5
Alpha for Airwolf
"This is Airwolf's handywork, it used to be Red Star Control."
The Airwolf crew were updated on the latest turn of events while they waited for Jo and Branson to arrive with the other chopper.
The plan to introduce the three Delta Force boys to Nash and Saint John at Red Star Control came at the eleventh hour.
Project Guardian found some worrying concerns when they finally received the intel they'd been waiting for.
They knew it would be hard to get into the Level 4 Biolab at the best of times and by securing the plans of the building, they'd be able to figure out the best strategy to do that.
Their biggest issue, was that there were no plans for the basement level of the building which would complicate things and that's exactly where Project Guardian suspected they needed to be to find Dr Zuan.
As was required by the Delta Force contract, they received any and all information that they "needed to know" according to Michael, including all background information on the Santini crew.
Just getting the five operatives to Red Star Control in a civilian helicopter was a feat in itself, seeing as the derelict facility was near the California, Nevada border and in the restricted zone not far from Nevada Test and Training Range and the place was under surveillance all the time.
And that's where the freakish turn of events with the F35 played to their advantage and minimised the risk of being discovered by the very institution that wound up helping them.
All they had to do was get Marella and Michael to Vegas and Project Guardian would take care of everything else.
Not letting Nash and Saint John in on the plan was a little to do with training and more to do with illustrating the need for Special Ops to be involved.
Le had designed The Lady to carry up to five additional passengers, or more accurately troops, making her a much more useful commodity then she was before her upgrade.
Branson dropped everything and headed to Vegas overnight to meet one of his 169's at The New Black for a departure in the early hours. He may also have made sure that his beautiful Jo would be the pilot. He missed her terribly and wanted to spend as much time with her as possible .
Michael and Marella did the same with Marella flying the couple's vintage Lear Jet to the desert city to meet the others at the hotel before they all took off for Nellis Air Force Base and tagged onto the back of the SAR Ops for the fallen F35 via the NTTR.
Peeling off the tail end of the Chinook recovery formation, it was only another twenty minutes of low flying within the twelve hundred square miles of restricted airspace before Jo and Branson dropped the others off on the old Red Star Control rooftop pad and then hid the 169 well out of the way from Airwolf's assumed incoming flight path.
The rest unfolded exactly to plan and here they were.
In that moment, a familiar whirring beat of the 169 executive helicopter could be heard incoming from above.
"Ah, that sound like our ride folks," Michael said, making move to head up to the roof top deck. "You boys make sure you get better acquainted and you two," he said to Nash and Saint John, "show our new friends a good time, before bringing them back to The New Black this evening." He continued as Marella and the others flowed him upstairs.
It would be the first time that Airwolf would use her powers of hiding in plain sight again since the good old days.
"Are you sure about that?," Saint John asked as the incoming chopper could be heard overhead.
"It was Branson's idea," Marella said, reminding the crew that from the lofty height of the rooftop and with the two similarly marked 169 livery's having been a common sight in the sky's over Las Vegas for more than a year, the day had finally come to start using The Lady again for the purpose she was intended.
Jo and Branson had made good use of their time alone together and weren't bored in the slightest while they waited in another part of the gorge some distance from Red Star Control.
They touched down on the helipad and smiled at each another playfully one last time, Jo slowing the rotors to idle, before the group, led by Michael appeared from the darkness of the rooftop stairwell.
Only minutes later, Jo, Branson, Michael and Marella lifted off, leaving the five men to hike back up the ridge and to where The Lady was waiting for them.
Just because the three Delta Force Operators spent more time jumping out of helo's then they did sitting in them, it didn't mean that they were ignorant and couldn't appreciate a fine rotor craft when they saw one.
It was like eyeballing your own pimped up ride built by West Coast Customs when it was revealed for the first time and you couldn't possibly have any soul if you weren't impressed by it.
Only this was so much better than anything West Coast Customs could come up with, because as she should be, The Lady was several steps up from just any old pimped up ride.
After a few low whistles and somewhat crude complements, Nash reminded them of their manners, "Now boy's, that's no way to speak in the presence of The Lady. Allow me to introduce to you, Airwolf. The most extraordinary and deadliest flying machine to have ever torn through the skies."
"That seems like a tall order to live up to, but if she flies anywhere near as good as she looks..." Sam said, leaving the sentence open ended while he ran another admiring eye over the smooth lines of the helicopter.
Nash opened the pilots side door with a hiss. "Well, you'll just have to wait and see." He said with a deliberate and mysterious air while exchanging a knowing glance with Saint John, before the handsome pilot climbed in and initiated his pre-start checks.
Saint John walked the other men around to The Lady's passenger side and operated the newly added personnel door that opened by cracking the seal and pushing it inward before sliding it rearward on its tracks.
"Just like most off door flying, the door can only be opened up to a VNE speed of one hundred knots." Saint John said casually before he gestured for the men to climb on board.
"Strap yourselves in gentlemen, it's gonna be one heck of a ride. Life jackets and barf bags are under your seats, you might want to use them in the event you have to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. Make sure you use them, I don't want to clean up after y'all," Saint John said, with a wink, only half joking while the three men secured themselves into their harnesses.
