Wingman (4 page)

`Hunter's thoughts suddenly flashed back to Dozer and the heroic 7th Cavalry. Who knows what ever happened to them?

`"We've seen a little action, mostly pirate ships and stuff," Jones said, helping himself to his fourth pick-up of the morning. "We've had some strange doings lately though."

`He drained his mug and stood up.

"Come on," he said, pulling on his jacket. "I'll show you what we're flying these days."

Hunter thought he'd never ask.

Walking out into the brisk morning air, Jones began to show Hunter around the base.

The place was more runway than anything else. There were three of them to be exact, two which ran parallel to the ocean nearby, the third intersecting them at a 70-degree angle. The entire base was probably a square mile in size. There were six lonely buildings scattered about-two of them big, Quonset-hut style hangars, two others served as housing for the base's occupants. The flight ops building had the base's control tower sitting beside it. The sixth building was next door, a catch-all mess hall, which he would soon find out, served as the well-patronized base saloon.

`The base was surrounded by a chain link fence and guard towers every 500 yards or so.

Soldiers walked the perimeter in pairs. He could see some rudimentary 20mm antiaircraft gun positions ringing the perimeter, with a few mobile SAM launchers and even a couple of old Hawk antiaircraft systems thrown in. But the only aircraft sitting on the flight line was the Piper Cub that Hunter had seen towing the sign a few weeks before.

`"I knew you were probably alive," Jones said matter-of-factly. "And, if you had made it back from Europe, that you were probably hiding out somewhere, waiting for the fall of civilization."

"I'm still waiting," Hunter said with a laugh.

"Me, too," Jones replied. "But I figured you would return to where your roots were. The mountains in New Hampshire seemed like a good bet, although I had that Cub flying all over the state before you spotted it."

`They walked right over one of the runways. Hunter could see that although there were weeds popping up through the asphalt, there were also some tire skid marks, indicating that something besides a Piper Cub had landed there recently. Where were the other planes?

"Don't ask just yet," Jones told him, reading his thoughts again.

They walked in silence for a few moments, over the second runway and approached the beach.

`"We lost twenty million people, Hawk," the general said, the bitterness evident in his voice. "When the double-cross went down and that Quisling left a hole in the Star Wars shield, the Russian ICBMs just kept on coming, all of them landing on or around our silos. Talk about overkill! They just about blew the country into two parts. From North Dakota on down, it looks like the moon. Craters as big as cities, forest fires that will take years to burn out. Even some of the rivers are on fire, who knows why."

"What about radiation?" Hunter asked, sniffing the air for effect. "Nothing seems to be glowing."

"Most of the bombs that fell were 'clean,' " Jones said with noticeable relief.

"Thank God for that. There is some low-level radiation, not much though. But those bastards also sent over nerve gas, germ bombs, even some hallucinogenic stuff. It's scattered everywhere. They must have launched everything but the kitchen sink at us, and we didn't so much as fire a popgun at them."

"So much for nuclear deterrence," Hunter said.

"It used to be beautiful country out there, Hawk," Jones continued. "The Dakotas.

Nebraska. Kansas. I was raised out there. I know. Now it looks like another planet.

It's a no-man's-land out there. I've flown over it. It gave me the creeps. It's downright spooky and it's going to stay like that for a long time."

Hunter nodded, then said: "I know it sounds terrible, but twenty million dead isn't so bad, considering what could have happened if they had nuked our big cities,"

Hunter said.

"You're right," Jones said, stopping to light his cigar in the brisk, ocean breeze.

"But they wanted something left for them to take over. This 'No Occupation' section of the treaty is a bunch of yabanza. You know and I know that as soon as those ugly, crude bastards get their hammers and sickles straight, they'll be over here, eating our food, fishing our rivers, screwing our women. They'll be able to take the
Queen
Mary
over here, who the hell's going to stop them?"

Hawk felt the bulge of the folded American flag in his back pocket. "We'll stop them," he said, matter-of-factly.

Jones looked at him and laughed, but didn't say anything for a couple of moments. "You could . . ." the general said, finally, thinking of Hunter's expertise in the air. He was widely known as the best fighter pilot ever. "You could probably shoot 'em all down singlehandedly."

