Labyrinth

Chapter 32

Saturday afternoon, Calvin Roy was working on Van Dam’s files when CIA director Peter Kennally appeared unannounced in his office.

“To what do I owe this pleasure, Major Pete?” Roy said, looking up. He pulled his glasses off and massaged his tired eyes, then ran his hands over his bald dome.

“Depends on what kind of mood you’re in, Cal. I’d like to keep my job when you get confirmed as Secretary.”

“Got a reason why I’d put an ad in the paper?”

“One just turned up.” Kennally moved forward but didn’t sit down. “One of our agents was quarantined, a Division Six man named Dogan.”

Roy mocked putting his hands over his ears. “I’m not supposed to hear stuff like that.”

“This time you’d better. It turns out Dogan was in Liechtenstein at the same time Locke was, and apparently they were supposed to meet at a hotel room in Rome. And the quarantine order was restricted. That means somebody doesn’t want Dogan coming in at all.”

“How do you know all this?”

Kennally sighed. “Because one of our agents went to Rome and got himself killed in Dogan’s place. That’s what put me on to the connection in the first place. The hotel was the one our man in Locke’s house received a call from. I did some checking. It seems Dogan’s original assignment was to kill Locke.”

“Where in hell did that order come from?”

“Executive sanction.”

“Van Dam?”

“I might have started with him but the restricted status on Dogan originated at a lower level. Group commander, station leader — something like that.”

“Christ,” Roy muttered. “So one of our agents is ordered to kill Locke, probably ends up joining him instead, and then becomes the object of a kill order himself.”

Kennally nodded. “I’ve lifted the quarantine but it’ll take a while for word to filter into the field.”

“Ever have a cow piss on ya while you were drawin’ milk, Major?”

Kennally just shrugged.

“Well, that’s what I think’s happening to this country right now, and I ain’t got the slightest idea where, when, or how.” Roy hesitated. “Your men got shooting clearance on this Dogan, Major?”

“Some of them will certainly interpret it that way.”

“Then let’s hope they got bad aim.”

Dogan was still awake when the sun came up Sunday morning. He wasn’t hungry or thirsty. He just lay there hoping the phone would ring, because if it didn’t he would be helpless.

The route he had taken into Washington had been long and tiring, for he had taken a number of precautions to avoid identification and capture. There had been several plane changes and brief trips by train and bus along the way. The worst stretch of the journey came in Lisbon, where a fogged-in airport stranded him for six maddening hours. Only a bribe assured him of passage on the first plane out. But it still took him until late Saturday afternoon to arrive in Washington.

The fact that Locke was alone again bothered Dogan only slightly. After all, by now the college professor would have linked up with Masvidal, and their raid on Mandala’s Keysar Flats airfield was only hours away at most. Masvidal was supposed to contact Vaslov with confirmation of the rendezvous, and Vaslov, in turn, would contact Dogan. So far no call had come and Dogan found himself increasingly uneasy.

He had spent Saturday night on the phone tracing down old contacts and making new ones, channeling each call through sterile exchanges but keeping them short in case the ciphers had been changed. The end result was to gain him a series of meetings with government officials starting with the Department of Agriculture and moving on to Brian Charney’s State Department bureau. He needed allies as well as evidence for the strategy he would implement later today even as Masvidal — and Locke — set out to destroy the canisters in Keysar Flats. If all went according to plan, Dogan would then be free to deal with Mandala personally at San Sebastian. Audra St. Clair’s words had confirmed that another phase of Mandala’s plan would begin there, one that would destroy South America’s farmland as well. It would end where it had started, and Dogan would be the one to end it.

The phone rang, startling him. Only Vaslov knew where to reach him. The Russian’s call had come at last.

“Yes?”

“Sorry for the delay in reaching you, comrade,” Vaslov said, voice flatter than usual. “But there has been a complication and it has taken me this long to sort everything out.”

Dogan felt his stomach sink. “What happened?”

“The Sanii Corporation’s plant in Liechtenstein has been destroyed by several well-placed bombs. Many people were killed or injured. Everything is gone.”

“It makes sense. Mandala’s covering more of the Committee’s tracks. He doesn’t want the crop genetics research to fall into anyone else’s hands and disrupt his plans.”

“There is more, comrade. The perpetrators of the explosion have already been arrested. Officials are calling it a major breakthrough in the assault on terrorism.”

Dogan knew the rest before Vaslov continued.

“Our friend Masvidal and over fifty of his troops were apprehended in Spain after a gun battle that claimed many lives. That final bit is right off the Associated Press wire…. Are you there, comrade?”

“Give me a few minutes to sort things out,” Dogan managed.

“I’ll call you back in a half hour, comrade.”

Dogan hung up the phone dazed. Masvidal had not made the rendezvous in Keysar Flats. Locke was there alone.

But he didn’t have to be. It was time to forget about precautions and procedures. None of that mattered any longer. He would make more calls and demand the meetings begin at once. He would keep calling until somebody listened and sent the marines into Keysar Flats.

Dogan had lifted the receiver from its hook again when the door to his room burst open and a flood of bodies poured through. He was in motion immediately toward the pistol hanging from the back of a chair, but he knew he’d never make it. The men charged forward, guns all black and steel, promising death.

It had been seven o’clock Saturday evening when Locke had given up waiting for Masvidal at the Ramrod Roadside Motel. He might have given up much earlier, when the messenger did not arrive as promised by five, but had no idea of what to do next. So he had stayed, hoping against hope Masvidal would materialize. He had no way of contacting Dogan, Nikki was gone, and now something had stopped Masvidal from coming.

It had been drizzling all day and by seven, when Locke finally returned to his room, the heavier rain had finally started, subsiding back to a drizzle around midnight.

The trip there had been long and unsettling. The man with the porkpie hat had reminded him to trust no one. Every person he passed was a potential assassin. Chris had spent much of the flight from Madrid to New York scrutinizing the half-filled cabin. He changed seats twice to avoid being near any one person too long.

Returning to the States made him think sadly of his family. He could only hope the real Burgess had been right about the government protecting the rest of them after Greg had been kidnapped. But the Committee could reach anybody. If he failed in Keysar Flats, what would become of his loved ones?

It hurt too much to think about, so Chris made himself stop. His mind swung back to Masvidal and a hundred possible explanations for what might have gone wrong. None of them mattered, though, because the one overriding fact was that he wasn’t coming and neither were his people. That left Chris with two choices: Either he could sit and sulk or he could go out and do something on his own. Keysar Flats was a big place but he had lots of time, a whole night to drive his rental car around every road he could find. He was looking for cropdusters and plenty of them. They’d be well protected and that might make them stand out.

Of course, Locke had no idea what he would do if he found the planes, but he had to make the effort. He was well rested, having slept a full dozen hours since arriving at the Ramrod. And he had a full tank of gas in the car he had rented in Dallas.

Chris started for the door, the absurdity of the situation almost making him smile: if the Gods themselves had imprisoned Tantalus, how could he possibly hope to free him?