The Lady came to life, vibrating slightly before the rotors made enough speed to smooth out the movement.
"I'm sure we can handle it." Nick said confidently, looking to his right at the other two Operators.
."I'm sure you can." Saint John said dubiously, stepping up into the cabin, closing and locking the door behind him.
He glanced at Nash at the same time as the younger man shot a wicked grin over his shoulder before sliding on his helmet and the others followed suit.
After Saint John took his position at the EEDC, it was only another minute before they were airborne.
This was going to be fun and once they flew into clear air, it was time to clear the pipes.
Which pipes? Well that was yet to be determined, but when Nash ordered: "Give me Turbo's!" The three new passengers screamed like little girls on a rollercoaster while being pinned to the backs of their chairs unexpectedly on the way to Mach two while Nash and Saint John grinned the best they could while dealing with the G- Forces.
After they got over their initial shock, Nick, Sam and Will were shown some of Airwolf's other features on their route back to Vegas and were delivered safely if not with a little too much enthusiasm for the level of training they possessed in preparedness of the unforeseen seriousness.
That was The Lady for you.
Everyone was expected to rest up and be at Superior Securities in Van Nuys by 0800 the following morning for an all day briefing. Nash and Saint John headed back to the Lair as soon as they made the drop off in the fading light of the early evening, leaving the others to rest up in the luxury of The New Black.
Jo would bring Branson and the three Delta Force boys in the 169 and both Michael and Marella would make their own way in the Lear the following morning.
Arriving through the giant roller doors at the Superior Securities building at 0800, it didn't take long to clear everyone and get escorted into the boughs of the Californian branch of Project Guardian.
Ayden Chapman joined them on the big screen at the end of the room and they got down to the business of the mission for the day.
Later, Nash and Saint John made the most of the limited time they had with their significant others and would next see them again for a short time on the RV Dolphin. It wasn't easy on anyone, but they knew that it was part of the deal going into this.
At first light two days later, The Lady rose from her Lair and sped out over the desert and then the ocean to rendezvous with a Zodiac en-route between Los Angeles and Catalina Island.
They were using the obscure exercise to test the titanium crane and winch system to board the three men who'd be accompanying Nash and Saint John over the Pacific Ocean to China and to further complicate any patterns that they might unwittingly be forming and that might be picked up within the intelligence community.
They hoped that they could always make sure that they remained the horse that had bolted.
And bolt they did.
Branson proved to continue to be integral in keeping Airwolf on the downlow with his connections, his business acumen and his copious wealth.
Rather than involve any covert military assistance and run the risk of exposure, he had already anticipated the moves that he needed to make as soon as Project Guardian had approached them weeks previously.
RV Dolphin had been off the remote Kimberly Coast of Western Australia on a private charter and Bob got word from Branson to mobilise as soon as he dropped his wealthy passengers in Darwin and stocked up on what he needed for his next big adventure with his business partner and friend.
The biggest hurdle that they faced with what was now known as Operation Alpha, was range. There was an awful lot of ocean between the States and Asia and they needed to be able to refuel in order to make it without falling into the drink.
Dolphin took ten days to wind up its charter, replenish provisions - including twenty drums of Jet A1- steam North up into the Philippine Sea and then make fuel drops at the various uninhabited islands and atolls that were strewn between Taiwan and Hawaii. The ship would wait at sea for the first refuelling stop between the popular tropical island and the American mainland.
While Le had managed to get a further five hundred miles range thanks to the more efficient turbines, they were still at least five hundred miles short of being able to reach the nearest land mass at Hawaii.
Not that Hawaii was tactically the best place to fly Airwolf into anyway. RV Dolphin was always going to be the better option, so she was to be the first fuel stop along their watery highway.
The Santini Crew left their company in the very capable hands of their staff under the guise of a short Hawaiian holiday a day before Airwolf departed.
Marella and Michael joined them on the commercial flight because their Lear didn't have the range either and they all boarded RV Dolphin's chopper and headed east again to meet with the luxury vessel in time to make their appointment with The Lady the next day.
A familiar howl could be heard as The Lady made a circuit around the Dolphin and touched down on the deck at approximately 0900.
RV Dolphin would become the floating base for all communications between Project Guardian and Airwolf. It already had an impressive array of technology on board and all Le had to do, was plug his devices into the existing tech and they'd be ready to support the mission.
The ship veered onto a west south-westerly course and Operation Alpha made sure that all their technical operations were working before they stopped for lunch and everyone would take advantage of the ship's luxury appointments and the last rest time they'd have before shit got real.
The next morning, RV Dolphin had made it approximately five hundred miles west by the time Airwolf finally set off. The ship would stay on course between all the fuel drop off points along the way.
The fight would take just over four hours to cover the five thousand miles plus the two fuel stops on the way to the final one, an uninhabited volcanic island nestled between Taiwan and Luzon where they would wait for nightfall before finally taking the mission into central China.
Having Nick Sam and Will on board turned out to be a great help refuelling. Taking turns trying to outdo each other on the hand pump made the turnarounds quick and efficient and they didn't take much longer than a powered set up.
