Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

The tape began shaky and washed out. When it finally cleared, it showed an enormous hole in the ground shot by a camera from high above. The gash was about three hundred feet across, the length of a football field, and maybe a couple feet deep. It was blackened and stood out like a sore thumb in the relatively undisturbed field of long golden hay surrounding it. The hole itself was filled with burnt stuff. Tree limbs, brush, scarred pieces of metal, and what appeared to be hundreds of chalky sooty sticks.

In reality, they were human bones.

“This video was shot in Bosnia almost one year ago,” Smitz said. “During a new flare-up in the fighting there, someone herded three hundred and fifty-two civilians into a field. This is what was left of them.”

Those assembled stared at the video. This was not a bomb crater they were looking at. It was too shallow and the shape was all wrong. This thing looked like a perfect circle.

The tape continued. Now they were looking at a hilltop village somewhere in the Middle East. There was nothing left of the place either, except the foundations of some houses and the remains of a fountain, which was leaking rusty water out into the street, like a bleeding wound.

“This was once the village of El Quas-ri,” Smitz went on. “It’s in central Iraq. It was more than four thousand years old. We’ve determined it took about thirty seconds to wipe it off the map.”

For the next ten minutes, the tape presented a ghoulish montage of burnt holes, charred bones, leveled villages, and other instances of selective destruction. The two-dozen perfectly square carbon smudges along a flat desert highway were the remains of twenty-four food-supply trucks heading for a Kurdish refugee camp, Smitz explained. The tiny seaport that no longer had a dock standing or a boat afloat had been a stopping-off point for people fleeing oppression in Iran, he went on. The small airfield flying a Red Cross flag that no longer had any runways or buildings or airplanes had been a UN-sponsored airmobile field hospital.

Everywhere, at every location, there were bodies. Twisted, skeletal, all shapes and sizes, from adults to children. Some still had skin clinging to their bones, others had been picked clean. They all looked as if they’d been cooked alive, which was not far from the truth. Most of the ghastly images were identified as being from the Middle East; others had been shot in parts of Asia and Africa.

But what had caused all this? Smitz wasn’t telling—not yet.

The tape finally ended, only to be replaced by another. This began with a black screen emblazoned with three red letters: NSA. Everyone in the room sat up again and took notice.

“This is footage from an NSA airborne asset,” Smitz explained solemnly. “It was taken two months ago somewhere over the Persian Gulf.”

What appeared was a grainy, static-filled NightVision video of two airplanes refueling in flight in the middle of a very dark night.

The tanker was a Tu-16A, a converted Russian Air Force bomber not seen much anymore. This one was in bad shape; one of its engines was smoking heavily. The plane carried no markings or country insignia.

The tanker was all over the sky, not at all staying steady and true as mandated when gassing another airplane in the air.

“Amateurs,” Norton heard Ricco stage-whisper all the way from the front row.

The second aircraft was a bit harder to identify at first. It had four propellers, a thick fuselage, and a nose that was grotesquely elongated. As the footage get clearer, though, it appeared this second aircraft was a C-130 Hercules cargo plane. But certainly not a typical one. This one had been stretched considerably, and had a more girthful fuselage to go with its weird nose.

It was taking on gas from the Tu-16A via a refueling probe on its left wing. This meant some very tricky flying for the Herc’s pilots, especially with Ivan bouncing all over the sky. Yet the odd C-130 was holding steady, and it appeared the refueling was going as smoothly as could be expected.

“Good drivers,” Delaney whispered over to Norton. He knew a few things about C-130’s.

They watched the refueling operation in silence for about two minutes. Finally, the Russian plane began smoking heavily and the fuel hose disengaged. Both planes gave a flick of the nav lights and then quickly fell away from each other.

The video went to automatic freeze after that.

The lights came up, and all eyes once again fell on Smitz. He had a laser pointer fired up and ready. He directed its red dot at the frozen image of the Hercules.

“This aircraft is an AC-130/SO-21D,” he began as though he’d pronounced the mouthful of letters and numbers many times in the past few days. “It’s attached to a classified joint program called ArcLight. Or, I should say, it was ….”

Norton’s ears perked up. ArcLight? He’d heard that term somewhere before. So had Delaney.

“Weren’t they an outfit that ran secret flights during the Gulf War?” Delaney whispered to him. “A kind of aerial special operations concept?”

Norton nodded slowly. He remembered now. During the Gulf War, he’d seen one of these weird airplanes returning from a mission one night over occupied Kuwait. The word around the bunkhouse later on was that the ArcLight guys were out looking for Scuds.

“Yeah, they were called the Air Rambos,” Norton whispered back. “They flew snoop-type gunships. But I heard they were disbanded after the war.”

Other murmurs were now going around. Smitz tapped his podium and the room went silent again.

He shut off the video and then looked over at the techs. One of them raised the lights a bit more.

“On the night of February 9, 1991,” Smitz began, “one of the ArcLight gunships went out on a Scud hunt. It left a secret air base in western Saudi Arabia at about 0230 hours, with a crew of thirteen. It was carrying three miniguns and a light howitzer, all fully armed. It was also hauling, among other things, various EW/ECM pods.

“After taking off, this particular airplane reached its first radio checkpoint, where it indicated everything was OK—and then it just disappeared.”

Smitz paused for a moment. He was staring out at twenty-six people, all wearing very quizzical looks.

Now comes the hard part, he thought.

Smitz lowered his voice and began again. “Everyone at CIA and the Pentagon was certain this airplane had splashed that night and was at the bottom of the Gulf somewhere. They looked for it, but never very hard. Turns out it landed on solid ground—or it was shot down. We still don’t know.”

Another pause. A few people in the room began to stir.

“But whatever happened to it,” Smitz went on, “it was refurbished by someone. And now… well…” He turned back to the frozen video again. “Here it is.”

There was a long, disturbing silence now as Smitz let his words sink in.

“You mean that plane is responsible for tearing up all that real estate?” someone up front finally asked.

Smitz nodded soberly. “That appears to be the case,” he said. “And obviously, it is no longer under our control.”

Those gathered remained absolutely silent. Even Gillis and Ricco were transfixed.

“The ArcLight 4 gunship reappeared about sixteen months ago,” Smitz went on. “It took out an Omani patrol boat that had been tailing some illegal arms shipments going up the Gulf. There were no survivors. Then it was reported over Somalia a few weeks later, firing at a rival faction of some warlord currently in power. Then it showed up again over the Gulf sinking a bunch of boats carrying ammo up to some Shiite rebels in Basra. But in the last two months it’s been very active.”

“Who’s pulling the strings?” Delaney called out with a belch.