Chapter Twenty-Seven

Hunter headed back to the Isakov at full throttle.

The NKVD carrier was hard to miss, even in the storm. Huge columns of smoke were rising above the giant warship, explosions were going off all over, fires were sweeping the deck and engulfing the superstructure. The battle was still in progress.

He turned his radio back to the mission frequency; he heard a cacophony of sounds and voices. It was the 7CAV, in combat, calling back and forth, reporting progress, reporting problems, reporting casualties. Hunter heard his own name amid the static. Several people were trying to hail him at once.

Finally, one voice came through.

Bull Dozer. …

He was yelling, “Hawk, can you hear me?”

Hunter quickly responded. “Affirmative—now I can.”

“Hey, it’s fucking crazy down here,” Dozer told him. “We’ve got two major gunfights going on, shit is flying in all directions, and I’m seasick as a bastard. But, in the middle of all this, our pal Commissar Zmeya’s personal chopper just came aboard. Went right down the main elevator shaft. Some of my deep recon guys have gotten down there. They say this copter is now at the bottom of the boat.”

Hunter couldn’t believe it. Zmeya’s copter? Aboard the Isakov? “Who would be crazy enough to fly way out here in this kind of weather?” he radioed back.

After a brief pause, Dozer replied, “Well, we did. …”

There was a burst of static.

“But there’s more, Hawk,” Dozer yelled through it. “She’s here, too. …”

Hunter froze. “Who is?”

“Dominique,” Dozer said. “She’s on the ship. Came in on the chopper. I’m talking to one of my deep recon guys on the other channel. He’s got eyes on her right now.”

Hunter felt a jolt of electricity run right through him. Dozer crossed the channels and had his recon trooper speak directly to Hunter.

“She’s right across the hangar deck from me, Hawk,” he said from his hiding spot, his voice low. “Not twenty feet away. Russian police are getting off the copter, looking like they’re trying to find something. It’s confusing down here, but she’s right in the middle of it.”

“Are you sure it’s her?” Hunter asked. “There are a lot of Dominique wannabes hanging with the Reds these days.”

“This is ten by ten, Hawk,” was his reply. “I know it’s her. She’s looking right at me. Gotta go.”

Hunter went numb. No feeling in his hands or his feet. Only his mouth could move, and it was only halfway open. He’d only just missed her atop 30 Rock during the firestorm. He didn’t want that to happen again.

That meant he had to get down to the carrier. … And that meant he had to land somehow on the rolling, wave-swept ship.

Dozer came back on the line.

“I’m coming aboard,” Hunter told him, beginning another orbit of the ship.

“You’re what?”

“I’m landing,” Hunter told him. “I’ve just got to figure out how. …”

The radio kicked out at that point, but that was okay with Hunter. He had to concentrate.

The carrier’s deck was pitching madly and it was strewn with wreckage from the crashed cargo planes and other debris caused by the fighting. The ship’s gigantic main mast was in pieces where it had fallen, scattered up and down the deck, much of it still on fire. Because the flight-deck elevator had descended to the bottom of the boat, there was a huge gaping hole on the deck near the bow. Worst of all, even though the XL had an arrester hook, when the second Sherpa had come aboard the carrier, it had snapped the trio of arresting cables stretched across the Isakov’s flight deck, rendering them useless.

The XL was not the clown plane. Its absolute lowest landing speed was 110 knots. Hunter could manipulate his flight controls right up to that point, but anything less, he’d go straight into the sea.

He had no choice but to hit the deck going that fast. But once on board, how could he slow down? He flew over the burning carrier and surveyed it again. Huge waves were coming out of the storm from all directions and crashing all over the ship. More fires around the superstructure had popped up. And the wind was growing even fiercer.

But that’s what gave him an idea.

His radio popped back on a moment later.

“Tell the guys to keep their heads down,” he yelled to Dozer. “And you might want to block your ears, too.”

He turned the XL on its wing for four seconds and then leveled out. Now he was staring down at the carrier’s deck again, but from the opposite direction: bow-first. The wind was blowing at least fifty knots up from stern. If he flew directly into the gale, he might be able to slow down enough to get aboard in one piece.

He came down to just fifty feet, pulled back on his throttles, and lowered his landing gear. All this slowed him down to the magic 110 knots. Then he tried to ease himself, but the XL dropped quickly. It hit the deck with a great crash just a few seconds later and began skidding. Hunter lifted his landing gear the moment he touched down, hoping the friction would slow him down. He just missed some pieces of debris but hit others, and even this helped to reduce his speed a bit.

Halfway down the deck, he pushed the XL’s landing gear lever, again hoping that the doors, in trying to open, would create even more friction and slow him even further. It worked, but not by much. With everything happening in a matter of microseconds, he could see the far end of the deck approaching very quickly. The wide-open flight elevator shaft was now right in front of him. Still, he needed more drag.

