by M.A. Harris
Air Discontent
Winter came early and bitter to these steep rocky hills; and ice and snow hung on in crevices and shadows among the rocks long into the spring. The hills rose in ranks towards a low mountain range to the north and a semi arid desert to the south. The aging Merlin helicopter painted in brilliant white and orange stripes, the Human Freedom Foundation’s colors, was operating at near its maximum altitude and speed; the locals were usually armed and had a habit of shooting at any low flying aircraft.
In the cockpit the satellite based aircraft navigation and communication system beeped for attention, a message appeared on the pilots flat screen. Approaching Davona control zone, confirm intent. Julia Chisholm reached to the interface panel, tapped the message, and pressed her thumb on the screen, when it toned acceptance, she said, “Landing.”
The system was supposed to deal with complex sentences but in the noisy environment of a chopper’s cockpit she found it better to keep it simple. The aging if well maintained Merlin was quieter than some of the Human Freedom Foundation’s fleet but all things are relative and it had started life in oil rig service, not as a VIP transport.
There was a tone from the comm system, “Human Freedom Foundation Flight Delta Niner Tango Two, this is Davona Air Traffic, Base Swampy. That you Julia?” The airwoman’s voice had a drawling western accent, Julia could picture her wrapped up in the cramped and chilly tent next to the heaved concrete of the old runway.
“Hey Diana, how’re things?”
“Same ol’ same ol’, cold, damp, ugly, but only three weeks, five days, ten hours and some odd minutes till my time here is up.” Diana groused good naturedly.
“Good to hear you in such a positive mood.”
“Uhyuh, this place brings out the best in everyone. Anyway, come in from the west, the wind’s blowing that way and the Maj called west the entry channel of the day. Stay clear of the notches in the hill line that way, hostiles have been spotted out that way.”
“Roger that Base Swampy, west approach, watch for hostiles. Talk to you later Diana.”
Despite the warning the approach went smoothly though Julia and her copilot Ricky Halberg kept their heads and eyes sweeping and their ears listening for the first warning tone from the warning and defense suite that even a pacifist NGO had to outfit their aircraft with.
Base Swampy had once been a Soviet airfield, a typical mix of bare bones military and civilian infrastructure in a backwater. The only sign of human habitation surrounded the airstrip, a bare strip of concrete on the almost flat top of a hill slightly taller, longer and wider than its brethren. A good base for the UN and the NGO’s that tried to keep this part of the world from sinking into a new dark age. A rutted road threaded its way across the side of the hill and out of sight, heading to Davona itself, huddled in a tight little valley nearby, somewhat protected from the weather and other marauders.
With its ecology ruined by Soviet era exploitation, even the dispersed population pushed the land to its limits of sustainability. On top of that poverty a lethal brew of civil, religious and ethnic discontent had ignited a war that had burnt across the region for decades. When the war had finally guttered out it had left well armed criminals to prey on a crippled society.
The NGOs, UN and finally the US government had become involved over the years, especially when bio-warfare of a crude sort had been unleashed. These days this whole part of the world was one vast Petri dish and the outsiders came to get a handle on the lethal new disease strains as much as anything else.
Julia brought the chopper in on a crudely painted landing spot on the ‘civilian’ side. As soon as the rotors had stopped turning Ricky was out of his harness and sliding aft, leaving Julia to finish the checklist before heading aft.
In the back she made sure the passengers were sorting themselves and their luggage out. Two medical types were getting off here, two more were going on to the next stop along with two American missionaries, she also had a message that she was picking up some kind of bureaucrat for the trip back to Jenna, the city near the Black Sea that was home base for this stint.
She dropped onto the ground and looked around; there were four dilapidated trucks and a staff car all in dingy green and rust plus one shiny new Mercedes four by four parked on the edge of the concrete. Halberg was standing by the Mercedes talking to someone hidden by the tinted windows. She didn’t like that; she didn’t like much about Halberg, for all his golden haired All American collegiate good looks.
