Mack Maloney: Chopper Ops

The second sheet had three other photographs attached, none of which had captions. The first showed an aerial photograph of a small airfield Smitz guessed was somewhere in the Caribbean. He’d been in that area enough times to recognize the fauna and the water color. The place looked tiny, with one short airstrip and a few buildings. It also appeared to be deserted. The second and third photos showed the same place, just as empty, taken through a Starscope camera at night.

The third page told Smitz what he should bring for the environment he was going to. Pack light summer wear and nothing else. An index card stapled to the fourth page said Smitz was to report to Andrews Air Force Base within twenty-four hours to get transport to his new assignment. Once he was on-site, further information on the program would be waiting for him.

And that was it. No more photos, no more background. Nothing.

Smitz closed the file and resealed it. Two things began bothering him immediately. First, this seemed to be a big project for someone like him who was still pretty low in rank in his section. Rarely did his assignments take him away from Washington, D.C., or its close environs. This one, though, seemed to indicate he’d be going somewhere hot and humid and be there for a long period of time.

But secondly, never had he read an action report with such a paucity of information. Usually a project folder was too thick with paperwork. This one was abnormally thin. Something had to be missing here. Perhaps there was more information in another file in Jacobs’s briefcase. Smitz threw the coffee cup away and walked back down the hallway to Jacobs’s room.

Only Stone was waiting outside the door now. The other two supervisors had left. Smitz tried to push by him, but the man stopped him.

“You’re too late,” Stone told him. “He’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?” Smitz asked. “Another room? Another floor?”

“Gone as in ‘dead,’” Stone told him coldly. “Ten minutes ago.”

Smitz thought he was kidding.

“But I only left here ten minutes ago,” he said.

Stone didn’t blink. “Take a look for yourself,” he said.

Smitz went through the door and stopped after two steps. Jacobs was gone, as were the tubes and the machines. Only the unmade bed remained.

Stone was right behind him. He handed him a small white card with an address on it.

“This is where you can send flowers,” he said.

Smitz looked at the card and then back at Stone, then at the empty room again.

Then without another word, he turned on his heel, went out the door, and took a cab home.

Fallon Naval Air Station

Nevada

Three weeks later

It was precisely 0700 hours when the sleek silver-and-blue jet fighter began its takeoff run.

Engines screeching, the jet roared down the runway, parting an ocean of early morning fog. Exactly eight seconds into his takeoff roll, the pilot yanked back on the stick. A stream of fire exploded from the aircraft’s tailpipes. Suddenly the fighter was airborne.

It immediately went on its tail, its needle nose pointing straight up into the cloudless sky. The jet accelerated so quickly, it was soon nothing more than a silver speck, twisting its way heavenward. With one last flash of sunlight off its wings, it disappeared from view altogether.

The airplane’s official name was the YF-17 Cobra. It was an unusual, one-of-a-kind airplane with an interesting lineage. Back in the early 1970’s, the Cobra had lost a fly-off for the Air Force’s new-generation fighter, a competition eventually won by the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The Cobra was hardly a bust, though. Its design was so impressive, the Navy tinkered with it and created the F/A-18 Hornet, currently the Fleet’s premier fighter-attack plane. Hundreds of Hornets had been built over the years. Yet only one Cobra had ever flown—and this was it.

In the world of military aviation, the phrase goes: If it looks good, it flies good. With its sharp nose, short wings, and twin tails, the YF-17 looked good and flew good. Real good. But for all its elegance, this particular airplane was essentially a flying clown. There was an air show today at Fallon. More than a quarter of a million people were expected to attend. The YF-17 was one of many airplanes performing; in fact, it was due to go on first. That was why the pilot was taking this practice run so early in the day. He had ten minutes to run through his routine, a preshow quickie that would allow him to get familiar with the terrain over which he would be performing.

The main attraction of the day would be a performance by the Navy’s Aerial Demonstration Team, better known as the Blue Angels. The eight blue-and-gold F-18’s were tucked away inside a secure hangar, one of many at the sprawling high-desert air base. Their scheduled takeoff time was still nearly six hours away.

There was also a dizzying assortment of military aircraft on static display to entertain the crowds. Mammoth C-5’s, grandfatherly B-52’s, a few hard-luck B-l’s. Also sleek F-16’s, tiger-sharked F-14’s, bulked-up F-15E’s. Even an F-22 Raptor prototype.

But of them all, no doubt the oddest airplane was the Cobra.

It appeared again about a minute later, streaking in from the west. Flying no more than two hundred feet off the deck, the Cobra twisted wildly as a long plume of red, white, and blue smoke streamed out of its tail. The patriotic cloud thus laid, the pilot put the aircraft on its tail a second time and once again rocketed back up into the deep blue desert sky.

When the Air Force decided to put the YF-17 out on the air show circuit, it realized it needed a pilot who was more than the typical ice-water-cool flyboy type. More than someone who could quickly adapt to the airplane’s unique controls and master its nuances, the Air Force needed someone who didn’t mind being a high-tech carnival act, who could handle the rigors of the road and long hours of solitary practicing. Someone who, for want of a better word, had a flair for “showmanship.”

So the computer at the Air Force’s Personnel Assignment Center at the Pentagon was given the task of finding just such a pilot. As the story went, it took exactly twenty-two seconds for the computer to spit out the file of the man now at the controls of the YF-17.

He was Major John Thomas Norton IV. Most people knew him as “Jazz.”

From the start it appeared to be a great match. At thirty- four, Norton was an outstanding pilot, near the top of the Air Force’s performance chart. He’d flown F-15’s for the 16th Fighter Squadron in Langley, Virginia, then F-117 Stealths out of Holliman in New Mexico. He’d seen action in the Gulf War and over Kosovo, and at present was on the very short list for space-shuttle training. If that didn’t come through, his superiors fully expected him to be assigned to flying black projects out of Groom Lake, the infamous Area 51 or some other secret location.

But what the computer might not have known was that the business of show flying was already in Norton’s genes. True, Jazz’s father had flown F-4’s in Vietnam and his grandfather had driven Mustangs in World War II. But Jazz’s great -grandfather had spent the 1920’s as a barn-storming pilot. He’d been a minor celebrity, famous for doing everything from wing-walking to intentionally flying rickety biplanes nose-first into the sides of old barns.

The question then was this: If the Air Force had realized that Great Gramps had made a living crashing his airplane for the delight of hundreds, would they still have made Jazz Norton the prime choice to fly the YF-17 when the air show assignment came up?