Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

He took another survey of the Hind’s byzantine control panel. “Does anyone even know how to start this goddamn thing?”

Smitz looked to the small cluster of aircraft techs who had gathered nearby, drawn back from their coffee break by the raised voices. They’d heard Norton’s question, but their only reply was a chorus of shrugs. One man held up a manual that looked about a foot thick.

Smitz turned back to Norton.

“Let’s just say we’re working on that,” Smitz told him.

Norton groaned and put his head in his hands. “Man, I should have stayed in show business.”

Smitz gave him a friendly pat on the back. “Look on the bright side, Major,” he said.

Norton looked up at him. “There’s a bright side?”

Smitz nodded. “You could have been assigned to the aircraft that your friends Gillis and Ricco have to fly.”

This was true enough. In the next hangar over, Gillis and Ricco were going through their own trauma.

They were sitting side by side in a helicopter even larger than a Hind. Also of Russian design, it was known as the Mi-6 Hook.

This copter was not a gunship. It was a dedicated troop carrier/cargo hauler of immense proportions. When it first entered service in the mid-fifties, the Hook was the largest military helicopter ever to fly—so big, in fact, it had to be shipped to Seven Ghosts Key in pieces, and still it barely fit inside the second C-5 that had landed earlier in the night.

Put together, it was an astounding 136 feet long— more than a third of a football field. Its rotors were a gigantic 133 feet in diameter. Its power plant was a brutally strong pair of engines capable of nearly six thousand horsepower per engine. As a result, the Hook was the first helicopter to ever surpass three hundred kilometers an hour. This was extremely fast for any chopper.

Its vast cargo hold could carry seventy-five fully equipped soldiers or even a tank or two inside. It could lug a total of twelve tons in its belly and another nine with a pull line underneath. The copter also had wings sticking from its midsection. Again, their function was to provide lift for the enormous machine.

None of this was making a positive impression on Ricco or Gillis, though. They were sitting in the vast cockpit—it too was adorned with a multitude of lights, bells, buzzers, switches, and levers. All of it with Russian nameplates. All of it looking like it was made in the fifties, which it was.

The only things the pilots recognized were the steering columns, the throttles, and the refueling suite—all of them were similar to the instruments on their KC-10 Pegasus tanker. But this provided them with little comfort.

Rooney, the CIA base chief, had drawn the short straw and was giving them their first look at the Russian-built behemoth.

“You really don’t expect us to fly this thing, do you?” Ricco was asking him for about the hundredth time.

“Those are the orders,” Rooney told him for about the hundredth time.

But Gillis persisted—he was by far the most infuriated of the two.

“You have to be nuts,” he lashed out at Rooney. “We fly jets. Big jets. Big fucking American jets! This is a helicopter. A Russian -built helicopter. We can’t drive this thing.”

“You’ll have to learn,” Rooney said matter-of-factly. “It’s as simple as that. Look—they went through the trouble to modify it to your experience. With the steering columns and all. I’ve been assured that once you get the feel of this thing, it will handle just like your big tanker. That’s why you guys didn’t have to suffer inside those simulators.”

But Gillis and Ricco couldn’t be had that easily. Sticks and throttles did not a flying machine make. As it was, the cockpit looked like the dashboard of a tractor-trailer jammed into that of a compact car.

But it was the modifications to the back cargo bay that really had them worried. The vast insides had been stripped out and two enormous fuel bladders had been installed. Per the mission specs, they were presently full of aviation fuel, the stink of which was permeating the vast flight cabin.

“And is someone expecting us to fly all that gas somewhere?” Ricco demanded of Rooney. “If so, I can suggest to you about a hundred better ways to do it. Like, in a fuel ship. You know, the kind that floats on the water? I’m sure the Navy’s got more than a few of them.”

Rooney just shook his head. He wished now that he’d volunteered to orient Norton to his craft instead of these two.

“The idea is not to carry the fuel from one place to the other,” he explained calmly and slowly, like a professor to a couple dumbos held after class. “The idea is to carry it upstairs—so you can refuel others in flight. That’s what you two boys are good at, am I right?”

The pair of pilots looked back at him. This was the first they’d heard of this.

“Yes, we are fucking great at refueling—in a big go-damn jet!” Ricco half-shouted at him. “Why doesn’t anyone listen to us here? We’re not chopper pilots. No one here is.”

Rooney just stared at the ceiling of the copter’s cockpit. He was astounded by the number of tubes and wires running along its length. What the hell was inside them all? he wondered.

“And you really expect us to learn how to refuel other aircraft in flight with this thing?” Gillis asked him.

Rooney nodded.

“What kind of aircraft?”

“Other helicopters, of course,” Rooney replied.

At this, Ricco and Gillis both slumped into their seats. Like Norton, they couldn’t believe what they had gotten themselves into.

There was a long silence as both men looked over the huge cockpit and its dozens of instruments and controls.

“And how long are you going to give us to learn all this crap?” Ricco asked.

Rooney was uncharacteristically lost for an answer. He ran his hand over his balding dome. Outside, it sounded like the storm was at last letting up.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” he said finally.

0830 hours

Delaney woke up to a cloud of steam hovering above his head.

He rubbed his eyes, took a sniff, and said: “There had better be sugar in that….”

Norton and Smitz were standing over him, cups of steaming coffee in their hands. Delaney just stared up at them.

“Unless you’re going to pour it on me…”

“We should,” Norton replied. “It took us five minutes just to make sure you were still alive. How can anyone sleep so fucking soundly?”

Delaney yawned and managed to sit up. He stretched and yawned again. Then he snatched the cup of coffee out of Norton’s hand.

“I take my sleep very seriously,” Delaney said after a few noisy slurps. “It’s one of the reasons I got divorced. I’d give her the happy stick, roll over, and be out for the next ten hours. I slept through a tornado once.”

Norton and Smitz looked at each other and did a simultaneous eye roll.

“Good,” Norton said, throwing him his clothes. “You’ll need that experience for where we’re going.”

Delaney had half-drained the cup of scalding hot coffee by now.

“Why? Where are we going?” he asked, pulling on his flight suit and boots.

“For a little ride,” Norton replied.

Two minutes later the trio walked into Hangar 2. Delaney took one look at the Hind gunship, turned on his heel, and began to walk away.

Norton caught him by the collar and spun him back towards the gunship.

Norton said grimly, “You know what that is, don’t you?”

“Yeah, of course, it’s a fucking Hind,” Delaney said, his eyes now glued on the frightening machine. “Is it real?”