Mack Maloney: Chopper Ops

Until now.

“Let me guess,” Ricco asked the fighter pilots.

“They got you two shoveling snow off the runways, is that it?”

“Nope,” Norton replied. “Actually, we’re delivery boys these days. We have a message for you two.”

Gillis and Ricco were totally confused now. This meant Norton had them right where he wanted them.

“And all the bullshit aside,” Norton added, “you guys should have been given a medal that night. It took guts what you did. Not many people would have done it.”

“So what…”

“So, we have new orders for you,” Delaney told them.

Gillis and Ricco just looked at each other. Was this a joke? Why would these two random a-holes they’d encountered briefly many years before track them down to Thule?

Norton handed them both a letter. Each was wrapped in red tape. Each was marked with the Presidential seal.

“See you soon, guys,” Norton told them. “And don’t forget to bring your suntan lotion.”

With that, he and Delaney went out the door and disappeared back into the snowy gale.

Central Iraq

Next day

The village of El Quas-ri was no more.

The place had stood on the same spot in Qaarta region of Iraq for more than four thousand years, existing more than two millennia before Christ walked the earth. The fountain in the main square had drawn water since the reign of Ebbenazzar III. The fields nearby had produced onions and rice since 2300 B.C.

It was strange then how quickly the end came. For centuries, the elders in the village had passed down stories of Qel, the mythical flying beast. This winged monster would periodically visit the other villages in the Qaarta region and destroy them with great spits of fire from its mouth and great gusts of wind from its wings. But it had never descended on El Quas-ri because its people had always remained faithful to God and had lived honest lives.

But on its last day, neither faith nor honesty could save the people of this ancient place.

It was late afternoon when their world came to an end.

Most of the village’s 250 people were gathered in the town square, a tragically ironic twist as it turned out. The occasion for the crowd was the appearance of a new Toyota truck recently purchased by Amhed Amhed, the son of the village police chief. The truck—a two-door, sixteen-cubic-foot beauty—was the most modern vehicle ever to be driven in the village. It was painted white with silver lines across its hood and doors and very shiny hubcaps. To the people of El Quas-ri, it looked incredibly stylish.

Ahmed Ahmed was very proud of it. He’d ordered the truck seven months before, and had kept his fellow villagers updated with each passing day on the status of its delivery. They’d staged a celebration a week before when Ahmed finally left for Basra to claim the vehicle. When word got around that Ahmed had returned with the truck, many of the villagers dropped what they were doing and immediately rushed to the town square. That was why the crowd had formed.

There they had found Ahmed telling all who would listen everything about the vehicle. Its engine, its chassis, its transmission, its spiffy interior. Ahmed related his journey to the port city of Basra, what he was doing when he first saw the truck, and his brush with an Iraqi Army major who had taken an immediate liking to the vehicle as well. The major—a brutish man with a huge scar running down his right cheek—had held him up for two hours, questioning him about the truck, how he had ordered it, how he had raised the money to buy it. In the end, Ahmed had been forced to pay the Army officer the equivalent of twenty American dollars in order to let him leave with the truck.

But Ahmed had anticipated this. He’d taken an extra fifty dollars to Basra with him to be used as the bribe money he knew he would need if he hoped to bring the truck back to El Quas-ri. From his point of view, the twenty dollars he’d paid to the Army major had been a bargain. In reality, he was actually thirty dollars ahead of the game.

The villagers especially liked this aspect of Ahmed’s adventure to Basra. They were very proud of him. He was the clever son of a clever man.

Only good things could befall someone so smart.

Ahmed was telling his story for the fifth time when the late dusk suddenly turned back to bright sunshine.

It came at first as a flash of light hitting the middle of the village square, stunning the villagers. The fire came next—scorching, searing, deadly. A rain of metal, razor-sharp and white-hot, came down on them, seemingly from every direction.

The children were consumed first, which was strange as they were the smallest targets. But the fire—which was actually the combined fusillade from three miniguns and a 105-mm howitzer—tore into them with sickening ferocity. Then the stream of shells ripped through the elders and the women who had gathered a short distance away from the Toyota. Finally, the fire reached the younger men of the village clustered around the rear bumper of Ahmed’s new truck. Many of them were literally cut in half.

The flying monster then flew off to the east, banked, and reappeared over the village. This time it spat fire into the houses, the huts, and workshops, killing anyone who had not been present in the square. Forty-three more people, plus seventy-one homes, were decimated in this manner. The bodies were quickly reduced to bone fragments, blood, and sinew. The homes were reduced to dust, some smaller than the finest grains of sand.

It was over in a matter of seconds—thirty-three to be exact. In that short time, 228 people lay dead or dying, and nothing over the height of twelve inches was left standing in the village.

Only a few of those two dozen who were wounded but still alive saw the huge helicopter appear over the village ten minutes later. It landed, and a man in a green Iraqi Army uniform was the first to step off. He was a major. He had a huge scar running down his right cheek.

As he supervised the killing of the wounded, the helicopter crew hooked the Toyota truck onto a thick cable hanging beneath their heavy-lift aircraft, preparing to fly it away. In the brutally quick, massive attack, the Toyota was the only thing that had not been harmed. Indeed, it wasn’t even scratched, so accurate had been the fire from the sky.

This was a good thing for the Army major with the scarred face.

He had admired the white truck with the silver stripes from the second he saw it on the dock at Basra.

And now, it was his.

It was a place that did not show up on any tourist maps—yet it looked like somewhere just about any tourist in south Florida would want to visit.

It was called Seven Ghosts Key by some. It was an island located about forty-five miles south of Key West, deep in the Florida Straits.

Five miles long and a half mile wide, it was covered with palm trees—some real, some not—and various other kinds of tropical fauna. It was surrounded by very light blue water. A huge coral reef dominated its northern side. A white sandy beach stretched along its southern end.

The center of the island boasted what appeared to be a small airfield, one capable of handling civilian aircraft like Piper Cubs, Cherokees, and so on. Close to this was a dock with facilities for a few dozen sport-fishing boats and yachts, with gasoline pumps, a repair shack, and bait barrels also on hand.

The main part of the resort was a cluster of six buildings located next to the airport. Three were obviously hangars—though to the trained eye they might have appeared a bit too large to handle only private airplanes. Two more buildings looked like motels—brightly colored one-story framed structures with lots of windows. The fifth building looked like a warehouse. The sixth was a restaurant. It was of vintage 1950’s design, its roof and gutters adorned with ancient-looking patio lights that were turned on both night and day. Its expansive deck looked out over the calm waters to the north of the key.