Target: Point Zero (7 page)

Franz, too, was unsettled by the blabbering about the American superpilot. In his typically Prussian way of thinking, he knew if Hawk Hunter
was
in the area then it could mean only one thing: Works would eventually lose this fight, too. All the more reason to get back over the mountain and get paid before the next boot fell. But how to do it? He and his men had spent much of the time inside the beer hall trying to devise the next step of their escape. They’d quickly discovered they really had few options to get out. They had no guns, no warm clothing, no maps, no radio, and now, little money. Other than sprouting wings and flying over the top of the mountain, there really was no way out.

The few coins they had left bought another bowl of stew and a mug each of ale. As the bar became more crowded, and more festive, a strange thing happened: the enemy fliers found themselves getting caught up in the rowdy atmosphere of the
Rootentootzen.
There were many, many pretty girls, and they all seemed enamored of anyone who walked through the door in a uniform. Several had already made passes by the air crew’s table, eyes darting this way and that, just hoping to be invited to join the six rugged aviators. The men from Works had been able to resist temptation, but just barely.

They did, however, get swept up in one of the many sing alongs that periodically washed through the well-oiled crowd. The song, “Ferme le Pook,” was a favorite on both sides of the mountain, and the strong ale gave the Works aviators the courage to take a chorus by themselves. This brought several rounds of complimentary drinks to their table, which they drained heartily. This, in turn, led to further singing, and more free ale, and soon, the enemy fliers were standing on their chairs belting out old favorites like “Under-handen der Fräulein” with lusty abandon. Very quickly, their table was close to toppling over, so full it was with steins of gratis beer.

But then, just as the enemy aviators had taken their sixteenth round of free ale, the door to the bar suddenly burst open and a dozen soldiers marched in. Dressed in Alpine-white camouflage suits and carrying submachine guns, the city’s muster squad was raising soldiers for the next deployment up the mountain.

“Papers, please!” the officer at the head of the squad announced loudly—and with just as much verve, the dozens of soldiers crammed into the beer hall quickly complied. Some had just come down off the mountain and resented the so-soon intrusion on their liberty. But most simply held out their blue cards and let the soldiers take their cursory look. It took about five minutes in all. The last table the muster soldiers came to was the one bearing the six escapees.

It was Franz who smashed the stein of beer in the officer’s face. The man went over backwards, tripping on his own feet as he fell. Franz was on top of him in a flash, digging the jagged edge of the broken cup into the officer’s neck. He found the jugular quickly, slashing it open and releasing a massive stream of blood all over the muster soldiers and the patrons.

Suddenly tables were being knocked over and chairs were flying through the air. Everyone dove for cover. One of Franz’s men grabbed the dying officer’s rifle and began firing it around the beer hall with ruthless abandon, killing and wounding several people with this as cover, the six escapees made their way towards the front door, picking up more weapons as they went. Women were screaming, men were shouting. But through it all, no one fired back at the enemy fliers.

Finally Franz and his men fell out onto the snowy street. Each one had a weapon now and they were ready to shoot anything that moved. The street was empty—and deathly quiet. No one came out of the beer hall to chase them; no one raised an alarm. The only sound they could hear was the murderous wind, rushing off the mountain.

They started walking, briskly, not running as that would draw too much attention. They ducked down a back alley, and headed east. It was now about five in the evening and Clocks was as dark as midnight, providing the escapees with even more cover. Still, only after they’d moved several blocks away from the
Rootentootzen
did they start to relax.

They reached a particularly dark district—one that was still smoldering from the bombing raid the night before. Franz ordered his men to stop, if only to catch their breaths for a moment. Leaning up against the side of an abandoned building, the crewmen suddenly broke out into a chorus of “Ferme le Pook.”

Franz did not join in—he couldn’t. A bright light had appeared overhead, and he was now paralyzed by the damn thing. It suddenly began dropping out of the sky, heading right towards them. It grew so bright as it approached, it hurt Franz’s eyes to look at it. His men continued their singing, somehow unaware of the terrifying light.

