There’s a full moon up there, somewhere, thought Master Chief Eddie Finch (Ret.), watching the low clouds blowing over his head. At least I think there is … .
He was on his knees, a large flashlight in one hand and a pair of hedge clippers in the other. A small hatchet was close by, too, but he was woefully unprepared for the job that lay ahead of him. He was cutting down weeds, hundreds of them, poking through the cracks in the old CG airstrip. Some were the size of small trees, thus the hatchet. But he’d been at it for nearly four hours now and he was still only a third of the way up the 3,600-foot runway. A very strange way to spend a Saturday evening.
It was almost midnight. Finch was cold, and it was dark without the moon, and, at 62 years old, he knew this was going to leave his knees in agony for weeks. Still he kept pulling and chopping. The job had to be done, because an old friend had asked him to do it.
An old friend named Bobby Murphy.
Cape Lonely Air Station was the most isolated CG base on the Atlantic seaboard. It was built on a cliff nearly 300 feet above the ocean. Six hundred acres, held in by a rusty chain-link fence, the road to get here ran two miles through a thick pine forest. A wildlife preserve bordered the station on
the north; a 20-mile stretch of empty sand dunes and beach lay to its south. The closest highway, old U.S. Route 3, was more than 35 miles away.
There was a time, though, when Cape Lonely was the busiest Coast Guard station on the East Coast. CG aircraft from all over came here for engine change-outs and maintenance checks. New pilots endlessly practiced touch-and-go landings on its extra-wide runway. But that was back when the Coast Guard not only rescued people in peril but also searched for Russian submarines. Ten years ago, the base had been downsized to the point of nonexistence. It was like a ghost town now.
The only two things of value left at Cape Lonely were a small lighthouse and a Loran radio navigation positioning hut. Both ran automatically. An administration building, some support huts, and four dilapidated aircraft hangars were the only other structures remaining of the once-bustling air station. Behind the hangars was an aeronautical junkyard, a place where old CG aircraft had come to die. Airframes, big and small, wings, tail sections, landing gear assemblies, all rotting away, many leaking nasty fluids into the soil. No surprise, Cape Lonely was a hazardous waste site, too.
The wind was really starting to blow now and Eddie Finch knew rain might not be far away. He yanked up a milkweed that was the size of a small conifer. He was amazed at the size of some of the plant life up here. Must be all that chemical crap in the ground, he’d thought more than once.
He finally stopped for a much-needed breather; he hadn’t worked this hard since he’d retired 10 years ago. He checked his watch. It was a few minutes past twelve. He looked down the remaining length of runway and groaned. God, did he still have a long haul ahead of him!
He was not up here alone at least. Not exactly anyway. Way down in Hangar 4A, he could see a very dull light peeking out from beneath the huge rusty door. You’d think a couple of those guys would come out here and help me pull weeds, he thought. But then again, they had their jobs to do as well.
Finch put his head down and got back to work. But suddenly from behind him came a strange sound. Even though he was alone on the old runway moments before, five armed men had materialized out of nowhere and were now standing over him. They were clad in weird black suits and ski masks and carrying rifles. Each man was also wearing a black rain poncho, all five blowing mightily in the wind. They seemed frightening, dangerous even, if a little frayed around the edges. Like a SWAT team that had lost its way.
Finch just looked up at them, though, and said, “Oh, it’s only you guys … .”
It was the ghost team minus Hunn and Ozzi—Fox, Puglisi, Bates, Gallant, and Ryder—and all five were still miserable. It had been a long, hot trip down here in Li’s very small car, with all their gear. They hadn’t eaten anything of substance really and were down to rationing cigarettes. Except for a few interrupted naps, none of them had slept much since busting out of Gitmo seven days ago. Add in the headful of stuff they’d just learned up in D.C., the result was they were all feeling punchy.
They trooped inside the admin building now. It was a four-story cement block structure, its white paint all but chipped away, located on the other side of the landing strip from the cliff. Finch led them down to the large mess hall, a reminder of the former glory of this place. The interior looked like something from a time capsule, though, right down to the yellowed recruiting posters falling off the walls. An old Coleman lantern provided the only light these days. Finch produced a pot of coffee and five paper cups but then said, “Sorry, we’re outta cream and sugar.”
The five men collapsed into metal folding chairs set up around a cafeteria-style table. “Just as long as it’s hot,” Fox mumbled.
They’d just taken their first tentative sips of the coffee when, far at the other end of the mess hall, another door opened and eight very elderly men, dressed as if they had just come off the golf course, filed in and sat down. This was strange … . The old guys exchanged glances with the team members, but there was no formal greeting.
