“Look, guys, I swear!” I reached my arm up over my head and moved it side to side. “I have full range of motion, and my leg has already stopped bleeding. We’ve got three cat-A soldiers down there. Let’s get back to it.”
After all, we had to give them “brave inspirations,” right? Category A meant urgent, and I wasn’t going to be the reason they bled out. I had lost enough soldiers to this war already, and I knew that if we lost them I would never forgive myself for heading back to KAF.
Steve was the only one who didn’t seem to object. After so much time together flying on drug eradication missions in California, he knew me well enough: If I said I was good, I was good. He knew I would never endanger my own crew out of some sense of bravado.
After a moment of silence, George piped up to the guys in back.
“You guys okay with going back in?”
He got affirmative answers from everyone, so he began to turn the aircraft back toward the convoy. Steve broke in that if we were going back in, we should enable the contingency power switch, a switch that would give us extra power if we needed it, but is used only in dire circumstances as it can burn up your engines if you’re not careful. I flipped it on, and we headed back toward the convoy.
Right on time, a familiar voice broke in over the radio: “Pedro one five, Guardian’s ready for pickup.” It was one of our PJs from the ground. They had no idea we’d been hit.
Unbeknownst to us, the PJs had gotten separated at the convoy and were not in communication with each other. The jammers had affected their inter-team radio, and only one of the PJs had made contact with the patients. He called us to land, hoping that the second PJ would see us touch down and run out to jump on board.
“Copy. Tell them we’re inbound,” George told the PJ team lead.
Then the headset crackled: “Pedro one five, one six . . . bent gun.”
Bent gun. Shit, they were having a weapons malfunction. Our sister ship was telling us they had a broken gun and would be able to support us out of only one side of their bird. The only thing worse than returning to the scene where you got shot is doing it when your support ship can’t fire one of its guns to defend you. What else could possibly go wrong?
“Roger. Grinder.” George, cool as a cucumber, was calling for the two ships to switch roles.
Protocol states that if your support ship is impaired, you become the support ship. We would cover Pedro 16 with our two working guns as they landed to pick up the PJs and the wounded.
“Negative. We don’t have the power,” came the reply from command in Pedro 16, fast and a little frantic. “We’re too heavy. We can’t do it.”
George and I exchanged a silent glance. I guess our radios were working again, because the other AC had clearly understood that we needed them to go in next but was refusing.
It was true that it was a lot of extra weight to ask Pedro 16 to lift with three patients on the ground, our two PJs, plus their own full crew on board, but there are always fixes to unforeseen problems. Instinctively, I ran through all the ways to do it. The easiest solution was for them to dump some fuel, then reroute after the pickup to a nearby refueling point. It could be done—but not without steady resolve by Pedro 16’s pilot.
He’s lost his nerve, I thought to myself. George nodded like he could read my mind. He kept quiet, too. We didn’t want to alarm the rest of our crew, but our silence didn’t fool anyone. They’d all heard the pilot’s voice. All of us who had done tours in Afghanistan had seen someone lose their courage. There was no coming back from that.
“Are you shitting me?” someone half shouted from the back of the bird. Now we’d have to stay lead, with Pedro 16 staying above, covering us with just one gun. At least the Kiowa Warriors had hung around and were still buzzing over the convoy. Their pods were about half full of rockets, which would give us some extra cover.
George quickly yanked and banked, about to execute the same heart-stopping dive-landing next to the convoy he had pulled off moments before, but he was now faced with a difficult choice. He could land to the same spot and be predictable to the enemy, or he could land somewhere else that hadn’t been cleared and risk landing on a mine or other improvised explosive device (IED). The convoy we were evac’ing the patient from had been disabled after they’d hit their own IED, so we knew there were likely more. George decided the lesser of two evils was to land on the same spot. However, while the small bullet that had splintered into my arm and thigh had been a dumb-luck shot from a rifle, we were about to find out that one of the enemy’s heavy belt-fed machine guns had since been trained on our landing zone.
