"Well, we got a bunch of friends on the way," Crunch said. "Gunships and F-20s. Now just tell us who the bad guys are."
"You were right the first time," Hunter told him. "The Hinds and the battleships belong to Viktor's armies. Cover those people on the beaches, will you? I got to catch that bastard."
"Go, Hawk!" Crunch called back, diving toward the battleships. "We'll take care of things here!"
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With that, Hunter climbed and headed south, adjusting his long-range radar hoping to pick up Lucifer's chopper.
The Brazilian captain, the man who had been in charge of Lucifer's personal battleship, now sat bound hand and foot in the jump seat of the Hind helicopter. They were flying at 7000 feet, heading south toward Lucifer's headquarters at Rub al Khali.
"You stupid fool!" Lucifer was screaming at the captain, the horribly scarred face just an inch awayy The captain could see little bubbles of foam forming at the sides of the madman's mouth. "You have personally destroyed half this fleet. You have set back our timetable by weeks!"
"But Your Excellency," the captain said in his own defense. "You approved my idea to bring the battleships up to the war zone. In fact, you suggested it."
Lucifer put his face even closer to the captain's. "How dare you speak that.way to me, you bush-man!" the black-cloaked man said. "If it weren't for you, we would still have a complete fleet. We would not have lost seventeen thousand men to those goddamn Moroccans, and we would not have lost our only aircraft and my laser imager. That was our most powerful weapon!"
"But Your Highness," the captain plunged on, "I had nothing to do with all that. It was Hunter and those Englishmen. How could I have known they would have stuck it out so long? How did I know they were so crazy?"
Lucifer closed his eyes and rubbed his burned face. "Captain," he said in a slight, whiny voice, "You have just admitted your guilt to me. In front of witnesses!"
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Lucifer spread his hands out to indicate his ever-present entourage of bodyguards.
"Because, captain," he continued, "if you say that Hunter caused all these losses and I say that you did, then that must mean you were, in fact, allied with Hunter and the Britishers!"
"That's preposterous!" the captain screamed.
"Is it?" Lucifer said, turning toward him again. There was more foam coming from the corners of his mouth now. "Then why is it that you keep bringing up Hunter? Why!? Don't you understand I screwed his woman? I have that much power over him."
The captain had had enough. He knew he was to be executed anyway. He decided to cash in his chips.
"Oh, fuck you," he screamed back at Lucifer. "Everyone in the world knows that Hunter kicked your ass in The Circle War and got his broad back. In fact, he kicked your ass so bad, you had to change your name!"
Lucifer's bodyguards thought the boss was going to pop a vein. No one, but no one, had ever talked to him like that. They half-expected to see steam coming out of his ears.
But Lucifer fooled them all. He simply turned to the nearest bodyguard and offhandedly said, "Get rid of him."
The bodyguards unhesitatingly stood the captain up and pushed him towards the open door of the Hind. Lucifer turned his back as the bodyguard kicked the captain hard in the back. The officer tumbled out of the chopper, screaming as he fell.
Hunter was losing fuel fast.
He had more than a dozen holes in his starboard wing, and possibly more on his portside. His canopy was cracked in three places and his radio was cutting in and out. What was worse, only a third of his cockpit devices were functioning, all his navigational units were out, and his left rear stabilizer was all but shot off. With all the 16's .maladies, Hunter was lucky if he could keep it going at half its normal cruising speed.
Still, he pressed on in pursuit of Lucifer. He had a good idea of where the madman was heading. He knew his headquarters was near Jidda, in the southwest part of old Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea. He was just hoping he'd find out where before his JP-8 gave out.
Flying more on instinct than anything else, Hunter navigated by the Canal and then the Suez estuary itself. Along the entire way he saw the results of the bombing raids by his now-lost air wing. He flew over a gang of ships two miles south of the Canal's southern entrance. An earlier air attack had clogged the entrance. No ship could get in, no ship could get
out. The ships on the outside were simply at anchor, awaiting orders. The world's most powerful fleet had fallen victim to a traffic jam.
