CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Tim rode in a 1989 MD helicopter. Not a single cloud, created by man or God, populated that morning’s expansive blue sky. Yet, a roving shadow of rotating blades and visually amorphous shapes blanketed the land.
His particular ship spent almost twenty years in Hawaii, flying tourists over a specific, uninhabited island known for its lush vegetation, heavy boar population, and rumors of cannibals.
Somewhere along the way, the craft lost its doors. Wind whipped through the interior. The noise deafened. The sight awed. The helicopter nearest his stretched an extra six feet and was painted in a faded yellow. A lime green stripe ran along the side, as if its past life involved promoting Mellow Yellow soda.
Tim’s helicopter soared on the northern (left) edge of the armada, close to the middle of the pack. The MD expected to touch down twenty-one minutes after the old steel tankers that led the fleet. Each would hit the ground, off-load their troops, and return to the sky.
Standing in an aged helicopter, the steady vibrations of the craft kept his body strumming in-time with his anxiety. Shooting other people lay in his immediate future. Landing twenty-one minutes after the first wave could spoil his chance for glory. Knowing hours of fighting awaited them, possibly days of random skirmishes, brought comfort.
Seven men—the full load under his command as a sergeant—along with a rookie pilot, caused the MD to be four passengers over capacity. A lenient figure. Other crafts of comparable size held ten men, crammed in like clowns in a circus car. However, his team transported two M107, fifty caliber rifles. Four feet ten inches in length, the guns weighed twenty eight and a half pounds when empty; enormous ammunition—each bullet as big as a cigar—more than compensated for the lack of warm bodies.
Though they adhered to a near radio silence, a headset connected him with the pilots and other team leaders. Their tight flight formation allowed for eye contact with passengers of nearby helicopters, linking the army on a more personal front. He read such emotion in each face: nerves, anticipation, fear.
The rotating blades created a deep thwumping that blotted out other sounds and whipped every strand of prairie grass below and head of hair above.
At one point, they crossed over a herd of deer. The dark, encroaching shadow and heavenly roar caused the animals to bolt as one, but as the crafts centered over them, and the tumultuous cacophony worked into their bones, they abandoned ranks, and scattered.
Tim imagined the men at Eridu would first hear a slight buzz, alerting them to something amiss; mounting caution as the rumble reached an approaching thunder. When the sky blackened with metal carriages, terror would set in. These metal carriages carried the end of life as they knew it, or, if Tim got his way, the end of their wickedness, period.
“Twenty miles to visual,” a voice informed him through his headset. They traveled at sixty miles an hour—a little over half the MD’s top speed. He estimated fifteen minutes until a true combat mission unfolded. Holding a strap with one hand and a loaded rifle in the other, Tim concentrated on slowing his heart rate.
Leaning out the side, he bathed in fresh air. After the ablution, he pulled himself back in and surveyed the men under his command.
Three sat shoulder to shoulder in the rear seat. One prayed, one chewed gum, another rocked to his headphones, and a crouched pair across from them tried to converse with shouts.
“Contact approaching, west end. Assume spread pattern,” the voice in Tim’s headset spoke with control, but confusion splashed his thoughts.
Before he pinpointed why, his helicopter yawed left, stumbling him and the two without seats. Securing his footing, he watched out the opposite opening, as over a hundred craft tilted in synchronization. He couldn’t help but appreciate the sight. Thirty feet of distance had separated each. The recent command tripled that. Even if equipped with binoculars and a clear line of sight, identify the model of the farthest craft, from corner to corner, might be impossible. The memory of the words that started this shift interrupted his marveling: contact approaching? What type of contact?
Their government source informed them Eridu had a sophisticated airport. In the unlikely event someone manned the tower, and the pilots flew high enough to be detected, Eridu’s radars would identify the inbound helicopter as far away as twenty miles out. Regardless, their ally assured them they’d sever Eridu’s communications to stop them calling for help.