It finally pulled up in a hover, not thirty feet right above Franz’s head. It was tremendous in size, saucer-shaped, and giving off a loud mechanical hum. Bursts of light and color were sparkling all around it. When Franz looked closely, he could see it was revolving at an impossibly high rate of speed.

Suddenly, a searing beam of bright light flashed out of the bottom of the object, hitting two of Franz’s men in their chests. They lit up instantly—Franz was astonished that he could see the bones moving around inside their skin. There was a sound akin to a crack of thunder and then, the two men simply disappeared.

With that, the craft shuddered once, and in a great burst of power and speed, shot straight up into the night sky. Horrified, Franz watched it quickly disappear among the stars overhead. Throughout the whole episode, his other three men never stopped singing.

Shaken and confused, Franz somehow recovered long enough to bark out an order. His men jumped to their feet on the first syllable and wordlessly retrieved the weapons dropped by their disintegrated colleagues.

Still drunk, the remaining escapees began running. Down the street, across a small square, through a children’s park; Franz was in the lead, running without his pants on.

They soon found another darkened alley, and quickly turning into it, vanished in the snowy night.

Hunter was clear on the other side of town when he heard about the shootout at the
Rootentootzen.

He was inside the golden pyramid, sitting at a table in Orr’s war room that was so large, it could hold up to one hundred twenty seats. Just over a dozen of them were occupied at the moment.

The mood around this table was understandably grim. The presence of the huge enemy gun up on the south mountain was catastrophic for Clocks. Fighting a cold, trench war way up in the clouds was one thing; living under the barrel of a weapon that could lob a one ton shell up to ten miles was quite another. No sooner had Hunter and Orr returned from their photo recon flight when they agreed that the big gun would have to be attacked immediately.

Before them now were twelve men—freelance pilots hired by Clocks before the city took delivery on its triplane air force. The pilots had been living inside the pyramid for the past six weeks, staying out of the public eye, content to collect their pay though they’d yet to fly a single mission. At first glance, the conflict between Clocks and Works meant little to them. It was simply business.

The twelve pilots were all Russian. Only about a third could speak English, and not very clearly. One man spoke English fairly well. His name was Alexander Ivanov and he was the commander of the mercenary air unit. He’d flown just about every airplane in the old Russian Air Force, he’d told Hunter, from MiG-25s to the giant Antonov cargo plane. The Wingman was impressed by Ivanov’s knowledge of airplanes and aeronautics. With his sharp eyes and quick wit, Ivanov seemed a natural for the fighter pilot game.

His pilots, known collectively as the
Sturmoviks,
had been together for three years now. They were warriors-for-hire true, but all had avowed hatred for the notorious Red Star group, the clique of renegade Russian militarists who’d started the Big War in the first place. As a collective unit, the
Sturmoviks’
reputation was impeccable; they’d fought in many of the conflicts that had raged throughout Central Europe in recent times, and boasted an impressive record of always winding up on the winning side. But like most mercenary groups, Hunter knew the true test of their mettle could only be proven in combat.

The past few weeks had been easy for the
Sturmoviks
—or “Stormers” as Orr called them. This was not because they didn’t know how to fly the antique collection of airplanes in Clocks Air Force—Orr had told them to sit tight until he could locate some more-modern airplanes for them. But now, with the discovery of the big gun, time was quickly running out on the city. The Russians were told they would have to take to the air in the refurbished World War I planes. In the end, it didn’t seem to faze them one way or the other.

Spread out on the big planning table before them, were the three dozen blow ups of photographs Hunter and Orr had taken earlier. These included the clearest views they had of the big 205-millimeter gun sticking out the south peak. The Russian pilots’ eyes went wide when they saw the size of the cannon and its substantial cavernous emplacement. No translation was needed here: the gun would be the first target for their first mission for Clocks.

Hunter had left it up to the Stormers on how best to attack the big gun. Though Clocks aerial force was all outfitted with weapons pods, they had no real blockbuster bombs at their disposal. It was foolish to think they could actually destroy the gun itself. Rather they would have to go after the big weapon’s ancillaries—its controls, its ammunition and the people who ran it.

