6
AL MACK HAD THOUGHT HE WANTED THIS LEVEL of excitement. He loved to fly, and mere wings had thwarted the full expression of his desire. Helicopters going backward, left and right, and straight up and down, sitting in the air like a hummingbird—that was flying. Even as a youngster watching TV back home in Concord, New Hampshire, before he caught the excitement of girls, watching Huey slicks flare on Vietnam news footage gave him goose bumps. From then on, that was his passion. Now he was thirty-nine, a geezer by combat standards who had shaved off his beard because it was showing telltale gray. Just getting into a cockpit had taken him nine years schlepping tools as a helicopter mechanic in places like the Republic of Korea, but seven years ago, after proving himself as a superior pilot in the regular Army, he accepted a coveted invitation to join the Army's elite 160th Special Operations Air Regiment (SOAR), the who's-who-at-the-zoo of chopper pilots. For the risks and for the unscripted maneuvers they put themselves and aircraft through, they were thought of as candidates for psychotherapy. They did things that challenged belief. A former SEAL had joined SOAR for thrills, and if that didn't say enough already, in one of his first training sessions he was taking off a Chinook and was powering through 150 feet when his instructor in the next seat leaned over and shut down both engines. The SEAL's eyes widened and he screamed, “What the fuck are you doing?” The instructor folded his hands as the bird autorotated in its powerless descent, hard to earth.
Before this infil into Takur Ghar, Mack had felt almost wistful, with only days left before he was to leave for home. His first months in Afghanistan had been like living in a dream. His aircraft was shot at each night he went up. Sixteen surface-to-air missiles, countless RPGs, splattered airbursts, cannon fire, even stones came from behind his helo and not out in front, where he could see. He felt a little let down and had whined about it: “We don't get to see this stuff they shoot at us up in the front.”
Right now he was in shock, with the Chinook off the peak in a controlled crash, slightly more crash than control. At a 35-degree nose-down angle, the 40,000-pound bird was partly autorotating, like a winged maple seed pair wheeling down to the ground from a tree. The up force of the descent spun the long, thick, flat twin rotor blades. The rate of descent was remarkable: it burst Mack's eardrum.
“Airspeed 90 knots. Rate of descent 700 feet a minute,” his copilot in the right seat shouted.
“How do you know that?” Mack yelled back.
His copilot aimed the beam of a Maglite on the panel at a small LED backup altitude and airspeed indicator with an artificial horizon. “Right there,” he replied, then replaced his hands on the cyclic and the stick between his legs, backing up Mack on the controls.
If Mack could keep the aircraft upright, they might survive the fall from 10,240 feet to 8,500 on the valley floor. However, given his lack of control, he was relieved that they were not slamming toward the ground at 2,000 feet a minute. A Chinook can land at 700 feet a minute, ripping the wheels off, killing some passengers, and the cockpit crew (who have automobile shock absorbers under their seats) coming out of it barely alive. Mack had been aiming for a known LZ, closest to the northern base of Takur Ghar. But he had to get on the ground sooner than that. He steered the helo toward a level patch to his left front just as the controls started going out again. He shouted to Madden to pump in another quart of hydraulic fluid. One can remained. The controls came back. Mack estimated about fifty seconds of control per can of fluid.
Ten feet off the ground, the aircraft was shaking and dangerously unsteady, and the noise was a loud, incessant clatter of metal parts at their limits of strain. The cyclic started to yank to the right against Mack's left hand. He wanted to land straight ahead, so he turned, and suddenly the aircraft was moving sideways. If the wheels touched the ground now with this lateral movement, the helo would hit and roll. The cyclic would not move. He repeated the mantra, Never stop flying the aircraft. He jammed the right rudder pedal on the nose, which kicked the aircraft around. He pushed down the thrust. Razor 03 slammed into the ground at 17 degrees nose high and 18 to 20 degrees roll to the left. Mack was certain they would flip over.