The Story of Air Rescue
By
Lon R Maisttison
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PUBLISHED BY:
The Story of Air Rescue
Copyrighted © 2013 by Lon R. Maisttison
Updated: 2016 by Lon R. Maisttison
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Introduction
Air Rescue Stories are about a fictitious paramilitary-for-hire rescue organization known as Air Rescue Special Forces, a subsidiary of Air Rescue’s commercial helicopter rescue business.
Air Rescue was conceived in the imaginative daydreams of author Lon Maisttison, while living in England in the 1990’s. The author visualized these daydream stories based against real life events going on throughout the world at the time and injected his own rescue organization into the scene as they played out in his imaginative mind. It wasn’t until the late 1990‘s that the author started compiling the stories on his home computer into a written outline format about the daydreams he visualized that day. For years the stories remained dormant on his home computer until 2003 when the author returned to the United States and contracted a flu virus that attacked his heart which developed into congestive heart failure (CHF). During that year, the author made himself a promise to write two styles of books, the first book would deal with surviving congestive heart failure “The Kissed by Death Books,” and the second series would be the “Air Rescue Stories.”
In 2007, the author introduced the first Air Rescue story that appeared in the book titled: “The Two Sisters of Kuwait”. The story was derived from an accumulation of the original eight story outlines conceived by the author in the late 1990’s and presented in the copyright filed with the Library of Congress in 2006. The Air Rescue Story being presented is an expansion of the original story developed in 2006.
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The Story of Air Rescue
It all began in 1980, when Blackie Winner, a pilot, flying out of the Haps Airport in Clark County, Indiana started-up a helicopter rescue business. Blackie and his sidekick Billy were out flying a helicopter around the Floyd Knobs one day and came upon a car crash in the hills overlooking the Ohio Valley. They landed their helicopter in a farmer’s field nearby the accident and ended up transporting the driver to the hospital to save his life. The insurance company paid the two men handsomely for their services, which got the two men thinking. If they could make that kind of money rescuing people, why not start up a business doing rescues and that afternoon's flight gave birth to a new company. Blackie and Billy decided that since their first rescue was done by air involving an aircraft i.e. a helicopter, they decided to call the company Air Rescue.
During the first year of business, Blackie and Billy modified a 1981 Bell 222SP which later became the first Air Rescue helicopter known as Air One. The modification involved removing one of the back seats and wall partition and installing an entrance door at the back of the helicopter. In place of the removed seat, a platform was installed that could handle an ambulance stretcher. This allowed the patient on a stretcher to be loaded straight onto the platform and slid into the helicopter from the rear of the aircraft. Equipment to monitor the patient in flight was installed overhead; oxygen tanks were added and medical supplies.
In the first year of business, the company successfully carried out 253 rescues. During that year, the two entrepreneurs focused the company’s line of business on transporting medical patients from hospitals, picking up people at car accident sites, taking people off ships on the Ohio River and basically specialized in air pickups of all kinds. Accident rescue was Air Rescues most profitable business in the first year, their bread and butter so to speak, and they were very good at this line of work. Business was good.
During the summer of 1981, Billy's brother Hank, a pilot in Miami, came up to Indiana to visit Billy and Blackie with the intent of starting up another Air Rescue business in Miami. The two entrepreneurs had been approached by other small helicopter companies in various Midwestern cities to franchise their style of business. But Hank was a relative of Billy’s and a successful businessman in helicopter sales and flew helicopters out of a Miami Airport. So, Blackie and Billy invested in Hank’s adventure and help finance his Air Rescue business in Miami.
In six months, the Miami office was booming. Business was good and focused on transporting medical patients from hospitals, picking up people at car accident sites, taking people off ships at sea and basically specialized in air pickups of all kinds. The success of the Miami office fueled interest by other local cities and Air Rescue franchised the business and the Air Rescue name grew into a successful million dollar company.
