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Authors: Mack Maloney
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mysterious rescuers.
Wakisaki felt his spirits plummet even further. What a difference a day makes! Now there was no wreckage to be recovered, no survivors to torture. No way to find out where they all came from.
He let out another gush of tears, and thought he saw a few of the doctors laugh at this girlish display. But two words in the report were beginning to burn their way into Wakisaki’s brain. Enemy action.
Yes, Wakisaki realized, forcing back the tears. He suddenly had an enemy on his hands. But who were they? Certainly not the Colombians, or the Brazilians. Neither of those troublesome states would dare attack New Lima. Nor did they have anywhere near the military technology Wakisaki and thousands of others had seen during the bombing raid. Huge bombers, huge gunships, small swift fighters, strange hovering aircraft bristling with guns. Wakisaki knew aircraft, and he knew that no one on this continent flew the kind of airplanes he’d just seen.
Then where did they come from? Even the most obvious choice—the norteamericanos —made no sense. Wakisaki had seen the heavy bomb loads these aircraft had been carrying. There was no way they had flown all the way down from North America carrying such heavy loads for this sneak attack. And from the reports of the survivor-rescue, the strange eight-rotor flying contraption certainly could never have made such a long trip.
Yet Wakisaki was sure there were no American megacarriers on either coast of South America. In fact, in the six months since the Japanese takeover of South America, there had not been one peep from the North Americans. Not one. They were exhausted, the conventional wisdom went, from their very draining, very close-run victory over Germany after fifty-eight years of war. It was a keystone of Wakisaki’s plan that North America would not lift a finger when Japan invaded South America, or took over the Panama Canal. The attack on Pearl Harbor had taken care of the aircraft carrier fleet, they had nothing left to fight with, even if their citizenry wanted to.
Yet logic dictated these attackers had to be North Americans. So then, where was their base? How could the norteamericanos hide an entire air base anywhere on a continent that was so firmly in the grip of Japanese hands?
Wakisaki didn’t know.
But as the tears continued to roll down his face, he made a vow right then and there to find out.
Six
Two days later
T HE ALL-BLACK AIRPLANE SET down at the New Lima airport just after sunset.
It was a troop transport, an eight-engine miniknockoff of the infamous Spruce Goose. It came in easily and took the full three miles of runway to slow down.
The airport itself was cordoned off to all but the highest level of security troops. The damage from the freak air attack two days before—one small airplane had knocked the base out of action at the height of the bombing raid—bad been repaired by now, or simply covered over. The entire security detail and air traffic control staff for the air base had paid the price for the single plane attack. All of them had been quietly executed earlier that day.
The huge plane rolled over to an isolated hangar and finally came to a stop. Its rear clamshell doors opened and slowly but surely a long ramp extended from its rear. No sooner was this platform down than two long lines of dark figures began disembarking.
Black uniforms. Black helmets. Black face masks, gloves, and boots. Even their weapons were black. No surprise then that they were known as Brigata de la Noche, literally, the Night Brigade.
They were Argentine commandos, special-ops troops who had terrorized the Argentine population and those in neighboring countries for years before the Japanese ever came ashore. Each man was more than six feet three inches tall and many were a half a foot taller than that. They lived on raw meat—and literally drank cow’s blood at least once a day. The Night Brigade, 1,200 men strong, were experts at both jungle
Wakisaki felt his spirits plummet even further. What a difference a day makes! Now there was no wreckage to be recovered, no survivors to torture. No way to find out where they all came from.
He let out another gush of tears, and thought he saw a few of the doctors laugh at this girlish display. But two words in the report were beginning to burn their way into Wakisaki’s brain. Enemy action.
Yes, Wakisaki realized, forcing back the tears. He suddenly had an enemy on his hands. But who were they? Certainly not the Colombians, or the Brazilians. Neither of those troublesome states would dare attack New Lima. Nor did they have anywhere near the military technology Wakisaki and thousands of others had seen during the bombing raid. Huge bombers, huge gunships, small swift fighters, strange hovering aircraft bristling with guns. Wakisaki knew aircraft, and he knew that no one on this continent flew the kind of airplanes he’d just seen.
Then where did they come from? Even the most obvious choice—the norteamericanos —made no sense. Wakisaki had seen the heavy bomb loads these aircraft had been carrying. There was no way they had flown all the way down from North America carrying such heavy loads for this sneak attack. And from the reports of the survivor-rescue, the strange eight-rotor flying contraption certainly could never have made such a long trip.
Yet Wakisaki was sure there were no American megacarriers on either coast of South America. In fact, in the six months since the Japanese takeover of South America, there had not been one peep from the North Americans. Not one. They were exhausted, the conventional wisdom went, from their very draining, very close-run victory over Germany after fifty-eight years of war. It was a keystone of Wakisaki’s plan that North America would not lift a finger when Japan invaded South America, or took over the Panama Canal. The attack on Pearl Harbor had taken care of the aircraft carrier fleet, they had nothing left to fight with, even if their citizenry wanted to.
Yet logic dictated these attackers had to be North Americans. So then, where was their base? How could the norteamericanos hide an entire air base anywhere on a continent that was so firmly in the grip of Japanese hands?
Wakisaki didn’t know.
But as the tears continued to roll down his face, he made a vow right then and there to find out.
Six
Two days later
T HE ALL-BLACK AIRPLANE SET down at the New Lima airport just after sunset.
It was a troop transport, an eight-engine miniknockoff of the infamous Spruce Goose. It came in easily and took the full three miles of runway to slow down.
The airport itself was cordoned off to all but the highest level of security troops. The damage from the freak air attack two days before—one small airplane had knocked the base out of action at the height of the bombing raid—bad been repaired by now, or simply covered over. The entire security detail and air traffic control staff for the air base had paid the price for the single plane attack. All of them had been quietly executed earlier that day.
The huge plane rolled over to an isolated hangar and finally came to a stop. Its rear clamshell doors opened and slowly but surely a long ramp extended from its rear. No sooner was this platform down than two long lines of dark figures began disembarking.
Black uniforms. Black helmets. Black face masks, gloves, and boots. Even their weapons were black. No surprise then that they were known as Brigata de la Noche, literally, the Night Brigade.
They were Argentine commandos, special-ops troops who had terrorized the Argentine population and those in neighboring countries for years before the Japanese ever came ashore. Each man was more than six feet three inches tall and many were a half a foot taller than that. They lived on raw meat—and literally drank cow’s blood at least once a day. The Night Brigade, 1,200 men strong, were experts at both jungle
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