Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

Again, no one laughed.

“This is a site located somewhere in the Suhr-bal in northeast Iraq,” Smitz began, using a chewed-on pencil as a pointer. “It has no known name. However, it is about two hundred klicks from where we are now. Six buildings in all. One appears to be a barracks. One is a very smoky factory.”

“A hole in the wall,” Ricco said. “So what?”

“Well, it’s an ingenious hole in the wall,” Smitz said. “Look at this building. It’s large enough to be a hangar. And notice this roadway. It appears to begin and end nowhere. But it’s just long enough to handle both heavy cargo planes and jet fighters.”

“An airport in disguise?” one of the Army pilots asked.

“That’s the thinking,” Smitz replied.

He pointed to the high mountains.

“Look at the topography of this place. Everything around it is at least 2500 feet high. The angles of these peaks are so sharp this place is likely to be covered in shadow for most of the daylight hours.”

He pointed to the factory-like building.

“And no one has any idea what this place does, what it makes, if anything. But those three stacks seem to be belching out some kind of black smoke on a continuous basis.”

Smitz paused for effect.

“Bottom line: Some people in my office believe the ArcLight gunship operates from here.”

Those gathered pulled in a little closer. They were now studying the satellite photo with renewed interest.

“So the highway is a runway, the mountains provide the shadows to hide in, and the factory smoke obscures the airplane when the shadows don’t,” Norton said. “Someone kept his thinking cap on for this one.”

“That’s the guess,” Smitz confirmed. “This place looks innocent and unimpressive. But whoever built it went a long way to make it nearly impossible to get a good satellite read on it. Or even a U-2 flyover.”

He indicated the long ranch-style building. It looked a bit like Motel Six, back on Seven Ghosts Key.

“Note this structure,” Smitz said. “Some people in my office believe the plane’s original crew is being held here. Going in and getting them out is what Team 66 has been training for.”

He pointed to an even larger building further down the “highway.”

“This might or might not be a hangar,” he said. “It’s big enough to house—or hide—a C-130. Whether that’s its function or not, my office isn’t sure. And note what could be AA gun emplacements.”

He pointed to several dark spots in the lower hills surrounding the base. If they were AA gun or missile sites, they were in the correct position to provide the valley with maximum air defense coverage—unless something was coming in real low.

Smitz took a moment to collect his thoughts. There was no talk among the men gathered. Just a grim silence and the gentle rocking of the barge.

“OK then,” Smitz began again. “That’s the target. Now here’s the plan….”

The men gathered even closer around the chart table.

“After the place has been reconnoitered,” Smitz said, “we will determine the most opportune time for the raid. We’ll go in as one. The Hinds arrive first, ride in low, and take out the AA threat. Then they will sweep the area of ground opposition. The Halos will land and half the guys from Team 66 will crash the prison building, eliminate any opposition, and free the original crew.

“The rest of the Marines will go to the hangar, hopefully find the gunship inside, and secure it. By that time”—he turned to Norton and Delaney—“you two will have landed and—”

Delaney quickly began waving his hands.

“Whoa!” he said. “You want us to land? Shouldn’t we be providing the air cover?”

“Under usual circumstances, yes,” Smitz replied. “But there are two things you have to do on the ground. First, as senior officers for the mission, it’s up to you two to appraise the situation inside the prison building, whether it’s good or bad. But more important, you have to get on board the ArcLight and determine its flight capability.”

“Well, how long will we have to do that?” Delaney asked innocently.

“About ten seconds,” Smitz replied without even looking up. “You’ll have to very quickly determine whether you can fly the thing out of there or not. If you can, then you will load everyone aboard, abandon the choppers, and get the hell out of there.”

“What if we can’t fly it out?” Norton asked.

Smitz took a breath. “Well, then we put everyone on the choppers, wherever they will fit, and take off. We leave explosives inside the ArcLight, blow it up before leaving. Should that not work, you guys use your choppers’ weapons on it. Fuck it up to the point of never flying again.”

They could all see Gillis and Ricco getting fidgety.

“Where the hell do we come in?” Ricco finally asked. “Why are we even here?”

Smitz turned to the tanker pilots.

“You’re here because you will perform the most crucial aspect of the raid,” he told them.

Both men brightened immediately—a small coup of diplomacy for Smitz.

“Now, depending on how it goes, you two will have either one of two missions,” he went on, turning everyone’s attention back to the satellite photo of the raid site.

“If the ArcLight is not airworthy, you will have to refuel the air assets once everyone has lifted off for the flight back to the ingress site. If the ArcLight is flyable, but is low on fuel, or if its tanks have been drained, then you will land and the fuel in your chopper will be pumped into the airplane. I’ve been assured it will be compatible. Now there’s a list of other contingencies, but there’s no question that fuel is the key to this whole operation. And you guys will have all the fuel.”

Gillis and Ricco were smiling so widely, it was as if they’d won the Medal of Honor already. Delaney glanced at Norton, who did a mile-high eye roll. After all their bitching, now the tanker pilots were happy?

Smitz moved the pencil pointer further down the piece of scrolled paper.

“Now for the ingress site,” he began again, pointing to another hazy photograph. This one was accompanied by several crude drawings. The photo showed a lone mountain at a location very different from the disguised air base. This mountain was a giant, so high there was even a wisp of snow at its peak. Yet it was a solitary place, surrounded by vast open desert. And it had an odd geological quirk to it. About halfway up on its southern side was a long, flat overhanging cliff. Looking from the south then, the mountain actually appeared to be half mountain, half mesa.

“This place is called Ka-el,” Smitz said, rolling the Arabic name off his tongue with some aplomb. “It was last used as an advance base by British SAS prior to the Gulf War.”

He pointed to the cliff. “You can see this area is flat as hell and long. We believe it’s long enough to accommodate a moving chopper takeoff.”

“You ‘believe’ or you’re sure?” Delaney asked.

Smitz looked up at him. “We believe we’ll find out soon enough,” he replied, leaving Delaney to scratch his head.

Smitz went on: “We ingress to this site, set down, and wait for the Hinds to recon the gunship’s base. Once we’ve determined the most opportune time to go in—that is, when the gunship is actually on the ground—then we saddle up and do the raid.”

Norton studied the photo of the oddly shaped mountain.

“Won’t we be very exposed up there?” he asked. “Anyone flying overhead will see us for sure. They’ll have to think it’s a bit strange that five choppers are sitting in the same place halfway up a mountain, even if we are painted like Iraqis.”

Smitz just shook his head. “That’s the beauty of this place,” he said. “We don’t have to be exposed at all.”