by Mack Maloney
And when he looked down at his laptop screen again, the little green light was blinking.
He began typing madly, nearly forgetting to hit the scramble-mode button first. He quickly gave the unit's present position, then briefly reviewed what had happened. The raid on the Ranch, the empty prison, the dead Americans. He covered the details of their escape from the mountain in a few succinct words, and made no mention of his suspicions that the entire operation had been compromised. He concluded by asking for further instructions as soon as possible.
Then he hit the Send button.
Then he sat back to wait.
*****
Smitz's message beamed up directly from his modem to a top-secret military satellite called the Red Door 3, some five hundred miles above the Earth. It was then bounced off no less than four other communications satellites, before being sent down to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
No human ever responded to Smitz's message, though. A computer had been awaiting a transmission—any transmission—from the unit, and now that it had arrived, the computer was sending back a response that had been entered into its hard drive several hours before.
The message told the unit to proceed to a point on the map known as El-Saad Men. This was an abandoned Iraqi Air Force base located in what was possibly the most barren part of the very barren central Iraqi desert.
Once there, the unit was to hide the choppers inside the most intact hangar on-site, and remain inside themselves until egress transportation arrived. The designated hangar would be easy to spot, as a large arrow was said to be painted on its roof.
This message made the return route up from Langley, to the four military bounce satellites, over to Red Door 3, and down to Smitz's NoteBook in less than one minute.
The CIA man was stunned when he looked down sixty seconds later and saw his green light was blinking again. Nothing ever happened that fast. But when he read the message, he felt his heart lighten by a couple hundred pounds.
The words "egress transportation" were the most heartening part of the lone stark paragraph. It was official then. The unit was being pulled out of Iraq, a prospect that Smitz was sure would be greeted with much joy among the others. Had they accomplished their mission? No. Had they affected anything by coming deep into Iraq and raiding the Ranch? No. But would they be glad to get out of hostile territory after nearly forty-eight hours of pure nonstop anxiety?
Definitely.
Smitz shut down the laptop and began crawling through the sprawled Marines, telling them that things were looking up—unofficially, of course—and that they should get ready "for anything."
He finally made his way up to the cockpit and asked the Army pilots to pull close to Norton's Hind, now riding about 250 feet off the left nose.
The pilots nuzzled up to the chopper, and using a trouble light, Smitz sent a hasty Morse code message over to Norton. It took two attempts for the former fighter pilot to blink back that he understood. Then, in a burst of enthusiasm, he gunned the Hind and started wigwagging all over the sky. Obviously Norton was happy at the prospect of going home too.
Then Smitz blinked over the coordinates to the abandoned base at El Saad Men. A quick check of the aviation chart showed it was about twenty minutes of flying time away from their present location. Getting there would be a breeze compared to what they'd been through. Smitz asked Norton to fly ahead and scout out the location first.
Norton blinked back his reply, gunned the Hind's engines again, and was off like a shot.
Then Smitz returned to his cramped seat in the cargo bay, and for the first time in forty-eight hours, actually fell asleep.
Chapter 27
El-Saad Men was an air base—or it used to be—located in the Tajji section of the central Iraqi desert, near the edge of Tharthar wadi.
Built a few months before the start of the Gulf War, it was little more than a pair of runways, a dozen support buildings, and three hangars. It had been designed for use as an alternative base for Iraqi fighters to transit to— a haven after a day of battle. But the base was knocked out the first night of the war by French fighters dropping Chaparral runway-busting bombs. Several times thereafter it was the target of follow-up Coalition air strikes.
Now El-Saad Men was a ghost town, literally. The runways were still cratered, and indeed only one hangar remained intact. The rest were just piles of rubble, victims of precision bombs dropped nearly a decade before.
This was the desolate scene Norton came upon when he reached the coordinates given to him by Smitz. At once he knew the base was the perfect place for the egress pickup. They could easily hide the choppers inside the last hangar standing—the one with the big arrow on top of it—and no one would know they were there unless they came up and knocked on the front door.
Still, he swept over the abandoned base several times, making sure there was no unfriendlies around; making sure there were no hidden weapons painting him. Once he was certain of this, he turned back and met the rest of the unit about fifteen miles east of the abandoned base. He pulled up alongside Truck One and delivered a nav light Morse code message.
"Looks good," he blinked. "Suggest we put down ASAP."
