Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

Yet there was nothing he could do about it. This was the price he had to pay for agreeing to join up with the Spooks. He could only buck it up, do the mission—whatever the hell it was!—and hope for the best. Or die trying.

He opened his locker to find a new combat suit waiting for him. Unlike the threads he’d been wearing since arriving on Seven Ghosts Key, this outfit was part fighter-pilot g-suit, part survival pack. It was desert-camouflaged and festooned with pockets—on the arms, the legs, the chest, Velcro pockets everywhere. The built-in utility belt carried small packets of survival stuff, including food pills, a tiny water-purification kit, morphine candy, bandages, an electronic compass, a mini-phone, a GPS transponder, and so on.

The helmet was also a combination of a pilot’s regular bone dome and a standard GI-issue Fritz battle hat. It was covered with camouflage netting similar to that used in Marine Aviation. The boots were waterproof, fireproof, and lined with pyrofoam, which would heat up at the crack of an inside seal. By experience Norton knew how cold and miserable the desert could be. There was a chance these heat-lined doggies might come in the handiest of all. The suit also came with a gun, a standard-issue Colt .45 automatic, with two clips of ammo.

So this would be his wardrobe for the mission. He could only pray that the length of time he’d be wearing it would be measured in hours and not days.

Norton climbed into his suit as quickly as he could. He would search for Delaney once he was suited up, he decided. But just as he was adjusting his helmet’s strap, Delaney blew in to the room.

Through the open door behind him, Norton could see the quartet of C-5 transport planes had landed and were already backed up to the flight line, their engines still turning. The unit’s Russian-built helicopters were being pushed up the loading ramps and into the cavernous cargo holds. The Marines were moving single file to take their places on the C-5’s as well. From all indications, they were less than thirty minutes from departure.

Delaney was already suited up in his futuristic combat suit; somehow he’d beaten Norton to the suit-up room. He was also carrying a small duffel bag with him. He came up to Norton and whacked him on his helmet.

“Ready for the big show, Jazzman?” he asked sarcastically.

“Unless they stop shooting people for desertion,” Norton replied.

Delaney laughed at the grim joke.

“We ain’t that lucky,” he told Norton, adding, “What kind of gun you bringing?”

Norton just shrugged. “The one they just gave me,” he replied, taking out the .45 and showing it to Delaney.

Delaney looked at it and just shook his head. “What are you? A girl?” he asked, exasperated.

Delaney tore the gun out of Norton’s hand and casually flipped it into the wastebasket.

Then he unzipped the duffel bag, reached in, and came out with an enormous pistol.

“Here, man,” he said, handing the massive handgun to Norton. “I got a real gun for you.”

Norton’s wrist almost buckled under the weight of the hand cannon. It was at least twice the size of the .45, with a long thick clip sticking out of the handle. The bullets in this clip looked like tiny artillery shells. The pistol itself was big and black and shiny. A true monster.

“What the hell kind of gun is this?”

“Beats me,” Delaney said, taking out his own huge pistol and examining it. “I got them from the same guy who’s been giving us the beer. He’s also the armorer here. He gave one to Smitz too.”

“Smitz? What’s he need one for?”

Delaney checked his weapon’s ammo clip. “He’s going with us, I guess,” he said simply.

This was news to Norton.

“Now if we get into a situation where we have to use pistols,” Delaney was saying, holding the huge gun out in front of him, “what would you rather have? A GI peashooter. Or this baby?”

Norton just looked at his gun, then at Delaney, and then back at his gun. His partner was making sense.

“This one, for sure,” Norton replied.

“Atta boy!” Delaney said, slapping him on the back. “Believe me, these things will come in handy. You’ll see.”

With that, Norton put the massive weapon in his bag, and together they walked out to the waiting C-5’s.

In a large, smoky, windowless room two thousand miles west of the Florida Straits, seven men were sitting around a table, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.

They were all in their late sixties. Those not bald had gray or white hair—overgrown, to the shoulders in a few cases. They were all wearing Western-style shirts, jeans, and cowboy boots. And even though the room was dimly lit, they were all wearing sunglasses.

“This is a very big gamble,” one man said. “There are so many things that could go wrong now.”

“It has to be done,” a second man said. “We knew we’d have to deal with this situation eventually. No one else was doing anything about it.”

“It was left up to us to take some action,” a third man said. “It shouldn’t have come to this, but it did.”

More cigarettes were lit and more coffee poured. The room became even smokier.

“But we’re walking such a thin line here,” the first man said. “Our people at Langley agree; what few we have left. Our lines of communications could be discovered. Just what the hell we’ve been doing here all these years could be revealed. That would be a disaster.”

“Doing nothing about this situation would be a disaster too,” a fourth voice said. “Our reason for being is not just to sit here and do nothing. Our reason for being is to act as a last resort. That’s what we’ve done in this case. That’s what we had to do.”

“Personally, I think we should have acted long before they sank the LaSallette ,” a fifth man added.

This opinion was seconded by the sixth and seventh men present. The first man just shook his head and finally shrugged.

“OK, I just hope these guys can pull it off—it’s such a high-wire act,” he said. “They’re professional military men and 1 just hate pulling their strings like they are puppets. They haven’t got the faintest idea what is really happening and that’s just not right.”

“It’s better that they don’t know,” the second man said. “We agreed on that long ago. Just let them fly the mission. We’ll give them what we can along the way. We’ll have our friend look in on them from time to time. Who knows? They might just get lucky and things will work out our way.”

There was almost a laugh around the table.

“And in thirty-five years, just how many times have we got lucky?” someone asked.

“Just about every time,” the second man said. “I think.”

The palace was called Qom-el-Zarz.

It was located in a very unusual part of the world. Just fifty miles northeast of Baghdad, it straddled the border of Iraq and Iran, tucked away in the very rugged foothills of the Suhr-bal. This area was so barren and desolate, at one time NASA had considered using it as a training ground for U.S. astronauts heading for the moon. In many ways, it did look otherworldly.

The palace was built into the side of a 3500-foot mountain. It looked like a cross between a modern-day fortress and something from the pages of Arabian Nights . Though it had been seen by very few eyes, its architecture was among the most beautiful in the Middle East. It featured four minarets, each one housing a Rapier surface-to-air-missile platform. Its main building was a pale-blue domed affair, looking not unlike a mosque, ringed with satellite dishes and Bofors antiaircraft guns. It was surrounded on all sides by high, thick walls. Their parapets were patrolled day and night by heavily armed mercenaries.