Finch finished pouring coffee for the team, then walked across the mess hall and had a brief conversation with the group of elderly men. When he returned, he had a bag of doughnuts with him. He passed them out to the ghosts.
“Those old boys hate to see anyone go hungry,” Finch told them.
Finch himself looked like a trim Santa Claus. White hair, white beard, Saint Nick after a year on Atkins. An NCO in the Coast Guard Reserves, he’d been stationed here at Cape Lonely, off and on, from 1964 until it went nonstatus a decade ago. A bit stooped over, with very thick glasses, he could have been mistaken for a retired grocer or a banker.
But he’d been a godsend to the ghost team. And not just for the coffee and doughnuts.
If not for him, they would all probably be back in prison.
“I won’t ask you how it went up in D.C.,” he said to Fox now. “I’m just glad you made it back in one piece.”
“We’re not staying very long this time, either, I hope,” Fox replied, checking his watch. It was almost twelve-fifteen. By his reckoning, they were already three hours behind schedule. “We’ve got to get moving as soon as possible.”
Finch just nodded toward the elderly men at the other end of the mess. “We’re ready on this end,” he said. “All of use … .”
Fox took a huge bite of a doughnut and washed it down with a gulp of coffee.
“Why were you out there pulling weeds on the runway?” Fox asked. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”
Finch rubbed his aching knees. “‘Our mutual friend’ said that we might be needing the airstrip again soon. Not for you guys. But maybe for something else. That would make it twice in about twenty years.”
Fox thought about this for a moment—why would they be needing the runway again? he wondered. But then he just went back to his doughnut. He already had enough weirdness floating around his head; he didn’t need to be thinking about something else.
The others ate and drank their coffee, too, but their respite
would indeed be brief. Between bites, Puglisi checked over the team’s small cache of weapons, now minus the hunting rifle. Gallant meanwhile had been carrying most of their ammunition in a backpack. He now laid it all out on a nearby table, making sure none of the rounds had come apart or got wet. Right beside him, Bates unwrapped his laptop, plugged it into an ancient phone jack, and was soon on-line. As for Ryder, he had other things to do. He drained his coffee quickly, lit one of his last cigarettes, then grabbed a flashlight and headed back outside.
The clouds above were still heavy, and fast moving, but the moon was finally poking through in a few places. He walked to the edge of the cliff, for a moment looking down at the sea crashing against the rocks below. Finch had told them earlier that when the government finally closed this place sometime in the coming year it was going to be developed for luxury condominiums. Three levels, ocean views, very private location.
Nice place to live, Ryder thought. If I had a million bucks …
He power-dragged the cigarette to its end, then flicked the expended butt over the side of the cliff, watching the tiny orange glow all the way down. Then he started across the wide, broken runway.
The four old hangars were all the same size, and all four were in the same state of disrepair. Ryder walked up to the first hangar and examined its padlock. He took a key from his pocket and tried to put it in, but the lock would not cooperate. He tried again—still no luck. The lock was rusty even though it had been placed here just a week before. The salt air had already corroded it.
Maybe not such a good place to live, Ryder thought.
The key finally slipped in and the lock popped open. It was so suddenly unleashed, though, the door abruptly swung out a foot, nearly knocking Ryder on his ass. He managed to push it back in place and roll it open. Then he turned on the flashlight and pointed it into the hangar.
That’s when he saw the airplane again. The Transall-2
turboprop special. The cargo plane from hell. Former owner: the Iranian Air Force.
The plane was a mess. There were small trees still wrapped around its wings, clumps of weeds still stuck in its engines. It was covered with sea salt, some of it thick as mud. All of the wing-mounted landing lights had been shattered, as were two of the eight cockpit windows. Of the 16 tires on the craft’s landing gear, a half-dozen were flat.
It looked like a shitbox on wings, but it had carried them here, somehow, from Cuba, so from that point of view it wasn’t a shitbox at all. In fact, it had played a very crucial role in their escape. Busting out of Guantanamo, was one story. It was getting here that had been the really hard part.
Using purloined weapons and shackle keys they’d hidden in the crotches of their prison uniforms, the ghosts had taken control of the transfer plane as soon as it lifted off from Gitmo. The three Iranians onboard took a swim for Allah—considering their no-win situation, it would have happened to them sooner or later. With Ryder and Gallant flying the plane, they’d climbed to 7,200 feet but not any higher, a wise choice, as it turned out. The Transall-2 was not that difficult a plane to fly, in good weather, that is. But at night, in the middle of a small hurricane, it proved a bitch. The fierce storm had been their one and only cover, though, and it topped out at 7,500 feet. As bumpy as it was, they’d been forced to stay in the thick of it if their escape plan had any chance of succeeding.
