"What kind of strange 'stuff?' " Jones asked.
"A loud explosion, sir," Toomey, the perpetually sunglassed pilot jumped in.
"Like an atomic bomb went off, one guy told us. Louder than a sonic boom or jet aircraft or things like that."
"But that area is practically deserted," Jones said.
"Yes," Wa continued. "That's what was so strange about it. The people were scared, sir. They said the explosion — or whatever it was — shook the city for ten minutes. Then they saw a lot of smoke and flame, out on the eastern horizon.
"We decided to stick around and try to track it down. We flew around the area where they said they saw smoke and flames. It took us a while, but then we found it."
"And what was 'it?' " Jones asked.
"A crater, sir," Twomey said. "The biggest Goddamn crater you'd ever want to see. It looked like it was made by a nuke. Easily a mile across. It was still smoking when we got there."
Jones took a swig of his spiked coffee. "Meteorite, maybe?"
Toomey shook his head. "We landed, then drove out to the place, sir. It was definitely an explosion. There were bits and pieces of metal everywhere. Plus a few threads of clothing. Even a few fresh bones — they still had some, well, muscle on them."
Jones took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. "A mile wide crater?" he asked. "That's a lot of bomb, if it was a bomb…"
"Whatever it was," Wa said. "It shook up the civilians pretty bad. Some of them left town; others are chipping in to buy an anti-aircraft battery, just in case."
A murmur rose up and subsided among the assembly.
Jones shook his head and took a swig of his booze-laced coffee. "What else?"
he asked.
Hunter nodded to Captain Crunch, commander of the Ace Wrecking Company.
Crunch stood up and started his story. "We were flying routine sea patrol, General, a few weeks before Ben and J. T. were down in Vegas. We were about one hundred fifty klicks off what used to be San Fran when we started picking up some strange radio clutter."
"What kind of strange?" Jones asked.
"Well, it sounded like a lot of different kinds of traffic. Routine stuff — like weather, wind direction, but also the kind of transmissions you'd hear between ships. Course headings, fuel loads, these kinds of things. Some of the voices were in English, others, well… not English."
"Russian?" Jones asked, looking up.
"I don't speak it, sir," Crunch said. "But it could have been."
"So what happened?" asked Jones as he refilled his coffee cup.
"Well, we alerted the base and vectored to the area," Crunch continued.
"That's when we made contact with the Coaster intell ship that was coming back from a long-range patrol."
"That was the Liberty Two ship, General," Hunter interjected.
Now a collective shudder went through the room. Everyone there knew what happened aboard the Liberty 2 was downright spooky.
"Right," Crunch said. "We talked to them. Reported that we were hearing all this strange stuff and it seemed to be coming from a point close to their location. They said they were picking the stuff up too, and that they were getting a little jumpy. They also said they were in the middle of a first-class fog and to them, the radio traffic sounded like a whole Goddamned fleet of ships was bearing down on them.
"We told them to sit tight, that we were about fifteen minutes away. We radioed the base again and requested back-up and also a air-sea rescue chopper, just in case. Then we lit out toward the Liberty. We were still getting a lot of noise on the radio, so much so we had trouble raising and maintaining contact with them."
Crunch stopped and took a chug from his coffee mug. It wasn't holding coffee.
He continued, slowly: "Well, we finally got to within twenty miles of the Liberty's coordinates and sure enough, there was the biggest Goddamn fog bank I've ever seen. It went on for miles in every direction. Thick as hell. We got a good lock on their receiver and we started sending like crazy. At first we got no answer, then…" Jones looked up. "And then, Captain?" Crunch took another slug from his cup. "Then we had one more transmission with them, sir.
We were talking to the skipper." "What did he say?"
Crunch reached out to the tape recorder which sat in front of him and pushed the PLAY button. "Here's what we picked up, sir."
The room was completely silent as the tape crackled to life. First, a burst of static could be heard. Then noises, like hundreds of voices, were clearly evident. Then, one voice came through. It was the Liberty 2 skipper. His voice was shaky: "Get here, quick, Phantoms! Get here quick! They're all around us!
Jesus, there must be a hundred of them! Phantoms! Do you copy? May Day! May Day! May…" The tape abruptly ended in a burst of static. The whole room shuddered as one again. Even Jones shook off a chill.
"We searched the area up and down, sir," Crunch said, caution evident in his voice. "We were twenty five feet off the deck in that God damn fog and we didn't see a thing."
"So what happened?"
"We waited for the chopper and that's when they found the ship," Crunch answered.
Hunter took it from there. "The chopper dropped two divers, General," he said.
"They climbed aboard the ship and found not a single soul on board."
"The engines were running, the radio was still on, the coffee was still hot on the stove," Hunter said. "But there wasn't anyone to be found."
"Any blood?" Jones asked. "Any signs of a struggle?"
Hunter shook his head. "We sent an armed tug out and they towed it back. We went over it with a fine tooth comb. Didn't find a thing. It's like they vanished into thin air."
"Goddamn it, what happened to those men?" Jones said, lightly pounded his fist on the table.
Absolute silence fell upon the room.
"I'm afraid the worst is yet to come, sir," Hunter said. He turned to one of the officers from the Crazy Eights. His was the strangest story of all.
The officer, a lieutenant named Vogel, stood up and slowly, clearly told his tale:
"We were sitting in the scramble house one day when we got a call from the frontier guardsmen's post out in the Hell's Canyon area," Vogel began. "It seems that one of their patrols was on a week-long mission and they passed through a small town named Way Out.
"They had planned to bivouac there, as they had in the past. But when they arrived, they found the town was… well, gone, sir."
"Gone?" Jones asked. "Don't tell me the whole Goddamn town vanished, too…"
"No, sir," Vogel continued. "Gone as in dead, sir. Wiped out. All of the townspeople killed. Mutilated."
There was dead silence.
"There were more than 300 people," Vogel went on. "So many the guardsmen couldn't bury them all. They headed back for their post and that's when they called us."
"Then what?" Jones asked.
Vogel continued: "I took Crazy Two and Crazy Four out with seventy five men.
By the time we reached the outpost, there was no one left there either. It was burned to the ground. No one around except this one guy. He was beat up pretty bad, lost a lot of blood. The medics tried to fix him up, but he was fading fast. But he kept saying one thing, over and over…"
"And that was…?" Jones said.
Vogel paused, then said: " 'Horses,' sir. That's all he could say, was
'Horses.' "
" 'Horses?' What the hell does that mean?" Jones asked, looking at Hunter. All the pilot could do was shrug his shoulders.
"Then what happened, lieutenant?" Jones asked.
"Well, I set up a defense perimeter, sir," the officer continued. "Then I took twenty five men with me in Crazy Two and flew out to Way Out.
"It was just as the guardsmen said. Bodies everywhere, horribly cut up. Some missing arms, legs, heads. They were in really bad shape. So bad even the timber wolves wouldn't eat them. Just like the guardsmen, we couldn't bury them, so we burned them instead."