Passage

At the opposite end of the strip the structures turned out to be three old rusting Army types Quonset huts with their end doors that faced the runway closed.  Jim stopped the Duke on the opposite side of the runway from the huts with its left wing pointing at the door of the middle one. He kept the engines running.

After a little while the doors on the middle hut slid open. A jeep with the old style quad-50 caliber mount containing four passengers drove slowly forward.

“Here’s payday”, said Mac as he slid out, made sure his seat belt stuck out to keep the door from latching shut, stepped off the trailing edge of the wing, opened the cargo door, and slowly dragged out the case. The person standing behind the quad-50’s aimed the guns directly at the Duke. Jim swung the Duke around to face them by adding power to the right engine while holding the left brake. When he was lined up, he flipped the row of toggle switches Mac had installed and the two mini-guns dropped down to join the four Hawkeyes below the wings. The gunner on the jeep turned the quad-50’s away and held his hands in front of himself palm forward and smiled.

When the dust cleared, Mac continued his deliberate walk to the middle of the runway and laid down the open case. The jeep, upon a command from the inside of the hut, continued slowly forward. About six feet separated them when the jeep stopped. A man in back picked up two army duffel bags and came forward carrying the bags with a strap over each shoulder. He dropped the bags in front of Mac and bent down to inspect the cash. Mac picked one of the brick sized packages wrapped in black plastic from one bag, dug his pocketknife from his pocket and stuck the blade into the package. He next extracted a glass vial filled with a clear liquid from his shirt pocket, removed the rubber plug, and stuck the knife blade into the clear liquid. He replaced the rubber plug and shook the vial. He held it up for Jim to see the liquid’s new blue color. Jim nodded OK and the man bent over the money closed the case and looked at Mac quizzically. Mac reached for the second bag and extracted a package from it. The second test with a second vial proved OK also but Mac saw Jim look with alarm at the top of the building.

That was enough for Mac. He opened up with both Mac-10’s as Jim let go with a Hawkeye directly into the building. First the explosion shook the ground. Then the building responded by becoming a huge fireball with pieces of tin roofing, parts of jeeps, and parts of men flying upward and outward. Other blasts followed the initial explosion as the munitions stored in the building were ignited.

Mac killed the man on the ground first and then directed his fire toward the other three in the jeep. None of them got off a round.  He then jumped up on the jeep and swung the quad-50 around raking the remains of the buildings with the 50-calibers. Jim steered the Duke with the throttles to place a Hawkeye into each of the other two building and they responded much like the first one had.

Mac could barely make it out above the bedlam as Jim yelled, “Get your ass in here and lets go”. Mac jumped off the jeep, put a duffel bag on each shoulder, and headed for the Duke. As an after thought, he retrieved the case of money as he ran by it. He flung everything through the cargo door of the Duke, dived in behind it, pulling the door closed behind him. As he slammed the cargo door shut, Jim was bringing up power and aligning the Duke with the runway. Mac heard the sickening thuds of bullets slamming into the rear of the Duke as he made his way forward to the right front seat. While pulling in his seat belt, Mac stole a quick glance backward out the door. He saw a string of armored personnel carriers and jeeps coming up the ruts that blended into the runway.

He said to Jim, “Bad guys are bearing down on us from behind”.