Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

Then everything just went black….

“OK… end simulation!”

The lights came back on, and Norton took a long, deep troubled breath. He was bathed in sweat and the insides of the helicopter simulator were beginning to smell rank again. He looked at his hands. They were trembling. His lips were cut and bleeding, sliced by his own teeth. His knees felt made of water. He’d been through 127 simulations in three days, and at last it was taking a toll on him. Like a recurring nightmare, he always faced the same scenario. He had to ice a tank before either AA or SAMs or Fulcrums iced him—and always, he failed to deliver and survive. Either the Fulcrums got him or the ground fire did. It seemed impossible to beat both threats at the same time.

Such was the fate of a fighter jock being made to fly a chopper.

The past dozen days had been the strangest in his life. From Fallon to here, to St. Louis, to Thule, and back here again. The cruelest joke was, he wasn’t even sure where “here” was. Not exactly anyway. He knew he was on an island, and the island was somewhere off the southern tip of Florida. And he knew this island was run by the CIA as a secret training site for operations to be undertaken elsewhere. But other than his trip to St. Louis to pick up Delaney, and their quick hop to the top of the world to recruit Gillis and Ricco, he’d spent just about all of his waking hours locked inside this smelly Tin Can, drowning in his own sweat, trying to learn how to fly an attack helicopter without ever leaving the ground—and losing every time.

It was called UIT—ultra-intensive training. So far, for him, it had been a bust.

The Tin Can was the nickname for the HSM—or Helicopter Simulator Module. It was in the subbasement of Hangar 2, the huge barn located right next door to the smaller warehouse building that housed his quarters. A short tunnel connected both structures, thus negating the need for him to actually go outside and see the sun or breathe the air, unless he was going to chow, which was usually at night and which he always ate alone. Indeed, much of the island’s training facility was located under-ground. Built inside old bomb shelters, he had been told.

The helicopter simulator was aptly nicknamed. It was a huge white barrel set up on six monstrous spider legs. It had 360-degree three-dimensional TV screens inside, and with loads of surround-sound effects and laser-light manipulation, it didn’t take long for the mind to accept that you were actually flying something and that people were actually throwing bad stuff up at you.

When he wasn’t being blasted out of virtual reality, Norton was usually asleep in his quarters. There really was little else to do. The security on the island was so tight at the moment, he was prohibited from speaking to anyone other than the Tin Can techs. He hadn’t seen or talked to Delaney since getting back from Thule. And the CIA operations officer in charge of the mission—a pup of a guy named Gene Smitz—had spoken to him on just two occasions, both times to remind him about the importance of security and to see if his living arrangements were up to snuff.

On that last score at least, Norton could not complain. His billet was comfortable enough. It had a bed, a chair, a small fridge, a microwave, plenty of coffee and fruit. There was a separate shower and a toilet. There were boxes of magazines for him to read, a TV, and a VCR with plenty of videos for him to watch. Still, he hated being cooped up inside the small windowless room. It was in essence a luxurious prison cell.

The only thing he hated more was being strapped inside the Tin Can.

No surprise that more than once in the past twelve days he’d asked himself one question: What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Still, he didn’t know the answer.

He finally unstrapped himself and squeezed out of the simulator. He was stressed to the point of being woozy. How could his brain be so fooled? He was here, in one piece, safe and sound. Yet every time he crawled out of the Can, he felt like he’d flown a combat mission—for real. And had been blown out of the sky—for real. A crude sign above the door said it all: Everything but the pain, someone had written. That was the truth….

The worst part was, if history was any judge, once he was out of the Can, he would be permitted a quick bathroom break, a chance to grab a Coke or a cup of coffee, and then be thrown right back into the simulator to do it all over again. For the 128th time.

But as it turned out, this recess would be different.

Usually he found a technician waiting for him outside the simulator door; the small, glass-enclosed control room from which the Can’s activities were monitored was down a staircase ten feet away. This time, though, the first face he saw belonged to Delaney. The slightly ragged-looking pilot was inside the control room, speaking with the six CIA geeks who ran the Tin Can.

Norton hadn’t seen Delaney since returning from Greenland. Though they lived in billets in the same building, their schedules ran exactly opposite. Whenever Norton wasn’t doing his time inside the Tin Can, Delaney was, and vice versa.

But now here Delaney was, dressed in a flight- simulator suit just like Norton, and looking quite stern and official. Yet he was carrying what appeared to be a small Styrofoam beer cooler.

“I have orders to bring Major Norton up to the Big Room,” Norton heard Delaney telling the simulator techs. “Smitz told me to tell you that you can dispense with the major’s post-simulation briefing as well. He’s through for the day. And so am I.”

Like every bullshit artist, it wasn’t what Delaney was saying, it was how he was saying it. The pointy-head techs listened in silence, then did a group shrug and went about the business of shutting down the Tin Can. Delaney finally turned towards Norton, pointed to the cooler, and pantomimed drinking a beer. Norton gave him a thumbs-up, signed the Tin Can log book, and bade the techs good-bye.

Then he joined Delaney, ran up three sets of stairs, and left Hangar 2 a free man.

“I owe you one, buddy,” he told Delaney, walking out into the sunshine for the first time in days.

“Only if we don’t get caught,” Delaney replied. “I can think of about a dozen regulations we’re breaking here.”

Norton was sure of that. In his indoctrination—which took place in the days after he was recruited at Fallon and before he went up to St. Louis to collect Delaney— he’d been told everything that was about to happen to him was top secret and that he should not discuss it with anyone, not even other members of the project team. This was peculiar. Norton had been involved in secret ops before, and never had there been a ban on the individual members discussing the situation. But apparently none of those ops had been as secret as this. It was strange, though. This weird place. The way they were drawn together. The way they were recruited. Was the CIA just getting better? Or was there another reason the clamp was so tight?

He didn’t know.

Since Delaney had been brought in, there had not been the opportunity for them to have a conversation. So did that mean they couldn’t discuss their shared experience now? Would it be against the rules? Would anyone be listening in if they did?

They began walking down the long camouflaged run-way. They were quiet at first. The afternoon was upon them. The base seemed deserted—as usual. Yet voices were on the wind.

In just a few moments, Norton was sweating again. The sun was that hot.

“If I didn’t get a break from that Tin Can soon, I was going to flip,” he finally told Delaney.

“Join the club,” his colleague replied. “I’ve been spending so much time inside that thing, I’m having nightmares. It’s like people are whispering to me when I’m trying to go to sleep. Think the Spooks might be programming that in? You know, filtering suggestive stuff to us subconsciously?”