Authors: Mack Maloney
St. Louis had told Hunter he would support any plan that would get him to Groom Lake to look for the AII research center. At that moment, Hunter thought these planes were just what he needed.
But there was a problem.
When Hunter asked for their price, Roy just shook his head. “For you, old friend, it would have been a very fair number.”
“What do you mean, ‘would have been’?” JT asked him impatiently.
“I mean I thought I had bought these beauties just a few days ago,” Roy said. “But no sooner did I deliver the asking price when someone stole them.”
Hunter frowned. “Who swiped them?”
Roy smiled grimly. “That’s the rub.”
He showed them another photo. It depicted one of the reconditioned B-25s wearing the markings of the Red Army Mafia.
“They’re up in Detroit?” Hunter asked, surprised.
“They are,” Roy confirmed. “Along with a lot of other stuff.”
Ben and JT got up to go, but Hunter stayed seated. He knew Roy better than they did.
“You wouldn’t be telling me all this if there wasn’t some point to it,” he said.
Roy waved his hand and the gunmen seated at the table got up and left the room.
Once they were gone, he went on, “Hawk, I think it’s very opportune that after all these years, you walked into my shop today.”
Hunter sipped his drink again. “How so?”
Roy lowered his wheezy voice. “The RAM has been on a bomber-buying spree lately,” he said. “Anything with more than one engine that they can’t buy, they’re stealing. They’re trying to keep it secret, but I’ve been told those mooks are grabbing up every mud mover they can get their hands on. Plus they’ve bought up just about every aerial bomb in the country too. It’s very odd.”
“Any idea what it’s about?” Hunter asked.
Roy shook his head. “I don’t know. No one does …”
The old man sipped his drink again. “So, Hawk, any suggestions?”
Hunter knew where this was going. “You probably want us to go up to Detroit and snatch those Mitchells back for you.”
Roy leaned forward and nodded. “Well, if you did,” he said, “I’d get my revenge, and you could use some of them for your little side mission—free of charge, of course.”
JT piped up. “But grabbing those planes back from the RAM? They ain’t exactly Cub Scouts you know. We’d stir up a huge shit storm.”
No one spoke for a moment. While nowhere near as powerful as the Asian Mercenary Cult, the Red Army Mafia was still bad news. They’d been ruling Detroit with an iron fist for years.
“They have weaknesses,” Roy said. “As all devils do. But whatever the case, I think you should look into this whole bomber-buying thing, Hawk. It’s such strange behavior on their part. It’s troubling. And we all know that back in the old days, you could figure out something like this during breakfast and have it solved by lunch.”
Hunter thought a moment, trying to digest the puzzling information.
“We’ll see,” he told Roy finally. “And if we come up with anything, we’ll be in touch.”
The old arms dealer smiled again, his eyes lighting up. Then he showed them another photograph. This one was of a warship. “While you’re doing your homework on RAM, you might want to consider this.”
Later that day
T
HE CONVERTED B-57 RECON
plane took off just as the sun was going down.
Hunter was at the controls again, the old infrared camera locked and loaded. He reached seventy thousand feet and quickly turned northeast. It would take him less than ninety minutes to cover the six hundred miles to Detroit.
He was worried. He didn’t dare entertain any theories about why RAM was accumulating bombers at such a rapid rate until he got a look at what was going on. That was the reason for this flight.
Before he left, Ben and JT had briefed him further on the Red Army Mafia. A mishmash alliance of Russian mafioso that had come to America just as it was being fractured and decided to stay, it had ruled the rough-and-tumble Motor City for about ten years. Their policies were similar to those of the Asian Mercenary Cult: extort and enslave the population and allow a privileged few to enjoy prosperous lives.
As Hunter recalled, that was about as un-American as one could get.
Time flew by, and Hunter was soon approaching his target.
He clicked on the camera just as he passed above Detroit’s outer defense line. Activating the zoom lens, he immediately saw numerous signs of military activity below. Artillery positions, troop trucks, and even tanks watched over key roadways and bridges. RAM seemed to be everywhere.
