Chopper Ops co-1

by Mack Maloney

  Chopper Ops

  ( Chopper Ops - 1 )

  Mack Maloney

  The most technically-advanced, armed cargo plane ever created has vanished and a specialized team of elite helicopter pilots has been sent into Saudi Arabia to retrieve it. They are the Chopper Ops, and they have only one chance to succeed.

  Mack Maloney

  CHOPPER OPS

  First in the New Military Action Series

  For my good friend

  Bob Bloomer

  PART ONE

  SEVEN GHOSTS

  Chapter 1

  Western Saudi Arabia

  February 9, 1991

  0200 hours

  The American air base at Al-Khadi was a very secret place.

  Located deep in the western Saudi desert, it appeared on no maps. The only road leading to it was 173 miles long, winding and unmarked. Barely a dozen people in the Saudi military knew the air base existed, and still they weren’t privy to its location. Even the U.S. Army engineers who built the place back in 1989 weren’t sure exactly where it was. They had been trucked to the site blindfolded when construction began. When they finished, they left the same way.

  Air operations at Al-Khadi took place only at night. Extremely strict blackout restrictions were always in effect then. No lights. No radios. No electronic gear of any kind was permitted to be turned on unless absolutely necessary. Even the lighting of a match was forbidden without proper authorization.

  Only one runway was open at Al-Khadi this fateful night. The rest of the base was shut up tight. The weather had something to do with this. An unusual desert fog had settled over the base earlier in the evening; it was so thick by midnight it resembled a snowstorm. The Saudis called this cold and wet phenomena el-fadehal, “unwanted visitor from the west.” Traditionally, it was an omen of bad luck.

  A single airplane stood waiting in this murk, its four propellers turning and blowing waves of cold mist behind them. An eerie growl from the plane’s muffled engines washed across the desert floor, bouncing off the mountains that surrounded the air base. The ground crew moved like spirits under the plane’s wings and fuselage, emerging, then disappearing within the swirl of fog.

  This particular aircraft had many names. Stout of body and thick in the nose, it was a variant of the ubiquitous C-130 Hercules cargo plane. Its official serial listing was AC-130/SO-21D. Since operating out of Al-Khadi, its radio call sign had invariably been “Alpha One Blue.” Its aircrew called the big plane “The Space Hog.” But the unusual aircraft was most readily known by the name of the secret unit to which it was attached: ArcLight 4.

  The air war against Iraq had been going on for nearly a month now. Allied bombers were continuously pounding targets inside Iraq and occupied Kuwait. The ground assault to retake Kuwait would begin in just two weeks. In anticipation of this, the big ArcLight 4 airplane was about to take off on its thirteenth mission in as many days.

  ArcLight 4 was not a bomber—not a conventional one anyway. It was actually a combination spy plane and weapons platform. Its bulbous nose was stuffed with surveillance gear—infrared TV cameras, NightScopes, powerful electronic eavesdropping equipment. Its thick fuselage was packed with weaponry. Three M-134 7.62mm miniguns were mounted in portholes on the aircraft’s left side. Essentially modern Gatling guns, these six-barreled weapons could each fire one hundred rounds a second—an incredible rate. The aircraft also carried a 105mm light howitzer, capable of firing a variety of ordnance including armor-piercing and high-explosive shells.

  The aircraft delivered its fierce barrage by going into an orbit above a target, tipping on its left wing, and firing all four weapons at once. Such a fusillade could perforate an area the size of a football field in less than ten seconds. Mobile targets, troop concentrations, and such things as missile launchers and heavy guns were usually vaporized in even less time. Sustained firing by the gunship’s combined weaponry most often resulted in craters that seemed more at home on the moon.

  The plane’s crew was a combination of sorts too. It was made up of U.S. Army Green Berets, U.S. Air Force officers, and Defense Intelligence Agency specialists. There were thirteen in all, and the delineation of duties was simple. The Green Berets handled the weapons, the DIA men ran the snooping equipment, and the Air Force guys flew the airplane. Each man on board had the highest security clearance possible.