Just seconds after they’d reached 7,200 feet, Bates plugged a small handheld device called a signal diverter (slipped to him by one of the Marine guards) into the plane’s flight computer. With just a few buttons pushed, Bates was soon manipulating every primary control on the airplane except steering and throttles. He then began punching commands directly into the flight computer itself, intentionally overloading it. It actually made a sizzling sound before it finally went kaput. At this point Ryder and Gallant had to start flying the plane manually, no hydraulic assists, no autopilot, just muscles and wires. Then Bates pushed one last button,
sending a barrage of false signals to the plane’s safety control systems: its environmental suite, its temperature sensors, and most especially its flight data recorder. These bogus signals were designed to do one thing: mimic a sudden explosive fire aboard the aircraft.
At that moment, Ryder and Gallant put the plane into a gut-wrenching dive, this while the others onboard held on for their lives. Ten seconds into this plunge, Bates administered the coup de grâce, blacking out all communications, both electronic and radio, from the plane. To anyone monitoring the flight, like the air traffic controllers at Guantanamo, it appeared the Transall had suffered a massive short-circuit, then a fire, then an explosion that literally blew it out of the sky. Even the air safety computers in the Gitmo control tower had been footled. Automatically clicking into a search and rescue program, one studied the last signals from the plane and concluded that not only would nothing bigger than a seat cushion be found at the crash site but also the storm would scatter the wreckage for miles.
It was only because Ryder and Gallant were able to pull the plane out of its death dive at 500 feet that some kind of crash didn’t occur. The plunge had rattled every nut and bolt onboard and had shattered most of the interior lights as well. Once level, though, they’d brought the plane down even lower, right to the wave tops, below any radar net they knew of, U.S., Cuban, or otherwise.
Only then did they turn north. Toward America. If they remained at this altitude, they thought, and the weather stayed awful, they just might be able to sneak up the East Coast and reach their destination in just a couple hours. At least that was the plan.
It was brutally turbulent, though, and the plane had sounded like it would come apart at any moment. But the escapees breathed a sigh of relief once they left Cuban airspace. It appeared their ruse had worked. They’d even relaxed a little, hoping to maybe see the dull lights of the Florida coastline through the storm. Up to that point, it had been so far, so good.
Then they found the bomb.
It had been taped to the roof of the tiny modular commode squeezed in behind the flight deck’s engineering station. Placed there days before, no doubt, by a member of Iran’s notorious secret police, it was discovered when Puglisi went into the Porta Potti to take a leak and smelled the distinctly sweet odor of plastique. He’d quickly informed the others, and it didn’t take much brainpower to realize the Iranian mullahs had intended to blow up the transfer plane all along.
Luckily, Puglisi knew about bombs, including ones like this. Hooked to a primitive altimeter assembly, it had been set to go off once the plane reached 7,500 feet. That’s why it had been wise, if not totally dumb luck, that Ryder and Gallant had leveled off at 7,200. They’d come within 300 feet of blowing themselves to Kingdom Come.
Disarming the bomb was another matter. It was very crude and unstable. The altimeter-trigger assembly was held together by nothing more than an elastic band. Rather than defusing it and taking the chance of something going wrong, Puglisi strongly suggested that they stay as low as possible and take care of the bomb once they were on the ground. Of course, flying low had been part of the plan all along. Ryder and Gallant had already been busting arm and ass just keeping the damn plane a few feet above the minitsunamis kicked up by the Atlantic gale. One wrong move and it would have been all over for them very, very quickly.
The anxiety of the bomb, the shitty overall condition of the airplane, the fact that despite all their deceptions, they still might be picked up on U.S. radar, and that would mean facing at least a couple all-weather-equipped F-15s or F-16s whose pilots would be working under the post-9/11 rules of shoot first and ask questions later—all these things had made the dash up the stormy Atlantic seaboard a bit uncomfortable, to say the least.
“We might wind up in the drink yet,” Gallant had said more than once during the trip.
So it was almost a surprise when, 122 minutes later,
they’d found themselves approaching the tiny isthmus called Cape Lonely.
