Chopper Ops (6 page)
*****
After five minutes of walking in the brutal sun, he and Delaney finally reached their destination: the fake yacht club at the southern tip of the island. Here sat a dozen aging yachts and fishing boats, vessels on hand to help maintain the illusion that this place was little more than a private rich man's fishing club.
Some of the yachts were so old, though, they were probably antiques. It was obvious none of them had been out to sea in decades. They had no engines, no sails. They were simply props.
He and Delaney climbed aboard one called
Free Time
. It was an elderly charter boat, a forty-four-footer with a huge open deck and sixteen fishing chairs set up on its stern. Norton and Delaney settled into the two seats closest to the shade, and Delaney dipped into his cooler. A six-pack of tall Budweiser’s was buried under a small mountain of ice inside.
"Where did you manage to get that?" Norton asked him.
"The mess hall guys have a private stash in the meat freezer," Delaney said, passing Norton a brew. "I told one of them I'd take him for a ride in the Tin Can some night. He's nuts about flying in that thing. Says he'll get us as much booze as we want, just as long as we give him a spin around the block every once and a while."
Norton just shook his head. He had not seen a beer or any alcohol since being on the island, nor did it ever dawn on him to look for any. Delaney, on the other hand, had been here less time than he had, and yet he'd managed to secure a six-pack and a future supply.
That was Slick. . . .
"Skoll!" Delaney said, tapping cans with Norton. Both took a long deep slurp of the cold beer. It felt like gold running down Norton's throat. For the first time since coming to this place, he actually felt his muscles start to relax.
"So," Delaney said with a burp. "Have you figured it out yet?"
"Figured out what?" Norton asked in reply.
"What the hell are we doing here?"
Norton swigged his beer again, then wiped the cool can across his hot forehead.
"You're asking the wrong person," he replied. "They keep telling me we'll all be briefed soon. But all I've been doing is playing in the Can. ..."
Norton let his words drift away. This was true. Though he'd been on the island for nearly two weeks, he still had no idea exactly why the CIA had brought him and the others here. Again, the security surrounding the project was that tight.
"Well, I guess we'll know soon enough." Delaney sighed. "Then we'll probably be complaining that we know too much."
They sat and drank for a few moments in silence. A light breeze blew in on them, reducing the temperature a few degrees to about a hundred or so.
Delaney broke the silence again.
"So, what kind of a chopper have you been flying in the Tin Can?"
Norton bit his lip for a moment. Was he really supposed to be talking about this?
He sipped his beer.
What the hell. .. why not?
"Well, because the simulator is rigged for an attack chopper, I just assumed it was an Apache," he answered finally.
Delaney nodded. The AH-1 Apache was the U.S. military's premier attack copter, and hands down the best aircraft of its kind in the world. It was a frightening aerial weapon, small, quick, heavily armed, survivable.
"But those simulators ain't no Apaches," Delaney said. "They handle too big. Fly too big. And the control panel is ass-backwards. It's like I'm reading right to left, instead of the other way around."
Once again, Norton had to agree. The setup as presented in the Tin Can
was
cockeyed. In any aircraft he'd ever flown, the layout of the instruments had a rationale behind it. Fuel gauges were all grouped in one spot, environmental controls in another, electrical supply in another, and so on. The controls were allocated in such a way that the pilot could review them quickly and the eye was naturally drawn to their location after just a few hours of experience. But the controls in the simulator seemed to be for a helicopter whose cockpit panel had been thrown together slapdash, with logical placement no more than an afterthought. Fuel gauge here, auxiliary fuel gauge way over there. Ammo supply here, firing sequence button way up here. Many things about the control layout seemed foreign and didn't make sense to him. Plus many of the controls weren't even marked.
"And how about the weapons regimen?" Norton asked Delaney. "My ship is set up as a two-man tandem. Is yours?"
Delaney replied, "Absolutely . . ."
"But the way I'm set up, it looks like I'm flying the pig
and
shooting the guns."
Delaney took a huge gulp of beer.
"Same here," he said. "I'm doing the driving and the shooting and the gunner is doing diddly."
"Weird . . ."
"Very weird . . ."
They finished their first beer in silence.