With the pack flying over the only road in or out for the last few miles, the biggest worry involved the enemy ferrying Mr. Boomul to safety in a private plane. Again, the government man guaranteed them Adisah would remain on his compound. His men would fight.
“Enemy bogey, eleven o’clock, stagger pattern,” the voice in his ear held its command, but something else had crept into the pitch. Fear? Tim peered out of the main windshield for signs of danger.
The MD dropped fifty feet in elevation, taking his stomach with it. Once settled, he noticed the Mellow Yellow representative had risen out of sight, as if the rows alternated between climbing and dropping. Though spawned by a complication, the aerial acrobatics invigorated Tim. He hoped, decades from now, when he met his maker, he could revisit this event, live it from an omnipresent point of view, for he participated in a glorious action.
“Oh, shit. Contact. Fire.” A new voice piped across the headset, ended the command for radio silence. Dozens of voices yelled and cursed.
A pilot screamed for another to watch his three o’clock, the crunch of an in-air collision in the distance, the flash of an explosion.
Another, more portentous sound overtook the headphone chatter and rotor wash. A familiar sound. A noise similar to the spat of a buzz saw, a squeeze and release of a chainsaw: automatic gunfire. Distant, but of a large caliber, rapid, like no weapon he had ever fired. And he’d shot hundreds.
The men in the rear of the MD jockeyed and jostled in their attempt to view the outside commotion. The shifting weight rocked the overburdened aircraft. Using urgent hand signals, Tim commanded his men to stay seated. Their first-time pilot didn’t need extra distractions. Sweat rimmed the pilot’s scalp. His hands held the control stick so tight, Tim feared a snap. And then, from out of the main windshield, Tim witnessed the unimaginable.
Loud reports, and a Lord’s Thorn helicopter skipped backwards in a series of jabs, and then, like a stone loosened from a clasped hand, plummeted to earth. The burning fuselage dropped out of sight. Seconds later, the boom of steel impacting earth.
Another rattle of the massive caliber in the distance. An explosion so intense, he imagined a thousand men shuddered in unison.
Did the bastards at Eridu have an attack chopper? If so, what a grievous oversight. What could the Lord’s Thorn do in defense? Their plans involved a ground assault, with small arms.
The radio chatter reached pandemonium. A man ordered everyone to “break off,” “use evasive maneuvers.”
Wouldn’t help. They’d be torn to shreds.
The silence between each rhythmic spat of gunfire seemed an eternity. Buzz saw, break; buzz saw, break. A life time. Birth, aging, and slaughter. Buzz saw, break. Each silence brought a mourning for a downed helicopter, each brought him closer to the crosshairs.
The pilot climbed to a desired height, pitched the craft forward, and increased their speed. Tim bent into the cockpit. The pilot leaned toward him, and while keeping his eyes forward, shouted, “We’re in one of the fastest machines. Someone’s got to ram that mother. He’s brought down nine of us by my count. If we can’t stop him…”
His words echoed in Tim. Become a martyr? A noble death, sure. It flew in the face of him leading society to a renewed time of faith, sacrifice, and discipline for our Lord.
The pilot shook his head, as if denying his intention. “This guy could wipe out our entire fleet.”
Perhaps a dozen helicopters had elevated to this new height. The MD in the middle. They all converged on a single source.
The assault chopper appeared smaller than he imagined. Compact, painted in a tiger stripe pattern of brown and mustard. Thick with armor, near invisible when plastered against the mountain backdrop.
The attack helicopter flittered, skipped; rose and fell like a hummingbird. Two gun barrels near its nose flashed, followed by the clattering buzz saw, silence. Tim pursed his lips.
The enemy craft climbed with the grace of a ballerina, ripped off another burst of fire; turned healthy craft to confetti.
The smell of burning fuel suffused with unsullied mountain air. The nearest Lord’s Thorn helicopter appeared a hundred feet from their target. Tim focused on it, willed success into his comrade. If the tan, tiger-striped craft stayed distracted a few more seconds…
A moment before a guaranteed impact, the bumble bee reversed its angle, tilted its nose at the ramming helicopter, activated the buzzsaw.
