Mack Maloney: Chopper Ops

That didn’t mean the weather was enjoyable, though. Just about everyone who wasn’t on duty at the frigid base was either asleep or at the Exchange Club, a combination PX, restaurant, barbershop, and bar.

In the past, at any given time as many as two thousand Air Force personnel could have been found at Thule. But a lessening of Cold War jitters had reduced the base’s profile to little more than a pinprick in the snow. It was once a stopping-off point for massive B-52 bombers on nuclear-alert exercises, interceptors keeping an eye on Soviet recon planes, or perhaps something more exotic like the occasional U-2 spy plane dropping in for some gas. Now Thule was a place only the unluckiest of pilots found themselves diverted to.

Among the reduced number of inhabitants these days, the talk always concerned the weather, the snow, the cold. By far the most exciting thing that had happened at the base in years was a recent rash of UFO reports. Bright lights had been seen zipping back and forth across the horizon. Some red, some bright blue, they were said to be doing some fantastic things in the sky, especially over the mountains to the north.

The base commander finally had to issue a directive informing all base personnel that officially nothing unusual was flying anywhere near the base and that it was best that the UFO talk dry up and everyone go back to concentrating on their mission—which was staying warm. The UFO reports faded after that, which was too bad.

At this point in its long service life, an alien invasion of Thule would have livened things up considerably.

The unofficial name of the Base Exchange saloon was the Ice Cube, usually written as Iceᵌ. Sitting at the end of its crowded bar at the moment were two men who’d been in town for only a week. They were the commanders of a massive KC-10 aerial tanker attached to the 157th Air National Guard refueling wing out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Their airplane had wound up in Thule after making a routine training flight eight days before. A bad engine had forced them to stay grounded. Then the weather got worse and the orders came down that no unnecessary flight operations would be permitted until the weather broke. Between getting the bum engine fixed and the snow, seven interminable days had passed by.

So here the crew had sat, cold, drunk, and bored, waiting for a receiver valve for their engine and a break in the “summer weather.”

The nickname of their KC-10 was “The Pegasus.” It had a reputation of sorts around the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Its crew was known as the best in the aerial refueling game. They were held in high esteem by fighter pilots who on occasion found themselves flying on dark nights over the North Atlantic with the weather getting bad and their fuel tanks getting low. Many times the Pegasus would take off from Portsmouth, find the lonely fighter, fill its tanks, and get it home safely.

The commander of the KC-10 was Major Jimmy Gillis. He was a tall, lanky, handsome man of fifty-three. His copilot was Captain Marty Ricco, stout, muscular, two years younger than Gillis. Both men were married and lived in New Hampshire; both had two kids. They’d been piloting the Pegasus for nearly twelve years together. Their crew of seven had been with them for almost as long. They were a tight group. Besides seeing service during the Gulf War, they’d participated in countless exercises over the North Atlantic, plus three European TDYs in support of NATO Bosnia air patrols. Together the crew had experienced many high points.

Being stuck in frozen Thule was not one of them.

By 1930 hours, Gillis and Ricco had finished their third beer of the evening. Their enlisted guys were playing video games nearby. Country music was blasting from the PA system. The TV above the bar was showing some Alpine games—a cruel joke—but Gillis and Ricco found their eyes glued to the screen. So bored were they that even an hours-long program about skiing, skating, and bobsledding could capture their attention.

So neither they nor anyone else at the bar noticed the plane that landed on the base’s main runway at precisely 1935 hours. It was the first aircraft to come into the base in three days, and it was, in a sense, an unusual one.

The airplane was a C-14 Jetstar, a bird usually reserved for flying big brass around. It was the military equivalent of a Learjet. Small, powerful, two jet engines, a rather luxurious interior.

The Jetstar set down quietly and discharged two passengers. Its pilots were told to do a “hot” gas-up—that is, take on fuel while their engines were still turning. If all went as the two passengers hoped, neither they nor the Jetstar would be staying in Thule very long.

Dressed in heavy parkas, the passengers made their way over to the Ice Cube, and after a battle with the wind and blowing snow, managed to open its inner door. Finally waddling inside, they quickly closed the door behind them and headed towards the bar.

No one in the place paid them any attention, least of all Gillis and Ricco. It was only after the two men reached the end of the bar that Ricco bothered to look up. Both men pulled back their hoods and wiped the ice and snow from their faces. Ricco stared up at them and then nudged Gillis.

“You believe in ghosts, Jimmy?”

Gillis looked up at the two men staring down at them.

“You got to be kidding me,” he breathed.

He recognized the visitors right away. It was Norton and Delaney.

“Well, if it isn’t the Mutt and Jeff of refueling business,” Delaney cracked.

Ricco quickly stood up and was immediately brow-to-chin with Norton.

“Let’s see, when was the last time we met?” Ricco hissed, glaring up at the fighter pilot. “Oh, yeah. It was, like, twenty miles from Saddamville. And we were getting our asses shot off….”

Norton didn’t blink. Instead he just smiled.

“Good to see you again too, Marty,” he said.

Gillis was on his feet now. He towered over both Norton and Delaney.

“Weren’t they going to court-martial you guys?” Gillis asked the two pilots bitterly. “If not, they should have.”

Norton never lost his smile—but he knew Gillis was right.

It was the sixteenth day of the air war over Iraq. An F-15 from Norton and Delaney’s sister squadron had been shot down by ground fire and Iraqi troops were closing in on the pilot. Norton and Delaney were the only Allied airplanes in the area. They were needed to keep the Iraqi soldiers at bay until an Army rescue team could reach the scene and extract the pilot.

The problem was, both of their fighters were running very low on gas. There was no way they could loiter over the area where the pilot was hiding and still have enough fuel to reach a friendly base. But there was no way they were going to let a fellow American fall into the hands of the Iraqis either, especially since at that time, Saddam had been urging his troops to cook and eat any downed American pilot they found. Both Norton and Delaney simply refused to leave the scene.

So there was only one other option. Norton radioed upstairs for the nearest aerial tanker—and it was the Pegasus who answered the call.

In doing so, Norton broke a slew of regulations, most notably calling for a refueler to enter a hot zone with more than twenty thousand gallons of JP-8 jet fuel in its belly.

But the Pegasus responded—and fueled both him and Delaney at an altitude so perilously low, both fighter pilots should have been court-martialed, and given the express train to Leavenworth.

As it turned out, the refueling went well. Norton and Delaney held off the Gomers long enough for the Army SAR chopper to arrive and pull out the downed pilot in one piece. A confrontation back at Riyadh came to blows—it was the seven guys from the Pegasus against Norton and Delaney. But the two sides were separated, and eventually flew off in opposite directions, never to cross paths again.