On Glorious Wings

by Stephen Coonts

  Sam wasn’t conscious of starting to run and was rather startled to find himself in full flight toward the stricken aircraft. The adrenaline pumping through his system seemed to allow him to float over obstacles, shotgun held in front at port arms to knock aside small bushes. He felt light as a feather and would not have been surprised to find that if he flapped his arms he could fly. He could see movement inside the inverted cockpit as the dust began to settle. Except for the bent prop and the crushed vertical stabilizer, the aircraft looked as though it could be righted and flown away.

  He skidded to a halt, panting, beside the entry door in the fuselage. Wrenching it open, he stooped to help the plane’s single occupant. The feet came first, and they were huge. Sam had never seen a pair of boots like those sticking into his face just now. The man’s frame unfolded and as it eased through the opening Sam saw that the man matched the feet. Eventually, all of him was outside and standing upright.

  Sam was not a little man. The helmeted figure now standing next to him had to be at least six feet seven inches tall. The visor of his helmet obscured the features from the nose up, but Sam could see a wide, goofy grin pasted onto the bottom of his face.

  Sam couldn’t believe it. This character stuck out his hand as if they were meeting socially. Even worse, Sam automatically accepted and shook it, all the time thinking of the incongruity of it all. An entire main force battalion may have them within their gunsights and here they were, shaking hands and smiling as though they were at a bridge party.

  “How do you do? Name’s Chief Warrant Officer Donald Lyle. Friends call me Stretch for obvious reasons.” He removed his helmet and surveyed the dinged aircraft with sad blue eyes. “Really fucked that up, didn’t I? Thought they’d probably give me a DFC if I pulled you out by myself,” he said with amazing candor. “Well, easy come, easy go. What’s your name, Major?”

  With his mouth hanging open, Sam stared at the good-natured face. It was long and the ears protruded slightly. A straight, narrow nose and firm chin were balanced by a broad forehead. There was a full head of rusty brown hair. A good-looking kid. But, didn’t CWO Donald Lyle realize there was a firefight going on two klicks away and that they were both now standing dehorsed in Charley’s backyard?

  “Later,” Sam responded shortly to the request for his name. “Let’s get anything outta the bird we can use and get the hell out of this clearing.”

  Without waiting for the warrant officer’s agreement, Sam knelt and began rummaging in the cockpit. He passed out the pilot’s M16 and a bandolier of ammunition, two more smoke grenades, a canteen of water, a six-pack of Pepsi, a bag of Cheetos, three C rations, a large Hershey bar soggy from the heat, and a small cluster of finger bananas. He decided to leave the box of crackers, the peanut butter—Skippy’s Smooth—the bag of Oreos, more C rations, the paperback books, and the small watermelon. After a moment’s consideration he went back for the melon.

  Chief Warrant Officer Lyle methodically stowed the material Sam passed to him in the voluminous pockets of his jungle fatigues and in his helmet storage bag. He’d retrieved a baseball cap from a side pocket. Sam scrambled out of the aircraft and looked queerly at the lanky man; then he grabbed the six-pack of soft drinks and, without turning to see if he was being followed, started for the trees at a slow trot. Most of the adrenaline that had coursed through his body was beginning to wear off. His legs felt heavy and it was with a great deal of relief that he reached the shadows once more. Cautiously, he led the lanky aviator to his depression and crawled into it. Donald Lyle looked around at his new surroundings with interest, as though he might want to put in a bid on this piece of real estate.

  Sam lay back with the shotgun over his chest and tried to get his breathing under control. His face felt hot and flushed, and somewhere in the chain of events he’d swallowed his gum and his mouth had dried out once again. He caught Lyle’s eye and nodded at the canteen in the helmet bag. The army pilot smiled with delight as though he was the host of a dinner party and a guest had asked for seconds on the roast beef. He passed the canteen and Sam was hard-pressed not to empty it. Instead, he allowed himself a couple of quick gulps, then hastily screwed on the top and passed it back before he lost his willpower. His eyes inventoried CWO2c. Donald “Stretch” Lyle. The army pilot stared back with a good-natured smile.

