by Mack Maloney
“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.
“It worked!” two yelled at once. “The fucking guns worked!”
“What did we need those other nine assholes for all this time!” the third joked.
Meanwhile, the miniguns were doing their deadly task. It was strange, but the worst vantage point to see how the target was faring was from the back of the gun- ship itself—especially in the first few seconds of a sequence. But as the airplane began to move around its semicircle and the three streams of fire combined into one and formed an arc, the rookie gunners could see at last the storm of lead tearing up the hangar with routinely chilling efficiency.
At the end of the thirty-second fusillade, the pilot twisted the airplane level again and called back for an assessment. The gunners looked out and saw that half the hangar was literally blown away and the other half was on fire. “Must have been a secondary within,” one man yelled ahead to the cockpit.
The pilot laughed at this joke, and then brought the airplane down to 1500 feet.
“Let’s fire up the popgun,” he said, referring to the howitzer. “We’ll use up whatever shells are left in the chamber feed and then get the hell out of here.”
The gunners did as told. They hit a separate timed order for the howitzer, and soon it was firing away with its usual swooshing noise.
The streams of artillery shells made a longer arc than the miniguns. They exploded with great flare on impact, the result of their high-explosive warheads. It took but another twenty seconds—and 21 shells—to obliterate the rest of the hangar.
Then the pilot called back the cease-fire order. Then he straightened the airplane out again.
He looked out his side window and saw that where the huge hangar had stood just two minutes before, now was a raging fire encompassing a pile of rubble. Nothing inside, man or metal, could survive that, he knew.
Of course, he’d seen it all before.
“Good job, boys,” he called back to the firing cabin. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
There was a sense of gaiety inside the cockpit of the AC-130 gunship now.
The aircraft had settled in at 5,500 feet in altitude and had reached its cruising speed of two hundred knots. The heavy plane was much easier to handle now because of all the ammunition just expended. In fact, the ride home was always smoother—and satisfying too. After a successful mission, it was always a pleasant feeling to go home with an empty belly.
All this was something they might eventually miss, the four crewmen had mused earlier. After ten years, the old habits would be hard to break. But they had little to complain about. Eight years of living in luxury at Zim’s Hotel; another two fixing up and then flying the great gunship again. The money had been good. The food great; the booze better.
With just one day left, they only had one real regret. If only they had been able to score some women along the way…
But little did they know that this perverse tour of duty was coming to an end sooner than they thought.
* * *
The first indication that something was not right came from the crew’s flight engineer. He’d been relaxing at his station, feet up, eyes closed, fighting off sleep.
Suddenly the radio in front of him burst to life with a howl of static. It jolted the engineer back to reality. His radio panel was lighting up like a Christmas tree. Red lights, green lights, blue ones too. All of them blinking madly.
“What the fuck?”
Then came some shouting. The loadmaster was trying to yell something up to the flight deck. The engineer took his eyes off his equipment, looked down into the weapons bay, and saw his colleague at the side window pointing at something off their left wing.
A moment later the engineer heard the copilot swear.
“Jeesuz… What the fuck is… ?”
That was when the airplane started bucking; it was so bad at first, the engineer had to hold on. The plane straightened out a bit a few seconds later, but the engineer could detect a wave of tension suddenly crackling through the ship.
He unstrapped, made his way back to the weapons bay window, and finally saw what all the commotion was about.
It was a helicopter, riding no more than twenty-five feet off their left wing. It was pale brown and red, with a strange bubble nose and long tail section. It was a two-man aircraft, but only one person could be seen on board. It was painted in Iraqi markings, but the pilot was definitely not an Iraqi. He clearly had red hair and a Caucasian complexion. In fact, he looked like an old-time cowboy. What kind of helicopter was it? The engineer didn’t know one chopper from the other, but he believed this thing was a Russian-built Hind.
But what was it doing out there? It was so close to their wing, one wrong move and they would surely collide with it. And the way its pilot was flying seemed crazy. The chopper was all over the sky, going up and down, back and forth, flashing its nav lights wildly. The pilot himself was particularly animated. He was waving his arms, giving them the finger, and seemed to be shouting something at them. There was only one word describe his bizarre behavior: He was taunting them.
The engineer quickly climbed up to the flight deck, and now both pilots were looking out at the strange chopper.
“Who the hell is this guy?” the copilot was yelling. His name was Pete Jones.
“Beats me,” the engineer replied. “But he skewered the comm set, he came up on us so fast.”
Jones turned to the man riding in the AC-130’s other control seat. This was Colonel Jeff Woods, the buzz-cut John Glenn lookalike.
“What’ll we do, Woodsie?” Jones asked him.
Woods looked out at the chopper and then settled back into his seat.