Soon he was over the Motor City itself, only to see more of the same. Detroit was an armed camp these days—not as protection against any outside forces, but simply as a way of keeping its captive population in line.
He passed over RAM headquarters. Housed in what used to be the world headquarters of General Motors, the former automobile giant, even from thirteen miles up, the seven separate interconnected glass towers looked magnificent. And no surprise, they were capped with AA sites.
Studying the buildings through his zoom lens and noting their proximity to the Detroit River, which linked Lake Erie and Lake Huron, Hunter understood why Roy had shown him that last photo of a warship. If someone
was
looking to throw a sucker punch at RAM, as strange as it sounded, having a warship might not be a bad idea.
He flew on.
About twenty miles southwest of downtown Detroit was a large airport that, in the prewar days, had been called Coleman International. It was now a gigantic RAM air base.
Passing overhead, Hunter saw not just active runways and support buildings blazing with heat signatures, but lots of airplanes also.
The half dozen Mitchells that Roy had told him about were down there, neatly lined up along one of the major runways. But even more alarming, he spotted at least a dozen squadrons of heavy bombers. B-52s, B-58s, and even a few B-47s. There were fifty-four of them in all, a gigantic air fleet these days. Just as bad, he could see hundreds of aerial bombs stacked along the runways, right out in the open.
The RAM was not known for air power. That’s why they hired the 10
th
Street Crew to do their bombing for them.
There was only one explanation for the buildup: The Red Army Mafia was gathering all these heavy bombers for a retaliatory strike on Football City.
And it would not be some dumb-bomb drop on the city’s harbor either. With all those big airplanes, such a bombing raid would be like the RAF over Dresden. The aim would be to destroy the city and everyone in it.
And it was all his fault.
Shooting down the dozen bombers the night he’d returned might have been a heroic act that had rejuvenated Football City, but now Hunter was sure it had led to this. …
And studying how the heavy bombers were dispersed below him, he guessed they’d be ready to attack in less than seventy-two hours.
Hunter brought the B-57 in for a landing in Football City just before midnight.
He taxied to its hardstand where Ben and JT were waiting. They secured an access ladder and Hunter climbed down. He had the recon camera’s videocassette with him.
He told them bluntly, “You’re not going to like what you’re going to see.”
They went to the pilots’ mess and had soggy pancakes and cold coffee. They watched the videotape, and JT and Ben saw what Hunter had seen: the firm RAM grip on Detroit and the airfield full of heavy bombers. Football City had faced similar threats in the past, but nothing on this scale.
The question now was: What could they do about it?
After a couple hours of discussion, one thing was clear: Hunter needed an especially audacious plan if he wanted to preempt RAM’s pending carpet bombing of Football City.
At the end of the session, Ben asked Hunter, “So, what do we do first?”
Hunter drained the last of his cold coffee.
“Let’s go get a warship.”
D
EPENDING ON ONE’S
point of view, Kingsburg was either the worst part of outer Football City or the best. At one time it was famous for building boats of all sizes; these days, it was a collection of bar rooms, gambling halls, whorehouses, and gun shops. It was not a place for the faint of heart.
Following Roy’s instructions, Hunter, Ben, and JT walked into the town’s most notorious bar, the Broken Bottle. It was smoky, smelly, and crowded with drunks and hookers.
At one table, seven men were playing cards. Hunter knew they were sailors right away. Their clothes, their mannerisms, their ruddy complexions.
Just the guys they were looking for.
Hunter, Ben, and JT, once again wearing hoodies, boldly pulled up three seats and joined the table uninvited. This startled the sailors. Each pulled back his jacket to show some kind of pistol tucked inside. But Hunter knew how to play the game. He lifted his hoodie to reveal a massive .357 handgun stuck in his belt; Ben and JT did the same. If it was a question of firepower, they’d just won.
Then Ben said the magic words: “Roy sent us.”
One of the sailors was older and had a ruddier complexion than the rest. He was an ex-chief petty officer and the group’s alpha dog.
“What can we do for you?” he asked gruffly.
“Do you guys own a warship?” JT replied.
“That depends on who’s asking,” the CPO said.
