“Auugh—” over the top they went. “Nice toboggan, chief—gad.” But even the gyrations failed to block the sharp_ reminder spitting over emergency channel, “Orphan Annie— Mickey Mouse,” and the area designator that followed spelled Leo’s position.
“SAMs,” from the frontseater.
“Yeah, and Migs,” from the backseater.
“Crap—that’s all we need up there now is more of those bastards.”
“Carbine,” came from control. “Do you have the coordinates for Carbine four?”
“No, I didn’t even know he was down, but the best we can give you is within ten miles of three. Control, don’t forget Waco is running his fighters based on you getting us lots more tankejs up here. And I’m sure Royal is running his show based on that also.”
Carbine got no reply and internal conversation took over. “Oh, crud. That stinking fuel, I think I’ll puke,” came from the rear seat as the tanks filled and the boomer initiated the disconnect. The fuel in the two systems banged against hy-draulically closed doors and vented directly into the pilot’s breathing and living environment. Beautiful piece of engineering.
“This pig. I’m really falling out of the sky.”
“You know I saw some flak underneath us on the way in.”
“How about holding the stick in this bank for a minute. Don’t let the airspeed get any lower or we’ll sink clean out of sight.”
“I’ll try. Damn—airspeed I ain’t got. How come you always have to blow your nose when the going gets rough. Good thing you got me back here.”
“Crap.”
“You know right over Leo himself we are out of range of all SAMs according to the book.”
“Not by much.”
“Better than nothing.”
A repeat of the Mig and SAM warnings coincided with the other survivor’s full load of fuel and his nasal purge, and Carbine announced, “OK, tanker, we’re both full and we are departing.”
The tanker answered with “Rog. Good luck. We won’t be here when you get back. Wish we could be.”
“I’ll bet he does.”
“Yeah, but I still wouldn’t want their job. What would your wife say when someone asks her what her husband does? My husband makes his living passing gas—”
“Gimme back the stick—” The frontseater resumed control of his aircraft and realigned his radio frequencies with “Carbine, let’s go back to rescue frequency.”
“Tomahawk—this is Carbine on the way back in. Give me a short count so I can home on you.” When you need to find another aircraft you can have him activate his radio transmitter while he counts or talks, and an indicator in your own aircraft will point to his general position.
“Rog, this is Tomahawk holding down. I’m at seven thousand feet.”
“Royal—this is Carbine. I’m back in the area with the two I’ve got left and I’m full of fuel.”
“Rog, Carbine, hold about twenty miles out of the area and 111 call you when I want you to go in.”
The series of transmissions that followed brought the next in a series of shocks for the day. “Royal five, Royal five— Royal two on rescue frequency.”
“Go ahead.”
“Roger, we’ve got everybody in position up there and we’re waiting for some clearance to go. Is there anything you can do to let us know if we’re going to get clearance or not?”
An irritated fighter pilot blurted out “Clearance for what?”—the obvious question as all of us who had heard the transmission blinked in disbelief. The rescue force was not just minutes away from picking our boys out of the paddies. They were orbiting to the south, across the border, while the communicators attempted to explain a situation they could not comprehend to a battle staff and a commander seven hundred miles to the south, and we sat there with all the tools and the know-how to save our guys.
“Roger, Royal two, we’re trying to work on that for you now.”
“Roger, we have quite a gaggle of fighters up there now and we’re having quite a time trying to shuttle them back and forth and the Nomads are all ready to go.”
Frustration was universal. “What the hell—who has to get a clearance?” We all realized for the first time that afternoon that all was not going well.
“Let’s get the crap with it.” We had all the cards we could possibly hold under the circumstances, but things were not going well. We were tied up in our own red tape and each of us could feel that tender something called a comrade getting tougher and tougher to hold onto. Nobody was about to give up and we all talked to ourselves, except the weasels who jollied it up together.
“How in hell did anybody get shot down over a mountain anyway?”
“I don’t even know what they were in range of.”
“Well, fifty-seven millimeter—”
“I know that—”
“Thirty-seven millimeter—”
“He was really on fire.”
“Hmmm?”
“He was really on fire.”
“I got a gun at twelve thirty,” and it was back to business as usual. The backseater interrupted the weasel’s own idle chatter with “Moderate intensity.”
The noise was building up to an intense level again, and as the boss in Waco lead, I was having trouble getting my messages across. I had reached a critical fuel state by this time and before I could break my element off and send them scurrying for a tanker I had to yell at the whole tribe again and attempt to keep the unnecessary chatter off the air. I decided to send my element on ahead of me to the tankers and when I dispatched them, they lucked out and got contact with tanker control right off the bat. The last I heard of them for a while, they were getting a steer to one of the tankers pressing northward to accept the thirsty birds. Once they were established outbound and I knew that Carbine was back in the area, I felt free to turn the low cover over to the flight above me and start for fuel myself. As I left the area, I knew that the entire show was not on the road, but I could tell that our portion was in good shape, and I couldn’t understand why the other forces were not in there by now.
“Carbine—this is Royal. Will you attempt contact with Nomad one on this channel and then I want you to escort him and Nomad two into the area.”
The slow prop jobs had at least been cleared into the area. They would now pick up escort from the Thuds and press in on the deck to try and get a visual sighting on the downed crew and sample the ground resistance. If they found the situation workable, they would call the choppers in, try to get them to the spot and attempt the pickup. But it was all too slow, too cumbersome. There should be a better way and there could be a better way, but we never planned or prepared for it.
Why didn’t we have a fast-moving vehicle that could fly reasonably close to us as we entered the area and then respond immediately when needed? Why didn’t we have a fast bird with its own armament that could have been on the scene before those guys hit the ground? Why didn’t we have a rig that could have been there and could have found them as easily as I found them? Why not a machine that could land and take off vertically from the rice paddy or the road with those two precious creatures on board; or even better, why not a machine to snatch their chutes as they floated down for five minutes with the enemy shooting at them? We can snatch the chute and recover an inanimate capsule that has accomplished its directed mission of research in space, but for two humans who have dedicated their lives since adolescence to the service of their country, two highly talented and educated husbands and fathers, for them all we can do is wait and slowly exercise a primitive system, whose chances of success are marginal from the start.