Return of Sky Ghost Read Online Free

the attacking bombers returned safely to the surfaced aircraft-carrying submarines which had remained in a holding pattern some 250 miles northwest of Oahu.
    The bombers split into groups of ten each and with great precision began landing back on the monstrous subs. The pilots, aided by a bevy of automatic navigation and control systems, flew their huge bombers into the gaping mouths of the subs, recovering on massive arresting wires located inside.
    Once each ship had recovered its squadron, the huge front doors began belching steam again and then started to close. It took about five minutes for the ships to seal up. Then, along with their coterie of seven submersible cruisers, they began to dive. Inside, their commanders were radioing back to their supreme headquarters in Tokyo. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor had been a huge success. Four of the five megacarriers had been destroyed, along with the airfield at Hickam and the city of Honolulu itself.
    Best of all, surprise had been preserved for a second phase of the overall operation because the attack had gone off completely undetected. No one had seen the ships surface, launch their aircraft, or recover them, the ship commanders reported. No one left alive anyway.
    But this was not entirely true.
    For two miles away from where the huge Japanese ships were now slowly sinking into the waves, there was a small island called Buku-Buku. On this island, hidden in the thick underbrush, were the sixteen survivors of the USS Neponset, the TPB cut in half by one of the Japanese cruisers.
    The American crew had reached the small island by sheer determination alone. Many were injured, two severely. These men had been carried to safety by Lt. Noonan, who lashed them together with pieces of rope and wire and then swam slowly and surely to the island, towing the two wounded men behind him.
    It would be seven days before the crew was rescued from Buku-Buku.
    But when they were, they would tell their superiors just how the Japanese had been able to carry out their vicious attack and then disappear, as if into thin air.

Two
    The Panama Canal
    Pacific Side
    R EAR ADMIRAL ERIC WOLF was relaxing.
    It was the first time in a while—at least a few years—that he had actually kicked off his shoes, removed his thick sunglasses, leaned back in his chair, and done nothing.
    The feeling was quite alien to him. He was a very stoic man, a highly professional naval officer and consummate loner. Things like kicking back and taking a nap in the middle of the day hardly came naturally to him.
    But here he was, sitting in a chair on the veranda of a ten-story building, looking out on the vast expanse of the Panama Canal and the lush green jungle beyond. The air was thick and sweet, a breeze off the Pacific just two miles away made the scorching temperature bearable. Wolf fought to keep his eyes closed and let his mind wander. After all, he was supposed to be taking it easy.
    There were some who said that Wolf was one of a handful of individuals who’d won the European War for the United States. He did not agree with them. There was only one person who could rightfully make that claim—and it was not him.
    However, he had been instrumental in overseeing the American Forces’ defense in the Atlantic during the bleak fall and winter months of 1997, back when it seemed certain that Germany was about to invade the United States and finally win the fifty-eight-year-old conflict known as World War II. Both in his command of a sub-hunting destroyer and later as overall commander of the Atlantic Wartime Command day-to-day operations, it had been Wolf’s meager forces that had held the German Navy at bay until the war could be won, far away in Europe.
    When the war was finally over and all the celebrations had died down, Wolf’s superiors ordered him to take two months R and R. He refused. Admiring his pluck, his superiors did the next best thing. They assigned him to the combined Army-Navy station at Fort