Then came one last desperate idea. He yanked his canopy-open lever. The bubble-shaped top snapped up and instantly acted like a speed brake, catching the ferociously blowing fifty-knot wind. With one last flick of the control stick, he had just enough air and momentum to go up and over the open flight elevator door before crashing to the deck on the other side. That did it. The XL came to a grinding, smoky, painful halt just inches from toppling off the stern.

Unprotected from the elements, Hunter was immediately soaked by the rain and sea spray. But it didn’t matter to him. He was down. That’s all that counted.

His beloved XL was a mess, though. A mess definitely beyond repair.

He loved his airplane. He’d often felt that it was a part of him.

But if Dominique was on board the carrier, he had to find her.

Dozer and five of his men arrived a moment later. They’d run down the deserted port side of the carrier, staying below the gunwales. The battle for the Isakov was taking place on its starboard side, because that’s where the superstructure was located. They didn’t see a soul on the opposite side during their carrier-length dash.

Hunter crawled out of the jet’s wreckage, M-16 in hand. The 7CAV troopers took in the remains of the famous F-16XL and were horrified. The fuselage was almost unrecognizable. The cranked arrow wings were broken and bent. The once-mighty engine was now a trail of pieces stretching all the way down the carrier deck. It was like seeing a racing car all battered to shit.

Dozer was almost in tears. “Hawk … your ride …”

But Hunter didn’t want to talk about it. There was no time.

“She definitely came aboard on that helicopter, right?” he asked Dozer as the 7CAV medic gave him a quick look over. “You’re sure?”

“That’s a roger,” Dozer told him. “And you heard my ‘deep guy’ who has eyes on them. It’s definitely Commissar Zero’s chopper, and she was definitely on it. But the big question is: Why? For someone to fly way out here and come aboard in the middle of a storm, it must be very fucking important.”

They all ran over to the open flight-deck elevator. Leaning over its edge, they peered into the abyss below. The rain and seawater were being blown into the gaping maw, but they could clearly see the massive Russian helicopter at the bottom of the boat—its crew had turned on their extremely bright exterior trouble beacons, lighting the scene more than 250 feet below.

“What the hell are they doing?” Dozer wondered. “It looks like everyone’s just walking around.”

“I’ve got to get down there,” Hunter said.

He jumped up and was suddenly moving faster than he thought possible. Running toward an open hatchway on the burning superstructure, his weapon was up, and the rain was in his face. Dozer and his guys were right on his heels, yelling for him to slow down.

But he couldn’t. His body was buzzing. He was in a zone. He could not only see farther and clearer than he could ever remember, he began seeing things before they even happened.

Two NKVD sailors with AK-47s up on a crow’s walk about to fire down at them. Hunter cut them down quickly, but his rounds seemed to land before he even squeezed his trigger. Another sailor, one deck up, grenade in hand. Hunter’s barrage hit it square on, blowing the man in two.

Behind you. …

He looked around. Four more sailors near the wreckage of his crashed XL, aiming an RPG at him. A four-second burst over his shoulder was all it took. Each sailor, two pop shots to the head, all without breaking stride.

He reached the hatchway, jumped through it, never stopped running. “Follow me, guys!” he yelled to Dozer and his men. “We’ve got to hurry.”

Down the smoky passageway they ran. This was not the same claustrophobic battleground the other 7CAV troopers were fighting in farther down the ship. These passageways were filled with cargo, but it was mostly small boxes neatly stacked against the starboard bulkhead and atop a temporary ceiling, leaving a sort of tunnel.

Hunter charged right through it. NKVD sailors appeared in front of him, in ones and twos, some with just dinner knives as weapons. He shot them all.

Down a ladder to the second subdeck level. More cargo in the halls, more enemy sailors shot. And more explosions all around them. But still Hunter kept going, the 7CAV guys in tow.

Around another corner and suddenly they were in an officers’ mess. Five enemy sailors were there, using an overturned dining table as cover. They were cooks. One was holding a kitchen knife to the throat of one of Dozer’s deep recon men, the rest were wielding meat cleavers. Three other 7CAV troopers lay wounded nearby.

“Ostanovit ili on umirayet!” one sailor cried. “Stop or he dies!”

But Hunter never broke stride. He fired off a single shot, hitting the man with the knife in the forehead, slamming him into the mess table and sending the other sailors sprawling. Hunter dispatched each of them with a swift crack to the head via the butt of his rifle. Then he resumed running, yelling to Dozer and his men, “Keep up with me! Don’t get lost now!”

Down another passageway, down another ladder. Bullets were whizzing by him, more explosions were going off. Another passageway where some cabins were on fire. Thick smoke everywhere. Down another ladder. He could hear people crying out in the distance, but he just kept going.

