by Dennis Foley
“Chief? You okay?”
There was no answer. Hollister found the release and yanked at it. The belts gave up their grip on him, and he fell from his seat. The chopper had come to rest on its nose, what was left of the tail up in the crotch of a tree.
His fall was only three feet, awkward and out of control. He landed on his back, light rain falling in his face, and fuel from the chopper dripping from the fuselage above him. He rolled over onto his stomach to try to crawl up and away from the risk of fire. The grasses were too slippery, and his boots could find no purchase.
He was aware of the continuing gunfire around them but couldn’t tell who was firing. He tried to sit up and suddenly realized he was actually leaning over and rolled down the hillside—out from under the chopper.
A small stand of brush kept him from sliding into the stream at the bottom of the slope. The stop made him realize he hurt. And that he was still wearing his flight helmet.
He reached up and pulled the helmet off of his head. Spent, he let it roll down the hill.
His chest and ribs felt the pain of the impact with each small move he made. He felt for broken bones but found none.
As Hollister’s focus broadened, he remembered Adams. He tried to call out his name and heard only a faint whisper coming from his own lips. He had not yet caught his breath. He laid his head back down in the wet grasses and forced himself to inhale. As his chest swelled, he felt more pain where his ribs connected to his breastbone.
He tried again. “Chief? You okay?”
No answer. A Cobra flew low and fast over the top of the crash site, firing his rockets into the enemy gunner’s position—blocking out any other sounds near Hollister.
As soon as the chopper cleared the area, Hollister heard metallic noises. He flinched, worried that the precariously perched chopper might fall from its place, slide down the hill, and onto him.
He rolled over onto his stomach and tried to get to his knees. Again, the ground was too slippery, and he was too weak. He settled for falling back onto his heels in a squat.
“Sir?”
Hollister heard the weak voice of his pilot “Chief? You okay? Where are you?”
“Over here.”
A few feet in front of the downed chopper the brush moved. Hollister grabbed for his belt to find the pistol holstered somewhere on it.
A hand came up from the thicket “Here. I’m here,” Adams said.
Hollister took another deep breath, grabbed on to a root sticking from the muddy slope, and pulled himself up to a crouch. Everything seemed to hurt, and nothing wanted to work right. His knees felt as if they were about to buckle, and his head pounded. He worked his way to the waist-high bush that concealed the pilot and looked over it. “Chief? You hurt?”
Adams was on his side, his uniform ripped down the entire length of his back, his helmet missing. His face was covered with streaks of blood and mud. His left foot pointed away from his lower leg at an unnatural angle. From the top of his boot blood dripped slowly to the ground below.
“Sorry, sir.”
“What?”
“I shoulda been able to sideslip that fucker,” he said. He coughed, and pain registered across his face.
Hollister moved around the bush and squatted to help Adams. “I wouldn’t worry about it. I think the Cobra jocks evened the score for you.”
Adams laughed and coughed again. “That’s worse. I’m gonna have to take a ration of shit from those guys for the rest of my tour.”
“If that’s your only problem, I’d say you’re okay.”
“I think I broke my leg, sir,” Adams said, pointing his gloved finger toward his ankle.
“You won’t be doing any flying for a while.”
The air suddenly filled with the sounds and the shadow of a slick. Hollister tried to shield his eyes with his forearm and still see the air crew.
His first sight was the beaming grin of First Sergeant Easy. He gave Hollister a wave and then threw out a bag of emergency gear. The pilot maneuvered the chopper to a low hover and Easy leaped out.
It looked to Hollister like Easy avoided a direct downward impact on his artificial leg by using a good parachute-landing fall. The old soldier landed on his good leg in a well-practiced roll that took advantage of the small slope.
“Airborne,” Easy yelled as he hit the ground.
The chopper quickly pulled up and out of the small break in the trees to allow the first sergeant to get to his feet and move back toward Hollister and Adams.
“Damn, Top, you never know when to quit. Do you?”
Easy tried to cover the fact he was still trying to catch his breath when he crawled over to Hollister. “Hell, sir, without me you’d be in really deep shit.”
“This isn’t deep enough?” Adams asked.
“We been in deeper than this,” Easy said, giving the pilot a reassuring wink.
“This is plenty deep for me,” Adams said.
Easy examined his injuries. “Hell, Chief, you’re about three good shots of Irish whiskey from being okay.”
Adams looked up the hill at the wreckage of his loach. “I sure fucked that up. I never put one down before.”
“You keep flyin’ those things, and you’ll park plenty of ’em where they don’t belong,” Easy said, pulling first-aid gear out of the bag he had dropped.
“We in trouble here?” Hollister asked.
“Don’t look too bad, sir. The gunships got that zip machine gunner, and nobody’s taken any more fire since then. If he had any friends, they’ve hauled ass outta here.”
“The teams on the ground?”
“Chastain’s home. DeSantis’s about to land now, and Deming’s on hold ’til we get you two out.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here before we end up causing some fucking international incident.”
Easy held the syringe up to eye level and squeezed the plunger to force any air out of it.
