The four of us had flown together on LOCCUST missions, and we were kept together as a crew as we were rolled into the wildfire-suppression undertaking. The locals, it appeared, were just as mad at us on these missions, despite the fact that this time, we were trying to save their crops, not to mention their houses.
The way the wildfire-suppression flights work is that firefighters on the ground tell us where they want us to drop water. Usually this means we fly through smoke and toast our butts a bit in the heat in order to drop water next to an active fire to help them keep it from spreading. We had to find the water ourselves somewhere, so we were authorized to “dip” from any water source we could find. This often meant ponds on private property and, in this area in particular, ponds that fed irrigation pumps for (you guessed it) cannabis fields.
Rhys was an excellent Aircraft Commander. Instead of doing everything himself, he knew he had a young Co-Pilot next to him who was eager for experience. One day, as unnerving as I’m sure it was for him, he let me take the controls while we were filling our water bucket. The bucket was a two-hundred-gallon, parachute-like neon orange assembly that attached to the cargo hook on the belly of the helicopter.
As I flew the helicopter over the water source, I could hear the backenders calling out, “Twenty feet . . . fifteen . . . ten . . . five, four, three, two, hold . . . filling . . . hold . . . hold . . . okay, start back up.” At this point, I started to slowly lift the bird up, so that the bucket would open and fill with water as we climbed. This is a rather delicate operation. You’re asking a lot of your engines to lift this much extra weight, and at the higher elevations that can be a recipe for disaster. In the event of an emergency or a power loss, both pilots are ready to hit the dump switch, which releases all of the water out of the bottom center of the bucket. With all of this at the forefront of his mind, Rhys was carefully guarding the controls as I was “on the dip,” as we called it.
“Who the fuck is this guy? Twelve o’clock,” Steve called out as I breathed evenly, trying to hold a perfectly stable hover and slow climb while keeping all parts of the aircraft out of the water. If I crept forward, I’d have to correct backward, which would put the tail lower than the nose. It was incredibly dangerous if you weren’t holding a very solid hover. I flicked a glance out of the front of the aircraft to see an angry, bearded middle-aged man on a quad bike yelling at us from a small hill about ten feet above the water level. This put him pretty much eye-to-eye with us, so a sense of unease began to permeate the cabin. Either he was mad that we, at some point, had confiscated his weed, or he was pissed that we were taking his water in the middle of a drought. Either way, it wasn’t a good situation. He could throw something at us and possibly hit a rotor, and we’d end up drowning in this twenty-foot-deep shit hole all because we were trying to save his house. Hell, even worse, he could shoot at us and we’d have absolutely no way to defend ourselves.
“Okay, that’s it. You’re clear,” Blue said over the intercom. He didn’t need to tell me twice. This was music to my ears, as I couldn’t wait to get away from this lunatic.
“Transitioning forward,” I announced as I slowly pushed the stick forward and pulled up the collective stick to my left to give the engines the power to go from a hover to forward flight. Unfortunately, the lunatic was directly in our takeoff lane, as the trees around us precluded a different track. We’d have to fly right over him, which was less than ideal.
“Oh shit. Water’s away,” Blue reported with a chuckle. I quickly glanced over at Rhys. He had an expression of “uh-oh” on his face. I looked down. Someone must have accidentally tripped the bucket dump switch, because the guy on the quad had just gotten a two-hundred-gallon bath.
“Ha! Got you, you fucker!” Steve shouted, to uproarious laughter erupting from both Blue and Steve.
Rhys looked down at the collective he had carefully been guarding. His thumb had accidentally hit the switch during the climb.
“Um . . .” he began. “Yeah, let’s go find another dip.”
We all had a good chuckle and began looking for a different pond. I kept flying. It was okay with me. The guy had looked like he needed to cool off.
