The airbase looked deserted. The three Soviet air—
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planes were sitting in the same position as on O'Mal-ley's video tape and there didn't seem to be any undue activity taking place at the base.
"Dare I say 'so far, so good'?" Dozer asked.
"Just cross your fingers when you do," Hunter replied. "I say let's get the rest of the gang up here . . ."
Dozer ran back down to the airplane and passed the word. Within a half minute the elite troopers were silently scurrying up to the edge of the runway. Stagg appeared with his Night Vision helmet and a long extension cord. He scanned the far off hangars.
"No one around, that I can see . . ." he said. "Maybe they're all asleep."
Hunter unstrapped his M-16 and checked the magazine. It was full, as always, with tracer rounds.
"Well, let's get this show on the road," he said, scrambling over the top.
"Everyone stay together and keep an eye on your brother . . ."
"And stay in the shadows . . ." Dozer urged them, checking the clip on his own Uzi. "Remember how we planned it. Just like Entebbe."
With that, the soldiers followed the two officers over the brush and out onto the runway.
Quickly, silently, they headed for the base's control tower.
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There were six Circle officers and ten enlisted men inside the Boiling base tower, having just come on duty at SA.M.
Four of the officers were already drunk when they reported for their shift.
The two others were under the influence of the cocaine that was so readily available to all of the Circle's commanders. Even the enlisted men were drinking beer on duty.
The men assigned to the moribund Boiling air base were from the bottom of the Circle's rather cruddy barrel. Anyone with a half a brain and some airport experience was based over at National. The occupation at Boiling was merely an afterthought for the Circle commanders, a place to station a few dozen malcontents, criminals and substance abusers where they would be out of the way.
The shift had been on duty only thirty minutes when the girls were brought in.
They had been bought, of course, right in downtown Washington, near the old
"J" street intersection, with a bag of money pooled from the officers and men.
It had been a weekly activity with this particularly repulsive grave-375
yard shift of Circle soldiers. Two girls, sixteen men, a case of booze and a lot of drugs.
The senior officer, a captain named Lutt, picked over the girls like a man buying livestock. Both of them were barely 17, if that, and they had been dressed up in the faddish "Queenie" clothes of the day. Lutt fondled their breasts, grabbed their rear ends, felt between their legs.
"OK, they'll do . . ." he finally declared. "Get them ready. . ."
The girls were led to the large table that had been placed in the middle of the control tower's main office. It had been covered with three dilapidated mattresses and a mish-mash of army blankets. The girls were hoisted onto the table and made to guzzle from a bottle of no-name whiskey. Then, with a barely-operating video camera turned on, the soldiers drew lots. The first winner could then order the girls to do anything of his bidding. Once he was through, the next man would step up and demand the same and on down through the line.
On this night, the first man to win demanded the girls start off by fondling each other, a favorite of the nightshift. Then he decided they would perform oral sex on him at the same time, much to the whooping delight of his comrades. He finished up by attempting to have regular sex with both of them, a near-impossible task for a man who was a regular cocaine abuser. His less-than-sterling performance lasted all of three minutes, then it was time for the next soldier in line to make his demands.
They were on the fifth trooper when the group heard, but ignored, a quick but fairly loud scraping noise coming from the river's edge.
"Those assholes over at National, screwing something up," was how Captain Lutt decided to dismiss
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the commotion. "Lay out some more lines and let's get on with it . . ."
His underlings did so, but as they watched the fifth soldier of the night take measure of the young girls, Lutt suddenly found himself looking up a strange face on the other side of the control room door.
"Who the fuck is that?" he asked, but before anyone could respond, the door had opened and something was thrown inside.
The next thing he knew, he was blinded by a tremendous white light, so intense, it actually stung his eyes.
"Flash grenade!" someone yelled, but those were the last words Lutt ever heard. Through painfully stinging eyes he could just barely see the black-suited men pouring into the room and making short work of his contingent of soldiers.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
One man, one shot. Lutt could tell the invaders were highly-trained, efficient. He made a vain attempt to reach his gun, but he heard one last pop!
and then everything turned to black . . .