Hunter continued flying until he saw the outline of a city about forty-five miles to his southeast. His acute vision detected several gas-flare tubes, indicating a refinery was working at the city. Cities were few and far between in the area -inhabited ones especially. He steered toward it.
The closer he got, the more he was convinced this was Lucifer's destination.
There were hundreds of military vehicles parked on the roads below him, and even more barracks -all empty, he imagined. He flew over an open area near a dock and saw what looked to be an execution ground. As many as 700 bodies lay rotting in the sun. He didn't even want to think about what had happened there.
He continued on over the typically Arabian city, over the barely working refinery, over its substantial port facilities. Yet he hadn't seen a person or any movement below.
But then he saw Lucifer's helicopter . . .
It was just going in for a landing at what looked to be a military base on the edge of the city. Hunter immediately put the hurting F-16 into a dive. There were definitely people at the base -armed people. And Hunter knew they had spotted him.
The AA guns opened up with a ferocity that surprised him. This must have been a heavy-duty HQ for Lucifer, he thought, as he twisted and turned around the ack-ack shells. At once Hunter knew that he had to prevent the chopper from landing. Because if it did, he'd need an army to get Lucifer out.
He roared in and peppered the two minaret gun posts with his Six Pack. There was a courtyard
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nearby and that was the intended landing site for the chopper, now hovering about 150 feet above. Hunter swooped down underneath the copter and raked the courtyard with cannon fire. As he streaked by he noticed several barrels sitting on one side of the landing pad. They looked like they contained fuel.
He pulled back up, did a loop, and came back in on the courtyard. A push of the cannon trigger and the barrels of fuel went up like fireworks. The courtyard was instantly enveloped in flames. The chopper got the hint and backed off.
But as he pulled up, a burst of AA fire caught hiy tail section. He felt the F-16 yaw out of control temporarily, and he nearly lost it avoiding a radio tower. He brought the plane under control, although it took all his might on the foot pedals to keep it level.
He spotted the chopper once again, this time flying out away from the city and toward the desert. Hunter turned the 16 around to pursue, only to see a small SAM flash up toward him. He peeled off instantly, but the warhead exploded close by, shattering his already cracked canopy. Hundreds of pieces of the exploded missile got sucked into his jet's air intake. The plane stalled, but he quickly restarted the engine. It stalled again, and he pumped the emergency fuel-release lever and started the engine again.
"C'mon, baby," he said under his breath. "C'mon, stay with me."
His airspeed now was down to less than 100 knots. The noise inside the cockpit was deafening, and things were flying in and out at alarming speeds. He felt like he was losing his beloved F-16 piece by piece. Still, he kept the chopper in sight ahead of him.
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His engine coughed once again, and the 16 pitched to right. He regained control and throttled up a little more. The chopper was going at about the same speed as the crippled jet fighter. He throttled up even more and started to gain on it. He had no more Sidewinders -he couldn't have used one anyway.
This was a job for his cannons.
He placed himself on the chopper's tail and fired a short burst. The shells streaked by the white and gold Hind's tail rotor, several of them finding targets.
He closed in on the copter and fired another burst. The force of the powerful cannons going off nearly jolted the 16 out of control, but he quickly regained level flight. This time the cannon fire found its intended target, the chopper's fuel tank.
Now, as the misty cloud of fuel flew back into his open cockpit, he fired a third time. He saw pieces of the Hind's tail rotor fly off. Just as the chopper started to drop, the F-16's engine stalled again. Hunter put the jet into a shallow dive and crossed his fingers. The engine came back on again.
He was now at barely 1000 feet, the chopper was at 700. Its rear end was smoking and its fuel leak getting worse. They were getting farther out in the desert with only an hour of sunlight left - he had to wonder if Lucifer knew where he was going.
He dropped down even farther and put another burst in the Hind. That did it.
The smoke started pouring out of the chopper now and it veered out of control.
He followed it down. The pilot put the burning craft into a semihover, and Hunter shot by it, his own plane doing a fair amount of smoking.
He did a careful loop and came back just as the copter was going through a controlled crash. It slammed into the side of a large sand dune, bounced 404
hard, and came down for good.
