There was an hour between Leese and Nate’s departure and the arrival of our ship. Resler and I were alone in our corner of the tent. I smoked. Resler cracked his knuckles.
“There’s some islands out about twenty miles from Qui Nhon,” said Gary.
“I know.”
“Twenty miles away. Completely uninhabited, too.”
“How do you know that?” I said.
“I’ve heard.”
“Terrific.”
“Do you ever think about quitting?” Gary asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Me, too. Sometimes. Guess that makes us chickens.”
“Maybe. But we do go fly, don’t we? That’s got to make up for feeling chicken.”
“Yeah, I guess it does.” He paused. “And when I’m flying the assaults, I start feeling brave, almost comfortable, in the middle of it all. Like a hawk, maybe.”
“I do, too. When I’m in the middle of it. But times like now, I’d quit at the slightest excuse. So what am I? A chicken or a hawk?”
“You’re a chickenhawk.” Gary smiled.
“Yeah.” There was silence. Yes, I thought. We’re both scared out of our minds. It felt like we were near the end of our wait on death row.
“How long do you think we could live on a Huey-load of C rations?” asked Gary.
“Shit, probably a couple of years. Two thousand pounds of food.”
“Maybe we should take less food and steal a couple of girls to go with us instead.”
“Go where?”
“The island.”
“You know, you’re right. We could do it.”
“I know we could do it.” Resler smiled proudly.
I liked the idea very much. Yes, by God, we could do it! “That’s it! You’ve got the answer. We just keep flying when we go out. We’ll have a big load of C’s. We can stop in Qui Nhon and get a couple of women, fly out to the island, land, and dump the food and the girls. Then one of us has to take the chopper out away from the island and dump it.”
“Why dump it? We can camouflage it, you know.” Gary leaned forward eagerly, caught up in the plan.
“Well, we’ll see when we get there. Maybe there’ll be enough trees and shit to hide a Huey. But if there isn‘t, we ditch it.”
“Okay. If there isn’t enough.”
“Some booze, too. Can you see it? You and me and two luscious girls lying back under the palm trees. We have to have a radio,with us, too, so we can keep track of the war. You know, so we know what we’re missing.”
Gary looked concerned. “Maybe we could fly to Pleiku first.”
“Why?”
“Well, I don’t know if I want to live out there with just any girl. Remember that girl, Mary, in Pleiku where I spent the whole night?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, she loved me.”
“Ah Gary, she…” Didn’t love you, she wanted your money. She wanted a ticket out of this bullshit country. “She was nice, wasn’t she?”
“She loved me.” Suddenly we were both quiet. We looked away, into our thoughts. My strength drained away. What a stupid idea. Just hopeful dumb fucking wishing. Face facts. Face facts. FACE FACTS!
“Gary, I think we can’t go to Pleiku first. I think we could only do it if we flew out of here just like normal and then disappeared. We could probably get away with landing at Qui Nhon. There’s a lot of transient traffic there.”
“Not without Mary.”
“Gary, be reasonable.”
“Hey, guys, it’s your turn.” Wendall ducked into the tent. The palm-tree isle, the bronze nubiles, popped out of existence. “The crew chief is patching some holes, but the ship will be flyable in just a minute.” Wendall looked kind of pale. “The old man wants you to join the gaggle at Lima. They’ve got some more missions to fly today. I hope it’s better for you guys.”
The crew chief, along with the maintenance officer, had inspected the ship. The holes in the tail boom were a concern because the bullets could have gone through the tail-rotor drive tube or the control cables. They had not. The crew chief covered the holes with green tape that almost matched the olive-drab skin. It was now our ship.
The sky, as if on cue, was overcast. At the An Khe pass Gary had to drop to within fifty feet of the road to maintain visibility. We landed at Lima.
“What’s that all about on the road?” I asked Connors. As we circled Lima on our approach, we had noticed a crowd of men around a big pile of something covered with canvas next to an overturned mule.
“A grunt mule driver lost control and flipped over.”
“Was he hurt?”
“No. Killed.”
“You and Resler are Red Four,” said Leese. He hurried back toward the front of the gaggle. Lima was crawling with activity. Troopers moved around in small groups, looking for their assigned ships. A few Hueys were out over sling loads, hitching up. A Chinook made an approach slinging in a fat black fuel bladder from the Golf Course.
“Shall I put my men on board, sir?” a Cav sergeant asked me.
“Yeah, Sergeant. Let them get on.” I looked forward at the other squads moving toward their ships. “We’re leaving pretty soon.”
He turned. “Move it!” They were in place in about fifteen seconds, I think.
It was a monster gaggle—forty or more ships—the kind I hated the most. And we were flying the four position again. We would have to fly hard to keep up with an outside turn, and flare like hell when the gaggle turned our way. Plus, the ship was a dog. When we took off, she hung down in the turbulence of the choppers in front of us, straining her poor guts out. We caught up to the gaggle at mission altitude and watched the prep going on. Smoke trailed in long streamers drifting off to the west. Air-force jockeys streaked away back to their base, their job done. Our gunships worked the area with their rockets and flex guns. Gary flew, so I just watched the show and smoked a cigarette. Kinda like being at a movie. The grunts behind me were screaming at each other over the cacophony of the ship, smiling, laughing, smoking cigarettes, scared out of their brains. The ships in the gaggle rose and fell on the sea of air. Formations always looked sloppy when you were in them because no two ships were ever at the same altitude. From the ground you got a flat view of the V, and it looked better. One of the noises on the radio was the Colonel.
“Yellow Four. Pull in closer. You call that a formation ?” The Colonel was flying above us, being a colonel. There’s a reason why they do that, we said. It’s from the word itself: colon(el), or asshole. They do exactly what you would expect them to.
“Guns ready?” Gary asked. We were now dropping fast, having crossed the initial point, a meager hut near a tall hedgerow that marked the beginning of the final leg of the assault. The LZ was two miles away.
“Ready.”
“Ready.”
“Fire at my order only, unless you see something obvious. Don’t shoot into the huts.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
Can’t fire into the huts. If you fired into the huts, you might kill a VC.
As we swooped toward the ground for the low-level run, I put my hand gently on the cyclic; my feet rode the pedals; my left hand touched the collective.
“Flare.”
Fifty feet off the ground, Gary was doing well. He flipped the tail past a few trees just when I thought he’d hit them. The gaggle mushed and bounded into the LZ. The troopers leapt out firing.
“Yellow One, it’s too hot ahead of you. Recommend you pedal-turn and go back out the way you came.” That was one of the Dukes, the gunships making runs at something at the far end of the LZ. The guys up front were yelling that there was a lot of shooting going on, but I couldn’t see any back our way.
“Roger. Flight, we’re going out the way we came. Wait your turn.” The flight leader lifted to a high hover and turned to fly back over us. Each ship in its turn leapt up and flew back over us. By the time it was our turn, the first ships were already calling in hit reports. As we joined up, the ship ahead of us was hit, showering bits of Plexiglas back on us. Next I heard tick-tick-tick, and new bullet holes appeared in the Plexiglas over our heads. Gary pulled full power trying to get higher, but the ship was a dog even when empty, so we lagged behind the others. Tick. Somewhere in the air frame.