The beat of helicopter blades directly overhead woke her. As she
stared, down out of it, hooked by a harness and cable to the mother
ship above, came Brock Vond ... whom his colleagues were calling
"Death from Slightly Above," had been out traveling in a tight
formation of three dead-black Huey slicks, up and down the terrain
of Vineland nap-of-the-earth style, liable to pop up suddenly over a
peaceful ridgeline or come screaming down the road after an
innocent motorist....
-Thomas Pynchon, Vineland (1990)

I know this is of no help, since obviously the military expression inspired it and not vice versa, but it is literary.