Chalk delighted in Tahereh’s exchange of barbs with Slagget. She understood Chalk’s leadership tactics. He felt a team united is a team that could mutiny. She had more in common with Chalk than he thought at first. He preferred his squad to be manageably at odds. The only problem was that he might not benefit from the full power of his group’s cohesive force in the breach. At least if he lost tonight’s skirmish, he would survive.
Chalk cross-referenced between a chart of the waters around Tangier Island and the GPS. “We’re getting in close to shore. We’ll beach on the west side of the island. A hop, skip, and a jump to the airstrip from there.”
Minutes later, Chalk drove the bow of the boat straight onto the sand through the surf. The breeze was lighter, and steady. The new moon even showed now and then as squall clouds wraithed by, like a bright sickle slashing through uncarded wool.
Slagget leapt onto the beach, and jogged inland until he found a rock for tying off the line he carried. Chalk and Tahereh toted weapons and three sets of NVGs to the low dunes. They did not put on the goggles, preferring for now to see by the hazy loom of house and street lights on Tangier.
They reached the runway, but held to its edge. It was wrapped in darkness.
Slagget licked his finger, held it up and said, “With this breeze now, they’ll land south to north. We can walk up to meet them at the other end.”
Chalk thought for a moment. He said, “I have a flashlight. We’ll signal them. They can taxi back to us.”
Tahereh asked, “How will they manage in this fog?”
Chalk said, “They have a choice of two non-precision instrument approaches. Farron, our pilot, can bring it in with NVGs. Good as they are, goggles can be kinda tricky to fly with depending on what generation they’ve got. In that clag up there, he might just click the transmit button a few times on the right frequency. Then that runway edge light you’re about to trip over will come on with all the others. He’ll see right where to put her down.”
The evening grew colder. The darkness closed in around them as lights in the distant homes winked out. This left the rare street lights to cast only the faintest glow across the hillocks, rises, and dunes.
After an eternity of no more than fifteen minutes, Slagget softly said, “There. Got to be them.”
Tahereh searched the sky. “I don’t hear anything.”
Chalk hissed, “Shut up! Listen.”
Soon, they all picked the distant whine of a twin turboprop out of the closer rustle of reeds and the swish of waves rolling up the beach.
A few more moments passed. Chalk scanned the sky. “I got them. They’ve got all the lights on.”
He pointed up at a small cluster of winking red, white, and green position lights moving in and out of cloud, as the engine sounds grew.
Chalk said, “Guess there’s no reason for Farron to do a covert insertion. Nobody watching but us chickens.”
They all followed the plane’s path as it passed down the east side of the island.
Chalk muttered to himself, “Good boy. Stay out of that D.C. Special Flight Rules Area.”
Of course, he had his own discrete squawk number he could have given MacDonald for the aircraft’s transponder so he could pass through the SFRA without getting an F-16 on his wing, or a SAM up his rectum. Fine, but why should Chalk show his hand when things were going so well?
He mumbled, “I change my squawk number every week. Like my own personal Fibonacci sequence. A Chalk sequence, I guess. I Gauss. There’s a Restricted Area just to the west of here, too. Navy gunnery range I think.”
“Maynard, please shut up!” Tahereh was losing all patience.
“Watch it, baby.” Chalk liked her spirit, but there was a limit. He chuckled. He knew she was taut as piano wire, wondering how her fate would play out in the next few minutes. He was not offended that she hadn’t fully bought in to his vision of sharing world dominion. There would be time for convincing later on.
The airplane’s engine sounds changed as the pilot adjusted power and altered the pitch of the props. The plane was now lined up for a long final approach to a murk-shrouded runway. A runway that none of the welcoming party had yet seen. Suddenly, the plane’s landing lights blazed out in clouded beams. Farron had not donned his NVGs. He was saving the batteries for the work to come later that night. Smart move.
The strange tendrils of fog were thickening, wreathing over the ground. The mist had crept in and enveloped the entire airstrip waist-high while they’d been staring upward at the plane’s approach. Chalk found it both weird and disconcerting to be so suddenly enswathed. The eerie vapor chilled his skin.