  On paper, the plane’s mission this night was the same as the previous twelve. Get airborne, turn on its snooping equipment, try to ascertain special targets—SCUD sites, biological or nerve-gas weapons depots, suspected nuclear storage facilities—and then go in and hit them with the airplane’s awesome weaponry.

  So far in the war, ArcLight 4 had destroyed a half-dozen such targets in some very out-of-the-way places. The fuzzy border between Iraq and Iran had been one of them. Enclaves of pro-Saddam guerrillas hiding valuable equipment in the rugged hills of east Jordan had been another. One flight a week before had brought the secret airplane all the way up to the Turkish-Russian border to stop a column of arms smugglers heading for Saddam’s beleaguered troops. It was no surprise that the airplane carried no markings, no country insignia, no outward indication as to who it belonged to. After all, the airplane’s modus operandi was to go places and do things no other Allied airplane could possibly do.

  That was why its crew, its operations, and the airplane itself officially did not exist.

  In many ways, it was a ghost.

  * * *

  By 0235 hours, the plane was ready to go. It rolled out onto Runway East One, the only airstrip open. The base control tower turned on the double set of dull blue lights lining the runway, but only long enough for the big airplane to get itself positioned. Then they were switched off again. The pilots would have to rely on their NightVision goggles for the actual takeoff.

  Waiting now at the end of the runway, the airplane’s crew ran one last diagnostic check. All of the airplane’s vitals—its engines, its fuel supply, its communications and backup gear—were in order. Its weapons systems were all lit green. Its tons of eavesdropping equipment were functioning in the high range as well.

  This mission tonight had the makings of a fairly easy one. The crew’s orders called for it to sweep up Iraq’s western border, cross over the top of Saddam’s domain, and then fly back down its eastern fringe. Total flying time, just under six hours. A Sunday drive compared to the fifteen-hour marathon flights the crew was used to doing.

  That was why it was so odd then that after the strange airplane took off and disappeared into the cold misty night, it was never heard from again.

  Chapter 2

  Bethesda, Maryland

  Ten years later

  The phone call came just after 1 A.M.

  It roused Gene Smitz out of his recurring dream about playing first base in the 1986 World Series. It was raining outside and in that first groggy moment, Smitz thought the ringing was the sound of raindrops hitting his window. But there was no rain that hard, his sleepy brain told him. Yanking himself out of his dream just as Mookie Wilson’s dribbler was heading right for him, Smitz reached over and answered the phone.

  The voice on the other end was a whisper, echoing and distant. That was how Smitz knew it was from his office.

  “You are needed at Bethesda Naval Hospital,” the voice said. “Second floor, Room 333. It’s best you don’t delay.”

  The cab driver had no problem with that. When Smitz said he needed to get to Bethesda Hospital as quickly as possible, the Sudanese cabbie drove the twenty-two miles in eighteen minutes. The ride was so wild it gave Smitz at least one strange thought: Was his life so ironic that he would be killed in a taxi rushing to a hospital?

  They came close—the streets had turned slick in the ch
illy spring downpour. But somehow he arrived at Bethesda in one piece. And while he didn’t know why he was being summoned to the Navy hospital, at least he was sure it didn’t pertain to any member of his family. The Office would not have called him for that.

  No, this was a work-related thing.

  Smitz jumped from the cab, threw the driver a twenty, and hurried inside. He was a slight, thin man, not quite wiry, and just twenty-five years old. His overgrown haircut and tortoise-shell glasses gave him a perpetual college-boy look. This was why the hospital security guards double-checked his ID badge before letting him into the private-area wing of the vast hospital. Smitz just didn’t look like a CIA guy. An accountant, maybe. A junior ad executive, possibly. But not CIA. His eyes just didn’t have it.

