Chopper Ops (27 page)
Zim was beside himself now. He was absolutely astounded that he was still alive.
"Lose the battle, win the war!" he was yelling.
He turned back to his two guards.
"Together, the three of us will build another palace, bigger and better than this place. And for your loyalty, you two will be my four-star generals. What do you say to that?"
But the guards weren't really listening to him anymore. They had detected something over the shrill tones of Zim's boasts. It was a very low rumbling, so deep it seemed to be shaking the air itself.
And right away, they knew what it was.
*****
"Up there!" one guard yelled. "See it?"
It came out of the dark sky as always, looking like some kind of monstrous bird, its engines droning, its ghostly, unmistakable camouflage visible even in the night, four huge guns sticking out of one side.
It was the AC-130 gunship. Coming home to roost.
The guards fled and Zim tried to, but it was tough to beat the speed of a bullet. The airplane went into a left-hand arc about a hundred feet above the palace and opened up with all four of its guns at once.
It was like a hailstorm of fire and metal as the awesome barrage tore into what remained of the compound. The Hotel was decimated first. Then the remains of the car hall, the art vault, the power station, and the waterworks.
The plane dipped its left wing even lower, and this served to focus its firepower. Like a massive ocean wave, the cascade of bullets walked through the front gate of the inner sanctum, over the minarets, through the thick walls themselves. The tracers looked like a solid sheet of flame as they hit the pale blue dome of Zim's inner chamber. Everywhere was smoke, fire. The sound of things blowing up.
Three revolutions around the palace and the guns finally snapped off. There was really nothing left to fire at by then. The palace and every building within it had been leveled.
Nothing over twelve inches high remained standing.
*****
Inside the C-130, Delaney crawled back up to the flight deck and settled into the copilot's seat beside Norton.
The plane was handling like a breeze, so much so, Norton could hardly believe it had just cracked up a few hours before. But the C-130 was known for surviving rough landings and making scary takeoffs. As it turned out, the onion field had proved to be a reasonable runway.
"How'd we do?" Delaney asked Norton, whose eyes were still glued on the burning palace. "It's hard to see from back there."
"The weaponry performed as advertised," was how Norton replied.
Deep down, though, even he was shocked at the destruction he and Delaney had managed to inflict. The palace looked like it had been carpet-bombed by a squadron of B-52's. Yet they'd been over it for less than two minutes.
"This plane is too powerful," Norton heard himself whisper. "Too
dangerous . . ."
At last, Delaney got his first good view of the demolished palace.
"Muthafucker,"
he whispered. "That's a lot of hurt for just the two of us!"
"Well, whoever ran this bird before helped by rigging the software to fire on command," Norton said. "That's what made it so easy."
"Yeah, lucky us," Delaney mumbled.
Norton finally turned the big plane southwest and gunned its engines, anxious to leave the burning mountaintop behind. They would now meet the others back at the onion field, where they would abandon the helicopters and head for greener pastures. And not a moment too soon.
It was a weird place to end a story that had started just off the Florida coast so many twists and turns ago. Norton and Delaney weren't even sure who owned the palace they'd just destroyed or what this person's position on the planet was. All they knew was this: He was the man behind the gunship—and now he'd just tasted its wrath big-time.
"So, fuck you," Delaney said, taking one long last look at the flames lighting up the horizon. "Whoever you were . . ."
Western Saudi Arabia
Colonel Larry S. Howard was the commanding officer of the secret American air base in the Saudi desert known as Al-Khalid.
It had been a long, busy day at the base. An unusual amount of military activity had been reported in the northeast regions of Iraq in the past forty-eight hours, and no less than fourteen U-2 spy planes had dropped in on Al-Khalid since the previous evening, needing gas-ups and fresh film for their cameras.
The last one had departed just thirty minutes ago. Once it had reported from its first radio checkpoint that all was OK, Howard dragged himself back to his quarters and collapsed on the bed. He hadn't slept for more than ten minutes at a time in the past two days. Now he was hoping for at least six undisturbed hours of down time, maybe even more.
Yet no sooner had he drifted off when his phone rang.
It was the security officer for the base.