One more loop and Hunter spurted right over the Hind. Two figures jumped out of the chopper, one of them wearing black robes and a hood, the other a standard flight uniform. He had no trouble figuring out which one was Lucifer.
But now the F-16 stalled again, and he knew that this time it was for good. He pulled the nose up and started looking for a level piece of sand to set down on. The engine coughed a couple times, telling him he couldn't get fussy about a landing spot. A fairly flat stretch of desert just below the dune where the Hind went down looked to be his best bet.
He glided in, wheels up, the cracked canopy obscuring his view somewhat. Then he hit - hard. He was jostled around the cockpit, as every light and buzzer went off at once. Waves of sand flew everywhere as the jet plowed into the soft ground.
"There goes the paint job," Hunter said grimly.
The battered fighter finally came to a stop. Its nose was buried three feet into the sand, its tail end was smoking. But he didn't have time to think about it.
He jumped out of the cockpit, grabbed his M-16, and looked around. Lucifer and his pilot were climbing the dune in front of him. He couldn't lose them now.
He checked his rifle's magazine. It was full. He pulled his helmet visor up and took off after the two men.
The chopper pilot foolishly took a shot at him as he was coming around the back of the smoking F-16. Hunter aimed and pumped off three rounds, dropping the pilot with three bullets through his heart.
Lucifer picked up the dead man's rifle and contin—
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ued climbing the top of the dune. Hunter double-timed it up the dune, drawing even with the heavy robed man just as they reached the summit.
They stood and faced each other. Hunter in his ripped and worn flight suit and helmet, Lucifer in his black robes right out of central casting. It was the first time Hunter had seen the madman since he had crashed his party on top of the World Trade Center. It was also the first time he saw the horrible facial scars.
Each was holding a rifle on the other.
"Well, Hunter," the man sneered at him. "We meet. Again."
"Yes, Viktor . . ." Hunter felt almost tongue-tied talking to the super-criminal. It started with two military forces heading for a collision in the Suez Canal, and now it came down to this. Just Hunter and Viktor.
"I have to admire your pluck, Hunter," Viktor said in his singsongy whine.
"I've been watching you ever since you crossed the Atlantic. There was no shortage of assassins willing to get rid of you. You dodged our missiles. You didn't blink when we sent those robot Ilyushin-28s after you, or when the Panatella air force took you on. And you were very clever figuring out my hundred-arms-of-Briareus idea. And even ghosts don't scare you."
Hunter was silent.
"So what do we do now, Mr. Wingman?" Viktor continued. "Take ten paces and draw? I'm sure you are better at such things than I. You should just shoot me now."
"No, Viktor," Hunter said, barely containing his temper. He hated this man, hated him for everything he stood for. "Shooting you would just inflame all those drooling idiots you've brainwashed into joining your sick, perverted cause. Death is too good for
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you. What you need is a slap of justice."
"How noble, Hunter," the man said. Hunter hearc him try to pull the trigger of the AK-47 he was holding. But it had hit the sand many times in the climb up the dune and now it was hopelessl} jammed.
"Nice try, Viktor," Hunter said. "But I'm nol about to kill you. What I am going to do is march you out of this desert and all the way back tc America."
The man seemed genuinely surprised. "America??: he asked. "What in Hell's name for?" /
"To stand trial," Hunter said, the anger rising up in his voice. "For war crimes committed against the people of the United States of America."
For the first time, the black-robed man lost his sneering grin. He actually looked worried. "You're mad," he said. "What makes you think you can get me all the way back to America?"
"What made us think we could stop your fleet?" Hunter shot back. "You destroyed a good part of my country, Viktor. And I'm going to see that you pay for it."
"You foolish, idealistic patriot," the man said, his sneer returning. "You have no country! When are you and your super-hero friends going to realize that? You lost the war, Hunter. There is no United States."
Never before had Hunter been so tempted to shoot a man in cold blood. He would be doing the world a favor.
"You're wrong, Viktor," Hunter replied, calmly. "As long as one person can say it, believe it, be willing to die for it, there will always be a United States of America. What you and your kind just can't get through your bullet heads is that men were