Chapter Twenty-Two

Searching for Convoy 56 was Hunter’s main objective—but he had a secondary mission before making his way to sea.

Climbing to a nose-bleed height of seventy-five thousand feet, he headed southeast after leaving Vermont. Within minutes, he was approaching Russkiy-NYC. Storm clouds blanketed the area and it was raining everywhere, but these were not factors at the moment. He activated his long-range, ground-imaging ALCN-6 recon camera, turned to a course that would put him right over Midtown, and started shooting video.

He was able to bring up a visual representation of Midtown on his control panel’s main VRC screen. From this height, the MMZ looked like one deep, smoldering black hole with several twisting, tentacle-like paths of destruction leading to the East River.

He keyed in on 30 Rock. It was still standing, but looked hollowed out by fire and was still smoking heavily. Most pleasing, though, he could see streams of civilians leaving the city. The Triborough and the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridges were packed with them, all heading east. The same for the George Washington Bridge on the West Side; both levels were crowded with refugees heading into New Jersey. Many boats were in the Hudson and the East Rivers, as well, carrying people away from Manhattan. It was obvious the Russians were in such disarray there were no attempts to stop the exodus.

That was all he needed to see. No matter what happened in the next few hours, the 7CAV’s attack on the MMZ had been a success. The epicenter of Moscow’s military establishment in America was no more and thousands of New York’s citizens had been freed.

Bull Dozer had wanted to make the occupiers hurt and to send a message to Moscow. Both missions had been accomplished.

Hunter was over the stormy Atlantic just a few moments later.

His F-16XL super plane was lugging two enormous under-wing gas tanks. Added to its full internal and reserve tanks, this gave him about six hours of fast, fueled flight.

Six hours sounded like a long time—but searching for a target at sea was one of the most time-consuming missions in aviation. Even in daylight, with clear visibility, and long-range forward-looking radar—and even when the pilot had a fair idea where the target was located—a lot of times, it was a matter of hit or miss, and many times, miss. Even from 75-Angels, the ocean looked huge, and the movement of its surface tended to hide things. Bad weather just made it worse.

Hunter knew he’d need every last drop of gas for this mission, which brought up a disturbing question. He was in contact with Dozer back in his spy tower in the Pine Barrens. Both of their radio sets had scrambler buttons, allowing them to talk without worrying that the Russians could hear them. Communication was not the problem.

The problem was that Hunter might reach his bingo point—that being the moment where he would have to turn around and return to land before he ran out of gas—without having found Convoy 56. He and Dozer had discussed it already, but Hunter knew, if the situation arose, he’d have few options. Locating the convoy was of the utmost importance now. If he had to keep flying and use up all of his gas to find the mystery ships and radio their location and type back to Dozer—and then go into the drink—then so be it.

At least if it happened that way, he would have died—for real this time—for a good cause.

For his country. His homeland in any universe.

America.

His plan was to fly out past Long Island Sound to a point about fifty miles off Nantucket and then start moving due east.

He’d calculated the date and time at which the secret document inside the red pouch had been transmitted and when Convoy 56 was expected in New York Harbor, and then he’d just counted backward. If the ships were traveling at twenty knots, and were due in New York at noon the following day, then they should be within seven hundred miles of New York Harbor and would show up somewhere within the search box he was planning. But if he was off by just a few minutes or a few miles, he’d miss the ships completely and possibly wind up crashing—and drowning—at sea for nothing.

This was the part of the hero business he never liked.

He reached his vector point five minutes after getting feet wet, and remaining at 75,000-Angels, pointed east. It was now 0600 hours, and while the day had brightened, the weather raged on, which only made his task more difficult. His FLIR imager—basically an infrared camera with a telescopic lens—could see through clouds, but the thicker the soup, the blurrier the reading. He’d have to pay very close attention to the imager’s screen to avoid missing anything.

But this also gave him lots of time to think—another problem. It had all happened so freaking fast. One moment, he’d been in Dominique’s suite atop 30 Rock, seconds away from catching up to her, then, suddenly, he’d been back at the Pine Barrens, then up in Vermont—and now he was out here, in his Ferrari jet, the minutes ticking away before he might have to give it all up and splash in. It was like this universe was stuck in fifth gear and still accelerating.

Where did Zmeya’s helicopter go? That was the road not taken for him. Had he chased it, he would have been much closer to rescuing his girlfriend than he was now. Yet he might have shot it down—and it bothered him that the thought that she might be on the copter had never crossed his mind.

