Attack on Area 51 by Mack Maloney Read Free Book Online Page B

devils do. But whatever the case, I think you should look into this whole bomber-buying thing, Hawk. It’s such strange behavior on their part. It’s troubling. And we all know that back in the old days, you could figure out something like this during breakfast and have it solved by lunch.”
    Hunter thought a moment, trying to digest the puzzling information.
    “We’ll see,” he told Roy finally. “And if we come up with anything, we’ll be in touch.”
    The old arms dealer smiled again, his eyes lighting up. Then he showed them another photograph. This one was of a warship. “While you’re doing your homework on RAM, you might want to consider this.”

Chapter 10
    Later that day
    T HE CONVERTED B-57 RECON plane took off just as the sun was going down.
    Hunter was at the controls again, the old infrared camera locked and loaded. He reached seventy thousand feet and quickly turned northeast. It would take him less than ninety minutes to cover the six hundred miles to Detroit.
    He was worried. He didn’t dare entertain any theories about why RAM was accumulating bombers at such a rapid rate until he got a look at what was going on. That was the reason for this flight.
    Before he left, Ben and JT had briefed him further on the Red Army Mafia. A mishmash alliance of Russian mafioso that had come to America just as it was being fractured and decided to stay, it had ruled the rough-and-tumble Motor City for about ten years. Their policies were similar to those of the Asian Mercenary Cult: extort and enslave the population and allow a privileged few to enjoy prosperous lives.
    As Hunter recalled, that was about as un-American as one could get.
    Time flew by, and Hunter was soon approaching his target.
    He clicked on the camera just as he passed above Detroit’s outer defense line. Activating the zoom lens, he immediately saw numerous signs of military activity below. Artillery positions, troop trucks, and even tanks watched over key roadways and bridges. RAM seemed to be everywhere.
    Soon he was over the Motor City itself, only to see more of the same. Detroit was an armed camp these days—not as protection against any outside forces, but simply as a way of keeping its captive population in line.
    He passed over RAM headquarters. Housed in what used to be the world headquarters of General Motors, the former automobile giant, even from thirteen miles up, the seven separate interconnected glass towers looked magnificent. And no surprise, they were capped with AA sites.
    Studying the buildings through his zoom lens and noting their proximity to the Detroit River, which linked Lake Erie and Lake Huron, Hunter understood why Roy had shown him that last photo of a warship. If someone was looking to throw a sucker punch at RAM, as strange as it sounded, having a warship might not be a bad idea.
    He flew on.
    About twenty miles southwest of downtown Detroit was a large airport that, in the prewar days, had been called Coleman International. It was now a gigantic RAM air base.
    Passing overhead, Hunter saw not just active runways and support buildings blazing with heat signatures, but lots of airplanes also.
    The half dozen Mitchells that Roy had told him about were down there, neatly lined up along one of the major runways. But even more alarming, he spotted at least a dozen squadrons of heavy bombers. B-52s, B-58s, and even a few B-47s. There were fifty-four of them in all, a gigantic air fleet these days. Just as bad, he could see hundreds of aerial bombs stacked along the runways, right out in the open.
    The RAM was not known for air power. That’s why they hired the 10 th Street Crew to do their bombing for them.
    There was only one explanation for the buildup: The Red Army Mafia was gathering all these heavy bombers for a retaliatory strike on Football City.
    And it would not be some dumb-bomb drop on the city’s harbor either. With all those big airplanes, such a bombing raid would be like the RAF over Dresden. The aim