The Fighters

by C. J. Chivers

  Now Slebodnik told Woehlert why. He himself, he said, was prone to airsickness. Woehlert did not buy it. No fucking way, he thought.

  “You don’t get sick,” he said.

  Slebodnik insisted it was true. If he sat in the left seat, he said, at the mercy of other hands on the controls, there was a good chance he would throw up. A standardization pilot could not be seen this way.

  “I don’t want to look like a pansy in front of the younger pilots,” he said.

  The walk across the tarmac was ending. Before they were close enough to the B-huts for anyone to listen in, Slebodnik revealed a purpose in sharing his secret. Woehlert was to tell no one, he said, about his reason for being a stick pig unless he had retired—or been killed.

  The walk was over. The conversation was closed.

  * * *

  Early one morning at about the same time, Specialist Jonathan Miller left the operations center after twelve hours of continuous duty. Overnight shifts were a grind. Miller was tired and feeling blue.

  The sun had yet to crest the mountains in the east. Though the sky overhead was bright and the day already hot, Jalalabad remained in shadow. He saw Slebodnik, in black shorts and gray T-shirt, facing the horizon, waiting for the sun.

  “ ‘I will lift up my eyes to the mountains,’ ” Slebodnik said.

  It was a strange thing to say.

  “What?” Miller said.

  “ ‘I will lift up my eyes to the mountains . . .’ ” Slebodnik said. “ ‘My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.’ ”

  Now Miller placed the words. Slebodnik was reciting a Psalm.III

  He followed Slebodnik’s gaze and saw light spreading on the valleys. Internally, Miller acknowledged that Slebodnik had keyed him to this beauty, which he might have missed. But he was stumped by Slebodnik’s words and by his relaxed good cheer, and did not know what to say.

  Slebodnik smiled, his blue eyes bright, and walked away.

  * * *

  By then Cela was due back from leave. Slebodnik busied himself with the final details of his practical joke, trying to pinpoint the schedule for Cela’s return. He was interested in Cela’s travel dates for other reasons, too. Slebodnik had let the other pilots take their leave first, and once Cela was back in flight status, he could take his own vacation home. Slebodnik had only to complete a four-day flight schedule with Captain Brian Meyer, one of the troop’s platoon leaders. The troop was preparing him for pilot-in-command status, and Slebodnik was evaluating him. The two pilots arranged to fly together from September 10 through 13. Slebodnik was to depart for home right after. He would return in October for the last two months before the task force packed out for Fort Campbell.

  On September 10 the two pilots planned the days ahead. Slebodnik proposed that they would alternate. He would fly right seat the first day, and the next day they would switch. Meyer would be the primary pilot and run the weapons while Slebodnik coached and observed. Meyer agreed.

  After the briefings, they took off on their first flight and headed to the test-fire area south of the base. Slebodnik flew a pass and fired a short burst with the machine gun. Everything was in order. He surprised Meyer by informing the other aircraft that they were going to make a second pass. He looked to his left.

  “This time I want to see you engage,” Slebodnik said.

  Meyer was not sure how he was supposed to do that. He could fly the aircraft with the left-side controls. But a Kiowa’s weapons can be fired only from the cyclic stick on the other side of the cockpit, in front of Slebodnik.

  Slebodnik was insistent. No matter where Meyer sat in a helicopter, he said, he needed to be ready for anything.

  “Let’s assume I got shot in the head and you have to engage,” he said.

  What would Meyer do then?

  Meyer assumed control of the aircraft and lined the Kiowa up for a gun run. As he nosed the aircraft over, he leaned across the cockpit, took Slebodnik’s cyclic, and opened fire with the machine gun.

  He released the right-side cyclic, sat upright on the left side, and broke. Slebodnik looked on, approvingly. A pilot in command, he said, needed to handle whatever came up.

  The flight that day was a routine area security mission. A ground unit was meeting with Afghans in a village. The two Kiowas were to fly around the outlying terrain and discourage would-be ambushers. The hours passed uneventfully.

