Chapter Nine.

For perhaps the tenth time that morning, Sandman pushed the stick over and forwards, and sent the little Bird Dog into a long, low swoop, no more than ten, or twelve feet above the almost impenetrable green sea of triple canopy which stretched for miles up through the Ban Karai Pass that bisected the Annamite Mountains; right up to the Plaine des Jarres.

He had been working near Route 911 in Khammaoune Province between the village of Ban Thapachôn and the head of the Ban Karai Pass with Redneck flight... a pair of F-4 Phantoms out of Udorn, for three-quarters of an hour now; and not a sign of the little Dink bastards; or even a real glimpse of the Ho Chi Minh trail somewhere down below. The NVA road builders built these roads through incredibly rugged terrain, and managed to camouflage them so well that FACs would often have to fly less than a hundred feet from the ground to even see them. The F-4s could not remain on station for very much longer, and would soon have to break to rendezvous with an air refuel Boeing K-135 orbiting out over Thailand. The replenished F-4s would then return and take up station again under Sandman's control for a further thirty minutes or so.

The HCM trail was a labyrinth of dirt roads, bicycle and foot paths, bypasses, storage areas, workshops, and truck parks that stretched from the mountain passes of North Vietnam, through the panhandle of Laos, and into east-central Cambodia. The entire system was elaborately camouflaged from aerial observation, and the more important portions were paved with rock and pebbles. Today's mission was to take out anything that provided a target opportunity. The tip-off for Sandman's spotting would be when a road ended abruptly. The NVA never spent the effort to construct a road they didn't need. If a road suddenly ended, it was pretty certain that a sweet target was at its far end. Redneck flight was orbiting out to the east, close to the Vietnam border. Sandman knew that he had maybe, one more pass and then, it was a scrub-out.

He pulled up and began a slow starboard orbit to bring the ship around for one final pass, As he lined up on the distant Co Khu peak which he was using as a reference point; suddenly, his little piece of sky was filled with flaming green onions that arced up slowly from the canopy below; then accelerated at a phenomenal speed towards him. Tracer! He barely had time to form this thought before two streams of heavy-calibre ordnance bracketed him. He ducked as the windshield plexiglass shattered, driving splinters into his face, whilst hot oil sprayed out from under the instrument panel over his legs. The controls went sloppy, and the temperature instrument needles went off the clock, whilst the pressure gauges began to rapidly wind back towards zero.

Shit! He had just the one last shot. Hauling the stick over and punching right pedal; Sandman aimed his Bird Dog's rapidly sinking nose towards the point where most of the tracer was coming from. He punched the tit. The Bird Dog seemed to hesitate and stagger as six white phosphorous rockets blasted away from under her shredded wings; leaving white trails streaking down towards the triple canopy. He yelled into his boom mike.

'Redneck Leader. Target marked. Expedite.'

The reply crackled faintly through his head set.

"Roger, Raven Five. Clear target area, and confirm."

Sandman grinned to himself. Clear target area? Fat chance!

He keyed his mike again

'Roger, Redneck leader. Expedite is cleared hot.'

The Bird Dog began a slow roll to the left. Sandman fought the controls. Nosing into the triple canopy was not the best way to walk away from this one. Everything seemed to go into slow-motion. Damn! Nothing but a green sea below, and the Bird Dog was still yawing over to the left. Suddenly, the horizon levelled out as the little airplane was rocked as the blowtorch jockeys came screaming in to dump their ordnance on the smoke-marked target area. He was flying right into it! All hell broke loose right in front of the nose of the Bird Dog as the Mk82 GPs and the explosive/white phosphorus mix CBUs detonated down in the triple canopy. The blast caught Sandman's languishing ship and punched her upwards, gaining him several thousand feet of altitude.

'Jesus H Christ!' Sandman locked his hands on the stick to try to keep her straight. All he saw of the fast movers were the roaring maws of their jet pipes as the Redneck flight jocks punched in their afterburners and rocketed up and away.