The storm had been almost as bad here as down at Gitmo, which was a good thing, because it had indeed helped mask their flight up. But at that point, they needed to get some air under them to rise above the cliff, turn around, and land. Though loath to go up even an inch, Ryder and Gallant had eased the balky craft to a hair-raising 3,000 feet. They didn’t linger there for very long, though. Putting the plane into a wide bank, they lined the nose up with the northern end of the runway and started back down. They’d had no contact with anyone on the ground, of course. This was strictly a seat-of-the-pants landing. No lights. No wind direction. So it wasn’t until the very last instant that they realized the airstrip was badly in need of a haircut. They came down in a small forest of ragweed and nettle, hitting hard and fast. Ryder and Gallant had to stand on the brakes with such force, three tires blew out—Pop! Pop! Pop!—one right after another, each one sounding, yes, just like a small bomb going off.
They’d needed every inch of the overgrown runway to get the Persian beast to finally grind itself to a halt, accompanied by a cloud of sand and dust and muck and pieces of weeds being shredded up by the big, wet propellers. It seemed like the screeching would never stop, even when they nosed down into the ditch at the far end of the strip. The front wheel finally collapsed, though—and so did Ryder and Gallant, right over the controls, both exhausted. To their utter dismay, they’d discovered their fellow escapees had dozed during most of the trip. Only the less than gentle landing woke them up.
Recovering from their ordeal, both pilots had looked back at their groggy colleagues in the cargo compartment, yawning and stretching like they’d just got off the couch from a nap.
“They’ll pay for this,” Gallant had grumbled.
All this happened a week ago, and this was Ryder’s first look at the plane since. They’d headed north for D.C. not 30 minutes after landing. (That ironic trip was made mostly by
Greyhound bus, a nightmare of cramped conditions and broken air-conditioning that made them all yearn for the Transall.) He’d left something behind on the plane that night, though. He was here now to get it back.
He climbed inside the airplane; the cargo hold smelled of low tide and oil. The flight deck itself was as messy as Li’s house. Finch and his cohorts had been up here trying to steer the beast while pulling it out of the ditch and into the hangar with their small fleet of jeeps and SUVs—all this after first disposing of the bomb. Ryder was glad he missed that little adventure.
He sat down at the controls and looked over the flight panel. He threw a few switches, but nothing would even turn on. He tried the engines, just for the hell of it, but there was little power left inside the plane. There was no way anything was going to start. The Transall appeared dead for good.
Enough of that. He reached up to the sun flap above the pilot’s side window, and there it was: the photograph he’d hidden here. It showed a beautiful woman, in her garden, just turning to smile after being caught unawares by the camera.
It was his wife, Maureen.
The only true love of his life.
Gone now almost four years … .
She’d been aboard Flight 175, the second plane to go into the World Trade Towers. Ryder had taken this picture a few months before that dark day and had carried it with him ever since. Yet he’d left it here, inside the Transall, after landing seven days ago. For some reason, he’d decided not to bring it up to D.C. with him. Perhaps he’d been afraid that if he got caught doing what he was doing they would take it away from him after he was arrested and he’d never see it again. Or maybe it had been something else.
But at last he had it back again—a great relief. He looked at it now, and as always, her eyes looked right back out at him. Blond. Sexy. Sweet. Deep blue beauty with a big smile.
Damn … .
The flap where he’d stashed the picture fell back down
suddenly, startling him. Its hinge had been shaken loose in the landing just like everything else aboard the airplane. But there was a small mirror attached to it, and now Ryder was looking right into it. From forehead to chin he didn’t recognize the person in the reflection. Skin burned and creased, hair not cut in months. Nose looking broken, though it wasn’t. Lips cracked, beard erupting. Chin quivering. But it was his eyes—they scared him the most. Red and watery, they looked absolutely insane.
He flipped the mirror back up in its place and pushed it in so it stayed there, cursing the cosmos for this unneeded piece of synchronicity. He already had enough reminders that he was spiraling downward. He didn’t need any more.
He returned to Maureen’s picture, gleaming in the flashlight. If he’d ever had any doubts about what he and the others were about to do, those misgivings were gone now. She’d been his life, and the mass murderers of Al Qaeda had killed her—and in doing so had killed him as well. He was not the same guy he was before her death. Back then, he was a highly paid test pilot for Boeing and the Air Force, this after many years of flying black ops. He was a normal person, or as normal as a test pilot could be. Then, in a blink, she was gone and he knew he would never be normal again. At the bottom of the blackest pit on the blackest days that followed, he’d never got through the last stage of grief: acceptance. Just couldn’t. Instead, he’d jumped right over it to the next emotion: revenge. Get mad; then get even. That’s what he was doing in the secret outfit.