When the plane was only fifty feet above the ground, the white runway lights suddenly blinked on. Chalk watched as the pilot made minor corrections in the plane’s glide slope.
It was Slagget who first signaled the catastrophe to come. “Shit. Damn!”
Chalk caught Slagget’s alarm and looked where his lieutenant was pointing at the runway. The problem was invisible to the approaching pilot through the mist. Small islets of runway edge light revealed the truth only to the three confederates waiting on the ground.
The runway was a disaster area.
To Chalk, it looked like whole trees lay felled across it. And the strip’s entire useable length was pocked with craters, heaps of dirt, slabs of pavement and other debris. The rusted hulk of an old truck lay spang in the middle, very Third World. All that was missing were the chickens, potbellied brats, and Sally Struthers cadging for handouts.
Chalk uttered a low, “No.”
Then he dashed toward the middle of the runway directly in the plane’s path. Waved his hands like a madman.
He screamed, “Go around! No! Go around! Abort! Break it off!”
Still the plane came down. Farron MacDonald was oblivious. Seen from the air in the poor weather, the runway lights created only small pools of light. They indicated the runway’s position well enough, but gave no hint of its condition. The runway lights baited an invisible deathtrap luring Farron in. The plane’s landing lights were not helping either. They were reflected back into the pilot’s eyes by the strange obscuring ground cloud.
Roaring in frustration, Chalk crouched low as the plane’s landing gear swooped over his head missing him by inches. The inevitable became grotesque reality.
The mist swirled up and away behind the plane’s wingtips, twin curlicue apparitions of moisture, ghost-rats departing the doomed aircraft. The plane’s nose rose up slightly as the pilot flared for touching down.
With a flash of sparks, the plane struck a mound of dirt with its left main gear. Gave a sudden lurch to the right as if shoved by a giant hand. The nose slewed left as the shriek of metal tore at Chalk’s eardrums and set his teeth on edge like a thousand fingernails on a chalkboard.
The wings canted to the right. With sick fascination Chalk watched the descending wingtip gouge a furrow into the strip. Then the entire right wing wrenched free of the body. With the propeller still turning at full power, it flipped over and over, trailing a blaze of oily orange flame.
With the right wing gone, the left wing was now alone making lift, and it rose into the air levering the fuselage onto its side. The nose skewed further to the left. The right tail stabilizer tore free as it was buried in the ground.
Then the plane inverted completely. The tips of the left propeller hacked into the old runway. The left wing could not bear this new strain. It ripped free and spun away, spewing a gout of burning fuel across the plane’s body, now a rolling fireball. It bounced and ricocheted down the runway from one obstruction to the next.
At last the ruptured silence of the night healed over. All movement ceased, except for the flames. Chalk was rooted in place. His trio’s volition to move or speak was completely vitiated by what they’d just witnessed. Instead of reinforcements, only the soft, distant roar of burning fuel came down the runway to where they stood.
“God damn all Blackshaws!” Chalk roared, teeth flashing, nostrils flared. “God shove them all straight up the Devil’s ass!”
After a moment’s paralysis, Chalk began to trot toward the burning wreck. Slagget and Tahereh followed, passing among logs of driftwood, heaps of torn-up asphalt, and the craters from which the chunks had been dug. All the destruction lay fully in view before them. The thick, low fog was dissipating as if sentient, knowing its destructive work was done.
Chalk grumbled and barked as he double-timed down the field. “Bastards! They tore up their own airstrip! In case I wanted to use it! On the damn off-chance! Jesus Christ in a tutu, Dick’s crazier than I thought.”
Dodging amongst burning sections of the wings, Tahereh and Slagget followed Chalk. They all felt the fire’s heat as they ran deeper into the debris field. The flames threw clouds of black smoke into the air. The breeze blew it back in their faces. Eyes and noses running, they got as close as they could to the fuselage. It was a blackened, battered ruin.
The rear of the plane, which had been closed off with a clamshell cargo ramp and door, was mangled. A human body lay half-in and half-out. No movement.
Then the screaming. Chalk was comfortably numb to all expressions of human suffering, but this was a new horror. It was the sound of a man regaining consciousness just in time to witness his own immolation. The desperate paean of a condemned soul departing for hell. Or worse, for oblivion. The sound took too long to end, though it lasted only moments.