Pop Keller sat in the corner of the Lonesome Horn Bar and Grill drinking his second special of the young day, a sweet concoction that tasted like sugared prairie dust. Yesterday’s special had been Jack Daniels straight up with a twist, and that had been much more to his liking. The day before that …

Pop Keller scratched his head. He couldn’t remember what the special had been day before yesterday. Amazing what advancing age could do for you….

Pop sipped his special and blessed the thin mist in the skies above the Lonesome Horn because it saved him the trouble of spending the day looking for a new site for his Flying Devils air show. The engagement had been scheduled to begin a week ago but then the rains came and on top of that they lost the only site in the Flats worth a damn. So Pop had sent his people out to enjoy the sights of Texas, hid himself in the Lonesome Horn, and started on the specials. Today was the sixth, seventh maybe. They were all starting to taste alike.

He might have stayed with his sugared prairie dust all day, except he was supposed to meet his people at their roadside camp at noon sharp. All this waiting around had the boys getting restless. Most had regular jobs they had already taken too much time away from.

The Flying Devils had once been the best in the business. They barnstormed the country with their World War II fighters, putting on mock air battles that thrilled their audiences. No jet-powered engines, no gymnastic circles in the air. Just plain old gutsy flying in reconditioned fighters.

The planes carried live ammunition in their front-mounted machine guns and real rockets under their wings. The highlight of the exhibition had often been Pop Keller himself putting on an amazing display of target practice at a thousand feet. He’d been able to shoot the horns off a bull … until his eyes went, that is.

He should have gotten glasses but they looked lousy under his leather flying goggles. Seven years back he had been squinting to focus when his fighter made a sudden dip and scraped the wing of another. At least it felt like a scrape. In fact, the collision tore the wing off his buddy’s plane and a moderate crowd of 1,200 watched him crash and die in a nearby field.

Pop Keller escaped jail but not scandal. The insurance company laid into him heavy and there were so many lawsuits, he figured he might as well move a cot into the Superior Court. The Devils started to come apart. Pop’s best fliers, the young ones, left for the Confederate Air Force or the Valiant Air Command and took their planes with them, leaving him with a ragtag unit of mostly old men who napped before and after performances. But flying was an important part of their lives and they didn’t want to quit. And their pension checks took some of the strain off Pop Keller’s barely solvent operation.

He had weathered the storm of the scandal, steeled himself even against the pranksters who changed the first “e” in his name to an “i” on billboards, proclaiming him Pop “Killer.” And the Flying Devils had managed to hang together, keep their live ammunition, and change their show to include more mock air battles, which were strangely the most rehearsed and safest segments of their show. The younger fliers started coming back and the Flying Devils again became as good as any of their competitors.

But not many people seemed to care anymore. They had done only six gigs in the past nine months and no crowd had reached a thousand. They collected far less money at the gate than it took for repairs and reconditioned parts for the ancient fighters which, like Pop Keller, didn’t know enough to give up. Pop was down to thirty-seven fighters, and there was seldom a day when more than twenty of them were able to take the air. Parts had been traded around so much that it was impossible to tell which had started where. Pop kept hiring mechanics to patch his fleet together with Scotch tape, Elmer’s Glue, or whatever else it took. He was living off a dozen loans now. Before too much longer, though, he’d have to sell all his beautiful fighters just to get out of debt.

Pop had gotten in the World War II air show business early, before the Warbird craze caught on. He bought most of his fighters in the fifties and sixties at rock-bottom prices that didn’t even approach their value today. But as they appreciated, so did his insurance costs until he had to sell off a few every six months just to stay above water. He started taking on pilots just to get their planes in the show, agreeing to pay upkeep, maintenance, and insurance on them just so long as they were ready to go at showtime. The compromises made his flesh crawl. Doctors, pharmacists, cesspool technicians — for a while the civilians had outnumbered the true fliers in the Devils. Bad times had forced most of them out now, leaving Pop with a nucleus of hardcore Warbirds who had lasted through a week of rain and a cancellation here in Keysar Flats.

Pop still owned a majority of his fleet, twenty-one of the thirty-seven planes. Regardless of ownership, they were all beautiful: six one-man Piper L-4s, eight T-6 Texas trainers, five P-51 Mustangs and the same number of P-40 Warhawks; four Corsairs, three F8F Bearcats, and a pair each of Spitfires, Trojans, and German Messerschmitts. He pampered them like children, taking great pride in the fact that several had been lifted literally off the scrap heap and reconditioned with his own hands.

Pop drained the rest of his special and watched the mist starting to break outside. He didn’t have the spare parts anymore to make planes fly, and the men flying them were living out ancient fantasies in skies that didn’t scorn them. It was nice when you thought of it that way. Pop could see the bitterness and despair disappear every time they took to the air. They would have been much happier in a real battle.

Keysar Flats, he figured, might be the end. Having their site yanked right out was a crippler, a total loss on the money he’d spent getting his fleet there. Looking for another site had started as a pain in the ass and then the weather fucked him sideways, so it probably didn’t matter anyway.

Not surprisingly, then, Pop Keller could recognize a man in trouble because one looked back at him in the mirror every day. He knew he was seeing one in the nervous man swallowing coffee at the bar. They had the Lonesome Horn all to themselves, and Pop Keller didn’t feel like being alone.

He pushed his ragged, arthritic bones from his table and slid onto the stool next to the stranger’s.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Be my guest,” Christopher Locke told him.

Pop Keller ordered another special and looked the man over. His eyes were drawn and bloodshot, his hair matted down by the morning rain.

“You look like hell, friend.”

Locke almost smiled. “Believe it or not, that’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in quite a while.”

“Been up all night?”

“Yeah.”

“I figured as much. I knew I recognized that look…. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Just coffee.”

“Some food?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Gotta eat, friend. I turned sixty-six last week and I ain’t lost my appetite yet.”

Locke stared down into his coffee, wishing the old man would go away. He was depressed and frustrated, and wanted very much to be alone with his misery. He had been up the entire night driving the roads of Keysar Flats, losing his way enough times to lose track of which roads he had been on and which ones he’d missed. It was no use. The airfield sheltering the cropdusters was too well hidden. It was over and he had lost. There wasn’t a single soul in the world he could turn to for help.

“Sometimes it helps to talk things out, friend,” the old man suggested.

“Not this time.”

“Friend, I’ve had a load of trouble in my life and finding a sympathetic ear always seems to ease it. Let me try and help you.”

Locke looked into the wizened, liver-spotted face beneath a sparse crop of white hair. “Unless you’ve got an army regiment or air force squadron waiting close by, there’s not a damn thing you can do.”

Pop Keller smiled.

Dogan was confused when the men who’d converged on his hotel room had not killed him. They roughed him up a bit, refused to respond to his questions, and then transported him handcuffed in the back of a van to what must have been a safe house over the border in Virginia. There he was locked in a small living room with steel-barred windows and plenty of guards beyond the door. Dogan spent the ensuing hours pacing anxiously. What was going on? What did the men have planned for him?

