Target: Point Zero (37 page)

Now Crunch was defenseless, horribly wounded, and his airplane was but seconds from being shot down over the unforgiving South China Sea. Odd the thoughts that passed through his mind as he felt his spirit struggling to get out of his body. His wife and kids were first and foremost; his friends in the UA were a close second. Just like they said it would, events from his life flashed before his eyes: the many air combat sessions, the many long-range recon jobs and all the planning and plotting in between.

The Tornados went by again, tearing away his extended nose and destroying more than ten million dollars in re-con equipment with one pass. The left-side engine bucked once—drenched now in oil, hydraulic fluid and fuel, it didn’t have much left in it. Through blood-soaked eyes, Crunch peered out at the sea below and wondered if he’d be dead before he hit the water or not.

The Tornados came back again. It was becoming clear they were getting bored with this game now. Crunch knew they would soon finish him off. Again his thoughts went back to the long, adventurous life he’d led, back to when there were two people and two airplanes in the Ace Wrecking Company. It had been a gas back then—exciting, fast-paced, and hugely rewarding on the financial end. Those had been the best times, he thought, coughing up a sickly amount of blood. Strange then that though he held these memories the closest to him, he could not for the life of him remember the name of his long-lost partner. In fact, he could just barely picture his face in his increasingly hazy mind’s eye.

All he could remember about the man was his strangely curled lip and the beyond-regulations sideburns.

What
was
his name?

The Tornados were suddenly in front of him again. This would be their last pass—they had more pressing things to do than taunt this old geezer any longer. Both jets started about five thousand feet off his left wing and began a vicious, high-energy dive. He saw the twin streaks of their cannons coming down to meet him. He tried to nudge his control column one way or another, but this did him no good. His plane was beyond any hope of maneuvering now; he had no choice but to sit there and take it.

But then, through bloody eyes, he saw a great flash of light—it happened so quickly, he thought his own airplane had blown up. Somehow, he was able to make out the pair of Tornados, now just one thousand feet off his left wing. Incredibly,
both
were on fire and breaking up, with the pieces of individual wreckage comingling in the middle of a ball of smoke and flame.

What the hell had happened?
Had the two Tornados collided? Had they run into each other in their vigor to be the one to actually kill him and shoot him down? It was the only rational explanation for the totally irrational event.

But then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that even further defied reality.

It was just a streak of light at first; a flash of silver bright enough to blind him a little bit more. Some kind of airplane went right over his head—it was huge and powerful, with two great engines, two great tailfins and a shape that looked like it was traveling at Mach 5. Suddenly his plane began vibrating tremendously—not from all the damage it had incurred, but from a shock wave emanating from somewhere outside. This concussion was so violent, it served to lift Crunch’s dying airplane up several hundred feet in altitude. Somehow, someway, because of this added elevation, he was able to look off to the west horizon and miraculously, spot a thin strip of land just over the horizon.

He twisted around in his cockpit, gravely disoriented, searching for the mysterious airplane he’d seen just for a fraction of a second. But all that was left in evidence of it now was a thick white contrail that rose straight up, as if it were pointing towards Heaven.

Confused, close to going into shock, Crunch summoned up every last ounce of strength in his depleted body with all his might, he pulled the Phantom’s control column to the right—and somehow, the Rhino had enough left in her to respond. Sputtering, smoking and bleeding, the plane nevertheless began heading towards that almost dreamlike piece of
terra firma
off in the distance. Was it an island? Or the coast of Vietnam? There was no way for him to tell. It was still a long way away.

Would he actually make it? He didn’t know this either.

But he sure as hell was going to try…

Lolita Island

I
T WAS THIRTEEN HUNDRED
hours when Kurjan first spotted the C-23 Sherpas belonging to the Island Rats, Inc.

They were coming out of the east; at least thirty of them, lined up in a long, single file flight pattern and heading right for him.

