Read Chopper Ops for Free Online Page A

down stories of Qel, the mythical flying beast. This winged monster would periodically visit the other villages in the Qaarta region and destroy them with great spits of fire from its mouth and great gusts of wind from its wings. But it had never descended on El Quas-ri because its people had always remained faithful to God and had lived honest lives.
    But on its last day, neither faith nor honesty could save the people of this ancient place.

     
    *****

     
    It was late afternoon when their world came to an end.
    Most of the village's 250 people were gathered in the town square, a tragically ironic twist as it turned out. The occasion for the crowd was the appearance of a new Toyota truck recently purchased by Amhed Amhed, the son of the village police chief. The truck—a two-door, sixteen-cubic-foot beauty—was the most modern vehicle ever to be driven in the village. It was painted white with silver lines across its hood and doors and very shiny hubcaps. To the people of El Quas-ri, it looked incredibly stylish.
    Ahmed Ahmed was very proud of it. He'd ordered the truck seven months before, and had kept his fellow villagers updated with each passing day on the status of its delivery. They'd staged a celebration a week before when Ahmed finally left for Basra to claim the vehicle. When word got around that Ahmed had returned with the truck, many of the villagers dropped what they were doing and immediately rushed to the town square. That was why the crowd had formed.
    There they had found Ahmed telling all who would listen everything about the vehicle. Its engine, its chassis, its transmission, its spiffy interior. Ahmed related his journey to the port city of Basra, what he was doing when he first saw the truck, and his brush with an Iraqi Army major who had taken an immediate liking to the vehicle as well. The major—a brutish man with a huge scar running down his right cheek—had held him up for two hours, questioning him about the truck, how he had ordered it, how he had raised the money to buy it. In the end, Ahmed had been forced to pay the Army officer the equivalent of twenty American dollars in order to let him leave with the truck.
    But Ahmed had anticipated this. He'd taken an extra fifty dollars to Basra with him to be used as the bribe money he knew he would need if he hoped to bring the truck back to El Quas-ri. From his point of view, the twenty dollars he'd paid to the Army major had been a bargain. In reality, he was actually thirty dollars ahead of the game.
    The villagers especially liked this aspect of Ahmed's adventure to Basra. They were very proud of him. He was the clever son of a clever man.
    Only good things could befall someone so smart.

     
    *****

     
    Ahmed was telling his story for the fifth time when the late dusk suddenly turned back to bright sunshine.
    It came at first as a flash of light hitting the middle of the village square, stunning the villagers. The fire came next—scorching, searing, deadly. A rain of metal, razor-sharp and white-hot, came down on them, seemingly from every direction.
    The children were consumed first, which was strange as they were the smallest targets. But the fire—which was actually the combined fusillade from three miniguns and a 105-mm howitzer—tore into them with sickening ferocity. Then the stream of shells ripped through the elders and the women who had gathered a short distance away from the Toyota. Finally, the fire reached the younger men of the village clustered around the rear bumper of Ahmed's new truck. Many of them were literally cut in half.
    The flying monster then flew off to the east, banked, and reappeared over the village. This time it spat fire into the houses, the huts, and workshops, killing anyone who had not been present in the square. Forty-three more people, plus seventy-one homes, were decimated in this manner. The bodies were quickly reduced to bone fragments, blood, and sinew. The homes were reduced to dust, some smaller