It must have been closing in on noontime when the door to the room finally opened and a small, balding man wearing a pair of steel-rimmed glasses entered.

“I’ll tell ya, son,” he said, addressing Dogan in a comfortable southern drawl, “somebody should dig up all the channels of this piss-ass government and plant new ones. Woulda been here sooner but word takes a damnable long time to travel.” The figure stepped closer and extended his hand. “The name’s Roy, son, Calvin Roy. Had your lunch yet? I don’t know ‘bout you, but I’m starved.”

They drove north along U.S. 83 in Pop Keller’s battered pickup.

“You sure they’ll be at that airfield?” Locke asked him. “What did you call it?”

“Stonewall Jackson Air Force Base. Been shut down for fifteen years now. But the runways are still kept in condition and there’s plenty of hangars, barracks, and large storage areas. I should know. I rented the fucking place four months back. Somebody canceled our show eight days ago. They didn’t give no reason.”

“You’re lucky they let you walk away alive.”

Pop’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Let me tell you something, friend—”

“Call me Chris.”

“Yeah, Chris, I went through the big one: WW Two. I shot down lots of Jap planes and I walked away from every battle. I don’t intend to break that streak now.”

Locke searched for a clock in the pickup but found none. “How many planes do you have?”

“You’re talkin’ ’bout some pretty heavy flyin’ here, Chris. My fighters got lots of guts but not an awful lot holdin’ them together. Twenty’s a reasonable figure to get up, give or take a few.”

“I can’t ask you to go along with this. The risks involved would be—”

“I don’t give two shits about risk,” Pop snapped.

“But your men, they—”

“My men feel like I do. We’re all beaten old farts, Chris boy. We’ve all been dreamin’ about fighting one last battle for years now. ‘Sides, cropdusters ain’t exactly about to offer much of a contest in an air-to-air battle with my fleet. Hell, I still got planes that’ll go three bucks easy.”

“They’ll have taken other precautions.”

“No sweat. We’ll come in low and fast and the bastards’ll never know what hit ’em.”

Locke shook his head. “No, I can’t let you do this. Just get me to this air force base and I’ll take it from there.”

“Alone, friend? Now that wouldn’t be too smart, would it? Come on, you’re doin’ us a favor. Flyin’ on weekends like a bunch of circus clowns has beaten the life out of my men. They all left their best days behind, and anything that helps them get those days back is okay for sure. They joined up with the Devils and stayed ’cause at least they can still fly and maybe pretend. Well, they won’t have to pretend today.”

Locke hesitated. “You’re sure about Stonewall Jackson being the place?”

“I’m sure it’s the only site in the Flats capable of sustaining the kinda operation you described ’cause I spent plenty of time lately lookin’ for others. And what better reason can you think of to cancel my gig all of a sudden?”

Chris shrugged, knowing he had to give in to the old man for lack of any other alternative. “Just volunteers, Pop, we only take volunteers.”

Keller smiled at him. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, friend.”

The Flying Devils had set up camp not far from the North Wichita River, fifteen minutes flying time from Stonewall Jackson Air Force Base. Locke stepped down from Pop Keller’s pickup and felt as if he were stepping back in time. The trailers and storage trucks had been arranged in a circle surrounding a huge mass of green tarpaulins, which covered the fleet. It almost looked like the men of the traveling air show had arranged their vehicles to protect against Indian attack.

“Gus, get the boys together!” Pop shouted to a toothless, barrel-chested man hammering away at a stripped engine.

“What you say, Pop?”

“Hurry up’s what I say, asshole! We got us a war to fight today!”

“Huh?”

Minutes later Pop Keller was standing on the roof of a trailer with the Flying Devils logo fading from its side. Fifty or so men gazed up at him intently as he recited his own colorful version of Locke’s story. Chris scanned them, saw not hesitation and fear but determination and resolve in their faces.

“This here’s the front, boys,” Keller said, nearing his close, “and we’re the last thing that stands between these murderin’ bastards and America. Some of us knocked plenty of Nazis and Japs from the sky and others took out their share of Gooks a few years later. I say it’s time to hit the skies for real again!”

“Yeah!” came the resounding chorus.

“Who’s with me, boys?”

Every hand went up.

“Let’s get to it, then!”

With roars of enthusiastic delight, the men of the Flying Devils headed toward their positions, each knowing his proper place. For them the preparations were probably the same as those for a show, yet Chris could not help but be amazed at the precision of their motions. In less than a minute, the tarps were all ripped from the planes and left to flutter in the wind. Locke looked at the ancient fighters and felt his heart sink. Somehow he had expected fresh, glowing Warhawks and Cobras shining proudly in the sun. What he saw instead was a squadron of battered, broken airplanes that looked as fragile as the balsawood fliers boys toss around their backyards. The Devils had done their best to restore each fighter’s original paint job, but patchup work was so evident that not a single plane could boast a consistent shade.

Locke sat down against a trailer. For a while the sight of broken men readying broken airplanes for battle had an almost comic texture to it. Then suddenly Chris realized there was nothing even remotely comic about what he was watching. The Devils moved confidently, even as they spit tobacco and huffed for breath. Engines were checked, propellers oiled and greased, glass cockpit covers washed squeaky clean. Gun sights were set and huge ammunition belts for the front-mounted machine guns were snapped home. For those planes still capable of holding bombs, dark-green projectiles were loaded beneath the wings. Wooden blocks were yanked from under the fighters’ tires and mechanics rushed crazily from one to the next, tightening a lug or fastening a bolt. When they wiped the sweat from their brow, they left a trail of grease behind. Their white T-shirts grew filthy from the grime.

Chris found himself rising involuntarily to his feet. The fighters were all being spun around now to face the same direction — toward the highway. A few pilots gunned their engines and taxied forward on their own. The ancient fighters seemed brighter now, more alive, as if they understood the role they were being called on to perform and were responding to it.

“We’ll be off the ground in fifteen minutes, Chris,” Pop Keller told him, the pain of his arthritis vanquished along with thoughts of unpaid debts and bankruptcy.

“What are we gonna use for runways?” Locke asked.

Keller’s eyes gazed out at U.S. 83. “The highway, friend. We’ll place trailers across to block off a big enough stretch. Yup, it’ll do just fine.”

Four prairie dust specials were starting to make themselves felt in his stomach, and Pop moved off toward the water jugs to drown the damn booze. Locke looked back at the fighters and watched the pilots donning their flying gear. Other men were still prepping guns and passing out parachutes.

Keller returned, dragging his sleeve across his lips. “We’ll be able to get about twenty of them in the air like I said and about half are equipped with rockets.”

“How many men per plane?”

“Most are outfitted to take two but we’ll stay with one. Cropdusters ain’t the fastest planes on the market but we’ll still need to cut out as much excess weight as possible to be sure of catching them.”

