Wingman (3 page)

supersonically, in three hours, drinking the best wine and eating the best food in the process.

"It was the last congressional boondoggle flight in history," the general continued. "We put down in Washington, because New York City looked too hot to handle.

These guys didn't want any part of it. Half of them were on their way to Weather Mountain.

You know, that place near DC where they have a fully stocked city right inside the mountain and all the big shots are supposed to go when the bomb was dropped?"

Hunter had heard of the place.

"Well, I don't know how many of them made it past the door, but they were telling me about the place. They had enough stuff hidden away to last them for years. The place is so big inside they even have a lake there. These guys claimed you could water ski on it. One senator said there was even a plan to round up all the best call girls in Washington right before the shit hit the fan and get them down there too. You know, just to give them all something to do while they waited for the dust to settle? Yeah, we had our share of great leaders, huh? They needed women to continue the human race with. Let their descendants crawl out of the cave and run things. You know, keep it in the family. But can you imagine what kind of a bastard is produced when a politician knocks up a hooker?"

The thought of it sent a shiver down Hunter's spine. He took a slug of his

whiskey-laced coffee.

Jones did the same, lit up a cigar and went on with his story. Once he touched down at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, the politicians bolted off the plane and were gone without so much as a thank you. Except for one of them.

"One guy did give me a bag of French francs," Jones said, blowing smoke rings.

"Big deal, I thought at the time. They were probably worth all of twenty-five bucks, and that was in France! He thought he was doing me this big favor and all he cared about was that his ass was home, so he was in a generous mood. Typical politician. Well, I hung onto them Frenchies, a wise move, I found out later.

"Andrews was pretty much abandoned. There were a few creeps around. Left behind GIs, MPs. These screwball National Guard guys. People like that. All of them were armed to the teeth and looking for trouble. I ignored them, but they had their eye on the plane. I saw a bunch of aircraft that had been blown up by some good little soldiers.

Some assholes following the New Order to the letter, I suppose. Air Force One was there, or what was left of it. Lot of F-15s, gone. Pieces of them scattered everywhere. It made me sick to look at them."

Jones became quiet for a moment. Hunter knew the general was thinking of the wasted, destroyed jets.

"I was beat and I had nowhere to go, so I slept for about two days right in the Concorde. Finished off the food and booze, then I realized that I could be sleeping in a real bed somewhere. I found some LC's office with a hideaway bed. I stayed there for two days, and you know, during the night some assholes sneaked down to the runway and blew up the SST? God, I'd heard of following orders, but some of these people carried it a bit too far."

Hunter nodded. Another example of a waste of technology. When would anyone get around to building a supersonic airliner again? "I bummed around DC for a while," Jones said, stirring his coffee. "There were some people still left. All the restaurants were open. It was nearly business as usual, except they were practically giving the food away. Dollars were as valuable as used toilet paper, but I found out that people would take coins, including my francs. It didn't matter that quarters, dimes and nickels were all clad coins with not enough silver to fill a tooth. These people treated them like they were pure through and through. There were even people running around with real silver and gold coins. So they loved to see me and my francs."

Jones soon took residence in an abandoned swank Georgetown townhouse. It was his home for three months.

"It was party time there too," he said. "All over DC. Food, booze and broads.

I was out in a bar every night. It's great when you don't have to go to work. Met a lot of funny people. But unfortunately, I also met a lot of people carrying guns, and not just .32 caliber water pistols either. It started getting tense. Pretty soon there were shoot-outs every night. It was Dodge City. I figured it was just a matter of time before a stray bullet would catch my ass, so I started thinking about getting out.

"Then I heard some of these new little countries were starting navies, armies, militias, things like that and they needed military people to help. I talked to a guy, who knew another guy who had a friend who knew about this job. Commander of the Northwest Economic Zone's Air Patrol-'ZAP,' for short. A little bulky, but it sounded good to me. They had a little money to spend and they were lucky. Most of their National Guard units were never turned on by the disarmament weirdos, so there were still a few guys around who knew how to take an order. I tell you, troops like that are a rare commodity these days."

