He knew the odds against him were at XX-to-1, but he was sitting on the horns of another dilemma: he couldn't let the pirate get him into a long, protracted dog fight, not because he was afraid he'd lose, but because he didn't want everyone in New Chicago to find out who he was. And to beat the pirate's sleek Flanker with his rickety Mirage would take a number of his best air combat maneuvers, moves that he had to admit, in all modesty, that no one but The Wingman could perform.
So the solution called for a short match. This, and that fact that Hunter loathed every second he spent sitting in the Mirage, had convinced him it should be very, very short.
He watched the Flanker reach its take-off point, and as soon as its wheels left the runway, he gunned the Mirage and lifted off cleanly.
The Flanker was bigger than his French flying shitbox, and, were it to be an even fight, the only obvious advantage Hunter had with his quicker take-off speed. But now the Flanker had done a quick twist and was heading back toward him even before he could pop the Mirage's throttles. The pirate was intent on shooting Hunter even before the Mirage could lift off.
"OK, jerk," Hunter said, legitimately smiling for the first time in what seemed like years. "You've just solved my problem for me . . ."
Hunter wasn't even airborne when he launched
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the missile-he had simply raised the nose of the Mirage and fired the damn thing. It came off his wing with surprising smoothness, rose up quickly and impacted on the Flanker's nose cone.
The Flanker's forward section exploded immediately; the air pirate hadn't even had a chance to pull his trigger. An instant later, the Soviet jet's filled-to-capacity fuel load ignited and completely obliterated the airplane.
End of duel . . .
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The recon strike force left Football City shortly after sundown and headed east.
The CH-53 Sea Stallion was loaded with two squads from the Football City Special Forces Rangers, an elite unit that was made up almost entirely of ex-professional football players who once earned their living playing the never-ending matches that made their home city so famous and successful.
Escorting the chopper were two A-7D Strikefighters, whose home base was the Pacific American Air Corps air station near Coos Bay, in the old state of Oregon. These unique duo-role airplanes would be able to provide ground support for the troopers and also fend off any intervening enemy fighters.
Also accompanying the strike force was the A-37 Dragonfly, with Ben at the controls and a pilot from the Texas Air Force riding in the right hand seat.
The A-37 would function as the small group's air warning platform and radio link, a job which required some-193
one on the ground with the troops to maintain the contact.
That job fell to Yaz . . .
The target was the warehouse where the mysterious tractor trailers were spotted. A high-flying reconnaissance flight early that day, courtesy of Crunch O'Malley, had confirmed the mystery trucks were still hidden at the remote location. O'Malley's RF-4 cameras also spotted a half dozen guards surrounding the warehouse.
The plan this night was to land near the target area, overtake the guards and gain access to both the mystery trucks and the warehouse. Two of the troopers were carrying photographic and video equipment. The opposition was hoped to be either McDeath ground troops or mercenaries in their employ. The worst case scenario would be that the guards were regular Circle Army troops, though this was unlikely.
The 200-mile trip across Illinois took nearly three hours as each aircraft had to refuel in mid-air before approaching the target, and the chopper was inherently slow. Once they were in the area, the Strikefighters went up to 23,000 feet, and started to orbit the target. Meanwhile, Ben and his copilot used the A-37's hardware to scan the target for any heavy weapons indications.
Finding none, the chopper moved in.
There was a small clearing a quarter mile from the warehouse, large enough to allow the Sea Stallion to land. Quickly and professionally, the Football City troops disembarked from the copter and moved into the nearby woods, Yaz sticking to the rear of the 24-man group with the radio operator and the medics.
They walked through the pitch black forest for 10 minutes until the target was spotted. The strike force leader, an Oklahoman major named Shane, told the 194
bulk of the group to stay hidden, as he and five advance men moved closer to the target to assess the opposition. Should it turn out to be stronger than believed, Shane had standing orders from Jones to abort the mission and get out of the area quickly.
Five minutes went by. Then Yaz heard the first shots.
