A HIND burst into flames, flipping nose-over-tail amid an inferno. Oddly, the helicopter’s machine guns were firing as it went crashing into the treetops below. Then one of its unlaunched rockets detonated, blasting trees out of the ground in a rapidly spreading circle.

  Kohl took a deep breath. He saw an Apache making straight for his squad’s formation—a suicidal move for a helicopter pilot at this altitude.

  Kohl fixed his targeting sights on the Apache and pulled a trigger on a rocket. The swish of exploding, burning rocket fuel made a faint sound above the staccato of his rotor. A fiery vapor trail left one launching tube. Then the Apache gunship suddenly disappeared on his screen. It was not possible, and yet he had seen the blip vanish himself.

  “Where is it?” he cried just as the rocket he launched went sailing into a black hole in the rain forest.

  “It is gone! I don’t see it!” someone exclaimed. “A big chopper cannot simply vanish like that.”

  Kohl’s rocket ignited a stand of trees, brightening the night sky briefly. He had missed the Apache completely and it did not make any sense-how could an airship be there at one moment, and then disappear entirely in a matter of seconds?

  It was not logical, he thought. Did these Rebels have some kind of new weapon, making their aircraft invisible? Or were their pilots simply that good at the controls?

  “I’m hit!” a slurred voice screamed from Kohl’s headset as one of the choppers to his left disintegrated in flames, twisting out of the sky in looping arcs. The HIND went out of sight, exploding upon impact, setting more trees aflame.

  A split second later Kohl saw a flash of light off to his right. A HIND was struck by a rocket and it went down like a flaming ball of heavy metal, dropping straight down into the forest with a bang.

  I am going to die tonight, Kohl thought. How is this possible, against only four enemy helicopters?

  “Beta Leader!” a voice said. “We are flying over batteries of anti-aircraft guns. They are shooting rockets up at us, and cannons are spitting lead all over the jungle below.”

  Kohl looked beneath his gunship. The trees were alive with flashing lights, a twinkling, staccato pattern of death, and the distant boom of cannons could be heard above the whine of his turbines and the hammering of his rotors through the air.

  Tracer bullets illuminated the pathways of cannon and machine gun shells, lighting up the night sky like the fireworks displays during Oktoberfest back home.

  “I am hit. Going down!”

  Kohl did not recognize the pilot’s voice. His squad was taking a terrible beating ... it was almost as if they had been lured into a nest of ground-to-air rocket launchers and anti-aircraft gun batteries.

  Something struck the underbelly of his chopper, and a pain began in his left foot so intense that Kohl unconsciously let out a yell, leaving him gasping for air. His boot went flying past his face, slamming against the roof of his gunship cabin.

  The chopper tilted crazily, driven out of control by the impact from a cannon round.

  Blood sprayed the cockpit, and Kohl noticed in the dim lights behind the control panel that his entire left foot was missing, blown off just above his ankle by a Rebel cannon. He seemed strangely detached from his circumstances, almost as if it were all happening in a dream.

  Perhaps it is a dream, he thought dazedly, hoping against hope this wasn’t really happening to him.

  Air pressure fell in the cabin and a map, clipped to a visor above his head, was sucked out of a hole in the M24’s steel-plated floor. An involuntary scream came from his throat.

  He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth, fighting back the pain racing up his leg. And now he had no foot with which to control the rudder or the speed of the tail rotor.

  He felt the chopper begin what felt like an auto-rotating ground-spin although his altimeter said he was still three hundred feet in the air. His mind would not function properly, due to the pain and his massive blood loss. His vision became blurred, and he couldn’t focus his eyes.

  He rubbed at his face, seeing another M24 break into pieces far to his right, blanketed by flames and smoke. Kohl’s radio crackled, but there was no voice from the pilot being shot out of the skies, only static as his last message never made it to his squadron leader.

  The drum of anti-aircraft guns became a rhythm from the dark forest, pounding, blasting away as Kohl’s HIND began a slow descent he could not control.

  “Son of a—!” Another pilot attempted a radio message in the last seconds of his life, before his chopper was hit by a hail of Rebel cannon fire.