"Sorry to bother you, sir," he said. "But we have a Green-Zulu-Six
situation. . . ."
It took a moment for these code words to sink into Howard's sleepy brain.
"Are you sure?" he asked the security officer. "Green-Zulu-Six?"
"That's confirmed, sir," was the reply. "We're looking at something happening inside of fifteen minutes."
Howard checked the time. It was 0130 hours—one- thirty in the morning. It was raining outside.
"OK," Howard told the security officer wearily. "Call a Code Three alert. I'll meet you on the flight line in five minutes."
*****
Four minutes and thirty seconds later, Howard was roaring along the base's main runway. Up ahead he could see six vehicles gathered near the auxiliary taxiway. He tapped his HumVee driver on the shoulder, and the man brought them to a skidding stop right in front of the base security officer's vehicle.
Howard got out and pulled his rain slicker up around his neck. It was a fallacy that it was always hot and dry in the desert. Many times it was cold, wet, and miserable. This was one of those times.
The security officer approached. Even through his slicker, Howard could see his face looked rather troubled.
"Green-Zulu-Six?" Howard asked him again. "You're certain?"
"Yes, sir," the security officer replied. "We got the message about oh-one-thirty hours. Confirmed it two minutes ago."
Green-Zulu-Six was code for an unauthorized flight requesting permission to land at the secret base. Usually this meant some kind of defection was about to take place, usually Iraqi pilots bugging out and taking their fighter jets or helicopters with them. Of course, the U.S. military greeted such people with open arms, especially if they brought additional valuables like code books along with them.
"Is the translator at the ready?" Howard asked the security man.
But the man did not reply right away. Howard looked at him closely; he could tell the officer had something further to tell him.
"Well, spit it out," Howard told him. "What is it?"
"This is not an Iraqi defection situation, sir," the security man finally said.
"What do you mean? You said Green-Zulu-Six."
"We
do
have an unauthorized flight coming in," the security man replied. ''But the call sign matches an aircraft that once flew from this very base. An
American
aircraft."
Howard just stared at him. "What are you talking about? Why would an American airplane be requesting a Green-Zulu landing?"
The security officer had anticipated this question. He had with him a prime operations log. It was a record of all takeoffs and landings made at the base in any given year. This book was for 1991.
He opened the page to February 9. He pointed to an entry. It read:
ArcLight 4.
Howard scanned the page and looked at the security man.
"Is this a joke?" he asked, not in the mood.
"I . . . don't know, sir," the security man replied.
He pointed to the page again.
"This aircraft, U.S. Air Force AC-130 . . . code-named ArcLight 4 . . . has asked for permission to land here, sir."
Howard was suddenly trembling slightly, though he didn't know why. He'd heard about ArcLight 4, of course. The special ops plane took off from
Al-Khalid nearly ten years ago and simply disappeared.
Now it was coming back?
"That's what it says," the security man replied. "The person we talked to on the plane knows all the old security codes, as well as the current ones."
Howard just shook his head. This didn't make sense. He didn't want it to make sense.
"OK, call command," he told the man finally. "And get your security detail up here."
The security officer pointed to the four troop trucks parked nearby.
"Already on hand, sir," he said. "And no other flights are due in."
"Damn," Howard whispered to himself. "Am I still asleep?"
"I'm asking myself the same thing, sir," the security man replied.
*****
Fifteen minutes later, there were twenty-two heavily armed troops lining the end of the main runway at Al-Khalid.
It was still raining, but some fog had moved in and now visibility was down to almost zero.
Howard was there, leaning against his HumVee, with a video man as well as the base chaplain. Four emergency vehicles were parked nearby. The rest of
Al-Khalid was on lockdown.
Howard had no idea what to expect. He was closely watching the time. The plane was supposed to have landed ten minutes ago. Yet absolutely nothing had happened.
He finally turned to the security man. "This is a bust," he said. "Must have been a security test or something."
That was when they heard a deep groaning sound. It seemed very far away and oddly echoing. It startled them all.
"Jeesuz," Howard whispered. "What the fuck was that?"