The motor was making weird noises and sounded as though it was going to seize at any moment. The radio was dead… this was a top-dollar, shit-bird situation. Sandman gave an ironic grin. So; the Golden B-B had got him at last! No FIGMO Two-step for the Sandman!... and no chance of a little Hoochy-coochy with that pretty little gal with the code-name, "Footloose One." Maybe he should have kept the Morgan Dollar to pay his dues to The Ferryman, instead of giving it to her! Still; what the fuck did he expect? Everyone knew that the Ban Karai Pass was one of the most dangerous places on earth for aircraft.

He had scarcely finished this thought when the motor coughed, made an ugly grating sound, and stopped. Suddenly all was silent, except for the whistle of the wind through the bullet holes in the windshield. Sandman shrugged. Oh Great! Dead-stick over the canopy and the control column feeling as if he was stirring a bowl of oatmeal. Still; be thankful for small mercies... at least he wasn't riding a flamer down... which had been the fate of several fellow-Ravens over the last couple of years. The Bird Dog finally ran out of sky and struck the top of the triple canopy; then he was into the trees, and heading down, nose first; in a world of splintering timber and tearing canvas and metal.

The starboard wingtip hit the ground first, snapping the starboard wing as though it was a celery stick, and pitching the little ship over onto her back. Sandman hung suspended in his shoulder straps. His right arm hurt like hell. Groggily he glanced down and saw a slender spear of jagged, curved windshield plexiglass protruding from his forearm muscle. He coughed, breathing in the abundance of smoke that filled the wrecked cabin. A sharp, cold realisation drove the pain back… Get the Fuck out!

He punched the harness release and fell in a heap onto what was left of the cabin roof; kicking open the twisted door and rolling out of the wreck. He lay there for a few moments gathering his wits. Faintly, he heard voices. The little bastards were coming to find him. Time to go! Gritting his teeth, he pulled the curved plexiglass shard out of his arm and ran for the cover of the jungle.

Stacey and Natalie were out on a rice drop mission to LS-47, Xam Tai; a God-forsaken, hillside strip close to the Vietnamese border, when the radio crackled into life. "King" was broadcasting a message for...

"Any Air America chopper in the Savanaket area that might be available to help rescue a downed pilot."

Redneck leader had reported Raven Five down. Stacey immediately responded that they were about ninety-five klicks to the north and would expedite. She then attempted to contact the downed pilot over the UHF guard (emergency) frequency. She picked up a signal. It was very faint, but established that the pilot was OK, but the Pathēt Lāo soldiers were starting to hunt him down. She glanced at Natalie.

'Ok, hun; let's haul ass and go pick him up. You'd better go check "puff" out. We might need to lay down suppressing fire.'

Natalie nodded, unbuckled, and moved back into the aft cabin. She switched on the electric supply; clipped on the safety "Monkey harness," and swung the minigun out on its Sagami mount. Having checked out the powered ammunition feeder/delinker system, she reached up to the side bulkhead and wound the rheostat up to eighty percent. Turning back to the gun, she flicked on the "Master arm" switch. With a rising whine, the drive motor began rotating the barrels. As they reached full speed, she swung the gun down, aimed for an empty, desolate tract of land, and pressed both fire control triggers. Just as Sandman had described; it sounded like a very loud pneumatic riveter, and even in broad daylight, the pyrotechnic display of the red tracer slashing down was awe-inspiring. Natalie poured a two-second burst into the ground; astonished at the sight of the bare ground literally shimmying under the impact of the bullets. She released the triggers and heard the shrill whine of the drive motor decrease in pitch as the barrels slowed, and finally clicked to a standstill.

Wow! This was a mean, kick-ass weapon. She flicked off the "Master arm" switch, unclipped from the safety harness, and returned to the cockpit. Buckling her harness, she keyed her mike.

'Jeez! That baby lays down some serious shit. It's everything the guys at Long Tieng said… and more. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be on the wrong end of that one!'

Stacey gave her a grim smile.

'Well, let's hope we don't need to use it. Buckle up and hang on. We're going in hot and low. I've zeroed him in on the UHF homer which shows his position from us as One-sixty. We won't get a visual on him for a while as yet, so stay sharp.'