Dipping low to avoid radar on approach to the tiny archipelago of islands on the pacific rim north of the Philippines, Nash landed Airwolf on a grassy knoll between two volcanic peaks where the men set up a simple camp until they were due to leave.
They ate the cold food that the chef on the RV Dolphin made and with the fancy coffee maker that Le thankfully, had not removed from The Lady's options. The boys could enjoy a quirky luxury courtesy of one of the deadliest machines on the planet and Nash, who thought himself a Barista, didn't make a bad pilot either.
At last light, there was a final brief and the they were on their way North, Northwest towards the Chinese mainland. Having plotted a route where they would have the least chance of being discovered, they continued to hug the ocean and followed a path up a river, over agricultural land and then they could pick up speed again over the many miles of mountainous country until they intersected the mighty Yangtze River and followed it directly into Wuhan.
Under the cover of darkness, Nash used the FLIR to navigate his way carefully over the landscape via the coordinates that Le had entered into the navigation systems. Behind a hospital and on a heavily wooded hilltop was an old concrete pad that used to be part of the local water pressurisation system before the town became a city.
The buildings and water tanks had long gone, and the trees had made an admirable attempt to reclaim the area that was now only just big enough to land a helicopter the size of The Lady.
Wasting no time, the three Delta Force Operators checked their weapons, their high-tech supplies and their earpieces before they disappeared into the night towards the Lab that, while only about a thousand feet away, they needed to cross two major highways and a densely populated neighbourhood before getting there.
Connecting to the security systems wirelessly from the outside of the building, the boy's got Le to calibrate their scrambler to the correct frequency to allow them access to all the electronic doors and interfere with surveillance systems. It was the first time that Airwolf's electromagnetic technology had been adapted for another application and it saved time so that instead of trying to override a complete system, the scanning device simply isolated the areas that the men were walking past and literally paralysed anything that was electronic, making them electronically invisible.
"We're in." Nick announced after what felt like forever.
There was no going back now.
Nash and Saint John were kept in the loop via the footage and sound that was sent from the three men via their body cameras as the men made their way firstly to the surveillance room where they made short work of incapacitating the two overnight security personnel, before further avoiding being seen and making their way through the corridors of the mostly deserted building.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Perhaps a little too smoothly.
The men had bypassed all the offices and laboratories on their way to the basement level and they finally got to the end of a corridor that was also the end of the building schematics they had earlier committed to memory.
From that point they were going in blind.
The long corridor faded from light to dark as the last light in the ceiling was passed by and they came to a little used heavy metal door at the end.
Their sensors showed that the door wasn't hooked up to anything electronic. In fact there seemed to be no electromagnetic activity beyond the point of the last light.
A little plastic explosive around the three mechanical locks and they were through the heavy security door that creaked on its hinges as they opened it.
Continuing to tactically cover one another as they proceeded, they entered into a dark underground tunnel that looked aged enough to be part of an old underground network.
Then the signal to Airwolf faded and finally stopped altogether while the team descended deeper underground.
Nash and Saint John waited.
Then they started to get worried.
"Can you hear that?" Nash asked Saint John.
They both strained to hear the faint noise that they couldn't yet place.
"There!" Nash said, finally pin-pointing it. "It's coming from outside!"
Both men stepped from the confines of Airwolf's cabin, out into the night, with their senses on edge, they drew their torches and weapons.
Their surrounds weren't quiet. The city could be heard in the background like a white noise even so late into the evening.
Hearing the noise again, it sounded like a car backfiring in the distance, the trees around them muffled the sounds somewhat.
The sporadic explosive clatters came from somewhere not far from them. It sounded almost like gunfire echoing in a cavernous space.
The two men explored their surroundings, using the intermittent sounds to guide them into a wooded area and then they came across a pair of crude looking rusty steel doors that were set into a concrete structure.
Gunfire could be heard coming from behind the doors and they had some trouble opening them. They took a few minutes looking around for something to leaver the doors open and found an old barbed wire fence nearby, they loosened and pulled out one of the star posts and with a loud creaking sound, managed to force the old hinges to yield.
Shining some light down into the darkness beyond the doors, revealed a staircase that disappeared into the abyss.
More gunshots could be heard giving some structure to what the boys already thought. Saint John was just about to take the first step inside.
Stopping the older man with hand to his chest, Nash asked. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Where do you think?" Saint John answered Nash with a question of his own.
Nash shook his head, "I don't think so Hawke, someone needs to stay topside with The Lady."
"Like hell I'm gonna let you go down there alone." Saint John retorted.
"I won't be alone. I'll have three of Delta's best down there with me." Nash said countering Saint John with a strong argument. "Get Airwolf ready to fly. " He said.
"But Nash..." Saint John said, starting to argue.
"Get Airwolf ready to fly." Nash said again, standing his ground and glaring at the man who was forty years his senior.
It was an order. Nash was pulling rank. He was in charge of this mission and if the worst were to happen, at least Saint John and The Lady had a chance of getting out of here. The very thought of that was almost too much to bear, but it was too late to back out of this now.
Saint John thought for a moment and finally acquiesced with a nod.