  Kohl’s life flashed before him—his childhood in Holland, and his enlistment in the New Federation Army headed by a blond giant named Bruno Bottger. Bottger had made so many promises to his new recruits, promises of a better world and an easier life for all who followed him.

  Then came the collapse of his Nazi-style regime, after a bitter war across Europe. Everyone believed General Field Marshal Bruno Bottger was dead. Then he had surfaced a few years later with his New World Order, headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa, proclaiming he had millions of followers and a better equipped army to fight against Democratic tyranny.

  Tristan Kohl had wanted to believe in this New World Order, as so many others had.

  His M24 circled closer to the earth, out of control because he had no foot to guide it. Sheets of pain ran up his thigh to his belly, and he felt nauseated.

  “Swing toward the east!” a voice cried, garbled through the radio by the sounds of cannon fire and machine guns.

  Yes, Kohl thought. Turn this helicopter toward the east, toward the jungle where the Rebels have no guns.

  Using the stump where his foot should have been, he placed bare bone and bleeding flesh on a rudder pedal and twisted the throttle.

  When his exposed, shattered bone pressed down, stabilizing the rudder, the pain almost caused him to black out.

  The turbines responded with a roar, lifting the HIND just in the nick of time. Kohl ignored the white-hot pain in his stump of a leg to keep pressure on the rudder pedal.

  He saw darkness underneath him, with treetops moving and waving in the wind like waves of an ocean marking the spot where beaches touched the sea. Only, there was no beach within a thousand miles, only thick jungle and rain forest.

  With all his might he kept his concentration on the task at hand, getting his damaged airship out of the range of the anti-aircraft batteries before a cannon, or a rocket, shot him down.

  His mind wandered to the report he was given concerning the commander of this Rebel strike force.

  What was his name? The churning of chopper blades above him prevented him from remembering, for the moment. Was it Malone? Marsh?

  “I am going down!” someone shrieked into his headphones, a voice heightened by hysteria he could not recognize.

  I will not go down, Kohl promised himself. I will stay in the air, no matter what.

  An M24 to his right blew apart, pieces flying, chunks of metal sucked into the downdraft of his rotor blades.

  “Oh no!” he gasped, feeling his gunship shudder in midair when something struck the tip of a swirling blade.

  He fought the controls with all his strength, but with a nagging sensation that he was losing consciousness due to the blood loss from his stump. The HIND would not obey his commands when he tried to steady it.

  “Goddamn you, Bottger!” he snarled, “making us fly these goddamn Russian antiques! Screw you and this stupid war! We can’t win it in these flying buckets....”

  It all went beyond his control when a fragment of a torn M24 sheared off one of his rotor blades. Tristan Kohl’s HIND flipped over, flying upside down until it was driven into the trees below, in the jungles of southern Zimbabwe.

  The explosion destroyed three Bantu tribesmens’ straw and bamboo huts, and started a fire that threatened the entire village.

  Tristan Kohl was killed instantly. He would never again drink beer and dance with the pretty liebfrau at Oktoberfest, or watch the colorful fireworks of the national holiday.

  He lost his life to Bruno Bottger’s dream of worldwide conquest.

  Thirty-one

  Bruno was summoned from his private office by Rudolf. “You are needed in the War Room, sir,” Rudolf said.

  “Is something wrong?” Bruno asked, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “Is it morning already?”

  “No, sir. It’s around midnight.”

  Bruno sat up in his bed, eyes wide, staring suspiciously at his aide. “What has happened?”

  “Captain Kohl and his M24 squadron were attacked at the anti-aircraft batteries we set up on the border with Zimbabwe by four Apache helicopters from Marsh’s Battalion 12.”

  Bruno’s face lit up with anticipation. “Good, the bastard finally outsmarted himself. If I’m not mistaken, Captain Kohl has twelve M24s under his command. Did he completely wipe out the strike force squadron?”

  Rudolf Hessner hesitated. He knew full well the danger a messenger placed himself in when delivering bad news, especially to a leader as unstable as Bottger. “Not exactly, Herr General Field Marshal.”

