Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

Another pause. Another cry on the wind.

“And it all looks like a rescue mission gone wrong,” Angel concluded. “Just like all rescue missions go wrong. Or most of them anyway.”

Norton and Delaney both collapsed, their rear ends hitting the hard cliff floor with two simultaneous thuds.

Norton was numb, his mind racing. By any stretch of the imagination, could this be true?

“But why?” he finally mumbled. “Why would they do this? And who is they to begin with?”

Angel rested himself on one knee. “Look, I’m just a guy who is on hand to look for things. I’m the scout at the head of the cavalry column. I report what I see and leave it to others to sort it out….”

“But… ?” Norton prompted him.

“But from all my years in black ops, I’ve learned that it ain’t just like the movies—it’s worse than the movies. The layers go deeper than you can imagine. And I just think that someone somewhere is obviously pulling some strings here. I mean, they knew you were coming. You can’t argue against that. Everyone back at Seven Ghosts was pissing their pants about security—so much so they didn’t even tell you guys what was up until after you shipped. Yet the whole show was compromised somehow.”

Thirty seconds of absolute silence went by. There were no cries on the breeze now. No shooting stars. Even the wind stopped blowing.

“Bastards,” Delaney finally whispered. “If this is even half true, I’ll kill anyone who put us in this position.”

Norton was just shaking his head. “But this still doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Why would they have to drag us all the way over here just to make it look like we killed those guys in a botched rescue attempt? I mean, we were at war with the Iraqis ten years ago—we’re still at war with them in one sense. Why would they be so shy about icing a bunch of Americans? Or more to the point, icing them but shifting the blame?”

Angel just took a deep breath. “Maybe you’re just assuming the people behind this are Iraqi,” he said.

Those words hit Norton on the head like an anvil. He looked up at Angel.

“Well, damn it, we’re in Iraq, and this fucking airplane has been operating out of Iraq, so how in hell can the Iraqis not be involved?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re involved,” Angel said. “But probably not the way we think. They’re just hired hands in all this, I’ll bet. Just like you. Just like me.”

At that moment they all heard an odd beeping sound. It quickly turned into a piercing shrill. Angel took a device out of his pocket. It looked like a TV remote control.

“I hope I’ve helped you two in some way,” Angel said. “And if I just made things more confusing, I’m sorry. But one last piece of advice: Whatever you do, let’s keep this little conversation just between us girls, OK?”

His device beeped again.

“Now I really gotta go,” he concluded.

The two pilots just stared back at him.

“You gotta go?” Delaney said. “Go where? How?”

Angel smirked. “You guys can do one of two things,” he said. “You can go back into the cave and not see what’s about to happen. Or you can hang around out here, get the fright of your life—and then walk around for the next twenty years wondering if someone is going to pop you because you’ve seen something you shouldn’t.”

Delaney was almost laughing now.

“Why do I have the feeling I’m in the middle of a bad spy novel?” he asked with frustration.

Angel smiled. “Because you are,” he said.

With that he punched some buttons on his device and the beeping became more frequent.

Suddenly Norton became aware of a bright light over their heads. This was no shooting star. It was burning bright blue. Then he realized it was getting bigger. Then he realized it was actually descending towards them at a high rate of speed.

For one frightening moment he was sure this was a missile of some kind heading right for the cave. He instinctively threw Delaney and himself to the ground. There was a great rush of wind and dust—and maybe some laughter too. Norton just covered up and waited for the sound of the gut-wrenching explosion to come.

But it never did.

That was how Smitz found them not ten seconds later. Lying face-down, hands over their heads.

“What the fuck are you two doing?” he asked them with much exasperation.

“Getting some air,” Delaney snapped back. They both scrambled to their feet, looking in every direction for any sign of Angel—and finding none.

“Mind telling me what’s happening out here?” Smitz asked them. “You two going round the bend together?”

The two pilots stayed tight-lipped.

“You need us for something?” Norton finally asked him.

Smitz just stared back at them. “Yes, I do,” he said. “Please get your asses back into the cave.”

He started to walk away.

“What for?” Delaney challenged him.

Smitz stopped and slowly turned around.

“What for?” he asked bewildered. “We’ve got to help Ricco and Gillis—that’s what for.”

He began to walk away again.

“Help them with what?” Delaney called after him. Neither he or Norton had moved a muscle.

Smitz was not having a good day. He spun around this time, his face growing red.

“Do you remember what Contingency #2 is, Delaney?”

“Tell us again,” Delaney said.

Smitz looked at them strangely.

“The Pumper?” he snapped. “Mutt and Jeff have to do their refuel rendezvous in one hour, remember?”

“Then what?” Delaney pressed him. “What are your immediate plans after that?”

Smitz was stumped. Why were they acting like this?

“I’ve decided our immediate plans are to get the hell out of here,” he said. “If that’s OK with you and your girlfriend here?”

Delaney looked over at Norton, who just shrugged.

“Yeah,” Delaney finally said. “That’s OK with us.”

Ten minutes later, Norton and Delaney were part of a large team that was pushing the enormous Hook fuel chopper out of the cave opening.

It was not unlike pushing a tractor-trailer truck with a full cargo bay from a dead stop. Of course it would have been harder if the chopper was filled with fuel, but after the long flight to and from the raid site, plus the ingress journey itself, the copter’s fuel bladders were nearly empty. Thus the rendezvous mission called for under Contingency #2.

If it was possible, Norton and Delaney were pushing the hardest on the huge bird. They had silently agreed not to mention to anyone the strange meeting they’d just had out on the cliff’s edge. Who would believe them if they did? They had no clue how the guy called Angel had been able to find them, land on the mountain, and depart again so quickly, so silently. And as he himself had warned them, they didn’t want to know.

Added to this the chilling message he left with them: that the operation had been compromised by either someone very high up or someone very close to it. After the day’s tragic events, it was all getting just a little bit too much to bear.

So, at the moment, their combined frame of mind was focused on just one thing: to get the hell out of their present situation. The harder they pushed, the sooner Ricco and Gills could take off, make their rendezvous, come back with the fuel, and make that dream a reality. That was why Norton and Delaney were sweating like madmen.

It was also why, when the chopper was finally out on the huge ledge, Norton felt the urge to warn the tanker pilots not to delay in the performance of their mission.

“Don’t waste any time up there, OK?” he yelled up to them.