The LZs the LRRPs selected for their insertions were never very big. They looked for the smallest, least-conspicuous clearings they could find on the assumption that since Charlie hadn’t enough people to spike welcoming parties on every prospective LZ, he would probably stick to the larger ones. Common pilot reaction to the LRRP choices went something like, “You want me to put this machine where?”
Add to the small size of the LZs the fact that most insertions were conducted just before dark when vision was poorest and you had a formula for complicating everybody’s life. You needed all the lift you could get to put the team in. These guys carried with them everything except the oil can crappers. Many times, for these reasons, we split the team members between two lift ships. Two or three in one slick, the remaining two or three in the other, with a pair of Snakes flying shotgun.
TOC scheduled me for an LRRP insertion at 1800 hours flying with a new kid, a warrant named Stockton. Stockton replaced a short-timer called Cowboy whom we had seen off at the last hail-and-farewell at Phuoc Vinh. Because of our staggered one-year tours, guys were always coming and going. You never had a chance to get to know some of them very well.
Stockton looked about nineteen, although he claimed to be twenty-two. He hadn’t shaved that many times. He surveyed my cavalry mustache with envy. His, so far and perhaps forever, was a mere shading of the upper lip. He was still the FNG with his hands digging in his pockets and his eyes curious and amazed and nervous.
“You’re the old-timer I wanted to fly with,” he allowed deferentially.
I started to laugh but held it back to a grin. Imagine. I hadn’t been in-country much more than five months myself and yet, considering the speed with which guys rotated in and out of Vietnam, I was already the “old-timer.” Don’t you see the irony of it? I wanted to ask him, wiseassed as always. But I didn’t. I remembered the awe with which I regarded Captain Beatty when I first reported here as the FNG. Now it was my turn to break in the incoming cherries; I would soon be their commander. The thought was still a little disconcerting.
“Everybody says Mini-Man never gets hit,” Stockton asserted, as though hoping it were true.
“Everybody says that, huh?”
“That’s what they say. They say you haven’t been hit even once. They say Mini-Man could fly straight into Hanoi and come out with nothing more than a good scare.”
“Maybe that’s what we ought to do then.”
He looked at me sharply to see if I were serious. I smiled to show him I wasn’t stupid.
“They say you’re charmed.”
“I prefer charming.” I twisted the ends of my mustache.
It was hard for an FNG to see humor in things at first, he was so intense and scared.
“I expected you to be a lot taller,” Stockton said.
I looked at him. It wasn’t at attempt at humor; he was serious.
“Yeah. Well, we all can’t be six feet tall.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it, sir. Did you know Alan Ladd is shorter than you are?”
“Let’s just drop it, Stockton.”
“Yes, sir.”
Farmer Farmer and Miles would fly the second lift ship. At sunset, the LRRPs waddled out with all their gear taped to prevent rattling and their faces blackened with cammie. They clambered aboard the two choppers, three guys in mine, three in Farmer’s. The patrol leader held up a wooden nickel.
“You coming back in to get us tomorrow night and pick up this, Mini-Man?” he asked.
“You betchum, Red Ryder.”
They all laughed. Stockton looked at them like they were crazy. How could they laugh when they were going out there?
It was supposed to be a routine mission, if anything could be routine in Vietnam. All we had to do was take these guys out there, drop them off and come back home. Like a bus driver. It was a nice evening for it too. Vietnam was such pretty country that I often thought I would like to come back some day after the war was over. If the war was ever over.
The sun hung red and low in the west. It reflected ruby-red from scattered sheets of water in rice paddies over by Nui Ba Den. It was already getting dark down there. I used a high overhead approach to the LZ, starting my spiral from about 1,500 feet and screwing us in tight and dizzying. My skids hadn’t even touched earth, with the grass whipping below and the forest black and overwhelming around us, than Shaky chirped through the intercom, “They’re gone!”
I pulled pitch to get out of there. The longer you stayed on the ground, the greater chance you had of being compromised. I did a cyclic climb by coming out over the treetops to pick up lift speed, then pulled back and popped up. You gained 1,000 feet real quick and were out of small arms range almost in a single breath.