Tim grimaced at the effect on the commercial vehicle. It lurched to the side as if hit with a three punch combo, dropped out of the sky as if slugged in the gut by a titan.
Tim jumped at the next buzz saw. Damn close now.
Six hundred yards out. Fourth in line. He and his men would soon be dead, in a vain sacrifice.
He slipped into a quiet acceptance. He envisioned the enemy pilot relaxed in that cockpit, listening to Mozart, sniffing an aged cognac before finding a target and depressing the trigger.
The kamikaze pilots were adding difficulty. Longer breaks between kills, but it seemed the entire mission was lost; unless this guy ran out of bullets.
Another destroyed craft. This close, Tim spotted the softball-size holes left by the ammunition. He secretly hoped one of those massive rounds took him in the chest. That seemed preferable to screaming in a freefall.
Tim’s eyes grew wide with an idea: The Fifty cals in the back. His false hope ended before it began. They lacked the time to dig out the guns, let alone load, aim, and fire.
Giving his life for his cause, his Lord, and his men created no dilemma, but accepting that service would be as human fodder depressed him.
Three crafts back. The preceding duo went high and low.
Tim rubbed the patches on his vest. “God, grant them success. Thank you for all of your blessing, for the gift of life. Accept me and my men into your heavenly embrace.”
A moment before he decided to join his men in the rear—pass along his peace—an object entered his peripheral. A small, two-person reconnaissance helicopter, painted all black, hovered over the eastern mountain ridge, as if a spectator to the abattoir of steel.
Buzz saw, break. The lead Lord’s Thorn helicopter exploded. Tim was now second in line.
A beach-ball size periscope hung from the spectator’s bottom. An Army XL42 spotter. The craft looked new, waxed. What was it doing here?
It dipped behind the mountain, leaving Tim to wonder if he hallucinated the image. Before he processed it all, a craft he clearly recognized popped up from behind that a ridge line. He’d had a poster of an Apache AH-64 on his wall since the age of twelve. A wipe of his eyes proved its reality.
The Apache floated in the bumblebee’s blind spot. It casually faced the dancing copter of death. A cough of smoke erupted under the Apache’s right wing, headed straight for their enemy.
Tim slapped the pilot’s shoulder, squeezed. The pilot yanked on the stick, throwing everyone off-balance as the MD climbed and banked. Thankfully, Tim witnessed the heat-guided rocket meet their nemesis, transform metal into fire, heavy fragments, and an explosion loud enough to ripple the valley.
The cheers of a thousand men overtook the whooping of rotor blades.
Tim shook the pilot in triumph.
“Afternoon, gentlemen,” a new voice came over the radio—clear, crisp—silencing the celebration. “Captain Riley Parker, United States Army, at your service. Hoo-rah!”
Tim had never wanted to be an American soldier. He often envisioned them as his enemy. Those feelings vanished as he joined a hundred other men yelling, “Hoo-rah,” into the microphone.
“You gentlemen have a pleasant and safe afternoon. Captain Riley Parker, signing off.”
Voices shouted. The men in the back pumped their fists, cheered, clamped onto one another. Tim didn’t bother asking them to watch their movements. They’d been tested; thwarted evil. He closed his eyes, thanked God; asked Him to help preserve these emotions. Today would always be his first time cheating death.
As the helicopters settled and regrouped, Tim estimated eighty percent of their fleet had survived. His craft assumed a spot on the outer edge of the pack, closest to the approaching city.
Hot waves of anger washed over Tim. This defenseless murder might backfire on the folks at Eridu.
Patting each man on the shoulder, he stared into their eyes until they shared his focus. This had become personal. For all he knew, Alan had been killed.
The chatter on the radio dimmed to words of encouragement, prayers for those fallen. With a bit more determination, the fleet continued toward the sinister home of Adisah Boomul.
