Chickenhawk Page 8

  I walked toward the sleeping man. Nguyen ran up beside me. The guy’s probably his brother-in-law.

  “Nguyen, I know this guy’s sleeping, so don’t try to stop me.”

  Nguyen didn’t answer. I felt a tightening in my throat, but I didn’t know why.

  The man did not get up when I stood next to him. He lay comfortably on his side in the grass while flies and gnats swarmed around the sores on his legs. (All of the Vietnamese had sores on their legs.) He did not breathe. Meyers came up from somewhere, knelt, and checked the man’s pulse at his throat. “He’s dead, sir.”

  Nguyen showed me what killed him. Six feet from his body was a beheaded snake. Somewhere among the mass of sores and cuts on his leg was a snakebite. He had been bitten, killed the snake, and then sat down to die. His friends working around him did not stop their work to help. They knew, and he knew, that when that snake bit you, you died. So he did.

  At quitting time the refugees lined up fifty feet away from the waiting trucks. The pay officer arrived just as a Jeep was taking the body to an aid station inside the camp. He carried a black vinyl briefcase that looked very out of place in the jungle and from which he produced Vietnamese cash to pay the workers.

  While he paid the people, I looked for Sally. I had not seen her since the snakebite incident. She was the only person I knew outside the army. She seemed bright and sensitive. I harbored fantasies of somehow saving her from a grueling existence. I could not find her.

  While I looked, I noticed a boy near the front of one of the lines step back onto the toes of the man behind him. The man immediately smashed him on top of the head with his closed fist. The kid sank weakly, almost to the ground, grimacing, but did not say a word.

  The trucks drove off. Meyers and I made one last check before we left. We found three distinct arrows pointed at sandbag positions on our distant perimeter. Hash marks on the stems presumably indicated the range. We scattered them.

  Late that afternoon I drove into the village of An Khe with Shaker, Farris, and Resler. It was an official trip to buy stuff for the men—candles, kerosene lamps, rice mats, and plastic lawn chairs. Resler and I were along to do the carrying.

  The village was small and dusty. A few other Jeeps were parked here and there. One bar seemed pretty lively, but Shaker wouldn’t let us go in.

  When I looked down the streets, I wondered where the refugees who had worked on the refueling depot lived. I didn’t see anybody I recognized.

  ———

  “Mason, they found a couple of platoon tents this morning,” Resler announced through the canvas. I wasn’t up yet. He usually beat me to breakfast. “They want us to move out of the pup tents but keep them pitched for now.”

  “Why?” I said groggily.

  “They’re going to use them for storage. There’s still going to be twenty men in the GPs, so there won’t be much room for your golf clubs and polo gear.”

  Hello, big time. The platoon tents, or GPs, were made of heavy olive-drab canvas stretched over a huge ridge pole. The sides were kept rolled up during the day because the tent’s dark color absorbed so much heat that you could feel the outrush of air, like a hot, stale breath, as you walked in the doors. The combination of heat and moisture generated great quantities of mildew and fungus. The tents were mostly uninhabited during the day because of the heat, and because we were supposed to be outside working anyway.

  That night the pup-tent colony moved into the cozy new GP. My bed and eight others lined one side of the tent. Ten more ran down the other side. Six inches of space separated my cot from Nate‘s, on my right. John Hall, from the advance party, was six inches away on my left. Wendall and Barber were across the aisle from me. Still, we could stand up in the tent.

  During our first night in the GP we talked about our deposed leader, Major Fields. A lingering ear infection got him grounded. At a surprise meeting before evening chow, he announced his retirement to Saigon and introduced his replacement, Major Williams. For more than two years Fields had been basically one of the boys, with gold braid. Williams gave us a sample of what was to come, with all the charm of an army textbook.

  “I’ve got the highest respect for Major Fields and what he has done with Bravo Company. I can see how much you have done here.” He did not smile as he looked over our very loose formation near the mess hall. “But, starting tomorrow, the pace quickens. We have more work to do on the company area, missions corning up, and a lot of training flights. Training is the key to survival. And survival is what it’s all about, gentlemen.” Heavy eyebrows slanted toward his nose. The wrinkles around his mouth pulled down sternly as he talked about the upcoming missions. His face suited the job perfectly.