"You won't believe how fast they have my ship going," Delaney said finally. "That thing flies so freaking fast, it almost makes sense they have a fighter jock at the wheel. I guess that's why we're here."
"Yeah, well, I get scared when something starts to make sense around here," Norton said.
Delaney coaxed the last few drops of beer from his can. Norton wiped his sweaty forehead once more.
The slightly cooling breeze blew off the water again. The beer was having its first effects on Norton. For a moment it actually seemed like they were just two guys, enjoying a hot afternoon, drinking beer, and fishing off the end of a huge boat.
If only
. . . he mused.
Delaney reached into his cooler, took out two more beers, and handed one to Norton.
"Did you know Mutt and Jeff arrived yesterday?" he asked Norton.
"No kidding?"
"I heard they've been crybabying to Smitz ever since," Delaney said.
"They really don't want to be heroes, do they?"
"Can't blame them, I guess," Delaney answered. "I mean look where it got
us
.''
Norton bit his lip again. That was another thing troubling him. His decision to turn the CIA on to Gillis and Ricco had been preying on his mind.
At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. The Spooks said this mission needed good air-to-air refueling guys, and when Norton was asked for the best, he gave them Gillis and Ricco.
But
had
he done the right thing? Or had he just been grandstanding? Caught up a little too much in the cloak-and-dagger excitement of those first few days. How could he justify involving the two tanker pilots in a mission he knew nothing about? What witches' brew had he gotten them into? With its reputation for screwing things up, could he really trust the CIA? Or any Spook, for that matter? Had he just been swept up in it because
he
wanted to be a hero? Because he wanted to do something more exciting than fly the Cobra at air shows?
He didn't know. And that was the problem. Gillis and Ricco weren't regular military; they were National Guard guys. Weekend warriors. They probably had wives and kids and homes, things he and Delaney did not. What if Gillis and Ricco got killed on this mission? What if by Norton's recommendation he'd brought Gillis and Ricco into something that would end up causing their wives to be widows and their kids to be fatherless?
He took another long sip of beer. Delaney was blabbing away about the weather or something, but Norton could not hear him. His ears were ringing too much. And his shoulders were suddenly feeling very heavy.
These disturbing thoughts were eventually knocked away by a sharp jab to his rib cage, courtesy of Delaney. The pilot was indicating that Norton should look at something off to their left. Norton did, and immediately saw what Delaney had spotted.
It was a group of Marines, about twenty of them, or one quarter of the complement known to be on the island. They were crawling through a grove of palm trees about fifty feet away from the yacht. The Marines were dressed in heavy combat gear and carrying enormous weapons. They were almost invisible.
Norton had seen the Marines training several times since arriving on the island, in those first hours before his marathon sessions in the Can had commenced in earnest. Each time, the Marines were in the process of surrounding and attacking Motel Six, which was the name given to the island's first motel-like structure. (The second motel-like structure, the one where many billets were located, had been named "Motel Hell.") Now it appeared the Marines were preparing to attack the structure once again.
Norton and Delaney watched with bemused interest as this first group of Marines got into position. Then they became aware of a second group of Marines inching their way up towards Motel Six from the opposite side of the runway. And a third group was in the process of scaling the structure's rear wall. Then, someone blew a whistle, a flash grenade went off, and the Marine assault was on. In seconds jarheads were swarming all over the structure, kicking in doors, going through windows, dropping down through holes in the roof. Norton and Delaney could hear shouting, heavy footsteps, the sizzle and pop of more flash grenades going off.
"Hey, man, this is better than the movies!" Delaney declared with a noisy slurp of his beer. "I just wish they would attack something else for a change. This particular act is getting boring."
The Marines apparently did mock assaults on Motel Six as many times a day as Norton and Delaney found themselves stuck inside the Tin Can. In other words, endlessly.
"Let's see," Delaney said. "We can call this mystery number two hundred and seventy-three. What the hell are these guys practicing for?"
Norton just shrugged. "Again, it's probably something we don't want to know."
The mock assault was over in a matter of minutes. Then the Marines started filing out again. Some of them passed right by the boat dock where Norton and Delaney sat, now drinking their third set of beers. Their blackened faces stared in at them. They looked exhausted, hot, sweaty—and most of all, thirsty.
