Tomorrow War (8 page)

She nodded sweetly.

“Not at all,” she replied. “You saved us from those pigs on the island. I owe you that at least.”

Now Y felt another surge of energy go through him. This one started south of the border and made its way northward.

He finally stood back up and straightened himself out.

“And you are?” he asked, trying to be cool and not succeeding in the least.

She smiled, seeming a bit embarrassed, but took his outstretched hand and shook it lightly.

“My name,” she said softly, “is Emma.”

I
N ANOTHER WORLD THIS
place was once known as Bloody Iwo.

Its full name was Iwo Jima. It was a spit of land, about four hundred miles south of what was left of Japan. There was a huge airfield consisting of four massive runways and eight smaller ones. This place was a stopping-off point, a gas station for the behemoth cargo planes and passenger carriers that plied the skies above the South Pacific.

The island was now nicknamed the Hellhole. The airfield itself was known simply as the Pit.

It was, quite accurately, the worst place on the Pacific Rim. Homicide was an hourly occurrence. The sound of gunfire was heard as frequently as that of the wind blowing through the palms, or the patter of the rains that arrived like clockwork at one o’clock every afternoon.

The Pit was such a dangerous place that even at the height of its power, the Japanese Imperial Army never came here. Not in force anyway. As for pirate groups like the Cherrybenders—they never came within one hundred miles of this place.

It was here, though, that Zoltan, Crabb, and Y landed one of the captured Bug copters.

They were smart enough not to bring the jetcopter down right in the middle of the vast airfield. The people in the Pit would have shot them out of the sky just for target practice. No, landing a Bug at the Pit would have been like showing up at the Grand Prix in a golf cart. That’s why they set down on the beach about a mile from the outskirts of the base itself. It would be easier, they felt, to bribe guards and whomever else they met along the way to get into the place. As it turned out, this was a wise decision.

The currency in these parts was gold: coins, bars, ingots, rings—anything. Just as long as there was gold in it, it passed for money on Iwo Jima.

Before leaving the U.S., Y had had the good sense to carry with him the equivalent of $10,000 in gold. This included four sets of earrings, several rings, a tiepin, a Relox twelve-jeweled twenty-four-carat watch, and a bag of gold coins.

These items were now locked in a small strongbox fitted into the leg pocket of Y’s battle fatigues. He was dressed, in his opinion, as a bummy air merc. His fatigues, borrowed from one of the Unit 167 Sea Marines, were slightly frayed and torn in a few places. He was wearing a crappy beret and an ancient weapons belt that could barely hold his pistol holster.

Zoltan and Crabb were dressed similarly. Zoltan was carrying a huge twin-barrel Thompson machine gun; Crabb was lugging a 4.57 Magnum triple shot.

They left the Bug on the beach and began walking toward the lights of the Pit. The sun was just going down, and the sky was a beautiful crimson-red. The sounds that mixed together were the crash of waves, the wind in the palms, and the roar of jet engines warming up. All were shaking the early-evening air.

“I wonder what kind of booze they got around here?” Y asked, still rather puzzled by his infatuation with demon alcohol lately.

“Probably that crappy Scottish stuff,” Crabb replied knowingly. A standing rule at his Chicago club was that no Scottish liquor of any kind could pass through the doors. In this world, booze from Scotland was the worst.

“The ambient vibes tell me that the liquor here is actually very good,” Zoltan said, touching his hand to his forehead. “And so is the food.”

They topped a sand dune and came upon a roadblock. It was manned by two guards in a small armored personnel carrier commonly known as a Gnat.

One man was sitting next to the vehicle’s top-mounted machine gun; the second was throwing a net into a small tidal pool nearby—no doubt fishing for his supper.

They barely raised their heads as Y, Zoltan, and Crabb made their way down the path toward them. The man fishing took a quick glance and went on about his business. The man at the machine gun actually yawned. Y decided already these two would get a gold ring from him, and not much else.

“Peace!” he greeted them with an upraised hand. “Friends here …”

Crabb and Zoltan looked at him like he was from outer space.

“What do you think, you’re in a cowboy movie here?” Crabb asked him.

