Weapons checked, Corporal Harris’s team stand by for the Chinook to come in and land.
“Here it comes, Sir,” one of the team announces, his head turned up to the sky.
Harris hears the distinctive sound of the big twin-rotor helicopter before he looks up in the direction of the ever-increasing din it emanates, as its rotors chop through the air. Only the raised nose and the unique rectangle underbelly of the helicopter are visible as the airport’s bright ground lights start to catch it in their beam.
As the Chinook approaches, its twin engines are working hard, ready to land. Its thunderous noise starts to drown out the noise of the other, smaller helicopters on the ground that have either just landed or are waiting for clearance to take off.
Harris’s team, now fully alert, spread out, ready to take up position around LZ1, the Chinook’s allotted landing zone. They hang back farther than normal from the zone, however, in anticipation of the colossal downdraft the big craft will throw down.
At first, Harris thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him as the helicopter comes into sharper view on its approach. They aren’t; the helicopter is wobbling strangely.
“Standby; we may have a mechanical issue,” Harris states into his comms headset.
“Looks like the loading ramp is opening?” a team member on the far side of LZ1, says in confusion.
“Confirmed, loading ramp is opening,” another voice sounds in Harris’s headset.
“Covering positions,” Harris orders as the Chinook descends, now entering the landing zone area and moving over the helicopters below.
His team is now covering the incoming helicopter, all of whom have taken a knee with their rifle pointed up and following the descent.
Still, over one hundred meters out from LZ1, the helicopter is coming down too fast, and at this rate of descent, it will fall short of its landing zone. The wobble has deteriorated, the pilot is losing control, the Chinook’s nose has come down and it is swaying from side to side. A feeling of panic starts to take hold of Harris as he becomes convinced the helicopter is going to crash.
Something falls out of the back of the Chinook, out of the open landing ramp. Harris follows it down the thirty meters or so, his eyes gaping, with a look of bewilderment transfixed on his face. The flailing body drops down fast, and he sees it clearly in the bright lights and he sees where it lands.
As if in slow motion, the body drops onto the outer edge of the spinning rotors of a grounded, stationary Wildcat. The body fragments into pieces which are flung back into the air by the power of the rotors. Pieces of body shoot through the air in all directions too fast to follow, until Harris sees something travelling in their direction.
The severed arm and hand hit the ground inside LZ1. The whole team recoils as it tumbles in their direction until it comes to a stop just short of them. Harris is sure that the fingers of the hand still twitch where it lies.
There is no time to dwell on the limb, twitching or not, the Chinook is still coming in their direction and it’s only a matter of time before it crashes. Did the body fall from the landing ramp or did it jump before the helicopter crashes, Harris manages to ask himself?
Now low in the air and still a distance short of its LZ, the body of the Chinook suddenly swings around at speed and out of control. A shower of bodies is thrown out of the gaping landing ramp, this time away from the helicopters below. They fall the short distance down onto the tarmac and grass areas around the left side of the landing zones.
The body of the Chinook carries on its trajectory, putting the whole helicopter into a fatal spin. Like a pirouetting dancer, it impossibly spins across the top of the helicopters below. Panicked personnel on the ground scatter in all directions, desperately trying to escape the impending crash.
After what seems like an age but is only a few seconds, the Chinooks’ dance comes to a catastrophic end. The tail of the helicopter spins, sending the lowered landing ramp careering into the stationary rotors of one of the grounded helicopters below, as the Chinook loses height.
Harris sees the impact a second before the sound of the crash reaches his ears. The force of the crash sending the nose of the huge Chinook upwards and flipping it into the air, like a whale breaching out of the ocean. And like a whale crashes down into the sea on its back, so does the Chinook.
Spinning rotors first, the Chinook slams down into the hardware below. Two helicopters, both fully laden with fuel and ordinance, a fuel truck and other support vehicles are all in its path. A fierce bright white light flashes an instant before a massive explosion erupts near the centre of the landing zone area. Fuel tanks of the Chinook rupture as do the two helicopters in the crash area; the fuel truck’s resistance is futile, and it explodes along with the helicopters. A fireball blasts hundreds of feet into the air at the epicentre and rushes out horizontally, sending an immense shockwave with it. Surrounding helicopters are blasted off the ground and incinerated, their ruptured fuel tanks adding to the fireball and extending it to engulf the next helicopter or fuel truck. Each new explosion has a domino effect and engulfs the next piece of equipment to it.
A chain reaction now ensues as the heat rises. Ordinance starts to explode as the heat reaches new high temperatures. Hundreds of thousands of bullets start to fire without a trigger being pulled as their cordite reaches critical mass. Bullets fly in all directions and hit the first things in their path or shoot off into the air. Bombs and rockets explode as safety mechanisms and casings are melted.
This phase makes the initial explosion
