Phoenix Rising

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

By the time they returned to the front of the hangar the fire had burned out and all that was left was the smoldering wreckage of the truck and helicopter. No longer red, the truck had rusted out in the flames. The tires had been burned off and the aluminum wheels were no more than molten slag. Inside the truck a charred body was draped over what was left of the steering wheel. The two gunners had been thrown forward over the cab of the truck and their charred remains lay in the blackened residue of what had been the helicopter.

“How much fuel was on board?” Jake asked.

“Unfortunately, we had it topped off,” John said.

“That leaves us just under four hundred gallons. If we can put another one together, we won’t be able to top off the tank, but we’ll have enough fuel to get to where we are going.”

“If we can put another one together,” John said. “I’m going to take Clay’s Jeep and drive around the field to see if I can find something we can use to start over.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Jake said.

“Well, Major, that’s why the Army pays you the big bucks,” Deon said, and the others, including Jake, laughed.

“John, while you are looking at the other helicopters, I suggest that the rest of us build some hasty fortifications of some sort. That way if this happens again, we’ll be ready for them.”

“Good idea,” Marcus said.

“I’m glad you think it’s a good idea,” Jake said. “Because now that I have suggested that, I have no idea what we can use for the fortification.”

“There are ten fifty-five-gallon drums over in the hangar next door,” John said. “They are empty, but if we put dirt in them . . .”

“Yes,” Jake said interrupting him. “We did that in Iraq, built up around our Quonset huts. It worked well.”

“You’ll have to cut the tops off to get the dirt in,” John said. “I’ve got a hacksaw and some blades here.”

“Won’t you need that if you find something out on the line?” Jake asked.

“If it isn’t something I can take off using a wrench or a screwdriver, then it’s not likely to be anything we can use. Take the hacksaw.”

“All right. Let’s get started,” Jake said.

“A suggestion, sir?” Marcus offered.

“Any suggestion is welcomed.”

“As soon as we get the top off one of the barrels, I suggest that one of us saw, while the rest of us fill the empty with sand.”

“Good idea.”

An hour later they had only two barrels filled with sand. Jake raised up from digging and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

“You know, when I said that we did this in Iraq—I forgot. There was no ‘we’ to it. We hired local contractors for the job.”

“Yeah, I was wondering where you got that ‘we,’” Deon said.

By nightfall, they had the ten barrels in a V shape in front of the personnel door. Back inside, they wondered aloud whether or not John would find anything they could use.

It was almost an hour later before John returned, and when he came into the hangar, the expression on his face told everything.

“We’re stopped cold,” John said. “There is nothing left that is salvageable.”

“Do you mean to say that out of a hundred or more helicopters, that you can’t put together one that is flyable?” Jake asked.

“I’m not saying that,” John said. “But what I am saying is that there is so little salvageable remaining on each of the aircraft that it would take days, maybe weeks, to put one together. The biggest problem is with the airframes. Those that haven’t been destroyed by all the scavengers are too badly damaged by the storm. I wish I had better news for you, but I don’t.”

“What do we do now?” Karin asked.

“What about the museum?” Deon asked.

“The museum? What about the museum? What are you talking about?” John asked.

“During the Vietnam War my dad was a door gunner on a Huey. There is a Huey on display at the museum just like the one he was on. I’ve seen it a dozen times—it looks like it’s ready to fly.”

“I wonder if the engine and transmission are in it.” John said.

“They are,” Jake said with a wide smile. “I remember reading an article in the Flyer last year about when it was brought to the museum. It was landed out front, then moved inside.”

“How long has it been there?” John asked.

“I don’t know, twenty years, maybe a little longer.”

“And it was flyable when it arrived?”

“Yes, in the article I read, they had a big ceremony about it. The pilot who flew it in was one of the last Vietnam veterans still on active duty. Do you think you could make it flyable?”

“We could come a hell of a lot closer with it than I can with anything that’s out here,” John said. “All of the parts should still be there, but after all this time there will be dried-out bushings, filters, gaskets, and so forth. We’ll have to rehydrate them, if we can.”

“Question is, how do we get it here?” Marcus asked.

“We’ll get it here in Clay’s Jeep,” Jake said.

“What? You can’t get a helicopter in that Jeep.”