Delaney raised his beer in a mock toast to the Marines.
"Semper fi, guys!" he called out to them. "Keep up the good work!"
The Marines growled at them, but kept moving.
"Can I tell you something, partner?" Norton said to Delaney.
"Sure . . ."
Norton watched the Marines disappear back into the palm groves.
"Something tells me we should be
real
nice to those guys," he said.
Before Delaney could reply, they heard someone walking down the gangplank towards their boat. Delaney quickly went to hide the beer. Not that he was afraid drinking on duty was against regulations. He simply didn't have enough to share with a third party. But this person had no interest in drinking. It was a guy named Raoul. He was one of several CIA flunkies on the island.
"I've been looking all over for you two," he said, out of breath but with relief.
"Why? Where's the fire?" Delaney asked him.
"The fire is in the Big Room," Raoul told them in cracked English. "The time has come—that's why Smitz wanted me to track you down."
"Time has come for what?" Delaney asked him, now chugging his beer in full view.
"For the briefing," Raoul said. "The big one. The one to explain whatever the hell we are all doing here."
"The 'mother of all briefings,' " Norton said, "It's finally time."
"Yeah, cool," Delaney said draining his beer. "And we get to go drunk."
The Big Room was another name for the main dining area inside the restaurant on Seven Ghosts Key.
It was an odd place inside an odd place. Back when the restaurant was built, prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion, someone thought it would be clever to paint folksy native murals on the walls as one more piece in the mosaic of the island's cover story.
The result was a collection of very dated and crude paintings. A huge marlin jumping at the end of a fishing line. A crimson tropical sunset. A garish voodoo ceremony. Children playing in the surf. The murals gave the place a certain campy look, but were also weird and unsettling. One was particularly eerie. It showed three jumbo black women carrying pots on their heads on their way to market. The way the mural had been painted, they seemed to be laughing at anyone who came through the front door.
The far wall of the room contained no murals. Instead it was dominated by a huge curtain, behind which was a gigantic TV screen. Communications gear of all shapes and sizes surrounded this screen. Radio transmitters, fax machines, scramble-cable printers, a secure Internet hookup—they looked like planets orbiting a rectangular star.
Usually found next to all this high-priced stuff was the chow table. It was well-stocked by the CIA-run kitchen located in the basement of the restaurant. The line of hot dishes was always substantial here, the coffee always fresh, the Cokes always ice-cold. Spooks had to eat too, and considering the location and the circumstances, the fare on Seven Ghosts Key was very good. But there was no hot food steaming today. No bucket full of icy Coke. Not even any coffee brewing.
Instead the buffet table was closed, the coffee machine stood mute, and there were three guys who looked very much like doctors sitting on folding chairs. In front of them was a smaller table with three black bags containing huge hypodermic needles opened up for all to see. And instead of plastic coffee mugs, there was a line of paper cups, each with several pills inside. None of this looked particularly inviting.
The first thing Delaney spotted as he and Norton walked in was the hypodermic needles. He almost passed out on the spot.
"Man, this is not going to be good," he whispered. "Not for me. Not for anyone."
They avoided the table of needles, and took seats in the last of five rows of chairs set up facing the big screen. The air-conditioning was working full blast, and it was actually chilly inside the room. Norton felt his sweat turn to ice; he wished he'd been able to finish one more beer. Delaney simply slumped in his chair and began a long series of burps.
More of the base's invisible occupants drifted in. A few of the tech support people. The guys who ran the simulators. The security team. The CO of the Marine contingent, Captain Chou Koo—who everyone called "Joe Cool"—arrived with a flourish. Four members of the U.S. Army Aviation Corps wandered in next, distinctive in the bright green fatigues. Behind them were four Navy SEAL medics, the tiny Red Cross patches over their left breast pockets identifying their function. What the SEALs' role was in all this Norton didn't have a clue. But like the Army pilots, they had certainly managed to keep themselves well hidden until now.
Behind the SEALs came a man Norton had seen his first day on the island and not since. He was a tall, powerful-looking individual, early forties, with a slightly Nordic look about him. He was wearing a black flight suit and a pair of Keds sneakers, the same outfit Norton had seen him in the first time. His baseball cap had a patch above its bill that read:
Angels Do It Forever
.
