“Man, I’m fucking glad to see you,” he said. I think it’s the first and last time I ever heard him drop an F-bomb.
I had a moment to consider the toll it had taken on him, as our commander, having the friends he carried responsibility for in such great peril. As I looked around the room at the brass, intel folks, the chaplain, and many others I’d never met before, I wondered how open everyone would be about the things that had gone wrong, given the expanded audience. I saw a couple of Army uniforms and hoped these were my Kiowa pilots so I might get a chance to thank them. I wouldn’t have time to find out, though, as the debrief got under way immediately.
It was packed in the room—standing room only. Still, I was pretty surprised when the few seats that were available weren’t offered up to the exhausted, fuel-soaked crew. I looked down at my bloody uniform, dry but giving off fuel vapors, and figured that was why people were staring at me. George, as Flight Lead, cleared his throat and began.
“Okay, so we stepped to the aircraft without any problems; run-up and taxi were standard. We got some reports from intel over the radio about the ongoing threat and to expect the Kiowas on scene.”
He continued from there, and for the most part, it was a standard debrief. Other than the exceptional details and the audience, it was just like any other. I grew worried as we got to the end, thinking that some of our decisions would be questioned. While I think we did the best we could at the time with the information we had, you could make the case that we never should have gone back in the second time.
Some would argue that we should have waited for the A-10s to get on scene, but we had three urgent American medevac patients down there, and we had reason to believe the round I had taken was just a lucky shot. No one mentioned the fact that Pedro 16 refused to go into the zone.
When George and Pedro 16’s Aircraft Commander got to the part where we were isolated on the ground, the other AC chimed in and started making claims that I was not willing to let slide.
“Then we all landed to pick you guys up,” he said, clearing his throat.
“Wait a minute,” I piped up.
Fifty faces turned to me. About five of them already knew what I was going to say, and from the looks on their faces, they were relieved someone was going to call him on his bullshit.
Do it, MJ. Someone has to say something.
“Why did it take you guys so long to pick us up?” I questioned him straight to his face. “Were you dumping gas? I would have thought you guys would have landed right next to us as soon as we shut down.”
The AC stared at me in disbelief. The silence was deafening.
“You weren’t on the ground that long,” he snapped back. “Anyway, at that point—”
“No,” I interrupted him. “We were. We were there for, like, twenty minutes!”
“I’m sure it felt like that, MJ.” He chuckled, as if he were talking to a child. “But it wasn’t long at all.”
“Intel . . . How long were we on the ground?”
Throughout the entire incident, the intel guys and gals had been listening to the radios and taking note of every single thing that happened, including the times.
“Um, eighteen minutes, Captain,” the intel troop answered sheepishly. It was clear he did not want to get in the middle of this.
“Eighteen minutes.” I nodded confidently. “Okay, so what took eighteen minutes?”
Eighteen minutes was a long fucking time to be sitting on the ground taking fire when a perfectly good aircraft was circling above, refusing to land.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I looked at the Kiowa pilots, who were elbowing each other and sort of shaking their heads. The truth was, and we all knew it, that we would still be there waiting if it hadn’t been for the Kiowa pilots. It wasn’t until they landed, showing 16 it was safe, and thereby taking tactical lead away from Pedro 16, that they had finally been forced into action.
“Okay, so at that point the Kiowas landed,” I went on, satisfied that I had made my point and ready for the debrief to continue.
“Right,” said George, as he continued with a pleased smirk.
Next they got to the part in the timeline where I fired my weapon. I did feel I had positive identification of the enemy and a solid point of origin, but I wasn’t on comm with the Kiowa pilots, so I easily could have put the other aircraft in danger if he had been maneuvering into my firing line. It was less than ideal to say the least, and now it would be time for me to take my lumps. Pedro 16’s AC gave me a smug smile, knowing what was probably coming, happy that I was on the receiving end this time.
But George just breezed over the fact that I had been firing and began to ask the room if there were any questions. I couldn’t believe it. The debrief was nearly over, and I was about to get away clean. Then one of the Army guys raised his hand.
“Who was it that was firing off of my skid?” he asked.
Shit. I was going to be in so much trouble. I had let my protective instinct for Steve and the others cloud my judgment, and I’d probably be grounded for it. So much for my flying career.
I took a deep breath and meekly raised my hand to the level of my ear.
“Umm, that was me.”
“Fuckin’ A, that was awesome,” he responded with a grin. “We were out of ammo, and when I saw that muzzle flash, I didn’t think we were going to make it outta there. You got their heads down so we could lift. Nice job.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking at Rhys to see whether or not I’d get in trouble. He read my mind and smiled reassuringly. No one questioned whether or not I should have squeezed that trigger. Thank goodness I had.
The chaplain stepped up and announced that he was available if any of us needed to “talk to someone.” We looked at one another and sort of chuckled. No, thanks. We’d pass. Especially since we weren’t about to raise a hand in front of fifty people.