Stacey dropped the Huey down to an indicated thirty feet; until she was brushing the top-most foliage of the triple canopy with the skids. Twisting the throttle grip open and pulling all the collective she could get, she shoved the cyclic right out to the forward stop, and brought the airspeed up to the red line at one hundred and twenty knots.

She was now completely focused on the task at hand. Her expression tightened into a grim smile as the Huey raced over the dense foliage of the triple canopy. With the landing zone nearing, as well as the threat of being shot down, her reflexes were on a hair trigger.

Natalie grinned.

'Hell! This seems to be your signature flight envelope, babe! Want to do the music as well?

Stacey nodded, and Natalie twisted the AM tuner knob to 99.9 MHz… AFVN… American Forces Vietnam Network. The signal came in at full strength, with Steppenwolf blasting out "Born to Be Wild" into their headsets.

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Twenty klicks out from the head of the Ban Karai Pass, Stacey switched out the AM tuner and went to Tactical AM frequency, attempting to contact the downed pilot. At the third attempt, she picked up just a whisper over the "tac push,"

"This is Raven Five Actual"

He reported that he could hear them coming and that they were headed straight for him. The enemy was close, and he was going dark on his PRC 90 transmissions. He would continue contact by using "break-squelch" as affirmatives to Stacey's transmissions. Stacey glanced at Natalie.

'Damn! It's one of our Long Tieng guys, and the Dinks are closing in on him. You'd better go wind up "Puff," hun. We're going in hot to pull him out before he gets screwed!'

Natalie nodded, unbuckled and moved to the rear cabin. Clipping in again and reaching up to the rheostat, she wound it up to one hundred percent. That would give her six thousand rounds per minute... enough for four, or five sustained bursts. She leaned forward and tapped the top Stacey's helmet in their agreed confirmation signal. Stacey keyed her mike.

'Raven Five; do you have visual?'

The distinct rasp of his "click-hiss" signal as he keyed "break-squelch" buzzed in her headset.

'Raven Five; Pop grape and confirm, break-squelch.'

A blossoming cloud of purple smoke appeared about two klicks directly ahead, and again the rasping click-hiss buzzed in her headset. Natalie was already on the minigun and spinning up, judging by the flicker of the voltmeter needle on the instrument panel.

Stacey switched to internal and keyed her mike.

'OK, Nat. Here we go. Stay sharp.'

Natalie's voice crackled in her headset.

'That's a Rog, babe. I'm covering the tree-line.'

Ahead, the crash site was coming up fast. There was the downed Raven Bird Dog; upside down in a rough pasture, and minus its starboard wing. She was coming in very low and very fast. She would have to watch out for a condition known as "vortex ring condition." This was a mean situation that could occur if she descended too fast and perpendicularly...without sufficient forward speed. The chopper could get into its own rotor downwash causing the lift to be substantially reduced. Recovering from this condition was possible only at higher altitudes, and she didn't have that luxury. She pulled back hard on the cyclic to dump airspeed. The Huey’s nose reared up toward the sky as she almost stood on her tail.

Stacey turned her into the wind, and eased the cyclic forward again; keeping sixty knots airspeed about ten feet off the ground, and then flared the bird by pulling back on the cyclic once again. The rotors bit into the wind, slowing the chopper down drastically whilst making the rotors increase their rotation at the same time, providing her with a small burst of lift. As the Huey slowed almost to a standstill, she straightened it parallel to the ground and cranked the collective up so that the rotors bit into the air and cushioned the chopper to a safe landing. Gunfire was coming from the tree-line about two hundred yards out to port. The Raven pilot broke cover, and ran towards the Huey. A squad of Pathēt Lāo troops emerged from the edge of the tree line, firing at the Huey as they advanced. Once again, Stacey heard the ominous snick... snick, snick as bullets smacked through the Huey's side.

Natalie opened fire with a couple of three second "high-rate" bursts and dropped the squad of hostiles, who were now aiming rocket-propelled grenades. She was loaded with a mix of four M59 ball to one M62 tracer. When the smoke and dust had cleared; she glanced towards the tree line.

