Tomorrow War Read online

  Wingman

  The Tomorrow War

  Mack Maloney

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Two

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part Three

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Part Four

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  A Biography of Mack Maloney

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  The Sea of Japan

  THE KUMO-DO MARU HAD been at sea for almost four days.

  It was a small fishing barge, thirty-four feet long, with a very shallow draft, a cranky diesel engine, and a crew of five. Four scientists were also on board. Two were marine geologists, the other two, triatomic physicists. They were all from the University of Seoul.

  They had been plying the waters around 35 degrees latitude and 140 degrees longitude for nearly one hundred hours, through rough seas and very heavy downpours. This typhoonlike weather had been the norm in this area for the past week.

  But now it was close to dawn and the weather was settling down. The skies were clearing, the rain had stopped, and the wind was dying to a breeze.

  For the first time in a long time, the sea was peaceful.

  The senior scientist on board was Dr. Chin Lo Ho, a triatomic physicist with nearly thirty years of experience studying quantum fusion. He’d been at his daughter’s wedding when the Great Blast occurred. He would never forget the feeling of the earth moving beneath his feet and seeing all his wedding guests stagger in unison as they danced the bride’s tribute. The whole reception building shook—the entire city of Seoul shook—for more than two hours.

  When Ho called his colleagues in the seismic department at the university on the last working phone in Seoul, he learned two were unconscious and two were busy trying to fix their earthquake-monitoring station. The two-hour rumble had been the largest earth disturbance ever recorded, by a factor of ten.

  But Ho knew even then that this titanic disturbance had not been an earthquake. Not a natural one anyway. And though it might have seemed perverse, the first thing he wanted to do once the ground stopped shaking was hurry to the east coast of Korea and see what the oceans were doing.

  He was finally able to secure transport to the city of Kangnung two hours later, arriving on the coast just before dawn. He and two students set up a small control station on a ridge that rose about seven hundred feet above the sea. At the time Ho believed what he was doing amounted to little more than an experiment in suicide. He was convinced that if his estimates were right, he and his students would be washed away by a tsunami he was sure was going to come sometime later that day.

  But it never did.

  That was six days ago.

  Now, standing on the bow of the fishing barge looking out at the ever-calming sea, Ho’s brain was stuffed with more questions than before. The whole of Northeast Asia was still in chaos because of the Great Blast. Communications were out everywhere, power grids thrown off-line, water main breaks, thousands of scattered fires. But amazingly, no tidal waves, and very little earthquake-related damages. That’s why Ho knew that whatever event shook the Earth six days before, it had not been “natural.”

  The biggest question in Ho’s mind was: Had it been “supernatural?”

  Ho studied the water before him now, and then turned back to the captain of the skiff.

  “Are you certain your coordinates are correct?” he asked Tuk-Pak, the grizzled old skipper.

  “They are the coordinates you gave me, Professor,” Pak replied. “Because I’ve never had the opportunity to actually sail in waters at these particular coordinates, I cannot tell you if we are at the right place or not. I can only tell you that we sailed to where you told us. Nothing more….”

  Ho looked in all directions—all he saw was water.

  He checked his map again. Did he have the coordinates right? One hundred forty degrees longitude, 35 degrees latitude. Yes, they were correct.

  Then there was only one explanation….

  He turned to the skipper and said crisply: “Bring us to a stop.”

  Pak motioned to his second in command to kill the barge’s engine. Soon the vessel slowed to a stop.

  To the amazement of all on board, Professor Ho then did a very strange thing: He stepped over the railing, and lowered himself down the side of the vessel into the water below.

  The crew rushed to throw him a life preserver—but none was needed. Ho simply stepped from the skiff’s bottom rail into the water—and stood up.

  Those aboard the barge stared in amazement. For a moment it seemed like Ho was walking on top of the water!

  But then the reality of the situation began to sink in—and this was even more startling.

  They had entered a part of the sea that, though vast, was at best, just a couple of feet deep.

  Ho looked up at them and spread his arms wide.

  “My friends,” he said. “This is where the city of Tokyo used to be ….”

  CHAPTER 2

  Off the coast of South America

  THE HUGE B-201 “SUPERSEA” Navy bomber was approximately 250 miles off the coast of Peru when it finally detected the withdrawing Japanese fleet.

  The aircraft had taken off from Panama two days before. An enormous aircraft with a crew of forty-two and a dozen double-reaction engines, which allowed it to stay airborne for weeks at a time, it had been flying recon up and down the west coast of South America since arriving in the area.

  Its mission was to locate what remained of the once mighty Japanese fleet. At exactly 1234 hours on this day, it had done just that.

  The war with Japan had lasted not quite nine months.

