by Mack Maloney
The figure was dressed all in white. Its skin was wet and runny. With a bright light coming from behind, it looked almost transparent. A crash of thunder and a flash of lightning only added credibility to the apparition.
Norton sat up with a start, his fists clenched, ready to punch the ghost.
That was when Smitz pulled back the hood of his rain slicker to reveal his soaking-wet head.
"Sorry to bother you like this, Major," the young CIA man was saying. "But we need you over in Hangar 2 right away."
*****
The storm was growing worse. Lightning flashes were tearing holes in the dark sky; thunder rumbled, shaking the tarmac right down to its foundation. And the rain was coming down in torrents. Norton and Smitz ran through the deluge, heading for Hangar 2.
"If you guys were so smart, you would have picked a better place to hide yourselves!" Norton yelled over at Smitz. "The weather here sucks!"
"Who said we were smart?" Smitz yelled back without missing a beat.
They finally reached the huge hangar and Smitz banged heavily on the front door. They could hear several techs struggling to open the big sliding piece of metal on the other side. Finally, the door was pulled back and the two men jumped inside.
Norton yanked back his hood and wiped the rainwater from his eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw before him a very strange aircraft.
Something ran through Norton at that moment; a jolt went from his head to his toes and back again. Was it adrenaline? A bit of lightning? Fear? He didn't know. But he staggered a bit, causing Smitz to reach out and catch him.
"That's how I felt when I saw it too," Smitz said.
Norton took a closer look. For a tiny instant, he thought he was looking at a jet aircraft here—an elderly A-6 Intruder, to be exact. Bathed in the weird greenish hue of the hangar's sodium lights, the snout of this odd aircraft, when viewed head-on, resembled the Intruder in a perverse way.
But in the next blink Norton knew this was no A-6. He should be so lucky. No, this thing was a helicopter. The massive rotors were proof enough. But it was a copter that had wings as well. And the cockpit was actually a double-seat tandem setup—a place for a pilot in back and a gunner up front, with bug-eyed bubble glass all round. And the wheels, though looking like a fighter jets, were squat, their attending gear very heavy. And hanging off those stunted wings were multi-barreled guns and rocket dispensers. And hundreds of different attachments—antennas, speed vanes, gun muzzles, God knows what else—seemed to be poking out all over the fuselage.
Norton blinked again. This thing was a beast—and it was staring right at him. And his first urge was to run, very fast and very far away.
"Do you know what it is?" Smitz asked him.
Yes, Norton replied. He knew exactly what it was.
It was an Mi-24 Hind. A massive Russian-built helicopter gunship.
"Where the fuck did you get this thing?" he asked Smitz incredulously.
"I can't tell you that," Smitz replied. "The Russians built a couple thousand of these monsters. Let's just say we were able to procure a few."
They walked further into the hangar. The techs who had spent all night putting the gunship together gave way with a nod from Smitz.
"Grab some coffee, guys," he told them.
Norton was simply awestruck by the size of the helicopter. It was huge. Much bigger than an Apache or a Cobra or any attack chopper of American design.
"The Russians came up with this concept after studying our experience in Viet Nam," Smitz explained, "They saw the pickle we were in, landing troops into hot zones with only a few machine guns sticking out of our Hueys for cover. So they set out to build a combination gunship and troop carrier. That's why it's so big."
They began walking around the machine.
"It weighs 21,000 pounds empty," Smitz continued. "Got to be the weight of at least a couple Apaches."
"At least," Norton said with a whistle.
"Half inch of plating around the cockpit," Smitz went on, sounding not unlike a car salesman. "Protection for both gunner and pilot. The Russians were so afraid of getting their asses shot off in Afghanistan, they put the flight crew in steel bathtubs. Same thing for the engines and the guts. Supposedly you can take a 62-mm round in the power plants and keep flying."
"Not bad," Norton mumbled.
"Thick glass all round," Smitz continued. "Those windshields have more strength than the steel tub the crew sits in. They can stop a high-caliber bullet, maybe even a cannon round or two."