As the meeting broke up, Rhys approached me to take a look at my arm. I could see in his eyes that he had taken the stress of what had happened harder than any of us; he almost looked as if he was going to tear up. He was the squadron commander at the time, and we were his responsibility.
“MJ, you need to go get that arm checked out,” he said, skipping emotions for logistics.
I didn’t tell him that it was my back that hurt the most. Something about the way we had landed had knocked my back out of alignment, and I had a bad feeling that it was going to catch up to me sooner rather than later.
I walked out of the TOC, hearing Rhys in the background arranging for someone to drive me to the hospital as the door closed. It was only about five p.m., still too damn hot for my liking, but I was too happy to be at KAF to care. I knew I was incredibly lucky to be there instead of in the back of some Taliban pickup truck with a hood over my head on my way to a basement somewhere in Marjah. I heard the door to the TOC swing open and close behind me, and I turned around to see Doug Sherry standing there, looking past me to the taxiway with the stub of his cigar between his teeth.
I waited to see if he would either ignore me, as he had done so many times before, or tell me all of the things I did wrong.
“Hey, Doug,” I said, steeling myself for either outcome.
He took a good twenty seconds before finally looking at me. He looked down at his boots for a tick, kicked a rock around a bit, and then, appearing to come to some sort of a decision, he looked at me.
“You did good, kid.”
I stood there stunned. The rest of his crew filed out of the TOC after him, and he followed them out to the gate as they headed to chow. Long after they were out of sight, I was still standing there dumbstruck. It wasn’t much, but it was the best validation of my actions I could hope for. That acknowledgment, from a pilot of his caliber, especially considering our complicated history, meant more to me than all the medals they would pin on my chest in th
e days to come.
I begrudgingly let someone drive me to the hospital. They took X-rays, plucked a few of the shrapnel pieces out, then flushed the holes with saline. An hour later I was back in the TOC, ready to get back to work. Once it was clear that they wouldn’t let us fly again that day, my crew and I retreated to the gazebo covered in Christmas lights. We weren’t ready to go back to our rooms just yet. Something still felt unfinished.
Sitting there watching the sun set, smelling the shit pond, we took turns with the lighter as we fired up our cigars. I took the one I had been saving out of my survival vest, figuring now was as good a time as any to celebrate. Who knew if I’d get another chance?
We all laughed together at the obvious danger of smoking cigars while covered in fuel on top of a wooden gazebo, but at that point, most of us felt pretty invincible. I would say bulletproof, but that had clearly been disproven.
“Hey, Steve, I bet even you could get laid using this story in a bar,” one of the guys joked. The full-bellied laughter that ensued was more cathartic and better therapy than anything the chaplain could have said to us. We were punch-drunk and thrilled to be alive, to be together, and to be ribbing Steve. When I look back and miss my days flying with my family, this is the memory that pulls the hardest.
—
Later that night, the PJs went back in to pick up the PJ we had left at the convoy. None of us could go back to our rooms until we knew he was safe, but we’d be in for a wait. George headed into a Porta Potty to do some business. I was cleaning my rifle in the aircrew locker end of the TOC, near the Porta Potties outside the back door, when I heard a commotion.
“Holy shit!”
The plastic door banged open, followed by the back door to the TOC, and then a very excited George stormed in.
“Are you okay?” I asked. Now that some of the adrenaline had passed, I was a little worried about all of us. We were sort of guardrail to guardrail emotionally, so I wondered what had George so worked up.
“I took part of that round!” he said.
“You mean in your vest?”
When we had inspected our gear after arriving back at KAF, George had noticed that part of the round had hit his body armor and lodged in his survival-gear vest. The shrapnel had impacted his flare, which, if it had gone off, would have been an added complication we really didn’t need. We had all said a silent thank-you to the universe that it hadn’t.
“NO!” he said. “I just pulled a piece of it out of my thigh!”
Luckily, the shrapnel hadn’t gone in very deep so he hadn’t bled much, but it was still unnerving to pull part of a bullet out of your body. He’d have to go get it checked out just in case, but he was okay.
I knew how he felt. I had already used the tip of my pocketknife to pull out about five pieces, and over the next couple of days I would pull out about ten more as they made their way to the surface. I tried to do it where no one could see me, as it made people squeamish. But I couldn’t stop looking for it, waiting for more to appear. There was something that made me angry about carrying around all that enemy metal.
Before the night was over, the PJs brought home their brother safe and sound, and we started trying to get back to business as usual. As our commander, Rhys had been trying his hardest to get the Canadians in the area to drop some munitions on our abandoned aircraft to destroy any classified equipment on board, but he couldn’t get any help. On the Predator feed, we had already seen a Taliban truck carrying parts away, and I knew Rhys felt defeated as he watched it. He had done everything he could to keep the aircraft out of enemy hands, but there it was on the screen, being hauled away one piece at a time. It was a terrible feeling, and we didn’t want to let more of our sensitive equipment fall into the wrong hands. Technically, we should have pulled some of that equipment out when we were rescued, but we’d had to travel light and it was the very last thing any of us were thinking about.
