Call to Duty

by Richard Herman

  He didn’t have long to wait before the first shadowy movement appeared on the far side of the clearing. They’re good, he thought, trying to get a head count on his pursuers. Come on, take the bait, he urged. Slowly, a single soldier moved onto the trail, working his way cautiously forward. As expected, Kamigami thought. His face was impassive as he sized the man up. How good are you? he wondered. He set down his submachine gun and drew his black Bowie knife as the man made his way across the clearing, past the booby trap he had set.

  When the soldier reached the trees, he was less than twelve feet from Kamigami’s hiding place. He carefully studied the underbrush at one point, looked directly at the American, not seeing him. Satisfied that all was well, he stepped out into the clearing and motioned for the rest of his troop to follow him across. Then he moved back into the underbrush to provide cover. You are very good, Kamigami decided, but not good enough. He studied the soldier’s movements and noticed he was concentrating on the surrounding edge of the clearing, expecting a threat from that quarter. Kamigami rose out of his hiding place and moved like a ghost across the few feet that separated them. Pure instinct caught at the soldier’s awareness and he turned around, not really sure why. He hadn’t heard a thing. The last thing he saw was Kamigami’s big knife slashing at him.

  With an easy motion, Kamigami caught the dead man and lowered him to the ground. He had to move quickly for the next man was already past the ambush point. He retrieved his MPS and squeezed off a burst. The bullets struck the lead soldier in the upper torso and blew out large chunks of his back. The two men directly behind him dove off the trail and hit the trip wires. A few seconds later, the grenades went off and a high-pitched scream cut the air. Kamigami moved away and fired a quick burst of fire across the clearing taking out one other man. Then all was quiet.

  There’s more over there, he thought. They need some more discouragement. He moved over the dead soldier he had taken out with his knife and examined his equipment. He drew the man’s knife and decided it was long enough to do the job. He held the body up against the trunk of a tree and drove the knife through its chest, just under the sternum, and out the back to pin the body to the tree, its feet dangling clear of the ground. He knew his pursuers would get the message—go slowly and use caution. He could hear shouted commands from across the clearing as he hurried after Woodward, Baulck, and Chiang. They aren’t going to be discouraged easily, he thought. He plotted his next tactic, thinking about the terrain in front of him.

  Then it came to him. It was too easy. “These guys are seasoned jungle fighters,” he mumbled to himself. This was their backyard and they had to know the terrain like the back of their hands. Their pursuers had to know where they were heading. He had to warn Woodward. Without stopping, he keyed his radio. “Expect some company on top,” he warned the British captain.

  The reply was a terse “We’re on top and have them in sight.”

  Damn, he raged, they were herding us. And how did they get around us so fast? He forced himself to concentrate as he pulled his way up the steep, almost clifflike face of the mesalike karst. It was easy to follow Woodward’s path. Less than twenty-five meters below the rim, the vegetation gave out where the eroded rock face of the karst was the steepest. Below him he heard a muffled crash—one of his pursuers had slipped and fallen down the steep slope. Those muthas are fast, he thought. And good.

  “Hammer,” Gillespie transmitted over the radio, “We’re in contact with Fastback Ground. They’re pinned down on the top edge of the karst approximately a hundred meters short of the LZ. Request clearance to go in after them.”

  “Say location of hostiles,” Trimler asked, trying to evaluate the situation on the ground.

  “Apparently a squad-strength group is in front of them on top of the karst and an unknown number are pushing them from the rear.”

  On board the MC-130, the two colonels conferred. They both knew that they were running out of time. “Spectre is in bound,” Mallard said, “and should be on station in fifteen minutes.”

  Trimler studied the chart in front of him. “They haven’t got fifteen minutes,” he said. “Rascal One has got to go in now if we’re to get them out.” He waited for Mallard to make the decision. As the ground commander, he had told Mallard what had to be done. But it was Mallard’s decision to commit the MH-53 with its six-man crew, thirty-five-man Delta contingent and Heather Courtland in order to rescue three people.

  “We go in,” Mallard said.

