Norton just stared back at him, letting the news sink in.
“A Navy spy ship? Damn, that’s not good,” he mumbled.
“As a result, we just got our orders, right from the top,” Smitz told him, each word landing like a hammer blow to Norton’s stomach. “We’re moving out. Now.”
“Now?” Norton asked incredulously. “You mean like today?”
“No, I mean as in ‘now,’” Smitz replied. “Right now. The transport planes will be here in ten minutes. We take off in one hour.”
Norton shook his head as if to clear it.
“Wait a minute,” he began to protest. “We’re not ready to go anywhere. We’ve been barely flying those choppers for a week. No way are we ready for combat. I thought the plan was for thirty days of practice.”
“Well, the plan just changed,” Smitz said, turning to leave. “Don’t ask me why, but when the gunship was shooting up refugees and villages, it just wasn’t this high a priority. But now it is. So we’re moving out.”
He started for the door again, but Norton grabbed him.
“Wait a minute! We haven’t even been briefed on the fucking mission yet,” he protested. “Not on the operational stuff anyway. How are we supposed to know what the hell to do?”
Smitz pushed his hand away.
“We’ll get our final briefing once we’re on-site,” Smitz said. “Now, I want you to find Delaney, get suited up, and both of you get down to the flight line, ASAP! I’ve got to go wake the Marines.”
With that, Smitz ran out the door.
Norton was suddenly alone in the big empty room with the garish murals. The one by the front door looked particularly eerie at this moment. Norton stared at it, then felt a shudder run through him.
The three jumbo black women with pots on their heads were really laughing at him now.
Ten minutes later, he stumbled into the preflight ready room.
He’d looked all over for Delaney. In Hangar 2, back at their billet, out on the flight line. But his partner had disappeared. No one seemed to know where he was. Nor was Norton in any mood to search any further for him. Let someone else deliver the bad news. At the moment, he needed time to absorb it himself.
He always had nerves before any combat mission—any pilot who denied this was lying. But in every mission Norton had ever flown, he’d made a point of checking, double-checking, and triple-checking every last detail before his feet ever left the ground. This was the reason he’d been to war many times and had come back without so much as a scratch.
But now, he and the others were being rushed into a very dangerous situation, probably the worst thing anyone could do when it came to combat. Despite how well they had all taken to their foreign-built choppers, they were still not fully prepared for this. Far from it. No operational briefing? No idea where they were going exactly? No more than a few live-firing exercises? It was a recipe for disaster.
Yet there was nothing he could do about it. This was the price he had to pay for agreeing to join up with the Spooks. He could only buck it up, do the mission—whatever the hell it was!—and hope for the best. Or die trying.
He opened his locker to find a new combat suit waiting for him. Unlike the threads he’d been wearing since arriving on Seven Ghosts Key, this outfit was part fighter-pilot g-suit, part survival pack. It was desert-camouflaged and festooned with pockets—on the arms, the legs, the chest, Velcro pockets everywhere. The built-in utility belt carried small packets of survival stuff, including food pills, a tiny water-purification kit, morphine candy, bandages, an electronic compass, a mini-phone, a GPS transponder, and so on.
The helmet was also a combination of a pilot’s regular bone dome and a standard GI-issue Fritz battle hat. It was covered with camouflage netting similar to that used in Marine Aviation. The boots were waterproof, fireproof, and lined with pyrofoam, which would heat up at the crack of an inside seal. By experience Norton knew how cold and miserable the desert could be. There was a chance these heat-lined doggies might come in the handiest of all. The suit also came with a gun, a standard-issue Colt .45 automatic, with two clips of ammo.
So this would be his wardrobe for the mission. He could only pray that the length of time he’d be wearing it would be measured in hours and not days.
Norton climbed into his suit as quickly as he could. He would search for Delaney once he was suited up, he decided. But just as he was adjusting his helmet’s strap, Delaney blew in to the room.
Through the open door behind him, Norton could see the quartet of C-5 transport planes had landed and were already backed up to the flight line, their engines still turning. The unit’s Russian-built helicopters were being pushed up the loading ramps and into the cavernous cargo holds. The Marines were moving single file to take their places on the C-5’s as well. From all indications, they were less than thirty minutes from departure.
Delaney was already suited up in his futuristic combat suit; somehow he’d beaten Norton to the suit-up room. He was also carrying a small duffel bag with him. He came up to Norton and whacked him on his helmet.
“Ready for the big show, Jazzman?” he asked sarcastically.
“Unless they stop shooting people for desertion,” Norton replied.
Delaney laughed at the grim joke.
“We ain’t that lucky,” he told Norton, adding, “What kind of gun you bringing?”
Norton just shrugged. “The one they just gave me,” he replied, taking out the .45 and showing it to Delaney.
Delaney looked at it and just shook his head. “What are you? A girl?” he asked, exasperated.
Delaney tore the gun out of Norton’s hand and casually flipped it into the wastebasket.
Then he unzipped the duffel bag, reached in, and came out with an enormous pistol.
“Here, man,” he said, handing the massive handgun to Norton. “I got a real gun for you.”
Norton’s wrist almost buckled under the weight of the hand cannon. It was at least twice the size of the .45, with a long thick clip sticking out of the handle. The bullets in this clip looked like tiny artillery shells. The pistol itself was big and black and shiny. A true monster.
“What the hell kind of gun is this?”
“Beats me,” Delaney said, taking out his own huge pistol and examining it. “I got them from the same guy who’s been giving us the beer. He’s also the armorer here. He gave one to Smitz too.”
“Smitz? What’s he need one for?”
Delaney checked his weapon’s ammo clip. “He’s going with us, I guess,” he said simply.
This was news to Norton.
“Now if we get into a situation where we have to use pistols,” Delaney was saying, holding the huge gun out in front of him, “what would you rather have? A GI peashooter. Or this baby?”
Norton just looked at his gun, then at Delaney, and then back at his gun. His partner was making sense.
“This one, for sure,” Norton replied.
“Atta boy!” Delaney said, slapping him on the back. “Believe me, these things will come in handy. You’ll see.”
With that, Norton put the massive weapon in his bag, and together they walked out to the waiting C-5’s.
In a large, smoky, windowless room two thousand miles west of the Florida Straits, seven men were sitting around a table, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
They were all in their late sixties. Those not bald had gray or white hair—overgrown, to the shoulders in a few cases. They were all wearing Western-style shirts, jeans, and cowboy boots. And even though the room was dimly lit, they were all wearing sunglasses.