  “Damn, I’d like to stay around and get tough working on the Golf Course,” said Connors as he walked in the crowded warrants’ tent. “But our new old man is sending me out tomorrow morning with good old Mason.”

  “Great.” I looked up as I cleaned my new Smith & Wesson .38. “Who else is going?” I slid the flashy, long barreled, wooden-gripped revolver back into the black hip holster. They had issued these cowboy weapons after we turned in our .45 automatics the day before. Great new toys for the pilots.

  “It’s a joint effort. Our company’s sending four ships. Me and you, Nate and Resler, Wendall and Barber, Hall and Marston.” Everybody looked up from tending to his .38. Connors ambled over to Hall. “Damn. It looks like you guys are getting ready for the O.K. Corral.”

  “You got it wrong, partner,” Hall said as he twirled the cylinder of his pistol. He snapped it shut and took aim with both hands at the tent pole. “This isn’t the O.K. Corral. It’s the Gee Whiz Jungle. Gunfight at the Gee Whiz Jungle.” Hall winked and took a healthy swig from his canteen cup.

  The mission we had been assigned to was simple: an early-morning flight over the An Khe pass toward Qui Nhon; a left turn up between two skinny ridges into Vinh Thanh Valley, known to us as Happy Valley; drop off the patrols and then go back to an LZ near the pass and laager (stand by). The grunts would call for a pickup. The Cav had been sending out patrols like this since we’d been here. This just happened to be the first one that we were part of.

  The troopers assembled on row three of the Golf Course. Each group of ten men had been assigned to an aircraft number. The troopers watched us as though we might sneak away while we did our preflight inspections.

  For the occasion of my first mission, I had on my cleanest fatigues, a flak vest, my new .38 in its hip holster, and a pair of real flying gloves. We didn’t have chest protectors because they hadn’t arrived yet. I reached inside the cockpit of the Huey and connected my helmet to the radio cord, hung it on the overhead hook, and stepped back to follow Connors’s preflight.

  “Too many dumb bastards have killed themselves by not knowing or caring about preflight. Everything I show you today, I want you to do every day you fly.” I nodded. We stood next to the cargo deck on the left side of the helicopter. “First, check the green book.” He did. “Plenty of people have missed a big red X that the crew chief put on the first page. You might miss what he’s logged. Remember this is the crew chief’s ship, and he’s the mechanic. You’re just checking his work, so first check what he thinks is the status of the ship.” Connors flipped the book shut and stashed it in its pocket at the rear of the center console. Then he squatted down next to the ship. “Everybody knows you’re supposed to drain some fuel before the first flight, to get the water condensation out.” He pointed under the belly of the Huey. “But I bet half these bastards around here never do.” I got down on hands and knees and reached the fuel-drain valve and pushed it to let a few ounces of fuel pour out onto the ground. I didn’t see any water drops.

  Connors continued the preflight, showing me what he considered important and felt was often overlooked. He understood the machine thoroughly and had the perfect disposition for an IP. We checked the tail rotor. I undid the rotor tie-down strap and removed it. We came to the right side after the walk-aro
und, and Connors crawled up the side of the aircraft using the concealed foot holes between the pilot’s door and the cargo door. I joined him. The roof deck of the Huey is flat, so you can walk around to check the rotor hub, the mast, the transmission mounts, and the control rods. He pointed out safety wires on parts of the swash plate, the push-pull tubes, the stabilizer bars, and the control dampers. We carefully inspected the Jesus nut at the top of the mast, which held the whole works in the air. “Everybody checks the Jesus nut, but nobody looks for hairline cracks in these blade-root laminations,” said Connors. “What difference does it make if the Jesus nut holds when the blade splits and breaks off?” I nodded.