  “What the hell were you doing with a watermelon in your airplane?” It seemed to be the most important question Sam could come up with at the moment.

  All seventy-nine or eighty inches of Stretch Lyle wriggled with delight. “Well, you see, I’m the army sector pilot over in Kien Long sector; that’s in Chuong Thien province, you know.”

  Sam nodded that he understood the geography and whispered, “Better try to keep your voice down.”

  The warrant officer nodded and smiled, happy to participate in such a fun game. “Anyway, there’s this one dink over there who likes to take a shot at me every time I take off. He’s about a mile off the end of the strip and he’s there every day, rain or shine. He takes just that one shot, that’s all.”

  “Why don’t you drop some arty on him if you know where he is?” asked Sam.

  Lyle looked horrified. “Oh, no! I wouldn’t do that! You see, this guy has got to be the worst shot in the world. I mean, he’s been taking a crack at me every day for at least four months and he’s never once scored a hit. If I were to zap him they might replace him with somebody who is a very good shot.”

  “So what has that got to do with the watermelon?”

  “You see, I don’t want to get rid of my dink but I can’t just ignore him blasting away at me all the time either. So, I came up with the idea of chucking these melons at him. I don’t really try to hit him and I think he knows that. But I don’t think he really tries to hit me either. So, ’bout once a week I buy a dozen or so of these, about the size of a bowling ball. I stow ’em in the Bird Dog to use during the week. They don’t cost hardly anything at the market in Kien Long.”

  “How about the rest of this chow?” Sam swept his hand at the pile of snacks.

  “I sometimes get a little hungry between meals,” Lyle confessed.

  Sam let his eyes linger on the amiable face for a moment, then let them drift over the lanky frame. The man was a walking arsenal. He carried the standard army .45-caliber automatic on his web belt along with a K-BAR knife. There was an additional handgun—it looked to be a .38 Special—in a shoulder rig. Taped upside down on the rig’s main strap was a double-edged fighting knife.

  “How old are you?” Sam whispered.

  “Durned near twenty-one,” Lyle answered. He peered at Sam’s face. “Want me to dress those cuts?”

  “Later, maybe.” Sam shut his eyes and sighed. He opened them and they focused on the melon. Saliva began flowing freely in his month as he began to think of what it would taste like. If they ate it, there would be less to carry if they had to move. Besides, he really wanted it. Sam eased back from the lip of the depression to sit closer to Lyle.

  “Listen,” he said, “why don’t we cut that melon? I need to get some moisture back into my system, but we’ll do it only if you want to. After all, it’s your melon.”

  Lyle looked pained. “Shoot, Major, this ain’t my stuff. It’s our stuff. Let’s cut that sucker right now.”

  It took all of Sam’s determination not to jerk the melon from the warrant’s hands as he measured, then remeasured, the point where he would make the slice. Then he inserted the tip of the K-BAR, made a neat circular slice, and popped it into two halves.

  Sam swallowed the first mouthful of red flesh, seeds and all. The juice seemed to fill in the cracks and crevices in the lining of his mouth. He looked at Lyle methodically munching his portion and gazing at the treetops while his jaws worked. Sam wolfed down the rest of his portion, even chewing into the paleness just inside the tough skin. He wiped his mouth with the sweaty sleeve of his flight suit. He saw Donald Lyle cock his head like an inquisitive puppy.

  “Somebod
y’s coming,” he announced in a normal speaking voice.

  Sam froze, head pointing toward the gloomy forest to the southwest. He heard it too. Someone was coming. A lot of someones. He could distinctly hear the sound of rubber sandals slapping the earth. Then he could make out the muted voices. There were a lot of them!

  RAID ON THUD

  RIDGE

  FROM ROLLING

  THUNDER

  by MARK BERENT

  No one ever wrote about the fighter pilots’ war over Vietnam better than Mark Berent, a career Air Force officer who lived the life he wrote about during three tours in Vietnam. He is that rarest of rarities, a pilot who can write.