  Once in, he took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor. He reached Room 333, and the small mystery was solved. A trio of CIA officers was waiting outside. They were his supervisors, three in succession, right up the ladder. This meant only one person could be behind the door: George Jacobs. The Old Man. The chief of the CIA’s Special Foreign Operations Section. Smitz’s big boss.

  “What happened to him?” Smitz asked the three men outside.

  Only one of his supervisors replied. His name was Larry Stone. He was a Grade-A prick, and an angry, bitter man. He resented the fact that Smitz was nearly as high on the pecking order as he at nearly half his age.

  “He wants to see you,” Stone told him. The words came in icy tones.

  Smitz began to open the door, and Stone caught his arm.

  “And listen, Harvard boy, it’s his heart,” Stone said.

  “So if he has something to tell you, don’t delay in letting him do it.”

  Smitz nodded curtly and went through the door.

  The room was small, spare, white. There were no windows. No other doors. There was a bed at the far end. It was surrounded by a jungle of tubes and hoses. Green ones, white ones, blue ones. A disturbing-looking red one. Then there were the machines. Pumping. Breathing. Beeping. Beneath it all, wrapped in a single pale blue blanket, was the boss.

  A shock of white hair, ruddy complexion. A big man who looked ten years younger than his sixty-five years, Jacobs managed a smile when he saw Smitz walk in.

  “Sorry to get you out of bed, Smitty.”

  “What happened, Chief?” Smitz asked, trying not to stare at the gaggle of life-support machinery.

  Jacobs laughed. “Old football injury kicking up.”

  “Chief, I’m sorry… I…”

  Jacobs waved away Smitz’s concerns.

  “I don’t have any regrets,” he said. “Except I didn’t make as much money as I wanted. You know how the government pays. But maybe where I’m going, they pay better.”

  Jacobs laughed. Smitz tried to.

  “We have some business, though, Smitty, you and me,” Jacobs went on.

  Smitz turned to the nurse sitting next to Jacobs’s bed and gave her a nod. She left quickly. Then Jacobs pointed to his briefcase on the table nearby.

  “Red folder, white envelope inside,” he said. “Everyone I know is inheriting my problems—and here’s a real stinker for you. Sorry I can’t leave you with something better. Believe me, if I had my way, I’d just let this one slide. But they are making me do it.”

  Smitz took the folder out of the briefcase. It was indeed red and sealed several times in red tape. One page was sticking out, and Smitz saw it was a letter with the Presidential seal on it.

  “This is a Level Six program, Smitty,” Jacobs said. “Way high on the scale. And it’s a real pain-in-the-ass job. But it’s something that has to be done and now it’s your baby. Read the briefing papers when you can, will you?”

  Smitz stared into Jacobs’s eyes. He didn’t look that sick. And despite the spaghetti jumble of tubes and hoses, none of them seemed to be connected to him.

  “I’ll handle it until you get back on your feet, Chief,” Smitz told him. “Don’t worry.”

  Jacobs just laughed at that too.

  “Just remember two things about this job, Smitty,” he said. “First, it’s a very screwed-up program. Stitched together, interservice bullshit. The personnel are still being assembled. The training is just beginning. The equipment is still somewhere in the pipeline. But something has to happen eventually. The problem might get visible. So, do what you can, OK?”

  “Will do, Chief…”

  Jacobs reached up and shook Smitz’s hand.

  “Thanks, Smitty…”

  Smitz hesitated.

  “How about the other thing, Chief?” he asked Jacobs. “The second point about this program?”

  Jacobs had to think a moment.

  “Oh, right,” he finally said. “The other thing is, you might find yourself doing a lot of flying for this one.”

  “OK. So?”

  Jacobs motioned for him to get a little closer.

  “If you do,” Jacobs said in a whisper, “try like hell to stay out of the helicopters.”

  * * *

  Smitz left the room, brushed by his supervisors, and retreated to a nearby waiting area. It was deserted, safe enough for him to read the file.

  He bought a cup of bad coffee from a nearby vending machine and sat down to read.

