Mack Maloney - Chopper Ops

Ryan’s eyes widened. “Wow! You mean you really were on a secret mission?”

Gillis picked up the bat, and handed Ryan his glove.

“I promise I’ll tell you all about it someday,” he said.

He threw the ball in the air and hit a high pop-up. His back hurt from the swing, and his burned legs still twinged, but he didn’t really feel the pain.

“In the meantime,” Gillis said, “let’s see what you’ve learned since I’ve been away.”

Ryan ran and caught the ball and began to hand it back to Gillis—but then stopped and took a deep sniff.

“Hey, Dad,” he said. “How come you smell so much like gasoline?”

Gillis managed another smile, and took the ball from Ryan’s glove again.

“I’ll tell you all about that someday too,” he said.

The waters were unusually calm in the Straits of Florida this hazy Sunday afternoon.

The chartered game-fishing boat was heading south, at high speed, having left Key West about a half hour before.

The boat cost $150 an hour to rent, bait and tackle included, but the two passengers had no interest in fishing. This was a covert ride.

Neither one had even touched the free beer provided them by the boat’s owner. From this, he knew something was up with them, so he just let them be. Sitting on the rear deck, staring out at the wake of the vessel, they looked like two soldiers suffering from shell shock. The boat owner knew it was best he leave them alone.

They had given him a strange destination—and would pay him $100 extra if he found it too. This was odd because he knew the place they wanted to go to very well. He’d brought many people there in the past two weeks. In fact, he’d been enjoying a real boom in transporting sports fishermen out there lately.

So this was another reason why the boat owner kept his mouth shut.

The trip took less than ninety minutes. The only thing that slowed them down really was the gaggle of surface traffic surrounding the location where the two mysterious guys wanted to go.

So crowded was this place, it took fifteen extra minutes and many calls to the marina before the boat owner was finally able to find them an open berth at the dock.

Only then did he pull into the south bay of Seven Ghosts Key.

Norton and Delaney climbed off the boat in a state of shock. Actually, they were suffering from a state of shock on top of the state of shock they’d been in for the past week or so.

Seven Ghosts was simply crawling with people. Small private planes flying in and out. Hundreds of fishing boats tied up or anchored offshore. The south beach full of sunbathers.

The restaurant was especially packed. There had to be at least a couple thousand people—men, women, and kids—crowded onto the previously isolated island.

The two pilots just stood and stared at it all.

“Have I finally gone crazy?” Norton asked.

It had been that kind of week.

They stayed at Al-Khalid only a few hours. The thought of getting caught on the ground, exposed again, still haunted all of them.

So somehow Smitz arranged for two buses to carry them out of the secret air base and on to Riyadh. Once there, he gave each man a credit card, the source of which was unknown. Then they all boarded commercial flights—seventeen different ones—and flew in different directions.

Norton and Delaney went east, through Islamabad, to Delhi, to Sydney, Hong Kong, and finally Anchorage. They lay low there for two days before flying to San Diego and finally on to Miami.

They moved like dead men, with ease but caution. The bad guys in the CIA probably didn’t know where they were or if they were dead or alive, and they wanted to keep it that way. They were both still carrying for protection the huge pistols they had used to shoot down the AC-130 gunship. And anytime they were stopped by airport security, they simply flashed their Level Six security passes and were let through.

They really felt like lost men, though. Like ghosts doomed to wander the earth, with nowhere to go. So they’d decided early on that the one place they could seek answers and revenge was back where it all started: Seven Ghosts Key.

But now, the place looked as crowded as Disneyworld.

”Man, just when you think things can’t get any nuttier,” Delaney said. “They do!”

They started walking slowly down the runway, wondering if this was like a CIA family outing or something. It didn’t seem to be, though. Everyone they passed appeared very normal, very touristy. Very un -CIA.

They finally reached the restaurant, and it was absolutely jammed. And next door, gone were the shuttered-tight buildings that had housed their simulators. The structures were now open and housing dozens of small private airplanes. And the places where the Marines had attacked and billeted were now overnight motels.

They elbowed their way into the restaurant, and found the big briefing room filled with happy drunks and ravenous diners. Yet everything, including the wall murals, was the same.

They made their way over to the bar, Delaney bringing up the possibility that maybe the CIA had fed them LSD somewhere along the line—and all of this was just a hallucination. Norton replied that they just weren’t that lucky.

The bar was crowded with fishermen and bathers, sucking down martinis like they were water. Both Norton and Delaney needed a drink—if just to convince themselves they were indeed still among the living. So they finally hailed the burly bartender. He turned and looked at both of them and smiled.

It was Rooney.

The CIA man who used to run Seven Ghosts Key.

Delaney reached over and grabbed the man by the collar.

“Whose side are you on, asshole !” Delaney growled at him.

Norton quickly intervened and pulled his partner off the CIA man. The place was so loose, none of the other patrons had noticed a thing.

“Relax,” Rooney said, barely ruffled. “Fistfights are bad for business.”

“So are bullet-riddled bodies,” Delaney snapped back. “Which you are going to be…”

Norton restrained Delaney from pulling his massive handgun. Then he turned back to Rooney.

“OK, tell us,” he said wearily. “What the fuck is going on here?”

Rooney just shrugged. “You must appreciate the concept of protecting one’s cover,” he said matter-of-factly. “Can you think of a better way?”

Delaney went for his gun again. Norton froze his hand.

“We were set up over there,” Norton continued through gritted teeth. “Or are you not familiar with that concept?”

Rooney served a few more drinks. Then he came back to Norton and Delaney.

“Look,” he said, his voice lower now. “You guys don’t realize it, but you’re heroes. You uncovered, shall we say, ‘a major internal dispute’ within the Agency, and you applied the remedy. A permanent one. Plus, you did a hell of a job getting that airplane back.”

Delaney was still furious. “Think that was easy, asshole?”

Rooney just shook his head. “Think I haven’t been in the same spot?”

For some reason, that silenced all three of them. Rooney poured a couple of martinis from a pitcher and pushed them towards Norton and Delaney.

“You see, you guys think you’re still in the military. Still in the real world,” Rooney said, his voice sounding like a grandfather gently scolding his grandsons. “Well, you’re not. And you haven’t been since you set foot on this place. You’re in Dreamland now, baby. You’re Spooks. Spooks in deep. Nothing makes sense. Nothing ever will.”

Norton thought about this for a moment, then reached for the martini and downed it in one gulp.