He didn’t speak. It appeared to Hunter that the strange little guy was working his way into a trance. He was sitting in an authentic cross-legged swami style, his palms open on his knees, his eyes closed tight. Hunter expected him to start moaning the magic word “Om” at any minute. Instead the man just sat there rigidly, the ever-present stream of drool running out of the corners of his mouth and on to his disgustingly moist and dirty beard.
Hunter moved a little closer to the man. Who the hell was he? he thought. How could anyone so obviously fringed out see the future so clearly? How did the man function from minute to minute, day to day? What spirits haunted him?
Suddenly Peter opened his eyes and turned his strange gaze right at Hunter. The eyes were almost red with intensity. The stare absolutely haunting. “You … ” he said, as if Hunter had just suddenly appeared. “You are the pilot. The Wingman. I see you. In my dreams. Battling the Angel of Death … ”
Hunter knew the man was about to go “off” once again. But he also knew that it was in Peter’s most disordered moments that he was at his most prophetic.
He knelt down beside the man. “What else do you see, Peter?”
The man put his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes in his agitation. “Lucifer,” he said, his voice trembling. “I see him in my dreams too. His face. In the sky. The color of blood.
“Lucifer’s minions will attack us. I see them now. Their boats can fly on the sea. The storms do not bother them. They are protected by the Death Angel’s face in the sky.”
Peter took his hands away from his eyes and looked again right at Hunter.
“The multitudes turn away when they see his face. But you, The Wingman, do not turn away … ”
Suddenly Peter was on his feet and grabbing Hunter by the collar. His face was desperate. Tears rolled out of his wild eyes and down his soiled face. “You do not turn away!” he said, tugging at Hunter’s flight suit. “I can no longer help you! Don’t you understand? I’ve done all I can!”
The man let out a long, unearthly, agonizing wail.
“This ship,” Peter said, more tears flowing. “This ship was once mine. I tried! I tried to defeat the Red demons. But I abandoned it! Yes, abandoned it!
“Now it’s up to you. It’s your ship now. You must use it. You must defeat the great Evil sent to this world. You! The Wingman. My dreams … Your battles to come. God help me! Why was I cursed this way!”
By this time, Peter was screaming at the top of his lungs. His SAS guards were on the scene and dragging him away. Hunter was stunned. He couldn’t move. A strange feeling had completely wrapped around his body, holding him rigidly in place. It wasn’t so much what Peter said — to anyone else it was only so much raving, drooling malarky. But it was how he said it. A psychic link existed between him and the strange man. Peter’s words had penetrated the deepest recesses of Hunter’s soul. The place where the feeling came from. Now an ice-cold chill enveloped his body as he watched the SAS men lead Peter into a hatchway in the carrier’s superstructure.
Do not turn away. The words echoed in Hunter’s ears. Do not turn away!
Chapter 24
One of the Commodore’s boat captains saw them first …
The carrier fleet had passed through the Strait of Sicily and was about 100 miles due east of the island of Malta. Captain Olson had decided the best way to utilize the Liberte Marina was to deploy them forward of the carrier. This way they could serve as lookouts and warn the Saratoga of any treacherous waters ahead.
So now the proud fleet of armed yachts, converted workboats, ferries, and trawlers plowed the sea, spread out anywhere from ten to fifteen miles ahead of the carrier force.
It was mid-afternoon. The day had dawned hot and nearly breezeless. Hunter was in the CIC, catching up on the latest radio intercepts from Lucifer’s Empire, when a frantic call came in from one of the Commodore’s lead boats.
“Emergency! Emergency!” the heavily accented voice cried out from the radio speakers. “We are under attack! Enemy aircraft! We are under att—”
The radio suddenly went dead.
“Christ,” Heath said to Hunter. “What the hell was that?”
Hunter didn’t reply. He was already out of the CIC, and up on the ship’s bridge. There, the six men of Yaz’s group charged with keeping the carrier on course had also heard the message and were already reacting. Yaz himself was crouched over the bridge radar. It had momentarily picked up several blips just as the panicky call had come in from the Freedom Navy boat. Now Hunter was peering out of the ship’s powerful telescope, searching the horizon for the boat that made the call.
The first thing he saw was a faint wisp of smoke off to the northeast.
“Yaz, can we establish contact with any of those boats out there?” Hunter called out, zooming in on the smoke.
Yaz moved over to the bridge radio and started punching buttons and twisting dials. “We’ve only got radio linkup with a few of them,” he said. “I’ll try the Commodore’s boat itself. He’s in that area.”
At the same time, a call came in from one of Olson’s frigates. “We’ve got enemy aircraft out here,” the calm, cool, Norwegian-accented voice reported via the bridge radio speakers. “They have sunk one Freedom Navy boat. They are attacking others. We are moving in to engage … ”
Hunter gave up on the telescope — the action was too far away from them. Instead he moved to the bridge’s backup radio set and called the frigate commander. “This is Major Hunter. Please ID number of enemy aircraft and type.”
The radio crackled with a burst of angry static. Then the same Norwegian voice came back on, this time a little less calm. “We are now under attack ourselves!” the radioman reported. “At least twenty-five aircraft! They are firing on us with cannon and missiles … We are … ” Another burst of static drowned out the man’s word.
Yaz was at Hunter’s side as the pilot tried to raise the frigate again. “How can there be aircraft out there, major?” the American sailor asked. “We would have seen it on the radar before it was a hundred miles near us.”
Hunter jumped up from the radio and ran to the radar set. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “You got a few blips when they first attacked, but now, there’s nothing. Unless … ”
“Unless?” Yaz asked.
“Unless, they are flying too low to be picked up on our screens,” Hunter said, quickly.
Heath had by this time appeared on the bridge, quickly assessed the situation, and yelled into a microphone, “Battle stations!” Immediately, the carrier’s warning klaxon began blaring. Men were running around the ship in controlled pandemonium. While deck sailors were feverishly working on Hunter’s F-16, preparing it for launch, others were using the carrier’s massive elevator to bring up the Harriers from below decks. Similar emergency sirens could be heard from the Norwegian escort ships cruising on either side of the carrier. Even the men on O’Brien’s tugs were reacting.
Once again the bridge’s radio speaker came to life. “SOS! SOS!” the Norwegian voice said. “May Day! May Day! We have been hit. Ship is on fire. May Day! May Day!”
Hunter was back at the radio in a flash. “This is the Saratoga,” he called. “Please ID attacking aircraft … ”
There was no reply.
“That does it,” Hunter said, running from the bridge. “I’m going out there … ”