"But this thing has wings," Norton said, stopping to study one of the not-so-stubby appendages.
Smitz turned on his NoteBook. "Says here they are nearly the size of the wings on an F-104 Starflghter."
"But why?" Norton wanted to know. He patted one of the huge weapon-dispensers attached to the long downward-slanting wings. "Just to carry these things?"
Smitz consulted his computer again.
"Says here the wings provide approximately one fourth the lift required to get the aircraft up and flying. I guess that means the damn thing is one-quarter jet fighter, three-quarters helicopter."
Norton just shook his head. "Only the Russians could think of that."
"They are known for their helicopters," Smitz said, a bit sly.
And that was when Norton stopped in his tracks. He felt like an anvil had just landed smack on the head. All those hours in the Tin Can. The screwy cockpit setup. The ass-backwards flight regimes.
He looked Smitz straight in the eye. "Damn, you're going to ask me to fly this thing, aren't you?"
The young CIA officer could only shrug. "That's the plan," he admitted. "We can't go into Iraq in American-built choppers. Our cover would be blown in a minute. So we have to use the kind of copters the Iraqis fly. And they fly Russian-built jobs. All those hours in UIT were intended to get you up to speed on this baby. The simulator software was reverse-engineered from this thing to give you a feel for flying a Hind. End of mystery."
Norton just shook his head, not able to take his eyes off the sinister Hind. "Man, what am I doing here?" he mumbled.
Smitz let the moment pass, then said to him: "Look, why not just get up there and try it on for size?"
Reluctantly, Norton climbed the ladder and eased himself into the rear seat of the cockpit. And of course there was a problem right away. There were switches and buttons and dials and levers and lights and handles going from his left elbow to his right. Indeed they seemed to surround him, and there seemed to be twice as many as needed. The interior did resemble what he'd been "flying" in the Tin Can, but with double the number of doodads. For someone so used to driving clean aircraft like F-15's and the F-17 Cobra, the Hind cockpit looked like a madhouse.
"Christ, what is all this extra crap for?" he cried out.
Smitz climbed the ladder and peered into the electronics-laden tub himself. It did look like it had been built back in the fifties.
"I've been assured all the crucial flight systems match your simulator training," Smitz said. "The unimportant stuff is just redundant backup readouts they felt compelled to jam in there, I guess."
But the cruel joke continued. Norton took a closer look at the control panel and discovered that in the multitude of lights, switches, and buttons, not one of them was labeled in English. Instead they all had nameplates with Cyrillic lettering on them.
"Jesus, even a Russian would have a hard time reading all this," Norton said. "How am I supposed to?"
"Well, that's a temporary problem," Smitz replied. "When we get a chance, we'll label all the crucial stuff for you. But a lot of it should be somewhat familiar to you already."
Norton tried to make some sense of the alphabet soup of Russian words swimming before his eyes. He felt as if all the air was leaking out of him.
"How long do I have to figure this out?" he asked Smitz. "A year or so?"
Smitz took a deep breath.
"The specs say the maximum flight-training time is thirty days," he said.
"That's to be considered combat- ready in this thing."
Norton just stared back at him.
"Thirty days? To be combat-ready? Better check your little computer there. You must be reading it wrong."
But Smitz didn't move a muscle. "Nope," he said. "Thirty days. That's the spec."
Norton reached up and pulled the CIA man closer to him.
"Are you crazy?" he hissed. "It probably took a Russian five times that long to get combat-ready in this shit-box—and they built the goddamn thing."
Smitz tactfully disengaged his collar from Norton's fist.
"Look, Major, our timetable is already behind schedule. Way behind. So, we've really got no choice in this matter. Thirty days worth of flight orientation is all that can be allotted. That includes group-flying exercises. Then—"
"Wait a moment," Norton interrupted him. "Did you say 'group flying'?"
