Chopper Ops (10 page)
Smitz looked to the small cluster of aircraft techs who had gathered nearby, drawn back from their coffee break by the raised voices. They'd heard Norton's question, but their only reply was a chorus of shrugs. One man held up a manual that looked about a foot thick.
Smitz turned back to Norton.
"Let's just say we're working on that," Smitz told him.
Norton groaned and put his head in his hands. "Man, I should have stayed in show business."
Smitz gave him a friendly pat on the back. "Look on the bright side, Major," he said.
Norton looked up at him. "There's a bright side?"
Smitz nodded. "You could have been assigned to the aircraft that your friends Gillis and Ricco have to fly."
*****
This was true enough. In the next hangar over, Gillis and Ricco were going through their own trauma.
They were sitting side by side in a helicopter even larger than a Hind. Also of Russian design, it was known as the Mi-6 Hook.
This copter was not a gunship. It was a dedicated troop carrier/cargo hauler of immense proportions. When it first entered service in the mid-fifties, the Hook was the largest military helicopter ever to fly—so big, in fact, it had to be shipped to Seven Ghosts Key in pieces, and still it barely fit inside the second C-5 that had landed earlier in the night.
Put together, it was an astounding 136 feet long— more than a third of a football field. Its rotors were a gigantic 133 feet in diameter. Its power plant was a brutally strong pair of engines capable of nearly six thousand horsepower per engine. As a result, the Hook was the first helicopter to ever surpass three hundred kilometers an hour. This was extremely fast for any chopper.
Its vast cargo hold could carry seventy-five fully equipped soldiers or even a tank or two inside. It could lug a total of twelve tons in its belly and another nine with a pull line underneath. The copter also had wings sticking from its midsection. Again, their function was to provide lift for the enormous machine.
None of this was making a positive impression on Ricco or Gillis, though. They were sitting in the vast cockpit—it too was adorned with a multitude of lights, bells, buzzers, switches, and levers. All of it with Russian nameplates. All of it looking like it was made in the fifties, which it was.
The only things the pilots recognized were the steering columns, the throttles, and the refueling suite—all of them were similar to the instruments on their KC-10 Pegasus tanker. But this provided them with little comfort.
Rooney, the CIA base chief, had drawn the short straw and was giving them their first look at the Russian-built behemoth.
"You
really
don't expect us to fly this thing, do you?" Ricco was asking him for about the hundredth time.
"Those are the orders," Rooney told him for about the hundredth time.
But Gillis persisted—he was by far the most infuriated of the two.
"You have to be nuts," he lashed out at Rooney. "We fly jets. Big jets. Big fucking American jets! This is a helicopter. A
Russian
-built helicopter. We can't drive this thing."
"You'll have to learn," Rooney said matter-of-factly. "It's as simple as that. Look—they went through the trouble to modify it to your experience. With the steering columns and all. I've been assured that once you get the feel of this thing, it will handle just like your big tanker. That's why you guys didn't have to suffer inside those simulators."
But Gillis and Ricco couldn't be had that easily. Sticks and throttles did not a flying machine make. As it was, the cockpit looked like the dashboard of a tractor-trailer jammed into that of a compact car.
But it was the modifications to the back cargo bay that
really
had them worried. The vast insides had been stripped out and two enormous fuel bladders had been installed. Per the mission specs, they were presently full of aviation fuel, the stink of which was permeating the vast flight cabin.
"And is someone expecting us to fly all that gas somewhere?" Ricco demanded of Rooney. "If so, I can suggest to you about a hundred better ways to do it. Like, in a fuel ship. You know, the kind that floats on the water? I'm sure the Navy's got more than a few of them."
Rooney just shook his head. He wished now that he'd volunteered to orient Norton to his craft instead of these two.
"The idea is not to carry the fuel from one place to the other," he explained calmly and slowly, like a professor to a couple dumbos held after class. "The idea is to carry it upstairs—so you can refuel others in flight. That's what you two boys are good at, am I right?"
The pair of pilots looked back at him. This was the first they'd heard of this.
