The words “egress transportation” were the most heartening part of the lone stark paragraph. It was official then. The unit was being pulled out of Iraq, a prospect that Smitz was sure would be greeted with much joy among the others. Had they accomplished their mission? No. Had they affected anything by coming deep into Iraq and raiding the Ranch? No. But would they be glad to get out of hostile territory after nearly forty-eight hours of pure nonstop anxiety?
Definitely.
Smitz shut down the laptop and began crawling through the sprawled Marines, telling them that things were looking up—unofficially, of course—and that they should get ready “for anything.”
He finally made his way up to the cockpit and asked the Army pilots to pull close to Norton’s Hind, now riding about 250 feet off the left nose.
The pilots nuzzled up to the chopper, and using a trouble light, Smitz sent a hasty Morse code message over to Norton. It took two attempts for the former fighter pilot to blink back that he understood. Then, in a burst of enthusiasm, he gunned the Hind and started wigwagging all over the sky. Obviously Norton was happy at the prospect of going home too.
Then Smitz blinked over the coordinates to the abandoned base at El Saad Men. A quick check of the aviation chart showed it was about twenty minutes of flying time away from their present location. Getting there would be a breeze compared to what they’d been through. Smitz asked Norton to fly ahead and scout out the location first.
Norton blinked back his reply, gunned the Hind’s engines again, and was off like a shot.
Then Smitz returned to his cramped seat in the cargo bay, and for the first time in forty-eight hours, actually fell asleep.
Chapter 27
El-Saad Men was an air base—or it used to be—located in the Tajji section of the central Iraqi desert, near the edge of Tharthar wadi.
Built a few months before the start of the Gulf War, it was little more than a pair of runways, a dozen support buildings, and three hangars. It had been designed for use as an alternative base for Iraqi fighters to transit to— a haven after a day of battle. But the base was knocked out the first night of the war by French fighters dropping Chaparral runway-busting bombs. Several times thereafter it was the target of follow-up Coalition air strikes.
Now El-Saad Men was a ghost town, literally. The runways were still cratered, and indeed only one hangar remained intact. The rest were just piles of rubble, victims of precision bombs dropped nearly a decade before.
This was the desolate scene Norton came upon when he reached the coordinates given to him by Smitz. At once he knew the base was the perfect place for the egress pickup. They could easily hide the choppers inside the last hangar standing—the one with the big arrow on top of it—and no one would know they were there unless they came up and knocked on the front door.
Still, he swept over the abandoned base several times, making sure there was no unfriendlies around; making sure there were no hidden weapons painting him. Once he was certain of this, he turned back and met the rest of the unit about fifteen miles east of the abandoned base. He pulled up alongside Truck One and delivered a nav light Morse code message.
“Looks good,” he blinked. “Suggest we put down ASAP.”
Inside of fifteen minutes, they had done just that.
They landed with no problems, and the huge choppers were pushed inside the last remaining hangar. It was a tight fit, but with some creative angling, all four finally squeezed in.
Now all they had to do was wait. And pray.
Ricco and Gillis were still in bad shape. The SEAL doctors had treated them throughout the escape flight, giving them oxygen and bandaging the multitude of wounds both men had sustained in the crash landing on the mountain. They had been taken out of their fuel-drenched flight suits and put into spares rounded up from others in the unit. Both pilots were now lying on makeshift stretchers, clad in Army T-shirts, Marine pants, and Air Force underwear.
Only now were they able to tell their tale to Smitz, Norton, Delaney, and Chou.
Though the Hook had developed engines problems en route, their refueling went well, they said. But then the ArcLight gunship showed up and blew the C-130 refueler out of the sky, taking the Hook down with it—or so it must have appeared. The chopper was mortally wounded and going down fast. But that was when Ricco did a very strange thing: He turned off the Hook’s one good engine about five thousand feet from impact. Killing the engine allowed the rotor’s kinetic motion to level them out—an old chopper trick Ricco had somehow picked up. It saved their lives. Once the chopper was stable, he was able to restart the engine, and it gave them enough power to stay airborne—but just barely. It was all they could do to keep the chopper at two hundred feet altitude.
They made the dash back to the Bat Cave, flying perilously low over villages, highways, army encampments. Thus their rather spectacular arrival back at the not-so-hidden mountain base. Everything was rather foggy after that.
This tale took about twenty minutes to tell. Neither man could get out a complete sentence without requiring a fix from the SEALs’ emergency oxygen tank. Ricco was especially woozy.
After hearing the story, Norton pulled Delaney away from the rest of the group.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked his partner.
“I think they’re delirious,” Delaney told him. “Do you really believe those two have all that in them?”
Norton shrugged and looked back at the two ailing pilots.
“They came down to the deck when we needed them that night during Desert Storm,” he said. “And it would have been damn easy for them to have just plunked down someplace close to Kuwait and walked across the border.”
Delaney took another look back at the pilots. They’d inhaled a lot of fumes and their skin had been drenched with aviation gas, not exactly a healthy situation.
“God, you mean I’m going to have to start admiring these guys now?” he asked.
“Someone has to be a hero in this big fat waste of time,” Norton said, his tone turning bitter. “At least they might have a chance to keep flying. As for you and me, we’ll be lucky if they let us shovel shit somewhere.”
“I can handle that,” Delaney replied.
But one aspect of the tanker pilots’ story raised a very disturbing question. Norton and Delaney were now joined by Chou and Smitz in the most isolated corner of the abandoned hangar to discuss it.
“Do you think these guys are hallucinating and just imagined the ArcLight killed their tanker?” Smitz asked under his breath. “Gas fumes can do that to you, I hear. Make you see things.”
“That part of their story really doesn’t make much sense,” Chou said in a whisper. “I mean, how would the ArcLight know that the Hook was refueling and where to go to find it?”
The four men just stared at each other. Not liking what they were thinking.
“Turn it around, though,” Smitz said. “Say it was true—why would the ArcLight go after the tanker?”
“Unless they were going after both the tanker and the Hook,” Norton said grimly.
“Which means they really know what we’ve been up to,” Chou said.
A dreadful silence fell among them.
Finally Delaney broke it.
“Listen, I’ve been trying to hold this in,” he began. “But I think now is the time to speak my piece … any objections?”
Norton eyed him sternly. Don’t tell them about Angel, he was trying to say.