Tomorrow War Read Free Page A

asked.
    Y thought a moment. “As an advisor,” he replied. “Help me pick the rest of the unit. Help me get the right kind of transportation. Then come along and use your, well … unique abilities to aid in the search. Simple as that.”
    Zoltan just laughed. Nothing was simple in this universe.
    “And if I refuse?” he asked Y.
    Y just smiled. “Then I’ll have to reactivate your military status—and order you to go. That way you’ll not get paid a dime over minimum wage.”
    Zoltan looked up at Crabb for help, but the burly nightclub owner was deep into his booze-laced coffee cup.
    Zoltan turned back to the OSS agent.
    “Well, I guess I have no choice,” he said.
    Y shook his hand. “Welcome aboard,” he said quietly. “Let’s set up a time tomorrow so I can brief you.”
    Zoltan wiped the sweat from his lip. He had a very bad feeling about all this.
    “Are you talking about a search party or a body-recovery team?” he asked Y.
    The OSS man just swigged his coffee.
    “Well, that’s the first question I want to ask you,” he said.
    Y moved a bit closer to him. Crabb made sure the door was locked.
    “Can you tell … ?” Y asked, his words trailing off. Zoltan just looked at him. “What? If Hawk is still alive?”
    Y nodded solemnly. “Are any of them still with us?” Zoltan felt a sweat break out on his forehead. “I’m not so good at that particular aspect of thought transfer.”
    Y’s face became grim. “Take a guess.”
    Zoltan wiped his brow, closed his eyes, and put his hand to his right temple. He stayed like that for a very long time.
    “If I had to guess,” he finally replied slowly, “I’d say ‘no.’”
    A cold chill suddenly swept the room.
    Zoltan was shaking his head.
    “Nope,” he said quietly. “I’m afraid none of them are still alive”
    Y stared down at his hands for a moment. “Will that make our job harder or easier?”
    Zoltan laughed grimly.
    “You should know by now, my friend, that looking for the dead is much more difficult than finding the living,” he said.
    He paused a moment, then saw quick visions of an empty ocean, a jungle on fire, and a very long railroad track.
    “Yes,” he added. “Dead men always leave a cold trail. And this one seems very cold ….”

CHAPTER 4
    Edwards Air Corps Aerodrome California
    One week later
    I T WAS A BLAZING-HOT day.
    There were high clouds off to the west, gathering with a slightly ominous look to them.
    Agent Y was standing out on an auxiliary flight line of the huge, bustling Air Corps base, sweating his ass off. All around him, gigantic Air Corps bombers were being decommissioned and put back into their hangar storage areas, possibly never to see combat again. He nervously checked his watch. Timing was everything in this world. And unlike the big bombers and their crews, so soon returning from war to the rest of their lives, Y’s future was now being compressed into a very small window of time, one that would keep closing at a very rapid pace.
    One week had passed since the meeting in Chicago at Crabb’s club. It had been a hectic seven days for Y. He had spent the majority of it in Washington getting briefed for his impending search mission by a legion of military and OSS higher-ups. Listening patiently to their cautions and advice, he’d pretended to take copious notes at each session—only to throw them all away once he’d left the Beltway.
    The main concern in D.C. was one of appearance—that was the bottom line. The greatest fear of everyone he talked to was that the story of the whole superbombing affair would reach the media before the B-2000 and its crew were found. Hawk Hunter was a high-profile, if somewhat mysterious, war hero, and the public would demand to know what happened to him when word of the super-bombing eventually did leak out. The Government did not want to be put in the awkward position of having to say: “We don’t know what happened to him.” To do this would signal the