Pontowski nodded in agreement and walked out with Clark and Rockne in close trail. He used the short ride to the First SOS and the waiting helicopter to go over the details of base defense. “Sir,” Clark said, “regardless of what happens, we’re going to need jet fuel to keep on flying.” Her driver halted the van by the helicopter. This time Clark was out before he could run around to open her door. She walked with Pontowski to the helicopter, still going over last-minute details. The four-bladed rotor started to turn as the turboshaft engines wound up. She stepped back and threw a crisp salute. Pontowski wanted to hug her, but that was out of the question. He returned her salute and climbed on the helicopter while she ran for the minivan.
Her driver was holding the door. “You go home now, Missy Colonel. Please. Before too late.”
The Puma lifted off as Pontowski strapped in next to the right-door window and donned a headset. He pressed the mike switch. “Any chance of checking out the roads?” he ventured. The pilot was agreeable, and they headed south, paralleling the main road. As Pontowski suspected, the road was clogged with refugees and nothing was moving north. They had been airborne less than six minutes when a loud bang and sharp jolt buffeted the helicopter. It tilted wildly to the left as Pontowski held on. Over his headset he heard the pilots yelling at each other in Chinese as they feathered the two engines. Smoke poured into the cabin, and he searched for an oxygen mask. But he couldn’t find one. Desperate, he reached for the door handle to roll the sliding door back. He cracked it an inch before it jammed. He stuck his face against the crack and took a deep breath. Then he hit the quick release to his lap belt and grabbed on to the seat frame. He half swung and half fell across the cabin, only to bounce off the crew chief and slam against the left door. The door handle jammed into his back. He fumbled in the heavy smoke until he felt the top seat tube. Holding on, he released the door handle and slid the door back.
He almost fell out before the pilots righted the helicopter. The smoke cleared, and he could see holes punctured in the floor near the aft bulkhead. Now the nose of the helicopter came up as it autogiroed to earth. He had mere seconds before they hit the ground, and he tried to strap back in. But he could find only the left strap of a seatbelt. The Puma hit the ground and bounced, twisting and pitching forward as he held on with a death grip. It hit again and corkscrewed back into the air, this time throwing Pontowski out the door.
Clark stood in front of the four body bags lying on the ground. Behind her, the dormitory was a smoking hulk. Slowly she clenched her fist and relaxed. Without a word, she climbed into the van and ordered her driver to take her to the medical station. She had to talk to Doc Ryan. She was there in two minutes and hurried down the concrete ramp that led inside. She was immediately assaulted with the heavy antiseptic odor that announced she was in the presence of medical wizardry. Ryan was bent over the casualty, talking quietly as he stitched up the man’s inside thigh. “You are one lucky dude. It missed your balls and got the fleshy part of your thigh.”
“Doc, how many wounded?” Clark asked.
Ryan looked up from his task. “Six. Two critical. We need to air-evac them out. Soonest.”
“I ain’t goin’ without my buddies,” the man lying on the exam table announced.
Ryan grunted. “Your call.”
Clark’s radio squawked at her. It was the controller in the command post asking her to return ASAP. “I’ll get back to you,” Clark promised, running from the bunker. This time it was quicker to run to the command post than drive and she was there in less than a minute.
Maggot told her the bad news. “The control tower monitored a Mayday from Pontowski’s helicopter. They took ground fire and augered in about ten miles south. I’ve scrambled Waldo and Buns to take a look.”
Clark clamped an iron control over her emotions and was all business. “We’re hurtin’ for POL. You might want them to recover at Tengah for refueling.” Tengah was a Singapore Air Force base.
“That’s doable,” Maggot said. “But we’d have to bring ’em here for rearming.”
Waldo checked in on the radio. “Rocker One and Two rolling now.”
In her mind’s eye Clark could see the two Warthogs roaring down the runway and lifting into the clear air, and like Maggot, she had to wait. But that wasn’t in her temperament. She strode into the communications cab. “I need to speak to the MAAG in the Singapore embassy. And I mean now.”
The pain was a tiger, ripping and tearing at him when he tried to move. But he had fought the tiger before and willed himself to move. Inch by inch he pulled himself across the rice paddy, barely keeping his head above water. He tried to move his left arm, but his shoulder roared with pain, making him dizzy. He stopped and used his right hand to position his left forearm across his chest. That helped, and he lay on his right side, pulling himself toward the low dike that bounded the rice paddy. Every time he tried to take a deep breath, more pain coursed through his body. He was certain he had broken a rib and had pierced a lung. Finally he reached the low mound of dirt and pulled himself into a half-sitting position, careful not to move his left arm. The pain in his chest subsided, but he knew the tiger was still there, ready to leap out of the fog that bound him tight. He tried to take a deep breath, but that only unleashed the tiger. Slowly the fog eased, and he could think.
Breathing, bleeding, and bones, he thought, reverting to the basics of first aid. He already knew about the breathing, so he checked for bleeding. Nothing. He forced himself to hack up some phlegm. Again the tiger roared, but what he spit out was clear. Okay, bones. He ran his good hand over his body. Other than a bruise on his left temple and the big hump protruding on top of his left shoulder, he was okay. He touched the hump and flinched with pain. “Broken collarbone,” he muttered.
The wind veered and sent a puff of black smoke over him. He pulled himself up the dike until he could see over the top. The smoking Puma was upside down two or three rice paddies away. He studied it, looking for fire. But there wasn’t any. Did they make it? he thought. His question was answered when he looked toward the nearby kampong. A group of soldiers was clustered around two inert bodies lying on the ground. He saw the flash of a machete blade as the men yelled and screamed obscenities. He stopped counting the hacks when he reached twenty. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the grisly scene.
Two A-10s roared overhead, driving the soldiers to cover. The lead Hog pulled up and ruddered over to swoop down on the grim tableau like an avenging bird of prey. Waldo, he thought, recognizing the style. The A-10 pulled off and circled the kampong at two hundred feet, baiting the defenders to shoot at him. They did. The A-10 jinked hard, pulling away as the second A-10 rolled in, its cannon firing. Reddish brown smoke rolled back from under the nose as the rounds walked up to the kampong. “Buns,” he muttered. “You always did bunt.” Waldo was in a sharp climb, popping to fifteen hundred feet for a low-angle bomb run. The maneuver was a study in perfection as he rolled and brought the Hog’s nose to the target. Two bombs separated cleanly, and their ballutes deployed, slowing the bombs while Waldo escaped, crossing at ninety degrees to Buns’s strafing attack.
Pontowski slipped down the dike for protection from the blast as the kampong disappeared in a series of deafening explosions. The two A-10s orbited the area on opposite sides of the circle. He was certain they were looking for him, and he crawled onto the dike to be seen. But two teenage boys were running toward him, crouched low, anxious to escape the wrath of the two raptors circling overhead. They saw him and shouted. But his ears were still ringing, and he couldn’t hear a word. He glanced up as the two Hogs joined together and climbed into the sky.