Suddenly it seemed like the air was filled with streaking bullets and rocket-propelled grenades. The trees themselves were exploding, raining thousands of sharp, burning splinters onto the Strike Force. The group's two radios were crackling with commands and excited conversation. All that Yaz could make out of it was the scouting party ran into a changing of the guard at the warehouse and that the guards were not McDeath hirelings as was previously thought. Nor were they regular Circle Army troops.
Most of the Strike Force had moved up to the forward battle line, leaving Yaz, two medics and one of the radiomen behind. The sparky jabbed a microphone into Yaz's face.
"It's the major," the man said.
Yaz had barely acknowledged when he heard Shane say: "Call in those airplanes
. . . Now!"
"What are the target coordinates?" Yaz asked, getting his own ground-to-air radio set up.
"Have them lay down something heavy at coordinates three-five-zero by six-seven. Tell them to hurry. We just walked in on about one hundred fifty bad guys and we need some cover so we can get the hell out of here . . . Just make damn sure they don't hit the trucks or that warehouse . . ."
Yaz was talking to Ben Wa inside of ten seconds. He relayed Shane's message, and even before he signed off he could hear the screech of the approaching A-7s.
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There was an odd kind of controlled confusion all around Yaz as the Football City Rangers began falling back. Major Shane was no fool-he was outnumbered nearly eight-to-one, and there was no better reason to cut the visit short.
The A-7s came in and each one laid down a wash of napalm. The exploding jellied gasoline lit up the forest as if it were daytime. Shane called back to Yaz immediately after the jets' first pass. "Good shooting!" he yelled over the squawkbox. "Keep it coming!"
Yaz relayed the message and repeated the coordinates. By this time, the wounded were being rushed back toward the choppers. Once again the Strikefighters roared in and dropped a napalm canister apiece. Once again the nearby woods were splashed with two flaming waves of liquid fire.
Shane and his advance men moved back to Yaz's position next, carrying the body of one of the enemy. The major was surprised to see Yaz still at his position.
"Shit, boy, you should have been the first one back on the chopper," he said, managing a grin.
Shane took ten seconds to go through the dead man's pockets, trying to get some identity on him. To Yaz, the dead soldier didn't look like an American.
It turned out he was right.
"Jesus Christ . . ." Shane whispered as he finally located the man's ID chain. "This guy is Spetsnaz ยป
Being an old US Navy boy, Yaz knew Spetsnaz. "God, we just walked into a hornet's nest of them," he thought.
But not for long.
Shane ripped the ID chain from the man, then jumped up and yelled "C'mon, boys
. . . Let's go!"
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They double-timed it back to the chopper as the A-7s came in a third time, laying down another napalm blanket to dissuade any pursuers.
After that, there were none.
"Spetsnaz?" Hunter was astonished. "I'm having trouble believing that."
It was the next morning and Hunter & Co. were huddled around the C-5 radio, talking to Jones. They had quickly filled him in on the last 24 hours in New Chicago-the duel and the celebration Crabb had put together for them that night. Now the crew of the Nozo was getting its first report on the abbreviated raid on Terre Haute.
"Shane did a great job getting his guys the hell out of there," Jones told them. "He estimates there were at least one hundred fifty Spets hanging around that warehouse."
"Well, this certainly changes things a bit," Hunter said with understatement.
"The Kremlin gang doesn't just send in its best troops to guard something so trivial as gold or even big SAMs ..."
Both sides were silent for a while. Then Hunter spoke up.
"I think that we should try again to locate and open up one of those trailers," he said. "But, also, we should agree that the gold APC may be the key here. Those mystery trucks were welded shut. But that tank had a laser lock on it that was more sophisticated than anything I've ever seen.
"So whatever is in those trucks may be important, but it could very well be small potatoes compared to what they are hauling in the gold armored car. And God knows how many Spets they have guarding it
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"OK, let's get in agreement," Jones radioed. "We'll see if we can locate more trailers, and determine the ones most vulnerable to attack. Plus, we'll intensify efforts to locate the gold APC."
"Sounds good from this end," Fitz said into the microphone.
