Flight of the Gunships

By Lon Maisttison

“Flight of the Gunships” is an ebook where the action hero is a gunship. The Captain and crew of Air Rescue’s ship Global Rescuer stumbles upon a terrorist in a restaurant in Alexandria, Egypt. Knowing that he is wanted by the United States dead or alive for 10 million dollars, they follow his yacht throughout the Mediterranean. But, the terrorist is on a suicide mission and sails to the USA with three homemade one kiloton atomic bombs. To save the three American cities, Air Rescue uses its high tech Fast Attack gunships to stop him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lon Maisttison
• Release date: May 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458087966

Lon Maisttison

Lon Maisttison is a retired Southern Indiana boy who enjoyed a 43-year career in Electronics Engineering with 20 years spent in England working on Government contracts.It was during his last assignment in England (1993 to 2003),that the idea for Air Rescue Stories was conceived from day-dreams formulated in the imaginative mind of author Lon Maisttison. The author visualized these day-dream stories based against real life events happening throughout the world and injecting his own 20th century Ninja action hero. A Ninja that was not based on Western Movie type of fighters, but the original fifteenth century Japanese stealth warrior, who specialized in covert assassinations for a paid fee for services. These fifteenth century Ninja’s utilized stealth; the art of being undetected, invisible to their target, which became the basis for the Air Rescue Stories.This theme created the action hero Jimmy West – The Stealth Warrior. An action hero who is paid a million dollars a mission to infiltrate a location, knocks off all the guards with a blowgun and tranquilizer darts, secure the kidnapped person and leave silently.During the late 1990‘s, the author started compiling stores on his home computer into a written outline format about the visualized day-dream stories of that day. For years the day-dreamed stories remained dormant on his home computer until 2003 when the author came back to the United States and contracted a virus that attacked his heart that developed into congestive heart failure (CHF). During that year of recovery from a heart function of 10%, the author started researching the Mediterranean Diet to survive CHF. This research work lead to the book titled: “The Kissed of Death – Congestive Heart Failure.” So, the author made himself a promise to continue writing about CHF and in addition, started a new hobby, writing books about Air Rescue. This lead to the first book titled: “The Two Sisters of Kuwait,” written from stories developed in England.Since 2003, new day-dreamed stories began about Air Rescue with the creation of Global Rescuer, a helicopter support ship, which used hologram displays to disguise its identity i.e. stealth. In addition, four robot based fast attack gunships was created, which use voice commands, supercomputers to fly the gunship. Later, Skyspy and Gunrunner was created, both are robot aircraft. The ship/gunship creation opened an endless avenue of new stories based on Strike Force Rescues i.e. attack gunships and rescue helicopters.For the past seventeen years, these simple ideas and dreams have created fourteen books composed of one short story, six novelettes, three novellas, four novels and four novel versions of “Kissed by Death.”

Book preview

FLIGHT OF THE GUNSHIPS

By Lon R. Maisttison

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY

Lon R. Maisttison on Smashwords

Flight of the Gunships

Copyright Notice

Copyrighted © 2011 by Lon R. Maisttison

Copyrighted © 2016 by Lon Maisttison

Updated: © 2018 by Lon Maisttison

Updated: © 2019 by Lon Maisttison

All Rights Reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase and additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 9870359967636

*****

Introduction

Flight of the Gunships is the first action-adventure short story about the exploits of Air Rescue's Ship - The Global Rescuer and its gunships and rescue helicopters.

This story was told by Captain Cork of Global Rescuer at a meeting with his boss, Commander Frank James, Air Rescue Special Forces at the Courtyard Restaurant, Harrogate.

Here is the report he filed titled: "Flight of the Gunships."

*****

The Air Rescue Story

It all began in the 1980‘s when Air Rescue started-up a helicopter rescue business. The company’s main line of business was transporting medical patients from hospitals, picking up people at car accident sites, taking people off ships at sea and basically specialized in air pickups of all kinds. Accident rescues were Air Rescues most profitable business for years, their bread and butter, so to speak, and they were very good at this line of work. Business was good.

In 1985, a commando unit was created from an idea of one of the aircrew personnel who had a background in Special Forces. He took it upon himself to do a little freelance work and went on a mission to rescue a businessman kidnapped in South America. He successfully rescued the businessman being held by drug lords and received a nice reward payment from the man’s company for doing a good job. The commando unit later became Air Rescue Special Forces.