“Hey Julia!” She turned to find a couple of the doctors who worked out here approaching at the head of a line of men and women carrying boxes and burlap bags, outgoing cargo. Not far behind them were a couple of UN soldiers with equipment to inspect the incoming cargo.
She had a schedule to keep so she talked to the disease specialist while she directed the unloading and loading of the cargo and topping up the chopper’s tanks. While she did that she also kept an eye on Halberg who seemed to be on surprisingly good terms with whoever was in the blacked out all terrain limo.
The doctors were worried about ‘Udovich’ one of the most infamous of the local warlords. A beast who’d been rumored killed, but who’d resurfaced, apparently with money to buy arms and loyalty and the NGOs were running scared. The HFF was often seen as more than just a cheap and reliable cargo carrier, and they were right, but Julia didn’t know any more than they did. She did promise to keep an ear to the ground, and to make sure there would be a quick exit available if need be.
The doctors left with the trucks, and she realized Halberg and the big Mercedes were nowhere to be seen as she climbed into the chopper and shut the hatch. She smiled at the passengers in the cabin as she checked the manifest; she glanced at the woman who had gotten on. “Hello Mrs. Alms, I’m Julia Chisholm, your pilot for today.” She’d done this a hundred times; she went through the spiel, checked their harnesses and then gave them a reassuring smile.
She shut the sliding panel that closed off the cockpit with a snap. “You’re supposed to have briefed them while I was finishing up outside Ricky.” The movie star smile was really a sneer, “The cattle give you a problem Jewel?”
She looked at him levelly for a moment, “Ricky, it’s on the copilot’s checklist, just like it’s on mine to check that you checked.” He didn’t even deign to answer, just making a show of checking his checklist. Slipping into the pilot’s seat she fastened her harness, thinking about the report she was going to write about Halberg; when she was done he would be gone, top ten thousand family or not.
As the rotor core turbines spun up, she ran down her much longer checklist before tapping the satellite link to life and checking in with the zone traffic center at Jekka and the local center at Pondla and finally HFF headquarters in Denmark. She glanced at the time, she was ‘on schedule’ but the weather was closing in. She might get stuck at Pondla tonight; she was not going to fly into bad weather at night in the middle of a war zone.
The take off and flight were uneventful but they were slowed by strong headwinds that added almost ten minutes to the flight. Even then everything would have been fine but at Pondla nothing went right. The trucks and vans weren’t there for cargo transshipment and the fuel bowser was broken down and had to be towed over. Then the local official found some mix up with the cargo manifest.
When she was finally done the sky to the north was a wall of black and to the west it was beginning to color up as the sun swung low, “OK folks, I have to call it, I’m sorry but we’ll be spending the night here. The weather is supposed to clear through before first light so we will get an early start in the morning.” She ignored the couple of protests but noted that Halberg didn’t give her grief about being a chicken hawk like he usually did.
Pondla was a tiny ramshackle place in the valley between two tall barren hills. The airfield started a quarter of a mile down valley from the edge of town. It was a section of fenced in road with gates at either end to keep out goats, cars and
trucks while aircraft were using it and a gated concrete apron area with fuel bunkers protected by earthen berms, two rusty hangars and a crumbling concrete block operations center.
The Merlin was towed to one of the hangars, where it would be mostly protected from the weather. Julia just hoped the hanger didn’t choose this night to collapse; it looked like it should have been knocked down when she had been in day care. There was an inn of sorts in the village that the stranded passengers used but Julia had a bedroll she carried for this eventuality.
As Julia played cards with some westerners in the operations center she realized that Halberg had vanished. In one sense it was a relief, she didn’t have to deal with his constant needling. But she didn’t like him not telling her what he was doing out here. This was a dangerous place even though this whole province was an island of government control in a sea of unrest. But there was little she could do except note it in her report.
The storm hit with buffeting winds and slashes of snow, ice and freezing rain. With the locals she huddled near one of the smelly stoves, drank hot tea and ate spiced mutton, still cold in her fleece lined leather coat. She got two not too subtle invitations to share sleeping accommodations with the locals, which she turned down with good natured firmness. About nine she spread out her sleeping roll with its rugged self inflating air mattress in one of the back rooms and went to bed.