  Both Kamigami and Woodward copied Gillespie’s radio call that he was inbound and would be overhead their position in two minutes. “Can you pop a smoke grenade and direct my fire?” Gillespie asked.

  “Can oblige,” Woodward answered.

  Kamigami’s eyes drew into narrow slits as he considered his next move. He was still twenty-five meters below the rim and could now hear movement directly below him. There was no way he could get across the open area and reach the top now without being seen. But that worked both ways. He pulled back into a shallow depression that offered some concealment and waited. Moments later, the first of his pursuers came into view and stopped, studying the open area ahead of him. Then he was joined by two more men. They crouched and talked in low tones, not realizing that Kamigami was only a few meters behind them. Their decision made, the leader started across the open area, climbing for the rim and Woodward’s location. The two men followed him at five-meter intervals.

  I hope that’s all of you muthas, Kamigami thought. He could hear the distinctive beat of the helicopter’s rotor as it approached. The three men in the open stopped, frozen by the sound. They were not sure if they should press ahead or retreat. Kamigami made the decision for them. He pushed the snout of his MP5 clear of the depression and fired off a short burst. The man closest to him screamed and toppled down the slope. A second burst took out the middle man while their leader scrambled for the safety of the rim a few meters above his head. Woodward was waiting for him.

  Kamigami broke from his cover and made for the top as fast as he could while Woodward turned his attention to the men in front of him. Below Kamigami, hidden in the underbrush, the man who had fallen down the slope only moments before carefully sighted his AK-47 at Kamigami’s back.

  “Smoke in sight,” Gillespie radioed when he saw Woodward’s smoke grenade pop. “Say your position.”

  “We are between the smoke and the edge of the karst,” Woodward transmitted, his voice amazingly calm. “Your target is approximately ten meters the other side of the smoke from our position.”

  “Damn blokes would rather die than sound bad on the radios,” Gillespie told his copilot.

  “Turn right,” Woodward transmitted. He watched as the helicopter started a right turn. “Roll out and you’ll pass right over us.”

  Gillespie did as he commanded and saw three figures crouched in the low underbrush between him and the smoke. “I have you at my twelve o’clock. No joy on the target.” He veered away so his right gunner would bring his fifty-caliber machine gun to bear on the area that Woodward had identified.

  Kamigami’s feet were scrambling, trying to get a foothold in the rotten limestone just below the top edge of the ridgeline. The fingers of his left hand dug in when they found a narrow crevice on the lip. Just as he heaved his bulk up, a short burst of submachine-gun fire cut across his back. One bullet ripped into the fleshy meat of his left side and another grazed the right side of his head, knocking his boonie hat off and momentarily stunning him.

  The shooter had not been able to control the hard-rising motion of the AK-47 and most of the burst went high and wide. Kamigami rolled down the steep incline and crashed into his assailant. Now the two bodies jarred against each other as they skidded and fell farther down the slope. Kamigami’s right hand tore at the man, gouging at his face and eyes while his left groped for a handhold. Finally, he snared an exposed root and clamped it tight, jerking to a halt, letting the smaller-framed man break free. But Kamigami had him by the neck. For a
full minute, they hung there, frozen in a grotesque tableau of death while Kamigami squeezed. The big American heard throat cartilage crack and felt it separate as his fingers dug deep into the man’s neck. Then he shook the lifeless body free and watched it roll down the steep slope into the more dense underbrush below him.

  For a moment, he hung there breathing deeply. He glanced down at his legs, not surprised to see streaks of blood. You’ve been wounded before, he thought, so stop the bleeding and get to the top. He tested his legs, surprised to feel them respond. More blood than damage, he reasoned. Slowly, and then with increasing confidence, he moved his boots until he found a secure foothold and could release his grip on the root. Since his left leg was more bloody than his right, he examined the left side of his body, certain that shock was keeping him from feeling the wound. His fingers found the hole the 7.62-millimeter slug had punched into his back. “Right in the love handle,” he mumbled. He unsnapped his first aid kit and pulled out a compress bandage. Too big, he thought and ripped it apart with his teeth. Then he shoved a wad into the bullet hole. Rest, he told himself. He still needed to bandage his head.