As soon as I jumped out of the tiny clearing, Farmer plunged toward it. One bird leaving the nest, a second taking its place.
Suddenly, Farmer’s distinctive drawl crashed through the air waves: “Taking fire! Taking fire down here!”
Instead of pulling out of his approach as he should have, he continued on in. His three grunts bailed out automatically and beat it toward the trees. Apparently they didn’t realize the LZ was hot until their taxi was already back in the air. Farmer came out of the nest through another hail of small arms fire.
Radios started going bugfuck. Everybody tried to talk at once. Our two Snakes circled overhead, chattering to each other as they attempted to determine the source of the fire. The grunts on the ground were screaming and swearing. Miles was shouting at me that they had taken some hits. I calmed him down and asked if he had any red lights on his instruments. He didn’t.
This entire situation now stunk. The LRRPs were compromised. We couldn’t leave them down there. We had to go back in and get them. It would take both helicopters. I was afraid that a single chopper wouldn’t have enough lift in a vertical hover to pull all six men out of that small clearing.
I explained all this to Farmer and Miles as I circled the LZ. Charlie had stopped firing, not wanting to unnecessarily give away his position. Farmer quickly regained his composure.
“Them cotton pickers,” he said in his strongest epithet. “Okay, Mini-Man, we’re with you. I think them little dudes was shooting at us from the southwest.”
An anxious plea came from the ground. “Mini-Man, we need out of here pronto.”
“Are you in contact?” I asked him.
“That’s a negative at this point. We heard the firing from about two hundred meters to our southwest.”
At least the LRRPs weren’t at risk of being overrun within the next few minutes. The real danger right now lay to the choppers, not the grunts. Charlie knew what we had done; he knew also we wouldn’t leave our guys. He was down there right now getting set up and ready for when we returned for the extraction. Apparently, wherever he was, he had an open view of helicopters approaching and departing the clearing.
“I think I might have a location,” Red Leader reported. “Ready, Mad Dog?” he asked his wing mate.
“I can almost smell the little motherfuckers.”
“We’ll cover you, Mini-Man,” Red Leader promised.
I swung west to where the sun had already gone down to leave the sky bruised with color and the earth below purple with darkness. I dropped down low above the forest and poured on the coal; Farmer and Miles were about a mile behind me. I rode so close to the treetops that they chattered in the slipstream of our passing. A few taller branches slapped our belly. Stockton scrunched down as though trying to hide inside his seat armor. I knew how he felt. There were times when I felt like melting into my helmet. This was one of them. I would rather have taken a beating than go back, but someone had to do it.
Dumbass Farmer. Why the hell did that Alabama hick let his guys off when he knew he was taking fire?
The Snakes were rolling in hot, delivering ordnance off the southwest edge of the clearing, ahead of us and to our right. Rocket explosions flared bright. I ignored them, concentrating on my job and the clearing rapidly approaching.
“Get on the controls with me,” I instructed Stockton. “Just in case. . .”
“Yes, sir.”
I wondered, wryly, if he thought Mini-Man was so charmed now.
“We’re receiving fire from the right!” Shaky called out.
Such was my concentration that I was only peripherally aware of scattered tracers zippering the purpling air.
“Gunner, have you got a target?” I asked. “Have you got a target?”
Shaky’s M60 opened up, slapping against my ears.
Stockton was praying. This was his first action. He appeared frozen. “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!”
As always when adrenaline started pumping, I experienced that sudden calmness as though I were a mere spectator instead of a participant. I brought the slick in, decelerated at the last moment and squatted it down into the clearing. I had already advised the LRRPs of their loading arrangement. They were ready. I didn’t even see them bound out of the jungle, but all of a sudden Shaky gave that exclamation I was relieved to hear: “They’re on!”
It was in and out. As I pulled up and out in a cyclic climb, accompanied by tracers streaking past, Farmer slid in underneath me. Unfortunately, this was not one of those evenings when he was absolutely brilliant at the controls. It was like he was driving the turnip wagon instead of falling off it.
“We’re hit!” he screeched over the radio. “Going down!”