Free Dragon Sim-13 by 1959- Bob Mayer Page A

two-hour notices for a deployment unless someone's shooting at somebody somewhere."
    Kent didn't know either. "All I know is, I've got to go with you all. I don't even know where we're going."
    "Uh-huh," Young noted. "This is it here," he said as he pulled up to a pickup truck with two air police in it. Young showed his ID and Kent followed suit. The police waved them on. "You see that red line we just crossed?"
    Kent looked back at the lit tarmac where the pickup was parked. "Yes."
    "We call that the line of death. If someone who isn't authorized crosses that line, those MPs will draw down on them. You're in a secure area of the flight line now." He pulled up next to an aircraft. "And this is my baby." Kent got out of the car and looked over the aircraft.
    Kent knew the capabilities of the MC-130E, designated as the Combat Talon, from his classes and training at the home of the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Florida. The basic design was that of a Lockheed C-130. Using that airframe, the air force had built a plane unique in the world.
    Seeing the fuselage in the harsh spotlights, Kent could note some of the more obvious external modifications. The nose of the airplane had a large bulbous protrusion under the cockpit that normal C-130s didn't possess; that bulb housed many of the additional navigational devices the airplane employed. Also in front, two "whiskers" scissored out from the point of the nose, forming an inverted v along the direction of flight. The whiskers were for the Fulton Recovery System, designed to retrieve either personnel or equipment from the ground. A balloon was used to stretch a cable up from the ground. The pilot flew the plane right into the cable and the whiskers snatched it between them. From the edge of the whiskers, a steel cable with wire cutters extended to the tips of the wings. This cable was protection in case the pilot missed; it would prevent the balloon cable from fouling the props.
    In the center of the whiskers, the balloon cable was clamped, then the speed of the aircraft drew the cable up along the belly of the plane. Hanging off the open ramp in the back, another clamp caught the cable and rotated it onto a winch inside the aircraft. Once the winch was activated, the cable was pulled into the aircraft, reeling in whatever had been on the ground
    As he ran his eyes back along the craft, Kent noted the extra fuel pods slung under the wings, which increased the aircraft's range. In the rear, he could see Young ground-guiding the driver of a forklift, maneuvering a pallet into the back of the aircraft. Kent wandered around the back.
    The rear of the aircraft opened up to allow such cargo to be put in and also for paradrops of personnel or equipment. The back split, with the bottom half coming down to form a ramp and the top half disappearing into the fuselage of the aircraft beneath the massive tail.
    Young had positioned the pallet over the ramp. Using hand gestures, the loadmaster had the driver lower the pallet until it sat on a set of rollers. After the forklift driver backed off, Kent hopped up and helped Young roll the pallet into the main body of the aircraft.
    The interior of the Combat Talon was the same size as a regular C-130 except that the front half of the cargo area was taken up with the banks of electronic equipment that were Kent's domain. Along with an assistant, Kent operated equipment that allowed them to detect enemy radar systems, a key factor in enabling the aircraft to penetrate hostile airspace without being detected. Another critical component to that ability was the navigational systems the pilots used to fly the aircraft. A precision ground-mapping radar laid out the terrain ahead, allowing the pilots to monitor the plane's location and anticipate upcoming obstacles as the aircraft hugged the ground to avoid radar. Cameras on the nose of the aircraft fed information back to a low-level light display in the cockpit, enabling the pilots to fly