Chopper Ops co-1 Read online

  The vessels—twelve in all—were loaded with a variety of cargo: black-market computers, TVs, silk, American-made jeans and sneakers. A few political refugees. A few escaped criminals. Many families, some going on vacation to the Persian Gulf states. Many had children with them. Some were carrying infants.

  They were heading for Oman, a full day’s journey if the seas stayed calm. On arrival, those with merchandise to sell would become rich for a year’s time. Those fleeing the authorities would be free. Those heading for a somewhat perilous shopping vacation would have the malls and sands of Oman, Bahrain, and the UAE awaiting them.

  But because their cargo was considered precious in these waters, the small fleet of boats would have been prime pickings for the sea pirates known to ply this part of the ocean, preying on the defenseless. That was why there was a thirteenth vessel in the fleet—in fact, it was leading it.

  It was an Osa-class gunboat. It had been hired by the voyagers to provide protection for their trip.

  The Russian-exported gunboat was well equipped. It held a crew of sixteen, only four of which were responsible for the forty-four-foot vessel’s operation. The rest were gunners, loaders, aimers, and computer guys. The gunship boasted twin OTO-Melara 76-mm guns both front and back, plus torpedoes with ultra-sound targeting capability. But the gunboat also carried the dangerous Starwind missile, essentially a knockoff of the terrifying Israeli-built Raphael antiship weapon.

  The Starwinds were accurate, easy to use, and had an extremely high kill record. One could sink a midsize cruiser; two could devastate an even larger ship. The Osa gunboat had a dozen such missiles on board. As such, its firepower was equal to some of the capital ships of the world’s biggest navies.

  The travelers had paid the gunship’s crew handsomely, and were cozy in the knowledge that the money had been well spent. Already during the voyage they had spotted pirate vessels sailing out on the horizon, like jackals shadowing a pack of wildebeests. But the pirates weren’t foolish—they knew their smaller, lightly armed vessels could never take on the kind of firepower that the Osa gunboat carried.

  That was why they had paid for a little firepower of their own.

  * * *

  They first heard the noise about ten in the morning.

  There was a little wind and the sea was throwing some spray, and that combination made a distinctive sound. The noise caused by the thirteen vessels and their various power plants also made a distinctive noise—but it was rather high-pitched and mechanical.

  This approaching sound was deeper, more ominous. As if the sea itself was groaning.

  For most of the travelers, it was the last thing they would ever hear.

  * * *

  The airplane came out of the west.

  It was flying low, its silhouette outlined by the heavy overcast, displaying its grayish, ghostly image.

  The crew of the gunboat saw it first. One of their forward gunners doubled as a lookout, and he had picked up the thing on his binoculars about three miles out. It was little more than a growing speck at that point. Still, it didn’t take long for the lookout to realize what it was.

  He turned to sound the alarm, but before he knew it, a long stream of red and yellow fire went right over his head. It came so close to him that for an instant, he actually felt its heat, which was hot enough to short circuit his IF gear.

  The next stream of bullets was more on the mark. It hit the lookout and the other three crew members at his gun station dead-on with a quick splash of fire and light. A mere three-second burst—four hundred projectiles in all—destroyed the gunboat’s forward twin weapon, its turret, and one quarter of its crew.

  The huge airplane roared over the stricken Osa several seconds later. The wash from its propellers kicked up the sea as no winds could ever do. Those still alive on board watched as the airplane did a long slow bank, passing over the rest of the ragtag fleet and back towards the gunboat again.

  Bells rang. Whistles blared. A scramble siren went off. But none of this did any good. The gunboat’s crew was already heading toward their battle stations, but there was nothing to scramble to. The sad truth was, for all the firepower packed in the gunboat, it was useless now. The travelers had indeed spent a lot for money and had spent wisely. No pirate vessel had come within fifteen miles of them.

  But no one had expected anything to be coming from the air.