Hunter steered clear of the subject.

"What's with this 'New Order' business," he asked. "Do people really give a damn?"

"No, not really," Jones answered. "It's a case of malignant neglect. That traitor Vice President set himself up as the New Order Commissioner, or some such thing, and then took his entourage of faggots and weirdos and Russians and went to Bermuda or Moscow or someplace to play house. Before he left, he set up a bunch of rules. All of them are designed to stop people from talking, or even thinking, about the old ways."

"I know it's 'illegal' to fly the Stars and Stripes," Hunter said. "What else did they come up with?"

"You can't even say the name of the country-the name before all this shit happened, that is," Jones said. "Not even the word, America. Now it's just The Continent. No more national anthem, no more newspapers, TV, radio. They even banned sporting events. But the Texans told them to go screw themselves on that one."

"And some people choose to follow these rules?"

"Well, yes and no. It's more like you can avoid a lot of trouble if you just keep your mouth shut."

"That was true in Germany in the 1930s," Hunter said.

"I know," Jones sighed. "But I look at it this way. If I start mouthing off, my bosses get upset. They get upset because they have to deal with the New Order flunkies who are running around in Boston, looking 1 over everyone's shoulder, collecting their 10-percent tax, off the top. I make too much noise, a New Order clown gets wind of it and tells my bosses to can me. They can my ass, I ain't got a job, money or a place to hang my helmet. What’s worse, I can't fly. If I can't fly, I might as well die. You know that."

Hunter nodded again. "Me, too."

"So I play their little game. We've got a good thing going here. We can build it into a
really
good thing. The Northeast Economic Zone is just another word for 'We're making money.' They have good airport facilities in Boston. A lot of traffic goes through there. All the major convoys to the Coast go out of Boston and Montreal. It's big, big money. Real silver. Real gold. They pay a tax to that jerk-off in Bermuda. He keeps the Russians happy by sucking up to the Politburo. It all evens out. No one wants to jinx it by talk of the old days."

The general was quiet for a while.

"We're mercenaries here, Hawk," he said finally. "We're not soldiers fighting for a flag or a cause. We're fighting for a paycheck. We're guarding their investment.

They're getting rich and putting people to work. People work, have food, they stay happy and quiet. Look, I have permission to raise an army here, train 'em, make a special forces unit out of them. The Leaders Council in Boston-they're my bosses-will give me just about what I need. In return, I protect their asses. I watch over their convoy routes. I make sure there ain't no pirates in their airspace. But if something big broke out, I mean like a war between the Zone and the 'Aks, I'm gone. And my people are gone too. It ain't like the old days. It ain't worth losing your life over."

Hunter let it all sink in.

"What's it like in the big cities these days?" he asked as they approached the beach on the other side of the runway. "I mean, I know New York City is like Beirut.

But how about LA? Chicago?"

"Well, they're empty, most of them," Jones answered. "They figure that more than half-that's
half
-the Americans moved out of the country in the past two years. Didn't want to live here, simple as that. Of the one hundred million that left, most went north to Canada, and some went south to Mexico. There are huge resettlement camps up around Toronto, Quebec, Montreal, places like that. The Canucks were good enough to take our people in. They didn't get burnt so bad in the rumble. Mexico is another story, from what I hear. Lots of trouble down there. The Mex still remember we kicked their asses back in 1836. Lot of those people have moved back into the ROT."

"ROT?" Hunter asked.

Jones laughed. "Shouldn't call it that I guess. 'Republic of Texas.' Those crazy bastards finally got their wish. They are their own country now. Got a hell of an army, too, so I hear."

Hunter wasn't too surprised to hear the Texans were adapting. "Shit, you don't think a little thing like World War III would stop those people, do you?" Jones said.

"Let me tell you something: after the armistice was signed, the Texans took about a day and a half off to change the colors on their flag and adjust their college football schedule. Then they went back to work.

"They knew that no matter what happened, people would always need three things: heating oil, gasoline and jet fuel. So they fired up their refineries and concentrated on just those three products. Since then, the world-such as it is-has beat a path to their door. Of course, the stuff goes at premium prices. Gasoline is worth about twenty-five old dollars a gallon these days. I forget how much that is in real silver.