That’s what they were all doing here.
He put the picture in his pocket and wiped his crazy eyes. Someone was approaching.
It was Gallant. He stuck his head in the flight compartment, half a doughnut still hanging out of his mouth.
“You think flying this pig was a lot of fun?” he asked Ryder. “Wait ’til you see what we’re riding in next … .”
The rest of the team were already standing at the entrance to the fourth hangar when Ryder and Gallant approached.
Refueled by the half-gallon of coffee they’d just split between them, the ghosts were jumpy now, anxious to get to the next step.
Master Chief Finch had prepared himself well for this moment. He had a regulation three-ring binder with him and was reading it by flashlight. He was calling out numbers, weights, speed, things like that. But as the two pilots drew near, Ryder heard Fox say to Finch, “You gotta convince these two guys first. They’re the ones who’ll have to fly this thing.” The other team members were staring into the air barn with shared looks of amusement and horror. This was not what any pilot wanted to hear or see.
Ryder and Gallant reached the door of the hangar and finally saw what the others were looking at.
It was a helicopter. A very old helicopter.
“What the fuck is that?” Ryder just moaned.
Finch went back to his three-ring binder again, returning to the first page.
“This is a Sikorsky Super S-58,” he announced. “They used to call it the ‘Sky Horse.’ Big engine. Lots of power. Lots of range. New tires. Ain’t it a beauty?”
Well, that was in the eye of the beholder, Ryder thought. This thing looked like something from a bad fifties war movie. It was big—nearly 55 feet long. And bulky—at least 15 feet off the ground, probably more. And Sky Horse? It looked more like a huge insect. The nose was bulbous and thick, the cockpit stuck on top of it almost as an afterthought. It had a gigantic four-bladed rotor, the tips of which drooped so much, they nearly touched the hangar floor. This made the thing look not only ancient but very sad as well. And it got worse. Most advanced choppers these days needed little or no tail rotor for stabilization. Microprocessors did much of the work. The tail rotor on this craft, however, was about the size of one of the propellers on the Transall-2. This meant the copter would be very hard to keep stabilized in the air, and that would make for very bumpy riding.
“We can’t go in this thing,” Gallant said now; he was the
team’s lead copter pilot, so he would know. “It’s too big, too ugly. Too old.”
Finch just shrugged. “It’s also all we got.”
Gallant went up and touched the helicopter on its nose, as if he had to convince himself that it was real. “But … when was the last time its engines were even turned over?”
“Last night,” Finch told him simply. “Those old boys who shared their doughnuts with you? They put this thing together in six days. From scraps out back, and stuff they stole, and stuff they’ve had here in storage since I was a recruit, and, of course, stuff from Radio Shack.”
Everyone’s jaw dropped.
“Those old guys built this for us—from Radio Shack parts?”
“Rebuilt it, yes,” Finch replied. “Mostly in the cockpit.”
Gallant was almost speechless. They all were.
“But have they flown it?” Gallant pressed him.
Finch just shook his head. “If they say it will fly … then believe me, it will fly.”
Exasperation now filled the air. Gallant just looked at Fox and then walked away. On cue, the rest of the team members left, too. It would be up to the DSA officer to explain the situation to Finch.
“Look, Eddie,” Fox began. “We realize these are difficult times. And we’re all taking a great amount of risk here, with what we are doing, especially you. But my friends and I have a long way to go, and a lot of things to do when we get there. We were expecting something a little more … well, up-to-date.”
Finch just shrugged again. “Besides finding you a place to land, ‘our mutual friend’ also asked me to provide you with something to get you where you needed to go.” he said. “Something untraceable. Something with long range and power. And he gave me exactly two weeks to get it done. This is what I came up with.”
Fox shifted nervously. “Well, I appreciate that,” he began again, stumbling a bit. “But it’s just that your friends look,
well, very retired, let’s say. And my friends here are used to having real sharp tacks working on their things.”
Finch just looked back at him—and then laughed. He handed Fox the three-ring binder.
“Believe me, Major,” he said. “If those guys say it will fly, it will fly.”
With that, he walked away.
The team reassembled and discussed the situation amid a storm of windblown cigarette smoke.
They were under the gun. They had to get moving. They had a timetable to meet, and if they were just a few minutes late, it might mean disaster. As unappealing as the Sky Horse seemed, it was obviously the only ride in town. Where they were going they couldn’t walk. Or take a bus. Or Li’s little Toyota. The S-58 would have to do.
