From far away, it sounds like a dream. A quiet whuck-whuck-whuck that sounds like nothing else in the world. From our outpost on the massif, we can see them far off in the distance, long before the valley-dwellers can hear them. We gather on the lip of the cliff. By the time we can make them out clearly, they look like angry green and black wasps, and the noise has changed dramatically. The sad excuses for trees that jut from the cliffs wave and snap in the rotor wash, and roar of the engines can be heard above the punch-in-the-gut throbbing of the blades. Once they’re over the villages, they go into action. Bright white rockets and red 37mm tracers fire rake the huts. The vapor trails disperse into harsh ghosts in the hazy day, and the gunships roar on down the valley. You can barely make out the quiet bass thumping of the rotors in the humid air. The whole valley is silent. The only movement that can be seen is the brief waving of trees from the rotor wash. It’s quiet again. We can go back to our jobs now.