“Well, let’s see if you boys can shoot him down,” he said calmly.
It took about a minute and a half to power up the three miniguns again; they’d all been shut down at the completion of the attack on the hangar at El-Saad Men air base.
Now the flight engineer and the loadmaster struggled to push the right panels and flip the right switches and reboot the right computers. Somehow, ninety seconds later, the weapons systems all came on-line.
The strange chopper had cooperated in this endeavor by not for a moment diverting from its strange behavior. It was still riding off the left wing, still flying in a weirdly provocative manner.
The ArcLight’s makeshift gun crew was now facing an unusual situation. The orders from the flight deck said shoot the asshole down, so that was what they were going to try to do. But the miniguns were designed mainly to fuck up big targets on the ground. Hardened stuff, troops concentrations, general populations. Static stuff. Things that were standing still.
Shooting down another C-130 had taken some finesse. Could they really nail something relatively small and agile as a chopper?
They would soon find out….
* * *
It was just fate that Colonel Woods was riding in the copilot’s slot when all this happened.
He and Jones usually switched off and on for pilot
ing missions. This particular day it had been Woods’s time at the stick, but after the attack on El-Saad Men was through, they had switched seats.
So for this curious engagement, Woods was relegated to observer status. Jones would have to try and keep the gunship steady while the two men in back fired on the mysterious helicopter. For this, the copilot’s seat had the worst vantage point. Woods couldn’t see the chopper, nor would he be able to see the guns when they went off. He really could do little else but sit back and just listen to what was going on.
That was why it was so strange then that he happened to glance out at the right wing and saw someone staring back in at him.
He nearly crapped his pants. It was another helicopter—another Hind. It was flying so close to the right side of the airplane, Woods could see the pilot looking in at him, not twenty-five feet away. The guy was handsome—almost like a movie star.
Woods tried to cough out a warning or something, but everyone else on the plane was concerned with the wacky chopper off their left wing, the side where the miniguns were located. So Wood just sat there for an instant or two, gaping at the second helicopter and wondering whether he was seeing things.
And in this odd stupor he saw the chopper get even closer. At the same time he watched as the chopper pilot opened the little side panel window on the Hind’s cockpit. Then he saw the pilot sticking something out of the window.
Then he saw a tremendous burst of light—it was a muzzle flash from a gigantic pistol.
The huge bullet shattered the AC-130’s right-side glass panel and struck Woods square on the temple. He felt the bullet enter his skull and explode his cranium outward. More shots were fired. The airplane’s control panel was suddenly coming apart. Then Woods looked down and saw blood falling in great splats on his lap, on his knees, and all over the steering column.
Then he saw nothing but red.
Then nothing but black…
* * *
Zim was reading a copy of The Wall Street Journal when Major Qank showed up with the bad news.
The doors to the great chamber opened, but in a grand lapse of protocol, Qank did not come in on his knees. In fact he strode in, very quickly, and walked right up to Zim’s mound of pillows. His teeth were clenched.
The Japanese girls saw his transgression and immediately scattered. They didn’t want be around when Zim realized one of his many rules had been so flagrantly broken.
Qank stared up at Zim for a few moments and then clapped his hands twice, very hard.
It was enough to cause Zim to lower the newspaper. Still, it took a few seconds for him to figure out what was happening. He stared down at Qank, a blank expression on his face.
“Yes? What is going on here, Major?” he asked, regaining his composure.
“Bad news, sir,” Qank said, quickly correcting himself: “I mean, possibly bad news.”
Zim was mystified. “What is it?”
Qank took a deep breath.
“Sir, we’ve lost radio contact with the gunship.”
Zim seemed even more perplexed. He folded the newspaper neatly on his lap.
“Has that ever happened before?” he asked.
Qank had to shake his head no. “They have always kept in touch, through either their passive or active radios,” he said. “But now all four lines are dead.”
Zim pulled his chin in thought, absentmindedly glancing at a story about Indonesian gas reserves.
“Do you think something might have happened to the airplane?” he asked. “Could it have crashed?”
Qank could only shrug. “Impossible to say, sir,” he replied.
Zim went right on talking: “Because if it crashed, well, that would—how do you say it?—queer the deal we want to make. The one-hundred-million-dollar sell-back? It would be queered?”
Qank almost laughed at the vast understatement.
“I would say that is an accurate assumption, sir,” he replied.
Zim motioned for his two bodyguards to come forward. Qank did not notice the gesture.
“What do you suggest we do now then. Major?” he asked Qank.
Qank was prepared for this.
“I suggest we put all our security assets here on full alert, sir, until we re-establish radio contact with the gunship,” he said.
“Full alert?” Zim asked. “Here? Why?”
Qank began shuffling his feet a bit.