  In the excerpt from his first novel, Rolling Thunder, that follows, Captain Court Bannister is flying in the back seat of a two-seat F-105. As usual, the war is being fought with one hand, the other being firmly tied by the politicians in Washington, who are using the American military to send “messages” to the Vietnamese communists. One prays LBJ is now shoveling coal in hell and Robert S. McNamara will wind up roasting beside him, but . . .

  The year is 1966, it is three in the morning in Thailand, and you are going up north in an F-105. . . .

  He awoke with a start when his alarm sounded a discreet bell. His mouth felt like an ashtray and his eyes were grainy and sore. He rooted around in his bag for his shaving kit and a fresh T-shirt. Twenty minutes later he walked into the wing briefing room, blinking in the harsh light. His legs were soaked with dew from the knees down because he had cut across the unmowed athletic field separating Wing from the barracks instead of taking the long way around on the sidewalks. It was two minutes to three.

  He found Frederick and sat next to him. The force commander, an older lieutenant colonel with squint lines fanning from his eyes, told the assembled pilots that today’s force of sixteen Thuds, four flights of four, was going against the rail yards outside of the Thai Nguyen steel mill. Secondary and tertiary targets were farther south in Pack 1. The Wild Weasel pilots, who flew the two-seater F-105F’s loaded with electronic gear controlled by the Bear in the backseat, and exotic weapons to suppress flak and SAM’s, looked as unconcerned as subway riders. The renowned Weasels were known for having the biggest balls in the SEA. Few survived 100 missions. Court recognized Westcott and Robinson among several others selected by Colonel Gary Willard to be the first Weasel pilots.

  The lieutenant colonel was leading the four-ship Pintail F-105D flight, the other twelve airplanes were in Harpoon, Crab, and Waco flights. His briefing covered the TOT, routes, tanker call signs, off-load fuel, and attack headings, and he gave a rundown on the butterfly, the formation he wanted to use rolling in on the target. Using chalk on the board, he described how the four flights, each flying as a corner in a flat, one-dimensional box pattern 2,000 feet on a side, would split, with two flights rolling in on the rail yards from opposite headings. He stressed detailed memorization of the target area to preclude any confusion on target identification and roll-in points. He answered a few questions about radio frequencies, then returned to his seat in the front row and turned the stage over to the weather briefer, a heavyset master sergeant in fatigues.

  Using a pointer on the large four-by-eight pull-out aerial map of Thailand, Laos, and North Vietnam, the sergeant began his litany. “Weather in the refueling area will be broken layers between thirty and thirty-three thousand. Over the fence those layers will stay the same, but you will encounter early-morning buildups imbedded in the scattered to broken cumulus ranging from eight to ten thousand. You will reach the target area just after first light, where your visibility will be five plus miles, opening up to ten as the sun burns off the haze. Winds at release altitude will be from 250 at ten, altimeter 29.66.”

  Court heard a muttered “Yeah, sure” from several of the pilots. He knew winds over a target area were as predictable as the Army-Navy football score. The altimeter was reasonably valid because actual measurements were sent from a weather recce F-4 and unnamed assets on the ground. The master sergeant concluded his briefing with the weather at the primary recovery base, Tahkli, and the other Thailand alternates of Korat, Udorn, and Ubon. He stepped down.

  A dark and vivid major from the intelligence section briefed with quick motions and fast words. From the side opposite the weather maps he pulled out a sliding map board with Communist defenses neatly drawn on an acetate overlay. As he pointed to the locations he listed the amount and types of guns and SAM’s along the ingress route, around the target, and covering the egress route. He said today’s codename for MiG’s was Steakhouse.

  Everybody laughed, because when enemy planes were spotted, the cry was “MIGS! MIGS!” Why fool around trying to remember a word to classify an event the enemy already knew about?