* * * *
“Approaching target,” said the voice in his headset. Clear. Distinct, no fear.
The tip of the hotel, La Berce, stood in the distance like a spear thrust in the ground as a challenge.
A red bulb illuminated inside the fuselage, signifying the front of the formation had reached the range of small arms fire. How many of the steel titans initially leading the pack remained? They had expected their outer shell to draw the majority of the rifle rounds. The floor boards and cockpit had been lined with Kevlar to provide extra safety. Against ten millimeter cannon fire, it’d offer protection similar to toilet tissue.
Buildings clearly in view now. Movement on rooftops. The familiar pop-pop-pop of small arms fire. Originally, he expected that sound to jack his nerves—knowing people fired at him and his—but after the earlier terror, recognizing the caliber brought relief.
“Contact,” came through the radio.
Contact? A surge of adrenaline. A survey out the windshield. No flighty choppers. Tim eased back, rubbed the patches on his vest, prayed for the safety of the lead men.
Real gunfire started. Continual patters, rifle reports echoed off the canyon. He gripped the strap and leaned out. Each rooftop held armed Eridu staff. These were the leftovers, shooting in hopes of a lucky hit. The majority of their forces would protect the Atrium, where they housed the equipment, and most-likely, Adisah.
After the earlier battle, Tim now disliked flying on the outermost edge, closest to the buildings, basically defenseless.
The increased sound of the gunfire alerted him that someone targeted the MD. They passed within a hundred yards of the nearest building. Plenty close enough to take a round. Using an inner calm, he visualized the landing. It would be chaotic, men screaming from gaping wounds, explosions all around. He would spot Adisah Boomul in the distance. The man would be rotating his arms in wide circles incanting some satanic prayer to summon some hideous demon from the pits of Hell. The earth would start to rumble as the beast woke. Some men would panic, a few others run. Not Tim, he’d aim down his rifle sight, and from two hundred yards, score a head shot, splattering brain mist and matter. No more warlock. Hero born.
Tink. A bullet punched through the floorboard in between his men, bringing him back to the present. Judging from the relieved grins on the surrounding faces, no one had been hit.
Through the headset, “Wave one down.”
Tim glanced outside, knowing that the Lord’s Thorn had boots on the ground. The two-way battle had commenced.
A trio of Eridu soldiers ran across a roof three hundred yards ahead. They lumbered with a tilt, as if weighted, drawing Tim’s attention. The three men worked as a unit. As he recognized their maneuvers, his blood froze.
The men lugged an A-98 Law rocket launcher—rectangular, the length of a pool stick, square as a small microwave—a weapon capable of firing four heat-seeking stinger missiles.
The man in the center hefted the metal onto his shoulders, his spotter selected Tim’s approaching MD.
Tim snatched at the pilot’s shoulder, tugged, pointed to the trio as a cloud of smoke engulfed them.
The pilot yanked the stick right.
Tim stumbled to the back for a better view. The missile traveled leisurely toward them in a looping patter that if followed with the eyes alone would cause vertigo.
The pilot would either raise them high enough to avoid impact or they’d explode. Deciding to increase his survival odds, he moved his rifle to a shooter’s grip, clicked off the safety, aimed, and fired a three-round burst at the missile. Dat-dat-dat.
He fired again.
On it came.
Another short burst.
Tingling heat he identified as horror filled him as the rocket tilted up, keeping with their climb. With his few remaining seconds, he looked off in the distance, at the previous location of the Apache and its spotter. Something would save him. This wasn’t his destiny.
The scream of the missile’s propulsion system overtook the thump of the rotors.
Closing his eyes, he rubbed the patch on his chest.
One of his men screamed.
In the middle of thanking God for all He had bestowed, a thirty-eight pound rocket, traveling at a hundred and twenty miles per hour, slammed into the center of Tim’s chest, drove him into the ceiling, and exploded with the force of three hundred sticks of dynamite.