About two in the morning she woke up and lay listening, finally realizing that the ‘sound’ she was hearing was silence. The storm winds had died away and unless it was snowing the weather had cleared out as predicted. She got up to check, the ops center was dark except for the glow of a few status leds, and still except for the snores coming from the main bunk room.
Outside it was very cold and still, the sky a bowl of stars. There were sentries but they no longer depended on light and worked better in a quiet environment. There was a mutter of a diesel in the distance then silence again.
Then she heard a faint screech of metal on metal, quickly gone. It had come from the direction of the hangars. She walked quietly to the end of the building and peered around. An instant later she was face down on the ground with the muzzle of a gun pressed, hard, against her skull.
“You really should have stayed indoors miss.” The voice was prissily British. She didn’t make a move, she’d been taken completely by surprise from behind, she cursed herself, how had she let that happen?
“Very good sense there miss, put your hands behind your back, wrists together, hands out.” He bound and gagged her quickly and efficiently with tie wraps and left her laying on her stomach against the wall, he threw something heavy and stinking of oil and jet fuel over her, a kind and confident move, he was sure she was out of it, whatever it was, and the tarp would probably stop her from freezing to death before the morning.
Julia felt rage seething somewhere deep down, but she kept it down as she tried to think, and worked at her bonds to see if there was a weakness, she need brains not rage right now. Someone was running a black op of some kind, some kind of independent job given their objective of the moment. It only made sense if they were after her Merlin and that made her very angry, it was her ship, her responsibility.
How had they gotten inside the perimeter without setting off all sorts of alarms and getting blown to hell by mines or roboguns? They had to have been let inside. Then she remembered the arrival of several UN trucks about seven, cargo awaiting an early morning flight. The UNies had seemed to be British troops under their blue caps. This had to be a black op possibly a very black op.
There was a sharp call from somewhere nearby, essentially, “who is there,” in the local language. That was followed by a snapping sound and a moan, and suddenly Julia was struggling hard against her bonds, things were going nonlinear.
A moment later there was a yell and the crack of a pistol and another shout then silence for a few moments. Then there was a crackle of gunfire from someplace almost overhead, the soft popping of a suppressed machine pistol responded. Again the distinctive rattle of an AK, then the crack of a high power rifle, she had seen several of both inside. Then there was a terrible shrieking hiss followed by a shuddering crack-boom, the wall against her back seemed to slap her. More shrieks and cracks and booms, the wall shuddered twice more. Someone had fired three bunker busters into the ops center, unless they had been undercover everyone inside was dead.
In moments the heat beat through the wall already and the stench was choking, she rolled and wriggled away, desperately afraid of the tarp with its oil and fuel stink, she didn’t want to burn to death in the thing. A few moments later she was in the clear, the base lit by lurid flames gushing from the wrecked ops center, the rockets must have been explosive-incendiaries.
There was motion nearby, a small shape low to the ground, a boy, one of the boys who had been delivering food and drinks and cleaning up in the ops center. She saw the gleam of his eyes, then he scuttled towards her, she felt a blade next to her ear and the gag was cut away, “Captain Julie, you are O K?” he sounded young and scared but his English wasn’t bad.
Vlad, they’d called this one Vlad, “Yes Vlad, can you get me free?”
“Yes Captain Julie, my knife is sharp,” Julia felt the cool hardness of the blade and the pressure as he slid the edge against the bonds and cut, the tough plastic gave away after a short struggle. She rolled over and borrowed his knife to free her feet.
There was a rising roar, the Merlin’s turbines coming up to power. She and Vlad were still lying on the ground, among the trash between the ops building and the tottering hangers. They were also masked by the leaping shadows from the firestorm the murderers had caused.
“They have Udovich.” Vlad said in her ear.
“What?”
“Udovich, the UNies took him, two days. Fly to Hague tomorrow.”
