Free Sky Ghost by Mack Maloney

suggested.
    “Sure…or something,” Z agreed.
    Zoltan lit another cigarette. “I think this is a big mistake,” he said. “This man, he is not just an ordinary person. I mean, look at what he did here today. There are some pilots that still can’t land a Pogo and they’ve been flying them for 10 years!”
    X finally turned back towards him and fixed him in his steely gaze. “You want to join him in the clink, Swami?”
    Zoltan’s heart went into his throat. He had no doubt the OSS agent could get him locked up just as quickly as this strange Hunter character.
    So he took the cigarette out of his teeth and drew a line across his mouth. The message was clear: his lips were sealed.
    “Theft of government property,” Z said into the phone. “Give him, um, let’s see. Ten years…OK. Bye.”
    Z then gathered his notebooks and put them into his briefcase.
    “Well, that’s that,” he said, snapping the case closed with a flourish. “Where are we going to eat dinner?”
    “Your choice,” X replied, getting his coat and hat.
    At that moment they both looked up at their other colleague.
    Agent Y hadn’t said two words during the whole time. He was standing at the big picture window now, looking out on the huge air base, watching as the armored police wagon took the strange man away to prison.
    “Problems, my friend?” X asked him.
    But Agent Y didn’t really hear the question. He turned around and looked at them both, his face blank, as if he was coming out of a trance himself.
    “You know what’s really strange about all this?” he asked them.
    They both shook their heads.
    “The strange thing is,” Agent Y told them, “I think I might know that man.”

Chapter 6
    T HE ENORMOUS GERMAN BATTLE cruiser slipped into the German-occupied Spanish port of Cadiz at exactly midnight.
    The ship had been at sea for nearly two months, a long time these days, and this stop was to be the last of its last patrol. The ship captain’s orders to his crew were to cool off the double-reaction engines, destroy all sensitive documents and await further orders.
    In days past, when the cruiser returned from patrol, families of the crew members would be on hand to welcome the vessel back. Sometimes there was recorded music, speeches, a small celebration. Reunions. Then preparation for the next cruise would begin.
    But there was no celebration this time. No loved ones, no mechanical oompah-band pumping out reverb polkas. This time the return of the battle cruiser had been kept a tightly guarded secret. The port itself had been sealed off. Armed soldiers lined all the docks, the harbors, the roofs of nearby buildings. They blocked off all roads leading in and out of the city itself. A curfew from sundown to sunrise had been declared. Violators would be shot on sight.
    These were very strange edicts for the port city of Cadiz, or for any part of Occupied Spain at all. The German Army had rolled into Spanish territory shortly after the occupation of France in 1940 and had been here ever since. Nearly two generations of people of mixed Spanish and German blood had come and gone, and indeed Spain was now more German than Spanish. The people felt this way, and so it was unusual for them to be treated as their forebears had been 50 years before. Curfews, soldiers in the streets, orders to shoot on sight—these things had not been seen in these parts for nearly a half a century.
    But then again, how often did a messiah arrive?
    The ship was drawn up to its berth by the automated docking system, run by the enormous Mark V computer housed in the largest building in the port. Save for a few of the ship’s top officers, and a squad of SSS guards, the crew was confined to quarters. All windows were shuttered. Absolutely no conversation would be permitted, electronic or otherwise.
    A convoy of armored vehicles was waiting at the dock. Personnel carriers mostly, three high-speed Tiger-7 supertanks were also in evidence. These frightful