  “Well, what happened, Rudolf? Surely four Apaches couldn’t defeat twelve M24s, led by our best air commander. Out with it, man!”

  Again Rudolf hesitated before answering. “I’m afraid Captain Kohl took off after the Apaches, and was led north into the jungles of Zimbabwe, where Marsh had set a trap. He had anti-aircraft batteries set up in the jungle, and annihilated Kohl’s command to the last man and last M24.”

  “What?” Bruno bellowed, leaping out of bed to grab Rudolf by his shirt front.

  “I’m afraid Colonel Walz’s M24s, as well as his MIGs, have failed you, sir. Walz says they have all been downed by rockets or GTA missiles. He asked to speak to you immediately.”

  “All of them? All twelve of the HINDs?”

  “I did not ask him for a number, sir. He said his helicopters ran into some kind of unexpected difficulty.”

  Bruno released Rudolf’s shirt and began to pace around his bedroom, muttering to himself for a moment.

  Rudolf was afraid at first that the news had caused his leader to lose his mind, until Bruno turned and stared at him with eyes glittering with hate.

  He pointed his finger at Rudolf, as if aiming a gun. “If Walz has failed us I want him executed, Rudolf.”

  “When, sir?”

  “I will give you a signal. Then, you take him down to the lower level. Tell him you have something to show him. And get rid of him.”

  Bruno began to pull his dress uniform on, still talking over his shoulder at Rudolf. “His incompetence has cost us countless lives and almost half our flying machines. He is an idiot, and I was a fool to have trusted him.”

  “Shall I incinerate his body?”

  “Of course. As far as the others on my staff are concerned, he deserted us. We’ll say we don’t know where he is, and brand him a traitor to the cause. You can say you saw him leaving in a jeep after you talked to him.”

  “Yes, sir. You give me the signal, and I’ll make certain it is done in accord with your wishes.”

  Bruno walked over to Rudolf as he was about to leave through the door.

  “You are a trusted associate, Rudolf Hessner, and you will be rewarded when The New World Order is in place.”

  “I am grateful for your trust, Herr Bottger. It is not misplaced. I would give my life for the cause, and for you, as you must know by now.”

  “Of course. Your loyalty has never been in question, and you have performed valuable services for me. It will not be forgotten.”

  “I understand, Herr Bottger. I fear you have entrusted men with no courage to lead your men in battle. Colonel Walz has always been suspect.”

  “As is General Conreid.”

  Rudolf nodded. “General Ligon believes in his germ warfare weapons. However, he has trusted others to deliver them. When the time is right, I will also get rid of him.”

  “You have a keen understanding of what is needed, my trusted friend.”

  “What is needed is good military leadership.”

  Bruno scowled, his eyes boring into Rudolf’s. “And you do not feel I have given my best tactical knowledge to our effort?”

  “You have, Herr Bottger. It is the others who have failed you.”

  “Alas, this is true. I chose the men I thought would lead us to victory.”

  “It would seem they are leading us into a series of defeats against the Rebels.”

  “Let us not forget that these Rebels are quite clever when it comes to tactics.”

  “Surely, Herr Bottger, they are not more clever than someone like you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then the solution seems to be simple. Get rid of the leaders who are costing you glorious victories.”

  “You are right. I have entrusted the wrong men with too much responsibility.”

  Rudolf gave him a weak smile. “In particular, I believe it was wrong to trust Colonel Walz with our precious aircraft. He has no vision, no plan, only a frontal attack directed at enemy positions.”

  “Yes. A schoolchild could have done exactly the same thing in our behalf.”

  “Should I kill him now?”

  “Wait, until I find out the extent of our losses. However, I doubt the outcome will suit me. If Walz has sent our last remaining MIGs and M24s into a losing battle, he must be ... eliminated.”

  “I will do it. Just give me the killing sign, and I will take him down to the lower level.”

  “It is where he belongs. We have lost so many brave pilots who were willing to give their lives for The New World Order. They followed the orders of a fool without any fighting skills or knowledge of military strategy.”

  “So it would seem, Herr Bottger.”