"Time to sign off," Jones said. "Just wanted to let you know also that all our reserves have arrived here, plus we've armed the POWs. We also have six squadrons of aircraft. Sounds impressive, but I don't have to remind you that our intelligence tell us that The Circle and The Family could field a combined army of one hundred ten thousand just in your neighborhood alone."
Hunter took the mike. "That's all the incentive we need to complete our mission here," he said. "If you can launch the next phase within forty eight hours, I guarantee those enemy troop numbers will drop . . ."
"I'll take that as a matter of faith," Jones kidded him. "After all, it is coming from a thirty-to-one long shot . . ."
Hunter turned and looked at the ten large piles of coins on the table next to the radio-the contents of 300 bags of gold, their winnings on the duel the day before.
"And I'll take that as a compliment, General," he concluded. "Everyone knows that Americans love the underdog."
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For Hunter and the crew of the Nozo, the next 36 hours were devoted to eating, drinking and gambling -especially gambling. Each of the 15 agents were given five bags of gold and were told to go forth and multiply it. The tactics ranged from trying their luck at one of New Chicago's dozen casinos, to bribing officials at the city's harness track.
Everyone agreed that intuition and innovation would be the keys. Thus, J.T.
went out and bought himself the contract to a club fighter from the city's still-uproarious South Side. All in one afternoon, he arranged a fight for the man, bribed the referee and judges, and artificially pumped the odds up on his guy, so that an hour before fight time, his fighter's opponent was a rock-bottom 75-1 shot. J.T. then paid his fighter the equivalent of twice the winner's purse for taking a dive. Hunter and Fitz had 100 bags of gold riding on the underdog; at fight's end, they needed a truck to collect their 7500
bags of gold.
The rest of the crew was just as successful although on a smaller scale. The fact that they were from the Nozo-coupled by the fact that they were friends with the pilot who had so shrewdly beaten the air pirate on the shortest air duel in the city's history-made them all instant celebrities. Celebrity status was essential in fixing the city's myriad of gambling opportunities, and the Nozo crew soaked up every last drop of their instant fame.
By the end of the 36 hours, they had amassed a staggering fortune in gold totaling 18,553 bags.
It was in a mansion on the city's east side that Hunter and Fitz met the man they called "The Kiss."
It had cost them 100 bags of gold just to arrange the meeting, but money couldn't really buy the advice only The Kiss could give.
The man-approaching his seventies, small, frail, and ailing-was still one of the most powerful men in New Chicago. He had more tentacles than a school of octupi, and ties into every last facet of the roaring city. He was a senior member of the board of The Family's ruling committee, the overseers of all that went on in New Chicago. He alone controlled the finances of The Family's army, who, for obvious reasons, stayed mostly to their barracks in a huge camp in the city of Aurora, right outside the old Chicago city limits. And he alone could bless who the next mayor
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would be to walk through the revolving door at City Hall.
The man's nickname was derived from "Kiss of Death." While his profession was a high-paid "consultant" and fix-it man, many a hood had met a painful end after being fingered for one reason or the other by The Kiss. In the pre-war days, he would have been called a "don" or a godfather. The word around the town was pay him in advance, follow his advice and don't get him upset, or figuratively, he'd plant a big, wet one on you.
Word of the meeting had spread around town, so much so that a crowd of onlookers and minor city officials just happened to be in the neighborhood when Hunter and Fitz arrived at the grand mansion.
The place looked old-almost antique-from the outside, but once past the front door, it was decorated in regal, if dark excellence. Hunter and Fitz were ushered into a large drawing room, where they found The Kiss sitting on a throne-like chair. They sat in plush seats before him, fully aware of the dozen bodyguards standing in the recesses of the room.
"So you are the new heroes in town," the man said, his voice raspy. "We've never had airmen as the upstarts here before."
"Maybe that's why we're so ... well, popular these days," Fitz told him.
"People just can't seem to have a good time without us."
"It passes the time," The Kiss said. "We're not what we used to be here-before the first big battles started after the New Order came in. But we've still got a big army and we're learning that