Return of Sky Ghost Page 4

  “What does this mean?” the woman asked her husband, all thoughts of checkers gone now.

  “It means the United States is at war again—I guess,” he replied.

  “But Japan?” the woman said. “I didn’t even know they had an army. You always hear how peaceful they are.”

  “Well, something has apparently changed in that area,” the man said, sitting back down and sipping his tea, trying his best to act normal.

  But acting normal would prove difficult. This message had many ramifications for them here, none of them any good. What were the chances the Japanese would make it all the way down to the foot of South America, unopposed or not? he wondered silently. From there it would only be a 600-mile leap over to the Falklands. Would the Japanese eventually invade here as well?

  He really didn’t want to think about that.

  He checked his watch—his only nervous habit. It was 0415 hours. He drained his tea then stood up again.

  “I think I’ll check the doughnuts,” he said.

  She laughed. He always made her laugh when he said that.

  “OK, dear,” she replied. “I’ll start dinner. We’ll eat early tonight.”

  He leaned over, kissed her lips, a little longer than usual, then gave her a hug.

  Then he walked over to the kitchen closet, stepped inside, and closed the heavy wooden door tightly behind him.

  He was now in a tiny, dimly lit hallway. Before him was another door. Beyond it was an elevator which went down sixteen levels, right into the heart of the small mountain on which the farmhouse sat.

  The man stepped into the elevator, pushed the button for the bottom level, then endured the painfully slow descent. Thoughts of the secret message he’d just received were still burning in his mind. How far away was Lima, Peru, from here anyway? He promised himself he’d check a map the first chance he got.

  The elevator finally arrived at the sixteenth level—the man was now 250 feet below the basement of the farmhouse. The door opened and he saw two familiar faces staring back at him. They were British STS commandos, part of the permanent guard for the well-hidden underground facility.

  They gave him a friendly salute, asked about the weather and his wife—it was a daily conversation between them. The man replied in a friendly manner but then hurried down the long metal-encased corridor the men were guarding. At the end was another thick, reinforced door. The man reached it quickly, and unclasped the intricate lock. The door opened with a squish of hydraulics and a whoosh of air. A laboratory lay beyond. It was of ample size and contained many pieces of exotic scientific equipment. This had been the man’s workplace for the past ten years.

  There were eighteen men inside the Level 16 lab at the moment. Most stopped working when the man came in, and either nodded or voiced a greeting. He politely waved them back to their work. The man then walked the length of the lab, eventually finding the lead scientist on duty. The man handed him the secret message he’d just received. The scientist read it, his eyebrows arched, his forehead wrinkled in worry.

  “The Japanese Army in South America?” he murmured. “What does this mean for us?”

  The man just shrugged.

  “Maybe nothing,” he replied optimistically.

  The man looked around him. This laboratory probably contained more secrets than any other place in the world. Weapons, materials processing, communications. Power generation. By its very isolation, below this hill on the windbeaten spit of land known as West Falkland, it was a highly secure facility.

  Or it had been. Now, with these new events in South America, that security seemed a little less certain.

  The man looked into the glass-enclosed room nearby and saw four men leaning over a table on which a bomb had been placed. The black-painted bomb was thin and about thirty inches long. In most respects, it looked like a typical aerial-delivery weapon. But the man, the scientist, and everyone else down here knew the bomb was anything but typical.

  “How’s our progress today?” the man asked the scientist, nodding toward the glass enclosure.

  “On the Z-project you mean?” the scientist asked. “Slow but steady.”

  “That’s always good to hear,” the man replied.

  There was a short silence between them, each one still wondering exactly what the secret message might portend for them. Finally, the scientist asked the man a question.

  “Do you want to do a security check in Room One?”

  The man nodded. “Yes—even though it’s a little early, I do.”

  They walked to a huge iron door located at the far end of the lab, behind which was Room One. Within it lay the greatest secret of them all.