Smitz just put his thumb over his shoulder. For the first time Norton realized there was another Hind, just as big, just as fierce, parked at the rear of the hangar.
"And there are three more, even bigger Russian copters, in the other two hangars," Smitz told him.
Norton just shook his head as it all fell into place.
"You're sending us all into Iraq, riding in Iraqi choppers?" he blurted out. "The Marines? Me? Delaney? The whole crew?"
Smitz nodded. "More accurately, in aircraft that look Iraqi. From the little I know, the plan requires being on the ground for a long period of time. Remaining mobile and remaining secure will be essential. Flying back and forth to an aircraft carrier or a friendly base is not an option. So the unit has to become autonomous and stay in-country, until the mission is done. To do that, a cover is needed. These helicopters will provide that cover—and the mobility."
Norton just couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Man, you guys have been watching too many bad movies," he said, starting to get out of the cockpit. "But you can do this one without me."
Smitz decided it was time to get tough. He reached over and firmly sat Norton back down into the cockpit.
"Major Norton, you're a military pilot, correct?" he began sternly.
Norton felt his jawbone tighten. "Yeah, that's right."
"And you've seen combat? And you are on the short list for shuttle flight training. And you wanted to fly black missions out of Dreamland? Right?"
Norton could only shrug. "Yeah, so?"
"So then flying is not the concern here, is it?"
Norton shook his head. "No, it isn't the flying," he mumbled. "I can fly anything. But—"
Smitz cut him off. "And to tell you the truth, Major, I'm not even sure why you were selected for this mission. But one reason, I believe, was your high rating on the adaptability section of the PS2. So—we know you can fly anything and we know you can adapt to just about any situation. What is the problem here then?"
"The problem is that there are about a million things that can go wrong with this plan," Norton shot back. "Whatever the plan is!"
"But if you don't know what the mission spec is," Smitz argued, "how could you possibly know what could go wrong?"
Norton took a moment and tried to compose himself. He was losing this debate and he knew it.
"Look, you're putting us in Iraqi copters, in Iraqi uniforms, I assume," he said slowly, rolling each syllable off his tongue with contempt. "If just the slightest thing gets fucked up, and we get caught, they can shoot us all as spies. That's just one reason."
Smitz just shook his head. He was the exact opposite of Norton. He preferred to hash things out, compromise, with level heads and calm voices. It was the Harvard way of doing things.
"Then, Major, I suggest you and the others should do everything in your power not to get caught," he said calmly. "I'm sure everyone from the President on down would prefer it that way."
Norton could feel his face go red. His hands went into fists again. He was stuck and he knew it.
He took another survey of the Hind's byzantine control panel. "Does anyone even know how to start this goddamn thing?"
Smitz looked to the small cluster of aircraft techs who had gathered nearby, drawn back from their coffee break by the raised voices. They'd heard Norton's question, but their only reply was a chorus of shrugs. One man held up a manual that looked about a foot thick.
Smitz turned back to Norton.
"Let's just say we're working on that," Smitz told him.
Norton groaned and put his head in his hands. "Man, I should have stayed in show business."
Smitz gave him a friendly pat on the back. "Look on the bright side, Major," he said.
Norton looked up at him. "There's a bright side?"
Smitz nodded. "You could have been assigned to the aircraft that your friends Gillis and Ricco have to fly."
*****
This was true enough. In the next hangar over, Gillis and Ricco were going through their own trauma.
They were sitting side by side in a helicopter even larger than a Hind. Also of Russian design, it was known as the Mi-6 Hook.
This copter was not a gunship. It was a dedicated troop carrier/cargo hauler of immense proportions. When it first entered service in the mid-fifties, the Hook was the largest military helicopter ever to fly—so big, in fact, it had to be shipped to Seven Ghosts Key in pieces, and still it barely fit inside the second C-5 that had landed earlier in the night.