Crabb stepped up and looked at the man fishing.

“We want to get to the Pit,” he said. “What is the quickest way?”

The guard shrugged. He was Fijian—far from home. But not that far.

“Many,
many
ways to get to town,” he said, finally snagging a couple of sunfish.

Crabb looked back at Y and stretched out his palm. The OSS man stalled a moment.

“Is it too late to hypnotize these guys?” Y asked Zoltan.

The psychic just rolled his eyes. Y just shrugged, then finally came out with two rings and the tiepin. Together they added up to a substantial amount of gold.

“I asked what’s the quickest?” Crabb said, displaying the rings.

The two soldiers looked the bribe over and then smiled.

“Over the next two dunes, around the mine field, then a half mile north,” one said.

Crabb was suddenly displaying the gold pin.

“OK, now,” he said. “How much for a ride?”

Ten minutes later the Gnat was rumbling through the very muddy main street of the Pit.

The place was very aptly named. It featured what might have been the largest collection of Quonset huts on the planet They were lined up for a mile along the main muddy drag, and some of them went at least a dozen blocks deep.

These plain tin houses were not used just for living areas. Many were converted into bar rooms, gambling halls, and brothels. The neon around these structures was so bright, Y noted that there was no need for streetlights. And indeed, there weren’t any.

The red, orange, and yellow glow was nearly blinding. The muddy streets were thick with vehicles of all descriptions. A few air bikes fluttered high above. The land traffic included mercs of all shapes, sizes, uniform color, and ethnic persuasion. There were hookers everywhere, too.

“Jeesuz, look at all the fuckware!” Crabb said, looking at the talent parading up and down the streets. “No wonder Emma knew where we should look.”

Y felt a sudden pang in his heart. Was Crabb insulting the beautifully delicate Emma?

And if he was, why would Y care?

The Gnat dropped them off at the largest Quonset hut in the vast airport city. This place was the combination saloon, black-market armory, and the unofficial headquarters for the fighter-plane mercenary group that Emma had told them about.

The trio thanked the Gnat crew and jumped off the APC to the muddy streets below.

True to form, the sound of gunfire soon punctuated the night air—not just pistol shots, but the loud reports of heavy-caliber machine-gun fire. Yet the crowds in the streets went about their business as if nothing more serious than a truck backfiring had happened.

Zoltan turned to Y and asked, “OK, now that we’re in, how are we going to get back out again?”

Y motioned his head toward Crabb.

“Ask our tour guide,” he said. “That is, if you don’t know already …”

Just as a matter of course, all three men checked the weapon clips in their guns and then walked into the huge Quonset hut.

The place looked like a cross between a movie set—bright lights everywhere—and an Old West saloon. A long bar stretched around three quarters of the immense space. The place was packed with mercs and hookers, all of them drinking, fighting, arguing, or eating.

Y took one look around and felt a strange sensation well up in the back of his head.

“Damn, I’ve been here before,” he said.

Zoltan looked at him. “That’s my line, isn’t it?”

Y wasn’t listening, though. He was too busy studying the interior of this place. It was strange. It was as if he was seeing it for the first time, yet he still had intimate knowledge of the saloon. The long bar, the crowd of soldiers and hookers, the very bright movie lights.

It was a very strange sensation.

Like a dream within a dream …

They walked over to the bar, and the bartenders all ignored them.

Y pulled out the gold necklace and began waving it in full view of the nearest beer jockey—but again to no effect.

Zoltan looked around, took out his massive gun, and fired two shots into the ceiling. The report from his weapon was earsplitting, the smoke and cordite like a small storm.

Not one person turned a head.

“Wow … tough crowd,” the psychic said.

“If Hawk was here, we’d have a drink by now,” Y said, more to himself than to the others.

It was just dumb luck that a waitress was passing by with a huge pitcher of beer and three mugs. Zoltan lifted the brews from the tray. All three quickly quenched their thirst.

This done, they had to start looking for the people they’d come to find.

Y knew very little about the air merc group, other than their name: the AirCats. Emma had told them only that they flew odd-looking airplanes—the norm in this world—and that they were fearless, which could also mean they were simply crazy.