It was very warm inside Kurjan’s hiding place, so much so he was down to his skivvies and his gun belt. The activity around Lolita had not stopped one bit. Another Cult battleship had appeared and anchored about a half mile out; more Cult troops had flowed out of it and come ashore. Most of these soldiers, along with the first contingent to arrive, were now in the process of securing the huge arrow and cross they’d made with the bright orange materials. In some cases, these men were hammering portions of the huge marker into the concrete slab with the aid of sledgehammers and spikes. Others were going up and down the three-mile-long landing strip, painting what looked to be a centerline, dividing the huge slab in two.

Still others were setting up mobile communications stations and sections of temporary scaffolding. One of the radio units was just one hundred fifty feet away from Kurjan’s position. It was so close, he was worried that the sat-com messages he’d been sending back to Da Nang nonstop since the first Cult soldiers arrived were somehow being glitzed. If that was true, then he might be the only guy on the good side to be invited to this party.

The Sherpas came roaring off the water, their noisy engines rising to a crescendo as all thirty of them went into a long orbit about three thousand feet above the island. Kurjan was familiar with the Island Rats, familiar with their take-no-prisoners method of operation. He, too, was surprised to see them way the hell out here in the South China Sea, especially when their usual field of operations was hundreds of miles to the east.

Must be some big job for these guys to be here,
he thought, as they continued circling the island.

But their unexpected appearance only served to confuse the issue even further. True, the Island Rats were paratroopers. But if given the option, they would always take the choice of landing their airplanes and disembarking rather than jumping out of them. Why then weren’t they setting down on the huge, brightly lined runway? Furthermore, the Rats were experts at depositing large numbers of troops on the tiniest, unmarked locations. Why then had the Cult soldiers laid out the huge cross and the miles-long orange arrow? After all, Lolita Island was a five-mile-square slab of cement in the middle of the sea. A battalion of blind men would be hard pressed to miss it.

This told Kurjan one thing that might have seemed obvious to an outside observer: the large arrow and cross were not for the Island Rats.

They had been laid out for someone—or something—else.

The Sherpas had been circling for about five minutes when another development took place.

Off on the eastern horizon now, Kurjan could see a mass of airplanes that was so large, they looked like a swarm of killer bees. The man they called Lazarus directed his high-powered peepscope in their direction. He was astounded. There were at least five dozen fighter aircraft heading for Lolita Island.

Kurjan clicked his scope up to full-power, and was just able to make out the first line of these airplanes. They were Tornados—high tech attack planes that he knew were not in the inventory of any force friendly to the United Americans, not in this quantity anyway. Behind them were lines of Jaguars and other fighter-attack craft. Kurjan felt his heart sink into the sweaty sand all around him.

This massive air fleet was undoubtedly in league with the Cult and the Island Rats. But something was telling him that the huge landing strip laid out on Lolita Island was not for their use either.

The roar of the Sherpas got louder. Kurjan adjusted himself so that he was now staring straight up through his peephole. Not unexpectedly, the first trio of C-23s was flying over the center of the island, their back doors open and disgorging paratroopers. At the same time, the first wave of fighter jets had arrived high overhead. They began taking up wide orbits around the slab of an island. Paratroopers, a vast number of air cover jets, huge arrows and crosses—still Kurjan just couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it.

Three more Sherpas went over—they, too, let loose with twenty paratroopers apiece. Kurjan watched them slowly drift down, most of them landing with a painful scrape and thud on the rough, cement airstrip. As soon as they were down, each Island Rat gathered up his chute, stored it away and then almost casually walked to preassigned positions around the enormous airstrip, totally ignoring the Cult soldiers, as they did them.

Three more Sherpas turned towards the island and began emptying out the back. These paratroopers were landing at the far end of the island, down near the beginning of the big arrow. Three more Sherpas appeared to let go their human cargos over the center of the slab. Kurjan had to admit the Rats were good. They were landing with pinpoint accuracy and slowly but surely forming a mighty protective ring around the island. All this time, the massive sixty-plus air armada continued to circle high above the tiny, cement—clogged atoll.