  The next day was the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York. Early that morning, before Tanja went to sleep at home in the States, Slebodnik called to let her know he would be flying in a place where it was usually quiet. He expected an easy flight and said he would send his usual note—“Down safe”—when he got back.

  The pilots showed up at their briefings with several American flags. These they would carry in the cockpit and later share as gifts—flags the cavalry had carried over eastern Afghanistan on the anniversary of the day the towers fell and the Pentagon was hit by a passenger jet. Meyer had five flags and Slebodnik had three. We’ll be able to hook people up, Meyer thought.

  Before the briefings Slebodnik pulled Meyer aside and asked for a change to the flight plan. Captain Hayden Archibald, an Australian pilot assigned to the troop as an exchange officer, was scheduled to be the day’s air mission commander, which meant he would be flying in the trail aircraft, and Slebodnik and Meyer would be in front.

  Slebodnik, as a senior pilot, gently asked Meyer if he could sit in the right seat again in the lead aircraft. “Hey, sir, I know we agreed,” he said, “but I never get to fly right-seat lead anymore, because I am too senior.”

  Even though he was approaching his own check ride, Meyer agreed. Slebodnik was the standardization pilot. He could do what he wanted.

  The first leg of the mission was a reconnaissance along the Alingar River, which fed into the larger Alishang River to Jalalabad’s northwest. With Slebodnik at the controls, Meyer took digital photographs of bridges and culverts. He did not know why the grunts wanted the photographs. Perhaps it was to measure development, he thought, or maybe a unit was planning an operation out that way.

  Upon returning to Jalalabad to refuel, the mission changed. Over the radio the aircraft were told that an infantry unit had heard explosions farther to the northwest, in the Alishang Valley. The operations center asked them to check it out.

  The two Kiowas lifted off and headed that way.

  They flew up the Alishang River past the junction with the Alingar River, where the pilots had flown earlier in the day, then several miles more, to a narrowing area where drainage valleys converged in a Y-shaped confluence at Qala-i-Najil. The last American combat outpost in the watershed, COP Najil, overlooked the village from above the eastern fork. This was a crest in the Afghan surge—a small fortified encampment held by a lone platoon, which used the call sign Joker.

  The Kiowas approached Qala-i-Najil in the early afternoon and checked in with the patrol from the outpost that had reported the explosion. Joker had sent a quick-reaction force to examine the noise, too. It had stopped along the road when the soldiers thought they found a bomb. The Kiowas flew around the soldiers for about fifteen minutes, watching over them until they were satisfied that there was no bomb in their path. Then the pilots turned north, up the western fork, toward where the soldiers said they had heard the blast.

  The military considered the western fork to be a transit and staging area for Taliban fighters, who rarely had to worry about Americans showing up.

  A few miles upstream, the aircraft approached a small village with a government compound. Slebodnik flew by it. Nothing seemed out of order. The compound looked secure—perhaps abandoned but secure. It had not been bombed.

  They banked and flew away to check up a slot canyon. That area was also quiet. Slebodnik doubled back, returning to the government center for a more thorough look.

  Flying low over the village, they spotted a man in black clothes with a blanket draped over his should
ers. A rifle muzzle protruded from the blanket.

  Under the rules of engagement, the man could not be fired on. His identity was unknown and he was not acting clearly hostile. Slebodnik had no authority to attack. The man walked into a house. Slebodnik orbited over the building, about forty feet up, while Meyer took a photograph and made note of the location.

  The man stepped out the back door with no weapon. He was unarmed now. It was as if he knew the Americans’ rules. He walked away.

  Slebodnik moved east, deeper into the village, where he and Meyer saw two men talking on handheld radios. This was a bad indicator. The village had no Afghan government presence beyond the silent government compound. There were no signs of Afghan forces. Civilians seemed to be hiding inside. Meyer felt uneasy. There is probably some shady stuff here, he thought.

