The Tripoli Mission
By
Lon R Maisttison
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PUBLISHED BY:
The Tripoli Mission
Copyrighted © 2011 by Lon R. Maisttison
Updated: 2016 by Lon R. Maisttison
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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 Rescue’s 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 1982, the business took a downturn due to the Miami riots that year. During that summer, and appreciating those times of American history, some overbearing cops in Miami beat to death a black motorcyclist which started the Miami Riots. Air Rescue was, of course, doing rescue work during the rioting period. The official story told by the sister aircrew flying that afternoon with the downed helicopter, indicated that the helicopter came under fire from the rioters and was hit in the tail rotor, always the most variable spot for a helicopter and the chopper crashed. Everybody on-board, including the patient, they picked up was killed. That was a very bad day for Air Rescue. So, some of the rescue aircrew members with military backgrounds started carrying weapons and on several occasions, they shot at rioters and snipers who were shooting at them.
In 1985, Air Rescue decided to officially start-up the combat rescue business and started hiring commandos out of various militaries. The commando unit of Air Rescue began from an idea of one of the aircrew personnel, who had a background in Special Forces. He took upon himself to do a little freelance work and went on a mission to rescue a businessman kidnapped in a South American country. He successfully rescued the businessman being held by drug lords and received a nice reward payment from the man’s company for a good job. He returned back to work at Air Rescue and of course Air Rescue wanted to hear all about his rescue story because Air Rescue liked the idea behind the rescue operation. So, he started up the commando unit of Air Rescue with one person and business grew and grew.
Once, the U.S. Government got wind of the military operations in the United States, the U.S. Government forced Air Rescue into U.S. Federal Court and through court action forced Air Rescue to either leave the United States or cease operations under a federal mandate of the Private Militias Laws brought on by all the problems with the Cuban National Front in Florida in the 1960’s. So, Air Rescue made a deal with the U.S. Government that the military wing of the business would move out of the United States, leaving only the medical rescue business.
That year, Air Rescue Special Forces moved their entire business office for Special Forces Operations to Harrogate, England, under the direction of Frank James, Lieutenant-Colonel (Ret.), Royal Marine Commandos (1984) as British laws are more relaxed about para-military organizations. Once the Harrogate Office was established, Frank established the supply office in Northampton which had operational control of assets being kept offshore in various friendly countries.
By the late 1980’s, Air Rescue was a well established and successful paramilitary-for-hire business. Commandos were used extensively in special rescue operations, especially during the Beirut Civil War to save kidnapped victims for large sums of money. One of the hero’s 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. Jimmy was known by several intelligence agencies and especially Egyptian intelligence for his work.
This action-adventure story appeared in the first book of Air Rescue Stories titled: “The Two Sisters of Kuwait.” The story is about the exploits of commando, Jimmy West and the report he filed titled: “The Tripoli Mission.”