Ryder and Gallant climbed up into the old chopper’s cockpit. At first it seemed to have so many levers and dials, it was like they were seeing double. It made the Transall-2 look like the space shuttle. But while everything original was very old, they were surprised to see the control panel had three laptops connected to it by cable wires and modem strips—a shoestring adaptation of a modern flight computer. There was also a GPS device hooked up for navigation, a heads-up display for both pilots, and a bank of TV monitors carrying video transmissions from small cameras placed strategically around the old copter. It looked ancient, but some very high-tech additions had been made inside the S-58.
But still there was the question of flying it. Finch’s three-ring binder helped them locate most of the crucial controls: the power systems, steering, and so on. They’d both learned how to fly an enormous Kai seaplane during their last operation in the Philippines. But the Kai was a relatively new design. The Sky Horse had been built approximately the same year Gallant had been born. It would take the best of pilots days, if not weeks, to learn how to fly the copter properly.
Trouble was, Ryder and Gallant had less than a half hour to accomplish the same thing.
Meanwhile, down below, Fox, Puglisi, and Bates were helping install some even more unusual additions to the old copter. Finch had wheeled in a large wooden box wrapped in red metal strapping. His weed clippers broke this binding to reveal three .50-caliber M-2 machine guns inside, huge weapons still used by many militaries around the world today.
The three team members helped Finch set up one of these guns in the helicopter’s nose, bolting it to a rigid brace set in a hole cored out right below the elevated flight deck. The two other enormous guns were then put on swivel mounts attached to either end of the left-side cargo door. The swivels gave both guns nearly 180-degree fields of fire, but they could be taken off quickly, for hand-held use too. Their attached ammo belts seemed to go on for miles.
Fox asked, “Where did you ever get these?”
Finch smiled slyly. “Let’s just say ‘our mutual friend’ told me they might smell like shamrocks.”
They finished bolting the third gun to its movable stand. “This is a lot of firepower,” Finch told them. “No one will expect you to have anything more than a squirt gun aboard this chopper, if that. You’ll surprise a lot of people, if you have to.”
Fox examined the M-2s and just shook his head. “If they catch us, we’ll get life in prison just for these guns alone … .”
No one disagreed with him.
It was about 1:00 A.M. when they finally pushed the old chopper out onto the cracked, weed-strewn airstrip. Things had moved quickly. The copter was fueled up. The machine guns were cleaned and readied. What little gear the team had of their own was stored onboard. But they were still at least two hours behind schedule.
After a few false starts, Ryder and Gallant finally managed to get the aircraft’s prestart systems running. Fuel pressure up. Engine oil heated to proper temperature. Batteries holding even. Gyro in place and balanced.
Gallant pushed the starter—and the engine behind them burst to life. No rattle, no roll. Barely a noise. Both pilots watched in amazement as the control indicator needles all climbed in unison, almost like an orchestra timed to the engine’s increasing RPMs. Once engaged, those four droopy blades straightened right out and started spinning with a controlled frenzy. Incredibly, they were almost silent, too.
The attached laptops lit up with a myriad of colors now, showing them readouts on just about everything onboard. These visual displays helped identify more newly added equipment around them. A high-powered radio receiver promised to let the pilots monitor all sorts of communications from miles away. A FLIR set would allow them to see very far in the dark. The onboard video monitors would allow them to see above, below, in front of, and behind the copter. They had a weapons panel that would allow the pilots to fire the .50-caliber gun in the nose. They had flare dispensers, hard-points to attach bombs, even large inflatable pontoons attached to the landing gear struts that would allow them to set down on water if they had to.
Ryder and Gallant were simply amazed. But even bigger surprises were about to come.
The computers automatically raised the power up to takeoff speed. Their improvised flight computer screen flashed a message indicating that one push of the key enter button would lift them off. Ryder and Gallant just shrugged and Gallant hit the magic button.
Suddenly they were airborne.
To those on the ground, it was an astonishing sight.
One moment, the big chopper was idling quietly, the huge rotor blades creating a mighty downwash. In the next, the aircraft literally jumped into the air. The power was startling, yet the helicopter itself remained amazingly quiet.
They watched as the copter translated to forward flight. Suddenly it shot forward almost as if it were jet powered. It went over their heads, turned right, and soared way out over the ocean in just a matter of seconds. It continued a wide
bank, circling back over the base once before streaking out toward the water again.
