"Welcome aboard, babe." Tony's distorted voice crackled into the mike.
"Want to sit up front? It's more comfortable."
"Nah, I'd better stay back here with the kid in case he gets scared."
"A gook kid? Scared of a little chopper ride? You gotta be shittin'
me." But he didn't repeat the offer. Lightfoot knelt by the open door, watching the country go by. Gusts of rain swept in and I tugged my poncho tight around both Ahn and me for warmth.
Tony kept to the coastline at first, the sky drab pewter, the beach pale, the rain and sea shiny, and the jungle a brilliant ribbon of variegated green. Perfect squares of fishnets were suspended above the water all along the coast, isolated from the shoreline. I wondered how they caught fish in them. Ahn kept shouting curious questions at Lightfoot, who grinned and pointed at things.
I settled down amid the olive-drab-painted metal and webbing. Whew. So far so good. We were getting away with it. A little rush of excitement and anxiety zipped through my nervous system, only to be replaced by depression. Out of all those people I'd cared for all those months, I could save just one. Maybe. Xinh gone, That gone, and now Xe. When that guy said war was hell, he wasn't just whistling Dixie. I was racking up a body count a marine would envy. Ahn flipped water from a fold in my poncho and smoothed it across my lap, before laying his head in it and falling asleep.
Seeing little but sea, most of my hearing blunted by the roar in my earphones and the occasional staticity chatter, I soon grew sleepy, too.
Some time later, Tony's voice crackled in my ear. "Hey, babe?"
"Yeah?" I mumbled into the mouthpiece.
"You know that guy you told me to ask about-Heron?"
"Yes," I said, a little more alert. Heron would want to know about Xe.
He'd be glad I saved the amulet. Even if he didn't want to use it himself, he'd know who should have it.
"I kinda found out and I kinda didn't. He's off in the field somewhere, but the mission is classified, no contact. Sorry 'bout that."
And after another minute, "Babe? You okay?"
"Yeah, sure, I'm fine, Tony. The old man died earlier today, did I tell you that? I just wish Heron could have been around." I fingered the cloth of my pants pocket where the amulet lay. The headphones went staticity-silent for a moment, and then Tony was humming "The 59th Street Bridge Song."
I was sleeping again when we got hit. I felt the chopper lurch and snapped awake, thinking for a moment we'd landed. It was too noisy to hear the round striking the bird. But when my eyes flew open, I saw Ahn's head raise up for a split second. His eyes glittered like a trapped animal's then his skinny little arms covered his burr crew cut and he curled into a protective ball.
The round hadn't wakened Lightfoot and I thought it should have. Surely when Tony started dodging bullets the crew chief would have duties. And sure enough, Tony's voice called, "Tonto? Hey there, kemo pabe-Ben?"
and he started to turn around. But I realized it was too dark for him to see anything and too dangerous for him to let go of the controls, so I unbuckled myself and crawled over to the crew chief, shaking his foot to wake him, as I had learned to do with the combat troops.
The foot flopped and I noticed that one of Lightfoot's arms was dangling out the door. I thought we ought to close that sucker anyway. I started to tug on him, and then I noticed the blood on his chest. I dragged him in and felt for a pulse, found none. I didn't expect to.
"Lightfoot's hit," I told Tony. "I think he's had it."
"Well, do CPR, for Chrissakes, while I try to find Quang Ngai.........
I was way ahead of him, working on Lightfoot even as I tried to remember what I'd been drilled on with a plastic doll but had never had to do to a human being-clear the airway, tilt the head back, pinch his nose, take a deep breath, and cover his mouth with mine. His mouth smelled sour, and when my finger came away from feeling for the airway, it was smeared with blood. I breathed in anyway, and pumped on his chest, but all that did was force more blood out the mouth and the wound. God, Lightfoot, you could give a girl a little help here, I thought, but I knew I was working on a dead man.
"Get away from the goddamn door," Tony barked over the roar. I started to haul Lightfoot with me, but he was a big man, awfully heavy, and his foot caught on some webbing. Then the chopper lurched again and outside I saw a red tracer round streak past us. I couldn't help but remember what they'd said in basic about the red cross on medevac choppers making such a great target.
I was trying to dislodge Lightfoot's boot from a piece of webbed strap when another round hit, and Lightfoot's body jerked again. The chopper lurched and I fell backward as another round exploded through the metal floor of the chopper's belly, right behind me, and another. I abandoned Lightfoot and grabbed for Ahn, huddling against the metal pole that held the rotor.
The rounds kept coming and Tony was trying to fly us out of range, but something was wrong with the rhythm of the blades. Even I could tell that. Instead of a steady "thucka-thucka-thucka" there was a jarring grind every few beats. I lifted my earphones. I could feel the chopper's damaged heartbeat through the floor, through the walls, through my skin, and deep inside my guts-my hips and the backs of my thighs tightened every time that beat missed, every time a round hit.
Ahn grabbed for my neck like a drowning boy just as the chopper wallowed onto its side, the open door yawning beneath my boots. Lightfoot's body was lodged between me and the opening or I would have fallen out then.
Somehow we had left the ocean and were now heading over tall elephant grass toward an endless tangle of trees.
The taste of Lightfoot's blood in my mouth made me want to vomit, but Ahn had hold of me and I had grabbed on to one of those webbed straps and was pulling myself up as Tony righted the chopper.
"You okay, babe?" Tony's voice, crackly and almost unrecognizable, came through the earphones.
"Yeah-I think so," I said. Okay considering the circumstances. I fumbled as I talked. The wire to the headphones had wound around my neck and the mouthpiece, and I had to untangle it and pry Ahn loose before I could move freely.
"Kid too?"
"Him too. How about you? You okay?"
"That's affirmative."
I drew a deep breath. Good. Tony would get us out of this. He had been in plenty of scrapes before. This was only going to be a tragic delay. Everything was under control.
"Babe?"
"Yeah?"
"Listen, there's a field of elephant grass up ahead. I want you to push the kid out and jump, got it?"
"Jump?"
"Do it, dammit."
"Yeah, but What about him? He must have some idea how to maneuver the bird to safety but couldn't do it with us aboard. He wouldn't ask us to leave unless he had a plan. He'd get us out of this somehow. He wanted to get laid, didn't he?
The chopper jerked and shuddered over the elephant grass, and blades licked the sides of the open door. Ahn clutched me convulsively. I crawled over Lightfoot's body, trying not to step on him, wishing I didn't have a corpse to stumble over.
The broad grassy valley swept beneath us, the elephant grass rippling from the wind of our blades, spewing rainwater everywhere. The patients had shown me pictures of themselves in the elephant grass. The grass, which looked so soft, stood a good three feet above the heads of the tallest men.