By the 1990’s, Air Rescue Special Forces was a well-established, successful, paramilitary-for-hire business. Commandos were used extensively on special rescue operations, especially during the Beirut Civil War, to save kidnapped victims for large sums of money. One of the heroes of that period of time was "Jimmy West" who was so successful in sneaking into and out of Beirut, that his paid fee increased to one million dollars per mission, and he became known as the stealth warrior for his nighttime rescue tactics.

Bio: Jimmy West - joined Air Rescue Special Forces in 1986 after being discharged from the U.S. Army Special Forces. During Jimmy’s 19 + year Army career, he had spent several years in Japan where he trained with a monk; a real 19th century ninja in the mountains of Iga Province in Japan. The monk trained Jimmy in Ninjutsu, the ancient art of stealth, and taught him to be a ninja; a shadow warrior who specializes in blending into his surroundings, the art of non-detection and avoidance. Being an American national, and having a career in a paramilitary organization, presented legal problems for Jimmy living in the United States. So, Jimmy eventually took up residence in a Mediterranean villa in the small, beautiful town of Port de Soller, Mallorca.

It was in the mid 1990’s when Air Rescue started talking about expansion. Air Rescue realized that commandos like Jimmy were limited to only very secretive cloak and dagger missions. With countries in chaos all around the globe, Air Rescue saw a need for a ship that could carry rescue helicopters required in larger rescue operations, and overhead protection for them i.e. a gunship.

Building Global Rescuer

It was in the early 90’s when a cruise ship sailed out of Miami harbor and caught fire, and everybody onboard had to abandon ship. The ship was a total loss in the eyes of the insurance company, and they were going nuts trying to sell the burnt-out ship and recoup some of their losses.

Air Rescue inspected the ship and found that it was in good shape. The engines were just fine and so were the forward 50 cabins from the smokestack to the front of the ship.

Air Rescue had been looking for a ship to buy, but everybody wanted a small fortune for their vessels. Then, one of Air Rescue's engineers took a look at the burnt-out ship. He sat down over lunch that day and drew out plans on a table napkin of how simple it would be to adapt the ship to what they wanted, so Air Rescue made a ridiculous offer. Five days later the insurance company accepted it. Air Rescue put a skeleton crew onboard and sailed it to a harbor in India, where all three burnt out decks were cut out and made into a hanger. The Indian shipbuilders then laid down a steel subfloor in the hanger bay and over the top of the hanger, installed 100 feet of steal flight deck and elevator to service the hanger below. The other damaged decks were cut out and made into storage rooms. The cruise ship later became known as Global Rescuer and at any given time, carried four Fast Attack gunships and two rescue helicopters.

Building the First Fast Attack

The first Fast Attacks were built from modifying the Agusta 109 that was salvaged from a hanger fire and purchased by Air Rescue in another insurance sale.

The helicopters were shipped to a Norwegian factory where all the modifications were performed, because of the Norwegian high technology welding skills developed for building cruise ships.

The first function was to strip the Agusta down to the frame (shell) and modify the body to accommodate the new, jet turbofan engines, weapons platform, heavy duty landing gear, supercomputers, microcomputer electro-mechanical devices and wiring.

At the rear passenger section of the airframe, the glass window was removed and replaced with a solid metal one. Under where the glass window was originally located was honeycombed out to create a cavity for the tires to fit from the new heavy-duty landing gear.

Sections of the passenger compartment flooring was cutout (modified) to create two cavities, one on each side of the fuselage flooring to accommodate the mounting of two small 12 inch by 30 inch, Williams F112 turbofan engines. The flooring behind and under the pilots / co-pilots seats was modified for air ducks to be installed so the jet engines could receive outside ram air. The rear end of the passenger compartment flooring was cut out to extend the engine cavities out the rear of the helicopter. A two-foot tail section; the part that meets the fuselage, was squared off at the back to create thrust port cavities for the new jet engines, and reverse thruster/hover device. Hinged covers were installed over the engine compartments on the belly of the helicopter.

Second - the weapons platform wings were welded to the fuselage on both sides to accommodate the 105 mm main gun and laser aiming device on the right side of the helicopter. The platform wing on the left side was installed to support the three 7.62 mm (.30 Cal) GE/Dillon, 4,000 RPM mini guns. Over the newly installed engine cavity was installed another metal subfloor to accommodate the weight of the main gun autoloader / shell bank and 7.62 mm magazine installation.