Suddenly, the two helicopters appeared, not out on the horizon but directly overhead.
"Damn, they are quiet," Frost whispered to Johnson. "I didn't hear a thing."
"Let's hope our friends up there in the castle don't, either," Johnson replied grimly.
Tyler and Crockett maneuvered the two choppers closer to the mountain fortress, going into a near hover just a couple of hundred feet away from the castle's front gates.
Suddenly the silence of the early morning was shattered by a burst of gunfire.
A dozen soldiers had instantly materialized along the front ramparts of the castle, their weapons blazing. In a second, both Tyler and Crockett could tell that these soldiers definitely were men. And worse, many of them were wearing gas masks.
The Cobra brothers immediately opened fire with their belly-mounted two-inch rocket launchers and then swerved sharply to the right and away from the enemy gunfire.
The fight was on.
By now the wave of attacking jet aircraft, having just refueled in air, arrived on the scene. Realizing that the Seasprays' initial approach had been repulsed, Ben Wa
23
and Twomey, leading the air strike in their creaking F-104's, dove straight for the castle's front wall. The heavy cannon fire of the Starfighters sent the blocking squad of Guardians scurrying for cover.
As JT and Ben Wa circled around for another pass, the F-4's of the Ace Wrecking Company roared in and sent two more barrages of cannon fire slicing into the castle. At least a hundred Guardians soldiers, about half of them wearing gas masks, had now appeared on the battlements of the fortress and were filling the sky with AA fire in a desperate attempt to hold off the attackers.
The rest of the United Americans' aerial attack force roared into view. But suddenly the skies were filled with streaking AA fire as well as a rain of small but deadly shoulder-launched SAM's. Then a wave of Hind helicopters emerged from hidden shelters on the far side of the mountain. While they were no match for the heavily armed jet fighters, the Hinds were able to dart in and out of the AA fire and send harassment fire up at the air strike, gaining precious moments until help could arrive.
And that help came, in the form of a dozen Phantom jets being piloted by air pirates in the employ of the Guardians. The Americans saw them coming and, as planned, half turned in their direction, missiles ready.
The battle now fully joined, the troops at the base of the mountain started their dangerous ascent. They edged their way up to the castle-slowly, painfully, but thankfully free of any resistance. Already the first part of the assault plan was working: The hired guardians of the fortress were far too occupied with the attacking jets to concern themselves with a ground attack, too.
Meanwhile, Tyler and Crockett ducked under the dogfights raging above them and brought the Seasprays streaking right over the castle, just a few feet above the walls. With considerable aplomb, they began firing cannisters of knockout gas inside the towering walls of the mountain fortress.
Not everybody down there can be wearing a mask, Tyler 24
thought as he watched one cannister smash into one of the castle's turrets and begin to spill its powerful gas.
And he was right. Inside the castle, dozens of soldiers-both men and woman-began to stumble and fall to the ground, unconscious, as the SX-555 gas started to spread.
The forces led by Frost and Johnson had reached the gates of the castle by now. Immediately a sharp firefight erupted between the invaders and the hired guns guarding the fortress. Several hundred feet above, the Cobras were now free to tangle with the Hind gunships. A thousand feet above them, the United American jets were battling it out with the Guardian Phantoms. Within the course of only a few minutes, the mountain sky, which had been bathed in the gentle pink of early morning, had turned red with the flames of war.
And out of that bloodred sky, a lone airplane appeared, and headed straight for the heart of the holocaust.
Hawk Hunter was about to join the battle.
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Hunter counted fifteen enemy Phantoms taking part in the swirling dogfight above the castle.
"Nine against fifteen?" he whispered as he watched the nine true fighters in the United Americans air contingent tangle with the F-4's. "Can they hold them?"
The United Americans had expected air opposition-it was known that the Guardians had hired out freelance air pirates based at a heavily fortified air strip nearby. But to strike the base before attacking the castle would have tipped the Americans' hand. So the hard decision had been made to deal with the enemy air force after it arrived on the scene.
