thing, Hawk," Jones began. "You'd better sit down."

Hunter was back down in an instant.

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"Hawk, Dozer and his guys ran across a plane wreck out on the border of Colorado and Kansas, near the Smoky Hill River," he told him.

"One of ours?" Hunter asked, mystified.

"No," Jones said. "One of theirs. Looked like an L-1011 converted for cargo.

It was an accidental crash. They found one of its engines first, about fifteen miles from the rest of wreckage. Dozer figures the engine probably came off in flight. I don't imagine The Circle has high air maintenance standards, so the thing probably ran out of oil." /

"So?" Hunter said. "What was it carrying?"

Jones looked at him for a moment, then took off his cap and scratched his wiffle-cut head. He slipped an envelope out of his pocket. "This," he said, handing it to Hunter.

Hunter took the envelope and ripped it open. He felt a lightning bolt come up his spine and explode in his brain. It was yet another photo of Dominique.

Same shot, same pose.

"It's weird, Hawk," Jones said. "The whole Goddamn airplane was filled with them!"

Hunter looked at him. "What does you mean, sir?"

"I mean there were crates of them," Jones said, leaning forward and speaking in an urgent whisper. "Thousands —tens of thousands of copies of the same picture."

"This is crazy ..." Hunter said.

"Hawk, I can't imagine what the hell is going on," Jones said. "The Russians, The Circle, this Viktor guy —these things I can understand. But what the 197

hell is it with these pictures? It looks as if they were going to drop them.

Spread 'em around like propaganda leaflets or something."

Hunter could only shake his head and stare at the photo. Would he ever know?

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The Grand Canyon black box was hidden in a very unusual place. Yet Hunter had been there several times before.

f

It was a secret airstrip that the CIA had built years before the Third World War; a place where ultrasensitive aircraft could land and take off from without anyone outside The Company knowing about it. Hunter knew the place existed during his Thunderbird days at Nellis Air Force Base at Las Vegas not a hundred miles to the west. At that time, he was asked to fly "special"

visitors to the secret base on occasion. The approach to the strip was very tricky by design and thus, the best Thunderbird pilot was always asked to go.

He'd been to the secret base —code named Phantom Ranch Ringo —a half dozen times. Yet he'd never actually met anyone who was stationed at the secret base except for the ground crew. His missions had called for him to fly in the

"guests" —always in the jump seat of a specially-equipped F-5 —drop them off then vamoose. Because the strip was so short, a launch-and-recovery arrangement —taken right off an aircraft carrier—was installed. It involved an arresting gear setup which would catch the

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hook especially attached to the bottom of the F-5 allowing it to come to a dead stop very quickly and a very powerful catapult system that launched him for the return flight. How the CIA got all the equipment to the bottom of the canyon and working was beyond him.

Now he knew that black box 3 was hidden at the base, specifically in a laboratory that was built right into the solid rock wall close by the landing strip. In theory, he would fly into the canyon, check to see if the arresting gear was still in place, set down if it was, then get the box and leave by way of catapult. The alternative would involve a long, time-consuming climb down.

He and Jones had discussed this part of the recovery mission at length. Really it was a job for a helicoper strike force — and they would have sent one, except for one thing. While no one really knew what the hell was going on in the Grand Canyon these days, the rumors were that right-wing fanatics — mostly from Utah —had retreated to the canyon after the war. The stories went on to say that these fanatics were well-armed and had adopted a "shoot first"

attitude. Several small airplanes had been shot down around the canyon in the past two years and not just with small arms fire. A convoy airliner that had run into fuel trouble a year before had to fly low over the canyon while attempting to land at the deserted Nellis. Someone fired a small surface-to-air missile at the airplane, just missing it. Jones and Hunter were aware of the incident at the time, but in the wild and wooly New Order America, they couldn't go around

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wasting valuable time, men and equipment chasing down every radical with a SAM

launcher.

But now Hunter had to go back and he had to do it in the airplane which would give him maximum maneuverability, firepower and escape potential. There was never any question that he'd take his F-16. In fact, while he was recovering the black box 2 from Wyoming, the PAAC monkey crew had worked round the clock and installed a Navy-style arrester hook on the belly of his jet.

It was uncommonly overcast above the canyop when he arrived around noontime.

