“Yellow Two, we are clear. I repeat, we are clear. The mortars have stopped.”
“Roger, we’re coming in.”
Just like that. Neither of us thought about the fact that the unit was trapped, encircled. The mortars could start again any time. Neither of us cared.
We approached the clearing in the shadows and pall, with the setting sun ahead of us. Even while Kaiser brought us over the tall trees, I felt no adrenaline. I sat up and squared my shoulders, put my hands on the controls, but I felt no anxiety.
Rubenski fired suddenly into the trees to our right.
“Get him?” I asked.
“I don’t know for sure.”
“That’s nice.”
Kaiser brought us to the ground with scarcely a bounce. The clearing was a miniature meadow surrounded by tall trees. The grass was short—like it had been mowed. I stared out the canopy. Across the lawn, ten men lay dead in a neat line. One man’s abdominal cavity was emptied around him, his remaining arm buried under his own guts. Another man seemed to be sleeping unscathed in the shady meadow. I stared at him while the grunts scurried toward us carrying five men. Ah, I thought, as I noticed the pale gore behind his head. Not sleeping. Brains blown out.
Two torn men were loaded on the back before the mortars returned. As the mortars struck, the grunts hit the dirt, carrying their wounded with them. Aw shit, I thought, another delay.
I noticed that there was a lot of orange light inside the explosions, silhouetting clumps of black dirt at the bottom of the funnel of expanding gases and shrapnel as mortars exploded a hundred feet away.
The grunts must have been as tired as we were. After the first few rounds, they got up and loaded the three other wounded while the mortars continued bursting ahead of us.
I looked back as the last man was lifted onto the deck. He was missing a leg below his knee. A tourniquet kept the blood mostly stanched. Rubenski blasted the tree line on our right flank. How long had he been doing that?
“That’s it, Yellow Two. Watch out for a machine gun ahead of you.”
Kaiser lifted the collective. I radioed, “Roger.”
A mortar exploded at two o‘clock, fifty feet away.
Kaiser pulled the ship’s guts so hard that the rpm warning siren screamed in our ears. He let off enough pressure to silence the alarm and turned left to avoid a machine gun the grunts had warned us about.
As we crossed the edge of the meadow, I heard Rubenski’s gun blasting away, and then tick-tick-tick. Ah, must be another machine gun. I nodded to myself. Three rounds passed harmlessly through the sheet aluminum and lodged in the hell hole.
It was peaceful again. I lit another cigarette and watched the sunset.
“You guys really impressed that grunt commander,” said Nate, back at the Rifle Range. “I heard he’s putting you in for a DFC.”
“Wrong medal,” said Kaiser, already drunk. “It should be the ‘I Don’t Give a Crap’ medal with a V device for valor.”
After we dropped off four wounded men at LZ Dog, Banjo and I, Daisy, and Gillette found ourselves returning to the Rifle Range at night. Daisy led the flight and decided to climb to about 2500 feet and have the radar at Dog vector us back to the Rifle Range.
I had used radar vectoring only once or twice during the instrument-training phase of flight school. I wasn’t familiar enough with it to want to use it. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to do anything but fly a compass course back. Daisy was nervous about flying into a mountain, but if we stayed away from the ridge to the west, we were well clear of the mountains.
So Banjo flew in formation with Daisy as he climbed up in a spiral above Dog.
“Preacher flight, take up a heading of one-seven-zero degrees,” said the radar station. This station was a four-by-four-foot box on the back of a trailer. It was olive drab.
Daisy turned to the heading, and Banjo skillfully turned with him. We found it easier to fly very close, so close that we could see the red cockpit lights of the other ship. At this distance you can hear the buzz of the tail rotor beside you.
“Preacher flight,” called the radar guy, “I have lost you.”
Lost us? We had been on course for all of two minutes.
At the same moment, we lost sight of Daisy’s ship as we flew into the clouds. It really was dark—no up, no down. Which way was Daisy flying? Left? Right? Up?
“Yellow Two, I’m breaking off to the left,” called Daisy.
“Roger,” Banjo said. He turned to the right. I watched the compass. We were turning right on around to the north, then to the west. West was where the mountains were.
“Hey, Banjo, we don’t want to go west,” I said.
“I know.”
“Okay.” I waited for him to change course, but he didn’t. Instead he was diving. The airspeed indicator was up past 120 knots. The vertical-speed indicator (VSI) showed we were going down at over 1000 feet a minute.
“Banjo, we’re diving.”
“I feel fine.”
“Look at the airspeed.” He did, and the ship slowed back to 90 knots, normal cruise. The VSI was showing a slight climb.
Where was Daisy?
“Yellow Two, Yellow One. We are descending to get out of the clouds. Recommend you do the same.”
I could just see it, Daisy wallowing around in the muck, trying to find the bottom of the cloud bank that ends right where a mountain begins. I could see the two of us trying to do this together and colliding before we hit the mountain.
“Banjo, don’t do it. Keep climbing. We’ll pop out at the top and shoot for Qui Nhon.”
“Daisy says to descend.”
“Daisy doesn’t know shit. Descend into what? Where exactly are we right now? Over the valley? Or are we over the mountains?”
“Okay, we’ll climb.”
“Do you want me to fly?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“Then could you come back to a south heading?”
Banjo began a turn in our featureless world. You can feel changes while flying in the blind, as when Banjo started his turn, but after the bank is established, you can’t tell it from straight and level flying. Banjo was staring straight ahead into nothingness, and the ship was diving again.
“Banjo, the VSI.”
He said nothing, but he stopped the dive and began a climb again.
I watched my set of instruments, monitoring Banjo. I wished that Gary was flying, or that I was. Banjo had gone through flight school years earlier, when helicopter instrument flying was not taught. Gary and I had completed instrument training at Fort Rucker, in the Huey. Banjo was an old salt with lots of time. In his mind I was still the rookie.
We were diving again.
“Banjo, if you keep diving like this, we’ll get into a world of shit.” The ship rocked back as he stopped the dive, but he was now turning to the west. “Compass,” I said, sounding like my old instrument instructor. “Compass.” He stopped the turn but started to dive again. “Airspeed.” The airspeed indicator will tell you immediately if you’re climbing or diving: If the airspeed increases, you are diving. Obviously Banjo was too proud to say he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, especially to me. I had to talk him through this.
“Ninety knots,” I said. That airspeed would keep us in a climb.
Now he was turning again! “Compass.” He corrected. It’s true, I thought. The FAA had tested experienced pilots in flight simulators to see if they could somehow fly seat of the pants, with no visibility. A hundred percent of them crashed.
God, I would love to see something. What if the cloud goes to twenty thousand feet? Can’t go higher than ten or twelve thousand without oxygen. Probably it’s clear over the ocean. Yeah, go over the ocean and come back under the stuff. “Banjo, head farther east.”