"We have our friends pretty well bogged down," the Irishman reported, sitting behind a desk somewhere at a secret base in Manitoba, a huge painting of a shamrock hanging on the wall behind him. "Ain't a bridge standing between Minneapolis and Sioux Falls. We go after the railroad lines today."
"The Canadians have their guys ready to strike,/ should we need ground forces.
We hope it doesn't come to that. Good luck down there, General."
Thirty minutes later, a Texas F-4 streaked in from the south under the weather to deliver another videotape, this one from St. Louie. It was shot out on a runway near Dallas and the white cowboy suited St. Louie looked more like a used car salesman than a leader in exile,
"Howdy, Dave!" the old ex-bomber pilot began. "Our buddies here are about to launch another air strike on the port of New Orleans." As if to confirm it, two Texas Air Force F-4s taxied by in the background.
"My flyboys plan to continue hammering the troops of the Circle Southern Group around Shreveport today.
"We have four teams — two Texan, two of my guys, waiting at the border, Dave,"
St. Louie continued. "We're waiting for whatever comes across. We figure we'll be seeing the whites of their eyes in two days. Good luck, buddy…"
The tape flickered and ended.
What characters, Jones thought. He was about to watch both of them again when he was surprised to hear the situation room's scramble radio crackled to life.
"Denver, Tango-Six-Maxwell calling…"
Jones instantly recognized Hunter's radio call sign.
He immediately picked up the radio microphone. "Hawk?" Jones answered. "That you, pal?"
The transmission was very faint, so muph so, it sounded like Hunter was calling from another planet.
"General, got to be… fast," the static filled voice said. "I put a convoy together. I'd like to take them through tonight. Right over you. As soon as that weather front clears…"
"Do I copy, 'convoy,' Hawk?"
"That's… a… roger… sir," the voice faded in between annoying bursts of static. "Out… of Oregon. Request top priority radio boot."
Jones was twisting dials and punching buttons in an effort to clear up the signal, but to no avail. He knew a request for top priority "radio boot" meant absolutely no radio contact from here on in, even in an emergency. Even this call from the coast, scrambled as it was, was risky.
"Understand and copy, Hawk," Jones said as slowly and distinctly as he could.
"What's the mission
"Psyche-Ops…" came the reply. "Repeat Special… mission." Then the radio signal went dead.
The weather cleared just as night fell. Jones and Dozer stationed themselves out on the air station's tarmac, with a pair of NightScopes and a radio phone hook-up. Crunch was in the control tower, at the other end of the radio-phone watching over the shoulders of two radar operators.
Nothing happened until 10:30. Then one of the operators spoke. "We're getting blips, Captain," he told Crunch.
The Phantom pilot watched the screen as first one, then two more radar blips appeared, indicating aircraft approaching from the west. He immediately called down to Jones and Dozer.
"Here they come, General," he reported. "One big boy riding out front. Two more, also heavies, right on his tail. You should see them soon, your north-by-northwest."
Both Jones and Dozer craned their necks, scanning the now-cloudless sky with the infra-red NightScopes. After a few minutes, they both saw the three faint lights at the same time.
"That front one looks like the B-36!" Jones exclaimed as the light started to take shape in the Scope. "Jesus, don't tell me he got that shitbox running…"
"Those look like the C-141s coming next," Dozer said, focusing on the trailing images. "He must have bribed a bunch of our cargo flyboys to follow him on this one."
The radio crackled once. It was Crunch. "Picking up three more, medium size, right behind them," he reported.
Sure enough, Jones picked out three more aircraft, moving silently across the star-studded sky.
"Those are the old 727 cargo ships," he said, directing Dozer to the three other lights.
Jones noticed a small, barely visible object bringing up the rear of the air train, an object that Crunch would never see on the radar screen. Jones knew this had to be the Stealth with Hunter behind the controls.
By this time, many of the people at the air station were outside, looking up at the strange menagerie of airplanes 60,000 feet over their heads.
"Well, he was right," Jones said. "He's heading directly into the 'Bads.
Probably through that SAM hole near Oakley. That's probably another reason why he really squashed them in that area the other night."
They watched as the airplanes passed directly overhead. Then, on what had to be a pre-arranged signal, all six airplanes flicked their wing lights three times.
A spontaneous round of cheers went up from observers at the airport. "Hunter's way of saying 'Hello,' " Jones said, laughing for the first time in days.
They stood and watched until the convoy disappeared from view. "He's got something in that mind of his," Dozer said. "God only knows what."
"I have a feeling we'll know soon enough," Jones said.
Suddenly the radio-phone crackled. "General," they heard Crunch say. "We're getting small outline readings in the trail of those airplanes, sir. It's like one of them dropped something."
Jones looked up and could barely see a bunch of tiny white specks falling from the sky. They also looked like snowflakes for a moment. Then, as they got bigger, he saw they were leaflets of some kind.
About 100 of the sheets fluttered down. "Talk about a precision drop," Dozer said. "It's like a phony war bombing." He was referring to the time early in World War II when the Allies faced the Nazis in a six-month, non-shooting 'phony war,' when propaganda leaflets Were the heaviest ordnance the enemies dropped on each other.
Jones grabbed the first one that blew his way. It was a photograph — taken in the correct and simple, propagandistic style. But it was very strange…
It showed Hunter's long-lost girlfriend, Dominique. She looked as beautiful as she did in the other mysterious photos that the Circle had been circulating of her earlier. But in this photo, she was standing next to the Stealth fighter, holding Hunter's small American flag in one hand, and pointing a la Uncle Sam with her other. There was a printed message at the bottom of the photograph.
It read:
"VlKTOR IS DEAD. LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS NOW AND GO TOME. REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE AMERICANS. You HAVE BEEN TRICKED BY THE RUSSIANS. EVERY AIRPLANE YOU SEE WILL BE DROOPING BOMBS ON YOU. DON'T DIE AS RUSSIAN PUPPETS. THE WAR WILL SOON BE OVER.
— QUEEN."
"I guess this is his way of telling us what he's up to," Jones said, studying the leaflet. "Well, at least now we know what he was doing in the photo lab."
"I thought I'd seen everything," Dozer said, reading his own. "But this has to be the wildest stunt he's ever tried…"
Jones read the message over and over. "Wild, yes," he said. "But also quite effective, in a crude sort of way.
"If I'm guessing right, he's got those big airplanes loaded with these things.
He's going to drop them all over the Circle's Central Group troop concentrations. Shit, if it works on one tenth of those guys — that means they'll be ten thousand less of them shooting at us."
"Well, it's worth a shot," Dozer said. "He did say he would take care of 'spooking' the bastards. I guess every 'Psyche Ops' plan is a little weird."
Then the Marine captain looked at the photograph even closer. "But I do have one question…"
"What's that?" Jones asked.