While the plane engines idled, all the men gathered together, and Pop Keller moved toward them. The average age of the Flying Devils looked to be about fifty-five, with variations twenty years in both directions.

“Boys,” Pop Keller began, eyes plainly on his watch, “we ain’t got much time. I ain’t much good at speakin’ so I’m just gonna speak my mind. It’s gonna be dangerous for us on this raid. Our best bet is to strike fast and hard and take these bastards with their pants down. If it looks like none of the dusters have took off yet when we get to the base, both Red and Blue wings will go in blasting. If some dusters have made it up, and that’s my guess, we’ll use a different strategy.” Pop Keller searched the crowd. “Mickey O.,” he called out.

A burly, white-haired man wearing an oil-stained shirt stepped forward. “Right here.”

“You’ll lead Blue Wing on the air-to-ground assault while I take Red Wing air-to-air after any of the bastards that already took off. Let yours and the other Pipers head the attack ’cause you each got six rockets and the best aim by far. We all gotta be careful,” Pop went on, speaking to everyone, “’cause catchin’ them with their pants down don’t necessarily mean they’ll be holdin’ their dicks in their hands. They’ll be protected, boys. Make your ammo count and remember we gotta knock these dusters down before they can drop their stuff.”

The men of the Flying Devils glanced at each other.

“Boys, I’m not much of an expert on this scientific junk but it’s a plain fact that the scum we’re goin’ up against means to do a swift number on the old U.S. of A. Well, I fought the Nazis and the Japs to keep that from happening and I’ll do it again today, tomorrow, or any other day it’s called for.”

The Flying Devils started hooting and hollering. Some of the men whistled through their parched lips.

“Ready, boys?”

A triumphant scream rang out.

“Then let’s getto it!”

And with that, the Flying Devils scattered toward their fighters, or the trucks and trailers that would follow them to Stonewall Jackson on the ground. Members of the ground-based crew helped the leather-clad pilots into their cockpits and waited for the thumbs-up sign as engines were gunned and propeller blades spun to life. A chorus of sputtering followed, quickly drowned out by the sound of gunned engines revving again. The assault squadron was ready for take-off, with nineteen fighters, six of which were Piper L-4s carrying rocket-propelled warheads under their wings.

“Ain’t gonna miss your own show, are ya, friend?” a voice shouted at Locke over the roar of the engines.

Chris turned to Pop Keller. The old pilot adjusted his goggles and then zipped up his brown leather flight jacket.

“I saved you the rear seat in my personal sweetheart,” Pop said.

And together they trotted toward a red P-40 Warhawk with the gaping mouth of a shark painted on its nose.

Chapter 33

Twenty miles away, another part of Keysar Flats was alive with similar activity. Fifty eager cropdusters were approaching takeoff position on two runways at Stonewall Jackson Air Force Base. The canisters had been loaded and all had been ready for ten minutes now but Ahmad Hamshi, the man in charge, had his orders as to the precise schedule and under no circumstances would he deviate from it. Hamshi was Mandala’s leading operations man in the Mideast and one of the few anywhere he trusted. He had brought the Arab to Keysar Flats specifically because he was a man intolerant of slipups. Hamshi would not disappoint him. So far things had gone off without a hitch and he wanted to keep it that way.

Once the cropdusters had begun their climb, Hamshi would dial a number in South America and give the go code, which would be relayed to Mandala in San Sebastian. Direct contact between them was impossible, as was further contact of any kind once the go code was given.

To insure total secrecy and complete control, Mandala had devised a plan he called Hop-Skip, whereby all canisters were loaded onto the initial squadron of dusters. They would empty their prescribed amounts and then rendezvous at the first “hop” point where the remaining canisters would be loaded onto dusters that would then “skip” on to the next rendezvous point. To have evenly distributed the canisters at the fifteen bases lining the center of the country would have meant far faster dispersal but would also have required the taking of far more men into his confidence. The physical logistics would prove more difficult under his Hop-Skip strategem, yet on the slim chance that one or more of the rendezvous bases were raided, there would be nothing for the authorities to find. Time clearly wasn’t a factor because the fungus spread so fast that this method of dispersal would slow the rate of total crop contamination across North America by barely a day. Furthermore, if a rendezvous base was captured, the approaching dusters would simply proceed on to the next one.

Ahmad Hamshi checked his watch: one minute to go now. The pilots were revving their engines. Since each plane was weighed down with the bulk of the excess canisters, its climb would be slowed. It would take just over seven minutes from takeoff for the dusters to rise to their optimum dispersal altitude and spread out sufficiently, and not until then would they open the valves that would dispense their cargo.

Hamshi sniffed the air. The clearing skies had left things hot and humid, ideal weather for the fungus to procreate and spread. Mandala would be pleased to learn that even the weather had cooperated with them, as if Allah was behind their plan. He checked his watch again.

The time had come.

He made the appropriate signal to the men directing the planes on both runways, and immediately the first two dusters began to accelerate down the dust-blown strips.

Ahmad Hamshi saw them clear the ground. As the next two taxied into position, he moved inside his cobweb-coated office and adjusted the transmitter to the proper frequency. He gave his call signal and a slightly garbled voice answered with the according one.

“The birds are flying” was all Hamshi said, repeating it twice before he returned to the runways.

“We got two thousand horses under us, Chris,” Pop Keller shouted back to Locke from the front of the cockpit.

“What?”

“There should be a set of headphones in front of you,” Pop shouted louder. “Put them on!”

“I got them!” Chris yelled back, fitting the plastic over his ears.

Pop Keller’s voice filled them immediately. “I said we got two thousand horsepower pulling us. I do some special stunts so I had the old Warhawk souped up a little.” He tightened his own set of headphones. “You’ll be able to hear all communications clearly now, friend.” His eyes tilted down. “That’s the base down there to our right. Enjoy the show.”

The ninth and tenth cropdusters were climbing for the sky when Hamshi saw the planes coming. He shook himself, wondering if it might have been a trick of the brightening sun, then quickly realized it wasn’t. Unless he had lost his mind, though, the squadron of planes swooping toward Stonewall Jackson on an obvious attack run was a mixed collection of World War II fighters!

He started running toward the twin rows of dusters, reaching them just as two more screamed toward the sky and the ghost squadron roared closer.

“Damn!” Pop Keller rasped into his headset. “Some of the cropdusters are already airborne. Blue leader, how many do you figure slipped out?”

“I count twelve climbing and spreading, Red leader,” the husky voice of Mickey Ostrovsky came back. “Weighted down by the look of it. Climbing slow.”

“Blue leader,” said Keller, “take your Pipers down and knock out as many of the other dusters as you can. Have the other half of your wing wait to mop up the mess.”

“Affirmative, Red leader.”

Pop adjusted his headset and Locke felt suddenly dizzy as the bottom seemed to drop out of the Warhawk.

“Red Wing, this is Red leader. We’re a little late, boys. Time to do some huntin’.”