It took only sixteen bullets to capture the air base control tower, two fairly quiet concussion grenades to neutralize the remaining enemy soldiers in the base's only occupied barracks.
Within a minute of the first gunplay, Hunter and the United American team were in control of Boiling Air Force Base.
"These guys perverted enough for you?" Dozer asked Hunter as the team members disposed of The Circle soldiers' bodies.
"They give perversion a bad name," Hunter said, watching the two rescued girls climb back into their Dominique get-ups. "Let's get Stagg up here and con-377
tact the other two Hercs. At least we know they'll have a smoother landing than we did . . ."
Twenty minutes later, the two trailing Hercs came in to perfect lights-off landings. Quickly, some of the troopers inside dispersed their heavy equipment to strategic points around the air base, while others went in search of Circle weapons and uniforms that the strike team would be able to use.
Ninety minutes after the first C-130 plowed in to the messy sand landing, a force of 35 UA troopers was driving out of the base in three captured Circle trucks. The first part of their bold mission was accomplished; now phase two had begun.
j
Hunter was in the lead truck with Dozer and Stagg. Two officers from Dozer's famed 7th Cavalry were commanding trucks number two and number three. I The tiny convoy split up as soon as it reached the j Suitland Parkway. Hunter's truck and number two crossed the bridge over the Potomac, while the third vehicle continued northward.
j
Each truck had a target: one of the trio of radar i stations that made up the Circle's DC radar net. Truck 3 would be responsible for taking over the large tracking facility up on Mt. Ranier, northeast of the ! city. The group in Truck 2 would divert to the south and capture the radar station at Fort McNair, which was adjacent to the old Washington Navy Yard.
Hunter's team was assigned to the toughest nut of all-the mobile three-array system the Circle had in-i stalled on top of the old Watergate Building.
They boldly drove right through the heart of downtown DC, the few guards they saw routinely waving them along. The reports they'd received from Yaz and Shane had been correct, even understated. The entire District area seemed to be a jumble of Circle military vehicles, abandoned tractor trailers and clumps of
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civilians-sleeping everywhere.
"This is the POW syndrome," Hunter said to Dozer and Stagg as he steered them along the streets of the capital. "There are probably ten or twenty civvies for every Circle guard, yet no one has the will to resist, the morale is so low."
Dozer shook his head. "It's amazing what happens when you imagine someone has a gun to your head, twenty-four hours a day. You resign yourself to your fate.
Your life is in someone else's hands . . ."
"All it takes is a spark . . ." Hunter said.
/
They drove down Constitution Avenue and saw for the first time the incredible tower of books The Circle had constructed. The smell of gasoline was everywhere. They pretended not to notice and kept driving. Past the Elipse, past the OAS Building and past the Federal Reserve.
But it was near the old Viet Nam Memorial that Hunter saw a sight that really made his blood start to boil.
Out on the field near the black sunken wall, there was a large pile, similar to the books and other items they'd seen stacked along the way. But this pile was different: It was about 25 feet high and square. To the normal eye the colors looked all jumbled together in the early morning light. But Hunter saw right through the dark haze like a laser beam. The colors were reds, whites and blues. It was an enormous pile of flags-American flags.
His breath caught in his throat. The Stars and Stripes had been banned from America by the New Orderin fact, it was the first edict to come down after the war. Being caught carrying the flag meant that the person could be shot on sight with a huge reward going to the killer. With no shortage of bounty hunters roaming the country these days, it was no
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surprise that hardly anyone carried an American flag anymore.
Except Hunter . . .
He reached up and touched his pocket and felt the reassuring folds of the flag he always carried with hun. Wrapped inside was the dog-eared photograph of his lovely and lost Dominique-but he managed to shake away that thought for the time being. Instead he concentrated on the pile of flags.
