It was very strange to be driving a fighter jet down the highway as if it were a land vehicle, but that's what he did for about another mile. He eventually reached an off-base housing complex. To his surprise, he found five more jets here: three F-15s, and a pair of A-10s. They were parked in a blacktop lot outside one of the larger buildings.
He knew there was only one reason these planes were here. Their pilots had landed at the base, and just like Hunter, had determined the situation enough to know that they were best in a closed environment — their aircraft — and wise to put a mile or so between them and the base.
Hunter pulled his F-16 into the parking lot as well. He popped the canopy, shut everything down, and jumped to the ground. He walked into the main building. Here he found the five pilots, huddled in the corner of the lobby, helmets still on, masks attached, sucking on portable oxygen tanks.
"Who's in charge here?" Hunter asked them sternly.
One man took his mask off long enough to say: "You are… until you drop dead from the gas."
Hunter took a quick scan of the men's uniforms. Three were lieutenants, two were captains. He, meanwhile, was wearing the uniform of a major. He was the senior man.
"Take those masks off," he told them. "You don't need them. The gas didn't spread this far."
"How the fuck do you know?" one pilot cursed right through his mask.
"Because if it was hard gas, we'd all be dead by now," Hunter shot back at them.
They mulled this over for a few moments, and then gingerly, each man lowered his mask and took a tentative breath.
"Hey, how about that?" one said. "The dude is right…"
Hunter was instantly furious. "Get up off your asses," he roared at them. "That's an order."
The five men reluctantly got to their feet. Hunter looked about the first floor of the building. It was typical off-base housing, more like a college dorm than anything else. It was also clear that whoever lived here had cleared out quickly. Scattered belongings, from clothes to record albums, littered the floor and the stairs leading to the upper rooms. He also detected the scent of liquor in the heavy air.
The men formed a ragged line in front of him, and Hunter proceeded to read them the riot act. He couldn't remember exactly what he said, losing each angry word the instant it came off his tongue. But he reviewed for them the tough situation the U.S. was suddenly facing, the need for America to counterattack, and the need for every able-bodied soldier to pitch in. The men just stared blankly back at him.
He then told them what he'd experienced coming over the Atlantic, and how his orders stated that an aerial assault on the advancing Soviets was critical before the situation got further out of hand.
"We have to fuel up, bomb up, get our asses up over West Germany," Hunter told them. "If we can stop them there, we've got a chance to—"
The five men all burst out laughing at him. Hunter was so mad, he couldn't speak.
"Major," one of the captains finally said. "You're a little behind on this thing. "There is no more West Germany. The Soviets took it over last night. The last we heard, they were marching on Paris."
Hunter was stunned to hear this news. But he instantly formulated a new plan. If indeed the Soviets were already as far as France, that meant their lines of communication were stretched even thinner than before. It also meant more targets for American aircraft, more bridges to bomb, more supply columns to attack.
"The farther these guys move west, the more they'll be strung out," Hunter said now. "If we can hit them somewhere in the middle at a choke point, we can have a very big effect. Plus their soldiers are weighed down by all that chem gear. They must be dragging ass for at least a hundred miles by now."
But the pilots just laughed at him again.
"Who the fuck made you the hero?" one asked. "We just want to get the hell back home."
Another pilot spoke up: "I've got a wife and three kids. I want to see them one more time before the world comes to an end."
A third said, "Why should we die trying to save a bunch of assholes in France?"
Hunter was momentarily stumped for a reply. Finally he shot back with the only response he could think of.
"You're going to go," he said. "Because I'm giving you a direct order to go."
They found a large fuel truck on the edge of the base that was filled with JP-8.
Testing his theory that soft gas had been used against the base at Rota, Hunter drove the truck back to where the jets were parked without the aid of oxygen. The pilots reluctantly worked together to fuel their aircraft. While this was going on, Hunter returned to the periphery of the base and canvassed it for ordnance. There was plenty to be found on the outlying edges. Mostly 2,000-pound blockbusters, but also antipersonnel weapons and even some high-explosive bombs.
This time he wore his oxygen mask not for the gas but because there were hundreds of bodies lying about. The air was getting fetid. He loaded up an ordnance truck by himself, using a portable hangar crane to do the heavy lifting. By the time he returned to the others, they had fueled up their aircraft.
Loading the bombs was long and sweaty, and a major pain in the ass. They were pilots, not ground crew guys, so it was trial and error at first. After a few hairy moments, they'd finally bombed up the A-10s. They would carry the heaviest loads.
The F-15s came next. They, too, could carry an awesome amount of munitions, plus they were easier to work than the A-lOs. Lastly, Hunter's F-16 was given two 2,000-pound bombs, plus an additional 5,000 pounds of antipersonnel munitions.
By the time they were through, night was falling. Hunter ordered the pilots to get some sleep, which they did right on the first floor of the off-base housing building. Hunter, however, stayed awake all night planning the route they would take tomorrow.
The flight up from Spain to the Franco-German border would burn more than half their fuel, this due to the overloads of bombs they would be carrying and the route they had to take. No matter which way Hunter spun the numbers, there just would not be enough gas for them to return to Rota. That was OK, though. Why would they want to come back here?
But where was their alternative base? If the latest news reports were accurate, most of Western Europe was flooded with deadly gas. Hard or soft, that meant many, many rotting corpses or lots of territory under control of the Soviets.
So there was no way Hunter could find a safe place for them to set down once they'd unloaded the munitions.
Unless some sort of miracle came along then, this was going to be a one-way mission.
Dawn arrived.
The sky was bloodred, always a sign of bad things to come. Hunter woke the five reluctant pilots and lied to them. He told them that he'd identified an air base still in friendly hands just outside Paris. They could fly their missions, land at this base, possibly load up again, and go up again. The five pilots greeted the news with only mild grumbling. They did one last check of their airplanes, and then it was time to go.
By design, the highways leading into the base at Rota were long and straight and wide. Their size allowed them to be used as emergency runways. The six airplanes lined up on the highway heading north. They took off, one by one. Hunter was the last to get airborne.
Per his orders, the three F-15s took the lead, forming a loose chevron about 1,000 feet in front of Hunter. The two bomb-heavy A-10s took up positions in between.
They flew in silence. Hunter's flight plan took them out over Spain to the French Alps. It was a slightly roundabout route, and would use up precious fuel, but there was a method to Hunter's madness. The small strike force had one main enemy: radar. If they were picked up too soon, no doubt the Soviets would send masses of aircraft after them. While the F-15s and Hunter's plane could dogfight with ordnance attached, the A-10s were not aerial combat weapons. They would be sitting ducks.