He spied the front door and noticed that most of the crowd had made good their escape. However, an unhealthy barrage of pistol fire was coming from very close to the exit. It was concentrating on some unseen enemy located at the back of the room. Bullets were pinging and ricocheting around the darkened cafe, sometimes accompanied by a groan or a scream when one of them found flesh. This was no place to be, he thought. Still, he couldn’t help thinking that this sort of thing must apparently happen quite often at the cafe.
He decided to create a distraction, something that would cause everyone to take cover and give him the precious four or five seconds he would need to make a break for the front door.
He raised the M-16’s nose until it was pointing at the ceiling, then ripped off a long burst of tracers. The bright trails of white-hot phosphorous illuminators lit up the interior of the cafe brilliantly. The bullets scraped the plastered ceiling, causing a rain of cracked and sparkling material to fall. The chatter of the automatic weapon filled the walls with a loud, echoing, dangerous sound. Immediately all the gunmen dove for cover.
Hunter was out the door in three seconds …
He found the jeep unattended outside the cafe. El-Fauzi was nowhere to be seen. Despite the gunplay in the club, the people in the streets of the movie set town seemed unaffected. Hunter started the jeep and headed back for the airport, glad to be out of the strange place.
The airport was even more crowded, more confused, more desperate than before. The F-16 was sitting untouched. He resisted the temptation to go looking for el-Fauzi; whatever the man’s motives had been, Hunter was sure he would be impossible to find. Besides, with the situation at the airport deteriorating rapidly, he wanted to get off as quickly as possible. His search for clues to Viktor’s whereabouts would have to continue in some other place.
He climbed aboard the F-16 and started to warm up the avionics. A wave of a bag of silver was all that was needed to flag down a passing fuel truck, and soon his tanks were full. Without bothering to contact the control tower, he taxied out onto the runway and took off on the tail of a battered Brazilian 707.
Minutes later, he turned northeast. Lard’s last word had been “Algiers,” and Hunter figured that was as good a place as any to resume his search for Viktor.
Chapter 4
Hunter was glad to get away from Casablanca. The place was just too weird for him. Movie-set towns. The airborne evacuation. El-Fauzi. Lard. The gun battle at the cafe. All the talk of war and armies of mercenaries waiting to go at it was particularly disturbing. So was the billion-dollar bounty on his head. He’d have to be extra careful about watching his tail. That poisoned drink could very well have been meant for him instead of Lard. And he was sure that word would spread quickly that he was in the area. It all had such an unreal atmosphere about it.
And he couldn’t help thinking that the spectre of Viktor — or Lucifer — was lurking behind it all.
He set a course low over the Moroccan desert, heading for Algeria and the unknown. He had to expect the unexpected. Play it smart. If war were about to break out in the region, he’d have to assume that any population center would be equipped with SAMs, maybe interceptors. Both of which he wanted to avoid. The sand-skimming course over the desert seemed to be his best choice.
Suddenly he felt trouble. His well-developed sixth sense — particularly attuned to nearby hostile aircraft — had his body tingling. He checked his long-range radar, which soon confirmed his feelings. There were two fighters approaching him from the northwest. They were moving fast and they were heavily armed.
He instinctively checked his instruments. Everything looked good until he went to test-fire his specially designed “Six Pack” of M-61 Vulcan cannons in the nose of the F-16. To his surprise, a push of the trigger produced nothing. Another push, still nothing. According to his panel lights, everything was in order. Strange … He quickly rerouted the fire command through his flight computer. Still nothing.
Someone had tampered with the airplane while it was parked at Casablanca, he knew it. He punched up his air-to-air missile-arming program. It too was drawing a blank. Sabotage! He should have expected it, although the electrically charged alarm system had never failed him before. An expert had done the dirty deed. But he’d have to figure out who the culprit was later. Right now, he needed to concentrate on the approaching interceptors.
He booted the 16 up to full military speed and was glad to feel the afterburner kick in so smoothly. The saboteur had apparently only tinkered with his armaments and not the airplane’s power plant. He stayed down low, hoping to skirt the look-down radar the interceptors might be carrying. His pursuers were just twenty miles behind him. He was sure he could outrun them to Algiers, but what would happen then?
“F-16, F-16.” His radio suddenly burst to life. “This is the Gibraltar Defense Force. You are in an unauthorized air zone. Prepare for interception.”
He was “unauthorized” again. Yet he didn’t feel threatened. The voice on the radio was British. Oddly, it did not sound hostile. Just serious. Hunter felt instinctively drawn to trust it.
“Gibraltar Defense,” he radioed back. “This is Major Hawk Hunter of the Pacific American Air Corps. I was unaware this was restricted air space. Request permission to leave the area at once.”
“F-16.” The voice came back. “You are not only in a restricted airspace, you are also traveling at illegally high rate of speed. You must be cited. We are tracking you with long-range missiles. We will fire if we have to. Please reduce speed and prepare for interception.”
High speed? Cited? What the hell was this?
Hunter decided to slow down and let the interceptors catch up to him. He was unarmed, and although he knew he could have outran the long-range air-to-airs, with all the twisting and turning required more than half his fuel would be burned up uselessly. Anyway, the interceptor pilots didn’t sound menacing.
They were Tornados. Impressive fighters that had been made back in the old days by a group of European companies. Hunter had seen many of them during the air battles over France. They were a rugged, versatile, even-flying aircraft, one of the best in the world.
They came up on either side of him. They were definitely British — both airplanes had Union Jacks painted on their tail sections. One moved in closer to his port wing and gave a gentlemanly wave.
“Sorry, F-16, but you’ll have to follow us,” he radioed over. “Course seven-two-niner Tango. Our base is thirty-four kilos northwest.”
Hunter waved back. Something about the British. No matter what, they always sounded so civilized.
The Tornados pulled ahead and turned northwest. Hunter followed.
The air base was actually a small, straight stretch of abandoned highway with a half-dozen large tents on either side. A long fuel truck sat off on the edge of the makeshift runway jeeps and personnel carriers moved about. Several Rapier antiaircraft missile batteries ringed the base. Two other Tornados were parked on metal plates that served as temporary parking stations on the highway shoulder.
The two British interceptors landed in formation and Hunter came in right after them. They taxied to their assigned metal plates, while Hunter rolled along to the center of the base. Several men waited there. A ground mechanic directed him in with a pair of red flags and gave him the thumbs-up when he was in the correct parking position. He shut down the engine, popped the canopy, and climbed out to meet the men.
They were all officers of the Royal Air Force, dressed in the correct desert fatigues. As one, they snapped to a perfect opened-palmed salute. Hunter returned it as best he could. One officer stepped forward — a man with bright red hair and an enormous mustache to match. He walked over and shook Hunter’s hand.