A Time to Die (43 page)

But regardless of the situation, Andrew and his friends were exhausted and needed rest. There were cots in the facility, and hot food. Andrew and his people were fed and shown to some cots. He didn’t even remember eating the food, or what it was. He was asleep almost the instant his head hit the inflatable pillow.

Chapter 27

Tuesday, April 25

Morning

Andrew woke up sometime later, surprisingly rested and hungry once again. He pulled on his boots and went looking for food. In the cafeteria he found Wade already there, the manuals for the C-17 spread out next to a nearly empty plate of some mystery lasagna.

“You been up long?” Andrew asked.

“An hour or so,” Wade said and used a highlighter in the manual.

“What time is it?”

“Just after 2am,” Wade said. Chris came walking in a moment later, yawning but following the smells of food. Andrew got some of the military issue lasagna along with Chris and they joined Wade who kept studying the manuals.

“You keep up on that and you’ll be able to fly it,” Andrew said, pointing with a fork. Wade snorted and kept studying.

“Oh,” Wade said suddenly, “that General dude wanted to talk. He said the op starts at 3am. They were about to come get you up.”

“Affirmative,” Andrew said. He shoveled a few more bites into his mouth and hopped up to head for the general’s office. An aide outside waved him in.

“Get some rest, Lieutenant?” the general asked.

“Yes, sir,” Andrew replied. “I understand you have a plan?” The general nodded and showed him. Andrew wasn’t thrilled with what he saw.

Later he left together with Chris, Wade, and the other pilot/copilot teams. Unlike how they’d arrived, they all wore clean uniforms and were equipped with modern gear. Wade and Chris had on army UCP camo jumpsuits with jackets, battle harness, and a backpack for other gear. Everyone sported new modern Kevlar helmets as well. Chris had a new M-4 carbine with a dozen magazines, Wade the same M-9 pistol in a proper holster and four extra mags in pouches. He’d passed on a rifle. Andrew wore the same Air Force flight suit, though his underwear was fresh and like the others he’d grabbed a quick shower.

The rain had relented to a steady shower as they walked out into the chilly April morning. As they approached a Blackhawk which was spinning up its rotors, the time read exactly 3am. The other two men stopped as they approached the Blackhawk whose rotors were now a blur.

“Are we really doing this?” Wade asked. Chris looked wide eyed.

“Yes we are,” Andrew said as he jumped up into the helicopter. “All these people are counting on us, guys. This won’t be as bad as you think.”

“Yeah,” Wade said, “it will be much worse.”

Inside the helicopter was the same team of operators that had gone with Tobey when he’d rescued Andrew and his friends. As soon as the three boarded the men immediately began getting the new arrivals into a complicated looking harness. It involved them stepping into the leg and cross sections then slipping arms in before straps went across the chest and waist. Andrew had worn these types of harnesses several times before and was used to the constricted feelings they caused, especially in the nether regions. The other two men, not so much. They looked like dogs in too-small collars.

“How bad is this going to hurt on the cable?” Chris wondered.

“It won’t hurt, sir,” one of the operators said as he adjusted the fit. “As long as these straps are in tight against your thighs.”

“Be sure you have them right,” one of the other operators said, giving Andrew a wink. “I jumped out once, had a nut under a strap, and figured I’d been shot. It hurt so fucking bad.”

“Give it a rest,” Tobey said as he hopped in. “This will go by the numbers.”

“Easy for you to say,” Andrew said, “you’re not jumping.”

“Actually I am, but it’s not jumping.” The helicopter’s engine began to roar and the lifted off the tarmac. Four other choppers lifted off at the same time. Elsewhere a dozen more Blackhawks were warming up, though none of them had passengers.

“Close enough,” Wade said, his eyes wide with fright.

The helicopters climbed to about 100 feet and headed west across the sea of ravening zombies. Two fell in with Andrew’s helicopter, two others angled away in their own formation.