The timing for all this would be critical. Though it was impossible to see just how close the big gun was to becoming operational, Hunter’s gut was telling him the weapon could start lobbing shells into Clocks at any time. The air strike would have to be carried out as soon as possible. Ivanov assured him his men could familiarize themselves with the Fokkers and Spads inside of an hour. Loading up weapons, fuel and getting the damn things out of the so-called hangar would take at least several hours more. It was now close to midevening. Hunter suggested that they go up at dawn. The Stormers quickly agreed.

They had just settled down to iron out the dozens of details when the first report reached them about the
Rootentootzen.
Orr went pale when he heard the news, brought to him by his top defense officer, a man who was wearing a bright red clown’s suit. Fourteen people had been killed, many more wounded, some very seriously. The
Wehrenluftmeister
took the loss of every man in his command personally—an endearing human trait, which nevertheless was a quick path to lunacy for any military leader. Details about the bloodbath were sketchy—at first everyone had assumed the perpetrators were mercenaries who did not want to return to the war at the top of the mountain. But Hunter knew better. He suspected the culprits to be the escaped Heinkel crewmen from the start—the brutality of the incident alone was enough to convince him.

Orr was quickly on the phone, once again rounding up the city’s police forces and militia to begin a hunt for the killers. Leaving the Russian pilots to continue planning the attack on the big gun, Hunter loaded up his M-16F2 and told Orr he would join him on the dragnet. He wanted to see just how desperate these men from Works could be.

T
HERE WAS A LONG
line of armored vehicles waiting outside the golden pyramid when Hunter and Orr emerged.

The ACs were brimming with the
Volkspolizi,
the city’s combination police force and Home Guard. Many of these soldiers were mercenaries, too. Any able-bodied man who was a citizen of Clocks was more likely to wind up on the front line, leaving the rear area duties to the paid help. The Clocks’
Volkspolizi
was made up mostly of Czechs and Free Canadians, many of whom had come over with Orr a few years back. There were a number of Italians and Scots as well.

The
Volkspolizi
had a reputation for being tough but fair, but with reports that some of their brethren had been killed in the shootout at the
Rootentootzen,
these men were now visibly agitated. Hunter could see it in their eyes—they couldn’t wait to start looking for the escaped enemy pilots. They would have their work cut out for them though—finding someone in the darkened corners of Clocks would not be easy. Every ounce of adrenaline would be needed to aid them in the long night ahead.

Hunter and Orr climbed into the first armored car. It was a twenty-year-old RPX 3000, complete with a Milan antitank gun on top. The vehicles behind them were Dutch YP-408s, each with its trademark Browning M2HB side-mounted heavy-machine gun on the turret. Orr checked the line of vehicles, then gave the start-up sign.

With a tremendous roar, a dozen diesel engines came to life and the column moved out. The search of the city had begun.

Clocks was laid out in a roughly circular pattern.

The northern part of the city was an area thick with bunkers, warehouses and storage buildings, all great places to hide. The eastern streets, the mostly academic and residential section known as
Volkshamlet
also afforded a lot of invisibility; so, too, the western end, though this was where most of the city’s troops were quartered. When the
Volkspolizi
column reached the middle of town, two ACs each split off to patrol the north, east and west.

The six remaining vehicles, including the one containing Hunter and Orr, would tackle the southern end of town, the tough area beyond mildly bawdy establishments like the
Rootentootzen.
Officially, this part of Clocks was known as
Seutendenzen.
But the place was so notorious, so dangerous, everyone called it
Badentoum,
or simply, “Badtown.”

Hunter had seen many seedy places in his travels, but
Badentown
managed to astound even him. It was the kind of place that, no matter what the weather, the road pavement always seemed wet, dark and grimy. There was little need for streetlights here; the glow from all the neon provided more than enough illumination, creating many shadow-filled and darkened areas.