With a new bucketful of water, we flew back into the action. We stayed just high enough above the flames to prevent damage to the aircraft, but it wasn’t uncommon to get a bit overheated after twelve hours spent roasting like a marshmallow over a campfire. We were careful not to get too close, but sometimes we pushed it. That day, we were flying as low as we safely could en route to our spot (chosen for us by the firefighters on the ground), when we saw a large tree on fire on a hill to our left. I don’t know if everything around it had burned down or if it had always been taller, but the seventy-foot tree stood at least thirty feet above everything around it, and it was completely engulfed in flames.
As we passed it out the left door, we got a little too close, and I could feel the skin at the nape of my neck start to sting like a bad sunburn. I was surprised that Blue hadn’t said anything behind me, but about three seconds later, he started coughing loudly.
“Okay, that was too close,” he blurted out. “I inhaled so much heat that I couldn’t breathe or talk there for a minute. I thought my visor was going to melt!”
Rhys glanced at me as he continued flying straight ahead. We weren’t used to the effect on the aircraft and crew of flying to the side of the fire. We had been concentrating on flying high enough above it.
“Yeah, let’s not do that again,” he said.
At the end of each day, we all smelled like chain-smokers and suffered from heat exhaustion. The trip from the aircraft to our motel was usually pretty quiet, as half of the crew ended up dozing off, exhausted. Sometimes we’d hit a drive-through on the way back, but usually we all just wanted a shower and a decent night of sleep.
—
About three days into the firefighting, we started having a lot more fun. We were becoming firefighting pros. We had no idea how long we’d be there, so we had to make the best of it. Before long, we felt like we could identify different areas of the forest by the look and smell of the smoke, as each unique type of tree burned differently.
“Wow!” I exclaimed one morning as we began our first trip into the cloud of smoke. “This smells like crap. I hope we’re not over a trash site.”
“I hope there aren’t any animals down there,” Rhys added. “It sort of smells like a skunk.”
“Great,” Steve piped in. “That’ll really help me score with the front-desk chick.”
“Oh, sure, Steve,” I said, laughing. “It’s the smoke smell that’s keeping you from getting laid. Whatever you need to tell yourself.” I could never resist giving Steve good-natured shit.
We all laughed, and the intellect of the day pretty much went downhill from there as we traded jabs and laughed at one another. We even started giving the other pilots on our radio frequency shit when they would hit bingo fuel before us and have to return to the airport for more gas. This was ridiculous, as we all knew, because your skill doesn’t determine your fuel flow, but it was good-natured ribbing about having the guts to squeeze one more dip out of your empty fuel tanks. We may have even pushed it a little too much ourselves, flying until we were running on fumes as well. Eventually our fun day came to an end, and it was time to drive back to the motel. On the drive home, Blue pointed out a diner on our normal route, and despite our exhaustion, we all jumped at the chance to stop and grab a bite to eat before returning to the motel.
It was during this meal that I began feeling like maybe the heat exhaustion was getting to us. Everyone was laughing that sort of uncontrollable giggling you get when you’ve been up too long or working out in the sun too much. We devoured our dinner and ordered more food, eyeing the pies in the glass display case. I’m not sure who started it, but then we began texting other crews, trying to see who would come and join the party. We were having way too good a time
to just call it a night.
Eventually, Rhys thought it would be funny to start texting our Squadron Commander. No one seemed to realize that this wasn’t a great idea, given that it was ten o’clock at night. We all started ribbing him just as hard as we’d been doing among our crew all day. Then he hit us with a sobering response.
I glanced down at my phone when my text notification dinged, and what I read just about made me lose my dinner. I locked eyes with Rhys across the table and realized he had gotten the same text.
Are you guys high? the text said. I think we’re going to have to test your whole crew when we get back.
We looked at each other for about three seconds in terror . . . until Rhys let out a “Pffttt” and began laughing his ass off. I followed suit, laughing at the ridiculous suggestion. Then, a few seconds later, I stopped laughing. Oh my God, we were all high! The fire we had been working all day must have been a cannabis field, and a good-sized one at that.
We told Blue and Steve, and they shook their heads in disbelief. None of us had any experience to tell us what being high felt like, so we all started looking around at one another, laughing and panicking at the same time.