Ahmad Hamshi had just signaled the dusters to continue taking off when the wave of Pipers soared over the runways. He saw the shiny, oblong objects shot from their wings, heard the rockets whistling through the wind, and hit the pavement just before they did.

The explosions came fast and loud, like thousands of pieces of glass shattering. Smoke clouded the start of the runways but as Hamshi climbed back to his feet he saw that miraculously only two of the dusters seemed damaged. Armed assault troops were pouring from the barracks by this time, rushing toward flatbed trucks that held heavy-canvas-covered, high-caliber machine and antiaircraft guns.

They were still yanking the covers away when the Pipers attacked again from the opposite direction. A dozen rocket-propelled warheads hurtled toward the ground. The resulting explosions sent huge chunks of cement into the air and disabled at least four additional dusters. As the Pipers swung into a steep climb, a pair of Bearcats dove under them and sprayed the runway area with machine-gun fire, scattering Hamshi’s men.

The smoke made it hard for Hamshi to estimate the damage. This was crazy. He was watching the whole plan disintegrate around him thanks to a bunch of crazy men flying ghost planes. He started running toward the main body of troops, who had started to organize their fire, even as the truck-mounted big guns were tilted toward the sky.

“The planes!” Hamshi shouted. “Move the disabled planes out of the way! We’ve got to keep the runway free! The runway must be kept free!”

Already he was starting to consider how to make up for the loss of at least six dusters. Mandala’s orders had been precise in the event of sudden mechanical breakdown. Well, this certainly fell into that category. The canisters were the key, Mandala had explained, and should be moved from disabled planes onto planes that could fly.

Sprinting along the runways, Hamshi noticed two more of the dusters had managed to take off and were climbing into the sky. Then he saw the streak of red, a Warhawk with a shark’s mouth for a nose, screeching forward, and he heard its machine-gun fire. Both dusters dipped crazily out of control, swooning for the ground beyond the runway and exploding on contact.

The bastard had shot them down! Then Hamshi watched as half the ghost fighter squadron broke off and soared higher in obvious pursuit of the dusters that had managed to escape the base. He glanced in the direction of one of the hangars and then bolted in a diagonal toward where the base personnel had gathered.

“We got the sons of bitches! You see that, Chris?”

Pop Keller pulled up from his dive and climbed almost vertically, his engine straining. Locke had seen all right but he couldn’t believe it. The ease with which Keller had maneuvered the Warhawk and knocked the cropdusters from the sky was incredible.

“Two down, lots to go!” Pop screamed. “Heeeeeee-yahh-hhhhh!”

Keller leveled off and picked up the Warhawk’s pace as Blue Wing was diving for another attack run.

Down below, the monstrous machine guns and antiaircraft cannons had finally been made ready.

“Holy shit!” Pop grabbed his headset. “Blue leader, this is Red leader, do you copy?”

“I copy, Blue leader.”

“I just spotted guns, big ones, on the ground.”

“I see them too, Red leader,” Mickey O. acknowledged.

“They’ll tear you to shreds! Have your team pull up, do you hear me?” Keller could hear the booming rat-tat-tat of the big guns and see the fire belching from their barrels even from this distance.

“Negative, Red leader, too late to pull out now.”

“The bastard’s crazy,” Pop said to Locke.

Aren’t we all? Chris might have responded but he was having trouble catching his wind.

“Red Wing,” Pop Keller started into his mouthpiece, “this is Red leader. Assume attack formation. We’ll take airborne planes from the rear. Let’s go for it, boys!”

As in the steps of a complex dance routine, the planes of Red Wing — a pair of trainers, three Mustangs, two Corsairs, a Spitfire, and a Messerschmitt — fell in behind Pop Keller, whose Warhawk flew at the center of a wedge spread into a pattern of wide wings. The fighters stormed into the wind, cheating the currents in pursuit of the specks climbing, spreading, and drawing away from Stonewall Jackson Air Force Base.

“We haven’t got much time,” Locke said, finding his wind but not his stomach.

“Won’t take much,” Pop promised, opening his throttle a bit more.

Behind Red Wing, the battle was raging back at the base. Mickey O. lost one Piper and a Trojan in the first assault from the big guns. Not one of his wing’s rockets, fired in desperation, had found its mark.

“Blue Wing, this is Blue leader. Remaining Pipers, follow me down for a run at the guns, ’specially the cannons. You others blast the runway to fuckin’ hell.”

Mickey O. swung his Piper for the big guns as the Bearcat, Mustang, and T-6 trainer roared for the runway. In World War II, the Piper L-4 Cubs had been used extensively for bombing runs on German Tiger tanks. A direct charge into those heavily armored monsters, of course, was out of the question. So the Pipers would make their runs by coming around the flank of a mountain or diving from the camouflage of a hill. Mickey O. tried that strategy with his remaining Pipers now. He swung in low beyond the barracks and cut a sharp angle back for the big guns, hoping to take them by surprise from the rear.

As he dipped into his approach, he saw the other three members of his wing had made a successful strike on the runways. Green-garbed men who had been pushing already disabled aircraft aside scampered frantically away. More of the dusters were blown onto their sides and set ablaze.

“Hot dog!” screamed Mickey O., who somewhere had left a wife and kids, several sets of them actually, scattered all over the country. He was sixty-two and cancer had for some time been eating away at his innards. Well, fuck these Commie bastards and fuck the cancer too!

Mickey O. released two more of his rockets as he soared over the big guns and watched as the other three Pipers did the same. One of the trucks blew up in a blaze of red, struck broadside by a pair of warheads. Guns from the other three kept blasting away, the other bombs either misses or duds altogether. Forty years ago Pipers had taken on Tiger tanks and often enough had won. But age had taken its toll on their sights, and Mickey O. should have known coming in this fast was a mistake. The enemy still had one machine gun and both its cannons.

“Pull up,” he ordered his team. “Pull up and prepare for our next run.”

“Blue leader, I’m hit! I’m hit!”

“Eject! Get the hell outta—”

“I can’t! Fuel line ruptured. Trying to—”

The explosion swallowed the rest of the younger man’s words. The big guns bore down on two more of the Pipers and just kept firing, orange flaring continuously in their barrels. The Pipers bled black smoke and went into a swoon, the only consolation being the sight of two parachutes floating toward the ground. That left Mickey O. with five planes now, including his own.

“Red leader, this is Blue leader, do you read me?”

Pop Keller’s wing had almost caught up with the first wave of airborne dusters.

“I read you, Blue leader.”

“Have encountered casualties, repeat casualties.”

“Shit! How bad?”

“At least four planes destroyed. Two pilots dead.”

“God damn! Gotta take out those guns, Mickey.”

“Negative, Pop, we can’t control these old birds sure enough to come in that low and fast.”

“Then blast the runways from up high. Just don’t let any more of the bastards take off! We’ll finish our run here and come back and take them together.”