Then in 1982, the Miami business took a downturn due to the Miami riots that year. During that summer, and appreciating those times of American history, some overbearing cops in Miami beat to death a black motorcyclist which started the Miami Riots. Air Rescue was, of course, doing rescue work during the rioting period. The official story told by the sister aircrew flying that afternoon with the downed helicopter, indicated that the helicopter came under fire from the rioters and was hit in the tail rotor, always the most vulnerable spot for a helicopter, and the chopper crashed. Everybody on-board, including the patient, they picked up, was killed. That was a very bad day for Air Rescue. So, some of the rescue aircrew members with military backgrounds started carrying weapons and on several occasions, they shot at rioters and snipers who were shooting at the rescue helicopter.
It was in 1985, that the commando unit was created from an idea of one of the aircrew personnel by the name of Mike Henderson, who experienced the Miami Riots first hand. He was a Vietnam vet, who had a background in Special Forces and spent most of his time in the jungle, and on occasion, had been involved in jungle rescues of servicemen captured and rescued them from the enemy. But for the most part, he spent his time jumping in and out of rice paddies getting shot at. He was a little guy, only 5':4'', but Vietnam had changed him from a naïve young kid to one mean son-of-bitch. He came back to the United States after the war and trained as a medic and was working for Air Rescue part time.
Mike had also become a religious man and attended church every Sunday and helped sponsor the church missionary effort in South America. The church was supporting three missionaries in Colombia, South America who was helping a local poor village and at the same time was preaching God’s word to the villagers on Sunday. But, one of the missionaries went a little too far in preaching about drugs and the local Drug Lord took offense. He had the missionary kidnapped and ran off the other two who returned back to Miami. The Drug Lord soon discovered that the missionary they had kidnapped was, in fact, a very successful businessman on a sabbatical from a well-known pharmaceutical company and rich. So, the Drug Lord put a million dollar ransom on his head.
When word reached the church that the missionary had been kidnapped and a ransom was demanded. Mike volunteered his services to help the church get the missionary released, as he knew the man kidnapped. Mike joined a party of church members who arranged a trip to South America in an attempt to meet with the Drug Lord. What the church members didn’t know, Mike was on a mission to do some freelance work and rescue the businessman if he got the chance. Mike knew he was walking into a trap and the Drug Lord was just playing with them in hopes of bettering his position. But, Mike figured his martial arts training and commando skills from his Vietnam days was good enough for him to disarm any rent-army-bandit he faced.
So, he teamed up with three other church members and caught a flight from Miami to Bogota, Colombia, South America on Aero Mexico Airlines. The church team set up residence in the Hotel Bogotá Real, in downtown Bogota and put the word out on the streets to taxis drivers and hotel staff, that they wanted to meet with the Drug Lord. It was
only a matter of days before a messenger showed up at the hotel, wanting to know what they wanted. The church members informed him that they wanted to secure the release of their fellow church member and the messenger left. About two days later, the messenger returned to the hotel and set up a meeting the next evening at the Drug Lords residence, outside of town.
Mike thought to himself, these church members are dumb and as far as Mike was concerned, these guys were walking into a trap. So, he told the others that he was going to have a walk around town and went out and secretly rented a car and parked it near the hotel. Later that evening after dinner, Mike faked being sick with food poisoning and stayed in his room studying maps as how to get to the Drug Lords residence.
The next day after breakfast, Mike put his finger down his throat and faked sickness again. Unwell, the church members thought nothing of leaving Mike at the hotel as they didn’t want any problems with sickness while visiting the Drug Lord. The messenger came to the hotel to escort them to the Drug Lords residence and the church members left with him.
Just as soon as the group left the hotel, Mike followed them out the door and got into his rental car and then continued following them to the Spanish hacienda. Watching from a distance, Mike saw the church members drive into the courtyard of the hacienda compound. As they all got out of the car, they were met at the front entrance of the hacienda by what appeared to be the Drug Lord and went into the building with him.
