“Take your time,” Hunter said, watching the sun go down. “I’m not going anywhere. Plus we’ll need a heavy lift chopper. My airplane is slightly bent out of shape.”
“Serious damage?” Crunch asked.
Hunter looked over the battered F-16. “Nothing that can’t be fixed,” he said, managing a proud smile.
“Well, look, Hawk,” Crunch continued. “We cleaned up this mess here at Ismailia. Greased all the Hinds and sank both those battlewagons. Saved a lot of people on the western bank too. A couple of platoons of Football City paratroopers jumped in and they’re helping the Aussies and the Gurkhas take care of the wounded. We were able to set the planes down about a hundred miles west of the Canal.”
A three-second-long burst of static interrupted the F-4 pilot temporarily. It cleared up and he continued. “Anyway, Hawk. I have some good news for you. First of all, we found one friend of yours, a guy named Yaz. He’s alive.”
Hunter shook his head in an effort to clear it out. “Yaz? Alive?”
“Yep, he’s beat up but safe,” Crunch reported. “We found him floating down the Canal in a big, old wooden box. He must have been tossed into the water when the carrier went up and grabbed on to it … ”
Wooden box? Hunter thought. It had to be the wooden box Peter used to sleep in. How strange that the decrepit piece of pine would turn out to be Yaz’s salvation.
“Anyone else?” Hunter asked. “Any more of the British officers from the Saratoga?”
“No, Hawk,” Crunch reported. “A lot of soldiers and sailors. Some Italians. Frenchmen, Spanish. Quite a few Americans. All those women you guys had on board are safe. Three of the frigates made it and that guy Olson will pull through. But all the Englishmen are gone, I’m afraid. No sign of O’Brien, the Irishman, either … ”
Hunter felt a pang of sadness rip through him. He wasn’t surprised to hear they had all perished. But now the reality was setting in. He knew he’d miss them all terribly.
“Another piece of good news, Hawk,” Crunch went on. “The advance elements of The Modern Knights landed at the northern end of the Canal just a little while ago … ”
Suddenly a major burst of static interrupted the transmission. It took more than a minute of Hunter twisting dials before the connection was weakly reestablished.
“Hawk?” Crunch said, his voice growing very faint. “Hawk, I’m losing this signal. Look, switch on your air-sea-rescue indicator. We got an AWACs with us and we’ll pick you up when it gets light again. Okay?”
“Sure,” Hunter said, reaching underneath his cockpit seat to retrieve the small air-sea-rescue blackbox. He pushed its sensor button and it immediately began to hum.
“We’ve already got a lock on you, Hawk,” Crunch said, his voice fading out for good. “Stay warm, pal, and we’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
“Okay, Crunch,” he said. “Thanks. Over and out … ”
Now he was truly alone.
It was already getting cold. He felt his mind start to flood with questions, emotions. But he quickly, calmly blocked it all out. He was too tired to wrestle with it all right now. The time to think about it all would come later, he told himself, staring into the brilliant desert sunset.
With that, he climbed into the F-16’s shattered cockpit, and cleared the seat of all debris. He unfolded the large American flag Yaz had given him and wrapped it around himself to keep warm.
Then he lay his head back and went to sleep.
About the Author
Mack Maloney is the author of numerous fiction series, including Wingman, Chopper Ops, Starhawk, and Pirate Hunters, as well as UFOs in Wartime: What They Didn’t Want You to Know. A native Bostonian, Maloney received a bachelor of science degree in journalism at Suffolk University and a master of arts degree in film at Emerson College. He is the host of a national radio show, Mack Maloney’s Military X-Files.