“Haw, Connors, you asshole, where’d you learn that trick?” Nate yelled, delighted.
Connors stood up and tried to dust the mud off the front of his fatigues. He turned to give us a snappy reply, but the whole truckload was laughing so hard that he just looked embarrassed and grinned sheepishly. It was great. Hooray, the company IP makes a mistake. And right in front of all of us, too.
“I would never do that,” said Resler, sitting next to me at the back edge of the truck. “Would you do that?”
“Not me,” I said. “Would you do that, Riker?”
“Not me,” said Riker very loudly. “Only an Instructor Pilot asshole would try to lasso moving rotor blades.”
Leese sat smiling next to me. He and I had flown the last mission together, my first hot mission. I felt pleasantly tired, calm, and strangely satisfied.
On our last few missions we had taken patrols out to Happy Valley, dropped them off, and waited at the laager area. On this last one, grunts had made light contact and reported several skirmishes where we had dropped them. We had taken three loads to the LZ; that was three trips in, so we would have to make three trips to get them out.
As we came in for the second pickup, Leese said that Shaker was making a bad mistake flying the same path over the trees each time.
“As soon as the VC get the idea that we repeat our flight path, they’ll set up machine guns along it.”
We were Orange Four. I was on the controls. I was actually having fun because I was getting pretty good at formation flying. Leese’s complaint reminded me that there were people down there who did not give a hoot that I flew formation well. All they wanted was to shoot me down.
“What should we be doing instead?”
“Take a different path in every time. Keep ‘em confused.”
We landed the second time without incident. Half the grunts jumped onto the sixteen ships, leaving the rest to wait for the last flight. After a thirty-second pause to let us load up, Shaker took off over the forward tree line. We followed his path. The ship I was flying seemed much stronger than usual. I stayed with the flight with no trouble at all, not falling back, as some of the dogships did. When everything was working right, it was exhilarating, this air-assault stuff.
“See, he took off right over the same place he did last time,” Leese said through my earphones. “No good,” he mumbled. I thought Leese was being too cautious. I thought we were doing fine.
It took thirty minutes to get the grunts back to the Golf Course and return. Shaker led us back to the valley at 1500 feet and 100 knots. About five miles out from the LZ, he dove down to treetop level for the approach. This was the exciting part, the low-level flying. Leese had taken the controls on the way out, and I was getting a great demonstration of low-level flying. He stayed right in the trees while at the same time keeping us close to the number-three ship. Occasionally a treetop would flash between us and them. Leese would let the fuselage pass between two trees, tilting the rotor just in time to pop over the rushing branches. A hundred knots is not all that fast until you’re as close to the ground as we were, where the effect of speed is confusing.
“Same flight path,” grumbled Leese as the trees streaked by. Shaker was leading us back along the textbook approach, over the lowest obstacles, up a valley of trees toward the LZ—our third trip along the same path.
“Yellow Two taking hits!” Decker’s voice shot through me.
“Muzzle blasts from three o‘clock.” A totally useless call. No call sign; therefore, no position.
As Shaker crossed the forward tree line, he called “Flare” over the radio to warn us to slow for the landing.
“White Two, receiving fire off our right side!” Connors’s voice sounded above the crackle of his own machine-gun fire.
We would be at the hot spot any second now. I had already checked the sliding armor panel on the seat. It was all the way forward, but I still felt naked. I was light on the controls, feeling Leese’s quick correction. Why the fuck didn’t we have chest armor?
As our right door gunner opened up with the machine gun, I tried not to flinch. I watched the passing trees and clearings to see if I could see the enemy. If I could spot. them first, I could direct the gunner. Maybe. I’m gonna transfer to guns the second I get back, I thought. At least they can shoot back.
Someone ahead had slowed too much on the flare, and we had to slow even more to keep from colliding. I felt like a fly in molasses, with the swatter coming down. A gunship raced by on our right side, smoke pouring back from his flex guns. The grunts in the LZ were yelling on the radio about taking fire. I glanced across at Leese, but I could not see his face. The LZ was just ahead. For some reason Leese was now wagging the tail as we crossed the last hundred yards before the clearing.
“I saw one!” The door gunner on my side exclaimed. His gun chattered loudly.
“I got him!” His voice was very shrill. “I got him!”
“Orange Four, Charlie at three o‘clock,” Leese called out for the benefit of the Red flight behind us.
“Sir, I got him!”
“Keep looking,” I yelled. “Keep fucking looking!”
The slicks squatted into the LZ, and the grunts raced from their cover at the tree line and jumped on board. Red Four, the last ship, called out that all the grunts were on board. Shaker acknowledged by taking off immediately. He turned slightly left, following the same path out as the last two times. Before Leese and I crossed the forward tree line, a ship in Shaker’s flight called that he was taking fire. Leese turned harder left and cut the corner of the turn that Shaker had taken, wagging the tail again. He stayed lower than anybody else, too. In the trees. As each group of four ships passed over the tree line, I heard calls about taking hits or receiving fire. (“Taking hits” meant, obviously, bullets hitting your ship. Visible muzzle blasts, puffs of smoke, or Charlie taking a bead constituted “receiving fire.”)
We darted low-level among the trees for a mile or so before climbing to a safe altitude. It was quiet now. My shoulders drooped.
“Anybody hurt?” Shaker called.
No answer. Our ships had taken only a few minor hits. Decker had one bullet hole through a rotor blade. Nate had one come through his canopy. Another of our pilots, Captain Sherman, had one stopped by his seat armor. It had knocked the breath out of him when it hit. I saw the crater it formed on the bottom of his seat when we got back. That armor really worked. Now, if only we had something in front of us. A bullet-proof helmet would be nice, too.
“How about a plane ticket back home?” said Resler as we joked in the back of the truck. “That’ll keep the bullets away.”
Connors crawled into the truck after he tied the rotors down. “Anyone here tells anyone back at the company about my fight with the rotors gets a bad grade on their next check ride.”
4. Happy Valley
Americans are big boys. You can talk them into almost anything. All you have to do is sit with them for half an hour over a bottle of whiskey and be a nice guy.
October 1965
It had been raining steadily for almost half an hour when Connors decided to take the plunge. I saw his hairy ass bouncing out the back door of the warrants’ tent. He was carrying his combat helmet and a bar of soap.