As the wheels touched down, heavy slugs from their machine gun began to hit us hard, beating out a steady rhythm into our aircraft. I could feel more than hear the big rounds slamming into us. They shook my insides. As rounds impacted the tail and slowly started moving forward as the enemy maneuvered the heavy gun, our eight-ton aircraft rocked like a little rowboat on the ocean. The row of armored trucks gave us little protection from the barrage. The enemy was firing from the high ground at eleven o’clock.
The PJ who was off comm must have seen the hail of fire we were under and thought, F that . . . I’m not gonna get shot trying to run to an aircraft that isn’t taking off. While one of the PJs and patients came out to the bird, a second PJ stayed with the convoy. With our hands full responding to failing systems and boarding patients, no one on board stopped to ask where he was.
When the tail malfunctions, a warning horn can be heard over the intercom. Since our tail was being shot to shit, the horn was drowning out anything we were trying to say to one another. It was all happening so fast that none of us thought to silence the horn with our cutoff switch, but we were on the ground for what had to be less than fifteen seconds.
With the sirens blaring over our intercom, we couldn’t talk to one another in these crucial few seconds. However, from my vantage point closest to the convoy on the left side of the aircraft, I could see over my left shoulder that the patients were still being loaded. We couldn’t lift during transfer, because we’d hurt or kill someone. So I gave George the signal with my hand to hold and stay down on the ground, until I saw that the patients were safely on board.
This was an incredible show of steely nerves on George’s part, let alone faith in the judgment of his Co-Pilot. He had very little prior knowledge of me other than the fact that he knew I was experienced and that I had gone through the same training he had. A lesser pilot would have panicked at the aircraft being rocked by heavy fire and might have just bolted, causing injury or death to the patients and soldiers loading them onto our aircraft.
Our sister ship and the two Kiowas couldn’t help us. It was clear that the enemy had been planning this attack in the hopes of taking down a rescue helicopter. Insurgents were dug into the high ground with weapons aimed at the landing site. They had concealed their position to the extent that our cover ships could not determine a point of origin for the fire we were taking. We couldn’t fire back; nor could our support ships. We were on our own.
TJ couldn’t spot the enemy machine gun either, and he could hardly open fire while our patients were being loaded in. Not to mention, his gun was designed to fire down, not up. So he and his fifty-cal had to sit and wait, just taking the fire as the wounded soldiers were loaded into the left bay door.
Once I saw we were clear, I gave George the thumbs-up. With two pilots, one is always “outside” and the other “inside” the aircraft. George would watch the terrain and fly us back to the hospital at Kandahar Airfield. My job was to concentrate on the systems.
Many times, in a crisis, crews will make things worse by flipping the wrong switch in their haste. Pilots have been known to accidentally shut down a good engine while the other is on fire. As per our protocol, I was calling back to Steve to confirm all of the switches I was flipping, isolating hydraulics and such. While he was verbally confi
rming all of my actions, he actually had his hands full with manning his gun and trying to keep bad guys away long enough for us to get out of the landing zone (LZ). He wasn’t even watching me. Given our history, he trusted me completely to be doing the right thing and thought he would serve us better searching for a point of origin for the incoming fire.
We barely had enough power to clear the terrain ahead of us, but thanks to Steve, we had engaged our contingency power switch on the way in. He had known when we went back in that we’d be facing a firefight. That decision, at this second, was saving our lives. If he had not thought of that on our way in, we would be a scorch mark on the desert floor today.
—
In our line of work, there is simply no worse feeling in the world than leaving a PJ or patient behind. The first thing we would normally do in this situation is turn around and go back in to get our missing PJ. However, things were about to go from bad to worse for us, and the aircraft we were flying would only be making one more landing in its lifetime.
George kept us flying low and fast, so the enemy would have a harder time drawing a bead on us against the sky—more brilliant flying on his part. Seconds after takeoff, though—and just as ***** was realizing that for some reason, our third PJ wasn’t on board—Steve said something that turned my blood cold.
