“You frigging British!” Hunter finally yelled at him. “Will you knock off this crap about going down with the ship! This isn’t a goddamn movie!”
Suddenly four huge shells hit the Saratoga in succession, two on the conning tower, two on the hull. Hunter felt the flattop rock back and forth. The deck was filled with fire and smoke. Suddenly Yaz ran out of nowhere and was climbing the F-16’s access steps. He was carrying two items.
“Not you too?” Hunter yelled at him. “Just because these crazy Brits are willing to go down fighting, doesn’t mean you have to!”
“Don’t worry about me,” Yaz said. “Just take these with you and get out of here!”
He dumped two bundles into Hunter’s lap and was gone, disappearing into the smoke. Not Heath nor anyone else was in sight.
Hunter looked at the two bundles. One was a bunch of videotapes, strapped together with a piece of wire. They had to be the BBC videos. The other bundle was the huge Stars and Stripes that Hunter knew belonged to Yaz’s unit. It was the flag he first saw flying over their camp back in Algiers.
But then, through the flames, he saw a helicopter rising from the second battleship. It was white and gold and he knew immediately that it was Lucifer’s personal chopper.
He had to go after it.
He didn’t have time to look around for someone to hook him up to the burning carrier’s catapult. He doubted it was working anyway. Instead he revved up the F-16’s powerful engine, while keeping his brakes locked on. He watched the RPM build up and, at the right moment, he popped the brakes. The F-16 burnt up a cloud of smoky rubber for two seconds, then instantly screeched forward. Hunter hit the throttle at full power and yanked back on the side-stick controller. The airplane roared off the carrier, then dipped as its speed was nowhere near that needed for unassisted takeoff. But Hunter coolly kicked in the afterburner, and the engine responded with a burst of flame and power. Soon he was climbing.
Just as the fighter cleared the deck, a barrage of six shells struck the ship square on the flight deck. Two of the high-explosive shots blew out a pair of huge holes in the deck. Four of the shells crashed on through to the below-decks, exploding there. It was the death blow for the flattop. Ammunition left over in the hangar area blew up, causing a raging fire to roar through to the reactor room. Another incredible explosion followed, nearly lifting the mighty ship clear out of water. It settled back down into the thirty-foot depth of the Canal, and continued to explode.
Hunter looked over his shoulder and saw the carrier going through its death throes. He still couldn’t believe it was happening; the carrier they had all worked so hard to bring to the Canal was now in the process of blowing itself up. And Sir Neil. Heath. O’Brien. Probably Yaz. All gone …
There were still some Hinds in the area, many of them mercilessly firing on the carrier evacuees. Now the battleships, seeing the Saratoga had received enough punishment, also started hammering away at the western shoreline.
Hunter didn’t want Lucifer’s chopper to get away, but neither could he leave the helpless carrier survivors at the mercy of the Hinds and the battleships. As if to underscore his point, he saw three Hinds swooping in on the beach where the carrier survivors were and start to strafe them.
Suddenly he felt a ringing start in his brain.
More aircraft. Nearby. Heading this way.
He dove toward the Hinds, blasted one from the air with his cannon Six Pack, then sheared the main rotor off another one. But just as he was about to open fire on a third, it seemed to explode on its own.
“What the …?” Hunter then spun around and saw that there was a very familiar F-4 flying right above him.
“Hey, Hawk!” He heard Crunch’s voice come over his radio set. “Where you been? We’ve been all over the goddamn Med looking for you!”
“Crunch!” Hunter called back. “I should have heard that Phantom coming a hundred miles away!”
“Well, we got a bunch of friends on the way,” Crunch said. “Gunships and F-20s. Now just tell us who the bad guys are.”
“You were right the first time,” Hunter told him. “The Hinds and the battleships belong to Viktor’s armies. Cover those people on the beaches, will you? I got to catch that bastard.”
“Go, Hawk!” Crunch called back, diving toward the battleships. “We’ll take care of things here!”
With that, Hunter climbed and headed south, adjusting his long-range radar hoping to pick up Lucifer’s chopper.
The Brazilian captain, the man who had been in charge of Lucifer’s personal battleship, now sat bound hand and foot in the jump seat of the Hind helicopter. They were flying at 7000 feet, heading south toward Lucifer’s headquarters at Rub al Khali.
“You stupid fool!” Lucifer was screaming at the captain, the horribly scarred face just an inch away. The captain could see little bubbles of foam forming at the sides of the madman’s mouth. “You have personally destroyed half this fleet. You have set back our timetable by weeks!”
“But Your Excellency,” the captain said in his own defense. “You approved my idea to bring the battleships up to the war zone. In fact, you suggested it.”
Lucifer put his face even closer to the captain’s. “How dare you speak that way to me, you bush-man!” the black-cloaked man said. “If it weren’t for you, we would still have a complete fleet. We would not have lost seventeen thousand men to those goddamn Moroccans, and we would not have lost our only aircraft and my laser imager. That was our most powerful weapon!”
“But Your Highness,” the captain plunged on, “I had nothing to do with all that. It was Hunter and those Englishmen. How could I have known they would have stuck it out so long? How did I know they were so crazy?”
Lucifer closed his eyes and rubbed his burned face. “Captain,” he said in a slight, whiny voice, “You have just admitted your guilt to me. In front of witnesses!”
Lucifer spread his hands out to indicate his ever-present entourage of bodyguards.
“Because, captain,” he continued, “if you say that Hunter caused all these losses and I say that you did, then that must mean you were, in fact, allied with Hunter and the Britishers!”
“That’s preposterous!” the captain screamed.
“Is it?” Lucifer said, turning toward him again. There was more foam coming from the corners of his mouth now. “Then why is it that you keep bringing up Hunter? Why!? Don’t you understand I screwed his woman? I have that much power over him.”
The captain had had enough. He knew he was to be executed anyway. He decided to cash in his chips.
“Oh, fuck you,” he screamed back at Lucifer. “Everyone in the world knows that Hunter kicked your ass in The Circle War and got his broad back. In fact, he kicked your ass so bad, you had to change your name!”
Lucifer’s bodyguards thought the boss was going to pop a vein. No one, but no one, had ever talked to him like that. They half-expected to see steam coming out of his ears.
But Lucifer fooled them all. He simply turned to the nearest bodyguard and offhandedly said, “Get rid of him.”
The bodyguards unhesitatingly stood the captain up and pushed him towards the open door of the Hind. Lucifer turned his back as the bodyguard kicked the captain hard in the back. The officer tumbled out of the chopper, screaming as he fell.
Chapter 45
Hunter was losing fuel fast.
He had more than a dozen holes in his starboard wing, and possibly more on his portside. His canopy was cracked in three places and his radio was cutting in and out. What was worse, only a third of his cockpit devices were functioning, all his navigational units were out, and his left rear stabilizer was all but shot off. With all the 16’s maladies, Hunter was lucky if he could keep it going at half its normal cruising speed.