  It had begun with a massive Japanese bombing raid on the American naval shipyard at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1998. Soon after that, Japanese forces attacked and occupied the Panama Canal. A few days later, huge troop-carrying submarines began landing Japanese forces, first in Peru and then throughout South America.

  This initial invasion was not opposed by the Peruvians. To the contrary, they celebrated the Japanese occupation—at first anyway. The Japanese Imperial troops rapidly took over every country on the South American continent except Brazil. With its new territory consolidated, the Japanese occupation quickly turned brutal as the conquerors forced the native citizens to become slaves and servants, while new colonists from Nippon exploited South America’s untapped resources, mostly cattle and oil.

  It took awhile for the United States to gear up for war with Japan. America had just won a fifty-year struggle against Germany, and the country’s resources and its citizenry were exhausted. But after Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor and Panama, there was never any question as to the United States’ reaction. It was just a little bit long in coming.

  The element for winning this war, and making it last just a few months instead of fifty-plus years, turned out to be a weapon that had fallen into the hands of America’s staunchest ally, the United Kingdom, through very serendipitous means. A joint team of American and British scientists working in an ultrasecret laboratory inside a hill on the isolated West Falkland Island created a “saturated warhead” nuclear bomb whose power potential was so intense, even they didn’t know just how much destruction it would cause.

  Coordinating several feints as attacks on Japanese forces in Panama and in South America—including a land invasion from Brazil—the U.S. sent a lone airplane carrying the “superbomb” on an odd transpolar mission. Its goal was to drop the superbomb at precisely the right moment on the city of Tokyo.

  Flying under complete radio silence, this bombing mission was accomplished. And Honshu, the main island of Japan, was utterly devastated, and literally sunk, as a result.

  What happened during that bombing run and the fate of the crew were not known.

  In fact, many people in the U.S. were still unaware of the superbombing, thinking instead that the Japanese simply gave up after the lightning-quick invasions of Panama and occupied South America.

  However, the reality of the situation was different—and still top secret, as were the names of the crew that had piloted the enormous B-2000 superbomber that had dropped the incredible weapon.

  The most secret element of all was the identity of the superbomber’s flight commander.

  Only a handful of people in the U.S. military knew that his name was Hawk Hunter.

  Now flying over the recently spotted Japanese fleet, a man known only as “Y” had his nose pressed up against one of the many observation bubbles located along the fuselage of the huge B-201 Navy bomber.

  Y was an agent for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). What he saw below was a fleet of thirty-six ships. Most of them were mammoth troop-carrying submarines, with a few equally large aircraft-carrying submarines mixed in. They were all riding on the surface; apparently none of them had enough power or ambition to submerge.

  They were a ragged group. Once mighty and fierce, most of these vessels now looked rusty and in an advanced state of disrepair. Each was flying an enormous white flag just above its bridge. Many had coffins lined up on their decks.

  Looking down at them, Y could not help but feel a pang of sadness in his chest, albeit just a small one. This was a navy in retreat, a disgraced and defeated force, returning to a homeland that simply did not exist anymore.

  What could be sadder than that?

  He arranged to have a few miles of long-range TV instafilm shot of the retreating fleet and prepared to send a detailed report back to OSS headquarters in Washington. But just as he was heading for the communications room, he met the radio officer coming out. He was holding a folded sheet of yellow paper held together with a piece of bright red tape.

  “This just came in for you from Washington,” the comm officer told him. “Level Six priority.”

  Y just stared at the piece of paper. Level Six was the security level used only in times of war—or a similar crisis. The war with Japan was over. Why, then, would a message for him be rated so high?

  “Did you read it?” he asked the comm officer.

  The man nodded sheepishly. “Couldn’t help it, sir,” he replied.

  Y just shook his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Just give me a heads-up. How heavy is it?”

  The comm officer just stared back at him.

  “The heaviest,” he said.

  Y reluctantly took the message from him. He’d been planning to take two months of R and R after this flight was completed. Now he knew that idea was probably in serious jeopardy.

  “It doesn’t say anything about a promotion in there, does it?” Y asked the comm man jokingly.

  The officer just shook his head. “No, sir,” he replied. “But it does say you should prepare for the biggest assignment of your career.”

  Y’s face fell a mile.

  “Damn,” he said, turning the secret message over in his hands. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Chicago, South Side

  IT WAS A SWEATY night inside the King Krabb Klub.

  The place was packed as usual. A line of limos and taxicabs was stalled outside. Passengers were climbing out; a longer line formed at the door. Greasy blues were flowing out of the place. The streets were still littered with red, white, and blue confetti, the remains of the huge celebration ending the Great Pacific War, as the recently completed conflict against Japan was now called.