  The scientist went through the complex series of security systems and finally managed to open the door. The man stepped inside and the scientist closed the door behind him. Once again he was in a small, dark room with only a faint red light for illumination. At the far end of this small chamber was yet another door. Nearby was a control panel containing a myriad of blinking lights. The man scanned each one of them and was heartened to see that all was normal, all was safe. A smile creased his sixty-year-old face. Thank goodness for that, he thought.

  He walked over to the door itself, put his ear to it, and smiled again.

  He could hear the wind rushing on the other side.

  Five

  Callao Beach, Peru

  Six months later

  THE WAVES NO LONGER broke along the shore of Callao Beach.

  There were no more seabirds. No more fish or crabs, sea otters or seals. The whales no longer visited the inlets and bays dotting the mid-Peruvian coastline. The water itself was no longer blue.

  The coastline was now blocked off by a miles-long artificial harbor. Made of aluminum planking, huge rubber inner tubes, and miles of rope and steel cables, the harbor, complete with immense off-loading machinery, fueling berths, and repair facilities, had been fouling the waters off Callao since the first Japanese soldier had come ashore back in December. So much oil and grease and waste water had been dumped into the faux harbor, the sand was now black as coal, the water as thick as the worst of Prudhoe Bay.

  The city of Lima, just a mile away, had changed as well. Gone were the slums, the narrow streets, the neighborhoods teeming with the poor. Now the city was a magnificent example of new urban sprawl. High-rises, business towers, trading halls filled the municipal landscape. Downtown Lima was not a place where people lived anymore—at least not the native Peruvians. The former citizens had been driven back into the jungle long ago. The new city-dwellers were all Japanese, and the design of their architecture was definitely Pacific Rim. Just about all the new structures—made almost entirely of pearl-white cement—had a pagodaish look to them. In many places it was as if an entire section of Tokyo, Osaka, or Yokohama had been picked up, carried across the vast Pacific, and plunked down into the South American jungle. Nearly a quarter of a million Japanese citizens had emigrated to the city and the outlying areas.

  Even the name of Lima had changed. It was now called Sukiwishi-mi. Roughly translated: It belongs to us.

  This term could have been applied to most of the South American continent as well. The Japanese invasion—peaceful, but not benign—had been a monstrous success. Brief but brutal battles with Paraguay and Colombia had quickly brought those countries into line. Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador immediately accepted provisional status. Brazil agreed to a nonaggression pact with Tokyo, but relations were still very shaky. Bolivia was in a constant state of anarchy, as was Venezuela. But for the most part, the Japanese digestion of America’s southern hemisphere was on schedule.

  The Japanese were still in firm control of the Panama Canal as well. Repairs were in full swing and expected to be completed within a month. With the canal reopened, Japanese access to the Caribbean and the Atlantic would be solidified. After that, there were secret plans among Japan, Argentina, and Peru for a three-pronged invasion of Brazil.

  If successful, then the entire co
ntinent would truly become a colony of Japan.

  This particular day was a special one for the new inhabitants of Sukiwishi-mi, Peru.

  A celebration was being planned in honor of the one millionth Japanese soldier to come ashore. On hand for this event was Supreme Commander General Wakisaki, the godfather of the Japanese occupation of South America. Wakisaki’s appearance in downtown Sukiwishi-mi the day before had set off waves of hysteria, so revered was the high general. The small, toadlike man who seemed to have a slight slump to his left shoulder due to the pounds of medals he constantly wore, was close to deity status among the new South Americans these days. In their eyes, and in the eyes of the million troops under his command, Wakisaki could do no wrong. He was considered infallible.

  He had a specially built aircraft, a huge ten-engine SuperKate transport which had been designed to look like an airborne palace. Wakisaki had taken an aerial tour of the new South America the previous day and what he saw would have made Buddha cry. Where once stood thick rain forests, now cities were being built. Oil rigs by the thousands—from the Bolivian plain to the Chilean lowlands—grew higher than the trees. Seven of the great South American rivers had been dammed extensively and now the western portion of the continent positively crackled with electricity. On thousands of acres of newly cleared land, tens of millions of cattle now grazed.