It was a very short flight, only about a thousand yards to a series of huge hangars. The helicopters singled out three of those hangars and split up, each one hovering over a different hangar. In the brief flight, the four operators and Tobey all put on their own harnesses. They did it much quicker, having done so countless times before.

“Listen up,” Tobey said as the helicopter started to slow into a hover. “Rappelling isn’t as easy as it is in the movies, but it also isn’t hard. Like I explained, just hold this snugly,” he held up the friction break. “And relax your grip. A little, not a lot, and down you go. If you’re going too fast, just squeeze and you’ll stop. Got it?” Wade and Chris nodded, their eyes wide in fright. Andrew had done this several times before, including during SERE training.

“Just land on the fucking roof!” Wade whined.

“Can’t,” the pilot yelled. “Not designed to take the weight. It wouldn’t be pretty.” They went into a hover about twenty-five feet above the hangar’s roof.

“Nice, short rappel,” Tobey said as the operators grabbed both doors and pulled them open. Wind buffeted them and rain swirled inside. With quick precision eight bags were brought forward. Each one had a D ring that was snapped into a clip on the floor, then the bag was tossed out the door, four to a side. They trailed out heavy duty climbing rope until they smacked on the roof one after another. “Just take it slow,” Tobey said, slid the rope through his brake, and calmly stepped out into the night.

“Jesus,” Wade said and carefully leaned out to look down. Tobey was already on the roof.

“Come on, Stay Puft,” one of the operators said and took ahold of Wade’s harness. Without being asked he threaded the rope through his friction brake, turned him around, and even took his hand and put it on the brake. “Easy peasy,” he said.

“Sure,” Wade replied. On the other side the remaining three operators all disappeared out the door, the helicopter rocking slightly as they went out. A moment later they were on the roof, and the vehicle rocked again as the weight went away.

Andrew decided he was more use on the ground than waiting for the two first timers. He hooked up and went over the side. He almost used too little pressure. The twenty-five feet went by in a flash. He squeezed hard and came to a stop just a foot above the roof, then gently set foot on the sheet metal. To an observer, it looked like a masterful repel.

It took quite a bit of encouragement and patience to get the other two down. Chris went first, even though Wade had already been hooked up. He followed the instructions and just inched his way down to the roof.

“It’s easy!” he yelled over the rotor wash.

“Sure,” Wade said as he closed his eyes and went over the side, forgot to squeeze, and plummeted twenty-five feet to the roof. He hit the metal like a sack of wet cement. The roof buckled violently and Andrew feared the whole thing would collapse for a second before it rebounded like a giant gong. He quickly went over to Wade to check on him.

“You okay?”

“Forgot to squeeze,” he gasped hoarsely.

“Ya think?” one of the operators asked as he and Tobey got him to his feet. The roof had given a lot, and the battle helmet had protected his head. So other than some bruises and a severely traumatized ego, the big gamer was unharmed.

The helicopter climbed away to an open area a few hundred meters away and hovered once more. Once it was farther out, the moans of the afflicted could be heard once again. They were a constant roar as loud as the chopper had been as it hovered overhead. It almost drowned out the constant gunfire from the airfield over half a mile away.

“Ladder is over here!” one of the operators called out. He already had the lock broken and the hatch open.

The operators went down first, holding hands on the outside of the ladder and sliding down in only seconds. They carried NVGs, night vision gear, and didn’t have to use flashlights in case any of the monsters were down there. They didn’t appear to be able to see in the dark. Tobey waited topside until he got the all clear from below.

“We’re good,” he said finally. The others looked at him skeptically. Tobey pointed at his ear where a tiny radio was visible. “Really, we’re good.”

The climb down was a lot further than the rappel had been. And it was nearly completely dark inside the hangar.

“A little light would help,” Wade complained about half way down.

“Is the interior secure?” they heard Tobey ask over his radio. They couldn’t hear the reply, but they did hear his next order. “Pop some light, boys.” An instant later they could all hear strange crunching sounds and from all over the hangar yellowish light began to glow brighter and brighter until interior of the hangar was visible, though not in great detail.