  A Kiowa is lightly armored and can fight only to its direct front. Meyer picked up his M4 carbine, ready to fight to their left flank. Rifle on his lap, he took a few more photographs and marked down more grids.

  The reconnaissance had turned up no sign of the explosion—no damaged structure or vehicle, no smoke, no crater, no leads. Slebodnik banked away from the village, flew to the river, and turned south, back toward the Joker patrol downstream. The trail helicopter followed behind.

  The valley was a mix of boulders and tall stands of soon-to-be-picked corn. Slebodnik flew over the lower valley just west of the road, keeping the road surface near Meyer’s left door, moving about 60 or 70 knots, about forty-five feet above the ground. They were almost skimming the corn rows, scanning for anything unusual. Meyer clutched his carbine.

  They had almost reached the river junction when Meyer heard gunshots.

  Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

  It was very close, almost directly beneath the aircraft, a rapid staccato rising from a blind spot at about their four o’clock.

  A bullet smacked the windscreen in front of Meyer’s face.

  Slebodnik yelled in pain.

  “Oh my God!” he said.

  A Kiowa’s underside is armored with plates that can stop a bullet. But one bullet had found a small gap between the horizontal plate and a side panel, entered the aircraft at an angle, and missed the right-side pilot’s seat, too. It hit near Slebodnik’s buttocks, high up on the bottom of his right thigh, passed out the top of his leg, continued through the plastic glare screen, and made a small exit hole in Meyer’s windscreen.

  Meyer dropped his rifle and grabbed the left-side flight controls. They resisted his inputs. For an instant he thought the helicopter was damaged.

  Have we lost hydraulics? he wondered. Then he grasped what was going on.

  Blood gushed from Slebodnik’s upper leg. But he was still flying. They were low, moving at about 70 knots, and Slebodnik would not let the aircraft crash.

  “Hey, Mike, I got ’em!” Meyer shouted. “I got ’em!”

  Slebodnik let go. The aircraft responded to Meyer’s commands. The flight was his.

  “Get a tourniquet on,” he said.

  He juked the helicopter to evade further gunfire, accelerated, and radioed Archibald in the trail aircraft.

  “Mike’s hit,” he said.

  He looked at Slebodnik. The wound was bad. It had been only seconds since the gunfire. Already his lower flight suit was soaked with blood.

  Meyer knew what this meant: There was no time.

  He had decisions to make. Should he fly for Mehtar Lam, about fifteen minutes south? Or should he land now and give Slebodnik first aid? Combat Outpost Najil was nearby, a minute away at full speed. They would have a medic and aid station there. That was the best call: Joker Platoon could do more for Slebodnik, and faster, than Meyer could do himself.

  He radioed ahead. “This is Close Combat 24,” he said. “We’ve got a pilot with a gunshot wound to the leg. Have medics on the LZ.”

  Slebodnik was staring down at his wound. “Oh, please, God,” he said. “Not now. Not now.”

  The outpost was close. Flying as fast as the Kiowa would go, Meyer spoke in reassuring tones.

  “Hey, man, you’re good,” he said. “Just stay awake.”

  Slebodnik’s eyelids drooped. He slumped in his seat. Perhaps a dozen seconds had passed.

  Rounding the corner at the river junction, Meyer saw the outpost, perhaps thirty seconds away. He was flying so hard that cockpit alarms were sounding.

  “Hey, stay awake,” he said.

  Slebodnik did not answer.

  “Hey, talk to me,” Meyer said.

  Slebodnik was silent.

  Captain Archibald, the Australian pilot, called from behind. “Make sure you safe your weapons, Brian, before you land,” he said.

  Meyer was in a circumstance resembling what Slebodnik had coached him for the day before. His lead pilot had been shot, and as a left-seater Meyer now needed to handle the flight alone. He reached to his right, to the center of the cockpit, and flipped a lever down, moving the weapons from ARM to STANDBY. He leaned back into his chair, banked for his approach, and descended fast, looking down upon soldiers bunched underneath on the landing zone.

