Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

He finally turned to the security man. “This is a bust,” he said. “Must have been a security test or something.”

That was when they heard a deep groaning sound. It seemed very far away and oddly echoing. It startled them all.

“Jeesuz,” Howard whispered. “What the fuck was that?”

The chaplain shifted his weight from one foot to the other, but Howard didn’t care. He’d been around airplanes all his career. He was a pilot as well. He knew their different sounds. And what he heard now—eerily so—was the distinctive sound of a C-130 Hercules on final approach.

He turned to the video man and said: “Start taping and don’t miss a thing or your ass is in Thule.”

The sound got louder. Deeper.

Then through the fog they saw a light. It was very faint at first. But slowly it grew brighter and brighter, until it was sending a thin beam piercing through the rain and mist. It seemed like a monster flying right at them.

Suddenly it burst through the fog. It looked huge, ghostly—and it was going way too fast.

“Damn!” Howard heard a few people cry.

The C-130 roared by them at tremendous speed and way too high for a successful landing. It was trailing smoke and exhaust, and was moving through the fog in such a way that it looked like a blurry photo.

As quickly as it came, it was gone, enveloped by the fog again. In all, they’d seen it for only two or three seconds, no more.

“Dear Jesus, what the fuck was that!” the chaplain cried out.

No one was sure. It was quiet again for a few seconds. Then they heard the deep rumbling again.

They all looked to the right, as if the airplane had turned around and was coming in again. But then it roared by—from the opposite direction.

This time it was a little lower, but it was still going very, very fast.

The noise didn’t go away, though. The airplane made an impossibly tight turn and came in a third time. This time it was still going fast, but it was very low.

And its wheels were down.

“Shit! He’s going to crash!” Howard yelled.

The plane slammed into the runway an instant later. It came down hard, bounced, came down again, scraped its right wing along the asphalt, causing a brilliant cascade of sparks, bounced again, and then finally came down for good about eight hundred feet from Howard’s position.

In seconds, the base’s emergency vehicles were screaming down the runway after it, as were the trucks filled with security troops. Howard found himself running towards the near-wreck, the chaplain on one side, the video man on the other.

When they arrived, the rescue team had already reached the aircraft and had yanked one of the rear doors open.

And that was when they all saw a very haunting sight.

A troop of soldiers came marching out of the airplane. They looked ghostly. Their uniforms were covered with white dust, as were their faces. Some were also covered with dried blood. Two were on stretchers. But they were in order and in step, and they marched out like a company of spirits, right past everyone and coming to a stop in a single line beside the burning airplane.

Howard felt a chill go right through him. The chaplain made the sign of the cross. The video man stopped taping; he was too stunned.

Three men came crawling out of the heavily damaged cockpit. The rescue forces were on hand to help, but the trio did not want any assistance. It seemed important to them that they walk away from the demolished airplane under their own power.

These men looked as bad as the frightful soldiers. Two of them Howard tagged as pilots. The third man looked particularly agitated. He walked right up to Howard and flashed a burned and broken ID badge. It was CIA. It identified the man as Gene Smitz.

“My men need a hot meal and a place to sleep,” he told Howard. “Then we want transport out to a commercial airport.”

“And who the hell are you?” Howard demanded.

“You have a cell phone?” Smitz asked in reply.

Howard didn’t, but the chaplain did. Howard snapped his fingers, and Smitz was soon punching a series of numbers into the phone. Smitz waited for the phone to ring twice. Someone on the other end finally answered. Smitz threw the phone back to Howard.

“Ask them who we are,” he said.

Howard had a brief conversation and read out the numbers on Smitz’s ID card. Then he counted the number of men lined up beside the airplane.

Then he turned back to Smitz.

“They want to know what happened to the helicopters,” he said.

Smitz looked as if he was about to burst. The two men behind him shared this feeling.

“Tell them,” Smitz said in measured angry words, “that our mission was to return the ArcLight 4 and its crew. There’s the airplane—and there are thirteen body bags inside. You can bury them as far out in the desert as you want. I suggest in unmarked graves….”

Howard repeated these words to the person at the other end of the phone.

Then one of the pilots broke through and had another thing to say. It was Norton.

“And tell them they can cancel their buddy Jacobs’ pension payments,” he said angrily. “He won’t be needing them anymore.”

Howard said these words too. There was a long pause. Then he shut off the phone and called up his security officer.

“Give all these men a hot meal and a place to sleep,” he snapped. Then he looked at the ragged bunch and the burning airplane.

“In fact, give them anything they want….”

Rye, New Hampshire

One week later

It was already hot this Saturday morning when Ryan Gillis arrived at the empty ballpark.

He took his ball from his glove and rubbed dirt on it. Then he picked up his bat and rubbed dirt on it too. Next he put dirt on his hands—he wasn’t sure why. He’d seen a lot of real ballplayers do this, so he thought he should do it too. After his disastrous oh-for-four, three-error debut a week earlier, he figured he needed all the help he could get.

The park seemed bigger this early morning—big and empty. Ryan just sighed, picked up his ball, and hit it straight up. As soon as the ball left his bat, he slipped his glove on, planted himself under the ball, and caught it. At least he was getting good at this routine.

He picked up the ball again, adjusted his glove, threw the ball in the air, and hit it again. Again, it went straight up, he pulled his glove back on, and got under the popup just in time to catch it.

Two for two…

He repeated the process again, but this time he somehow managed to hit the ball very high behind him. He quickly yanked on his glove and started backpedaling, trying to keep his balance and his eye on the ball at the same time.

The ball seemed to hang up forever, but when it came down Ryan finally got himself right under it. He lifted his glove, closed his eyes, and… nothing happened.

He stood there waiting for the ball to hit him somewhere—on the head was usually where he got plunked. But this did not happen.

So finally he opened his eyes.

And that was when he realized someone else had caught the ball. Someone who was standing right over him—an adult. The ball was firmly in his hand. Ryan spun around and looked up.

And that was when he saw the hand belonged to his father.

“Dad!” he yelled, dropping bat and glove and hugging his father for the first time in many years.

“Hey, kid,” Gillis said. “Looking good with that glove these days.”

Ryan held on tight.

“Geesh, Dad,” he said, looking up at his father’s weary eyes. “Where have you been all this time?”

Gillis laughed. “I can’t tell you, son,” he said. “If I did, then I’d have to… well, never mind.”