“What are you doing?” the chief asked.
“We’re gonna take some of the pain out of that leg so we can move it and you. This stuff’ll let you travel.”
“I never saw a first sergeant with a hypodermic needle,” Adams said.
“You never been in Special Forces, either. Have you?”
Adams shook his head and let Easy inject the painkiller into his leg.
Easy bent the needle on the syringe against his plastic leg and threw the apparatus back into the bag. “We’ll throw a quick splint on that leg so we won’t tear anything up while we move.”
“Where we going?” Hollister asked.
Easy jerked his head toward the other side of the stream. “There’s a small clearing over there—’bout two hundred meters. Can you walk?”
Hollister got to his feet and tested his legs. “Seems like I can.” He looked around. “Hell, two hundred meters, I can crawl.”
The flight to the clearing station gave Hollister a chance to get caught up. Easy had a radio lashed to the legs of one of the jump seats. Once they got out of the clearing and to altitude, Hollister was able to contact the flight and the launch site.
“We’re tight here. We’ve already sent the three folks you picked up out there over to province headquarters for interrogation. The few documents they had with them have also been sent to G-2 at field force,” Michaelson said.
“Great. Everyone else okay?”
“A couple of minor scrapes. Aside from that and the trashed loach, I guess you could mark it up in the plus column. How’s the chief?”
“He’ll only be flying a desk for a coupla months.” Hollister turned so Adams could hear him. “And he’s going to have to figure out how to pay for that aircraft out of his paycheck.”
“We’ve got it under control here. Hope we can get some good information out of the three they brought in. Do what you got to do, and we’ll see you back here.”
“Roger,” Hollister said. “One other thing … thanks for being there.”
“Well, well, well … Ran
ger Six.”
Hollister turned around and saw Doctor Plummer entering the curtained-off examining area of the clearing station.
“Hey, Doc. How are you?”
“I’m fine. But it looks to me like you’ve busted up another chopper pilot,” he said, pointing a rubber-gloved finger toward Adams, who was lying on an examining table.
“No, sir,” Adams said. “If I could blame it on Captain Hollister, I would, just to keep the other aviators off my ass. I have to take credit for this one.”
Two of the medics had already cut off Adams’s flight suit. Doctor Plummer stood at the end of the table and tried to take a long view of the angle formed by the break in Adams’s lower leg.
The area around the exposed bone was already very swollen and discolored in patches of raspberry and yellow-gray.
“How’s it look, Doc?” Adams asked.
“Looks like we’re going to have to set and cast you before we can do anything else with you. You up for this?”
“I don’t have much choice. You think there’s gonna be a problem with this break?”
“Will you be able to fly again?” Plummer walked over to a portable light box and looked at the two X rays on it. Both bones were broken just two inches above the ankle. “If you do what I tell you and try not to be a tough guy, you have a better than even chance of getting back into the cockpit.”
“How bad is it?”
Plummer looked at Adams’s leg, then at the X ray again. “You’re going to need some wire sutures and a cast to midthigh. You’re fixable. But you’re going to have to help me.”
“Count on it, sir,” Adams said, reassured by the news.
Hollister made eye contact with Plummer, throwing a question into his look. Plummer nodded and gave Hollister an encouraging wink. He’d be okay.
“I have to get back to Tay Ninh. You take it easy. I’ll try to smooth things over with your boss,” Hollister said, kidding Adams.
“Sorry I messed things up for you, sir,” Adams said as he reached out to try an awkward handshake.
“You did a good job of getting us to the ground, Chief.”
Hollister waved and turned to leave. “Take care of him, Doc.”
Plummer looked up from his patient to reply when Hollister made what looked like a misstep on the plywood floor. “Hey, Ranger. Wait a sec.”
Plummer motioned to the medic on the other side of the examining table to finish the cleanup he had started with an antiseptic solution, and stepped over to Hollister. “Look at me.”
Hollister held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m okay. It’s just been a long day, and I could use some sleep and a cold beer.”
Plummer pulled a penlight from his shirtsleeve pocket and held Hollister’s head steady. He looked into his eyes and watched for the reaction of his pupils to the light. “Did you take a bump on the head in the crash?”
“I don’t know. There was a hell of a lot happening on the way to the ground.”
“Did you lose consciousness at any time?”
“I, um … not really out out. I got my bell rung. But I wouldn’t use the word unconscious.”
The doctor snapped the light off and put it back in his pocket. He then picked up an instrument from the tray next to the examining table, clicked on its tiny light, and looked first in Hollister’s left ear and then his right.
“You’re staying the night.”
“No way, Doc. I’ve got a shitpot full of things to do and a company to run.”
“You know, you have a real bad habit of pissing off doctors in their own little kingdoms,” Plummer said.
Hollister pulled his beret from his pocket and unrolled it.
“Unless you are going to wear that to bed, you’d better stuff it back in your pocket. I’m admitting you and that’s that.”
Easy stepped in and tried to break up the argument. “Cap’n, we can probably make it through tonight without you. Why don’t you take the downtime and catch up on some of that rest you need?”