In fact, no other cropdusters were even attempting to take off because Hamshi had ordered the functioning ones to swing away from the runway and taxi behind the protection of the three remaining big guns while canisters from the disabled planes were loaded onto them.

Up ahead of him, Pop Keller watched with dismay as the airborne dusters began widening the distance between themselves.

“Shit”—he moaned—“they’re pulling out.”

“No,” Locke said. “They’re approaching their dispersal altitudes. We’ve got to take them now!”

“I’ll drink to that, friend.” Hand on his headset again. “Red Wing, this is Red leader. Spread out and take ’em, boys, one to a customer.” Then, to Locke. “Now the fun begins.”

The Flying Devils had never performed better. They fanned out neatly and expertly in the trails of the various dusters, banking away from the wedge formation. The duster pilots fought for more speed as some of the fighters roared overhead in pursuit of the first few that had taken off.

Pop Keller drew his Warbird closer to one of the dusters in the rear.

“Gonna crawl right up his ass and give him a fuckin’ enema to remember!”

Locke could see the old man tightening his gloved hands on the control stick and placing both thumbs over the red firing button that operated the twin machine guns. The 2,000-horsepower engine shook the old fighter forward like a jet.

“Here we go!”

Locke watched Keller press the button. Bullets pounded into the back and wing of the target and Keller pulled immediately into a climb.

The duster exploded beneath them, bursting into flames and dying right there in the sky. Still crackling, it slid through the air screeching shrilly and leaving a trail of black smoke in its wake.

“Hot shit! One down, eleven more to go,” Pop announced proudly.

Another duster exploded to their right, and Red Wing’s pair of Corsairs had successfully crippled a pair of dusters to the left.

“Double up,” Keller ordered. “When you’ve made a hit, link up with the fighter closest to you and keep on huntin’.” He turned to Locke. “If any other dusters get off the ground, they’ll send them away from us in the other direction. We’ll have to go back for them as soon as we’ve finished with these.”

As it was, though, no other cropdusters had taken off. Mickey O. followed a Piper and a Bearcat down for a quick run to head them off before they reached areas of safety behind the trucks, but the big guns found a quick bearing on the two lead planes and fired, tearing the old fighters apart before they even got close. They just seemed to disintegrate in the air, taking their pilots with them. They were good men, Mickey O. thought, damn good men.

He swung into a climb quick enough to smack his teeth together, as his two remaining planes provided cover fire. He had another Bearcat and a Mustang left and both still had rockets, but their aim was unreliable. They were horribly mismatched against the ground-based antiaircraft cannons. There remained twenty, maybe twenty-five perfectly flyable dusters just waiting for a chance to take off. They had to be disabled. But how?

“Blue Wing, this is Blue leader. We’ll circle around for a bit and regroup. How’s your fuel?” Both pilots acknowledged they had plenty. “All right, here’s the plan….”

Mickey O. was about to go on when he heard a familiar sound that sent a shudder through his entire cancer-eaten frame. He looked down toward the hangar area in time to see four armored helicopter gunships lifting straight into the sky. Damn things looked like giant black insects with two twin machine guns mounted on either front side as stingers and rocket launchers aimed forward and back looking like antennae.

“Holy Christ …”

The helicopters had to be taken out. Otherwise they’d catch Pop and blow his entire wing to hell.

“Blue Wing, this is Blue leader. Go for the helicopters. Repeat, go for the helicopters. Hit ’em with everything you’ve got! I’m gonna draw the fire of the big guns so you can come in unhindered.”

Mickey O. banked around the outskirts of the base and roared downward much too fast to even think of using his remaining three rockets over the big guns lodged on the truck beds. His teeth clamped together, and he was thrown back hard against the cockpit’s shoulder rest, which snapped off from the impact.

He felt the bullets pound his wings and tail, and the Piper sputtered. The windshield shattered and glass blew into Mickey O.’s face, drawing blood everywhere and blinding one of his eyes. But he had done his job by drawing the fire of the big guns away from his Fighters long enough to allow them to engage the gunships. He turned his remaining eye in their direction.

The Mustang and Bearcat were in the midst of a vicious air battle, firing as they darted through the sky. The gunships, though, could match them in speed and easily outmaneuver them. Mickey O.’s pilots managed to position themselves for several volleys of fire from their machine guns. But only a direct hit in a vital area could cripple the gunships, and virtually all their bullets bounced off the choppers’ armor.

The Bearcat streaked in front of one of the choppers and a rocket from the gunship blasted it into flaming oblivion. The Mustang settled into an escape run, but a second gunship drew near quickly and pounded it with cannon fire intense enough to tear the plane in half.

Mickey O. pushed for enough thrust to reach the choppers himself but the Piper handled listlessly, showing the effects of its wounds. The engine sputtered. He was drawing straight over the big guns again and tried desperately to drive the Piper into a lift.

It climbed a little but the big guns still found him. Mickey O. reeled as a piece of shrapnel thudded into his side and part of a ricocheting shell smacked his stomach. With the last of his strength, he pulled the dying Piper up and away from the big guns, and limped off into the hills, as the helicopters took off on Pop’s trail.

“Red leader, this is Blue leader,” he muttered through the blood starting to collect in his mouth. “Watch your rear. Big … guns … coming….”

His radio, though, had been knocked out by the first rampage of bullets. Pop Keller never heard his warning.

On the ground, Ahmad Hamshi gazed happily at the helicopter gunships streaking away in the trail of the ghost planes. By his count there were still twenty-eight cropdusters waiting to take off, with ten destroyed and twelve airborne. Even if all twelve of these were destroyed by the ghost planes, Hamshi calculated that the remaining twenty-eight could still accomplish their task. There was no way of contacting Mandala, so he was forced to take matters into his own hands. The distribution strategy would have to be altered a bit, the range of the dispersal pattern modified. Little of Tantalus’s effect, though, would be lost. The range would only be narrowed, the time for total infection lengthened accordingly by only a week, even less maybe. Mandala wouldn’t have been able to do better himself under the circumstances.

Meanwhile Hamshi would not risk any more of the cropdusters until the helicopters completed their chore of destroying the other half of this ghost squadron.

It wouldn’t take long.

Pop Keller and the Red attack wing were closing on the last four dusters, the first four that had taken off from Stonewall Jackson. They were all in sight of his fighters and coming rapidly into range.

“Fire when ready,” Pop ordered as he pushed his Warhawk into range of the duster he had trained in his sights.

He had left this one for himself and assigned three of his fighters to the other three remaining dusters. There were a lot of low-flying clouds and the dusters had passed into them in the hope of shaking off their pursuers. This unnerved Pop slightly because it took him out of eye contact with his wing and that was something a squadron commander dreaded. He wanted to be done with this, link the wing together, and make tracks back for the base to find out what had happened to Mickey O. and Blue Wing.

A flood of black smoke stained a cloud to his far right.

“There!” Locke pointed.