Normally, Hunter would have armed everything on board and hurtled himself into the highspeed jet shootout twisting barely a mile above the castle. Actually it took a lot of willpower to prevent his instincts from doing just that.
Instead, he was flashing in toward the castle at treetop height, far below the spectacular dogfight.
The truth was, mixing it up in a furball was not part of his mission. Nor was providing ground support, SAM su-pression, or weapons targeting. No, he had only one mission this day, dictated in writing by the United American Commander in Chief himself, General Dave Jones.
That mission was to rescue Dominique.
When word first arrived-via St. Louie's spies-that Dominique was being held prisoner in the same location that Duke Devillian, Elizabeth Sandlake, and God-knows-how-many other wanted criminals and terrorists were us-26
ing as refuge, Jones knew that the plan to invade the castle and arrest the notorious characters had just taken a very bizarre and complicated twist. As a student of history and as a commander of an entire nation's armed forces, he knew that military planners frequently had to put sentimentality aside when making tough decisions. Few important military victories came cheap, in resources or in lives. When the truth was uncovered about the castle, the stark-cold reality of it was this: the possibility of catching so many dangerous criminals in one place at one time was too great for both the Americans and the Free Canadians to pass up just because Hunter's celebrity girlfriend was locked inside.
So, from a military point of view, the castle had to be attacked.
Yet such an operation-especially one that counted on air power as such a crucial component-would be much more complicated and costly without Hunter's expertise in planning a prestrike execution. No one doubted that the attempt to capture the fortress would be intense and bloody. But Jones could not order Hunter to take part in a military action that could prove so violent it might quite possibly kill Dominique.
So Jones slyly did the right thing. Declaring that Dominique would be "a valuable asset" in any treason trial against Devillian and Elizabeth Sandlake (because, Jones explained, she could place the criminals at the scene of the crime, so to speak), the general made it Hunter's special mission to rescue this valuable witness-at all costs.
With complete determination-and a grim wink of the eye-Hunter had accepted the mission.
Now hoping that JT, Ben, Crunch, and the others could keep the situation in the air under control, Hunter put the Harrier into a shallow dive, heading straight for the castle.
On the ground, the elite troops led by Johnson and Frost had broken through the front gate and were locked
27
in close combat with the hired guards of the fortress. The knockout gas had eliminated some of the resistance, but hundreds of gas-mask-equipped soldiers remained, determined-by gold or insanity or both-to defend every inch of the fortress with their lives.
The Harrier hovered just above the castle, dodging a wide assortment of AA fire, as Hunter searched for a landing place. Because the Harrier was so versatile, any reasonably flat surface would do. Yet, in the midst of the gunfire, the explosions, and smoke, finding such a place wouldn't be easy.
Still, Hunter was nothing if not lucky, and within seconds he spotted a semiprotected ledge jutting from the side of the mountain, about a hundred yards from the castle's front gate.
It would take a landing of pinpoint accuracy, since the ledge was only twenty-five feet wide. Any slight miscalculation would send the Harrier hurtling down the side of the cliff and into the forest several hundred feet below.
Gingerly, Hunter eased the Harrier into position. Once he was as close as he was ever going to get, he took a deep gulp of oxygen and activated the jumpjef s direct vertical thrusters. A few seconds later, he set the aircraft down exactly in the center of the tiny ledge.
It took him only a couple of seconds to secure the jumpjet, leap out, and start for the castle gate. On the way, he donned a gas mask. He was carrying his trusty M-16-filled as usual with tracer rounds-as well as several grenades and a small cannister of the SX-555 knockout gas.
Reaching the battered, burning gate, he found nothing less than a full-scale battle in progress. Gas-masked soldiers on both sides were firing at each other from point-blank range. Some of them had resorted to brutal bayonet engagements, others had tossed their guns aside completely and were struggling in hand-to-hand combat with their foes. All the while, the sky was aflame with streaks of AA fire and air-to-ground rocket launches and the roar 28
of the dueling jet fighters high above.
It looked all the world like a scene from a B movie about a war between alien armies on a far-off planet.