Mike got out of the car and sneaked over to the compound wall. He climbed on the courtyard wall and laid down flat, so he wouldn’t be noticed by the roaming guards while he viewed and studied the courtyard and grounds. From his advantage point on top of the wall, he could see the church members talking with the Drug Lord through the windows as they all stood around in the foyer with the Drug Lord. Then the Drug Lord laughed at them and motioned with his hand to his guards, with automatic weapons, to take them downstairs to the basement of the hacienda.
As Mike laid flat on top of the wall, he thought to himself, well, I was right, it was a trap. So he starts thinking how he was going to get them out. He decided that the first thing he was going to do was nothing, but just sit tight and wait for things to quieten down, watch guard activity and at the same time, look for cameras.
From Mike’s advantage point, he could see one camera at the entrance. It was the type that rotates back and forth to cover a wide range of the entrance to the building. Mike thought, he can’t just walk up to the entrance without being seen, so he needed a disguise. He needed to look like one of the guards. So, when the camera looked away from Mike’s direction, he climbed down off the wall on the courtyard side and moved across the lawn to the house and hid in the bushes.
Mike waited about 15 minutes for a guard to walk by doing his security rounds. As the guard passed him, he snuck up on him and clubbed him on top of the head and knocked him out. He took the guy’s shirt off him and put it on with his hat to fake out the guy in the control room who’s watching with the cameras.
When the camera rotated around to the position where Mike was not as visible to the camera, he put his head down so his face was not shown to the camera and walked in the entrance. Once inside, he sneaked along the hall to the door where he saw the guards take the church members.
As it turned out, the door led to stairs going down into the basement. So quietly, Mike sneaked down the steps to the basement area and stopped, because a camera was just above his head and looked into the open room and cells. Mike could see the guard sitting at a table with all of the church members and kidnapped friend sitting around the wall of a small cell together.
Mike thought to himself, I don’t have a prayer in hells chance of getting to the guard before he sees me, and he has a gun and I don’t. So, Mike decided he would get the guard to come to him. If he changed the position of the camera then that will get the attention of the control room, and they will call the guard to go fix it.
Mike reached up to the camera and changed its position so it pointed up at the ceiling, and then waited for the phone call from someone in the control room. It took less than 5 minutes and the control room was calling the guard to check the camera.
The guard got up, walked over to the camera, and while he was correcting the camera’s position, Mike came from behind the stair wall and hit him on the head with a club and knocked him out.
Mike hurried over to the guard’s table, collected the keys and unlocked the cell door and opened it to release everybody. He told them all to keep quiet and to follow him. Up the basement stairs, they all went to the ground floor. Mike opened the basement door and looked out into the hallway to no activity…no guards …Mike whispered to everybody to follow him as he led them out and along the hallway and out the front door.
Mike figured he had only minutes to get everybody out through the front gate and around to his rental car and drive off, because the control room would have seen them leave, and sound the alarm.
He started the car and drove down the street a few blocks and then parked the car and had everybody lie down on the seats and hide. It was only minutes, before several cars came out of the compound and raced down the streets looking for them.
But, Mike had done his homework, and he knew that the Drug Lord would send paramilitary people to their hotel and airport looking for them. He knew that the only real safe place was the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. So, Mike drove to the U.S. Embassy and identified everybody as kidnapped persons hiding from the Drug Lord and arranged to stay in residence at the Embassy until morning. The next day under the protection of the Embassy, they drove to the Airport and flew back to the USA.
The successful rescue of the businessman gained Mike a nice reward of $25,000 dollars from the man’s company for a good job well done. When Mike returned to his job at Air Rescue, they were most interested in his story and wanted someone like Mike to set up a business doing this style of rescue. The small commando unit that resulted from the Colombia rescue later became known as Air Rescue Special Forces.