  Above him, he could hear the familiar heavy humping of a fifty-caliber machine gun as the helicopter orbited overhead.

  “No joy on the target,” Gillespie radioed to Woodward as his right gunner worked over the area.

  “You’ve got the area bracketed,” Woodward replied. “Keep firing.

  “Captain!” the rear gunner shouted over the intercom. “I’ve got Kamigami in sight. He’s on the open part of the slope just below the rim. I think he’s in trouble.” Then he saw the distinctive smoke trail of an SA-7 Grail streak toward them. “Break left! Break left! SAM! SAM!”

  Gillespie wrenched the big helicopter into a hard downward left turn as the copilot popped a chain of flares behind them in an attempt to decoy the infrared seeker head of the Soviet-made, shoulder-fired missile. It almost worked. The Grail missed the fuselage and flew into the rotor’s arc. The top of one of the six rapidly rotating blades hit the Grail and cut it in two. But the impact snapped off the outer six feet of the blade, throwing it out of balance with the other five blades.

  The vibration that shook the helicopter made it impossible to see the instruments or move—it was simply a matter of holding on. Gillespie reacted with pure instinct as he fought at the controls, trying to make the aircraft respond. His small frame chafed and jerked against his shoulder harness as the vibration slammed him around. Then he sensed what was wrong as he traded off altitude for control. “Gear down!” he yelled at the copilot. It all came together as he honked back on the cyclic and pulled up on the collective for a landing flare. Two feet above the ground, he cut the throttles to stop the vibration and let his aircraft smack into the hard crust of the flat shelf that capped the top of the ridge.

  “You are one lucky son of a bitch,” he told himself as the rotor spun down. They had landed a hundred meters from the edge where the slope turned into a sheer five-hundred-foot cliff face. The helicopter’s three machine guns started to fire as Delta rapidly evacuated out the back.

  The sharp crack of the AK-47 carried a message of worry as it echoed over Woodward. But he trusted Kamigami to handle the problem, not that he had a choice. He was fully occupied with the threat in front of him as the helicopter came down. He zeroed in on the source of the Grail and sent a long burst of fire in that direction, but the range was too great for the close-in MP5. Before he could radio the threat to the helicopter, men erupted from the back of the helicopter and fanned out, quickly securing the area.

  Two men ran toward the British captain. Mackay and his RTO. “The sergeant major,” Mackay yelled, gesturing at the edge.

  Woodward sprinted ahead of them, went over the rim and scrambled down to Kamigami. “Rope,” he yelled. He looped an arm around the wounded sergeant’s back and held him against the steep face of the karst formation. “You’ll be all right now, mate,” he said.

  Kamigami raised his head and looked up at Mackay who was feeding a rope down to them. In the distance, he could hear the sound of gunfire and the dull whomp of grenades as Delta cleaned out the last of Chiang’s soldiers who had reached the top of the ridge. “I’m okay,” he told Woodward. A more important thought came to him. “Casualties?” he asked. He had to know for he was still taking care of his men, the first and last responsibility of a sergeant major, the responsibility that dominated his life and gave meaning to his existence.

  “How the bloody hell would I know,” Woodward replied. “I’m down here, aren’t I?”

  “Well,” Kamigami said, “you’ve got us into one hell of a mess, Captain. Looks like I’ve got to get us out of it.” He grabbed the rope and started to scramble up the slope.

  “Cheeky bastard,” Woodward allowed. He had seen it before and knew the sergeant’s will was more than a match for his wounds.

  Anger tore at Mackay and he turned it on Kamigami and Woodward as they emerged over the edge and scrambled onto level ground. “Damn,” he swore. “We shouldn’t be here.” But it didn’t help. His face was a granite mask as he buried his feelings and focused his thinking, making himself concentrate on the more immediate problem. “Captain Gillespie,” he said, his voice now flat and unemotional, “can it fly?”

