Korea, and much later, the industrial heart of postmodern Japan.
The base on Adora Atoll had laid abandoned for many years—that was, until a pair of Free Canadian C-141F Starlifters landed there a week before. Contained within these two long-range airplanes was a special unit of Canadian engineers. Their task: get the secret base up and running for the imminent arrival of a force of very large aircraft.
The Canadians worked day and night to do so. Their main project—to extend the runway of the atoll an additional 1000 feet—was accomplished twenty-four hours ahead of schedule. Smaller but no less important assignments—such as installing temporary fuel tanks, reviving a sea water desalination plant, and retooling a small gas turbine to provide electrical power—were also completed on or before deadline.
In fact, the Canadians were putting the finishing touches on, of all things, a baseball field when the first radio report came in. Suddenly, all thoughts of the baseball diamond were dropped. The transitting force they’d been waiting for were now only a hundred miles away and coming fast.
It was Bozo that came in first; Hunter’s expert touch at the controls put the extended runway to its first test and proved it was a job well done.
One by one, the other great Galaxy airships descended on the base, each setting down nimbly, drag chutes extended, engines screaming in reverse, strange colors displaying proud aerial individuality.
It took but three minutes, twenty seconds for all nine C-5s to touch down and taxi in. Their engines whining down, their cargo doors open, their crews disgorged, the first leg of a very long journey had come to a successful conclusion.
Hunter was greeted by the friendly Canadians, and he praised them for their efforts and obvious top-notch workmanship. They in turn challenged the Americans to a round of baseball games, to be played on the newly built diamond. Hunter quickly accepted.
Then he went to the Canadians’ recently constructed radio shack and sent a microwave burst message back to Edwards, clear on the other side of the globe.
The scrambled message simply read: “The First American Airborne Expeditionary Force has landed …”
Chapter Eight
Two days later
T WO HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN miles to the southwest of Adora Atoll, Bobby “Wallybee” Fletcher was sitting in a blind near the shoreline of a long, boomerang-shaped island, known simply as Boho.
It was a perfect location, for he had a commanding view of a narrow but deep strait that ran through the nearby archipelago of small deserted islands. On and off for three weeks, and now for the past twenty-hours straight, he had hardly budged, despite the swarms of mosquitos that seem to cover every square inch of his exposed skin.
He was waiting.
Fletcher was a coastwatcher, and like his father, and his father’s father, he was one of the best. Regardless of the dangers or the isolation or the loneliness that came with the territory, Wallybee was able to draw on his enormous reserves of patience, the patience needed to sit through the worst kind of weather, severe hunger, thirst, bugs, and hours of boredom, simply to do his job.
And now this patience was about to pay off.
He heard it first, a kind of sloshing noise, slightly punctuated by a low mechanical throbbing. He took another long pull on the jug of New Zealand moonshine he kept handy to sharpen his senses, and then peered into the inky blackness of the moonless night.
The noise grew louder and louder until it was almost on top of him. In the black night, Fletcher could see a gigantic shadow passing by, like a great black cloud. He instantly knew it was what he had been waiting for all this time. The size of the phosphorescent wake spreading out after it passed was confirmation enough.
Fletcher opened up the wooden carrying case that shielded his World-War-II-vintage radio and quickly plugged in the antenna that stretched between two nearby tall trees. Then he
The base on Adora Atoll had laid abandoned for many years—that was, until a pair of Free Canadian C-141F Starlifters landed there a week before. Contained within these two long-range airplanes was a special unit of Canadian engineers. Their task: get the secret base up and running for the imminent arrival of a force of very large aircraft.
The Canadians worked day and night to do so. Their main project—to extend the runway of the atoll an additional 1000 feet—was accomplished twenty-four hours ahead of schedule. Smaller but no less important assignments—such as installing temporary fuel tanks, reviving a sea water desalination plant, and retooling a small gas turbine to provide electrical power—were also completed on or before deadline.
In fact, the Canadians were putting the finishing touches on, of all things, a baseball field when the first radio report came in. Suddenly, all thoughts of the baseball diamond were dropped. The transitting force they’d been waiting for were now only a hundred miles away and coming fast.
It was Bozo that came in first; Hunter’s expert touch at the controls put the extended runway to its first test and proved it was a job well done.
One by one, the other great Galaxy airships descended on the base, each setting down nimbly, drag chutes extended, engines screaming in reverse, strange colors displaying proud aerial individuality.
It took but three minutes, twenty seconds for all nine C-5s to touch down and taxi in. Their engines whining down, their cargo doors open, their crews disgorged, the first leg of a very long journey had come to a successful conclusion.
Hunter was greeted by the friendly Canadians, and he praised them for their efforts and obvious top-notch workmanship. They in turn challenged the Americans to a round of baseball games, to be played on the newly built diamond. Hunter quickly accepted.
Then he went to the Canadians’ recently constructed radio shack and sent a microwave burst message back to Edwards, clear on the other side of the globe.
The scrambled message simply read: “The First American Airborne Expeditionary Force has landed …”
Chapter Eight
Two days later
T WO HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN miles to the southwest of Adora Atoll, Bobby “Wallybee” Fletcher was sitting in a blind near the shoreline of a long, boomerang-shaped island, known simply as Boho.
It was a perfect location, for he had a commanding view of a narrow but deep strait that ran through the nearby archipelago of small deserted islands. On and off for three weeks, and now for the past twenty-hours straight, he had hardly budged, despite the swarms of mosquitos that seem to cover every square inch of his exposed skin.
He was waiting.
Fletcher was a coastwatcher, and like his father, and his father’s father, he was one of the best. Regardless of the dangers or the isolation or the loneliness that came with the territory, Wallybee was able to draw on his enormous reserves of patience, the patience needed to sit through the worst kind of weather, severe hunger, thirst, bugs, and hours of boredom, simply to do his job.
And now this patience was about to pay off.
He heard it first, a kind of sloshing noise, slightly punctuated by a low mechanical throbbing. He took another long pull on the jug of New Zealand moonshine he kept handy to sharpen his senses, and then peered into the inky blackness of the moonless night.
The noise grew louder and louder until it was almost on top of him. In the black night, Fletcher could see a gigantic shadow passing by, like a great black cloud. He instantly knew it was what he had been waiting for all this time. The size of the phosphorescent wake spreading out after it passed was confirmation enough.
Fletcher opened up the wooden carrying case that shielded his World-War-II-vintage radio and quickly plugged in the antenna that stretched between two nearby tall trees. Then he
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