“Oh crap,” I murmured. “Steve’s eyes are bloodshot!”
“Steve’s eyes are always bloodshot,” replied Blue. He was right, of course, and we enjoyed another good laugh. Everything was a lot funnier than usual that night.
We never did get that urine test, but I think we all knew what was going on. I was just glad to have finally experienced it, and I couldn’t have picked a better group of guys to hit it with than good ol’ Jolly 94.
—
Soon enough, thankfully, the wildfires died down, and it started to look like we’d get that much-anticipated break we were hoping for at the end of LOCCUST. But the summer of 2008 wasn’t through with us yet. Hurricane Ike was just about to hit Houston, Texas, so our team was mobilized to head down there and help pluck folks who were too stubborn to evacuate off of their roofs. The government didn’t want another Katrina on its hands, so we stood ready to launch.
There were a few crews who landed in driveways and boarded the scared, cold survivors, but for the most part, we just spent a good deal of time searching, flying around in the crappy weather to see if anyone waved at us. We even had a few of our PJs patrolling a street looking for anyone who needed help. Rumor has it that the PJs actually commandeered a fire truck whose keys were left in the ignition, but I wasn’t there to see that. Knowing those guys, I certainly wouldn’t have put it past them, though.
After that mission, we did get something of a break. There were missions and training here and there during the next few months, but the focus was mainly on spin-up training to get us ready to head to Afghanistan in the spring. As the date of my next deployment neared, I thought about all we had been through that summer. I had grown close to Team Hawk and had spent hundreds of hours in and out of the aircraft with Rhys, Finn, Steve, and others. I had no idea who I’d be crewed with in Afghanistan, and I trusted everyone in my unit, but I was really hoping that Steve would be my FE. I knew that he was one of our best, and I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have my back in combat. Whoever I ended up flying with, I had a good feeling that this deployment would be a very different experience from the last. I was right.
SEVEN
The trip over to Afghanistan in 2009 was similar to the first, but this time around I was a seasoned pilot, I was with friends, and I knew what I was getting myself into. The only person I had left to win over was Doug Sherry, but I didn’t spend much time worrying about him. Some people would always make generalizations about others based on their gender or race; once I finally decided to accept that, I found a great deal of peace. I couldn’t change people. I could only be the best version of myself and see if that made them change themselves.
On the way over to Kandahar, we ended up getting delayed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, so we had a day or two to burn while waiting for transport. Some of us decided to head out to one of the local breweries for a tour. Luckily for us, we went through the beer-tasting part of the tour before having to sit through the video on the brewery’s history, so we had a great time trying to translate the German narration. It would be the last beer we would have for months.
Once we got to Kandahar, we met up with the squadron we would be replacing. They briefed us on the current conditions and acclimatized us to the area. Although most of us had already been to Afghanistan, some things had inevitably changed in the year and a half since we had been away. There were new procedures for getting gas, new places to drop off patients, and new bases to forward deploy to.
Personally, I had a lot more on the line this time. When I deployed with New York, I was tangentially aware that what we were doing was dangerous. I’d congratulated myself on my “bravery” for not being afraid to die. You would think that, given my experience, I’d be even more comfortable. But on this deployment, I was actually scared.
This time around I was afraid, not for myself, but because I had grown so close to my brothers- and sisters-in-arms from California. The thought of losing one of them was terrifying. I looked around the room and saw my friends, but I also pictured all of their kids, brothers, sisters, parents, and spouses. I didn’t want any of my friends to be in danger, but there was no way around it. As I sat through my first briefing and listened to the analysis of the threat situation, I thought back to the first time I had ever taken fire.
Back in my 2007 deployment, when I was still a very young Co-Pilot, I had just returned from my first rotation in TK, where we had lost that ***** ***** ODA sergeant to the gunshot wound to his arm that had penetrated his chest. I had been assigned to a new crew, so I was flying with one of my role models in New York named AJ Wineberger. AJ usually stood about six inches over everyone else in the room, but his unassuming, quiet demeanor made him less intimidating, and his approachability contributed to his admirable leadership ability.