Over the next few days, the Army and Air Force collaborated to try to get our aircraft out. The crash recovery team had a plan to bring in a large Chinook helicopter with dual rotors and the ability to cargo-sling out our heavy bird. A few of our maintainers volunteered to join the effort to make sure 118 was well taken care of.
Honestly, I was mainly looking forward to getting a good assessment of the damage. The number of systems we had lost and the number of holes she had withstood had to be some kind of record. Unfortunately we would never find out.
To sling 118 out, they would need to saw off her rotors. The book called for this to be done one at a time, rotating each blade around to the nose of the aircraft, but our guys knew they were in bad-guy territory and, understandably, wanted to expedite. So instead they were cutting them off as quickly as possible, without rotating them around to the nose. As they cut the blades off the sides, the sparks they generated landed on the substantial amount of fuel still covering the cargo bay. Suddenly, the entire aircraft was on fire.
Our maintainers had only a moment to stare in shock at the burning aircraft. Before the whole helicopter was engulfed, one of the maintainers actually managed to reach into the cockpit to grab the bag I had left behind, the one holding the flag I had carried with me on every single combat mission I had ever flown. I will be forever in his debt for saving it from the ensuing inferno. When he returned it to me, a little charred and melted around the edge, I threw my arms around him and squeezed him as hard as I could. My hero.
At the end of that deployment, when the next group came in to replace us, one of their young pilots stopped me in passing in the TOC.
“Hey . . . what was your call sign? We’re trying to think of one for us.”
“Pedro. We were Pedro.” And we were. I was so proud. We had lived up to the name. We would always be Pedro.
“Pedro? Why, are you guys near Mexico?”
I just chuckled and walked away. He’d figure it out.
I found out later that the incoming squadron kept our name. Apparently we had built quite a reputation with the American and international ground forces. There were many different platforms that could be tapped to pull out someone who was injured on the battlefield, but when ground forces heard the name “Pedro” on the radio, their spirits were lifted because they knew we would get them out at all costs.
As of 2015, six years later, Pedro was still being used by each incoming rescue squadron. We had earned the Pedro call sign on that deployment, and I finally felt like I had earned the right to walk the halls with the rescue heroes I so admired.
—
Our return trip back to the States was more fun than I’d thought possible. We stopped over at Diego Garcia, a horseshoe-shaped island reef in the middle of the Indian Ocean with a small military presence. We had nothing to do but drink and celebrate the fact that we were all still alive.
The afternoon started out tame enough, with a few of us mixing a cocktail or two. But things went downhill when one of the Gunners started giving everyone what he called “naked Gunner hugs.” You would get a hug and a slurred “I love you” over your shoulder until, in the spirit of camaraderie, you’d pat his arm and say, “I love you, too.” Then you realized that he had dropped his drawers to his ankles. It’s easy to see how this could spiral into something bad, but there in Diego Garcia, it was like someone had opened a release valve and let the pressure out of the group. We loved each other, we truly did, and we had just survived one of the craziest deployments any of us had ever known.
As the afternoon progressed, we invariably ended up looking out over the ocean. More and more of us accumulated out there, slightly inebriated, until there were probably twenty of us standing in the sand, wiggling our toes in the water. I heard some snickering over my shoulder, and I looked down the beach about ten feet to my right to see a sight that would be burned into my retinas forever. Doug Sherry, in his tighty-whities, taking off running toward the water, the stub of his cigar still clen
ched between his teeth.
After spending four months covered in sand and dirt in the heat of the desert, suddenly the thought of jumping into the Indian Ocean was the greatest idea any of us had ever heard. We all instantly stripped and followed Doug into the water. The ocean was warm and welcoming; I never wanted to get out again. That swim, which I’ll remember forever, was both physically and emotionally cleansing. It should be a required activity for every person reintegrating into civilization straight from the violence and horror of the battlefield.
—
After our brief tropical interlude in Diego Garcia, it was time to get back to real life. Once we had arrived stateside, reality hit, and it hit some of us harder than others. Coming home to our families and facing the mundane indignities of ordinary life (like paying bills and filing tax returns) can be difficult after the time spent at war.
Some people have a hard time coming home to find that everything went on as usual without them. Kids played sports and went to school and made new friends. Spouses filled up their cars with gas and went grocery shopping and chatted on the phone while we were trading fire with a skilled and determined enemy and were busy rescuing young men and women with missing limbs who were bleeding out in the back of our aircraft.
It is no one’s fault, but it is surreal being reinserted into this world of complacence and monotony as if nothing had happened. You have to reach deep down inside yourself and turn off that survival mode switch. Some of us are better at this than others.
When we got back, I took some time off and visited my mom in Austin, Texas. I was doing okay, but I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat. I wasn’t dreaming about getting shot down, though. For me the thing that was difficult to recover from was the actual medevac missions and the fact that we couldn’t save everyone. I can barely recall any of the times we saved people, which was more often than not, but when I look back at my missions, it’s the ones I lost that usually come to mind. Did I do everything I could? Could I have gotten to them faster?
Shoot Like a Girl Page 20