That was the black op, a jail break for the warlord, but for all its import she hardly heard Vlad because rage was flaming out of control in her head. In the light of the fire she saw Halberg, Ricky Halberg her copilot, speaking with someone in the Merlin’s cabin as the last couple of mercs hopped up to sit in the hatchway, their weapons at the ready. Ricky was smiling like a mad man, enjoying the rush of action and his own treachery. Somehow she wasn’t surprised, but she was utterly determined that he wouldn’t get away with it.
Next to the corner of the building was a body, probably of the man she’d heard die first. His body was sprawled with an angular shape lying over a leg. She low crawled to the body; it was one of the locals she had been playing cards with earlier. A cheerful man with a bushy graying beard and bad teeth, the shape she had spotted lying across his legs was a semi auto hunting rifle, scope and all.
“Is good gun.” Vlad whispered, he was feeling in the man’s pocket, he pulled out an ammo clip with a nasty smile. Julia slipped back, making ready to use the man’s beer belly as a rest for the rifle, the man, Dusan she suddenly remembered his name, didn’t care any longer.
She came by the appellation “Captain” honestly, Julia Chisholm, Captain US Air Force, Air Guard now, had flown search and rescue choppers for a living for four years. A job that required a small arms rating, and of course she was a Wyoming native, she had shot her first elk when she was twelve.
One of the men in the door must have spotted something in the leaping shadows, his gun came up. Julia’s rifle crashed and the gunman flopped back onto the cabin floor. The second gunman got a burst off before she shot him as well. Other figures were in the doorway, guns were flashing at her, but they were standing and shooting off hand, and the Merlin was moving, beginning to lift, its tail coming up, moving forward.
She changed her aim point and with grief in her heart slammed round after round into the engine nacelle of ‘her’ big beautiful bird. She ran out of bullets and the big chopper slid out of her line of sight before she could change magazines. She took the magazine Vlad was holding out and reloaded anyway as she stood up.
There were a series of explosions nearby that sent her and the boy ducking again. A pillar of fire erupted into the sky from the fuel bunker behind the ruined ops building. And with a moaning roar the two hangars collapsed, flame gushing out around the falling sheets of rotting metal. Udovich was a beast; he had never intended to leave his enemies unharmed.
-o-
The pretty brunette talking head looked serious, “.....In other news, the infamous warlord Udovich was broken out of UN custody by a group of gunmen and flown back to his stronghold. There was heavy loss of life during the breakout and the stolen helicopter used was found burnt out thirty miles away. There were four dead bodies in the wreckage but Udovich was not...CLICK”
Julia shut the TV off with an irritated flick of the wrist. Udovich had gotten away, as had Halberg and most of the team who’d broken him out. His retainers and supporters had already taken over his old stomping ground and Udovich’s enemies had started disappearing. The mess in ‘The Stans’ was going to get worse again.
She went back to the ratty chair in the corner of the dingy hotel room and sat down. She was still in Jekka because no one knew what to do with her. Nobody was happy, the local government, the local police, the Army, the UN, the HFF.
Her cell phone rang; it was her boss, “Evgeny?”
“There’s a ticket on a Turkish Air puddle jumper waiting for you at the airport, it takes off in two hours, you need to be on it Julia. Udovich has put a price on your head, not enough to make it worthwhile outside of the Stans but enough for some local punk to try and collect.”
“Damn it.” She had figured as much.
“Agreed. When you get to Istanbul we’ll have a ticket for Sydney, Australia waiting. We have lots of work out in the Pacific these days.”
“The peaceniks back down?” The ‘office workers’ of the HFF tended to be pacifists and they’d kicked up a stink about her violent reaction to murder, theft and jail breaking.
“No, but Jenny is telling them to get stuffed, that you did right,” Jenny Welldinger was the head of the HFF. “And you did, Udovich would have created havoc with the Merlin,” he finished.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, oh and Jenny also told the Halbergs to get stuffed when they protested his innocence. Their son is a sociopath and they need to understand that. He’s on the most wanted list in most civilized parts of the world.”
“Good.” Though most likely he’d just go to prison rather than the scaffold like he deserved. But he might not survive long in prison, he’d never understood that sometimes being rich, photogenic and smart were just no substitute for caution and knowing what you were doing.