Norton elbowed Delaney when this character walked in.
"Who is that guy?" he asked his colleague. "He seems familiar."
Delaney burped once. "He looks like a pilot. But I haven't the foggiest."
Smitz came in next. The young CIA case officer arrived, as always, briefcase and omnipresent IBM NoteBook in hand. He nodded to Norton and Delaney, who returned his greeting with mock salutes. Others stood and shook his hand. Still others ignored him completely. Accompanying Smitz was a middle-aged CIA officer Norton knew only as Rooney. Norton had figured out that where Smitz was the one actually running the mystery operation, Rooney was the guy in charge of Seven Ghosts Key itself. Following them in were a half-dozen civilian types, unknown to Norton and Delaney, but undoubtedly CIA as well.
The last ones to arrive were Gillis and Ricco. They walked into the Big Room like aggrieved parties walking into court. Slightly flustered and confused, looking this way and that, checking out every door and window as if they were already plotting out an escape route. It was clear they wanted no part of whatever was about to happen here.
They were about to take seats when they spotted Norton and Delaney. Their demeanor changed instantly. Gone were the twin baffled looks. Both faces now turned red. They began walking over to Norton and Delaney. It was clear they wanted to talk.
"Oh, boy," Delaney slurred. "Here we go . . ."
"You two assholes are dead meat," Gillis growled at them upon arrival.
Neither Norton or Delaney moved a muscle. They remained seated and simply looked up at the two National Guard pilots.
"What's your problem?" Delaney asked them calmly.
"You dickheads twisted something to get us assigned here.
That's
the problem," Ricco said through gritted teeth. "Now we're stuck out in the middle of nowhere, without a clue as to what the deal is."
"Hey, join the club," Delaney said dismissively.
Gillis, the taller of the two, leaned in closer to them.
"We know this is some kind of weirdo practical joke of yours," he said angrily. "And I swear, when I get the chance, I'll kill both of you twice."
Delaney just laughed at him. Norton didn't. His shoulders were still feeling a bit heavy.
"I was asked to recommend a solid refueling crew for this mission," Norton told them. "And you were the first choice. That's the story, straight and square. Besides, I've got better things to do than play practical jokes on you two lugnuts."
"We're going to be away from home for two fucking months," Ricco said, seething now with each syllable. "Do you know that? We got homes, families, things to do—not like you two cowboys."
Norton just glared up at Ricco. Oh, yeah, recommending the Air Guard crew
had
been a mistake, he thought. But not for the reasons he'd been dreading.
He finally stood up and faced both men.
"Look, you meatballs," he said. "We're in the fucking military here. The service of the United States. You got a letter from the President, for Christ's sake. There's a mission to be flown and they asked for the best and I said you guys because you are the best at air-to-air. But I guess being an asshole doesn't make any difference when it comes to that."
Ricco and Gillis were suddenly stumped. Was Norton really flag-waving, or was it just part of a bigger gag?
"I got no desire to fly anything involving you two," Gillis finally retorted. "Besides, I don't have the faintest idea how to fly a helicopter, nor do I want to."
Now it was Norton who was surprised.
"Helicopter?" he asked. "They want you guys to fly a copter too?"
"Don't play cute," Ricco told him. "Like you didn't know?"
Norton just shook his head. "How the fuck would I know? No one knows anything about what's happening here."
Gillis took one more step towards Norton. He really was a huge guy, and Norton was sure that if he wanted to, Gillis could squash him like a bug.
"Like I said, I don't want to be involved in anything that includes you two assholes," Gillis hissed.
"Ditto," Ricco chimed in.
Now Delaney was suddenly on his feet.
"So go ask to be relieved if you're going to cry about it," he told them angrily. He was about half Gillis's size in both height and weight. "Then you can go back to hanging out at the dump on weekends."
Gillis and Ricco started laughing at this.
"Hanging at the dump, eh?" Ricco said. "Well, it's sure beats being demoted from driving jet fighters to
choppers
!"
Norton's ears were stung by the comment.
"Think this is a come-down for us, do you?" he asked them.
