Chapter 53: Chinook Arrival

Thursday 10 in the morning

I was walking back to the hacienda from Jacki’s house when the valley was filled with a loud, familiar yet strange, sound. It was the arrival of the Chinook, the jet powered banana-shaped double-bladed heavy lift helicopter the Patron had purchased from the military in Argentina and then rebuilt. Mateo, the pilot, decided to circle the Colony at about 200 feet, and the sound echoed off the wall of the fault line.

Mateo was not a member of the Colony, he grew up in Argentina and became a pilot. Several of our people, including Tango, met him in their service and listed him as a potential hire. He was looking for a big score, a “buy a boat” score, But he did not want to be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life. He was good at navigation but he knew his limits. Captain Thomas brought him here a few years ago, when he initially signed up for the Chinook project. At his first visit his freedom and knowledge were limited. But once he started rebuilding the helicopter and put his crew together, he got more information. This was his first view of the area from the air, and he had a hard time believing such a place could exist.

Arriving today was the best case scenario. The schedule had been for sometime Thursday or Friday, depending on weather (headwinds and rain) and other factors (Brazilian military and the flight control). The unspoken factor was pilot fatigue. A helicopter requires all four limbs working together, and it is harder at low altitude where there are surprises that can come up. Mateo was the only pilot and he had to stay low to avoid radar. His logs showed that he was cautious with the Patron’s big investment.

There were no complications, refueling was quick at each point (helicopters are slow and thirsty) and the guys were anxious to get to their new home, so they were up early each day.

After the helicopter took a slow tour around the colony (the settlement was larger than the crew expected - but the same was true of the helicopter) they made straight for the hanger carved out of the fault wall. There the blades were folded and the Chinook was moved out of sight. The Patron sent a truck to get the crew and they had lunch in the hacienda. Kwool dropped in and the rest of the pilots and ground controllers were there to meet the new people.

The Patron had a number of pilots who were off elsewhere, doing the cocaine delivery cycle flying Cessna 208s. Also, the Hercules was doing contract jobs in Africa, they would be back in a few weeks. But most of the people were eager to meet the newest additions to our little Air Force.

Kwool was the only female and the only indian pilot present, her distinct ethnic looks were a surprise to the Chinook’s crew, all of whom were raised in Argentina in lower-class homes. The listed pilot of the Hercules was a female and one of the co-pilots on a Cessna were female, as were two members of the radar/radio shack crew. The guys, raised in a macho lifestyle, knew they had to adjust their attitudes.

While rebuilding the Chinook the men had been visited by women of the Colony, who were typical Spanish blood. These men were very interested in the chance to meet some friendly females, Kwool raised all kinds of questions.

But before they got to that Mateo raised an important issue. “Patron, as you ordered we installed a number of radar sensors on the helicopter, they worked quite well in allowing us to avoid detection. However, about 30 miles away somebody locked on, a strong lock in a Soviet-era targeting frequency. Any time after that we could have been killed it they had a beam-rider or fire-and-forget missile. We almost aborted. Is there a SAM battery nearby?”

“That was me,” Irene announced as she walked in the room, looking like a commander of killers. She was Spanish, same as the men, but her scars and appearance did not inspire cuddly feelings, she looked more like a female pirate. “I wanted to make sure you were not compromised, anybody except you would have taken evasive action ... not that it would have helped. My arrows always hit when I let them fly. You should have picked up three frequencies, I wanted to make sure you were not followed.”

Mateo was confused for a moment, the signal was too strong, for too long, to come from the Colony. Then he looked at Kwool and made the connection. “The radar is on the mountain, very hight on the mountain. Doesn’t the cold...” He realized the answer before he finished the question, he was not in Argentina any more.

“We are close enough to the Equator that the temperature swings are not really a problem ... not like the Andes in Argentina,” Irene answered for the benefit of the others. “You actually scraped our distant sensors farther out, but they were low-power and didn’t trip the alarms unless you were watching the gauges.”

“You actually have the SAMs here?” Mateo asked.

“Mobile units ... a couple of boxes.”