Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

Everything stopped….

“Company, hold fast!” Norton heard Chou yell from somewhere inside the cloud of smoke. “Secure positions. Cease firing!”

The calm that settled on the building came so quickly, it was almost frightening. In seconds, all that could be heard was the crackling of flames and the whistle of the wind outside.

Then came the voices. Not yelling. Not the cries of excitement of men in battle.

No—these were gasps, curse words of disbelief. The voices of men in the process of grisly discovery.

“Doc! Up here!” they heard someone shout. The SEAL doctor began moving through the haze, Norton on his tail, Delaney close behind. They reached a small open area about halfway down the length of the barracks. There they saw a very disturbing sight.

Lined up side by side on the barracks’ floor were nine bodies. Facedown, hands at their sides. They were arranged in such an orderly fashion, it was obvious someone took a bit of time to do it properly.

They were Americans. They were all wearing plain gray flight suits that were about ten years out of date. All still had their names sewn on them. One of Chou’s men was doing a quick check, but there was no doubt who these people were. They were the DIA and Special Forces guys assigned to the ArcLight gunship.

Each one had a bullet in the back of his head.

Smitz was hanging out of the side window of Truck Two, out of breath, sweaty, and getting dizzy.

Something was wrong here, he just knew it.

There were circling the ArcLight gunship. The smoke from the battle going on inside the prison compound was obscuring his vision, even though they were just a few hundred feet above the airplane.

The Marines inside the giant Halo were chomping at the bit to land and get on with the mission, but the Army chopper pilots were playing it by the book: They would not land unless they were sure the area was secured. But with the swirling sand and smoke, it was impossible to see if any opposition was waiting for them on the ground. The Hinds would have taken out any AA and the SAMs, but what about the regular grunts that might be guarding this place?

Try as he might, Smitz could not see any potential enemy soldiers anywhere near the runway or the airplane. Of course there were only a few thousand places they could be hiding.

Finally Smitz had to make a decision. He crawled up to the copter’s cockpit and tapped the pilot on the shoulder.

“Bring her down!” he yelled. “We’ve got to go in now.”

“The LZ is not secure,” the pilot said back. “The orders were for us not to…”

Smitz had no time for it. He wasn’t questioning the Army pilot’s courage—the guy was just doing what he was supposed to in these cases. But Smitz was throwing away the book, or at least ripping a few pages out of it.

“Bring her down,” he said again. “I’ll take the heat if anything goes wrong.”

The two Army pilots just looked at each other. It did seem stupid just to keep circling. And they were as anxious to get the show on the road as anyone. So they nodded and told Smitz to tell the Marines to get ready. Then they leaned on the controls and the big chopper began falling out of the sky.

Smitz scrambled to the back and gave the high sign to the Marines, but they already knew they were going in. They were crouched in their ready positions, weapons up, helmet visors down, tension and excitement very thick in the air.

Smitz checked his own weapon; it was a standard-issue rather boring-looking M-16 that he had never fired. His plan for the next half minute was very simple: wait for the chopper to land and then get the hell out of the way as the Marines exited the aircraft and did their thing.

And that was just what happened. The big chopper landed with a tremendous thud. The downwash from its huge rotors caused the interior of the cabin to fill with smoke and exhaust, but this did nothing to dampen the Marines’ verve. No sooner had the chopper stopped rolling when the big rear doors opened up and the Marines went running out. The copter’s engines were still screaming, and Smitz was sure he heard gunfire as soon as the Marines hit the ground. He checked the clip in his own gun a second time, noted the time, took a deep smoky breath, then ran out of the copter’s tail. This would be first time he’d ever been in combat.

He tripped coming down the ramp, of course, landing ass over teacup and sending his Fritz helmet flying off his head. Now came a bizarre piece of business as the Halo’s rotor wash started blowing his helmet down the runway, away from the airplane, which was sitting about fifty yards away in the opposite direction.

It was weird because Smitz’s first instinct was to chase his helmet—and that was what he did. But the damn thing was traveling faster than he could run. Still, he pursued it, not wanting to be without it when the bullets were flying, and not thinking that he was presenting himself as a very easy target to the hundreds of gunmen who could be hiding anywhere.

So he ran and tripped and got up and scrambled in a crouch some more, until he finally caught up with the helmet. Snatching the damn thing by its strap, he slammed it back down on his head. Then he turned around and focused his attention back to the matter at hand.

But something very odd was happening here. He was sure he would see the Marines storming the ArcLight airplane, and maybe hear the sounds of a fierce gun- fight in progress. But when he turned back to the action he was surprised to see that the Marines were more or less… standing around.

This wasn’t right.

Smitz got back to his feet and began running towards the airplane. He met one of the platoon leaders running for him in the opposite direction.

“What the fuck is happening?” Smitz yelled at him over the roar of the waiting chopper.

“It’s the wrong airplane!” the Marine yelled back.

Smitz stopped dead in his tracks. He grabbed the Marine by his collar.

“It’s what !?”

“It’s the wrong airplane,” the Marine yelled again. “It’s not the gunship.”

Smitz let the Marine go and together they ran up to the aircraft. The other team members had stripped off the tarpaulin covering, and Smitz could see the plane was definitely a C-130. And it was painted just like the ArcLight aircraft, or at least the same as the pictures he’d seen of the rogue gunship. But the numbers on the side of the fuselage and the tail appeared to be very crudely painted on. And many of the cockpit windows were either smashed or gone completely.

Smitz’s heart sank to his feet. He climbed inside the airplane and saw it was completely empty. No guns. No computers. No nothing. Just an empty cargo bay.

“Jessuz, did you check the numbers up front?” he asked the Marine.

The soldier nodded. “They don’t match,” he replied. “Nothing does. This plane doesn’t even have portholes for any guns. See?”

Smitz felt the air just go right out of him. He couldn’t believe it.

They had come all this way… for the wrong airplane?

There were tears in the eyes of the Marines when Smitz arrived at the prison building.

When he scrambled through the blasted-away front door, the first thing he saw was a bunch of Team 66 men hunched over, turned away from each other, silently crying.

Smitz passed by them slowly—his first thought was that many of their comrades had been killed in the attack. But when he reached the area where everyone else was gathered, he took one look at the nine bodies and knew this was a different horror they had to face. It was unreal for a second or two. No one was talking. No one acknowledged his presence. Everyone was just milling about. And the nine dead Americans didn’t look dead at all. They looked like they were asleep. All lined up in a perfect row. With small parts of their skulls blown off. And tiny trickles of blood flowing out. Some with eyes open. Some with smiles frozen on their faces. It was almost as if they had been expecting what had killed them—yet did not resist.