The sixth set of Sherpas began turning off the beach, roaring right over Kurjan’s head and dropping troops not five hundred yards from his position. He heard a completely different noise—one that cut through the clumsy racket of the Sherpas and the high tech squeal of the five dozen jets overhead. This sound, faint but growing louder, had more of a
whooshing
quality to it.

Damn,
Kurjan thought,
it almost sounds like a…

A second later, he saw it. It was a missile—a Phoenix antiaircraft missile, known for its distinctive hollowing cry usually heard before its arrival. The thing was streaking in from the northwest, diving out of the sky with a shriek now reaching banshee-status. In a heartbeat, it impacted on the third-in-line Sherpa, simply obliterating the two-engine cargo carrier and incinerating everyone inside.

Kurjan was stunned, as was everyone on the island. The missile had come out of nowhere, literally.

Now, even as the bare pieces of wreckage came floating down, Kurjan heard another whooshing sound. An instant later, a second Phoenix appeared, it, too, coming out of the northwest. It caught the tail of the first Sherpa, the one that had already jumped its troops, spinning the airplane around helplessly in the sky before it went up in a ball of flame.

Everyone on the ground was scattering now as two more missiles came in. One went right over Kurjan’s head and kept on going; the second one hit something way up at the other end of the airstrip. Suddenly a Jaguar fighter simply fell out of the sky, its fuselage engulfed in flames from the wings back. It hit just to the left of the huge orange cross, its pilot burning to death, still strapped into his cockpit.

Now more and more missiles came screeching in. Overhead the Sherpas began to scatter; way up high, the aerial carousel of fighters began breaking up, too. But for three of them, it was too late. Two more Jags and a Hawk came plummeting out of the clouds, all three crashing into the massive coral reefs which ringed Lolita on three sides.

Suddenly everything was madness. Kurjan looked up to see the jet fighters and Sherpa transports flinging themselves this way and that, trying to find some flying room and get the hell out of the way of the incoming Phoenix missiles. But for three more of them, this was a useless effort. A trio of missiles arrived and took down another Sherpa, another Jag and, surprisingly, a Tornado. All three crashed into the sea about a mile offshore.

Kurjan had his peepscope drilled out on the northwest horizon now. There was only entity in this part of the world that possessed Phoenix missiles and the knowledge to shoot them so accurately: the United American Expeditionary Forces. So was it true? Had his messages gotten through to them?

He strained his eyes and prayed for some kind of vision to feed the greenish tinge of his scope. A few seconds later, that vision appeared. Way out on the horizon, flying incredibly low, he saw the six C-5 gunships of the UAAF bearing down on Lolita Island.

The cavalry was on its way.

The lead C-5 approaching Lolita Island had a very unlikely pilot behind its controls.

Ben Wa was a fighter jock; he’d flown the massive Galaxy barely a half dozen times before, and all those during transit or shakedown missions.

But now here he was, pressed into service, driving one of the gigantic airplanes right into the teeth of combat over the unlikely battlefield of Lolita Island.

That the climax to all the events over the last few days would come here, to this isolated speck of land in the middle of the South China Sea, was not all that surprising. It was the speed at which things had come to a head that was rather mind-boggling to Wa. One moment, he’d been deciphering the flight plan of the captured An-124 Condor; the next he was flying back to Da Nang with this encryption; the next he was hearing the warning call from Crunch and the crew of
Black Eyes
about oncoming mercenary forces, the next he was lifting off from the UA base, riding the wheel of the C-5 known as
Now,
arguably the most powerful of all the Galaxy gunships, and serving as the UA’s flight leader.

It was on his orders that the two missile ships on his flanks first located and then targeted the paratroop planes circling above Lolita Island. These airplanes launched a spread of Phoenix missiles from thirty-three miles out—indications were that all but one had hit a target. But Wa could see both on his forward-looking radar screen and with his own eyes, that there were dozens of airplanes orbiting Lolita, some scattered up high above the island; others skirting the sea all around it, hoping that altitude alone would protect them from the near-infallible Phoenix missiles.