  We climbed into the cockpit to face the morning sun. Stress patterns spiderwebbed brightly in the plastic canopy. A boy called Red, the crew chief for this ship, helped me strap in on the right side. The sun poured in, heating us up quickly. Dark stains grew up from my waist, and I could feel sweat dripping around my concealed derringer. That idea was not going to last long. I put my sunglasses on. Connors watched from the left seat in the classical disinterested-instructor-pilot-who-is-really-watching-like-a-hawk pose. His arms were folded across his flak vest, his head pointed to the front, but his eyes darted over to see what I was doing. I ran through the cockpit check from memory and looked outside to the lead ship, parked two ships over on our right. After a couple more minutes of sweating, I saw the flight leader, in a ship from the Snakes, whirl his hand as the crank-up signal. The starter whined, the rotors moved slowly, then the turbine caught. The rotors blurred overhead, and we were ready to go. I clicked in the intercom and asked the crew chief and the gunner if they were ready. Answering clicks said they were. “Don’t forget to have them check the doors,” Connors said. I nodded and asked the two men to check if the pins that held the two sliding doors fully open were in place. They were. Without the pins, the doors could jump out of their tracks and blow off in the wind.

  Soon sixteen slicks and four gunships were ready on row three. The troopers waited nearby for us to hover out of our parking slots.

  The flight leader assigned each group of four ships—each squad—a color as a call sign, always in the same color order: Yellow, White, Orange, Red. Within the squad we got a number that referred to our position in the formation. Connors and I were Orange Four. Each ship called out its color and number in turn. When the sequence got to our squad, I heard “Orange One.” Marston.

  “Orange Two.” Wendall.

  “Orange Three.” Nate.

  I called, “Orange Four.” The Red flight called in after us. We picked up to a hover, moved out, and parked in a long string down the middle of row three.

  The troopers—or, as I had been corrected by Connors, the grunts—jumped on board. They wore jungle fatigues and bristled with bandoliers of ammunition, M-16 rifles, M-79 grenade launchers, hand grenades, and canteens. They carried little else, because they were Cav troopers and would be resupplied constantly by us. Three of them squeezed between the crew chief and the gunner on the long bench across the cargo deck, three more on the deck in front of them, and four more in the two pockets. Ten grunts.

  “How did they get the name ‘grunt’?” I asked while they scrambled aboard.

  “That’s the IQ of a trooper,” Connors said.

  “I hope they can’t hear that.”

  “Don’t worry, Mason. We’re all grunts in the Cav. Didn’t you join the army voluntarily?”

  “Yes.”

  “I rest my case.”

  Red Four called the flight leader and told him the sixteen slicks were loaded. Yellow One rogered and moments later made a sluggish takeoff. The ships followed in close sequence. When Orange One, Marston and Hall, nosed over on takeoff, I began to ease in the power to get the Huey light on the skids. The nose came up lightly and she shifted a little. I corrected the drift and waited, still light. When Nate and Resler got off, I was right behind them, feeling sluggish with the weight of the grunts. Yellow One climbed slowly over the trees north of the camp, holding his speed down to 60 knots while we closed up in the familiar V formation. As we closed, he made a slow turn to the right toward the An Khe pass. As fourth ship, I joined the left wing of the V formed by the other three ships, making it a heavy-left formation.

  As I closed on Orange Three’s left, she seemed to fall back, so I decelerated. Then she seemed to lurch too far ahead, and I had to nose over hard to catch her. My lack of formation training was showing. I kept oscillating from too far forward to too far back. Connors let me do it a few times, then said, “I got it.”

  “You got it.”

  We fell into position forming a straight line with Orange One and Orange Three after he took the controls. We moved in so close to Orange Three that I could hear the buzzing of their tail rotor.

  “Let me show you the tricks to this formation jazz,” Connors said. His grin was partially concealed by his microphone. “First you gotta find two spots on the Huey you’re flying on that line up and put you at a 45-degree angle away from their tail. I’ll use where the cross tube connects at the rear of Orange Three’s left skid as one point and line it up with the front of their right skid, where the cross tube connects. See?” I saw that those two points were lined up, moving slowly relative to each other as the ships surged gently through the air. As he showed me, we were climbing at 80 knots along the highway, toward the pass.