  * * *

  The AC-130 rose slightly in altitude as it approached the gunboat again. Its engines suddenly began screeching louder than before—this was the noise the four propellers made when their fuel was pulled back and they’d been ordered to reduce speed. Engines protesting, the pilots put the big aircraft into orbit about 1200 feet directly above the gunboat. The pilot dropped the left wing, and now all four doors on that side of the fuselage snapped open.

  The stream of fire that came out of the gunship now lit up the sea for twenty-five miles around. It lasted no more than twenty seconds, just enough for the big airplane to make one circuit around the hapless gunboat. The violence it visited on the water was so quick, so intense, so heated, that steam enveloped the gunboat. A few of the vapors were blood red. When the smoke and the mist and the sea spray finally cleared, there was nothing left.

  The gunboat and its crew were gone.

  * * *

  Its job done, the airplane departed in the same direction from whence it came. It would fly all the way to Bahrain. There it would land at a secret base and pick up a trunk full of dollars. This would be the second installment in its contract with sea pirates. The crew would split fifty percent of the take, and what remained would be sent to a special Swiss bank account controlled by others. The crew would then take off and refuel in the air, before returning to base. If all went well, they would be down and eating dinner by 1800 hours, another day’s work behind them.

  As for the travelers—they were now easy pickings. The pirates moved in and methodically attacked and boarded each vessel. Anything of value was taken; the captains and crews were immediately killed. All eligible females were snatched, along with all the guns and radio gear.

  Once each boat had been visited by the pirates, the sea thieves would fire 22-mm cannon shells into its hull. A ten-second burst was usually all that was needed. Invariably something would catch on fire or the holes made would be big enough to cause water to pour in. No one remaining on any boat survived. All either drowned, or did not last long in what was some of the most shark-infested waters of the world. More than 160 men, elderly women, and children met their end this way.

  The pirates, as always, made a clean getaway.

  Chapter 11

  Seven Ghosts Key

  Midnight

  The storm came up so quickly, Smitz didn’t have time to close the window in his billet.

  The rain and wind blew in, like a pair of unseen hands, causing a small tornado to swirl madly around his room. It scattered his previously orderly papers everywhere, and soaked just about everything he considered valuable, including his fax machine, his change of clothes, and his bunk. Then, just as quickly, it stopped, even before he could get the window closed, leaving him dripping wet and his room in a shambles.

  His world turned upside down again. Just like that.

  He’d been lying on his bunk, going over his NoteBook entries for the day, when the sudden wind came up. Located in base’s tiny control tower, one floor down from the control room itself, his ten-by-ten billet had been a storage closet originally. When Smitz first landed on Seven Ghosts Key, his rooming options were limited to bunking in with the Marines in Motel Hell or staying with the pilots in the basement of the building adjacent to Hangar 2. Instinct told him that with this operation, it was best that he didn’t get to close to the personnel involved. Especially the pilots.

  So he’d tried sleeping in the Big Room the first few nights. But between the laughing murals, the lizards scurrying everywhere, and the tale of the seven CIA people who’d vanished from the island bouncing around h
is head, the place had given him a major case of the yips. Smitz valued his sleep, and wanted to lay his head somewhere that was not overrun with reptiles or ghosts. When Rooney suggested that the empty supply room in the tower might be more comfortable, Smitz jumped at the chance.

  He lay back down on his bunk now, disgusted that in just a few seconds his place had become a small disaster area. But this was nothing new. This assignment had been a struggle from the start, and nothing he’d seen lately indicated that it was going to change anytime soon. A small twister in his room was just more of the same.

  The screwiness had not ended that night in Bethesda. If anything, it had grown worse. Not only was he almost as much in the dark about this operation’s goals as the personnel called in to do the job, but since arriving on Seven Ghosts Key, Smitz had been fighting a silent, but nonstop battle with his office back in Washington for both the information and equipment he needed to see the thing through. Getting the intelligence assets. Getting the humans. Getting the Tin Can software. Getting bunks for the Marines. All of it a battle. For some reason, he’d had to fight for every last nut and bolt of the essentials, and with his nemesis Larry Stone back in D.C. controlling the spigot, it was even harder than expected.