"Yes, we are fucking great at refueling—in a big go-damn jet!" Ricco half-shouted at him. "Why doesn't anyone listen to us here? We're not chopper pilots. No one here is."
Rooney just stared at the ceiling of the copter's cockpit. He was astounded by the number of tubes and wires running along its length. What the hell was inside them all? he wondered.
"And you really expect us to learn how to refuel other aircraft in flight with this thing?" Gillis asked him.
Rooney nodded.
"What kind of aircraft?"
"Other helicopters, of course," Rooney replied.
At this, Ricco and Gillis both slumped into their seats. Like Norton, they couldn't believe what they had gotten themselves into.
There was a long silence as both men looked over the huge cockpit and its dozens of instruments and controls.
"And how long are you going to give us to learn all this crap?" Ricco asked.
Rooney was uncharacteristically lost for an answer. He ran his hand over his balding dome. Outside, it sounded like the storm was at last letting up.
"I'll get back to you on that," he said finally.
0830 hours
Delaney woke up to a cloud of steam hovering above his head.
He rubbed his eyes, took a sniff, and said: "There had better be sugar in
that. . . ."
Norton and Smitz were standing over him, cups of steaming coffee in their hands. Delaney just stared up at them.
"Unless you're going to pour it on me . . ."
"We should," Norton replied. "It took us five minutes just to make sure you were still alive. How can anyone sleep so fucking soundly?"
Delaney yawned and managed to sit up. He stretched and yawned again. Then he snatched the cup of coffee out of Norton's hand.
"I take my sleep very seriously," Delaney said after a few noisy slurps. "It's one of the reasons I got divorced. I'd give her the happy stick, roll over, and be out for the next ten hours. I slept through a tornado once."
Norton and Smitz looked at each other and did a simultaneous eye roll.
"Good," Norton said, throwing him his clothes. "You'll need that experience for where we're going."
Delaney had half-drained the cup of scalding hot coffee by now.
"Why? Where are we going?" he asked, pulling on his flight suit and boots.
"For a little ride," Norton replied.
*****
Two minutes later the trio walked into Hangar 2. Delaney took one look at the Hind gunship, turned on his heel, and began to walk away.
Norton caught him by the collar and spun him back towards the gunship.
Norton said grimly, "You know what that is, don't you?"
"Yeah, of course, it's a fucking Hind," Delaney said, his eyes now glued on the frightening machine. "Is it real?"
"Too real," Norton said, nudging him a little further towards the Russian-built gunship. "But it's a beauty, isn't it?"
"It's a piece of shit," Delaney replied. "And if you got me up to go for a ride in this thing, you wasted your time and mine."
He began to walk away again. Smitz blocked his retreat.
"You're the one wasting time, Major," the CIA officer told him. "This bird has to go up on a shakeout flight. And we need someone to fly front seat. And that someone is you."
Delaney turned back to Norton.
"Don't tell me you know how to fly this thing," he said.
Norton just shrugged. "They seem to think I can. And if I can't, then they're going to put you behind the wheel. Because there's one in the back of the building for you too."
Delaney squinted his eyes to see that, indeed, there was a crew of air techs praying over a second Hind gunship.
Delaney put his hands to his face and just shook his head. "Gawd . . . I'd give anything to be flying poodles around again. Anything . . ."
Smitz stepped forward, his NoteBook out, its screen blinking in the muggy post-storm breeze.
"We've got a satellite window of three hours coming up," he said. "We've got to get this thing started, taxied out, and airborne. Like right now . . ."
Delaney looked as if he could have punched the CIA man. But then his face brightened a bit. His mind had switched to another mode.
"Let me ask you something, Smitty," he said. "If we're in such a secret place that no enemy of this country knows we are here, then whose satellites are you so worried about passing over and seeing us?"
Smitz just shrugged. "Our own, of course," he replied simply.
Norton wiped his brow at that one. It was getting very hot, very quickly. The bad dream was continuing.
He turned Delaney back toward the Hind.