“My Messerschmitt did that,” Pop boasted. “You can make book on it.”

More smoke billowed from a cloud to his left.

“That was the Spitfire’s work.” Pop beamed. He gritted his teeth. “Okay, you bastard,” he said to the duster before him as the clouds broke and they flew together into sharp blue sky. “Get ready to join the fellows.”

The duster could have released its canister contents there quite effectively but refrained, as the others had, because it would have required a substantial loss of speed. The pilot didn’t realize that escape from Pop’s 2,000-horsepower engine was impossible no matter what he did. Pop snapped his thumbs and tore into the plane’s fuselage with machine-gun spray. The duster burst into flames.

“Straight to hell, asshole,” Pop shouted after him as a similar orange ball erupted far to the right. A pair of Mustangs had finished the final duster.

“Red leader, this is Red Wing three” came a pilot’s old, panicked voice. “Something’s coming up on me from the rear. I’m turning to. I’m trying — Oh, God, it’s—”

The volley of bullets came right over the headset into Pop’s ears. Then nothing.

“Red Wing three, what the hell happened? Red Wing three, are you there?”

The trainer, which had taken up a position behind them, wasn’t answering. Locke glanced back to his rear and felt his bladder weaken as the helicopters roared toward them.

Chapter 34

“Oh, shit!” was all Pop Keller could say after he completed a wide turn that brought him face to face with the four gunships. “We got a bit of trouble here, Chris.”

“Then why the hell are you—”

Locke’s words were drowned out by the Warhawk’s engine as Keller lifted into a sudden climb and streaked over the four helicopters. They turned effortlessly and continued their pursuit.

“Red Wing, this is Red leader. I’ve got four big bugs on my ass and I need some help fast. Reds three and four,” he said to the Messerschmitt and the Spitfire, “come in from the rear and take them with your air cannons. The rest of you hang close.”

“They’re right on your rail, Red leader!” came a pilot’s desperate voice.

“I know that, numb nuts,” Pop muttered, and proceeded to drive the Warhawk up and over, defying gravity, diving fast with its shark mouth swallowing air to elude the gunships on his tail.

Two of them broke off and headed for the rest of the wing.

“At least we took out the dusters,” Pop said simply.

“You didn’t impress me as the kind of man who’d give up.”

Keller’s crusty features flared. “Who said anything about giving up? I was just stating fact.”

A volley of machine-gun fire sprayed them. Pop dove, then climbed, fighting to stay out of the gunships’ sights if not their range.

Up ahead, two of the gunships were bearing down on four of Red Wing’s fighters that were acting as decoys for the strike by the Messerschmitt and Spitfire. Suddenly the decoy planes dove together, as the two assault fighters dropped out of the clouds and fell in behind the two gunships.

“We’re on them, Red leader. In range … now!”

The air cannons blazed from the Messerschmitt and Spitfire.

“Hot shit!” Pop beamed. “Kiss those choppers good-bye!”

“Negative effect, Red leader,” the Spitfire reported. “Achieved direct hit with negative effect.”

Pop leaned forward. “They’ve got armor plating. Our shells won’t cut through it. Go for the rear propeller.”

A helicopter’s rear propeller is its most vulnerable point. Knock it out and you strip the machine of balance and stability. The Messerschmitt and Spitfire, though, never got the chance to try. A pair of rockets blasted from the warships’ rear launchers blew them into a thousand pieces that fluttered to the ground.

“Dirty bastards! I’ll get you for that!”

Pop went into another climb, bringing him almost into the path of the two choppers. Their bullets pounded the side of the Warhawk, sending steel shards everywhere and just missing the fuel tank.

“Come on, old girl, hold together for Pop just a little longer,” he urged his plane, tapping it tenderly. He went into a dive that took him between the four gunships. He spoke frantically into his headset.

“Form two wedges, boys. We’ll take them from different angles. Reds seven through ten, try to get over them and use your rockets. Might score a lucky hit.”

Pop knew the chances of that were virtually impossible. Perhaps, though, the sight of falling bombs would distract the choppers’ attention long enough to allow a full frontal assault.

“My bombs are loaded with firecracker stuff,” Pop told Locke. “Not as potent as the real thing but they’ll still make a helluva mess….”

With that, Pop swung into a climb that took him over the two gunships that had originally given chase. More bullets sprayed their rear and Keller had to dive again, ducking and sweeping like a crazed bird, fighting to stay out of the sights of the second pair of choppers.

“Fuck this strategy,” Pop said. “I never went in for the sneaky shit anyway. Hold on to your balls, Chris!”

Pop went into a climb, then banked at an angle that brought him head-on with the two trailing gunships, his machine guns blasting away more for effect than anything else. The other two choppers veered off toward the approaching wedge made up of a pair of Mustangs, a Corsair, and a trainer.

“Get ready, Chris!” Pop grabbed the throttle tight.

A collision with one or both of the gunships seemed inevitable when Pop kicked in all 2,000 lovely horses of the stubborn Warhawk. As it climbed he released all four of his firecracker-loaded bombs. The gunships slowed suddenly, just as Keller expected they would, and at least two of his bombs exploded on impact against one. Glass shattered and metal gave way as a burst of Fourth of July colors sprang from the chopper’s frame. The pilot fought frantically with the controls but black smoke and bright colors stole his sight away. The chopper’s engine died and the machine went into a hopeless dive. Its crash sent more pretty colors flying outward.

Two of the remaining gunships were firing away at the first wedge and they disabled one of the Mustangs. The second wedge banked in front of them, machine guns spitting. Bullets poured through the windshield of one of the gunships, killing the pilot instantly and sending the giant insect into a dying spin. The second chopper escaped the fire by dropping beneath the attack. It tilted its laser-aimed rocket launchers upward and released a burst of four. The last trainer and a Corsair exploded in twin fireballs, while another of the Mustangs limped away, gray smoke pouring from its injured engine.

“Reds six and seven, get the hell outta here,” Pop urged the battered Mustangs, and turned his attention to the spectacular aerial dogfight going on between the two gunships and his two remaining fighters.

Forty years ago, the Red Wing’s last Mustang and Corsair might have made mincemeat out of the choppers, but their engines were laboring from the strain of the chase now and the planes moved sluggishly. Exchanges of fire were frantic, the two fighter pilots struggling to take aim on the slippery gunships, which were never in the same place for long. The final Mustang swooped down trying to take one of the gunships from behind. But the other chopper was equal to the task, dipping effortlessly and spraying the attacking fighter with its machine gun. The Mustang fell immediately, spitting black smoke. The pilot ejected.

“That makes it two against two,” Pop reported grimly, driving the Warhawk forward toward a gunship’s tail.

The gunship he was trailing seemed to drop straight down, under the Corsair that was banking into an attack run. The Corsair pilot kept enough cool to drop both his wing-mounted rockets, but the wind took them and they soared harmlessly away. He turned to link up with Pop’s Warhawk but the helicopter fell in on his tail, machine guns blasting.

