War of the Sun (31 page)

It was a grim reminder of what they had to do.

Most of the firing had stopped by this time. It was clear that the vast majority of the island was now without electrical power. For the most part, the Great Wall of guns had fallen silent. The enemy’s will to resist had also been broken, or at least they were in need of a major regrouping. Any opposition the 104th met on the way up the second half of the mountain scattered as soon as they fired on it. Now, according to Task Force radio reports, there were no Cult troop movements in evidence anywhere on the island.

The 104th quickly set up their equipment and went about their task with workmanlike authority. They had carried nearly 800 pounds of XHE—for extra-high explosive—up the mountain with them, and now much of it was being placed by troopers in repelling equipment along the precarious overhangs which dominated the northwestern side of the mountain peak.

Below them was the valley of smog, now made extra thick by two hours of explosions both real and fake. Hidden in the polluted gloom directly underneath them was the enormous cave mouth that served as the opening for the hidden airstrip.

Their charges were all in place by 0830. Previous radio traffic between the 104th and the Task Force told them that the JAWs teams had determined that most if not all slaves were out of Shuri Mountain. Now came the report that the JAWs team had sealed all smaller entrances not previously blocked by the earlier airstrikes.

At 0835, the second-to-last barrage of fake F/X explosions went off, the idea being to keep any Cult soldiers in the jungle at bay until the JAWs team reached the beach at Nin again safely.

Then at 0840, Geraci got a call directly from Ben Wa on the
Fitzgerald.
Everything was go for the 104th to complete its mission. With one twist of a detonator handle, Geraci did just that, triggering the 800 pounds of XHE to explode out and downward, causing an enormous landslide down the northeastern face of the mountain.

It took five full minutes for the smoke and dust to clear, but when it did, there was no doubt that the 104th had completed its mission. The landslide had completely covered the entranceway to the hidden airstrip, sealing it forever.

The vast Shuri Mountain aircraft manufacturing facility was now one enormous tomb.

Hunter and JT touched down on the
Fitzgerald
shortly after the 104th detonated their charges.

Their fuel tanks were so low, neither one would have had enough gas to make another go-around should their first approach to the carrier not be true. Both made perfect landings, however, quickly securing their airplanes and unstrapping from their cockpits.

They didn’t have to be told the grim news about the
Cohen—
they had followed the battle via their radios on the dash back from Iko Jima. As it turned out, they had caught up with the last wave of the Iko strike force, knocking down six Zeros and scattering the others. Had it not been for that action, the kamikaze raid on the battered, depleted Task Force could have been much worse.

But there was no celebrating as they wearily climbed out of their airplanes. With the loss of the
Cohen
and a large part of her crew, even the reports of the successful completion of the Okinawa campaign did little to lift their spirits.

The grim reality of war had finally hit home.

They spent another full day in the waters off Okinawa. Heavily-armed landing parties helped the 104th strip dozens of usable weapons from the now-silent Great Wall while others scoured the island for valuable fuel. A contingent from the F/X group joined in these efforts and then took up stations on the
Fitzgerald.

The following morning, the three remaining ships of the battered Task Force sailed away, leaving countless thousands of Cult soldiers entombed in Shuri Mountain, and 311 Americans and the USS
Cohen
at the bottom of Okinawa Bay.

“C
RUNCH” O’MALLEY’S BACK WAS
killing him.

“Maybe I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered, trying to reposition himself in the tight pilot’s seat. “Or maybe I should lay off the Scotch. Or the stogies.”

He’d been flying for sixteen hours now and had at least another two to go before he reached the coordinate where he hoped the USS
Fitzgerald
would be. He’d last taken on fuel ninety minutes before, an expensive midair gas-up courtesy of a very high-priced mercenary refueling company flying out of what passed for New Guinea these days. It was his third such aerial pump-up since leaving a small, secret airstrip located on Aitku Atoll, one of the smaller Carolina Islands, just after midnight.