"Let's just get this over with, OK?" he said.
Norton and Delaney pulled on a pair of helmets, strapped themselves into parachutes, and climbed up the access ladder to the Hind's tandem cockpit. A squad of air techs was buzzing around the gunship now. They seemed to know what they were doing, Norton thought. Or they were giving a good impression that they did.
Delaney eased himself into the forward compartment through a hinged thick-glass door that looked not unlike something found in a gull-wing sports car. He settled into the seat, which was comfortably plush, leather-covered, and sturdy. The number of dials and buttons and buzzers in this compartment rivaled those in the pilot’s hold in back. There was a spare set of flight controls in the gunner's seat, but Delaney was cautious not to put his feet anywhere near the rudder pedals or his hands anywhere near the stick.
An air tech appeared beside him and plugged a wire from his helmet into one of dozens of inputs on the multi-layered control panel. This done, he slapped Delaney twice on the head—and a second later, Delaney could hear Norton's voice through his headphones.
"Ever see leather seats on an American bird?" Norton asked him.
"Yeah, they're real comfy," Delaney replied. "This thing have a CD player?"
"More likely an eight-track," Norton told him. "You see a primary switchboard up there?"
Delaney scanned the control panel—that was when he first noticed just about everything was labeled in Russian. But a few primary systems had masking tape covering up their Cyrillic nameplates with hastily scrawled English printed over them. Most said the word: "Override." Delaney started switching them all with wild abandon.
"Tell me when to stop," he called back to Norton.
Meanwhile, Norton was switching on all of his own masking-tape-labeled switches, going systematically from left to right. He could hear things begin to whir, and the sounds were vaguely familiar to him. Where had he heard all this before? Then it hit him—in the simulator; these were the sounds they had piped into his headphones during his crash course inside the accursed Tin Can.
A tech started hand-signaling him.
"Want to move it out now?" he was asking Norton.
Norton just shrugged. "Sure, why not."
With that the squad of techs began pushing the huge gunship out of the hangar, with Smitz and a few guards lending a hand.
Out in the bright sunshine the cockpit began warming up quickly. By the time they were on the tarmac, Norton had completed all of his switching. Everything seemed to be set—green lights indicated each system was online and ready to go.
Now it was time to start the engines. Smitz had given him a photocopied, heavily edited version of the Hind's translated flight manual. Norton now had it in his lap, opened to the page entitled: "How to Start the Engines."
"Hang on, partner," he called ahead to Delaney after reading the instructions. "This could be interesting."
He saw Delaney tighten his helmet and assume a crash position. Norton did one last check of the bizarre control panel, and then activated the switch marked APU. This stood for Auxiliary Power Unit, a kind of outside battery pack that would jump-start the gunship's two powerful engines. Or at least that was the plan.
But when Norton hit the APU panel, he heard an explosion that sounded like it was ripping the big gunship apart. There was a bright flash of red from behind him, the reflection lighting up the cockpit. He turned and saw a six-foot flame shooting out of the APU vent.
Shit . . .
This did not look good. Norton was convinced that he'd blown off the rear end of the copter somehow. He looked down at the air techs and saw panic wash across their faces. In front of him Delaney was already struggling with the clasp on his cockpit door, in the first stages of abandoning of the aircraft.
But before full-blown hysteria could set in, Norton saw Smitz run into his field of vision, simultaneously waving and flashing the thumbs-up sign—while still looking worriedly towards the rear of the copter.
"It always starts up like that!" he was yelling up at them.
"Damn!" Norton heard Delaney curse in his headphones. "I thought we'd blown the fucking thing up and gotten out of this."
And a moment later, sure enough, the huge rotor began turning over their heads. Now the gunship was rocking back and forth with a mighty vibration, lifting Norton an inch or so off his seat.
"Jeesuz, are you sure we're not on fire!" Delaney yelled into his microphone.
Norton
wasn’t
sure. He did a scan of the control panel and found the warning light that he believed would indicate an engine fire. It was safely on green.