  Details were few on exactly how the war ended—but people in this place weren’t as inquisitive about such things as in other universes. The war was over, ended by some secret military operations, and that was good enough for them. For the first time in nearly six decades, the United States was not in the midst of a global conflict. To them, peace was a very unusual state of affairs.

  So the celebrating had been going on for nearly a week, and the King Krabb Klub, like the dozens of other blues bars along McKinney Street, had been packed around the clock since the announcement of Japan’s surrender.

  There was no sign that the revelry would slow down anytime soon.

  It was about midnight when a military vehicle known as a Jeepster pulled up in front of the King Krabb Klub.

  Three men got out. Two were soldiers of the OSS’s military wing; the other was Agent Y.

  One look from the doorman and the crowd parted for the three men like the Red Sea. Y left the two OSS soldiers at the door with orders to stay cool and not bother anybody. Then he stepped inside the foyer of the small but very hip South Side club.

  As always, the man known as Colonel Crabb was sitting in a huge chair right near the front door. As always, he had a young beauty on each knee—short skirts, long curly hair, one was a blonde, the other a redhead. Like his knowledge of the blues, Crabb’s taste in females was always impeccable.

  Crabb looked up and recognized Y right away. Their paths had crossed more than a few times in this universe—as well as in others.

  Crabb was a big man, but he lightly lifted the two females from his lap and gave Y a hearty handshake. “Here to celebrate, I hope?”

  Y just shook his head. “Have you ever known me to celebrate anything?” he asked.

  Crabb took stock of the man. Y was small, wiry, tough-looking, perpetually twenty-seven years old. Crabb knew Y’s reputation inside the OSS was exemplary. And it was true, he’d never seen the man in anything other than an all-business mode.

  Still that was a mold Crabb might break.

  “Take a look around,” he told the OSS man. He swept his hand to indicate the bustling club. Beautiful women were everywhere. The blues band on stage was superb, the smell of Creole food and the aroma of fine liquor was thick in the air. “It’s criminal not to enjoy yourself here. At least have a drink ….”

  Y shook his head again.

  “I don’t drink,” he said. “Besides, I’m here on official business.”

  Crabb’s shoulders fell a bit. It hurt him that anyone would not be seduced by his establishment.

  “How official?” he asked Y.

  The OSS man looked him straight in the eye.

  “Hawk is missing,” he said. “And I need some help in finding him.”

  Crabb just stared back at Y. Suddenly he knew exactly why the OSS man had come.

  “Our friend is playing cards in the back room,” Crabb said. “I’ll bring you to him.”

  Zoltan the Magnificent was in the process of pulling an inside straight when Y and Crabb walked in.

  If possible, the small room at the rear of the club was smokier and smelled more of alcohol than the main room. Five men were seated around the table, ten young girls, in various stages of u
ndress, lingered around the periphery. The walls were adorned with photos of old blues greats and long-ago sports heroes. A single bare bulb provided the only illumination. It cast odd shadows everywhere.

  There was more than one thousand dollars on the table. The atmosphere was friendly but tense.

  That all changed when Y and Crabb appeared.

  The players saw Y’s uniform and gasped. Gambling was against the law, and no one wanted to have the OSS anywhere near such illegality. Some players went to hide their cards—but Y just raised his hand.

  “Everyone freeze,” he said.

  Then he looked at Zoltan’s cards and shook his head.

  “This man is clairvoyant. He was once an officer in the U.S. Psychic Corps. You are foolish to play with him….”

  The other four men just stared at Y and then over at Zoltan. It was true of course—Zoltan did hold a reserve officer’s commission in military psychic ability. He couldn’t read minds very well, but he did have success at correctly guessing which cards were going to be drawn at any given time from a deck. And he had just drawn an inside straight.

  But now the thousand-dollar pot was vaporizing before his eyes. On a nod from Y, the other players began quickly pulling their money out and slinking from the table.

  Crabb nodded to them. “Drink free for the rest of the night, guys,” he said. “Just keep your mouths shut, OK?”

  The four men left the small room quietly, taking the girls with them.

  Y sat down next to Zoltan as Crabb stood watch by the door.

  The psychic was crestfallen, but not that surprised to see the OSS man. He’d had a quick flash of Y’s face about thirty minutes earlier.

  “I could have used that grand,” Zoltan told Y as he rustled through the few dollars he still had on the table.

  Y just shrugged. “Something more important has come up,” he said. “I have an assignment for you.”

  Zoltan’s spirits should have soared at this. In civilian life he was a professional psychic/nightclub hypnotist. But his bookings had been very sparse lately. With the war over and everyone seemingly certain about the near future, there was no need for the services of a psychic. Oddly enough, that had been the attitude while the war was on, as well.