Aerial Anti-Mafia Mission
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Aerial Anti-Mafia Mission (Mission Aérienne Anti Mafia) is the name of the twelfth story arc in the Buck Danny comic book series by Jean Michel Charlier and Victor Hubinon.
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[edit] Publication History
This story arc was originally a trilogy of novels published in the seventies in the weekly Franco-Belgian magazine Spirou. The three novels were named The Valley of Green Death (La Vallée de la Mort Verte), published in 1972; Sharks in the China Sea (Requins en Mer de Chine), published in 1975; and Ghost Queen published in 1978. When the entire series was streamlined into albums integrating the different story arcs into a single book, the three novels were combined into "Aerial Anti-Mafia Mission."
[edit] Plot
[edit] The Valley of Green Death
Sonny Tuckson's Crusader is lost in the South China Sea during a particularly brutal storm; out of fuel, he is forced to eject in extremely adverse conditions over the island of Borneo. As soon as the weather clears, Buck Danny and Jerry Tumbler take off by helicopter to lead the search and rescue party; but just as they locate Sonny, they are shot down by unidentified jet aircraft and barely survive the crash. After escaping a violent fire started by the chopper's crash and explosion, they follow the direction of the bandit aircraft, both to identify their attackers and to find supplies and transmitters.
After a day of searching, they come across the bandits' home base; an immense opium plantation, complete with an airstrip for crop dusters and the fighters that attacked them. After nightfall, they try to sneak into the base and steal one of the crop dusters, but Buck and Tumb are spotted and captured. They are brought in and meet their adversaries; General Shim, the local dictator, and Rocky Voltero, a middleman for a powerful Mafia family. Shim is allowing the Mafia to run the largest opium plantation in the world on his territory, in exchange for which they provide him with financial support and a makeshift air force of European and American mercenaries.
Buck and Tumb are imprisoned, but before their fate can be determined, Sonny breaks them out. While the Mafia personnel spreads out and searches for the escapees, the three of them sneak back onto the base, steal a crop duster and escape, even neutralizing three of Shim's jets before getting away. Enraged, Shim orders the rest of his fighters after the Americans, but the arrival of Navy F-4s on the scene deters them. The three pilots make it back to their carrier (U.S.S. Ranger), and relate the situation to the admiral; however, he informs them that the United States will probably be politically unable to take action.
[edit] Sharks in the China Sea
The novel begins with a briefing in the op-center. The Admiral informs Buck, Tumb and Sonny that General Shim has complained before the UN General Assembly about the U.S. Navy's recent incursions into North Sarawak (his country); without absolute proof of the plantation's existence, the United States cannot intervene. Buck and Sonny volunteer to take off the following night with a stealthy YO-3A, "accidentally" drift into North Sarawak and take pictures of the plantation. The operation is a success, but Tumbler, who was escorting them in a Crusader, is shot down by enemy jets. Worse, the pictures reveal that the opium poppies will be harvested within three days, not enough time for the Pentagon to make a decision. Taking the law completely into his own hands, the Admiral orders Danny and his fighters to destroy the plantation; but a new storm delays flight operations another day, and by the time the raid is finally launched, the harvest is over.
Outraged by the unauthorized raid, the Pentagon orders the Ranger to cease all operations against North Sarawak and return to Pearl Harbour. Instead, the carrier battle group feigns a departure, but turns around in the middle of the night, returns to Borneo and anchors itself in a deserted fjord, unknown to both Shim and the U.S. Their plan is to wait for the Mafia's cargo ship to come retrieve the harvest, then pursue and intercept it on the high seas.
Meanwhile, Tumb has been recaptured by the enemy. Under torture, he finally agrees to go on television and admit that there were never any poppies, and that their existence was invented by the CIA and U.S. Navy as a pretext to invade North Sarawak and overthrow its government. However, when Voltero brings him the text he has to read, Tumb breaks free and captures him. Thanks to his new hostage, he obtains a helicopter and escapes the enemy base (destroying their communications antenna before getting away); contacting the U.S. Navy by code, he is directed back to the carrier. Unknown to him, Shim had placed a transmitter on the helicopter; thanks to it, his men follow Tumbler to the fjord, where they discover the Ranger.
