Eyes of the Hammer by Bob Mayer

Author:Bob Mayer [Mayer, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: E, P, U, B
Tags: Fiction, General, suspense, Thrillers, War & Military
Publisher: Cool Gus Publishing
Published: 2011-10-09T04:00:00+00:00

5:00 P.M.

Riley felt the wheels touch down. The plane did a short bounce and then rolled to the end of the runway. The pilot turned the plane as the loadmaster began to open the ramp. Looking out, Riley could see a Blackhawk sitting on the tarmac about a hundred meters away. The plane jerked to a halt and the ramp went down all the way. Powers stood up. "Let's go. Rucks first, then the boat."

Each member of Eyes Three grabbed his rucksack and jogged off the ramp toward the helicopter. Riley could see two pilots waiting by the aircraft. He threw his ruck in front of the nose of the helicopter and went up to the two figures in flight suits. He looked them over quickly. A captain and a female warrant. They were looking at him strangely. He knew his appearance wasn't exactly what they were used to. Each member of the team wore a black wet suit with a combat vest over it. There was nothing to identify who they were, which Riley hoped wouldn't cause any trouble with the pilots.

He stuck out his hand to the captain and then the warrant. "Dave Riley. You all ready to go?"

"Captain Davidson." The captain seemed pissed off about something, but Riley didn't have time to worry about it.

The tiny woman draped in a flight suit took his hand briefly. "Chief Hobbes. We're topped off. Once you all get loaded, and tell us where we're going, we'll be ready."

"What the fuck is that?"

Riley looked over his shoulder at the object of the captain's remark. The other five members of the team were carrying the Zodiac off the ramp. They had already inflated the ten-man craft at Belvoir to save time down here. The black boat measured fifteen feet five inches long and over six feet wide and weighed 265 pounds. Adding the outboard motor and fuel bladders, which were tied down inside, boosted the weight to over 400 pounds. The men were glad to drop it on the ground in front of the bird.

"That's a Zodiac, a rubber boat."

"I can see that," the captain replied snippishly. "What I want to know is where you think you're going to put it. It won't fit into the aircraft. And we're not going to fly a thousand miles with it sling-loaded. We'll lose too much speed and fuel."

"We're going to put it under your aircraft."

The female pilot seemed interested. "How're you going to do that?"

Riley pointed as Powers began directing the movement of the boat between the two front wheels of the Blackhawk. "We've got something called a Boltz rig."

"Never heard of it," the captain snapped.

Riley decided to ignore him. "The rig is a series of straps that go around the entire boat, both directions. We run the straps through the cargo bay and crank down on them. The rubber boat kind of melds along the bottom of the aircraft."

Hobbes walked over closer to watch what they were doing to her aircraft. "How do we release it if we have to, or when we get wherever it is you're going?"

Riley pointed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.