But that's why everyone just about stays put these days. No more jumping in the car to see Grandma. And there aren't that many cars working anyway.

"The heating oil is cheaper and a little easier to get. But still, these days you have two, three, maybe four families sharing what used to be one-family houses.

That's how people are surviving. It's the buddy system. It's a lucky man who has a job-and he gets paid whatever is available. Food, clothes, heating oil, sometimes money, I guess.

There's no such thing as a regular paycheck out there anymore. It's catch as catch can.

That's why so many people are joining the army. Pretty soon, I think, everyone will be in the army in some capacity. For many of the little countries, it's the only secure job there is. Now, like I said, people here in the Northeast have it better than most.

That's what we are protecting. The 'Aks cream their jeans thinking about what we have going here."

He relit his cigar.

"Of course, it's the jet fuel I'm most concerned about. We are worthless if we don't have the juice to fly. I can deal with Texans, or I can deal with some of the Arabs that are still alive and pumping crude. It's way cheaper with the Texans and more reliable, too. You can imagine what is going down in the Arab World these days! But with the Texans, they insist on a fighter escort for the ship, round-trip, no less.

There are a lot of people out there who haven't the sweet deal we have here and who'd love to get their hands on a tanker filled with JP-8 fuel. And they wouldn’t mind slitting your throat to get it."

"Things are that bad?" Hunter asked, feeling he'd missed a chapter of history during his exile on the mountain.

"They’re worse," Jones said with a grim laugh. "Besides here and out on the Coast, and maybe in Texas, it's as if all the rest of the decent people were either killed in the war or are in hiding. Out there, only the scum survived. The seas are filled with pirates-and so are the skies."

"Air pirates?"

"They're everywhere, Hawk," Jones said, waving his hand at the sky. They had reached the beach by this time. Hunter looked at the waves, crashing on the shore a few hundred feet away. Cape Cod, he thought. No place like it. A bunch of seabirds scattered as they approached a beat-up picnic table. Jones produced a small flask and with a mock toast, took a healthy slug. Passing the container to Hunter, the general pulled the table around to face the ocean, then sat down and closed his eyes, letting the early spring sunshine soak through his body. Hunter took a swig-it was ginger brandy-and sat down beside him.

"Well," Jones said, looking out on the shoreline, “at least I have myself some beachfront property. “

They both took another belt. Then the general continued his story: "The West Coast was lucky. They didn't get screwed up too much, so they got their act together real early in the game. Now, we here on the East Coast are in almost the same position. Besides the airport, we still have some kind of industrial base, plus our ports can handle anything coming across the Atlantic-oil from the Arabs, food from Africa and so on.

The West Coasters know this, so we do a lot of trading with them. They have stuff we want and vice versa.

"The problem is getting the goods back and forth. The Panama Canal went blooey in the first wave the Red slime sent over. The trip around South America takes way too long, although a lot of ships are doing it. And there's no way you can drive through what's left of the middle of the country."

"How come?" Hunter asked. "Highway system destroyed?"

Jones nodded."Not only are there no reliable roads, but like I said, there are some really bad characters living out in the middle of the country-and there are more than a few of them."

There was a distinct chill in the general's voice.

"They're all crazy, Hawk," the senior officer said. "They'll blow your head off just as soon as look at you. They live in filth and squalor. They steal everything they can get and get it any way they can."

It sounded to Hunter like New York City. "Who are these people? Why did they turn so-anti-social, so quickly?" he asked.

Jones removed his baseball hat and ran his hands through his hair. "Who knows?

ICBM shell-shock? Or exposure to nerve gas? Or maybe this hallucinogen gas the Reds sent over. Maybe this is what a man becomes when there is anarchy, I don't know. A guy in Boston told me there were a couple big prisons in Kansas that were busted open when the bombs started falling. He said it was done on purpose, by persons unknown, just to disrupt the recovery. Other people say that the wardens were just giving the prisoners a chance to save themselves. Whatever, a lot of them survived and some banded together and decided that the best way to make it in this brave, new world was to take what you want and kill if you had to get it.