Chapter Fifty-One

Otis Air Force Base, Cape Cod
May 24

The four Su-34 JLRs were lined up on the runway, engines turning furiously. Behind them, four more Su-34s—these were the buddy tankers. All the jet fighters were painted in naval gray and bearing American flag emblems on their sides and wings. Hunter was in the fourth Su-34 at the end of the first line.

The new American Naval Air Force had joined the plan to strike Viktor’s secret shipyard—and the fact that the aerial portion of the mission would originate from Otis was drenched in irony. This was where Hunter and other American pilots had run ZAP—the Zone Air Patrol—soon after the Big War. In many ways, Otis was where it had all started. Hunter had a lot of history with this place. They all did.

The four fighters and their tankers were about to take off for one final training mission before the actual strike against the arctic shipyard was launched. Other elements of the newly combined air and sea assault were moving into place. Operation Skyfire was just seventy-two hours away.

Bull Dozer had been brought into the Fitz Group. At first, he’d been as incredulous as Hunter had been when he’d learned what Fitz’s people had been doing in New York during the Okupatsi. But when he recalled Fitz’s telling him earlier that he was on to something very hot, the pieces had fallen into place, and the old marine had become a quick convert. When he offered the Su-34s to be part of the strike package, Fitz quickly accepted.

Dozer had come up to Otis to help with the last-minute details of the mission. Fitz’s people knew exactly where the secret shipyard was—the southern tip of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Kara Sea, just off the coast of western Siberia—and the new expanded plan was simple. Hit the place with a massive air strike and then, with USS Fitz submerged nearby, sink anything that tried to escape. With the flight being four thousand miles one way, the mission would put the ultra-long range Su-34 JLR to the test. But that’s exactly what the airplane had been built for.

Meanwhile, most of Fitz’s intelligence operatives were undercover again, traveling to other locations around the world in hopes of determining Viktor’s whereabouts in case they didn’t catch him during the shipyard strike. Dominique was among those forward deployed.

Dozer appeared on the tarmac just as Hunter was doing his last preflight checks. He’d helped the Wingman strap in, handing him yet another borrowed crash helmet.

Cigar going as always, the marine told his friend, “I see they gave you the extra-large fuel tanks. I’m guessing they’ll get you to Canada no problem once the training mission is over.”

“I know what they’re for, Bull,” Hunter said, trying to ignore him.

Hunter had a classified radiophone number in his pocket, right next to Saul Wackerman’s flag. He’d used it once, leaving a short message. But that’s where it ended with him right now, he had more immediate things to think about. “Lots of stuff has changed in the past few weeks,” Dozer went on. “Just look at yourself. In a new airplane. In a new American air force. These things usually come in threes, you know.”

“I thought your lucky number was five?” Hunter joked.

Dozer laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “Touché, brother.”

Then he was gone. Hunter punched his mission codes into the flight computer and then watched the control panel light up green. All the instrument translations had been done already, but he knew pretty much how everything worked anyway. It came naturally.

The special Su-34 JLR felt good underneath him. He fiercely disliked the Russians, but he loved this airplane. He’d been doing little else but flying it for the past few days. The Fitz Group was very excited to have him on board.

They started taxiing. JT in the lead, then Ben, Crunch, and himself. Their buddy tankers would take off right after them. Every plane in the training package had a two-man crew except for Hunter’s. He just wanted to ride this one alone.

Besides, once it was over, his return destination would be different from theirs.

They got the final go-code for takeoff. Ironically, it came from Gagarin, who also passed on a coded message telling them Fitz’s Boomer sub was closing in on the target and would be in position in less than forty-eight hours. So, a two-prong attack was assured.

Then Dominique’s new gentleman friend wished them good luck and signed off. From that moment on, they were in radio silence.

Hunter took off in sequence and climbed to twenty-five thousand feet, where the entire package formed up. Then he turned with the others and headed due north.

It was a two-hour mission. They rehearsed both low- and high-altitude over-water strike approaches and then dropped practice bombs on an isolated island off the coast of uppermost northern Maine. Called Steels Harbor, it was almost an exact duplicate of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Kara Sea.

The training mission was a success, with all of the practice ordnance hitting their targets. At that point, all the pilots agreed they were ready to do the real thing.

When it was time to head for home, though, all but Hunter turned south. Instead, he steered his plane northwest. He’d requested a twenty-four-hour leave, promising to be back at Otis in time for any last-minute preparations before they took off to attack the Siberian shipyard.

There was something else he had to do first.

As he flew over the coast and crossed the Canadian border, the events of the past few weeks ran through his mind. Trying to remember it all was like recalling an encyclopedia. Mudtown. The Pine Barrens. New York City. Nantucket. Yankee Stadium. Nauset Heights. Bombing the MMZ. The battle for Tower Two. …

But while he’d replayed all the strange things that had happened in just the past few weeks over and over, one stood out in his mind.

It was the night he’d crashed through the windows of the top floor of 30 Rock, retrieved the NKVD’s master plans for Convoy 56, and found the blonde girl with the big smile. As he’d been flying around the seventy-story building, he’d felt his internal vibrations going off like never before.

But it had slowly dawned on him, and had later been confirmed, that these intense vibes hadn’t been caused by Dominique. She hadn’t even been in the building at the time. She’d already left aboard the helicopter he’d almost shot down.

And during some of his earlier flights, before he’d been spotted, she’d been at her room at the Ritz while he’d been feeling the feeling buzzing around the MMZ.

No, for the entire adventure, the cosmic, heart-pounding sensations—part of that instinct that never led him wrong—hadn’t been caused by Dominique.

They’d been caused by that girl he’d rescued, the girl with the big smile and the big brown eyes.

The girl whose name he didn’t even know.

It was dark by the time he spotted the enormous abandoned air base.

It was located south of the Canadian city of Sherbrook, not far from the Vermont border. It had been a secret joint US-Canadian facility, but had gone unused since the Big War. There wasn’t even any electricity at the place anymore. But as he came within five miles of it, he realized electric lights would not be needed for what he was about to do.

The base featured an enormous five-mile long runway, and he could see it clearly now through his night-vision goggles because someone had lit both sides of it with hundreds, if not thousands, of candles.

He circled the base once and then came in for a bumpy but successful landing. Rolling the Su-34 all the way to the end of the runway, he shut down his engines and climbed out, shaking with anticipation. Waiting for him below, dressed in an old-fashioned US Army combat uniform, was the blonde girl with the enormous smile.

He didn’t even have a chance to say a word to her. She ran to him and kissed him immediately.

There’s that smooch again, he thought.

The kiss was followed by a deep, sensual hug and then another long kiss. Finally, he was able to croak, “You know, I don’t even know your name.”

“Well, you must have top-secret clearance by now,” she replied, kidding him. “But I can only tell you once. It’s Sara.”

Then she handed him a box.

“I heard that you needed one of these,” she said with a smile.

He opened it to find a new crash helmet inside. It looked like his old one, white with lightning bolts on either side, but its finish was almost translucent, and it was embedded with multicolored flecks that reflected the light from all the candles at every angle.

In a word, it was beautiful.

And so was she.