What had once been men was now little more than a stream of red slush. "Puff" had shredded them so completely, that it looked as though the Dink platoon had been fed through a meat grinder. From the look of it there sure as hell wasn't enough left to put in a bag and send home to Mama. The Raven pilot scrambled aboard. Natalie stared, open-mouthed. Damn! It was Sandman! He grinned, and then winced as she grabbed his arm to haul him into the cabin.

'Well. Damifitain't my favourite Huey babes. Let's get the hell outta here! Those little bastards have a bunch of buddies coming up behind them, and they aren't going to be too pleased with what you've done to their lead platoon!'

Natalie nodded, slid the cabin door shut, and keyed her mike.

'OK, babe; we've got him. Let's go!

Stacey was concentrating hard. This improvised LZ needed a confined area take-off which meant backing up the Huey as far as possible and then executing a high power, high angle take-off until she was clear of the trees ahead. Once clear of the trees, it was then possible to nose over the aircraft and build airspeed. She pulled collective and wound on power. She had barely cleared the trees and was nosing over to gain airspeed, when the Huey was hit again with several bursts of small arms fire. Natalie opened up again with the minigun and literally sawed down the first few metres of tree-line from where the automatic fire was coming. The incoming fire stopped abruptly as the minigun finally ran out of ammunition and the barrels clacked to a standstill.

Sandman slumped in the corner of the cabin, as Natalie swung the minigun inboard on the Sagami mount and pulled the port cabin door closed. As she turned, he saw that she was bleeding. He scrambled to his feet.

'Damn me, girl; you've been hit! Where's the first-aid pack?'

Natalie winced as the Huey jolted.

'I'm OK. More to the point, I'd better get you a dressing for that arm, Sandman.'

She took two steps forward towards the cabin front bulkhead and collapsed. He saw that she had been hit twice, just above her left hip... an inch or so below the protection of her body armour. He reached forward and smacked Stacey on the top of her helmet. She glanced back, and pointed to the spare headset hanging from the roof of the cabin, motioning that he should put it on. Clamping the headset on, Sandman yelled that Natalie had been hit, and it looked serious. Stacey keyed her mike.

'OK. We're just transiting The Chokes. I'll divert to Da Nang.'

Stacey was flying the Huey at three thousand feet apprehensively watching the fuel pressure and quantity gauges. Pressure was OK at twenty-five PSI, but the quantity gauge was dropping faster than she would have liked. The twenty-minute low fuel warning light was still extinguished, but for how long was anyone's guess. She was just about to ease back on the throttle when Sandman appeared beside her. He plugged into the intercom system and keyed his mike.

'You're going to have to go hot, Baby-Girl. Natalie's getting worse. I think she's bleeding internally. Her pulse is starting to get thready.'

Stacey didn't hesitate. Twisting the throttle grip open and pulling the collective right up to the stops, she shoved the cyclic all the way forward, and brought the airspeed right up to the red line at one hundred and twenty knots. The Huey shivered and responded sharply almost causing Sandman to lose his balance. Glancing back at the instrument panel, she watched the gas producer tachometer needle begin to creep up the scale. One hundred and one per cent was the structural limit. She looked back to the horizon… yes, there! About twenty-five klicks out… the Ocean! She reached down and switched to UHF Command Set.

'Da Nang tower. Footloose-One Actual. Ten mile final approach with wounded and emergency fuel state. Over.'

Da Nang response crackled in her headset.

"Footloose-One Actual. Divert to MMAF Marine Corps Facility, five miles south-east of field. Turn onto One-Three-Five. Patching you through to MMAF Control. Out."

Stacey keyed her mike.

'Roger, Da Nang Tower. Out'

She applied right pedal and brought the chopper's nose around to the south-east. She keyed her mike again.

'MMAF tower. Footloose-One Actual. Twelve mile final approach North-east inbound at Two-Two-Five with wounded and emergency fuel state. Over.'

Her headset crackled urgently.

"Footloose-One Actual. Cleared to Straight-in approach, West pad. Sea-board pad active. Touch-down at your discretion. Over."

Stacey keyed her mike again

'Roger, MMAF Tower. Standby.'

