Tomorrow War by Mack Maloney Page A

search mission. They had heard the story of what had happened over on West Falkland Island the day before. How the strange man had somehow shepherded ashore twenty boats filled with children he’d apparently saved from a ship that had been caught in the raging storm.
    The pilots were now looking for the ship itself.
    But this would prove to be a fruitless task. They flew in box patterns for three hours, covering hundreds of square miles of ocean north of the Falklands, but they could see nothing. No wreckage, no flotsam, no sign at all of the ship that had been carrying the children and the strange man.
    The fighter planes were called back to base shortly before noon. The British Royal Army contingent on the island knew that if a ship was caught in a storm such as the one of the previous day, the South Atlantic was quite capable of swallowing it up whole. That no other survivors were found surprised no one.
    The fact that the strange man had saved so many children was what everyone was baffled about.
    Colonel Neal Asten was commander of all British Royal Forces on both East and West Falkland. His command consisted of 150 men and a squadron of SuperChieftain tanks. These behemoths held a crew of nearly two dozen, featured twin 188-mm guns and a myriad of antiaircraft, radar, and night-detection equipment.
    Their mission was basically to protect the ultrasecret research facility located deep in the ground beneath West Falkland Island at a place known as Skyfire.
    Just what went on below the farmhouse that sat atop the hill at Skyfire, Asten had little idea. He’d heard rumors of everything from superbombs to Life itself being created within the facility that stretched some sixteen stories into the earth.
    The farmhouse had just been recently rebuilt. It had been destroyed a month earlier in the huge battle fought against Japanese forces on the island. The house had taken no less than the brunt of a massive bombing strike. The facility beneath, however, had survived intact.
    Two people lived inside the house—a husband and wife, both were in their late fifties. Asten didn’t know their real names. He rarely talked to them on anything but a professionally cordial level. But he did know the Man was an American who many believed knew all the secrets of the universe, and then some.
    A person like this was very special. So after the battle had been won and the Japanese defeated, Asten and his men built a new farmhouse for the Man and his wife.
    The new farmhouse looked exactly like the old one, right down to the slight lean to the east caused by the raging storms, which always blew in on the island from the southwest. Everything on the island leaned east—and less than a month after its completion, the farmhouse was no different.
    Asten was inside the command SuperChieftain when he received the report from McReady air base across the sound on East Falkland. No sign of any ship had been spotted by the search planes. This was no surprise to Asten. He’d been on the Falklands long enough to know what the brutal storms could do. He’d seen some so fierce, he doubted even one of the Americans’ huge megacarriers could make it through without some kind of damage. A smaller vessel would have no chance.
    After confirming the radio report, Asten ran out the pilots’ official report on his signal printer and then placed it into a white envelope, which he sealed with red tape. Then he left the command tank and began the long walk up the hill toward Skyfire.
    It was up to him to inform the Man of the pilots’ fruitless search.
    He found him sitting in his new living room, his back stiff against the new chair Asten’s troopers had provided as part of the refurnishing of the house.
    Across the room sat the survivor named Viktor, the man who had somehow saved the children from the storm. The children themselves were down in Port Summer Point, the small civilian settlement located about a mile away from Skyfire. Viktor, however, had been