Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

Norton shrugged and looked back at the two ailing pilots.

“They came down to the deck when we needed them that night during Desert Storm,” he said. “And it would have been damn easy for them to have just plunked down someplace close to Kuwait and walked across the border.”

Delaney took another look back at the pilots. They’d inhaled a lot of fumes and their skin had been drenched with aviation gas, not exactly a healthy situation.

“God, you mean I’m going to have to start admiring these guys now?” he asked.

“Someone has to be a hero in this big fat waste of time,” Norton said, his tone turning bitter. “At least they might have a chance to keep flying. As for you and me, we’ll be lucky if they let us shovel shit somewhere.”

“I can handle that,” Delaney replied.

But one aspect of the tanker pilots’ story raised a very disturbing question. Norton and Delaney were now joined by Chou and Smitz in the most isolated corner of the abandoned hangar to discuss it.

“Do you think these guys are hallucinating and just imagined the ArcLight killed their tanker?” Smitz asked under his breath. “Gas fumes can do that to you, I hear. Make you see things.”

“That part of their story really doesn’t make much sense,” Chou said in a whisper. “I mean, how would the ArcLight know that the Hook was refueling and where to go to find it?”

The four men just stared at each other. Not liking what they were thinking.

“Turn it around, though,” Smitz said. “Say it was true—why would the ArcLight go after the tanker?”

“Unless they were going after both the tanker and the Hook,” Norton said grimly.

“Which means they really know what we’ve been up to,” Chou said.

A dreadful silence fell among them.

Finally Delaney broke it.

“Listen, I’ve been trying to hold this in,” he began. “But I think now is the time to speak my piece … any objections?”

Norton eyed him sternly. Don’t tell them about Angel , he was trying to say.

“Go ahead, do it,” Smitz told him.

“OK,” Delaney began. “Let’s look at the forest instead of the trees for a moment. I have a theory this program has been screwed up from the start. Anyone else thinking along those lines?”

“I thought you were going to tell us something we don’t know,” Chou said snidely.

“No—I mean screwed up from the start ,” Delaney said. “From day one.”

Smitz wiped his tired eyes. Chou leaned back against a partially shattered wall. They knew this might take a while.

“OK,” Smitz said. “Let’s hear it.”

Delaney took a deep breath and collected his thoughts.

“From the start,” he repeated. “You got me and Jazz. We’re fighter pilots—why have us come in, learn how to fly the choppers?”

“Because you scored high on the PS2,” Smitz replied. “Your profiles said you could both adapt.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit!” Delaney shot back. “You’re telling me that they couldn’t find any real-life chopper pilots who could do the job as well as us?”

It was a good question.

“Apparently not,” Smitz replied.

Delaney nodded over to the other side of the hangar, where the Army Aviation guys were sitting.

“Then what the hell are those guys doing here?”

The others just stared and let it sink in.

Delaney was on a roll.

”Point two,” he began again, gathering steam. “We’re in choppers here—but we’ve got a pack of Marines. Marines are usually good—and these Team 66 guys are great. But correct me if I’m wrong, don’t Marines usually jump out of boats? Army guys are better at jumping out of choppers, right?”

The three others nodded. Again Delaney was making sense.

“Point three,” he went on. “And no offense to Mutt and Jeff. But really, if you had a mission that was supposed to be this important, would you pick two National Guard guys to be your fill-up men? Two weekenders who have never flown choppers before?”

More nods.

“And SEAL doctors?” Delaney said. “I mean, don’t you jarheads have your own corpsmen?”

Chou nodded. “We do,” he said.

Delaney looked them all in the eye.

“Don’t you get it?” he was imploring them. “This thing was fucked up from the start because it was meant to be fucked up. All these things we thought had some deep dark meaning behind them were actually roadblocks put in our path, so we wouldn’t succeed. They probably thought we’d be at each others’ throats more than actually drilling for the mission. That we were able to overcome everything they threw at us—well, I mean, what does that say about us?”

“That we should all get medals,” Chou said.

“At the very least,” Delaney said with disgust. “We’ve been set up, I’m convinced of it, but not just on the raid. From the first moment of this plan’s existence. Someone knew this gunship was flying around and knew it had to be stopped. But for whatever reason, they didn’t want it to be stopped. Yet they had to turn some wheel, had to push some button, to make it look like something was going to be done. So what do they do? They put together an underservice F-Troop—never in a million years thinking that we’d get as far as we have.”

“Jesus Christ,” Smitz swore softly. “I’m starting to believe him.”

“I mean, let’s really get back to ground zero,” Delaney concluded. “If they really wanted this thing to go down, they would have done what we were all saying at the first briefing. Just send in some fighters and shoot the fucking thing out of the sky.”

Now the silence was so thick it was like a veil had come down around them. Norton and Delaney looked at each other. Both were thinking the same thing: Was it time to come clean on Angel?

Delaney had one more thing to add, though. “I think now we have to go on the assumption that everything they’ve sent us has been skewered intentionally.”

He paused.

“And if that is true, what was the last order they gave us?”

Now a wave of high anxiety washed through them. If every order had been compromised from the beginning, what did that say about their latest instructions?

But before anyone could say another word, something very strange happened: A knock came at the door.

It was such a surprise, Norton actually mouthed the words: “Someone is knocking? At the door?”

It came again. Everyone tensed. Marines grabbed their weapons.

“Who the fuck is this?” Delaney asked. “The Mad Hatter?”

Chou barked a silent order, and in a snap the six Marines closest to the small access door had it covered, their rifles up and ready.

“Open it,” Chou told them.

They did—and standing on the other side was a face familiar to all of them—most especially Norton and Delaney.

It was Angel.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Smitz exclaimed. “How the fuck did you get here?”

“Never mind that,” Angel said worriedly. “We’ve got to talk.”

It was difficult but not impossible to operate the AC-130 gunship with only four people on board.

The plane could be flown by one person; two were required only for landings and takeoffs, and maybe not even then. And the plane’s vital signs could be monitored on a periodic basis instead of having one person dedicated to that one job. And if the ECM suite was not in use, there was no reason to have a body praying over that either.

It was the aircraft’s massive weaponry that needed the manpower.

The good thing was all three miniguns and the howitzer were computer-guided, computer-aimed, and computer-fired, as were their rearming systems. The bad thing was, the four remaining members of the ArcLight’s flight crew—the pilot, copilot, flight engineer, and loadmaster—were Air Force guys. Not one of them had the computer knowledge needed to fire the guns.