Darting quickly through the gate and into a huge courtyard, Hunter moved along the edge of the fighting, stopping every few feet to add his tracer-laden machine-gunfire when and where it was needed. Within a half minute, he was able to ease his way toward an opening on the far side of the courtyard that seemed to lead into the castle itself.
Once he'd battled his way to this opening and turned the corner, however, he found two Guardians in his path, their rifles raised. Before they could get off a shot, Hunter dropped them both with the butt of his M-16. The first man was out cold, his jaw shattered and mangled from the sudden blow. The second man, suffering from a busted nose and choking on a mouth full of broken teeth, struggled to his knees and shakily lifted his weapon. But once again, Hunter was too quick. He expertly batted the rifle out of the man's grasp and slammed him back onto the stone floor of the courtyard.
Leaning over the fallen soldier, Hunter instantly jerked off the man's gas mask. Then, jabbing the muzzle of his rifle against the man's forehead, he barked through his own gas mask: "The woman prisoner-where is she?"
The soldier's eyes were wide with fear, but he said nothing, shaking his head as he spit out more teeth. But Hunter had no time to dally. The hand-to-hand fighting was getting worse, as was the automatic gunfire from both sides. The dogfight between the Hinds and the Seasprays was also intensifying, as was the battle between the UA jets and the enemy Phantoms.
So Hunter quickly lowered the M-16, pressed it against the man's groin, and screamed: "Talk!"
The fear on the man's face turned to sheer horror. Although he was a professional, well-paid, killer-for-hire, there were some things more precious to him than gold.
"Up there," he blurted out through bleeding lips, point-29
ing toward a tower rising from the far corner of the courtyard. "She's up there . . ."
"That's better," snarled Hunter. A sharp punch to the man's jaw combined with the fog of SX-555 gas to knock him unconscious.
Hunter continued through the smaller courtyard until he reached the small door leading into the main building of the fortress. Bursting inside, he raked the main hallway of the castle's entrance with his M-16 tracers, causing the defending Guardians to take cover. This respite proved long enough for the American and Free Canadian troops to smash their way in through the main doors of the castle, carrying the sharp firefight into the corridors of the fortress itself.
The fighting now became particularly vicious in this main hallway. No sooner had the allied forces burst in when the opposing troops were hurling flash grenades and smoke bombs at them with wild abandon while their companions filled the air with a storm of ricocheting bullets.
Hunter added his tracer stream to this hail of lead as he slowly zigzagged his way across the main hallway and toward a long ornate set of marble stairs.
Scrambling up this staircase, he reached the first landing and found it split off into two adjoining passageways-one leading up, the other leading down.
Crouched behind a thick marble post off to one side of this landing, firing away with a huge Browning automatic rifle, was his good friend, Catfish Johnson, along with a dozen of his men.
"Glad to see you made it, Hawk," Johnson told him, managing to shake his hand and yell above the racket of the ancient yet still-powerful BAR. "Where you heading?"
Hunter nodded toward the passageway that led up to the castle's tower. "I'm pretty sure Dominique is up there."
At that point, a squad of Free Canadian troopers came running up the other passageway, Major Frost in the lead.
"That way leads down to the dungeon," Frost told them after quickly greeting Hunter. "We broke in through the
30
subbasement, blew down a wall, and trapped a bunch of these Guardians down there. At least temporarily . . ."
Despite the nonstop gunfire, the constant blinding light of flash grenades going off, and the generally ear-splitting racket of warfare, Hunter turned to his friends and said: "Things seem to be under control here . . . I've got to get going ... got things to do."
He started to move past them and toward the hallway that would bring him up to the tower when Frost reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder.
"There's something you should know, Hawk," he yelled. "We spotted an airplane way down in that dungeon. A bunch of these goons were pushing it out of the back and toward that road on the other side of the mountain."
Hunter shrugged anxiously. "So?"
Frost took a quick deep breath. "It was your airplane, Hawk," he said deliberately. "Your F-16 . . ."