We were flying a Dutch intelligence officer who had an injured ankle from a FOB back to Kandahar at night. I was looking through my night-vision goggles at the ridgeline that was about level with the aircraft, thinking that it was a good thing we were so low. The moon was bright enough that we would be silhouetted against the sky if anyone was looking for us. About then I heard a muffled boom and saw a flash of light outside AJ’s door at about four o’clock that illuminated the entire inside of the cockpit for a split second.
“Hey! Is someone taking pictures?” AJ barked into the mic. “Keep your friggin’ lights off!”
I kept quiet, wondering what in the hell had just happened. Then a steady stream of excited Dutch started pouring through my headset. After about thirty seconds of anxious charades between the Gunner and our patient, we realized he was telling us that it was an RPG exploding outside the door. It was a little surreal, and while I felt a lot of adrenaline, I wasn’t really scared. AJ quickly took evasive action, and we hightailed it back home.
Two years later, though, surrounded by my Rescue brothers and sisters, I knew the stakes were higher for me this time. I would do anything, fly into anything, to keep them safe. I looked over at Steve, and he nodded back at me. Maybe he was having the same thoughts.
As the meeting broke up, one of our senior pilots, Mat Wenthe, came over to chat with us. Mat came to us from active duty, where he was a rock-star pilot and a Weapons School graduate. The Weapons School is the Air Force’s version of the Navy’s famous Top Gun School. Mat was sharp, witty, and funny—definitely the cool kid that everyone wanted to fly with. He looked like sort of a shorter, better-looking Vince Vaughn with a high-and-tight haircut. Often paired with Doug Sherry on a crew, Mat had an uncanny ability to crack a joke that could put Doug in his place without alienating him or pissing him off. You couldn’t help but like Mat—he was the perfect personality to balance out the much harsher Doug.
Mat had an important subject to
discuss with us—choosing a call sign. It was standard for each incoming squadron to pick a new one. For example, the New York unit had been known as Yankee. So, you would hear “Yankee One Eight inbound for fuel” on the radios. We didn’t have anything picked out yet, so we asked him for any suggestions. He suggested we use “Pedro,” which I thought was odd. Why would we be Pedro? Because California bordered Mexico? Was it a play on the movie Napoleon Dynamite?
Later, I was embarrassed to learn that it was a name I should have known from Rescue history. It was a nod to the HH-43 rescue helicopters in Vietnam in the 1960s who used the call sign Pedro. The HH-43 pilots from Vietnam have an incredibly rich and brave history, not to mention a stellar reputation. It would be an honor to carry the Pedro call sign, and it would be an everyday reminder of the enormous responsibility we had to carry on the honorable Rescue tradition.
This would technically be my first time deployed with California, but it didn’t feel like it. I could remember in 2007 when I was augmenting the 33rd Rescue Squadron out of Kadena Air Base, Japan, I had been thrilled to be tasked with a mission that would have us working side by side with the California unit. We had intel that Osama bin Laden had been spotted in northwest Pakistan, and they were planning a huge operation to try to take him out.
We had flown into Bagram Air Base in the capital city of Kabul to gear up and do some mission planning. It didn’t matter that my unit was there doing medevac, and California was there supporting the CSAR mission. We were all CSAR assets, so we would all support this mission together.
We pre-positioned in the middle of nowhere near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in the northeast part of the country close to the border with Pakistan. Our crews would sit alert alongside the California unit, ready to go in if the shit hit the fan and the op went south. On the night our Special Forces teams were going to hit their target, I was standing outside our command tent, ruminating about the gravity of the event and hoping that we might be dealing a serious blow to Al Qaeda. Sitting on the back of a four-wheeler, listening to some of the California guys inside the tent laugh and play pocket tanks, I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye.
Shoot Like a Girl Page 15