That's what the Ghost Rider Project was all about.
Five "black boxes" held the key. Once in place in their respective airplanes, the control boxes interconnected the flight, weapons and navigational systems of the five Ghost Riders. Working together and making full use of a radar-jamming technology so complex that even Hunter was just now beginning to understand it, the five bombers could literally fly over enemy territory without showing up on radar. They could not be shot down with radar-homing missiles; they could not be tracked by radar controlled anti-aircraft guns.
Radar-guided air-to-air rockets would fall to earth unexploded because no target could be found.
All this was of the utmost importance to PAAC because although the Russian SAMs sitting in the Badlands were of many different sizes and configurations, they all had one thing in common: they tracked their targets on radar. And what they couldn't "see,1 they couldn't shoot down.
But the eyes of the Ghost Rider Project were missing. Dispersed by design after the war so they — and the nearly completed Ghost Rider total radar avoidance system — would not fall into the wrong hands. The black boxes were under the command of an Air Force general named Christopher Josephs when the Big War broke out. At the time the system was just a month away from going operational — bu; it was never dispatched to the European theater Why? Call it a fluke of the military bureaucracy 01 call it fate. But when the war came, the test pilot; assigned to Ghost Rider were routinely called back to their combat bomber duties. From the day they left.
General Josephs was on the phone to Washington DC every hour of every day trying to get his pilots returned. Without them, the airplanes could not be tested. But they never came back. And soon no one answered the phones in Washington.
So Josephs called in his trusted right-hand man, a captain named James Travis.
It was Travis's job to take the five Ghost Rider black boxes and hide them at Josephs' direction. When PAAC discovered the underground laboratory they found Josephs' personal diary sitting on the pilot's seat of Ghost Rider 1. It took months to break the computer code which held the secret of Ghost Rider and which Josephs — his fate and whereabouts unknown — had left behind to find, for anyone who was smart enough to look for it.
The black box locations were finally narrowed down to Pearl Harbor, Devil's Tower, the Grand Canyon, New Mexico, and, of all places, Manhattan. Why these locations were selected, no one knew, but at least Josephs could never be accused of not having an imagination: the black box at Pearl was supposedly hidden in the flag mast of the USS Arizona, the battleship that was destroyed by the Japanese sneak attack and that still sat half sunk in the harbor serving as a war memorial.
As soon as they discovered the meaning of Ghost Rider, PAAC engineers began work on all the other aspects of the system. Coincidentally, Jones was intent on discussing a recovery mission with Hunter when the current troubles in the East took precedence. Now the black box recovery mission was critical. It was up to Hunter to find the boxes and bring them back to Eureka. Only then could the five B-1s operate up to their marvelous potential. Only then could they be sent in to destroy the SAMs in the Badlands. Only then could PAAC lead the fight against The Circle armies. Only then could the battle for democracy on the American continent be won.
But for Hunter, there was more at stake in the mission. For him, there was another mystery to be solved; that of the photographs of Dominique. The pictures the Texans brought with them were variations of the same pose and dress as the photograph he'd found on the renegade convoy airplane. The horsemen's pictures were discussed briefly during the viewing of the Badlands recon film — but were quickly dismissed by Jones.
"They must have busted into an X-rated book store somewhere along the line," the general had said to the Security Group at the time. Actually Hunter had taken Jones into his confidence, telling the senior officer of his previous discovery on the crashed 707. The general was as mystified as Hunter on what the photographs meant to the overall problem. Ben Wa and Toomey were also told as the two ex-ZAP pilots were the only comrades of Hunter who knew Dominique.
All three of his friends agreed that the photos were an odd twist to an already strange story. But they also agreed to keep it top secret. They knew it was a mystery — and a battle — Hunter would have to face himself. They knew he wouldn't let them here him if they tried. That was the nature of Hunter. The imminent war had taken on a new, different meaning for him. The battle against the totalitarian force that were attempting to take over what was left of th< American way of life was uppermost in his mind am in his soul. But in his heart, the whole thing had become very personal. Why they had found photo graphs of Dominique on the convoy pilot and th< Mongol warrior, he didn't know. But he did know that the only connection between the two dead mer was they were on the side of The Circle and th(Russians. Hunter also knew that back east, some where, was Dominique. The fact that he was heading in the opposite direction didn't bother him. He felt in his gut she was being held against her will. A prisoner. Now he renewed his vow to find her. And God help those responsible when he did.
Jones had taken most of the afternoon explaining Project Ghost Rider to the Security Group. Hunter took off later that same day, heading for Hawaii. The next morning, which was appropriately May 1st, the Soviet SAMs opened fire on a convoy that was attempting to pass over the southernmost section of the Badlands. Seventeen airliners were brought down by SAMs. At about the same time, two divisions of The Circle Army were spotted heading for the Syracuse Aerodrome. Another two divisions were discovered marching from the western end of Kentucky into eastern Missouri, apparently moving toward Football City. Their lead element ran into a company of Football City's famous recon troops and a sharp fire fight ensued.
By noon that day, the first shots of the Second American Civil War had been fired.
Chapter Sixteen
The F-16 had spent the past hour lazily circling th Hawaiian island of Oahu at 50,000 feet. Hunter was surveying the ground below using his topographica contour radar. The device allowed him to spy on th island below him, charting where any weapons — including interceptors, anti-aircraft guns or SAN sites — might be located.
He found none, which didn't surprise him. Al though contact between the Hawaiian Islands am PAAC on the mainland was nearly non-existent, th Pacific Americans knew that the New Order frenz; of disarmament had been nearly complete through out the 50th state and that a kind of modern royal tribal rule had returned to the islands.
He located an airstrip on the northeastern end o the island and swept the area with his scope. There wasn't a weapon nor a breathing human around. H quickly set the F-16 down and hid it in a forest o coconut trees located at the end of the runway. Th< landing strip appeared to be an abandoned Coast Guard air station. He found a paved road nearby which would carry him south and he began to walk. The sun was just coming up out of the sea on the eastern horizon. The sky was red — as red as the Aurora Borealis he had encountered at 90,000 feet several weeks before. He knew a red sky in the morning was a powerful omen for bad things to come. - But to Hunter, the crimson sunrise meant another thing: the fighting had started to the east. Although he was thousands of miles' to the west, he could smell war in the air. His mission just became more crucial, possibly more desperate. He quickened his step. He had to make the 25 miles to Honolulu by nightfall.