Then the helicopter began a very steep, very fast climb. It went up not unlike a Harrier jet, all power and exhaust. It climbed so high, so fast, those on the ground quickly lost sight of it as it disappeared into the clouds. They waited. Five seconds, ten seconds, twenty …
Suddenly they were besieged by a great whoosh of wind and spray. An instant later the huge chopper went right over their heads no more than 30 feet off the ground. It had come at them from behind, but they hadn’t seen it or heard it until it was practically on top of them. The ghosts hit the deck; that’s how sudden the copter’s appearance had been.
The aircraft then banked sharp left, back out over the ocean, and, incredibly, nearly went completely over, showing an agility matched only by the latest supercopters of the day, like the Apache, the Commanche, or the Euro-copter Tiger. It soon righted itself, turning the corner sharply, and began to climb again.
This time, though, it swooped up to about two thousand feet and then went into a sudden hover. It turned 360 degrees on its axis, displaying amazing agility, before coming back down again and pointing its nose out toward the open sea. Suddenly there was a huge flash of light. For an anxious moment or two, those on the ground thought something had gone wrong. But no—Ryder and Gallant had simply engaged the big .50-caliber machine gun in the nose. The resulting pyrotechnics lit up the sky like fireworks.
It went on like this for the next ten minutes. It was almost dreamlike, the big chopper flashing all over the sky like some futuristic flying machine. Finally, it came in for a landing, touching down in front of the small crowd of observers with barely a thump, the only noise being the remaining weeds getting stirred up by the huge rotors.
The pilots shut everything down and climbed out to meet the small contingent of elderly men—now forever known as the “Doughnut Boys”—who’d been watching along with the ghosts.
“Who are you guys?” Gallant exclaimed to them.
Finch was also there. He replied for the group. “They are simply good Americans,” he said. “Just like we were told you were.”
Gallant was still shocked, though. “But how were you able to get that piece of—”
“Running like a top?” one of the men finished Gallant’s sentence for him. The others just laughed. The joke certainly was on the two pilots.
Finally one of the group stepped forward, took a picture from his wallet, and showed it to the pilots. It was a photograph of an X-15. One of the most advanced aircraft ever built, it was a rocket plane that could actually fly to the edge of space.
“I just helped rebuild one of these,” the old guy told him. “For NASA. They’re going to start flying it again to test parts for the new shuttle design. But that’s just a hobby. I worked for Lockheed Special Projects for years.”
He turned to his colleagues and started pointing. “And this guy helped design the F-117 Stealth plane. This guy worked on the F-22 Raptor. This guy helped design the Apollo capsule. This guy worked on the Osprey.”
On and on: This guy retired from advanced designs at Boeing. This guy from the Jet Propulsion Lab. This guy former Air America.
Then the spokesman patted Gallant on the shoulder.
“So don’t worry, my friend,” he said. “We did a good job on your chopper. In fact, ‘our mutual friend’ thought you’d appreciate the concept.”
The concept? Ryder thought. Yes—something was beginning to sink in between his ears. When the ghost team was first assembled, they’d been given a very plain-looking, very rusty containership as their ride to war. But the floating hulk actually had billions of dollars of high-tech, top-secret combat and eavesdropping equipment hidden onboard.
Now they had this old helicopter. It looked ancient, harmless even, on the outside. But inside it was packing a punch.
And it could fly fast and quiet. And it could see and hear for miles and do many other things as well.
“How?” was all Ryder could say now.
“You really don’t have to know ‘how,’” the elderly man told him. “The real question is ‘why?’”
Again, the ghosts were puzzled for a moment.
“We have something for you,” the old guy said. “Might explain some of it.”
The Doughnut Boys gathered around the ghosts. This was the first time the team members really got a good look at them. They were big and short, tall and skinny. Bald, glasses, red noses. But they were clearly not just mechanics but rather aeronautical geniuses with resumes listing employers from NASA to the Lockheed Skunkworks.
“We really shouldn’t go into too much detail with each other,” the head Doughnut said. “True, we’re all from deep security environments. But once you’ve ‘gone underground’ it’s best not to know too much about what your friends are doing. But we can tell you this: we know where you are going and what you have to do.
“And we just wanted to say thank you. For what you’ve done before. At Hormuz. At Singapore. In the Philippines. We wanted you to know we appreciate it.”
He had something in his hands. It was in a simple paper bag. He reached in and came out with a crude but crisply folded flag, at least six feet long. It had 13 red and white stripes like a typical American flag, but instead of the field of stars there was a picture of a coiled snake, with the words “Don’t Tread On Me—Ever Again” embroidered underneath it.