  “No way, Colonel,” Gillespie answered. “We lost about six feet of a blade, which throws the whole rotor out of balance. Makes for one hell of a vibration. We were lucky, being so close to the ground when we took the hit.”

  Sweat etched Mackay’s face, catching in the cracks and crevices of his pock-marked complexion and giving him a dark, evil look. “We’ve got to get out of here soonest,” he said. His gut was telling him that more trouble was on the way.

  “I’ll work on it,” Gillespie said. He turned and ran back to the helicopter, calling for his flight engineer.

  Mackay checked with his team leaders to determine their status. The top of the ridge was secure and clear of Chiang’s soldiers but a reconnaissance patrol had reported the discovery of a well-marked and improved trail on the far side. Satisfied that was how the soldiers had been able to reach the top so quickly, Mackay directed a team to establish a defensive fire position to block the head of the trail and discourage any more unwelcome visitors. You had better be worried, he told himself. Chiang’s men had proven themselves to be tough and determined and they weren’t about to go away. He motioned for his RTO to hand him the handset.

  “Hammer,” Mackay transmitted, “Fastback and Rascal One are on the ground at Blue Four.” He quickly relayed their situation and requested a backup helicopter for an extraction. After a short pause, Mallard told him that the gunship was inbound and should be overhead their position in five minutes to provide a protective cover. There was no mention of the helicopter.

  “Colonel”—Gillespie panted as he ran up to Mackay—“we might be able to fix this beast.” He pointed to his flight engineer who was climbing up the side of helicopter. Another sergeant was waiting to pass a four-foot breaker bar to him. “We’re going to remove the broken blade and two others to get the rotor back in balance. That’ll give us three balanced blades.”

  “You think three blades can give enough lift?” Mackay asked.

  Gillespie said, “Beats me, Colonel. No one has ever tried it before and there’s nothing in the tech manuals about it. Worth a try. We’re going to strip the goat clean to lighten the load. Tell your men they’ll have to do the same.” Orders were given and the Pave Low helicopter was stripped clean. Even the three 50-caliber machine guns and all ammunition were removed. “I’ll punch off the external fuel tanks when we’re airborne,” he told the copilot. “That’ll shed a lot of weight.”

  The tech sergeant who served as Gillespie’s flight engineer fixed a socket wrench on the first of the eight bolts that held the broken blade to the rotor head. He slipped the breaker bar over the handle for an extension, braced his feet against the blade and heaved, straining to break the 2,460 pounds of torque that hel
d the nut. His face turned red under the strain and, for a moment, nothing happened. Then he heaved for all he was worth and the nut broke free. Seven more times he repeated the process, freeing the 371-pound blade from the rotor head. He was hunched over, gasping for breath and in pain, when four men lifted the blade free. Then he skipped a blade and started to work on the next one.

  “How long do you think it will take?” Mackay asked.

  “Maybe twenty more minutes,” Gillespie replied.

  Mackay’s radio crackled to life. “Fastback, this is Spectre.” It was the Beezer. “Inbound your position. We are monitoring movement on the slope below you. Suspect hostiles coming your way.” The sensor operator in the booth on the AC-130’s gun deck had detected numerous small targets on his highly sensitive infrared sensors. “We’ll see if we can discourage them.”

  “Copy all,” Mackay answered. He turned to Gillespie. “I don’t think we’ve got twenty minutes.” Then he spoke into his radio to warn his small force. Delta sprang into action and the men ran an emergency action drill they had practiced many times as the first mortar round screamed down on them. “We need a fix on that incoming,” he said into the radio. He made sure his men were dispersed as Gillespie’s flight engineer worked feverishly at the second blade. Then he saw Heather and motioned for her to join him. He handed her his poncho. “Wear this,” he said, “and wait over there.”

  The girl slipped the poncho over her head. She looked up as the first heavy drops of rain started to fall. “I’ll be okay,” she promised. She hurried past the pile of equipment discarded off the Pave Low helicopter and paused, rummaging through a survival kit.