Y knew a bit about military aircraft, as did Zoltan. In this world there were literally dozens of current military aircraft models, not just a few top-of-the-line fighters, bombers, and so on.

And there was a fighter-bomber manufactured by Boeing-Grumman-Northrop-Bell called the AirCat. It was a big, powerful, quick, double-reaction-powered airplane, with straight wings, a central power plant, and a small compartment able to hold three crew members: a pilot, a copilot/bombardier, and a navigator/tail gunner for big jobs, a single pilot for small ones. AirCats could lug a lot of bombs, hold as many as eight cannon on its wings and, ironically, was able to operate off of an aircraft carrier.

But how to spot a certain gang of air mercs in a place that was full of them?

Y turned to Zoltan.

“Got your antenna up?” he asked the psychic.

Zoltan grimaced—he disliked any suggestion that his ability was anything less than genuine. But he closed his eyes, wrinkled his brow, and put his finger to his goateed-chin.

Then he simply spun around and pointed to a table in the nearest corner.

“There …,” he said, without opening his eyes.

Y and Crabb looked in the direction Zoltan was indicating—and found themselves staring at a table teeming with transvestite hookers.

“Please guess again,” Y said, horrified.

Zoltan opened his eyes, saw his mistake, yanked his chin in thought, and then thrust his finger straight up in the air.

“There!” he yelled above the din.

Y and Crabb looked up and saw that indeed there was a table full of mercs sitting on the second level right above the girly-boys.

They all looked rugged, grizzled, and drunk. So at least they knew they were pilots.

“See? My location was right,” Zoltan said by way of explanation.

Crabb patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah, you just gotta work on that altitude thing.”

Y had already made his way through the crowd and was bounding up the stairs toward the merc table. Zoltan and Crabb were quickly behind him.

Arriving on the second floor, Y fought his way through another crowd of drunks, hookers, and soldiers, and finally arrived at the table of mercs. There were thirteen of them—each one had a girl on his lap, except the two men who seemed to be the leaders of the group. Each of them had two girls on his lap.

Both these characters appeared tough-looking, with identical gnarly beards, handsome if rugged faces, all-in-all two no-nonsense guys. Both were small and wiry. Both were older than the rest of the group. And though they were both wearing caps pulled down low and dark sunglasses, it was obvious after a while that these men were identical twins.

The whole table looked up at Y. His arrival seemed a bit sudden, putting the group on guard.

“Hey, waitress?” one of the twins said to him. “We need another round ….”

Y remained silent.

One of the mercs shooed the girl off his lap and was suddenly nose to nose with the OSS agent. He was a head over Y and had about fifty pounds on him, big for a fighter pilot.

“My boss told you to get us some drinks,” the man snarled at Y.

Y reeled back and leveled the man with one massive punch. Zoltan and Crabb arrived at this very moment, and only Crabb’s perfect basket catch prevented the man from hitting the floor.

The table full of mercs was stunned—except the twin pilots, who simply smiled a bit.

“He might kick your ass, when he wakes up,” one of the twins said.

“I might not be here when he does,” Y replied. “Unless you want to talk some business.”

There was a long silence. Then Crabb let the man simply crash to the floor, knocking him further into unconsciousness.

The twins gave the eye to the six men sitting on their right. The pilots were soon pushing girls off their laps and making room for Y to sit down.

“What do you need?” one twin asked Y. “We do intercept stuff, close air support. Armed recon—”

“At the moment all I need is some information,” Y said. He dramatically pulled the bag of gold coins from his leg pocket and slammed it on the table.

This was enough to impress the twin pilots.

“Ask away,” one said.

Y drew his seat a bit closer to them. The rest of the mercs, the girls, Zoltan, and Crabb were all now leaning against the railing a respectable distance away, watching the meeting. Already Crabb had several girls buzzing around him. The guy Y hit was lying on the floor, an odd smile played on his face—even though his lips were bleeding a bit.

“You know what the Japan Sink is?” Y asked them.

Both men looked back at him; their bravado faded a bit.

“What if we do?” one asked.