“We’ve got fuel back here . . .” From the smell, I knew he meant that it was spewing into the cabin. I immediately looked at the fuel gauge to see how fast it was leaking. The number one fuel tank on the left side of the aircraft wasn’t just leaking—it was already empty—and the number two tank wasn’t far behind.
The two gas tanks are heavily armored, so the Taliban’s machine gun rounds must have hit the tiny fuel line—for the second time today, a one-in-a-million shot. Each tank fed one of the Pave Hawk’s jet engines, so now one of our engines was running on fumes. With this load on board, one engine wouldn’t be able to keep us aloft. In an instant, I followed through a quick chain of logical events in my head. At the end of the chain, there was only one conclusion. Us flaming out and hitting the ground burning. Any second now.
I instinctively threw the fuel selector into cross-feed, buying us a few minutes as the left engine started receiving fuel from the right tank. The bird kept flying. We hadn’t planted into the terrain. Yet. Thank God. Here we are, about to crash on the desert floor, and instead of my life flashing before my eyes, I found myself imagining a crew recovering the wreckage. They’d load it all up into a Chinook and drag it back to Kandahar, and then the head of the investigation would say, “Hey, look—at least the Co-Pilot switched the number one fuel selector into cross-feed.”
Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, I looked at the fuel gauge. The needle for the right tank, now feeding both engines, was moving toward empty far too quickly.
There was only one option left.
“We need to land.”
“Yeah, we’re RTB,” George replied. It came as no surprise that he was so focused on flying and on the surrounding terrain, he was unaware that our problem was bigger than a little fuel smell in the cabin. He didn’t know about the empty tanks. We were RTB—returning to base, obviously. As in, umm, yeah, what the hell else would we be doing?
“We’re not going to make it back to Kandahar,” I stated, as clearly and calmly as I could. “We’re pissing gas.”
I saw the tiniest flicker of alarm on George’s face.
“We have to either land over there”—I pointed to a flat spot of rocky sand just over to our right—“or we’re going to crash . . . over there.”
I pointed to a different ridge five miles off.
George didn’t question a word I said. Without pause, he immediately pointed out a rocky spot where he planned to drop the helo. There? It was the right call. Harder to put land mines under rocks than sand. Our ordeal was far from over, and we weren’t going home just yet. George needed zero distractions so he could concentrate on flying and landing our failing aircraft at the site, so an eerie hush came over us as he dove toward the rocky terrain.
Everyone did their part to prepare, but very soon there was nothing left to do except hold on tight for the crash. I reached my left arm up to the top of the doorway, placed my bleeding right hand on the console, and took a deep breath.
The bird was without hydraulic assistance to the controls as George guided us down—I could feel the strain through my seat, like driving an 18-wheeler with no power steering. As we touched down, far faster than usual, we could hear the bird crunch on impact. I felt a jarring crack in my mid-back, but the pain wouldn’t slow me down, certainly not today. We had landed—a hard landing rather than a crash, thanks to George—all of us no worse for it. We were alive. George was an amazing pilot, and now his job was done. It was time for the PJs to take over.
The only thing to worry about now was the Taliban—and somehow figuring out how to get the hell out of there.
My hands moved quickly around the console, pulling levers and flipping switches, executing exactly as we’d been trained. I cut off the throttles and closed off the remaining fuel. The crew did the same, calmly and quickly running through the shutdown procedures we’d done hundreds of times.
Alongside that checklist, I tried to quiet my brain from playing out a script that I knew was no horror movie. It was our new reality: IEDs on the ground everywhere, no perimeter security, hills around us full of Taliban. I knew I’d fight to the death—far better that than being captured and marched through enemy territory with a bag over my head.
I reached around for my rifle, grabbed it, and slid out of the helo down to the rock-strewn terrain. After three tours in Afghanistan flying into countless combat zones, this was the first time I’d ever stepped outside the wire of an air base, on the ground in enemy territory.
