Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

Maybe, he was just a damn…

“ Jazz! Jazz? You awake, man?”

Norton’s headphones were suddenly filled with the sound of Delaney’s very excited voice. He hit his silent-scramble-mode key and responded.

“I’m here… what’s up?”

“What’s up?” Delaney came back. “Open your eyes, man. Dead ahead.”

Norton shook the last of his morbid thoughts away and took Delaney’s advice. His jaw dropped.

“Damn. Will you look at that…”

About five miles straight ahead was exactly what they were looking for. The shadow-filled valley. The prison building. The smoke-belching factory. The high, sharp-peaked mountains. Everything. It was the Ranch, just as it had been presented to them.

And sitting out on the highway that doubled as the runway was the ArcLight gunship. It was partially covered in tarpaulin, but Norton could see its elongated nose and its extra-wide fuselage poking out of the covering. Figures could be seen moving around the airplane and at various points on the base itself. The suspected AA guns and SAM sites were in evidence. There was even a T-72 battle tank sitting alongside the asphalt roadway.

“We just hit a home run,” Delaney was telling him through his headphones. “On our first at bat!”

Norton was so surprised by their sudden luck, he yanked back the throttles and slowed down a bit to take a better look. It had been almost too easy, but there was no denying that the CIA’s directions had brought them precisely to where they wanted to be. All the pieces fit. The buildings. The runway. The mountains. The billows of black from the factory smokestacks. And best of all, there was the gunship, sitting so fat and pretty, Norton felt he could reach out and touch it.

“Damn,” he said again. “This must be the place.”

Smitz was checking his NoteBook when he got word that the Hinds were returning.

He alerted Chou, and quickly a dozen Marines began clearing the opening to the cave. It was now 0830 hours, and the sun was up and visibility extremely clear. Getting the Hinds out of sight would be their number-one priority.

The two gunships came in for bumpy landings. No sooner had they stopped rolling when the air techs flooded out of the cave and began pushing them towards the opening.

Because of the Hinds’ long, low still-turning rotors, many of the techs had to lie down and push the choppers’ big wheels by hand. But finally the rotors stopped turning and both aircraft were pushed completely inside. The cave opening’s covering was put back in place. A check with the perimeter men confirmed that the landing and recovery had gone unnoticed.

Norton was out of his Hind even before the cave opening was sealed off. Smitz and Chou were waiting for him.

“We found the place,” he exclaimed to them. “First time. Just like that.”

Delaney was right beside him. “It was just where they said it would be. Right on the fucking money.”

“Damn, really?” Smitz breathed.

“Your office got the number of blades of grass right. And the ArcLight is there. Ripe for the picking.”

Smitz was having trouble absorbing the news. No way did he expect the timetable to be moving this fast.

“Either my office is getting real good, real quick,” he muttered, “or we’re just the luckiest bastards on God’s Earth.”

“Either way,” Delaney said, “we know where the place is. And the gunship is on the ground. I say we get our asses in gear and do this thing right now—so we can get the fuck out of here.”

Smitz bit his lip. There was nothing in the plan that said they couldn’t move fast once the target was established. But this fast? After everyone assumed that finding the hidden base would take more than just one recon flight?

He had to think for a moment. His stomach was getting tight—a sign sometimes that all was not right. What should he do? Should he send a scramble-burst message back to his bosses and tell them what had happened? Ask for further orders? Or would this just waste time? The forte of the unit was they were supposed to be autonomous. They were supposed to be able to think on their feet, take advantage of any situation.

But he was also under orders to report extraordinary events back to the office, both good or bad. Did an incredible stroke of good luck qualify as “extraordinary”?

“Fuck it, Smitty,” Delaney cursed, reading his thoughts. “Don’t call those assholes back in Washington. They’ll just fuck it up. Let’s just do it. Before we think too much about it. Besides, I got some shit to do back home.”

Smitz looked up at Norton. His rock of good judgment. Surprisingly, Norton was smiling.

“You heard the man,” Norton said, indicating Delaney. “He’s got ‘some shit to do.’”

Gillis and Ricco were now standing nearby as well. They were nodding in agreement. So were Chou and the Army pilots.

Smitz slammed his NoteBook shut and turned off the power.

“OK, screw it,” he said finally. “Let’s go.”

They came out of the sun, like a thunderstorm of fire and burning metal.

Red tracers. Streaks of flame. Blinding yellow explosions. Palls of smoke rising in seconds. The noise, the screech of engines. Deafening enough to puncture eardrums, enough to make them bleed. Every sound of combat could be heard now—except the screams.

Norton had gone in first. His Hind’s gigantic nose cannon was pumping out its enormous shells as soon as he came over the top of the mountain. His first target, of course, was the T-72 battle tank sitting astride the fake highway. There was no simulated nightmare here. He threw more than thirty high-explosive shells into the mammoth tank, and it blew apart like a kid’s toy.

Next, he looped up and took out the first suspected AA gun emplacement, the one on the ledge about two thirds of the way up the south mountain wall. This took fifteen of the big shells before exploding in a ball of fire and dust. What Norton believed was a SAM site located on the west mountain wall appeared in his targeting circle next. He let his wing guns take care of this potential threat, shredding it with a five-second twin burst.

Another quick turn and he was firing at the second suspected AA site. Three seconds from his side guns and it was vaporized. Another 90-degree turn, another pair of five-second bursts, another suspected SAM site reduced to twisted metal and flaming embers.

Just like that, his first strafing run was over. He’d taken out the tank, two AA gun sites, and a pair of SAMs in less than thirty seconds. Without getting so much as a ding on his aircraft.

And not a Fulcrum in sight.

Delaney was now on his tail. They turned as one and like two World War One Spads, they swept over the hidden base, back and forth, firing their massive guns and hitting everything but the building where the prisoners were thought to be kept.

Norton was screaming at the top of his lungs now—an involuntary quirk of combat he’d picked up in Desert Storm. He was shooting at anything and everything he thought looked target-worthy. The gaggle of metal and wires on a perch overlooking the factory. Was it another AA gun or some kind of weather station? No matter. It was gone in a three-second burst. That glint of white plastic sitting on a trailer with four wheels near the roadside. Was it a mobile SAM launcher or a satellite dish in disguise? It made no difference. A barrage of missiles from his wing pylons and the thing was gone.

That garage, at one end of a narrow street. Could there be another T-72 hiding inside? Again, it didn’t really matter. A ten-second burst from the monster nose cannon and the place was left a pile of smoking debris.