“My only son was killed in the Pentagon on September Eleventh,” the old guy went on. “He was helping rescue his office mates when he died. The wife of a man he saved sewed this together for me, stayed up for two days and two nights doing it, for his memorial service. I know it’s not the prettiest flag in creation, but it meant a lot to us then, and it means a lot to me now.”
He retrieved a handkerchief, wiped his eyes once, and then blew his nose.
“This is a great country,” he went on. “But only because its people are great. It’s a brave and fair and moral and honest country, too—but only because a great majority of its people are. This country is not about its politicians or its corporate presidents or its movie stars or its nutty generals. It’s about the guys fighting in Iraq because they feel it’s the right thing to do. It’s about the guys dying in Afghanistan trying to find the rest of those pukes. It’s those cops and firemen who died that day in New York City. It’s about those people who crashed that plane in Pennsylvania so it wouldn’t hit the White House. The world has gone crazy, but that doesn’t mean this country has to be pulled down with it. At times like this, it’s up to us to step up to the plate and try to fix things.”
He looked back down at the flag.
“I’ve been holding on to this for a special occasion,” he went on, fighting off another sniff. “And now that I know about you guys, and what you’ve done and who you really are, well … will you take it with you?”
Ryder and Gallant were speechless. All the ghosts were. Their sad, miserable, aching backs suddenly straightened a bit. The wind had come back to their sails. Ryder shook the guy’s hand.
“Sure we will, pops,” he said softly, taking possession of the flag and handling it with reverence. “It will be our honor … .”
It was time to go.
It seemed to Ryder that between their two visits to Cape Lonely he’d been living atop the cliff for weeks. Added up, though, they’d only been at the base a few hours combined.
There were a few more items Finch had for them that were loaded aboard. A cardboard box full of uniforms to replace the ones Finch had given them when they first landed. These opened the box and saw that these were newer, even darker versions of the uniforms the original team members had worn during their heyday in the Persian Gulf. They even
had the unit’s patch sewn into the right-hand shoulder. It showed an image of the World Trade Center towers, with the Stars and Stripes behind it, the letters NYPD and FDNY floating above it, and the group’s motto, We Will Never Forget, floating below.
They also loaded aboard a box containing several dozen MREs—Meals Ready to Eat, the contemporary version of the old GI C rations. Finch handed them another paper bag, this one containing nine standard American flags, each one about three feet long. “You’ll be needing these types of flags as well,” Finch told them with a wink.
Then came aboard the strangest piece of cargo of all: a huge battery-powered freezer. Inside were three dozen tiny dead pigs, flash frozen to the point that they almost looked like cuddly toys. There was also several packages of bacon in the cooler.
“Now, don’t go eating any of that stuff,” Finch joked with them again. “That wouldn’t be kosher … .”
As they were loading on a half-dozen more laptops for Bates to use, Ryder climbed back up to the copter’s flight deck and spent about five minutes alone, checking on the aircraft’s primary systems. Their improvised flight computer was keeping everything up and on-line. All of his cockpit lights were green. All of his power modes were in the red. They could leave at any time now.
But when Ryder looked back down into the cargo bay he was surprised to find everyone was gone. He climbed out of the copter but again found the area around the Sky Horse deserted. He was just starting to wonder what other weird thing could possibly happen when he heard a voice coming from the air station’s Loran building. Loran was a worldwide communication net that was maintained for the U.S. military by the Coast Guard in many locations around the world. Like one big electromagnetic antenna, the building itself seemed to be crackling with energy. Ryder could see flashlight beams inside.
He walked over to the igloo-shaped building, opened the door, and found the rest of the team huddled within. Finch was
with them, as were the Doughnut Boys. They were all smiling, ear to ear.
What was going on here?
As soon as he appeared, Fox said to him, “I know we’re in a hurry. But man, we had to see this. Check it out.”
Everyone extinguished their flashlights and now all Ryder could see was Eddie Finch. He was holding a halogen lightbulb in his hand—but it was not attached to anything. He was simply holding it. Yet it was glowing, very brightly.
“Can you believe it?” someone asked Ryder. “These Loran places have so much juice running through them, you don’t even have to screw the lightbulbs in … .”
Ryder just stared at Finch as the retired Coast Guardsman held the lit bulb under his bearded chin like a Halloween prank. He looked like something from a horror flick.
“Damn,” was all Ryder could say.
It was one of the strangest things he’d ever seen.