  “Now, those are the right reference points if you’re flying about level with the other ship. You also have to find two points that work when you have to go higher than them, like when they turn toward you or you have to miss a tree or something. If you make sure you have those reference points lined up, you’ll be at the right angle.” Connors suddenly raised us above the rest of the flight. “Look across Orange Three’s roof deck.” The rotors blinked over the air-vent bulges and antennas scattered on top. “I use the air vent on this side lined up with the forward corner of the roof deck.” With those two points lined up we were at the correct angle to Orange Three. As we drifted back down to the same level as the rest of the flight, Connors said, “When you fly formation, try to find your own reference points for every possible position. That way, you’ll never get disoriented when the going gets rough. And if you think this is bad, wait till we start doing this shit at night.”

  “Night formation?”

  “Yeah. The trick to that is staying close enough to see their instrument lights. You can practice by flying about this far away, one rotor diameter between the disks. Later you’ll learn to move in even closer.” He made it look easy. I was determined to be as good. I was so involved with what he was showing me that I barely noticed that we were crossing the pass. “You got it,” he said.

  “I got it.” The reference points gave me something to aim for. I was soon holding us at the correct angle, without hesitating and surging as much.

  “While you’re holding us on that imaginary 45-degree line, practice letting us drift farther away along that line and then back close again. No matter what the distance between us is, you should be on that line.”

  As I drifted back, I wondered what Red flight thought about our yo-yo-ing around. Orange Three and Orange One were still lined up. As long as I stayed on that line, I would not interfere with Red flight. When I was a hundred yards from Orange Three, I accelerated gently to maintain the position. When I was sure I was holding it where I wanted it, I nosed forward to move back up the line. I was doing fine, but this wasn’t a training flight. As I got close to the flight, they turned left in front of us to follow Yellow One. I had to decelerate fast to keep away.

  “Try to anticipate the turns,” said Connors. “As soon as you see Orange Three begin to bank for a turn toward you, you’ve got to bank even harder and slow down because you’re on the inside of the turn. If you’re on the outside of the turn, you must be ready to accelerate as they bank to keep in position. It’s kinda like cracking the whip.”

  I slowed correctly and held my position, but when they leveled out on a
north heading up Happy Valley, I didn’t anticipate soon enough and fell back. I moved back up feeling very much like a student again.

  “Closer,” said Connors.

  I thought I had been at about the right distance, but I moved closer.

  “Closer.” Jesus, it looked as though we were overlapped already. I moved in toward Orange Three until I could see Resler clearly through the left door. He turned and waved. I heard the tail rotor buzz again. Way too close.

  “That’s about right,” said Connors. I strained to keep from leaning away. I could see that it was going to take some time before I got used to flying this tight. “When we land in the LZs, we’ve got to stay tight so everybody can get in. And if we stay tight in the formation, we’ll all arrive at the same time, land at the same time, and get the fuck out at the same time. We can cover each other, too.”

  As Connors spoke, I barely noticed our trip up the valley. Yellow One’s call brought me back to reality.

  “Okay, Dukes, start your run.”

  The slicks slowed from 100 knots to about 80 to let the gunships fly ahead. They were B-model Hueys and slower than ours. They were also very heavily loaded with ammunition. They eased ahead of us, dropping at the same time. Our flight continued to decelerate to about 70 knots. We were on a long approach to the LZ, about five miles ahead.

  The valley was scrubby here: elephant grass, occasional tall trees, and dry rice paddies. No villages.

  I saw white smoke streaming behind the gunships, about a mile ahead of us. They were in position and prepping the LZ with their flex guns and rockets. As we closed the distance and dropped lower, I could see the rockets blasting earth into the air. At 300 feet up and a quarter mile away, Yellow One radioed, clearing us to use our door guns.

  “No shooting until I say so,” said Connors. Red and the gunner clicked their intercom switches twice. As Yellow flight moved toward the near end of the clearing, I could hear the faint crackling of their door gunners’ firing into the tall grass and bushes. Moments later, when our flight was within a hundred yards of landing, and the other ships had started firing, Connors said, “Fire at will.” The guns chattered out either side of our Huey. Our guns were so close behind our seats that it felt as though someone were slapping my ears with open palms at each shot. The grunts joined in with their rifles. My adrenaline kicked in and the world got quieter. I felt strangely detached from the scene. I concentrated on the cross tubes of Orange Three. Tracers from our own guns flowed in my peripheral vision. I felt Connors get on the controls with me. It was a rule. Just in case.