  The file was barely an inch thick. The first bunch of pages contained a slew of PALs—Presidential Action Letters. They were addressed individually to the personnel ordered to work the program. Most of these people were military. Many of them were Marine Corps. Four were from Army Aviation. Four more were from the Navy SEALs’ medical personnel section. Four letters still had their addressee lines blank. Smitz groaned. Jacobs didn’t have to warn him about this. From experience he knew that any program involving interservice “cooperation” seemed cursed from the start.

  It got worse. The next page displayed the PS2, the personnel selection sequence, which was a fancy way of documenting in graph form both how and why the civilian and military personnel selected for the program had been chosen. But the PS2 sheet was nearly blank; its graph lines were limp and flaccid. Many names had been scratched out; still others were of personnel not even contacted yet. With the exception of the Marines, it was as if someone was simply picking names out of a hat, instead of trying to collect a cohesive group of individuals whose talents would interact for the greater good. This didn’t make any sense to Smitz. He could only hope someone up top understood it.

  The next part of the file contained a series of satellite photos with map grids superimposed on them. Most were identified as being from the Persian Gulf region, specifically Iraq. They showed what appeared to be sites of recent combat damage. Villages, convoys, oil-storage facilities—all of them torn up, burned, or flattened. In many photos, bodies were in evidence. Smitz’s first thought was that the photos had been taken during the Gulf War, nearly ten years before. But each of the pictures carried a date much later than 1991. The most recent one was marked with a date from just a few months ago.

  Only two photos depicted places located outside the Persian Gulf region. One of these showed an enormous black hole in a field near a town in Bosnia identified as Crztia. The caption for the second photo said it was taken near Dishu Bur, Somalia. It showed a large portion of slum-like neighborhood simply vaporized.

  The third document in the file was actually an envelope containing the Action Paper, essentially the background on why this particular program had been put together. Smitz took a deep gulp of the putrid coffee and opened it.

  He expected to find reams of pages explaining what the program involved and what he was supposed to do. Instead, he found just four meager information sheets. The first showed a very blurry photocopy image of what Smitz recognized to be a C-130 cargo plane. It had no markings or insignia, however, seemed bigger than a normal C-130, and appeared to be painted a light shade of camouflage gray. There was a caption attached to the bottom of the photocopy, but most of it had been inked out. The only thing Smitz could make out were a few words directly
underneath the airplane’s image. They read: “ArcLight 4. Last known radio call sign: Alpha One Blue.”

  The second sheet had three other photographs attached, none of which had captions. The first showed an aerial photograph of a small airfield Smitz guessed was somewhere in the Caribbean. He’d been in that area enough times to recognize the fauna and the water color. The place looked tiny, with one short airstrip and a few buildings. It also appeared to be deserted. The second and third photos showed the same place, just as empty, taken through a Starscope camera at night.

  The third page told Smitz what he should bring for the environment he was going to. Pack light summer wear and nothing else. An index card stapled to the fourth page said Smitz was to report to Andrews Air Force Base within twenty-four hours to get transport to his new assignment. Once he was on-site, further information on the program would be waiting for him.

  And that was it. No more photos, no more background. Nothing.

  Smitz closed the file and resealed it. Two things began bothering him immediately. First, this seemed to be a big project for someone like him who was still pretty low in rank in his section. Rarely did his assignments take him away from Washington, D.C., or its close environs. This one, though, seemed to indicate he’d be going somewhere hot and humid and be there for a long period of time.

  But secondly, never had he read an action report with such a paucity of information. Usually a project folder was too thick with paperwork. This one was abnormally thin. Something had to be missing here. Perhaps there was more information in another file in Jacobs’s briefcase. Smitz threw the coffee cup away and walked back down the hallway to Jacobs’s room.

  Only Stone was waiting outside the door now. The other two supervisors had left. Smitz tried to push by him, but the man stopped him.

  “You’re too late,” Stone told him. “He’s gone.”