Jones had traveled to Boston and met with the leaders of the Northeast Economic Zone. They promised him almost complete freedom. Just as long as he paid lip service to the New Order rules.

"You know, no radios, no TV, no old uniforms, no Stars and Stripes." Jones's voice cracked slightly when he mentioned the ban on the American flag. "That's why we have these stupid pansy color uniforms on, and that's why that candyass, three-dollar-bill flag is flying over this place.

"But I've always liked the Cape, and they let me fly, so here I came. Been here about a year and a half."

But Hunter was confused. Fly? The last time he'd heard, one of the New Order's rules-the most important one in his eyes-was that all military aircraft had to be dismantled as part of the demilitarization agreement. But he had heard jets at the base.

Then, as if on cue, the sound of a jet taking off filled the office, shaking the coffee pot slightly.

Jones read his mind.

"We have a few planes here, Hawk," the general said, his smile looking like the cat that ate the canary.

“So I can hear Hunter said. "But how'd you get around the demilitarization order?"

The general gave out a loud "Ha!" and waved his hand. "We were lucky, Hawk. And the traitors-our so-called Vice President and the rest of them-were stupid. Their New Order said 'dismantle all the combat aircraft' when it should have said 'destroy all combat aircraft.' so what do you think the smart people in Europe did? They just started taking the planes apart, cataloging the numbers and packing them away. And who the hell was going to stop them? The UN? The Finns? The Russians? No way. So these enterprising sorts packed all the pieces away, put it on ships and sent the ships everywhere and anywhere, just before the commies moved in."

"Every war has its profiteers,' Hunter said.

"You get the idea," the general said, pouring him another cup of coffee and adding a dash of booze. "Now, don't get me wrong. A lot of planes were destroyed. I mean, look what happened to us."

Hunter well remembered the day when the Finnish observers arrived and

systematically blew up the squadron's 12 remaining F-16s.

"Yeah, nice guys, those Finns," the general said, digressing for a moment. "They live in the armpit country of Europe and spend most of their time sucking up to the Russians."

Hunter felt a surge of rage flow through him. What a waste of money and technology?

"Anyway," Jones continued, lighting up a massive cigar. "The New Order boys also screwed up by not including other military aircraft like cargo planes and tankers.

Copters. And they didn't mention anything about de-commissioned aircraft either."

Hunter's vision of a flightless world was happily coming to an end. "You've been to Wright-Patterson," Jones said in a puff of smoke. "You know how many planes were in mothballs there?"

"Hundreds, It would imagine," Hunter said, adding some hooch to his own coffee.

Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio, Hunter knew, was the location of the Air Force's surplus aircraft storage area. It was like an elephant's graveyard for old planes; especially the sophisticated ones that had some years behind them but were too damned expensive to send to the scrap heap. So instead of shit canning them, the Air Force just plugged all the holes, drained the tanks and had them sit out at Wright-Patterson to use in case of an emergency.

"Thousands," Jones corrected him. "And most of them just needed the screws tightened and the oil changed and they were ready to fly,"

A tinge of panic took a swipe at him. "But, what is Ohio these days? Who's running things there?"

"No one, which is fine with us," Jones hauled out a map that was so new it looked as if the ilk still wasn't dry. It was the first time Hunter had seen the new countries and territories of America. "Ohio is now a Free State. In other words, it's an open area. No government. At least for the time being. A couple of guys out there realized they were sitting on a bonanza and opened up shop. All these little countries or regions or states – or whatever they are came running because everyone wanted to start their own airforce. It's an airplane supermarket. We've got a couple of guys out there right now, bidding on some planes."

Hunter instantly wanted to see the place.