But every long conversation he’d had with himself about Dominique always came back to the same question: Was she a princess or a prisoner? It was more likely that she was a captive than a collaborator, at least the Dominique he remembered. But maybe he wasn’t dealing with the woman he knew.

Round and round it went, each rumination hurting a little more than the one before. And he still didn’t know. And the way this mission was looking, there was a good chance he’d never know.

Maybe I did fall into the wrong universe, he thought over and over. Maybe I’m not supposed to be here. …

He flew on for more than two hours and didn’t see as much as a rowboat.

There was no commercial traffic on the North Atlantic these days; from Maine to Scandinavia, it was basically a Russian lake.

The Russians held sway in many other places around the world. Addendums in the Convoy 56 papers indicated places from which the Okupatsi could draw resources. If mountain soldiers were needed, a brigade or two from the Russian Alpine Corps, currently stationed in Switzerland, would be sent to the new world. Need someone to fight in the desert, the Corps Commander for the Middle East could spare a few thousand men. Need urban warfighters? A division from the Russian’s Sixth Berlin Army would do a tour across the pond.

Moscow was on a roll and making things stick for a change. They’d conquered roughly two thirds of the landmass on the planet, including all of Europe, all of Africa, and all of the Middle East, in less than two years. They were quite literally in the middle of an Earth War; what was going on in America was just one example of how far Moscow had been able to spread its tentacles.

All that said, today, Ivan’s Lake seemed maddeningly empty today.

And foggy. And very stormy.

Another long hour passed. He’d soon be near the point of no return. He’d flown straight over the ocean for three hours; it would take him three hours to get back. Simple as that.

Yet he’d seen nothing but storm clouds and fog and the green tint of the radar sweep of the empty seas below him.

Then … just as his bingo light began to glow, a buzzing saturated his ears. His eyes went wide. He flipped off his FLIR set. Suddenly, he didn’t need it anymore.

The feeling. …

The original thing this time.

Something bad was coming… .

But … what was it?

He couldn’t recall ever getting this sensation from an approaching warship. So what was going on?

Then it hit.

Airplanes …

Way out here …

Coming right at him.

His hands began moving in fast motion. He clicked on his FLIR again, booted the throttle, and pushed down on the stick, all at once. The XL went into a screaming dive.

He broke through a thick cloud layer at forty-five thousand feet—and that’s when he saw them.

Two jet fighters, heading west at thirty thousand feet, both wearing red star insignias. But they weren’t the elderly mid-level Soviet-type warplanes that were seen flying above America these days. And they certainly weren’t Yak-38 jump-jet shitkickers. These planes were sleek, swept back, and modern—and Hunter knew what they were right away: Su-34 Fullback fighters, a plane that could blow most opponents out of the sky in an instant.

Now he knew what kind of warship the VLV was… .

They turned back to the east shortly after he spotted them. Although his bingo light had popped on, Hunter kept on going. Using his FLIR allowed him to stay high enough and far enough away from the two Russians that they couldn’t pick him up on radar.

He was able to study them with his fairly primitive zoom function. It got him close enough to see that these two fighters were not exactly the same. They were not typical Su-34s, but rather some highly advanced naval variation of the fearsome Fullback fighter.

One was carrying two buddy tanks under its wings where its ordnance points would usually be. The fuel in these massive extra tanks could be used to gas up the second plane while still in flight, the air-to-air refueling extending its combat range by hours.

“Fucking Commies,” Hunter said with grim admiration. “Dangerous when they put their minds to it.”

The two Russian fighters started to descend. Hunter watched them go down through the dark clouds, expertly heading toward a vessel that, while hidden by a fog bank, was obviously going full speed west, toward New York City.

Hunter hadn’t spoken to anyone at Dozer’s base since he’d begun his search, and now he had something to tell them. Just as he was about to switch on his radio, the mystery ship broke out of the fog—and finally he saw it.

It was a Very Large Vessel indeed; there was no doubt about that.

Not a battleship or a heavy cruiser.

It was an aircraft carrier… .

An enormous one.

He even knew its name. Everyone did.

The Admiral Isakov.

Hunter watched the two fighters land, both screeching in through the fog and sea spray that covered the massive flight deck. Behind it was the rest of the convoy.

Hunter turned on his wing, climbed back up to seventy-five thousand feet, and began taking long-range video of the fleet. Then he turned on his radio to call back to Dozer, his eyes fixated on the huge aircraft carrier and the ships beyond.

“How the hell are we going to stop these guys?” he wondered aloud.

Part Two