Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

Once each boat had been visited by the pirates, the sea thieves would fire 22-mm cannon shells into its hull. A ten-second burst was usually all that was needed. Invariably something would catch on fire or the holes made would be big enough to cause water to pour in. No one remaining on any boat survived. All either drowned, or did not last long in what was some of the most shark-infested waters of the world. More than 160 men, elderly women, and children met their end this way.

The pirates, as always, made a clean getaway.

Seven Ghosts Key

Midnight

The storm came up so quickly, Smitz didn’t have time to close the window in his billet.

The rain and wind blew in, like a pair of unseen hands, causing a small tornado to swirl madly around his room. It scattered his previously orderly papers everywhere, and soaked just about everything he considered valuable, including his fax machine, his change of clothes, and his bunk. Then, just as quickly, it stopped, even before he could get the window closed, leaving him dripping wet and his room in a shambles.

His world turned upside down again. Just like that.

He’d been lying on his bunk, going over his NoteBook entries for the day, when the sudden wind came up. Located in base’s tiny control tower, one floor down from the control room itself, his ten-by-ten billet had been a storage closet originally. When Smitz first landed on Seven Ghosts Key, his rooming options were limited to bunking in with the Marines in Motel Hell or staying with the pilots in the basement of the building adjacent to Hangar 2. Instinct told him that with this operation, it was best that he didn’t get to close to the personnel involved. Especially the pilots.

So he’d tried sleeping in the Big Room the first few nights. But between the laughing murals, the lizards scurrying everywhere, and the tale of the seven CIA people who’d vanished from the island bouncing around his head, the place had given him a major case of the yips. Smitz valued his sleep, and wanted to lay his head somewhere that was not overrun with reptiles or ghosts. When Rooney suggested that the empty supply room in the tower might be more comfortable, Smitz jumped at the chance.

He lay back down on his bunk now, disgusted that in just a few seconds his place had become a small disaster area. But this was nothing new. This assignment had been a struggle from the start, and nothing he’d seen lately indicated that it was going to change anytime soon. A small twister in his room was just more of the same.

The screwiness had not ended that night in Bethesda. If anything, it had grown worse. Not only was he almost as much in the dark about this operation’s goals as the personnel called in to do the job, but since arriving on Seven Ghosts Key, Smitz had been fighting a silent, but nonstop battle with his office back in Washington for both the information and equipment he needed to see the thing through. Getting the intelligence assets. Getting the humans. Getting the Tin Can software. Getting bunks for the Marines. All of it a battle. For some reason, he’d had to fight for every last nut and bolt of the essentials, and with his nemesis Larry Stone back in D.C. controlling the spigot, it was even harder than expected.

Smitz was getting so weary of it, he’d wished more than once that some ghost would swoop down and spirit him away. But then they’d have to change the name of the island.

The strange thing was, only stuff relating to the upcoming operation seemed to have a hard time squeezing itself through the supply pipeline. Espresso for the restaurant, fresh steaks for chow, tapes for everyone’s VCRs—all these things he could get, via the twice-weekly visits by CIA-contracted cargo planes. But trying to secure the correct-size computer disk for the Tin Can’s hard drive had taken three weeks. Getting the two tapes he’d shown at the recently completed briefing had taken nearly as long. These selective delays were stupid and weird, like just about everything associated with the project. Yet every time he cabled Stone to ask why it seemed some things were being held up intentionally, he never received an adequate reply.

It was like fighting a losing battle from the start.

Smitz put his last dry towel under his head now, took off his glasses, and tried to rest his tired eyes. This operation was the biggest and most complex he’d ever been assigned. He was, after all, still a junior officer in the CIA’s Special Foreign Operations Section. His job for the past two years had been essentially carrying spears for the section’s bigger operatives. Cleaning up their dirty work, getting funds to them if they were offshore, writing their reports if they were not. The solo projects he’d handled had been appropriately unimportant. Meeting with Cuban dissidents, interviewing fake Russian nuclear scientists, telling half-truths to disaffected mullahs. Kid stuff…

Why then had Jacobs given him this assignment literally from his deathbed? Had it been a vote of confidence from the old dog to a young wolf making his way up the ranks? Or had it been just the opposite—a chance for him to fail and get weeded out to some real crappy CIA desk job, like the Agricultural Intelligence Section. Was that the reason Stone was squeezing his balls so hard on this one? Smitz didn’t know. He was the first to admit that the project was a little over his head. The question was, could he still rise above the waves and see it through?

He rolled over on his bunk and stared at the dripping-wet wall. He suddenly wished that he smoked cigarettes or drank liquor. He suddenly wished he had a vice . He wasn’t sure why. It was a strange thought. But it seemed if he did have some nasty habit to fall back on, it might make what he had to do go a little easier.

But alas, he had none of these things.

He wasn’t that lucky.

He somehow drifted off to sleep in his messy wet little room. His dream began again. He’s playing first base in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series. Two outs in the tenth. The crowd is roaring. He’s tapping his mitt. Voices are whispering in his ear. But this time, before the ball is even hit to him—the one that would go through his legs and cost him the world championship—the rain pelting his window started up again. He awoke with a start and saw a red light flashing in his face. It was his scramble-fax’s remote beeper. There was a message coming in for him from the Office.

He reached over and activated the remote-control device, then plugged it into his laptop, praying that his stuff would work after getting seriously drenched. He was heartened to see the laptop’s little green light pop on. He hit the enter button, and the message began scrolling across his laptop screen.

“Situation fluid. Further materiel arriving your location within the half hour,” was all it said.

Half hour? Smitz sat straight up on his bed.

He couldn’t possibly clean up his room in that short a time!

The wind was howling and the rain coming down even harder when Smitz reached Hangar 2.

It was now almost 0100 hours and he was awaiting the “further materiel” as the scrambled message had told him to do.

But what was he waiting for exactly?

He didn’t know. But he had a good idea.

Rooney drove up in one of the pink jeeps. He had had the sense to wear a rain slicker. The storm was getting worse now, and the wind was positively screaming.

Rooney climbed out of the jeep, soggy cigar still stuck between his teeth. He was a powerful if paunchy individual, with an Ernest Hemingway look to him. A team of air techs was waiting a little further inside the hangar, wondering why they’d been called out to duty so late and in such weather.