Put together, it was an astounding 136 feet long— more than a third of a football field. Its rotors were a gigantic 133 feet in diameter. Its power plant was a brutally strong pair of engines capable of nearly six thousand horsepower per engine. As a result, the Hook was the first helicopter to ever surpass three hundred kilometers an hour. This was extremely fast for any chopper.
Its vast cargo hold could carry seventy-five fully equipped soldiers or even a tank or two inside. It could lug a total of twelve tons in its belly and another nine with a pull line underneath. The copter also had wings sticking from its midsection. Again, their function was to provide lift for the enormous machine.
None of this was making a positive impression on Ricco or Gillis, though. They were sitting in the vast cockpit—it too was adorned with a multitude of lights, bells, buzzers, switches, and levers. All of it with Russian nameplates. All of it looking like it was made in the fifties, which it was.
The only things the pilots recognized were the steering columns, the throttles, and the refueling suite—all of them were similar to the instruments on their KC-10 Pegasus tanker. But this provided them with little comfort.
Rooney, the CIA base chief, had drawn the short straw and was giving them their first look at the Russian-built behemoth.
"You really don't expect us to fly this thing, do you?" Ricco was asking him for about the hundredth time.
"Those are the orders," Rooney told him for about the hundredth time.
But Gillis persisted—he was by far the most infuriated of the two.
"You have to be nuts," he lashed out at Rooney. "We fly jets. Big jets. Big fucking American jets! This is a helicopter. A Russian-built helicopter. We can't drive this thing."
"You'll have to learn," Rooney said matter-of-factly. "It's as simple as that. Look—they went through the trouble to modify it to your experience. With the steering columns and all. I've been assured that once you get the feel of this thing, it will handle just like your big tanker. That's why you guys didn't have to suffer inside those simulators."
But Gillis and Ricco couldn't be had that easily. Sticks and throttles did not a flying machine make. As it was, the cockpit looked like the dashboard of a tractor-trailer jammed into that of a compact car.
But it was the modifications to the back cargo bay that really had them worried. The vast insides had been stripped out and two enormous fuel bladders had been installed. Per the mission specs, they were presently full of aviation fuel, the stink of which was permeating the vast flight cabin.
"And is someone expecting us to fly all t
hat gas somewhere?" Ricco demanded of Rooney. "If so, I can suggest to you about a hundred better ways to do it. Like, in a fuel ship. You know, the kind that floats on the water? I'm sure the Navy's got more than a few of them."
Rooney just shook his head. He wished now that he'd volunteered to orient Norton to his craft instead of these two.
"The idea is not to carry the fuel from one place to the other," he explained calmly and slowly, like a professor to a couple dumbos held after class. "The idea is to carry it upstairs—so you can refuel others in flight. That's what you two boys are good at, am I right?"
The pair of pilots looked back at him. This was the first they'd heard of this.
"Yes, we are fucking great at refueling—in a big go-damn jet!" Ricco half-shouted at him. "Why doesn't anyone listen to us here? We're not chopper pilots. No one here is."
Rooney just stared at the ceiling of the copter's cockpit. He was astounded by the number of tubes and wires running along its length. What the hell was inside them all? he wondered.
"And you really expect us to learn how to refuel other aircraft in flight with this thing?" Gillis asked him.
Rooney nodded.
"What kind of aircraft?"
"Other helicopters, of course," Rooney replied.
At this, Ricco and Gillis both slumped into their seats. Like Norton, they couldn't believe what they had gotten themselves into.
There was a long silence as both men looked over the huge cockpit and its dozens of instruments and controls.
"And how long are you going to give us to learn all this crap?" Ricco asked.
Rooney was uncharacteristically lost for an answer. He ran his hand over his balding dome. Outside, it sounded like the storm was at last letting up.
"I'll get back to you on that," he said finally.
Chapter 13
0830 hours
Delaney woke up to a cloud of steam hovering above his head.
He rubbed his eyes, took a sniff, and said: "There had better be sugar in that. . . ."
Norton and Smitz were standing over him, cups of steaming coffee in their hands. Delaney just stared up at them.