[edit] Ghost Queen
The discovery of the Ranger has placed Shim and his Mafia allies in an awkward position. They cannot reveal the carrier's presence without calling international attention to Sarawak again, which they are not willing to do until the cargo ship Ghost Queen, carrying the opium, is safely away. To this end, they decide to ask for the help of Khum-Lan, the leader of a local pirate organization; he responds by sending his lieutenant, who is revealed to be none other than Lady X, Buck Danny's old nemesis. She explains her plan to attack and neutralize the Ranger with a torpedo brought in by frogmen, and neutralize it long enough for the Ghost Queen to execute a clean getaway; Shim will then be able to rally public opinion in his favor.
The operation does not go as planned; the frogmen are discovered before they can reach the Ranger. However, their torpedo cannot be disarmed, and is instead directed away from the carrier; upon explosion, it causes a landslide in the entrance to the fjord, which traps the ship inside. The Admiral estimates that it will take thirty-six hours to clear the passageway again. When news of this partial success reaches Shim's headquarters, he immediately orders his last two fighters to attack the Ranger and the Ghost Queen to take off. However, both of these fail; Shim's Drakens are intercepted by the carrier's Crusader patrol, and the Ghost Queen crew discover their ship has been disabled by one of the Ranger SEAL teams.
Faced with another failure, Shim places his last hope in Lady X. She proposes a plan B; the cargo will be transferred aboard one of her submarines, while other pirates within the organization hijack an oil tanker, bring it to the fjord where the Ranger is stuck and detonate it, destroying everything within miles. The pirates' plan is again foiled when the tanker is intercepted, but they still manage to detonate it just as the Ranger breaks free, setting the oil-caked surface of the water ablaze for miles around. The Admiral orders the ship into emergency nuclear alert and sails it through the inferno. Ten minutes later, the Ranger emerges still in one piece, but all of its aircraft have been rendered non-operational, except the helicopter Buck Danny was using to guide the ship. Danny turns the chopper around and races to intercept Lady X's submarine before it can escape; the sub is located and destroyed just as it is diving, along with its deadly cargo. Once back on the Ranger, Buck, Tumb and Sonny find that the ship has finally reestablished contact with the Pentagon, and that while the mission was a success, the Admiral risks losing his pension for mutiny. Danny promises that the entire crew will support him, if necessary by appealing to public opinion and the thousands of live saved by the destruction of the drug plantation.
[edit] Characters
- Buck Danny: the lead character of the series. In this story arc, he is the Commander, Air Group of the U.S.S. Ranger.
- Jerry "Tumb" Tumbler: one of Danny's second-in-commands and closest friends, along with Sonny.
- Sonny Tuckson: completes the trio, another pilot extremely close to Danny.
- Admiral (unnamed): the senior officer in charge of the Ranger carrier battle group, who risks his career and his pension to stop the threat posed by Voltero and Shim's drug operation. His motivations are very personal; his son was killed by an overdose of heroin when college friends persuaded him to try drugs.
- Lady X: a formidable pilot and mercenary, and Buck Danny's nemesis since the mid-fifties. In this story arc, she is working as the second in command for the powerful pirate lord Khum Lan; their organization's muscle comes from their access to weapon caches abandoned all over the Pacific by the Japanese after World War Two. It is also revealed that her espionage career began towards the end of the war as a close friend of one of Imperial Japan's top admirals, which is how she knows the caches' locations.
- Rocky Voltero: the middleman for an American Mafia family. He has a very "business, not personal" attitude about his job; when Danny expresses his contempt for a man who would stab his own country in the back, he simply responds, "In business, I don't have any flag."
- General Shim: dictator of the Sultanate of North Sarawak. Thanks to his support by the Mafia, he is the most powerful ruler in Borneo; he also has excellent ties with the pirates infesting the South China Sea.