“We could if we took the body off. Then we could set the helicopter on the Jeep’s frame. The tail cone will stick out, but it’s on skids, not wheels, so we can tie it down securely without worrying about it falling off.”

“Yeah!” Deon said. “Damn right.”

“Thing is, I hate doing that to Clay’s car,” Marcus said.

“Believe me, Marcus, I knew Clay better than anyone here. And if Clay were still alive, he would be the first one to say do it,” Jake said.

“Yeah,” John said. “I think he would too. All right, let’s get this buggy stripped down.”

It was a tired bunch who ate their supper that night, but before they turned in, they drew little slips of paper upon which times were recorded, the times determining who and when they would pull guard duty.

The next morning, with nothing left of Clay’s Jeep but the frame, the men drove over to the Army Aviation Museum. Like all the other buildings on the fort, the museum had been vandalized and stripped of anything that could be construed to be of value. But the display of a Huey, depicting an LZ in Vietnam, was still intact. John opened the cowl and took a quick glance at the engine.

“All right!” he said. “Looks like nobody has messed with it. I think we’ve got a shot at getting this thing going!”

The hardest thing was going to be getting the helicopter loaded onto the back of the Jeep, but anticipating that, they had brought a crane and pulley system from the hangar and, after half an hour getting everything rigged up, John climbed up onto the engine deck and screwed a lifting eye onto the top of the mast. This was exactly the kind of lifting eye that was used by the aircraft recovery teams when they were sent in to pick up a downed helicopter on the battlefield.

When everything was rigged up, they began cranking on the crane and pulley system until the helicopter was lifted from the place it had occupied on the display for nearly twenty years, then swung over to the Jeep frame and lowered. The skids were lashed in place, and everyone but Deon, who was driving the Jeep, climbed into the helicopter for the drive back to Hanchey Field.

Once they had the helicopter in the hangar, John began a more thorough examination.

“Damn!” he said. “How did I not see this?”

“What?”

“We’re missing a drag brace.”

“How important is that?” Deon asked.

“Not all that important, if you don’t mind throwing a rotor blade,” John said.

“Anything out there we can use?” Jake asked.

John shook his head. “No, they are very precise.”

“John, isn’t there a Cobra helicopter there in the museum?” Marcus asked.

A huge smile spread across John’s face. “Yes! And they share the same rotor system!”

“Let’s go back.”

“Deon, go with them,” Jake said. “It’s getting a lot more antsy out there. I don’t know what they might run into.”

“All right,” Deon said. “Willie, the M-two-forty is still in the tower. How about you going up there and keeping an eye open while I’m gone?”

“Good idea,” Willie said.

John, Marcus, and Deon climbed back onto what was left of the Jeep, as Willie went back up into the tower. That left Jake, Karin, and Julie alone in the hangar.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to see if we can get anything else on the radio,” Julie said.

“You know how to do it?” Karin asked.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve been watching Willie.”

Julie turned the crank to build up the power; then she turned the radio and started moving the dial through all the frequencies.

. . . establish contact. We have to be very careful in this, because the IRE, the Islamic Republic of Enlightenment, has their spies everywhere. No doubt they are monitoring this very transmission. Well, I’ve got news for you, IRE, there are millions of us out here. We’ve been knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out. We have survivalist groups coalescing all over the country and the time is going to come, and soon, when we get together and reconstitute the United States of America.

To my fellow American patriots, find safe ways to contact each other, make yourselves strong, grow in strength, until we are able to join together as one unbeatable band. Until then, this is General Francis Marion of the Brotherhood of Liberty, and I’m using that term in its most generic sense, because we welcome our sister patriots with open arms. And in the Brotherhood of Liberty, men and women, black, white, Asian, American Indian, Protestant, Catholic, Christian, Jew, freedom-loving secularists, we are united, we are strong, and we will be victorious. I am asking you to grow strong, hold on, and wait until that glorious day when we will take our country back. God bless America!

Oh, do you think that’s real?” Karin asked.

“I don’t know if it is for real or not,” Jake said. “But his name is obviously false.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Francis Marion was in the American Revolution. He was the first guerrilla fighter.”

“Are we going to try and make contact with them?”

“We’ll play that by ear,” Jake said. “For now our primary objective is to survive.”