"Just hang on," he called ahead to Delaney. "We aren't even having fun yet."
The crew chief was hand-signaling him again. Norton got the message right away. He and Delaney were to seal their cockpits.
Norton told Delaney to button up, then did the same. And that was when everything seemed to change. When the door clamped down and was sealed, it became very quiet within the gunship. The only sound Norton could hear besides the
whupp-whupp-whupp
of the increasingly spinning rotors was the soft rush of air. The Hind's cockpits were pressurized, a luxury Norton didn't believe was afforded to many American chopper pilots.
"Hey, cool, I can hear my heart beating again," Delaney called out from in front. "Or, at least I think it's my heart."
Norton got another signal from his crew chief. The rotors were turning at full throttle now. He waved the man off, and the small army of techs began moving away from the gunship.
He consulted the crude instruction book, turning to the page detailing a quick course on how the Hind should get into the air. He began reading as fast as he could.
The Hind wasn't like any other copter. That much was certain now. It didn't take off vertically because it was so damn big. It had to be rolled down a runway, just like an airplane.
"Hang on, partner," Norton called ahead to Delaney. "Let's see just how good the Russians build helicopters."
"I have just one question first," Delaney asked. "Why are we wearing parachutes?"
Norton consulted the crude manual again. "If this thing goes unstable, we open up and step out."
"With that eggbeater still turning above us?" Delaney cried. "Are they nuts?"
Norton couldn't argue with him. It seemed like a choice between two deaths. Go down with the ship or step out and be sliced and diced by the rotor.
"We won't need them," Norton said back to him. "Don't worry."
"Yeah, that's what my first wife said about using rubbers," Delaney replied, his voice trailing off and leaving Norton wanting some kind of punch line.
Did Delaney have kids?
Norton wondered. He didn't even know.
But his mind was soon back on other things. He booted power and adjusted to 60-percent torque, just as the photocopy instructions told him to. Then he popped the brakes, and the huge gunship began moving.
"Oh, Christ," he heard Delaney gasp. "This ain't going to be good. I just know it. . . ."
"Relax, Slick," Norton reassured him. "Think nice thoughts."
The ride was bumpy, and Norton's steering very herky-jerky, but in good time they had reached the main runway. Turning left and creeping up about fifty feet, Norton finally touched the brakes and the gunship came to a stop.
He did one last check of the control panel, and then tried to think back to all those hours in the Tin Can. It seemed odd, but this was not that much different from flight-testing an airplane for the first time. But had he really learned enough about the Hind to actually fly it?
There would be only one way to find out.
"You still breathing?" he called ahead to Delaney.
"I assure you I'm going through several bodily functions at the moment," was Delaney's reply.
"OK, then," Norton said. "Get ready to do one more."
With that, he took a deep breath of the artificially cool air, hit the gas, and off they went.
*****
About a quarter mile away, Ricco and Gillis were rolling out in their new aircraft too.
The two refuelers were less sullen than when they'd first stepped into the cabin of the gigantic Mi-6 Hook. The interior control work done on the huge copter's controls
had
been extensive. Through the use of microprocessors and a hundred miles of rewiring, nearly sixty percent of the controls had been converted to look and act like those on their KC-10 Pegasus. Even the steering yokes and throttle bars were the same.
So the tanker pilots were more comfortable with their new set of wheels. But they had not left the ground—yet.
It was a tribute to his professionalism and toughness that Rooney, just months away from retirement after thirty-five years in the CIA, had agreed to go along with them on this initial flight. He was now sitting in the flight engineer's hole, parked directly behind Ricco, who was sitting in the left-hand pilot's seat.
The huge Russian helicopter was moving slowly towards the southern end of the runway. Rooney had to admit that the tanker pilots—for all their complaints—were handling the big bird pretty well so far. Taxiing out to the airstrip was no more or less comfortable than the bouncing and jostling one experienced in a commercial airliner. The only difference was the constant roar of the copter's huge rotor blades and the never-ending sloshing of the fuel bladders in the rear of the cavernous cargo hold.