Now it was four in the afternoon and his back was getting stiffer.

It had not been a pleasant mission. Three and a half days of flying over the vast South Pacific made for looking at a lot of water and little else; the distances between islands or island chains was simply mind-numbing in some cases.

But when he
did
find a “live island”—one that was under control by the Cult—all the news was disturbing. In fact, his camera pods were filled with video showing island after island of Cult facilities: weapon assembly plants, staging areas, supply depots, ammo dumps, fuel farms, and above all, troop barracks. The Cult’s domination of the area was so vast, Crunch couldn’t imagine it being any different from the Imperial Japanese occupation of the area back in the 1940s.

But actually, there
was
one big difference, and in fact, this was the most disturbing aspect of Crunch’s long, long flight. For although he’d reconnoitered upwards of 200 separate Cult military and support facilities, they all had one thing in common.

They were all empty.

He had had a hard time believing it at first—the Cult sites were elaborate in the extreme, frightening examples of the Asians’ military industrial power, yet they were all abandoned. It was only after he’d done several unopposed low-level runs that it began to sink in. The wishful thinking was that the Cult had simply dissolved, perhaps after finally hearing about the Tokyo Raid and the death of Hashi Pushi—but this was definitely not the case. No, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had been staging at these island sites had not disappeared, nor had their units disintegrated. Rather, they had obviously deployed to other areas.

This was the disturbing news Crunch was bearing for Hunter and the rest of the Task Force. All the evidence of Cult power was there, spread throughout the South Pacific like a plague. But that power had moved on.

The question was, where?

It was ninety minutes later when Crunch overflew the chain of five small islands where the Cult had built its enormous battleship manufacturing yards.

Just like the rest of the Cult’s military installations, this one was absolutely deserted. There were no soldiers, no workers, not a smokestack puffing or a light burning or an AA site manned.

Nor were their any battleships.

He buzzed the necklace of islands, grimly fascinated that such an example of pure military might could be so utterly empty. It looked like a scene from a 1960s end-of-the-world movie.

But unlike the other abandoned sites, this one bode not well at all for the Task Force. From the looks of things, there were anywhere from two to three dozen battleships roaming around out there. If just two or three located the shoestring fleet of the United American Task Force, it would prove catastrophic.

That’s why Crunch had to reach the
Fitzgerald
as quickly as he could.

Leaving the chain of islands behind, he swiftly climbed to 15,000 feet and headed east, toward the Task Force’s prearranged coordinate.

That’s when he saw it.

It was coming right at him—head on—a sickly pink airplane leaving a long trail of dirty gray smoke. Crunch instinctively banked away, preventing what would surely have been a fatal midair collision. Still, the strange airplane came so close to his nose, he’d almost clipped its tailplane in his evasive dive.

As it screamed past, he got a brief but telling glimpse of the airplane itself.

Crunch was startled that he recognized the type right away—it was an Me-262
Strumvogel,
or Stormbird, the Nazi-designed airplane that was the only combat jet to see regular action in World War Two, all of it at the end of the hostilities in Europe. As such, its fuselage was made primarily of wood and nonmetal layering. No wonder his radar hadn’t picked up the aircraft.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Crunch yelled into his mask. “An antique stealth!”

But a second later, he had other problems. Deep into his evasive maneuver, the right-side engine on the RF-4X Super Phantom flamed out, stalled because of the radical banking. Crunch coolly but quickly stomped on his left rudder and punched the left aileron, twisting the venerable fighter-bomber in such a way that airflow into the sputtering right engine became constant again.

He did this twice before the suffocating engine relit on the third attempt. He was able to get out of the dizzying spin and level out at a hair under 8500 feet.

The Me-262 was long gone by this time, disappearing into the huge cloud bank to the south.