"They're going to have a flag-burning," he said almost to himself but quite aloud. "The bastards are going to burn all of those flags over there . . ."
"Son of a bitch," Dozer said. "That's as bad as torching the books."
Stagg strained his eyes to look closer at the pile as they drove by. "Look at the big one next to the pile," he said. "Isn't that the one that used to hang off the Iwo Jima Monument?"
"Yes it is," Hunter said, his voice betraying quiet rage. "It's one of the largest in Washington and these bastards are going to desecrate it."
Hunter felt an urge to stop the truck and gather up j as many of the flags as possible, but he knew it would j be suicide, even if he could bluff his way through \ anyone who might see them.
Stick to the plan, he kept telling himself. Just stick to the plan . . .
His anger somewhat in check, he took a right onto 23rd Avenue and was soon pulling up in front of the infamous Watergate complex.
"Such an ugly building," Stagg said, looking at the wavy construction that seemed to have no beginning, no end, no structure, and little function.
"Wonder what the rental rates are these days?"
"Cheap, I would guess," Dozer said.
Hunter could see the three large radar dishes spin-380
ning on the south side of the building's roof. There were also several antiaircraft batteries installed nearby.
"They look like they're prepared for company," Hunter said, noting the twin Bofors AA guns. "They've probably got a couple SAMs up there, too."
There were two guards at the main entrance and several more inside. Dozer whispered a command back through the window of the captured deuce and a half troop truck to the 15 soldiers in the rear. They quietly got ready.
"Here goes nothing," Hunter said, slowly getting out of the cab of the truck.
He was dressed in a standard Circle Army captain uniform. In his pocket was a squirt gun . . .
Both guards saluted him as he approached. "My guys are here to rewire one of the arrays," he said, trying to keep a straight face. "Can you help us carry our equipment up to the roof?"
Both guards unquestioningly nodded and moved to the back of the truck. They were instantly taken up inside and disposed of.
By this time, Dozer and Stagg were standing next to him, each one wearing a Circle Army officer's uniform.
"So far, so good," Dozer said.
The three of them brazenly walked into the building's lobby where they were met by three junior officers of the guard.
"Can I help you, sirs?" one of the men asked them, a suspicious look written across his face.
"Yeah, we're lost," Hunter told hun. "We're on our way to the Capitol Building. Which way is it?"
The officer turned to his two comrades for help. "The streets in this town are really crazy," one of them said. "Let me see now, if you take New Hampshire 381
Avenue over to Pennsylvania ..."
The man was surprised to see Hunter take the squirt gun out of his pocket.
"What is this, a gag?"
"Good guess," Hunter said squirting all three of them in the face.
The trio was unconscious before they hit the ground, silent victims of Hunter's homemade knockout potion of chlorine and etherized ammonia.
"Boy that stuff really works," Dozer said as the three men crumpled like marionettes without strings. "But it sure does stink . . ."
"Oh God, is that the truth . . ." Hunter said, coughing from the fumes. "I think I made it a little too strong ..."
All three of them were gagging as they signaled the rest of the troopers to get into the lobby. Soon they had commandeered three elevators and were quickly rising to the top of the building.
Hunter stopped his lift at the floor just under the penthouse, and the troopers in the other elevators did the same. Using hand signals, they quietly moved toward the stairs, taping the access doors behind them, so as not to set off any alarms.
Hunter was the first to reach the top floor, and he quietly opened the access door a crack and peeked in. There was a pair of penthouse suites on the top level. A tangle of wires ran in through two large glass doors, these no doubt leading up to the roof and to the radar dishes. He scanned the inside of the penthouse itself and finally saw the three control boards for the radar sets were installed right next to a large bar and couch pit.
Reclined inside this pit were six Circle soldiers-radar operators who were doing anything but watching their scopes. Instead, just like their compadres back at Boiling, they were passing around two young 382
girls.
"These guys are unbelievable," he whispered to Dozer and Stagg as they joined in looking out of the crack in the door. "Did any of them have normal upbringings?"