The Circle War Read Online Free PDF Page B

must have formed up in tight groups, but it didn't make any difference.
    These . . . horsemen ran them right over. Trampled almost all of them to death and kept right on going!"
    Hunter shook his head as if the motion would drive away the very strange story. Dozer and Fitzgerald looked like they were in a state of shock.
    "Only three guys lived through it," St. Louie said slowly. It was evident the loss of the men had hit him pretty hard. "Two of them were really badly broken up. They died on the way back. This one guy stumbled across the border eight days later. We found him and got him on a medivac chopper but it was useless.
    He was out of it. Delirious. Still is. Whatever he saw out there —horses or whatever—his brain is gone."
    The four men were silent for a long time, absorbing the frightening tale. Fitz reached for another bottle, opened it and took a long healthy swig. Hunter could see the Irishman's mind working. He knew his friend was seriously superstitious. And Hunter had to admit to himself, that right now, he was getting more than a little spooked too.

Chapter Four
    The departure from Mac Intosh went off without a hitch. Just as the five PAAC
    choppers lifted off, a PAAC C-130 tankerplane appeared right on schedule over the small town, its four-ship T-38 fighter escort in tow. Two at a time, the PAAC helicopters hooked up to the orbiting C-130's in-flight refueling probe and drew fuel from the mother ship. Their tanks thus filled in mid-air, the small air armada headed for home.
    But it was a long, troubled flight back for Hunter. He sat alone in the Sea Stallion's spare navigator's seat, everyone on board knowing enough not to bother him. The intelligence meeting was a success from an operational point of view, but he had a million things running through his already overloaded mind. The disturbing stories from Fitz and St. Louie had only added to his worries about the similar strange events happening on his side of the continent.
    The tale of the recon troops in the Badlands was particularly haunting him. He felt a shiver in his spine when he thought of the brave soldiers walking into the gates of hell like that. St. Louie said he doubted if the lone survivor would be able to leave the psychiatric ward-ever.
    Right then and there, Hunter had vowed to find out what really happened in that ravine that night.
    But Fitz and St. Louie had given him other information as well. Both men had spies everywhere, especially entrenched in the Northeast and the old Atlantic States' region where the Mid-Aks once ruled with a brutal iron fist. Things had changed dramatically since Hunter, along with Dozer and a special strike force, rescued a bunch of ex-ZAP pilots the occupying 'Aks were holding prisoner in a Boston skyscraper. Not only had Hunter and his small, airborne army freed the pilots; they blew up a liquid natural gas facility close to the city which torched most of the Mid-Aks' military supplies that were foolishly stored nearby. The daring rescue mission and the destruction left behind more or less ended the 'Aks military domination in the region. Right now, the once-thriving Northeast Economic Zone — the territory that ZAP once protected
    —was pretty much abandoned. The 'Aks retreated southward to be closer to the home territory; the citizens had fled northward into the relative safety of Free Canada.
    But now Fitz had told him that some of the Mid-Aks were itching to become a force to be reckoned with once again. Or at least share that power. Right
    -after the Battle of Football City had been won—at a terrible loss of life and property—Hunter had heard that a new, more sinister alliance was forming in the
    40
    east. Apparently made up of representatives of the air pirates, the Family, the 'Aks and other scum, the shadowy alliance —known as The Circle—was now gaining momentum.
    According to Fitzie's spies, the group was being run by a mysterious figure named Viktor Robotov. They said that although