*****
Inside of fifteen minutes, they had done just that.
They landed with no problems, and the huge choppers were pushed inside the last remaining hangar. It was a tight fit, but with some creative angling, all four finally squeezed in.
Now all they had to do was wait. And pray.
Ricco and Gillis were still in bad shape. The SEAL doctors had treated them throughout the escape flight, giving them oxygen and bandaging the multitude of wounds both men had sustained in the crash landing on the mountain. They had been taken out of their fuel-drenched flight suits and put into spares rounded up from others in the unit. Both pilots were now lying on makeshift stretchers, clad in Army T-shirts, Marine pants, and Air Force underwear.
Only now were they able to tell their tale to Smitz, Norton, Delaney, and Chou.
Though the Hook had developed engines problems en route, their refueling went well, they said. But then the ArcLight gunship showed up and blew the C-130 refueler out of the sky, taking the Hook down with it—or so it must have appeared. The chopper was mortally wounded and going down fast. But that was when Ricco did a very strange thing: He turned off the Hook's one good engine about five thousand feet from impact. Killing the engine allowed the rotor's kinetic motion to level them out—an old chopper trick Ricco had somehow picked up. It saved their lives. Once the chopper was stable, he was able to restart the engine, and it gave them enough power to stay airborne—but just barely. It was all they could do to keep the chopper at two hundred feet altitude.
They made the dash back to the Bat Cave, flying perilously low over villages, highways, army encampments. Thus their rather spectacular arrival back at the not-so-hidden mountain base. Everything was rather foggy after that.
This tale took about twenty minutes to tell. Neither man could get out a complete sentence without requiring a fix from the SEALs' emergency oxygen tank. Ricco was especially woozy.
After hearing the story, Norton pulled Delaney away from the rest of the group.
"Well, what do you think?" he asked his partner.
"I think they're delirious," Delaney told him. "Do you really believe those two have all that in them?"
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."
Chapter 28
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.
But together, the four of them had been able to cook up a way to get the weapons to fire semi-manually. In effect they had rigged a system whereby the guns would fire on a timed command—and that command could be sent by the pilot when he was able to get the plane into position above their next target.
In order to do this, though, they had been forced to erase a large portion of the weapon computer's original firing commands, along with a ton of secondary and backup commands.
But what difference did that make?
As far as they were concerned, this would be the last time they would be operating the gunship.
At this time tomorrow, they would be gone—pockets full of money—to places unknown.
They just had to hit this one last target.
*****
That target was now just five minutes away.
It was ironic that they had been vec
tored to this part of Iraq. Years before, the gunship had flown this sector many times looking for SCUDs or other targets of opportunity. As they flew over these familiar parts once again, it was almost as if the aircraft recognized its old turf. There were the Tajji Mountains over there. The Samarra dry river over there. The valley known as Tawiq Cha was over there. And out on the horizon, coming into range soon, was the air base, now abandoned, known as El-Saad Men.
The main hangar stuck out like a sore thumb. It was the only building standing in the ten-year-old rubble of the base, the only structure that could be identified so quickly from ten thousand feet.
Upon seeing it, the pilot lowered the gunship's altitude to 3,500 feet in a hurry, putting the ArcLight into a dive so severe the other three crewmen had to hold on for dear life. But it was a jovial plunge—one last time on the Space Hog roller coaster.
Inside of sixty seconds, the airplane was in position over the hangar. There was even a large arrow painted on its rooftop. It couldn't have made a better bull's-eye.
"OK there's your mark," the pilot called back to his "rookie" gunners. "Let's do a half-rotation, thirty-second burst with the minis. Then we'll go around again and try the popgun."
The three men in the rear weapons bay radioed ahead that they got the order. Now they had to see whether their jerry-rigged computer command would work. They felt the pilot dip the plane's left wing. Looking out the window, they could at last see the hangar themselves.
"OK, let's give it a shot," one said.
The second man did a mock sign of the cross and hit a button—just one of many on the firing panels connected to the three-minigun setup. There was a slight delay—almost too long. But then an amber light blinked on, indicating the pilot had punched in his timed-sequence command.
Five seconds later, to their great surprise, the three miniguns opened up full force.
The noise was sudden and the vibration so intense, it nearly knocked all three men on their rears. But they were laughing at the same time.