With my back flat against the bird, I shuffled aft and looked in the cabin, finally getting a good look at the patients we’d rescued. An older-looking soldier with his arm in a sling wore a vacant expression as if he’d already checked out. Not so the guy on the stretcher next to him—he looked plain pissed off. Straps on his chest and legs held him immobile. He was likely a spinal injury, but his arm could move, so he calmly made a request.
“Give me a fucking gun.”
TJ handed the wounded soldier his sidearm and, despite the situation, we shared a smile. One more warrior on our side.
The third patient was another story. She looked young. I couldn’t tell the extent of her injuries, just that panic had her shivering, despite the overwhelming Afghan summer heat. As she sat still on her seat, her eyes darted wildly around the cabin and outside to the hills. I bent close.
“Hey . . . hey, look at me.” I locked on to her gaze.
“A rescue bird was just shot down in Afghanistan. Every aircraft in a one-hundred-mile radius just launched to come get us”—I got straight to the point—“so calm down. We’ll be out of here soon.”
As I stood up and turned back to TJ, I rolled my eyes.
He nodded in agreement. “Man, that’s why they shouldn’t let women on those convoys,” he said to me quietly.
Covered in my own blood and soaked with jet fuel, I stared him down hard for a tick, but he didn’t catch on.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
TJ looked bewildered for a second; then it clicked.
“Oh, not you, MJ! You kick ass . . .” he stammered.
I turned back to the bay door. I had no time to think about what it meant that TJ, who knew I was a warrior who would hold my own, somehow thought I was the exception. He still couldn’t accept the fact that some women were every bit as capable as a guy in uniform.
After all, the pilot in Pedro 16 was a guy, and his loss of nerve was still fresh in my mind. Speaking of which, where the hell were they? Why weren’t they landing next to us to get us out of Dodge? Not to mention, I was the one with blood all over my rifle ar
m, still ready to fight. Battle readiness had nothing to do with gender and everything to do with individual capability.
I shook it off and stepped in front of the open bay door. None of the patients had body armor, but I did, so I put myself between them and the hills. ***** stepped down next to me. He scanned the ridge off the tail of the helo, covering six to nine o’clock; I had nine to twelve o’clock off the nose. Standing shoulder to shoulder with a special-ops warrior like ***** felt good. This was what I was made for. I felt it in my gut. In the last hour, I’d been shot by the Taliban, had my aircraft riddled with bullets, and landed hard in enemy territory. I can do this. I’m not scared. At that moment, I wouldn’t have switched spots with anyone in the world, because I knew I was the best person for the job.
It was a dangerous place to be, though—circled around a fuel-soaked, flightless bird, as TJ transmitted our location over an emergency radio channel.
“Mayday. Mayday . . . Pedro one five needs exfiltration.”
Our sister ship, with the bent gun, stayed high overhead, showing no signs of being willing to land.
“Mayday. Mayday . . . Pedro one five needs exfil,” he said again. I thought about the fact that the whole point of traveling in twos is so that one ship can rescue the other in an emergency situation. Pedro 16 had already declined to get our patients due to fears about weight; now we were asking them to lift even more. It didn’t surprise me they were refusing to come down.
Still TJ kept shouting into the radio, as explicitly as possible.
“MAYDAY! Pedro one six, fucking land and pick us up!”
Then the shooting started in earnest.
—
I read intel reports later that had about one hundred fifty Taliban in the area. They had a clear plan: disable a convoy, injure a soldier, attract a medevac bird, and shoot it down. They never should have been able to pull it off, but there we sat, with more enemy fighters training their sights on us every minute. I was pretty sure that the significant enemy forces we had faced at the convoy minutes earlier were busy packing up their gear and heading our way to finish the job and kill or capture every last one of us. On the left side of the bird, bullets pinged off of the rocks at our feet.
Shoot Like a Girl Page 18