“Top, there’s too much to do.”
“And the teams are all in. Colonel Michaelson’s in town, and we’re about as close to being in a stand-down as I’ve seen in a long while.”
“See?” Plummer said. “They’ll survive without you for a night.”
Hollister hung his head. “Okay. Okay. But I need to get to a field phone to make a few calls.”
The sheets felt so good and so heavy. He had been sleeping under a featherlight nylon poncho liner for so long that the weight of real bedcovers took some readjusting to.
Plummer had dropped in to see Hollister, but only told him they were just walking on the side of caution. There were no obvious signs he might have a head injury. Prudence and an otherwise empty hospital ward prompted Plummer to admit him.
Hollister had called operations, spoken with Michaelson again, taken a long shower, and eaten a hospital meal. After an hour in bed, he was bored. Plummer had left him some APC for the pain he predicted from the trauma, and two red capsules the doctor said would help him sleep.
Knowing that there were no teams out on the ground and little chance that there would be any activity in operations, Hollister elected to stop into the orderly room first.
Just as soon as he stepped through the door he was met with yelling and cross talk that quickly told him something was seriously wrong.
“Hey! Hey!” Hollister yelled over the sounds of Easy screaming into one phone and Captain Browning into another. “What the hell is going on?”
Easy slammed down his field phone receiver and looked at Hollister with a characteristically flushed red face—a clear sign of trouble. “That fucking dickhead has kidnapped our girl,” he said.
“What?” Hollister asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Easy took a deep breath and started again. “Valentine. He decided the prisoners we turned over from the snatch had more to offer than his guys were getting out of them. He sweated the other two and got squat. When he got to the Montagnard laborer he got a stone wall. The guy musta told him he didn’t speak no Viet.”
“So? I’m not following you.”
Browning raised his hand to the first soldier. “Let me fill in the blanks, Top.
“General Valentine turned the prisoners over to his provincial recon unit and told them to take the POWs back to the tunnel complex and root out some more folks or turn up some better intelligence. Apparently, he’s convinced there’s more going on than they were able to get out of the prisoners.”
“Shit. What an asshole. Does field force or MACV know he sent Viet units across the line?”
Easy interrupted. “Colonel Michaelson’s over at operations now talking to General Quinn by secure radio.”
“What the hell is he trying to do and what does it have to do with us?” Hollister asked, more frustrated by his confusion.
“Well, it gets lots worse, Cap’n,” Easy said.
“Jrae,” Browning said.
“Jrae?” Hollister repeated. “What about her?”
“Seems she went by the darkroom to see Young’s photos of her and saw the photos Deming’s team had turned in for the afteraction report. They had taken several photos of the Montagnard with the busted arm.”
“So?” Hollister said.
“He’s her brother.”
“What?”
“The guy’s her brother. His name is Pek. He was taken from their village some years ago by the VC.”
“Go on,” Hollister said, suspecting it was going to get worse.
“She split. She hopped a ride over to province headquarters to find him.”
“Okay. So what’s the fucking problem?”
Browning looked at Easy and they both braced for Hollister’s reaction. “Valentine found out who she was, her connection to the Montagnard prisoner, and choppered her out to the river junction to act as interpreter.”
“What!” Hollister yelled. He pointed toward Cambodia. “You mean she’s on the ground out there
?”
“Yes, sir,” they both replied.
“What are they doing?”
“From what I can piece together from the folks over at Valentine’s headquarters, his people have her with them. They’re sweeping through the tunnel complex area and hoping she can get her brother to tell them where to look for the bad guy pot of gold,” Browning said.
“Where are you going?” Hollister asked Easy, decked out in his combat gear and carrying a pump shotgun.
“I’m riding belly in the chase again.”
“Why?”
“Anybody better at it?”
“No,” Hollister said.
“She’s my clerk, and I should have done something to keep her from gettin’ into this fix.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going with you to get her the fuck out of there—now.”
“Okay, Top. You’ll do just about anything to get away from the paperwork. Won’t you?”
“Can’t get that paperwork done without my gal Friday, now, can I?”
“Okay, okay. How we going to do this?”
“If you and Top go out there to find out just what the hell’s going on, we can figure out our next steps to get her, and I guess her brother, the hell out of Cambodia before we start some international flap,” Browning said.
Hollister looked outside his chopper, back toward Easy’s chase ship. The first sergeant saw him and waved. Hollister turned back to Tennant, up front, and pointed down at a wide spot in the trail complex. “There!” he yelled.
Tennant nodded and put the chopper into a steep turning descent.
Hollister pulled his signal instructions out of his pocket and flipped to the advisory unit frequencies and call signs. He quickly found the line for Captain Depplemeier’s job—PRU adviser. He picked up the radio he had brought along, set the frequency. “Autumn Notion Five-Six, this is Campus Killer Six. Over.”
He got no answer and tried again. While he waited for a reply, he held the SOI up for Moody, flying copilot, to read the frequency and dial it into one of the chopper radios.
“This is Five-Six. Over.” Captain Depplemeier’s voice had a ring of irritation to it.