"What are you shopping for?" he asked. "Mostly small stuff, fighters, attack craft. They've got everything. A lot of heavy bomber merchandise. B-58s, B-47s, even a couple B-36s." The general rose and poured himself a third cup of joe and added the mandatory splash of whiskey. "But we can't fool around with the heavies. We can't afford them and the runway here won't take a lot of it. Way too short. And where would we put them?”

"And what would you do with them?"

"Exactly," Jones replied with satisfaction. "The people running all these little air forces think the bigger the better. Now, I'm sure a lot of them are thinking of converting their B-47 into a cargo plane and, in some cases it will work. "But you can be sure that some of these clowns are thinking differently. Some of these states are being run by the typical crooked and/or stupid politician who suddenly woke up and found he was a king. Hell, this so-called Vice President-what's his name again, Benedict Arnold?-appointed half of them. God knows what deals he made before he traded in his stars and bars for a hammer and sickle.

"Well, what happens when someone in the country next door doesn't want to pay a flyover tax? Or money at the tolls? Or starts fishing in the other guy’s river? How much will it take before one of these pisspots in control gets mad enough and orders his B-36s to go and flatten the other guy's capital? It's already happening! They've been having a hell of a misunderstanding down near Florida and Alabama. Blowing the shit out of each other. Using gasoline bombs, napalm, terrible stuff."

`"Napalm?" Hunter said, stirring his coffee with a pencil. "You can get napalm these days?"

`"Oh yeah," Jones said, relighting his stogie. "Anyone who wants it can get 'palm from the Mid-Aks."

`"Mid-who?"

`"Mid-Aks. The Middle Atlantic Conference States, Everything from Delaware and Pennsylvania down to Georgia. New Jersey doesn't count. The 'Aks. They're real dangerous, Hawk. They were sitting on a lot of military hardware when the balloon went up and they must have either hid ninety percent of the shit when the New Order came in, or made a deal to keep it all because they still have a lot of it. I mean these guys are armed to the teeth and then some with tanks, PCs, howitzers. And they have a lot of men in uniform too. Lot of scumbags living down there even before the war.

Now, at least, they're employed."

`He let out a snort and took a healthy swig from his coffee mug.

`"We'll be fighting them here next," he said, a touch of nervous caution in his voice.

"They're already making noise. They took over several little territories around Kentucky and Tennessee. Just rolled over them. Sherman-to-the-sea type stuff. They have Fort Knox and made themselves rich. Now they want to talk to my bosses about 'Mutual Defense Treaties' and all this happy horseshit. It’s a joke! They have bunch of crooks running the show and they can use a whole army as enforcers. I'd like to kick their asses."

"How are your . . . bosses?" Hunter asked.

"Ah, they're okay," Jones said. "They were smart enough to know that if you can't have a big army, you'd better have a good air force. Especially with all the coastline they have to protect. From old New Hampshire, to Boston Harbor, the whole Cape out here, right down to Long Island. They'll probably get Maine someday, too. Right now, that's a no-man's-land.

"They pretty much leave us alone down there. They give me money and I pay everyone and what's ever left over, I invest in spare parts and start saving for some more airplanes. We fly up to Boston every few days, buzz the city, just to let them know we're around. The people up there like it. They like to think someone's watching over them."

Jones returned to the map again. "We fly out to the Berkshires, go up around Mt.

Washington, skirt down around Connecticut. That's about the range of our patrols. We could fly right over New York City if we wanted to, but the place is so heavy, you never know what they'll shoot up at you. You think it was bad when you were there? It’s incredible down there now Everyone has a gun, a missile, or a tank. And all they do is fight each other for the right to call this block or that apartment house 'their turf.' They enjoy it. Every man's a king and the fighting never stops. And it's a great cover for what really goes on down there, and I mean all kinds of smuggling. Guns, drugs, women missiles, explosives, gasoline, booze-you name it. Enough parts to build your own goddamn B-52, if you have the gold or the silver or whatever to pay for it. and I know for a fact the Mid-Aks run most of the guns into New York City and trade them for protection-a free rein in smuggling stuff in and out."