"Yep," Jones said. "Cavalry. Yaks. Hit and run. The town is fairly large, so they would seem to be getting bolder. More willing to take on big targets."
"This is not good news," Hunter said, reaching for the coffee pot a waitress had produced.
"It gets worse," Jones said grimly. "The Texans did a photo recon overflight of New Orleans harbor this morning. The place is lousy with Russian subs."
"Holy Christ," Hunter said softly.
"And they weren't little tin cans either," Jones continued. "Those were big boys. Nuclear jobs. They took a shot of them hauling long metal cylinders out of the missile tubes.
They're probably bringing either more mean high-explosive, or SAM fuel."
"Probably," Hunter agreed. "They figure the tubes would protect them if something went unstable."
"There is some good news," Jones said. "Word's getting around pretty quick.
Not just about The Circle, but about the Russians, too. We have guys-volunteers — pouring into San Diego. Small militias and stuff, looking to sign up. And, the Texans tell us that people are crossing over from Louisiana and Arkansas who want no part of the Reds, or The Circle or Viktor. Canadians say the same thing. To make it easier, we've agreed to be known as the Western Forces."
"Well, every last guy will help," Hunter replied. "What about the regular Free Canadian Army?"
"Frost is up in Montreal right now," the general told him. "The Canadians, want to help — but they can't send their entire army down. It would leave them too unprotected."
"I can understand that," Hunter agreed. "There are a lot of people from the USA up there. It's risking too much."
"They did say they'd have two divisions waiting at the border near Winnipeg.
They'll intervene if we need them. They'll also 'encourage' volunteers and they'll take up our Northwest Approach air patrols."
Hunter was glad to hear that. With the Free Canadians watching over the territory from Alaska over to Siberia, more PAAC aircraft would be freed up to join the fight over the Badlands.
Their waitress reappeared with a bowl of scrambled eggs and a string of sausages. Hunter immediately dug in.
"How are things at Eureka going?" he asked between mouthfuls.
"Slow," Jones said, lowering his voice a meter. "They finished all the engine work, no problem, and began to work on the avionics. But it's so complicated they have to start at square one just about. We have some great guys working on it. Wa and Twomey are there, as you know, plus a lot of former CalTech people. But they're expected to figure out in a matter of weeks what it took the U.S. Government years to put together."
"I don't envy them," Hunter said. "Compared to what they have to do, I've got the easy job, just getting the boxes."
Jones nodded gravely. "All we can hope for is that you get Boxes three, four, and five and when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, — the final battle, so to speak — we'll have the B-1s up and operating."
Hunter wolfed down the rest of the eggs, drained a cup of coffee and prepared to leave. "Well, I'd better get the '16 up and running. I'd like to be down by the Grand Canyon by noon."
He looked at the general and was troubled to see an especially grim look come across his features. "There's one more thing, Hawk," Jones began. "You'd better sit down."
Hunter was back down in an instant.
"Hawk, Dozer and his guys ran across a plane wreck out on the border of Colorado and Kansas, near the Smoky Hill River," he told him.
"One of ours?" Hunter asked, mystified.
"No," Jones said. "One of theirs. Looked like an L-1011 converted for cargo.
It was an accidental crash. They found one of its engines first, about fifteen miles from the rest of wreckage. Dozer figures the engine probably came off in flight. I don't imagine The Circle has high air maintenance standards, so the thing probably ran out of oil."
"So?" Hunter said. "What was it carrying?"
Jones looked at him for a moment, then took off his cap and scratched his wiffle-cut head. He slipped an envelope out of his pocket. "This," he said, handing it to Hunter.
Hunter took the envelope and ripped it open. He felt a lightning bolt come up his spine and explode in his brain. It was yet another photo of Dominique.
Same shot, same pose.
"It's weird, Hawk," Jones said. "The whole Goddamn airplane was filled with them!"
Hunter looked at him. "What does you mean, sir?"
"I mean there were crates of them," Jones said, leaning forward and speaking in an urgent whisper. "Thousands — tens of thousands of copies of the same picture."
"This is crazy…" Hunter said.
"Hawk, I can't imagine what the hell is going on," Jones said. "The Russians, The Circle, this Viktor guy — these things I can understand. But what the hell is it with these pictures? It looks as if they were going to drop them.
Spread 'em around like propaganda leaflets or something."
Hunter could only shake his head and stare at the photo. Would he ever know?
Chapter Nineteen
The Grand Canyon black box was hidden in a very unusual place. Yet Hunter had been there several times before.
It was a secret airstrip that the CIA had built years before the Third World War; a place where ultrasensitive aircraft could land and take off from without anyone outside The Company knowing about it. Hunter knew the place existed during his Thunder-bird days at Nellis Air Force Base at Las Vegas not a hundred miles to the west. At that time, he was asked to fly "special" visitors to the secret base on occasion. The approach to the strip was very tricky by design and thus, the best Thunderbird pilot was always asked to go.
He'd been to the secret base — code named Phantom Ranch Ringo — a half dozen times. Yet he'd never actually met anyone who was stationed at the secret base except for the ground crew. His missions had called for him to fly in the "guests" — always in the jump seat of a specially-equipped F-5 — drop them off then vamoose. Because the strip was so short, a launch-and-recovery arrangement — taken right off an aircraft carrier — was installed. It involved an arresting gear setup which would catch the hook especially attached to the bottom of the F-5 allowing it to come to a dead stop very quickly and a very powerful catapult system that launched him for the return flight. How the CIA got all the equipment to the bottom of the canyon and working was beyond him.
Now he knew that black box 3 was hidden at the base, specifically in a laboratory that was built right into the solid rock wall close by the landing strip. In theory, he would fly into the canyon, check to see if the arresting gear was still in place, set down if it was, then get the box and leave by way of catapult. The alternative would involve a long, time-consuming climb down.
He and Jones had discussed this part of the recovery mission at length. Really it was a job for a helicoper strike force — and they would have sent one, except for one thing. While no one really knew what the hell was going on in the Grand Canyon these days, the rumors were that right-wing fanatics — mostly from Utah — had retreated to the canyon after the war. The stories went on to say that these fanatics were well-armed and had adopted a "shoot first" attitude. Several small airplanes had been shot down around the canyon in the past two years and not just with small arms fire. A convoy airliner that had run into fuel trouble a year before had to fly low over the canyon while attempting to land at the deserted Nellis. Someone fired a small surface-to-air missile at the airplane, just missing it. Jones and Hunter were aware of the incident at the time, but in the wild and wooly New Order America, they couldn't go around wasting valuable time, men and equipment chasing down every radical with a SAM launcher.
But now Hunter had to go back and he had to do it in the airplane which would give him maximum maneuverability, firepower and escape potential. There was never any question that he'd take his F-16. In fact, while he was recovering the black box 2 from Wyoming, the PAAC monkey crew had worked round the clock and installed a Navy-style arrester hook on the belly of his jet.