Suddenly, Christine’s hummed melody trailed off as last dialog she’d had with Amanda back aboard the Carlson came crashing back to her.
The little blonde glared at the image in the mirror. “Christine Maude Rendino, you have a big frickin’ mouth!”
The Kimberly, Australia
55 Miles West of Kalumburu Mission
1005 Hours; Zone Time, October 16, 2008
The Seawolf Super Huey settled onto the ridgeline in a flurry of dust and sand. Scowling like a thunderhead, Captain Stone Quillain peered out of the open side hatch of the helicopter at the absolute desolation surrounding the grounded aircraft. Unbuckling his seat harness, he leaned over the pilot’s shoulder. “Okay, dammit, what’s supposed to be out here?” he yelled over the fading howl of the turbines.
Commander Richard “Cobra” Jackson, the C.O. of Light Attack Helicopter Squadron Three turned his helmeted
head and looked back at the Marine. “What’s here is this set of GPS co-ordinates.” He held up a palm-sized “Slugger” Global Positioning Unit. “This is where you change buses. I bring you here. Somebody else picks you up.
That’s what I know.”
“This has got to be the damnedest thing I have ever heard of!”
“Stone, don’t ask me! I haul you all, that’s all.” The Aviator racked the Slugger onto its charging clip on the control panel and
reached down between the pilot’s seats. Coming up with a full canteen, he passed it back to Quillain. “Just in case they keep you waiting a while.”
Quillain made a sour face. “Well, thank you kindly, sir.”
“You’re most welcome,” the helo jockey replied. “See you later – I hope!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha! Why don’t you go wax the steps at the Old Folks Home, Cobra? They could use a good laugh
too.”
Quillain caught up his sea bag and dropped from the open side door to the stony ground, hunkering low to keep below the helicopter’s rotor arc. As he got clear, he heard the Super Huey powering up for lift off. He flinched away from the stinging sand whipped up by the rotor wash. When he looked up again, the Seawolf was airborne and paying off toward the northeast.
The sound of the helicopter rotors dissipated, leaving only the whine of the wind. From his position atop the low ridgeline, Quillain could see the glitter of the ocean several miles to the west. Inland, beyond an expanse of brush dotted outback, a mountain range thrust skyward, all bare, jagged, rust-colored rock. Overhead was empty sky, the color of faded denim and clumped with cumulous clouds. The full heat of the desert day hadn’t settled in yet, but it was coming.
Beyond that, there was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Quillain tore off his utility cap and slapped his thigh with it, simmering.
This insanity had started aboard the Carlson the previous evening when he had been called in by his new TACBOSS. According to Captain Carberry, the Red Cross had contacted the Task Force. One of Stone’s family had been taken ill, and he was being granted emergency compassionate leave, commencing immediately. Stone was to turn command of the Sea Dragons over to his Company exec and make all preparations to fly out to the States the following morning.
Naturally enough, Quillain made an immediate sat phone call back to his parent’s farm outside of Valdosta, Georgia. He found that his mother, who had been pleased but somewhat puzzled to hear from him, was making fruitcakes for the Christmas bazaar at the First Baptist Church. His father was out in the equipment shed tinkering with his new John Deere and his kid sister was playing basketball down at Clyattville. Every other member of his family, up to and including his peculiar cousin Ray John up at the state prison, was in robust health and good spirits.
When he returned to the TACBOSS to request a clarification, he was told in no uncertain terms to shut up and make ready to move out. Until further notice, one of his family members was deathly ill and his presence was required. The Navy would inform him when that individual was well again.
His hand-over of the Sea Dragons had not been the crisis it might have been. Part of the “Garrett Doctrine” was that no one was indispensable within the Sea Fighters. Every unit leader was mandated to have his own replacement ready for a seamless handoff of command. All that was required was a sleepless night to check and sign-off the paperwork and hand over the reins.
Quillain had presented himself, grumbling, on the Carlson’s flight deck the next morning for the flight out to Darwin.
Only Seawolf One had not gone to Darwin.
Fifty yards down slope, a cautiously curious kangaroo peered from behind a knot of sun-blasted scrub.
“Will you kindly tell me just what in the hell is going on around here?” Quillain roared at the marsupial.
The ’roo fled in terror.
The Marine aimed a furious kick at a baseball-sized rock, the steel capped toe of his boondocker sending it bouncing for the length of a tennis court.
Half an hour later, Stone sat on his upended seabag, studying the canteen in his hand and telling himself that he really wasn’t thirsty yet.
Then he heard the noise approaching, something like the familiar vibrant growl of a rigid-rotor helicopter but with an odd, trilling undertone. Stone got to his feet and squinted at the horizon as it grew rapidly in intensity.
Suddenly, to south, something bobbed over the ridgeline. Banking in sharply toward Stone, it came in so low that it trailed a slipstream-whipped wake of dust. Instinctively, the Marine ducked and yelled as the aircraft blazed past overhead. Straightening, he stared after the bizarre flying machine as it popped up in a steep zoom climb and reversed toward him once more.
Stone was no aviator, but he did know the weapons systems of the world backwards and forwards. This thing simply wasn’t in the books.
All he could say was that it was a helicopter … of some nature. It had a family resemblance to the Bell-Textron AH-1 Super Cobra series used by the Marine Corps, but there were differences, major critical differences.
There was no rotor mast, and the streamlined blade hub sat low atop the twin-turbine power pack, the mark of an advanced rigid rotor transmission system such as could be found on an Army AH-64 Apache. The familiar Cobra landing skids were missing, as well as the chin-mounted gun and sensor turret. The tri-barreled 20mm cannon peered from a fixed centerline mount below a sleeker extended nose faring.
Set at the mid-point of the fuselage were a pair of wings – not the usual stubby aerodynamic weapons sponsons, but honest to God, swept-back wings, a set of streamlined drop tanks mounted on hard points beneath them.
But the true strangeness began at the rear of the aircraft. Instead of the conventional tail rotor, the helicopter’s tail boom flared into a set of cruciform fins and a circular shroud. Encased within that shroud was a pusher-style propeller and what appeared to be a set of elevator and rudder airfoils.
The overall impression the machine gave was more of a small jet fighter with rotors than of a conventional helicopter.
It had been painted a dull, grayish black and it was only as the aircraft slowed and circled back toward him that Quillain could start to make out “PHANTOM” lettering and insignia on its sides.
Whatever it was, it belonged to the United States Navy.
The machine slowed, flared and touched down a few yards off from Stone, daintily settling on the wheeled landing gear that had extended from its belly.
Beneath the pilot’s cockpit, Stone could dimly make out a zero-zero designation number, the traditional Navy “double nuts” of a squadron or air wing commander. There was also a single, small patch of color, a cartoon decal of a curvaceous blonde girl clad in scanty harem garb riding a flying carpet, “Jeannie II” scripted with a flourish beneath the image.