“Just a precaution, sir,” he replied. “The Americans have been unpredictable lately. You never know—they may even attack.”
Zim was surprised to hear this word.
“Attack? Here?” he said. “I thought that was impossible.”
Qank just shuffled his feet a little more. “Nothing is impossible sir.” he said. “And I might add—nothing lasts forever.”
Zim smiled a bit now. “That’s for sure,” he said.
He nodded to the guard who had silently placed a pistol at the back of Qank’s head. The man pulled the trigger and Qank’s throat exploded in a cloud of bone and red mist. The bodyguard then lowered the gun and put another bullet into the small of Qank’s back. This round went through his lungs and demolished his heart. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Zim leaned back in his pillow and picked up The Wall Street Journal again.
“Clean that up,” he ordered his guards. “And then prepare the compound for an attack. Whatever that means.”
Chapter 29
Norton was the first one on the scene after the ArcLight gunship went down.
He found it on the edge of a huge onion field inside a shallow valley about fifty kilometers north of El-Saad Men air base. It had come to rest at the edge of the long, narrow farming area, its extended nose barely touching a small road that ran into a small village nearby. It was rather amazing: Somehow the plane had found the softest piece of ground in a thousand square miles on which to land.
Norton roared low over the gunship. The pistol Delaney had given him had proved to be just enough weapon to finally bring down the flying monster. He was sure he’d killed at least one of the pilots, and that he’d wreaked havoc on the gunship’s control board as well. Destroying the plane was never really his intention. That would have sealed forever a few secrets he was determined to uncover.
No—the plan all along was to disable the gunship, not kill it. Norton could tell now that the plan had worked. The plane had not crashed. Rather someone had landed it here, and had done a great job of it too.
And that meant someone was still alive on board.
* * *
The other choppers were soon on the scene.
Both Halos descended quickly; Norton followed them in. Delaney continued circling overhead watching for any unfriendlies.
No sooner had the Halos touched down when the Marines were jumping out of them and slowly enveloping the downed gunship. From ground level it was obvious that the plane was in remarkably good shape. A slight wisp of smoke was coming from its left outboard engine, and one of its tires had blown. But it had landed with its gear fully deployed and there was absolutely no damage to its propellers.
By the time Norton had climbed out of his Hind, Smitz and Chou were waiting for him.
“Look at the way they came in,” Smitz said. “They thought they were going to take off again.”
“The arrogant bastards,” Chou cursed. “You can be sure that ain’t going to happen.”
Chou gave his men the signal to move in, and within seconds the plane was completely surrounded with heavily armed Marines. They were careful to avoid the left side fuselage windows where the three miniguns and the howitzer were still in evidence.
“What do we do now?” Smitz asked Chou. “Yell, ‘Come out with your hands up’?”
“No need,” Chou replied. “Look.”
The Marines had opened the rear left side door and three men were standing at it. They did indeed have their hands up.
The Marines pulled them out of the airplane, one by one, throwing them to the ground a
nd frisking them. The trio was wearing U.S. Air Force flight suits. Not the modern multi-pocket space-suit type the chopper unit wore. No, these were of a design not seen in ten years or so.
“Jeesuz,” Smitz said. “So they are Americans.”
“They’re three of the last four,” Norton replied. “Just like Angel said.”
Chou walked over to them.
“Name, rank, and serial number,” he demanded of them.
The three men laughed at him. They were sitting up, legs crossed, by now.
“Who’s working for the Agency here?” one man asked in a distinctive Southern drawl. Norton recognized him. He had dreamed about his wife. His name was Pete Jones.
“Name, rank, and serial number,” Chou said again.
The men laughed again.
“Look, we’re kind of tired here,” Jones said. “And our boss, Colonel Woods, well, he’s having a really bad hair day.”
At this point Norton and two Marines climbed into the gunship and made their way up in to the cockpit. Sure enough, there was the guy named Woods, half his head blown off. There was extensive damage to the flight controls as well. Jones had landed the airplane here on the bare minimum.
They went back outside, and the three survivors were still joking around. They were making faces at the Marines, laughing at their own comments to each other, and asking for cigarettes. The Marines around them remained stone-faced and tight-lipped.
“OK, look,” Jones said finally. “Just get us a phone or something and let us make a call. We’ll straighten this whole thing out, then we’ll let you guys buy us a beer.”
But Chou was suddenly in his face.
“Straighten out killing more than a thousand innocent people? Straighten out sinking a U.S. Navy ship? And trying to kill us?”
Jones just laughed again. They all did.
“Well, damn, don’t take it personally, man,” he said. “We were just doing a job. Everyone at the Agency knew about it. Everyone who was high enough on the totem pole, that is…”
Suddenly three shots rang out.