Ben smiled. “You guys remember Hawk Hunter?”
The men nodded solemnly.
“Ever meet him face-to-face?” Ben asked.
They all shook their heads no.
JT put his hand on Hunter’s shoulder. “Well, here’s your chance …”
Hunter pulled his hood back slightly, so they could get a better look at his face. The sailors’ jaws dropped simultaneously.
“You’re him?” one man said with a gasp.
“I’m him,” Hunter replied.
The men immediately dropped the attitude.
“We heard you came back—some kind of miracle or something,” the CPO said. “But I didn’t believe it until now. Where the hell have you been?”
Hunter held up his hand and said, “That’s top secret, okay?”
Again the sailors nodded soberly.
“So, you need a tin can?” the CPO asked.
“We might,” Hunter said. “Can you give us a little background first?”
The men ordered a round of drinks and began their story.
They had been lifers in the US Navy before the Big War. In its aftermath, when America became fractured, they were able to spirit a small destroyer away from the Navy’s Great Lakes training school and bring it to Kingsburg. The sailors intended to return it to combat condition, then sell it.
Then one day while on a trip to Football City, the men bet on the city’s year-round, nonstop football game and won an enormous payday. Each man’s split had been more than five million dollars in gold.
After that windfall, the sailors decided to take a break from restoring the old warship—and that break had lasted more than ten years.
“Having money is not a bad thing,” the CPO concluded. “But nothing’s like being out at sea.”
“So is your ship available to rent?” Hunter asked. “We’ll pay you a fair price.”
The seven men didn’t even discuss it.
“Sorry, you can’t rent it,” the CPO said, then added, “but you can use it for free.”
Hunter was puzzled.
“Free?” Hunter asked. “Why?”
“Because of all you did for our country years ago,” the CPO told him. “We just don’t forget things like that—so there’s just no way we could charge you. But, there is one condition.”
“What’s that?” Hunter asked.
The CPO smiled and replied, “We go where she goes.”
Hunter disappeared the next day.
He was packed and gone before sunrise, long before the crowd had gathered in front of his building, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.
One of Football City’s Hueys was gone, too. This left the city with just two eggbeaters, a handful of Sabre jets, and six very old C-119 “Flying Boxcars” as its only airworthy combat aircraft. After being converted to a recon plane, the B-57 no longer qualified.
Hunter had left instructions for Ben and JT before he vanished. An entire notebook of them. It also held a list of items Football City would need if his plan was to be successful. The list included hundreds of parachute flares, a homemade radio jamming pod, nearly a ton of cut-up aluminum foil strips, five large loudspeakers (complete with two-hour-long audio cassettes), and a large shipment of plain, brown boxes mysteriously stamped
KEEP AWAY FROM OPEN FLAME
in Chinese that Hunter had ordered and that had arrived later that day.
Ben and JT were the keepers of that bible now. They knew that if they followed every step Hunter had laid out, there was a chance, though slim, that the next forty-eight hours might not end in disaster.
But they had a lot of work to do.
T
HE CITY OF DETROIT
had a strict curfew, per the decree of the Red Army Mafia.
It lasted from dusk to dawn, and any civilian caught in the streets during that time was executed on the spot by patrolling RAM security troops.
A total blackout was also imposed across the city—and the punishment for breaking it was just as harsh. Anyone caught with a light on—or even a lit candle—would be hauled into the street and shot.
This was how RAM maintained control of the city. The great mass of its subjects detested RAM, but they were also wise enough not to break the rules.
It was one of the RAM hit squads patrolling the southern edge of the city’s limits in an old troop truck that first saw the strange collection of aircraft approaching.
It was odd. RAM aircraft rarely flew in large groups, and almost never at night.
So, whose planes were these?
There was one jet fighter, followed by a half dozen large prop-driven airplanes. Suddenly the formation was over their heads. Those RAM troopers equipped with night-vision scopes could see the backs of the prop planes open up and something tumbling out.
They were boxes … plain, ordinary-looking boxes.
But then the boxes began exploding in midair, causing enormous
booms!
Suddenly the sky was filled with thousands of small, individual explosions going off.