The chaplain shifted his weight from one foot to the other, but Howard didn't care. He'd been around airplanes all his career. He was a pilot as well. He knew their different sounds. And what he heard now—eerily so—was the distinctive sound of a C-130 Hercules on final approach.
He turned to the video man and said: "Start taping and don't miss a thing or your ass is in Thule."
The sound got louder. Deeper.
Then through the fog they saw a light. It was very faint at first. But slowly it grew brighter and brighter, until it was sending a thin beam piercing through the rain and mist. It seemed like a monster flying right at them.
Suddenly it burst through the fog. It looked huge, ghostly—and it was going way too fast.
"Damn!" Howard heard a few people cry.
The C-130 roared by them at tremendous speed and way too high for a successful landing. It was trailing smoke and exhaust, and was moving through the fog in such a way that it looked like a blurry photo.
As quickly as it came, it was gone, enveloped by the fog again. In all, they'd seen it for only two or three seconds, no more.
"Dear Jesus, what the
fuck
was that!" the chaplain cried out.
No one was sure. It was quiet again for a few seconds. Then they heard the deep rumbling again.
They all looked to the right, as if the airplane had turned around and was coming in again. But then it roared by—from the opposite direction.
This time it was a little lower, but it was still going very, very fast.
The noise didn't go away, though. The airplane made an impossibly tight turn and came in a third time. This time it was still going fast, but it was very low.
And its wheels were down.
"Shit! He's going to crash!" Howard yelled.
The plane slammed into the runway an instant later. It came down hard, bounced, came down again, scraped its right wing along the asphalt, causing a brilliant cascade of sparks, bounced again, and then finally came down for good about eight hundred feet from Howard's position.
In seconds, the base's emergency vehicles were screaming down the runway after it, as were the trucks filled with security troops. Howard found himself running towards the near-wreck, the chaplain on one side, the video man on the other.
When they arrived, the rescue team had already reached the aircraft and had yanked one of the rear doors open.
And that was when they all saw a very haunting sight.
A troop of soldiers came marching out of the airplane. They looked ghostly. Their uniforms were covered with white dust, as were their faces. Some were also covered with dried blood. Two were on stretchers. But they were in order and in step, and they marched out like a company of spirits, right past everyone and coming to a stop in a single line beside the burning airplane.
Howard felt a chill go right through him. The chaplain made the sign of the cross. The video man stopped taping; he was too stunned.
Three men came crawling out of the heavily damaged cockpit. The rescue forces were on hand to help, but the trio did not want any assistance. It seemed important to them that they walk away from the demolished airplane under their own power.
These men looked as bad as the frightful soldiers. Two of them Howard tagged as pilots. The third man looked particularly agitated. He walked right up to Howard and flashed a burned and broken ID badge. It was CIA. It identified the man as Gene Smitz.
"My men need a hot meal and a place to sleep," he told Howard. "Then we want transport out to a commercial airport."
"And who
the hell
are you?" Howard demanded.
"You have a cell phone?" Smitz asked in reply.
Howard didn't, but the chaplain did. Howard snapped his fingers, and Smitz was soon punching a series of numbers into the phone. Smitz waited for the phone to ring twice. Someone on the other end finally answered. Smitz threw the phone back to Howard.
"Ask
them
who we are," he said.
Howard had a brief conversation and read out the numbers on Smitz's ID card. Then he counted the number of men lined up beside the airplane.
Then he turned back to Smitz.
"They want to know what happened to the helicopters," he said.
Smitz looked as if he was about to burst. The two men behind him shared this feeling.
"Tell them," Smitz said in measured angry words, "that our mission was to return the ArcLight 4 and its crew. There's the airplane—and there are thirteen body bags inside. You can bury them as far out in the desert as you want. I suggest in unmarked graves. . . ."
Howard repeated these words to the person at the other end of the phone.
Then one of the pilots broke through and had another thing to say. It was Norton.
"And tell them they can cancel their buddy Jacobs' pension payments," he said angrily. "He won't be needing them anymore."
Howard said these words too. There was a long pause. Then he shut off the phone and called up his security officer.
"Give all these men a hot meal and a place to sleep," he snapped. Then he looked at the ragged bunch and the burning airplane.
"In fact, give them anything they want. . . ."