  Smitz was getting so weary of it, he’d wished more than once that some ghost would swoop down and spirit him away. But then they’d have to change the name of the island.

  The strange thing was, only stuff relating to the upcoming operation seemed to have a hard time squeezing itself through the supply pipeline. Espresso for the restaurant, fresh steaks for chow, tapes for everyone’s VCRs—all these things he could get, via the twice-weekly visits by CIA-contracted cargo planes. But trying to secure the correct-size computer disk for the Tin Can’s hard drive had taken three weeks. Getting the two tapes he’d shown at the recently completed briefing had taken nearly as long. These selective delays were stupid and weird, like just about everything associated with the project. Yet every time he cabled Stone to ask why it seemed some things were being held up intentionally, he never received an adequate reply.

  It was like fighting a losing battle from the start.

  Smitz put his last dry towel under his head now, took off his glasses, and tried to rest his tired eyes. This operation was the biggest and most complex he’d ever been assigned. He was, after all, still a junior officer in the CIA’s Special Foreign Operations Section. His job for the past two years had been essentially carrying spears for the section’s bigger operatives. Cleaning up their dirty work, getting funds to them if they were offshore, writing their reports if they were not. The solo projects he’d handled had been appropriately unimportant. Meeting with Cuban dissidents, interviewing fake Russian nuclear scientists, telling half-truths to disaffected mullahs. Kid stuff…

  Why then had Jacobs given him this assignment literally from his deathbed? Had it been a vote of confidence from the old dog to a young wolf making his way up the ranks? Or had it been just the opposite—a chance for him to fail and get weeded out to some real crappy CIA desk job, like the Agricultural Intelligence Section. Was that the reason Stone was squeezing his balls so hard on this one? Smitz didn’t know. He was the first to admit that the project was a little over his head. The question was, could he still rise above the waves and see it through?

  He rolled over on his bunk and stared at the dripping-wet wall. He suddenly wished that he smoked cigarettes or drank liquor. He suddenly wished he had a vice. He wasn’t sure why. It was a strange thought. But it seemed if he did have some nasty habit to fall back on, it might make what he had to do go a little easier.

  But alas, he had none of these things.

  He wasn’t that lucky.

  * * *

  He somehow drifted off to sleep in his messy wet little room. His dream began again. He’s playing first base in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series. Two outs in the tenth. The crowd is roaring. He’s tapping his mitt. Voices are whispering in his ear. But this time, before the ball is even hit to him—the one that would go through his legs and cost him the world championship—the rain pelting his window started up again. He awoke with a start and saw a red light flashing in his face. It was his scramble-fax’s remote beeper. There was a message coming in for him from the Office.

  He reached over and activated the remote-control device, then plugged it into his laptop, praying that his stuff would work after getting seriously drenched. He was heartened to see the laptop’s little green light pop on. He hit the enter button, and the message began scrolling across his laptop screen.

  “Situation fluid. Further materiel arriving your location within the half hour,” was all it said.

  Half hour? Smitz sat straight up on his bed.

  He couldn’t possibly clean up his room in that short a time!

  * * *

  The wind was howling and the rain coming down even harder when Smitz reached Hangar 2.

  It was now almost 0100 hours and he was awaiting the “further materiel” as the scrambled message had told him to do.

  But what was he waiting for exactly?

  He didn’t know. But he had a good idea.

  Rooney drove up in one of the pink jeeps. He had had the sense to wear a rain slicker. The storm was getting worse now, and the wind was positively screaming.

  Rooney climbed out of the jeep, soggy cigar still stuck between his teeth. He was a powerful if paunchy individual, with an Ernest Hemingway look to him. A team of air techs was waiting a little further inside the hangar, wondering why they’d been called out to duty so late and in such weather.