"Who wouldn't?" Ricco replied. "Everyone knows that's where guys who can't cut it in fighters wind up. Either there or flying the President's hamster around the country."
This barb was aimed directly at Delaney; he looked as though it had punctured his heart. His face reddened, his fists tightened. He was ready to fight both men. Of course, he was also fairly drunk.
At that moment, Smitz looked up and saw the growing confrontation. He seemed to be the only one in the room noticing something was amiss.
He tapped his pen on the podium and called the room to order.
"Gentlemen? Can we settle down, please?"
The four pilots continued glaring at each other.
"Gentlemen? Please? We have a lot of information to cover here. . . ."
The staring contest lasted a few more moments, but finally the pilots dispersed. Norton and Delaney sat back down. Gillis and Ricco walked to the opposite side of the room, down the aisle, and took the first two seats in the first row. Right in front of Smitz's podium.
"Candy-assers," Delaney said under his breath.
Only one person in the room laughed at Delaney's remark. It was the guy in the Angel cap. He was sitting three rows in front of them, yet somehow he had heard the whispered comment.
Smitz tapped the podium again, and now everyone else sat down. There were twenty-six individuals in the room, and all of them found seats as far away from the men with the needles as possible.
"Well, this is what you've all been waiting for," Smitz began nervously. "All of the human assets needed for this program have arrived. This being the case, we've finally been authorized to tell you a bit about where you'll be going and why."
A groan went through the room. Smitz nodded to one of his flunkies and the lights became dim.
Slowly the huge TV wall screen came to life. The room went absolutely silent. Smitz pushed a button and a video began rolling.
The title boasted that the video was prepared by the CIA's Foreign Intelligence Evaluation Section. Everyone in the room groaned again.
The tape began shaky and washed out. When it finally cleared, it showed an enormous hole in the ground shot by a camera from high above. The gash was about three hundred feet across, the length of a football field, and maybe a couple feet deep. It was blackened and stood out like a sore thumb in the relatively undisturbed field of long golden hay surrounding it. The hole itself was filled with burnt stuff. Tree limbs, brush, scarred pieces of metal, and what appeared to be hundreds of chalky sooty sticks.
In reality, they were human bones.
"This video was shot in Bosnia almost one year ago," Smitz said. "During a new flare-up in the fighting there, someone herded three hundred and fifty-two civilians into a field. This is what was left of them."
Those assembled stared at the video. This was not a bomb crater they were looking at. It was too shallow and the shape was all wrong. This thing looked like a perfect circle.
The tape continued. Now they were looking at a hilltop village somewhere in the Middle East. There was nothing left of the place either, except the foundations of some houses and the remains of a fountain, which was leaking rusty water out into the street, like a bleeding wound.
"This was once the village of El Quas-ri," Smitz went on. "It's in central Iraq. It was more than four thousand years old. We've determined it took about thirty seconds to wipe it off the map."
For the next ten minutes, the tape presented a ghoulish montage of burnt holes, charred bones, leveled villages, and other instances of selective destruction. The two-dozen perfectly square carbon smudges along a flat desert highway were the remains of twenty-four food-supply trucks heading for a Kurdish refugee camp, Smitz explained. The tiny seaport that no longer had a dock standing or a boat afloat had been a stopping-off point for people fleeing oppression in Iran, he went on. The small airfield flying a Red Cross flag that no longer had any runways or buildings or airplanes had been a UN-sponsored airmobile field hospital.
Everywhere, at every location, there were bodies. Twisted, skeletal, all shapes and sizes, from adults to children. Some still had skin clinging to their bones, others had been picked clean. They all looked as if they'd been cooked alive, which was not far from the truth. Most of the ghastly images were identified as being from the Middle East; others had been shot in parts of Asia and Africa.
But what had caused all this? Smitz wasn't telling—not yet.
The tape finally ended, only to be replaced by another. This began with a black screen emblazoned with three red letters: NSA. Everyone in the room sat up again and took notice.
"This is footage from an NSA airborne asset," Smitz explained solemnly. "It was taken two months ago somewhere over the Persian Gulf."
What appeared was a grainy, static-filled NightVision video of two airplanes refueling in flight in the middle of a very dark night.