One more passageway, one more ladder—and then, suddenly, he was at the bottom of the boat.

He found himself in a long, dank, dimly lit passageway, the helicopter hangar nowhere in sight. The deck was really moving under his feet though, the outer hull being continuously hit by monster waves. The overwhelming noise down here was of riveted steel groaning.

“Let’s be careful here,” he said to the 7CAV guys. “We can’t get lost in the dark.”

But then he looked over his shoulder and realized no one was behind him. In fact, Dozer and the 7CAV troopers had lost sight of him back in the officers’ mess, when they’d stopped for a moment to assist their wounded comrades. He’d been charging through the carrier alone ever since.

He slapped the side of his helmet once, calling himself a dope. Then suddenly, everything around him got very quiet. All the noise, explosions, the storm raging outside, the waves against the hull. They all faded away. It was dead silence.

He began walking and came to a compartment, barely seeing its toggle wheel in the dark. He turned it open and looked inside. It was a large room, filled with AK-47 ammunition. Tons of it. Another compartment down, he opened the door to find boxes of RPG grenades stacked to the ceiling. Hundreds of them.

The third compartment down had a door with two toggle wheels. Both were difficult to open, but he finally prevailed. The large space within was packed with thousands of artillery shells and something else. He took a deep sniff and found the air had a sweet citrus scent to it. Damn. … He slammed the door quickly. Hal-lou gas, the powdery toxic agent the Russians had spread over the Badlands after nuking it, making it even more uninhabitable, smelled just like oranges. Anyone who’d ever come within a hundred miles of the Bads knew it well. It floated on the wind like powder. And that’s what he smelled now.

He spit a few times and tried to clear his nose. He saw powder on his hands and chest. Fucking Russians, he grumbled, can’t put up a warning sign?

But then he froze again, just completely stopped in place. Something was about to happen. He could sense it.

Three seconds later, he heard the sound of many boots, walking quickly on the metal deck. Then, the clinking of weapons. Then guttural conversation, definitely Russian.

Five people, maybe more. Carrying a flashlight and coming right at him.

But then, speaking above the others, a woman said, “We are going the wrong way. …”

Hunter didn’t move, didn’t breathe. Once again, ice water was running through his veins.

He knew that voice.

Twenty feet away now, the flashlight playing on the deck. By its bare glow, Hunter could tell there were five soldiers carrying AK-47s and pushing a large yellow box on wheels. A sixth person was slightly behind them. No faces were visible, but he could see a large brass key dangling from someone’s fingers. The key glinted in the green artificial light.

“We are going the wrong way,” he heard those words again—and he knew it was her.

Dominique.

Not ten feet away.

He raised his M-16. He would have to be both quick and perfect here, one missed shot would mean disaster.

He waited until the flashlight beam found his boots and worked its way up his body. When it reached his eyes, he squeezed his trigger—and heard nothing but a click!

His M-16 was out of ammunition; had been for quite some time. And he was looking at five Russian NKVD gunmen, two almost face-to-face.

His massive .357 handgun was out of his belt in a flash. His first bullet blew away the man with the flashlight.

Then, everything went dark … for about two seconds. Suddenly, orange tracers were flying everywhere. They lit up the scene enough for him to squeeze off four more rounds.

Then everything went black again.

Silence, for five long seconds. Then …

“Is it really you?” she asked.

“Is it really you?” he asked in return.

He took out his penlight, turned it on, and there she was.

Dominique. Standing right in front of him. Smiling … slightly. Despite the form-fitting NKVD uniform, she looked as good as the last time he’d seen her—and that seemed like a million years ago.

She had a small flashlight as well and pointed it at him.

“So it was you flying around New York in that toy airplane,” she said.

“I was looking for you,” was all he could say at first, his voice starting to crack. There was an aura of unreality in the damp, dank air. “It seems like forever since I last saw you, and I was sure you were in trouble.”

He could see tears forming in her eyes. “But what happened to you?” she asked him in a whisper. “You were gone so long—I was sure you were dead.”

He wanted to touch her face, to hug her, to kiss her. But he just couldn’t. He remained glued to the spot. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he finally replied. “I’m still trying to figure it out. But I’m here now—here to rescue you.”

She looked him straight in the eyes, her beauty undiminished. “I don’t think there’s any way you’ll ever understand this,” she said.

“I’m willing to understand anything you’ve done,” he told her sincerely, wiping his own eyes. “Just as long as we talk about it.”

But she just shook her head. “Not that,” she told him. “I mean this. …”

She’d wrapped the huge gold key she was carrying around her fingers, as if putting on a pair of brass knuckles.

She said, “I’m so sorry,” and the next thing Hunter knew, her fist was coming right at him, hitting him square on the jaw.

He fell backward, cracking his helmet on the hard deck below.

Then everything went black.