  Bruno reached for the doorknob. “Just in case things are far worse than we believe, have Alexis prepare my helicopter for takeoff.”

  “Where would you have him take us?”

  “Merely tell him to fill all tanks with fuel. I will not retreat or abandon our compound until it is clear we have no other choice.”

  “Alexis will be informed.”

  Bruno strode out into the concrete corridor leading to the War Room. A voice inside his head warned that incompetent men had again cost him the chance to smash the Tri-States Army, and Ben Raines.

  He should have been more careful, picking the men who would command his air and ground forces in Africa. It was all too clear that he should have seen to every detail himself.

  Well, he promised himself, he would not make that mistake again.

  Thirty-two

  Ben and his team were leading his 501 Batt forward, even as Colonel Holland and his squadron of jets were forging ahead, seeking out the Minsk tanks at the coordinates given to them by Marsh.

  As they drove, leading his column of troop carriers and tanks and armored cars, Ben had Corrie put Holland’s tac-frequency on the radio speaker so they could listen to the air battle as it raged....

  Holland’s voice came on above the static, squeaky and tinny on the small speakers of the radio.

  “Johnny, you see anything yet?”

  “Not yet, Cap’n. But I’m flying at ten hundred feet. If you want us to pick anything out of that desert down there we’re gonna have to get on the deck and fly low and slow.”

  “Roger that, Johnny,” Holland answered.

  “Billy, you and Joe Bob follow Johnny and me down to the deck. Keep your eyes peeled, men, ‘cause I have a feelin’ we’re gonna draw some fire from the krauts down there.”

  “Roger, Cap’n,” Billy answered.

  “We got your six, Cap’n,” Joe Bob said in his soft Texas drawl. “If those boys stick their heads up, I’ll be on ’em like a tick on a coon hound.”

  “Ten-four, Joe Bob. Johnny, let’s drop on down and say howdy to the Germans.”

  “Gotcha, Boss,” Johnny answered. “I’m on your tail, so don’t hit the brakes unless you want some company in your cockpit.”

  The whine of the big Whitney-Pratt engines climbed in pitch over the radio as the two lead planes dived to five hundred feet, flying over the coordinates of the hidden tank group to try to draw their fire so they would reveal their position.

  The rattle of the tanks’ 30 caliber machine guns could clearly be heard, even over the radio as the planes flew above the tanks.

  Several loud metallic thuds were heard, and Johnny’s voice broke the radio silence, sounding strangely calm. “I’m hit, Cap’n. Took six thirty cals through my cockpit plexiglass.”

  “Johnny, you OK?” Holland asked, sounding worried.

  “Sure, Boss. A little plastic in my cheek and a bit of blood on my flight suit. Otherwise, I’m flying strong, the bird is sailing okay ... seem to have missed the engines.”

  “I got ‘em in my sights, Cap’n. Look out, you sand lizards, Joe Bob is deliverin’ the mail!” Joe Bob yelled as his engines screamed and he dove, twin Gatling guns chattering their song of death.

  Holland called out, “Let’s kick these pigs and get some air under us, Johnny. We’ll make a high circle and come back at ’em with the Vulcans.”

  “Ten-four, Boss. I got the pedal to the metal,” Johnny answered as he tilted the nose of his plane at the sky and pushed the throttle forward.

  “On your six, Joe Bob, there’s a Minsk to your left at ten o‘clock. You take him, and I’ll get the armored personnel carrier at three o’clock.”

  “Roger that,” Joe Bob drawled in his laconic manner.

  Thirty seconds later, he gave a whoop. “Whoa, Nelly! Take that and scratch one Minsk. Did you boys see the size of that fireball? Hell, he must’ve been loaded to the gills with HE shells, probably some phosphorus too!”

  “Good shootin’, Joe Bob,” Holland said, his engines screaming in the background. “Now quit posing and get your butt out of the way. I’ve got some mail of my own to deliver ... air mail!”

  The roar of Holland’s cannons could be heard, deeper and louder than the chatter of his machine guns, as he dived on the tanks below.

  A double explosion came over the radio, just as Billy yelled, “Hot damn, Boss! You got two with that strafe. Good shootin’.”