The burning man’s final scream faded. The flames’ roar was joined by a pounding against the metal insides of the plane. It came from forward by the cockpit. As Chalk’s team approached, they noticed a small door. It bowed outward from impacts from the inside.
A muffled, choking voice called, “Dammit! Open the damn door, dude!”
A moment of reason must have followed this outburst. The emergency release mechanism was tripped. The entire door popped off its hinges and fell to the ground with a clang. It was immediately followed by a human being. His black tactical suit trailed plumes of smoke. The plane was now coffin and crematorium in one.
Without a word, Slagget grabbed the smoldering man under his armpits, and dragged him clear of the worst heat. Chalk disappeared, wriggling inside the door from which the survivor had just leapt.
Within seconds Slagget was back at the fuselage. He yanked the semi-conscious form of a second man out of the plane as Chalk shoved from behind. This was not risking all for comrades. Not heroics. They were desperate for more boots on the ground. More soldiers equaled a fortune.
The team’s ammunition on the aircraft began to cook off in the blaze. The bangs started singly. Then they grew faster, like killer Jiffy-Pop. Bullet holes randomly pocked the sides of the fuselage, as rounds zinged and buzzed past Tahereh. That first screaming man had not gone to hell. He had left it. And Chalk was still inside.
Twice more, Chalk and Slagget rescued dazed men from the wreck. Then Chalk hurled himself out the escape hatch to the ground. Coughing like a three-pack-a-day man, he staggered over to the survivors Tahereh was treating with water from their canteens.
Chalk gasped, “No more,” between coughs. He wasn’t clear whether this meant there were no more survivors, or that he had enough men and was no longer willing to risk his hide.
Slagget choked out, “We gotta get clear.”
There was a loud roaring noise to punctuate his suggestion. An instant later a small missile shot out the cockpit windscreen. With its guidance system damaged and locked onto nothing, it curveted wildly through the air, and splashed with a hot hiss in the Chesapeake.
Chalk complained, “Aw crap! A Stinger! Could’ve used that.”
Two of the crash survivors could hobble away under their own steam. Of the other two, Tahereh supported one as he limped. Chalk and Slagget dragged the last man between them. They assembled behind a low mound of dirt. Round after .50 caliber round of tracer fired into the sky. Bullets spun along the ground past where they huddled.
The man they dragged was badly broiled along his legs and feet. He turned his sooty face to Chalk and said, “Sorry, chief. Kinda blew that one.”
Chalk smiled like an understanding uncle. “Nonsense Farron! They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one. Dude.”
Then Chalk drew his pistol, shot Farron twice in the face.
Chalk continued, “Unfortunately, he wasn’t walking anywhere with those burns. We gotta di-di on out of here! Anybody notice the natives aren’t exactly rushing to investigate all this Guy Fawkes Day bullshit? It’s a total setup, and I’m not hanging out to get my nards shot off.”
He scrutinized the man Tahereh had helped to walk. “What’s the story, Petunia, can you hump it?” The man glanced at Farron MacDonald’s corpse, then back at Chalk, nodded briskly, and slapped Tahereh’s helping hand away. He gave his best, “Hoowa!”
Chalk said, “Good boy. Let’s boogie.”
The six made their way back down the airstrip as quickly as possible toward the boat. As they went, previously sound fuel tanks in the plane’s wings heated, warped, and blew. More ammo of all sizes banged and whizzed into the sky. The odor of burning meat tainted the oily air.
Chalk took in the sabotage of the airstrip as they hurried along its length. He muttered, “No doubt about it. Somebody’s screwing with me. Someone who knows me a little too well. Dick and the rest of them, they’re all in on it together. Not good.”
Chalk assessed his three remaining survivors along the way, ready to unburden himself of any more gimps or laggards. They all made it to the Palestrina. With some pushing and shoving, the new men scrambled aboard much worse for wear from the last eight minutes’ ordeal.
Only Tahereh seemed bucked up about the crash. It had helped her position. With the sudden reduction of Chalk’s able-bodied personnel, she knew she was still needed. So she was still alive.