  Rooney walked over to Smitz, huddled just inside the door of the aircraft barn.

  “You got to get yourself some foul-weather gear, Smitty,” he told him. “Things can get mighty strange out here in the straits.”

  “You’re telling me,” Smitz replied.

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth when his cell phone rang. It was the tower. Four planes were on their way in.

  “I suppose they didn’t tell you exactly what we’re getting,” Rooney asked as he tried to relight his cigar in the pouring rain.

  Smitz resisted the temptation to ask him for a puff.

  “They weren’t specific,” Smitz replied. “But I’ve got a pretty good guess.”

  “Yeah,” Rooney said. “Me too.”

  Their words were drowned out by the sound of the first airplane approaching. The high-pitched whine meant only one thing. This was a huge C-5 Galaxy cargo jet coming in.

  The monstrous plane appeared out of the mist a moment later. It slammed down with a great screech of tires and smoke, and roared by them with oceans of spray flying in every direction.

  “Damn!” Smitz exclaimed.

  “Not the kind of plane you’d expect to land in a hurricane,” Rooney said.

  Right on its tail came a second Galaxy. Behind it, a third, then a fourth. The four airplanes touched down as if they’d been choreographed. By the time the last plane had landed, the first C-5 had reached the end of the long runway and had taxied back around towards the hangar. It pulled to a stop in front of Smitz and Rooney, its nose opening like a gigantic set of jaws.

  The insides were packed so tightly, it was hard to see exactly what the flying beast was carrying. But the aircrew hopped to it, and soon two dark canvas-covered forms were being pushed out of the gaping maw and into the hangar.

  “Damn, look at that,” Rooney said, somehow puffing his water-soaked cigar. “It’s like a whale giving birth through its mouth!”

  “But what the hell are these things?” Smitz asked.

  Rooney finally threw the cigar away and lit up another.

  “Let’s find out,” he said.

  As soon as the first bundle was inside the hangar, Smitz had a word with the first C-5’s loadmaster. Smitz signed a slew of documents, and then asked that the C-5’s crew remove the canvas covering one of the objects. This took a few minutes, but when they were done, Smitz just stared at what had been revealed. />
  That was when his boss’s last words came back to him.

  Try to stay out of the helicopters, Jacobs had said.

  Finally Smitz knew what the old man had meant.

  Chapter 12

  0500 hours

  Jazz Norton didn’t dream very much.

  He didn’t know why exactly. A flight surgeon once told him that as someone who dodged flak and SAMs for a living, and who, when not in combat, flew dangerously at air shows, Norton lived a much too exciting a life to dream. After going twice the speed of sound miles above the earth on a daily basis, his subconscious needed a rest too. Besides, the doctor had asked him, what would a person like him dream about?

  But this night, Norton was sure he was dreaming when he saw a ghost looking down at him from the foot of his bed.

  The figure was dressed all in white. Its skin was wet and runny. With a bright light coming from behind, it looked almost transparent. A crash of thunder and a flash of lightning only added credibility to the apparition.

  Norton sat up with a start, his fists clenched, ready to punch the ghost.

  That was when Smitz pulled back the hood of his rain slicker to reveal his soaking-wet head.

  “Sorry to bother you like this, Major,” the young CIA man was saying. “But we need you over in Hangar 2 right away.”

  * * *

  The storm was growing worse. Lightning flashes were tearing holes in the dark sky; thunder rumbled, shaking the tarmac right down to its foundation. And the rain was coming down in torrents. Norton and Smitz ran through the deluge, heading for Hangar 2.

  “If you guys were so smart, you would have picked a better place to hide yourselves!” Norton yelled over at Smitz. “The weather here sucks!”

  “Who said we were smart?” Smitz yelled back without missing a beat.

  They finally reached the huge hangar and Smitz banged heavily on the front door. They could hear several techs struggling to open the big sliding piece of metal on the other side. Finally, the door was pulled back and the two men jumped inside.