It was enough to calm the group as they finished their climb. It also showed the massive C-17 parked in the middle of the hangar. Outside lightning flashed, casting the interior of the hanger into temporary stark flickering relief. In a minute they all were standing on the shiny concrete floor.

Wade took a sheet from his pocket and started giving instructions. “That APU over there, grab it and pull it up here by the fuselage.” He pointed to an access hatch on the underside of the plane with yellow warning labels. “Find a couple of access ladders.”

The operators looked at Tobey who chuckled and nodded. “You heard the expert, get going!”

Once the two access ladders were found, Wade supervised wheeling the APU in place and hooking up cables while Andrew used the other one to open the lower crew boarding hatch. It dropped open and a ladder automatically slid down to clang on the deck. Andrew grimaced at the noise, but a second later the APU came alive. Basically a huge generator on wheels, its diesel engine grumbled into roaring life as it started feeding kilowatts of power into the huge transport.

“Stealth was never an option,” Tobey yelled to him as Andrew quickly climbed inside. “Get this thing running, we have work to do.” Then Tobey collected the operators and ran towards the massive hangar doors.

Andrew moved from the nose of the main cargo bay. Red standby lights cast the space with an eerie glow as he headed aft and found the crew deck ladder already down. He climbed upwards again, feeling like he was heading back to the roof where they’d just repelled in from.

Emerging at the rear of the crew deck, he found what he’d been expecting from the manuals. A dozen rows of four-wide seating, often referred to by grunts who had to ride below as ‘first class’. There were two heads and four small bunks for the crew to rest on long flights. All the way forward was the entrance to the flight deck. The door wasn’t locked, a last hurdle he’d been concerned about. The doors into a military transport flight deck were a lot more robust than a commercial aircraft.

Inside, the same red lights showed him the flight stations. A few switches glowed here and there. He pulled the flight manual from his bag, removed the M-4 carbine and racked it in the cockpit gun rack, and found the overhead master power switch and flipped it.

The cockpit came alive as the computers all started to boot up and systems came alive. A few status alarms beeped and became silent as the sleeping plane made ready. He grabbed the overhead handle and used it to step over the central console onto the seat, then slid his legs into position. Releasing the window, he slid it back and stuck his head out.

“How we doing?” he yelled.

“APU operating at maximum,” Wade yelled over the diesel engine. “Charge telltales say you should be a go for internal startup!”

“Roger that,” Andrew called back, then yelled even louder. “CLEAR ON NUMBER ONE!” He found the #1 engine control, flipped the fuel and power routing controls, and stabbed the prestart. Glass cockpit controls, relatives of what he worked with on the A380 came alive as he heard the familiar high pitch whine of a turbine startup sequence. Pressure climbed and deep inside one of the Pratt & Whitney F117-PW-100 turbofans a single sparkplug ignited the kerosene and the engine came alive with a dull roar that instantly eclipsed the APU.

He knew that Wade would never hear him over the engine spooling up to idle, so he flicked the landing lights once, as had been agreed if the engines started as planned. The “External APU” light went out, indicating Wade had disconnected the machine. He was on internal power. A moment later Chris came into the cockpit.

“Holy fuck this thing is big!”

“Damn straight,” Andrew said. He pointed to the right seat and at the overhead handhold. “You grab that so you don’t step on any switches.”

“There must be a million of them.”

“Probably close,” Andrew agreed.

“What is that thing?” Chris asked after he was seated, indicating a bracket that held a green colored glass reticule above his controls.

“Heads up display,” Andrew explained. “Kind of a dumb version of what I have in a fighter. When you’re busy flying, it puts up vital information like flight path, air speed, and other things so you don’t have to look away from the window.”

“Cool!”

Andrew nodded. He watched the internal power as the turbine he’d started reached optimal idle RPM and pressure. Once he was sure all was good, he used that engines power to start the others, one after another, in sequence. Soon the hanger was vibrating with the roar of the four massive turbofans. And rapidly filling with jet exhaust.