  The sight-seeing flight had brought a slight grin to Wakisaki’s face—the only hint of the delight hiding within the stone of a man. Even the most famous samurai warriors had not accomplished what he had. He was certain to go down in history as the most successful soldier ever to come out of Japan, or anywhere else.

  So the general was in a good mood when the ceremony on Callao Beach began. The millionth soldier had been carefully selected from a new division of engineering troops that had arrived off the Peruvian coast two nights before. The man bearing the magic number had to be well-groomed, well-indoctrinated, and of the correct political stature, and many hours had gone into this. A reviewing stand had been erected near the beach, a huge ornate affair located up on the highest dune, with the new city of Lima as a background. Every Japanese officer of any import was on hand for this ceremony, nearly 300 in all.

  An honor guard of no less than 10,000 troops had also been mustered. Six thousand of them were Japanese; the remaining troops were made up of native regional allies, Argentines, Chileans, Bolivians, and of course Peruvians.

  It was a bright sunny morning. The waters off Callao were sparkling like coal. The temperatures had already started to climb. At precisely 0900 hours, the ceremony began. The special boat carrying the special soldier crept toward shore. General Wakisaki grinned slightly as he got caught up in the moment. Never had a deployment of troops gone off as successfully as this, he thought for the millionth time. The boat arrived. The special soldier stepped off. Trumpets blared. Dozens of twenty-one-gun salutes were fired. A cheer went up from all those assembled.

  No wonder then that no one heard the dull roar of aircraft coming from the north.

  The first plane to come out of the sky was an enormous B-17/52.

  It was bright silver, with long, swept-back wings bearing eight engines per side. Its thick body carried no less than four separate bomb bays. As many as forty triple-.50 machine guns poked out of gun stations up and down the aircraft’s fuselage. The roar from its engines was simply deafening.

  It came in low and slow, and flames could be seen shooting from its engines as it passed over the Tower of the New Sun, the combined temple, government center, and military officers’ club located in the middle of the city. The airplane was so low and moving so slowly it looked like a gigantic prehistoric bird; this is why the native Peruvians, who had seen this thing before, called it ala del muerte, roughly translated, “The Death Wing.”

  The plane roared over the Temple of the Sun and opened all four of its bomb bays. In seconds, long streams of black sticks began falling from the great plane’s belly. The black sticks were incendiary bombs—explosives designed to start fires. Much of the new Lima was built of flammable materials: wood, hemp, plastic, rubber. Even some of the properties inside the pearl-white cement were flammable.

  The huge plane began dropping 40,000 pounds of firebombs along a one-mile strip in the center of the city. In seconds the main avenue was awash in a horrible yellow glow. Fire was suddenly everywhere. Stores, cars, trees, people burst into flame. The mechanical screams overhead were as terrifying as the human ones below. The plane unloaded its final bay of ordnance, then with a great explosion of energy and power from its sixteen engines, sped up and roared away.

  But no sooner had it departed when two more B-17/52s arrived above the city, roaring over the mountains to the north and dropping down just as low as the first plane. They headed for the eastern edge of the sprawling metropolis, opening their massive bomb bays and letting go thousands of more powerful incendiary devices.

  The target of these bombs was a huge barracks located on the outskirts of New Lima. Guided by the flame caused by bombs dropped by the first aircraft, this pair of attackers laid a carpet of yellow fire and smoke across the long line of military housing units, incinerating soldiers and civilians alike.

  As soon as they departed, two more huge bombers appeared and began dropping their fiery loads on the city’s central marketplace. More death. More screams. More unspeakable horror. Behind them came two more—their target was the city’s waterworks. Behind them, two more, aiming for the city’s power station. Without water and electricity, the fires raging throughout the city could not be put out.