He knew that ever since the Soviets had nuked the Badlands the continent's weather patterns had changed —still a foggy cloud bank enveloping the crevices of the canyon was highly unusual.

He brought the jet fighter down to barely 1000 feet and located the western mouth of the canyon near Lake Mead. Dropping even lower, he found the clouds ended completely at 500 feet.

The secret base was cleverly hidden about 100 miles east of Lake Mead, in an extremely narrow and isolated part of the canyon. Built near an outcrop of rock that was nearly inaccessible by foot, when viewed from the air, one could only see canyon walls and the Colorado River snaking its way through. The buildings, the arresting gear and the catapult were all hidden from casual view. Only someone flying low off the river and expertly following two very hairy miles of the twists and turns of the canyon floor could reach the place.

It was so well hidden that only a handful of the many excursion pilots that had

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flown the canyon before the war had tripped over the installation. When they did, the CIA tracked them down —then offered them a lucrative flying job. Only the most courageous or craziest of pilots would dare to fly the narrows that led to the base. But those were two qualities in demand at the CIA any time.

Hunter located several landmarks and slowly brought the F-16's airspeed down to barely 150 knots. Just off Steamboat Mountain, he carefully descended until he was below the rim of the canyon. Further down he went, gingerly edging the

'16's right side control stick back and forth, staying with the twists of the river below.

Soon he was just 50 feet off the water and his airspeed was down to 120 knots.

He started to pick up some more fairly familiar landmarks. A cliff here, a set of rapids there. Although he'd had only flown the secret missions here years before at night, he had guided his way in then using a helmet-attached

"NightScope." The device made the flights seem like flying in the clearest of daylight.

He recognized a bend in the river ahead as the two-miles-to-go landmark. He applied his airbrakes and lower his landing gear, reducing his speed to just 110 knots. He inched his way down to 40 feet off the deck. Above him he could see the outcrops of rocks jutting out this way and that. This was the hairy part. If any trouble developed, he could not pull up without smashing into one of the overhangs. All he had to do was keep it slow and steady and hope that the arresting cables were still there . . .

Bang!

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Suddenly something hit his starboard wing. He turned to see a hole had drilled clearly through and a wispy stream of fuel starting to leak from the wound . .

.

Bang!

Something—probably a .20 mm cannon shell— went through his port wing, just at the tip, close to his wingtip-mounted Sidewinder . . .

Bang! Bang! Bang!

In a matter of seconds the air around him and in front of him was filled with streaks of antiaircra£ fire. He reacted quickly: he couldn't go up, so dropped down, all the time trying to identify the source of the gunfire. Then he saw puffs of smoke — hundreds of them coming from guns hidden in every crevice and crack on both sides of the canyon wall. Only by his rocking of the F-16 in the narrows did he avoid getting hit.

Up ahead he could see the firing was even more intense. But at the same time, it was sporadically placed. The gunners —whoever they were —weren't aiming at him as much as setting up a wall of lead, which made it impossible for anything to get through. Bullets were glancing off the wings and body. He had no choice. He put the '16 into a 180-degree roll —the tightest he'd ever performed. As most of the gunfire was coming from above him, he'd much rather take some hits on the bottom of the airplane than the top.

But the maneuver was not enough. He still had at least a mile and a half to go. He had to fight back . . .

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He couldn't imagine this many gunners were hiding in the canyon just waiting for some airborne intruder to pass through. Then he got an idea. He immediately punched his Electronic Counter Measures console and heard the reassuring whine as the variety of radio jamming equipment came on.

Suddenly the firing stopped. His gamble worked. He realized that these weren't humans shooting at him —they were robot-controlled antiaircraft guns. The CIA must have installed the things to finish off anyone —like a single fighter or even a cruise missile—they judged hostile before it even reached the base. His ECM equipment was effectively jamming the signals, confusing the guns'

automatic fire system and bringing the attack to a halt.

But Hunter felt far from secure. Someone had activated the robot-controlled gauntlet — someone who didn't want anybody getting into the base. The fact that his airplane was equipped with ECM counter-measures was the only reason he was still in one piece. Most of the aircraft flying around these days considered ECM equipment as an expensive and hard-to-maintain luxury.