“They’re on me!” the pilot shouted into his headset.

“Hang on,” Pop commanded. “I’m coming.”

“I’m hit! I’m hit!”

“Eject! Don’t stay with the damn thing! … Do you copy? I say again, do you copy?”

There was no reply. The Corsair went into a death dive and spun to Earth.

“Just us against them now, Chris” was all Pop said.

The gunships fell in line and roared at the Warhawk together, gunners struggling to adjust their aim at Pop’s daredevil dips and darts. For twenty years he had practiced such maneuvers to thrill fans and sell tickets. Now he was using them to save his and Locke’s life but it felt little different, just a routine to follow and somewhere a crowd to please. He performed magnificently. But the 2,000-horsepower engine had been pushed to its fullest for too long now and the tach’s needle was dancing crazily.

The gunships were gaining ground, letting their final target bob and weave to its heart’s content. There was no reason to rush things. The old plane was moving away from the base, not toward it, and there were no more cropdusters in the air to protect. The gunners kept firing erratic bursts from their machine guns as they closed the gap on the Warhawk, down to two hundred yards now.

The glass surrounding Locke shattered and he felt something hot stab his shoulder with burning agony. His ears were exposed to the rushing wind, the effect like twin sledgehammers pounding away on either side. With his free hand, he squeezed his wounded shoulder and felt blood soaking his fingers.

Pop knew the choppers were closing and started with more evasive maneuvers, swinging up and down, left and right, to avoid their fire. The motions hit Locke’s stomach like a roller-coaster ride, but that was a hell of a lot better than being hit by the bullets pouring from behind them. He clung to the hope that the Blue Wing had successfully disabled the remainder of the cropdusters, blew them to bits, burying Tantalus forever.

There wasn’t much chance of that, Chris knew, not with the gunships to consider. And then he noticed the blinking red light next to the Warhawk’s fuel gauge.

“Wouldn’t happen to have any gasoline handy, would you, friend?” Pop shouted back at him.

Ahmad Hamshi knew he had responded to the crisis brilliantly. The enemy planes had all been destroyed. He had managed to save twenty-seven of the cropdusters and all canisters from six more. The overall operation would be slowed but hardly wiped out. So when word had come from the helicopters that they were in pursuit of the final ghost fighter, Hamshi ordered the dusters to return to the runway and begin takeoff procedures again immediately. Keysar Flats was isolated but still too close to civilization for comfort. A prolonged aerial battle would certainly have drawn attention to the area, and with the dusters — and their contents — still on the ground, it was attention he could ill afford.

Men perched behind the remaining machine-gun and antiaircraft cannons watched the sky warily, anticipating yet another attack from the ghost squadron. The engines of the cropdusters, meanwhile, were revving, and the first two had taxied into takeoff position.

Ahmad Hamshi allowed himself a smile.

The smile vanished quickly at the sight of the battered blue Piper Cub roaring over the hangars, barely clearing them, coming out of nowhere.

“Heeeeeee-yahhhhhhhhhhh!”

Mickey Ostrovsky was screaming as his Piper soared over the hangar. Parts of his guts had escaped from a gaping wound in his stomach and were hanging over his belt but he didn’t care. The cancer had taught him how to live with pain, and he had only two months left anyway. He had another minute before it got to be too much, and a minute would suit him, just fine.

His Piper had almost crash-landed minutes before but he had managed to keep it whole, losing consciousness only briefly. When he came to, he pushed the fighter back into the air, feeling its wheels scrape against the hangar roof, and headed it straight over the big guns for the runway.

The men manning them struggled to change the big guns’ angle but the best they could manage was to bring them directly overhead. Only the machine gun was able to get off any rounds at all as the blue plane screamed above them.

Mickey O. took a chest full of lead and felt the blood filling his mouth, but he wasn’t about to let such inconveniences stop him. He was going out the way he had always wanted to and the rest of the world be damned.

He fired his three remaining rockets and followed them to the ground, crashing his Piper into the line of cropdusters at the front just as his rockets tore up the middle rows. The dusters were shoved back against each other, tumbling like dominoes, as Mickey O. grazed the ground and waited for the merciful explosion that would end his life. Enough of the dusters’ fuel tanks had ruptured upon impact, and the flames from his final rocket blasts sniffed out the gushing gas and stuck to it. The explosions came fast and furious, belching black smoke and orange flames, consuming the last of the air before Mickey realized he couldn’t breathe it.

Ahmad Hamshi rushed desperately about, hands flapping and signaling, ordering his men to salvage the canisters. His words were absorbed by the fire and the blasts, but he knew it didn’t matter; there could be nothing left to salvage. His men were fleeing toward safety. He fled with them.

Mickey O.’s remaining eye found the sky he had loved one last time. Two bright flashes broke before him, coming straight from the heavens, angels no doubt sent to carry him up.

“I’m gonna make a fight of this,” Pop said, breaking the red warning bulb with his bare fist. “Hang on, Chris.”

With the gunships only seventy yards back, Keller swung up and over them, hoping to move in from behind and take them with his guns. But the battered Warhawk moved too sluggishly to gain him the advantage he sought, and he fired his guns at targets already swerving to the side, angling themselves in for a direct hit. His only advantage was gone now, Pop knew. He kept firing his guns until the hammers snapped on empty chambers, which was about the same time the engine began to sputter.

Chris watched the helicopters closing for the kill, dual guns blasting at the dying Warhawk as it started to drop from the sky. The giant insects hovered with it briefly, taunting their prey, then roared forward angling for a rocket shot.

There was a blinding explosion that shook Locke’s eyes closed, and he opened them fully expecting to see a long tunnel extended toward the next world.

What he saw was totally different.

The remains of one of the gunships were slipping from the sky, shedding more parts of its carcass as it fell. Locke turned toward the second chopper just as a similar explosion shattered the air and turned it hot. He shook himself from what must have been a hallucination. In the cockpit, though, Pop Keller seemed to be jumping for joy as he struggled to hold the Warhawk steady.

A pair of F-16s roared over them and then circled back to render assistance. Chris felt the tears burning his eyes. The jets were the prettiest sights he’d ever seen, and he forgot about his injured shoulder long enough to wave at them.

“We ain’t out of the woods yet, friend,” Pop said grimly.

The engine sputtered one last time, then died out altogether. Pop had used its last spurt of fuel to level out the Warhawk’s descent into the wind.

The ground came up fast. The last thing Christopher Locke remembered was checking to make sure his seat belt was fastened. Impact shook him forward, then quickly back so that his head smashed against the wooden railing. He felt himself being shaken violently up, straining against the seat belt, and imagined he had been catapulted outward into the warm air.

But he hadn’t imagined anything. The brave Warhawk had broken up around him, and Locke had been thrown well into the air at a frightening clip. The landing knocked the wind out of him, and he felt himself rolling over again and again, crunching bones with each turn. The pain was everywhere at once yet still spreading.

Then darkness.