Out to the east, a constant stream of aircraft was orbiting Da Nang Air Base. It was described as the busiest airport in the world. Transport aircraft and fighters were taking off and landing around the clock. From out here, it looked to be a dismal place... nothing but red clay dirt everywhere; no grass, or trees. It had two, ten-thousand-foot parallel runways, serried rows of Quonset huts and hangars… and not much else.

Swooping low over Da Nang city and the Han River, she picked up the twin-peaked Marble Mountains, and just this side of their towering bulk, the single runway of the Marine Corps Marble Mountain Air Facility. OK. Final approach. As she lined up with the west pad, the twenty-minute low fuel warning light panel lit up like a Christmas tree. The east pad was full of Marine HUS-1 choppers; some with their rotors turning. There could be a nasty crosswind from their rotor downwash. No matter; run in hot and low, flare out and bring her down quickly.

No sooner had the skids touched concrete, than two Corpsmen and stretcher bearers ran out to meet the chopper. They lifted Natalie out of the cabin and on to a stretcher; then into a Dodge ambulance, which tore away across the concrete, and out onto the road that ran past the base, then turned immediately into a compound on the opposite side of the road. Sandman jumped down from the cabin as Stacey shut down and opened the cockpit door. He grinned.

'They might have given me a lift as well!'

Blood was seeping through the dressing on his arm. Stacey pulled off her helmet and jumped down onto the concrete.

'What is that place, Sandman?'

He smiled.

'The best possible place that we could have taken her, Baby-Girl. That's the Naval Support Activity Hospital. It's a special field hospital, staffed with specialists and stocked with all the medical supplies required to be a modern emergency hospital. She'll be OK in there.'

Stacey and Sandman walked across the compound of the Marble Mountain medical centre where they had been waiting to see what the medics said about Natalie. She was about to undergo emergency surgery and was not classed as being on the critical list, in no small part, due to Stacey's rapid, seat-of-the-pants flying down from the area of The Chokes, and Sandman's quick-thinking first-aid on board the chopper. The resident M.O. had said that Natalie would be hospitalised for at least a month, and the line chief's report on the combat damage to Stacey's Huey wasn't about to be much better. Both the centrifugal and axial compressors had blade damage from the haphazard ground fire. The line-chief remarked that it was a fucking miracle that the turboshaft engine hadn't exploded in flight… especially when he learned that Stacey had been red-lining it for something like two hundred klicks. He leaned against the side of the Huey and sadly shook his head.

'Jesus H Christ! I thought the Air America jocks were crazy; but a pretty little thing like you, flying a shot-up bird like that? Damn!'

Sandman grinned.

'You think that's hot? You should see her dancing a fixed-wing around the Boonies! She makes our Medivac hot-shots look like pansies… she's got no Goddamned fear at all!... and you know that the Medivac guys have the biggest balls of all! You just remember this Lady… she's "Footloose-One."

Stacey jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.

'Oh, can it, Sandman. I only do what I have to do… and getting Nat back here was what I had to do at any cost.'

The line-chief nodded.

'Footloose-One, huh? Yeah, we've heard your name before. Well, this time, the cost is a new turboshaft motor. We'll have to get one up from Phan Rang. That'll take close on a week; then there's the fitting up. You guys are going to be stuck here for at least ten days.'

He slid back the rear cabin door and motioned to the minigun.

'That's some mean sucker you have there, but it's an old version. We can change it out for an up-to-date GAU-17/A; optimized for flexible use, with an MAU-201/A delinking feeder. Same rates of fire, but a more efficient feed. Those old GAU-2/As tend to misfire occasionally. We might as well give you the good stuff while this bird is hangared up.'

Stacey nodded.

'If you think so, Chief; thanks.'

She and Sandman left the line-chief and strolled across the chopper pad towards the stretch of sandy beach separating the facility from the South China Sea. Sandman glanced at her.

'So, Baby-Girl; ten days. What shall we do to pass the time?'

She smiled.

'I never did get your real name, Sandman.'

He grinned.

'That's because you never asked. It's Shepard … Alex Shepard.'

She nodded. Strange. Her mother had once said that she had a thing with an Alex when she was in Russia, before the war. He had turned out to be a bad one. This Alex seemed to be OK. She smiled again.

'I'm sure we'll find something to amuse ourselves with… Alex.'