  All this was happening so fast, the people on the beach stood aghast, not quite knowing what they should do. It was High General Wakisaki who acted first. As the fifth pair of bombers swooped in low and unloaded their fire weapons, Wakisaki pulled out his pistol, put it against the head of his chief Air Defense officer, and pulled the trigger. The man immediately collapsed to the platform floor, blood spurting out of his forehead. His second-in-command, the assistant air defense officer, got Wakisaki’s message right away. He grabbed a radiophone and made a very urgent call to the air base located in the Lima suburb of Costa Camu.

  But the people at the air base, where five squadrons of Mitsubishi Super Zero jet fighters were stationed, needed no warning about what was happening. Their radar sets had picked up the incoming bomber force as soon as the first airplane came over the mountain. This was way too late to prevent the bombs from falling on New Lima, but still enough time to scramble aircraft together, to attempt to shoot down the attackers. The problem was, the air base itself was being attacked. Not by the gigantic B-17/52s, but by a single, much smaller aircraft.

  The officer on the other end of the radiophone was in such a state he could barely speak—not a good situation for the newly appointed air defense officer. With panic breaking out among those on hand for the One Millionth Soldier ceremony, the air defense man wanted action quick from his newly acquired charges at the air base. But it seemed as if a single enemy airplane was keeping them all pinned down.

  “How can this be?” the air defense chief demanded of the air base commandant.

  “This pilot, he is crazy,” the air base commander was saying. “He is everywhere at once. We thought at first there were four or five of them. But it is only one!”

  The air defense officer was getting very angry—and nervous. Wakisaki was not two feet away from him, broiling him with his laser eyes, even as the city of New Lima began to burn just a mile away. The next bullet from Wakisaki’s gun would surely wind up in the new air defense minister’s head if he didn’t get action very very quickly.

  “You have antiaircraft rockets!” the air defense man was screaming into the radiophone. “And antiaircraft guns. And more than fifty airplanes. Are you saying that one airplane—a fighter—is preventing you from taking any measures?”

  The air defense man hit the receive button for his answer—but there was no reply.

  Startled, he sent the message ag
ain, his voice rising a full octave and five meters in volume for the benefit of Wakisaki, who was again fingering his pistol.

  But again, there was no reply from the air base commander. A third try produced the same result.

  The line from the air base was dead.

  Wakisaki shot the new air defense man anyway and then turned to his ministers of ground troops and security. Unfortunately, both men were diving for cover under the review stand at that moment, an action Wakisaki first interpreted as cowardice but was actually done out of self-preservation. For now there was a new growl in the air. Wakisaki finally looked up and saw two more airplanes coming over the mountain.

  They were big. They were silver. And they were heading right for the ceremony on Callao Beach.

  Wakisaki himself just barely made it under the platform as the two huge airplanes roared overhead. The troops on the beach scattered at first sight of them too—the civilians had already fled the area in panic. Some soldiers simply hit the ground where they stood, covered their heads, and hoped for the best. Others darted into patches of jungle nearby. Some even jumped into the filthy water of the artificial Callao Bay. Everyone expected to have a heavy rain of firebombs come down on them at any moment.

  But that did not happen. Dropping firebombs on human targets was usually a waste of weaponry. Besides, these airplanes—they were B-24/36s, mammoth aircraft which embodied the look of a B-24 Liberator and a B-36 Peacemaker—were not bombers per se. Rather their fuselages were thick with gun blisters up and down the length of them, and dozens of triple-.50 machine guns had been installed in these stations. They were then a rarity in this world. They were flying gunships.

  Now, as the two planes roared over, they both went into a long, slow turn above the beach, one plane placing its nose on the other’s tail, almost forming one, nightmarishly huge gun platform.

  Their first targets were the gaggle of warships anchored and vulnerable about one mile offshore. The airplanes went into a very tight circle not 500 feet above one of the huge, submersible troop ships. Suddenly, all at once, every gun on the right side of both airplanes opened fire. It looked like a sheet of flame pouring out of both giant airplanes. In seconds, the huge sub was shrouded in a cloud of fire and smoke as the planes went round and round like a devilish aerial merry-go-round.