I told headquarters to tell Grunt Six that nobody had jumped out before the plane had hit and that there now remained only some smoldering pieces of airplane and some exploding ammo in the middle of the burnt clearing.
“Ah, roger, Red Two, wait one.”
Whenever they asked you to wait, you knew they were up to no good.
“Ah, Red Two, Grunt Six says roger. But the air force wants you to land and do an on-site inspection.”
Leese shook his head. “Negative, HQ,” I radioed, “this area is hot. We will return to do a slow fly-by and check it again, but we know there’s nobody left.” Leese nodded.
Now, you would think that that would be good enough. I had just volunteered the four of us in our lone Huey to fly back over a very hot area to double-check the obvious.
It was not good enough. The air-force commander, via a relay through our HQ radio, wanted more.
“Red Two, the air force wants you to land and inspect the crash site for survivors,” announced the voice in my flight helmet.
I told them to wait one, that I was in the process of doing another fly-by to check it out.
While our guy at HQ got back to the air-force commander, Leese and I and Reacher and the nervous ex-grunt who was our gunner approached the crash site. I wanted to be sure this time. I slowed to about thirty miles an hour just above the trees surrounding the new clearing. I started to circle the smoke and flames below us when we heard explosions. Leese, who always stayed off the controls, said, “I got it.” He took the controls and dumped the nose of the Huey to accelerate. “Probably just some leftover ammunition from the fighter exploding,” he said, “but I want to come back around in a fast turn just in case.” He glanced out his window. “Somebody shot down this guy, and they’re still around here somewhere.” Leese began a turn to the left to circle back to the smoke. He picked up speed fast, and when we got to the clearing again, he banked very hard to the left. We all sank into our seats feeling the pressure of at least two Gs as Leese put the Huey into an almost-90-degree bank. I looked across at him in the left seat, through his side window and directly down to the wreckage. I had never experienced such a maneuver in flight school. My first thought was that the Huey would disconnect from the rotors, that the Jesus nut would break.
The view was, however, unique and totally revealing. And we were moving so fast we would be harder to hit.
From this dizzy vantage point we could see a few metal parts that hadn’t melted and the flashes of exploding ammo. We hoped that all his bombs had gone off in the crash. We radioed that the pilot was definitely dead.
“Ah, roger, Red Two, wait one.” We circled at 2000 feet about a mile away.
“Red Two, this is Preacher Six.” Major Williams was now on the horn. “I have just talked to the air force, and I agreed that you would land to do an on-site inspection.”
Leese, in his capacity as aircraft commander, answered. “Preacher Six, Red Two. We have already confirmed that no one is at the crash site, alive or dead. We have already risked more than we should have to determine this.”
Leese should have known better than to try to be logical.
“Whether you have risked enough is my decision, Red Two. You are ordered to proceed to the crash site and land. You will then have your crew get out and inspect the wreckage firsthand. Over and out.”
There was silence. I’m sure Leese considered telling him to stuff it, but he had to play his role.
He played it correctly. “Affirmative.”
We were now back at the wreckage, circling once again in a scrotum-stretching Leese special. The left side of the Huey was really straight down. After two of these furious turns, he pulled away to set up his approach. He had decided not to try to land in the wreckage-strewn clearing itself because we wouldn’t be able to land far enough away from the fire and the exploding ammo. Just behind the point of impact, there was a natural thin spot in the jungle where a few bare, 75-foot trees stood. It certainly wasn’t big enough to put a Huey there, but that’s where he was headed. Leese was going to show me another trick.
He settled into a hundred-foot hover directly over the tall trees and moved around searching for the right spot to play lawnmower. He had Reacher and the gunner lean out to watch the very delicate tail rotor. He found what he liked and began to let the helicopter settle down into the trees.
He had picked the spot perfectly. The tail boom with the spinning rotor on the end had a clear slot to follow down to the ground. The main rotor only had to chop a few two-inch-thick branches off some trees, a maneuver not even hinted at in flight school. When they hit the first branches, it sounded like gunfire.
Splintered wood flew everywhere. Treetops towered above us as we chopped our way down. We settled to the ground amid swirling debris, ass end low on a gentle slope covered with dense undergrowth. There was a moment of silence as the twigs and leaves settled around us. Nothing had been broken.
Reacher and the gunner grabbed their rifles and leapt into the thick tangle of weeds, galloping toward the still-exploding wreckage. The cords from their flight helmets trailed behind them.
Leese and I sat at the bottom of the vertical tunnel he had cut, our heads swiveling on nervous lookout. So far, only the sound of exploding ammo occasionally popped over the sound of the Huey. Reacher and the gunner disappeared through the thicket of trees between us and the wreckage.
We waited.
Whumpl Whump, whump! Mortars! From wherever they were hiding, the NVA launched their worst.
We were alone. HQ had not sent a gunship for escort or even another slick to watch over us. Leese and I looked at each other as the mortars got closer. His mouth was thin and his jaw was tight. I wondered if this was as bad as landing gliders. In the dense foliage around us I heard the mortars crashing heavily, shaking the air, searching for us. They sounded like the footfalls of a drunken giant. A big crunch nearby, then one to the side, then another behind us as the invisible giant staggered around trying to stomp us. The NVA were very good with their mortars, but it took time to zero in on a new target like us. Since they couldn’t see us from where they were, they had to walk the rounds back and forth until they got us.
Just when my fear was at an all-time high, Reacher and the gunner finally broke through the thicket to release us from the trap. They were both pale with fear as they dove on board. Leese had never let the Huey relax, so to speak. He had been ready to go at any second. As the two men hit the deck, Leese went.
He climbed back up through his tunnel in the trees like an express elevator and nosed the Huey over hard just as the rotor cleared the treetops. A mortar went off below just as our tail cleared the last tree.
Reacher told us that there was not even a little piece of the pilot left, and the air-force commander was finally satisfied. “Not only that,” I fantasized he would write to the widow, “but I sent four suckers from the army right back in there to make sure your husband was dead.”
Leese and I joined our company for the next lift after a trip to the Turkey Farm for refueling.
X-Ray was quiet this time. We dropped off the troopers and picked up wounded. At the hospital tent next to the runway at Holloway, I couldn’t believe how many bodies were piling up outside the tent. Williams radioed that Leese and I and another ship could fly over to our camp and shut down because he wouldn’t need us for the last lift in. I looked at the pile of dead, and shivered.
Back at our camp, Sergeant Bailey leaned out of the operations tent and yelled that the company was on its way back to Holloway. Two pilots had been hit.