Once the U.S. Government got wind of the paramilitary operations going on in the United States, the U.S. Government forced Air Rescue into U.S. Federal Court. Through court action, Air Rescue had to either leave, the United States or cease operations under a federal mandate of the Private Militias Laws, brought on by all the problems with the Cuban National Front in Florida in the 1960’s. Air Rescue made a deal with the U.S. Government that the paramilitary wing of the business would move out of the United States, leaving only the medical rescue business.
That year, Air Rescue Special Forces moved their entire business office for Special Forces Operations to Harrogate, England, under the direction of Frank James, Lieutenant-Colonel (Ret.), Royal Marine Commandos (1984), as British laws are more relaxed about paramilitary organizations. Once the Harrogate Office was established, Frank started the supply office in Northampton, which had operational control of assets being kept offshore in various friendly countries.
By the 1990’s, Air Rescue Special Forces was a well-established, successful paramilitary-for-hire business operating primarily in Europe and Mid-East. Commandos were used extensively in special rescue operations, especially during the Beirut Civil War to save kidnapped victims for large sums of money. One of the heroes of the Beirut period of time was “Jimmy West,” who was so successful in sneaking into and out of Beirut that his paid fee increased to one million dollars per mission and he became known as “the stealth warrior" for his nighttime rescue tactics.
Bio: Jimmy West - joined Air Rescue Special Forces in 1986 after being discharged from the U.S. Army Special Forces. During Jimmy’s 19 + years Army career, he had spent several years in Japan, where he was trained by a monk; a real 19th century ninja, in the mountains of Iga Province. The monk trained Jimmy in Ninjutsu, the ancient art of stealth, and taught him to be a ninja, a shadow warrior who specialized in blending into his surroundings, the art of non-detection and avoidance. Being an American national and having a career
in a paramilitary organization, presented legal problems for living in the United States. So, he eventually took up residence in a Mediterranean villa in the small beautiful town of Port de Soller, Mallorca.
At the height of the Beirut period, one of Jimmy’s most famous rescues was “The Tripoli Mission,” a cloak & dagger, special ops, secret Air Rescue mission to Tripoli, Libya. On this mission, Jimmy West, the stealth warrior, was sent to rescue an Egyptian envoy's wife and two daughters and get them back on Egyptian soil alive.
The rescue mission became famous throughout the Arab world and led to the mission called “The Two Sisters of Kuwait.” This commando mission was to Kuwait City during the first 24 hours of the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, to rescue the Emir's grandson Prince Nasser. Jimmy landed in Kuwait City and unexpectedly stumbled upon nine marauding Iraqi soldiers attacking the two sisters and rescued them. The sisters befriended Jimmy and helped him rescue the prince and complete his mission. Hunted by the Iraqi Army, they escaped capture in a mad dash across Kuwait City, engaging in several running gun battles, to be extracted by Air Rescue Aircraft.
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The Story of Global Rescuer
It was in 1988, when Air Rescue started contemplating business expansion. They wanted to get into the multi-million dollar rescues. Commandos like Jimmy West could only do so much in cloak and dagger based rescues. So, Air Rescue conceived the idea of the ship / gunship combination to support their rescues. The world was exploding around the globe and Air Rescue wanted a piece of the action and saw a need for a ship that could carry muscle i.e. the gunship.
But, even though Air Rescue was a successful million dollar company, their business thoughts were in practical terms and they simply didn’t have the money to support the construction of a new ship. Air Rescue also realized that in a gun battle up against a host country’s military during a rescue, they would be out gunned in a fight and their ship wouldn’t last five minutes. So, they conceived the idea of a clandestine ship (a Ghost Ship) based on secrecy, stealth, and deception. Basically, what Air Rescue wanted for rescues was a ship that could disappear or disguise itself. Air Rescue figured if Jimmy could be so successful in cloak and dagger, clandestine work, why couldn’t Air Rescue modify a ship to operate in deception i.e. Cargo, tanker, or cruise ship mode of operation.
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