  “Stay with me here,” Meyer said to Slebodnik.

  The helicopter touched down. “Stay with me.”

  The grunts were running toward them. Meyer had done what he could do. They and their medic would take it from there.

  * * *

  Back at Jalalabad Airfield, Colonel Lynch was having a meeting in his office at task force headquarters when an officer entered the room.

  “Hey, sir, first report,” he said. “Not a lot of information, but Mike Slebodnik got shot in the leg.”

  Lynch took the news easily. He was a Kiowa pilot himself and knew a few pilots who had been struck by gunfire in the cockpit. Foot and leg wounds were the common outcome. Slebodnik, Lynch figured, was the latest.

  He’s going to be pissed, he thought.

  He headed for the operations center to listen to the task force retrieving one of its pilots for care.

  * * *

  Outside Lynch’s headquarters, two Black Hawk crews were on standby for medevac flights. Chief Warrant Officer Joseph Callaway heard the call.

  Urgent medical. One coalition force wounded. COP Najil.

  He ran to the operations center for information and a glimpse of the intelligence. Someone said a pilot had been hit in the leg by small-arms fire. He asked who was down. Mr. Slebodnik, he heard.

  Mike, he thought.

  I’m going.

  Callaway knew the routes and the passes between Jalalabad and Najil. His mind laid out the puzzle. The fastest evacuation, he thought, would be if Slebodnik were flown in his own Kiowa to Mehtar Lam while Callaway was en route. Once there, Callaway’s medic and crew chief could pick him up on the landing zone of the American base and transfer him to the faster Black Hawk for the run back to Jalalabad.

  “Have the copilot meet me in Mehtar Lam,” he said, and dashed out the door. His Black Hawk and a chase bird were warmed up. He climbed into his seat and strapped in. They’d be in the air in no time.

  The operations center said Slebodnik was at Najil.

  Callaway had already thought through plan B. To reach Najil, there was a route through a mountain pass he could fly instead of following the valleys. It would shave time. Either way, Callaway thought he could have Slebodnik to Jalalabad in less than forty-five minutes, maybe within thirty.

  He was worried about Slebodnik losing a leg. They needed to go.

  Engines running, rotors spinning, his medic and crew chief strapped in, he was about to fly. He radioed the operations center for permission to take off.

  The voice came back flat. “Stand down.”

  The medevac for Slebodnik was being assigned to two aircraft out of Bagram. The medical planners wanted him treated there.

  Callaway was astounded. Bagram was too far from Najil—at least a forty-minute flight. By the time an aircraft from Bagram picked up Mike and returned with him to the base’s hospital, ninety minutes would have p
assed. That was too long.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said.

  The reply was inflexible.

  “Stand down, Joe.”

  Callaway would not accept it. If he took the mission, his aircraft would have Slebodnik in the care of a surgeon at Jalalabad before an aircraft from Bagram even reached Najil. There was no time to argue. He was right. He needed to fly.

  “It’s going to take those assholes forty-five minutes to get there,” he said. “In forty-five minutes I can have him here.”

  The voice repeated the order.

  “You’ve got to stand down.”

  Fuck this, Callaway thought. FUCK THIS.

  Callaway’s crew was tense. He knew they wanted to go, but had to be silent. He was the mission commander. This was between him and the boss.

  “What are you going to do if I launch?” he said.

  “Joe, you have to stand down. We’ve been told you have to stand down.”

  Goddamn bullshit.

  “It’s fucking stupid,” he said.

  “Joe, you’ve got to stand down,” the voice said. “The mission went to Bagram.”

  The other aircraft were in the air.

  Callaway climbed out and stormed into the operations center. The room was on edge. For a few minutes, seething, he listened to the radio traffic. Heart pounding, doing nothing, he could not take it anymore. He was doing no good. He was just in the way. He left the room to pace and to curse.