Though safe, Crunch was in a mild state of shock. He was not surprised by much anymore. Ever since the Big War, the world had gone crazy; having the granddaddy of all combat jets nearly collide with him at 15,000 feet was just another example of the madness. And even seeing one which was painted in a hideous pink blossom color didn’t phase him much.

But something about the lightning-quick encounter incident
had
shook him. It was the pilot himself. Their eyes met for what could have only been a tenth of a second—but it was surprising how much one could see in such a short amount of time. The Me-262’s pilot was a young Oriental. He was wearing a red kerchief around his head instead of a helmet, and an old leather flight suit which also harkened back to old Imperial Japan.

But it was the pilot’s face that sent a chill to Crunch’s bones and back again.

For what Crunch saw was a look that, for lack of a better word, could be described only as totally evil.

It was weird, a sensation that baffled him at its depth of spookiness. He knew he’d never forget it …

Recovering to 20,000 feet, Crunch shook off the chill with a deep gulp of oxygen. His back no longer hurting him, he booted in his afterburner and felt the corresponding kick as the engines devoured raw fuel being dumped into their tails.

He had to get the Task Force with all haste.

The Next Day

The four-prop P-3 Orion antisub plane banked low over Punta Eugenia and then went into a sweeping orbit above the small island.

It was 0800. The P-3 had been airborne since leaving Vancouver around midnight. The long-range airplane was on a dangerously routine mission: to keep tabs on
Fire Bats
One, the Cult-controlled submarine which continuously plied the waters off the southern coast of occupied California, its 18-megaton nuclear missile targeted at any one of the West Coast’s population centers.

Sitting at the controls of the P-3 was Major Pietr Frost, the Free Canadian officer who served as his government’s liaison with the United American cause. In the uncertain times following the Tokyo Raid, General Jones had asked Frost to oversee the crucial
Fire Bats
tracking operation personally. If the Cult made good on its threat to nuke a West Coast city and incinerate millions of innocent Americans, the chances were that Frost would be one of the first to see the missile go up.

The island of Punta Eugenia was located off of Baja, the virtually abandoned isthmus which provided the tail for California. A tiny, top secret United American coast-watcher base was located deep inside the desolate rocky atoll. In one of several such stations hidden along the West Coast, the fifteen-man crew kept track of
Fire Bats
One by monitoring radio signals, sonar waves, and the general commotion made by submarine operation with their ultrasensitive listening devices.

Normally, the base at Punta Eugenia would keep a running account of the
Fire Bats’
ever-changing underwater course, transmitting the information to the P-3 via a satellite uplink. The Orion would then locate the
Fire Bats
and trail it from a safe altitude until the plane’s fuel ran out, at which time another P-3 would take over. (A similar system was in place off the coast of northern California, where
Fire Bats
Two usually operated.)

The hound-dog procedure served as a rudimentary early warning system should the
Fire Bats
ever launch its nuclear weapon. If and when that happened, the P-3 was under orders to sink the sub immediately, a task it couldn’t do before then for fear that such an action would provoke its sister vessel
Fire Bats
Two to launch its weapon.

But on this day, something was not routine.

This was because the Punta station had not been able to locate
Fire Bats
One for nearly eight hours. The P-3 had been searching for it all night, too, with no luck.

What is going on?
Frost wondered over and over. If the equipment on Punta was operating properly—which was why the P-3 was orbiting over the island, to check the station’s triangulation—then the lack of sub noise could mean only one of two things: either the
Fire Bats
was laying dead cold on the bottom somewhere, or it had left the area.

Either way, it would be a significant event.

The P-3 continued circling the small island for another ten minutes. Finally Frost’s communications officer told him that all of the equipment at the top secret station had checked out. Losing track of the
Fire Bats,
then, was not a mechanical error.

Frost turned the big prop plane back north and began the low-level, radar-avoiding run back to its base at Vancouver. At the same time, he told his communications officer to establish a secure scramble line direct to United American headquarters in Washington.

General Jones had to be alerted at once.

Washington