  He said the base altitude was 13,000 feet. He wrapped up his briefing with a reiteration of the safe bailout areas and the Rules of Engagement: “Don’t fly within thirty miles of the Chinese border, thirty miles of Haiphong Harbor, thirty miles from Hanoi, and of course, you can’t hit the MiG bases at Phuc Yen, Gia Lam, Kep or Hoa Loc.” He stopped and looked about apologetically. “Lastly, gentlemen, you are forbidden to hit the Thai Nguyen steel mill itself. You may only bomb the rail yard servicing the mill.”

  “Isn’t that the shits,” a pilot muttered. “I hope somebody is writing all this down,” said a second.

  The force commander wrapped up the briefing with a final word. He stood, hands on hips, facing his audience. “This is a JCS target today, gents. Let’s take it out, but let’s get everyone home. No pressing. No radio chatter, No MiG calls, unless you’re positive. Always, I mean always, use call signs.” He gave a half salute and said, “Go get ’em.”

  Frederick turned in his seat to stare at Court.

  “Listen, movie pilot,” he said, “I didn’t ask for you, I don’t want you, but I’m stuck with you. Somebody even sent over a two-seater from Itazuki to fly you in, otherwise you’d never get off the ground. We’d never put you in our own two-seaters. They’re Weasel birds configured with enough electronic crap for the Bear, the guy in back, to light up Times Square for a year. They go along to take out SAM’s. It’s damn near a kamikaze mission. Damn few Weasel pilots have made it to a hundred missions yet.” He shook his head. “So if the Itazuki bird wasn’t here, you wouldn’t fly.” Without another word, Frederick got up and walked out of the briefing room. The other pilots grouped together to head toward their individual squadron briefing rooms. The darkness concealed the faces of those who were apprehensive.

  Court fell in step with Frederick, who continued the conversation as if it had never been interrupted.

  “I sniveled us the Number Three slot with Pintail, the force commander’s flight, today. We’ll get off. You watch, though, some coward will find an excuse not to go. But I’ll get you up there. I’ll get you up where the big boys fly.” He punched the night air with his free hand.

  Each flight had a fifth man, a spare, who was briefed with the rest, with an airplane loaded for the strike. The pilot would start the airplane, check in, arm, and taxi to the runway in the event someone had to abort at the last minute. In an extreme case, the man even took off to fly just short of the tankers as an airborne spare.

  Frederick and Court joined the members of Pintail flight to listen to the final briefing in the squadron building. When it was over, Frederick pulled Court aside for an individual brief about what he expected of his backseater. They both carried coffee mugs.

  “We may be going on a real double-pump mission; that’s when your heart has to double pump to keep up with your adrenaline flow. You’ll see a bunch of flak when we roll in. That’s normal, so don’t pay any attention. Start staring at it and you’ll scare yourself to death. Cinch up your seat belts. We might get a few negative g’s when I maneuver and certainly a lot of positive g’s when I pull off target. A lot of g’s.” He took a long swallow of coffee, gone cold, and continued.

  “If we take a hit, don’t arbitrarily punch out. We’ll t
alk it over. The Thud takes a lot of punishment. I’m familiar with this airplane, you’re not. I’ll tell you when to punch. If we’re northeast of the Red River, we’ve got to either get back west almost to Laos, or east out over the water to be picked up. The rescue helicopters can’t make it into the Hanoi area. There’s too much flak.”

  Frederick led Court to the PE room, where they started gathering their gear. He handed Court two baby bottles. “Fill these. Use them on the ground if we punch out. In the airplane, you’ve got a bottle and a hose to suck on in flight. If the crew chief is a nice guy, he’ll have them filled with ice tea or lemonade. Don’t let your canopy close on the hose or you’ll dry out in an hour.”

  Court put on his G-suit and survival vest, slipped into his parachute, which, like on the F-100, was not built into the ejection seat. He picked up his helmet bag and his purse, a flat kit made in the parachute shop to hold maps, and followed Frederick out the door. They stood with the other pilots waiting for the van to take them to the flight line. No one spoke. The humid cool air reminded Court of an icehouse. Muted humming from APU’s firing up for the KC-135 tankers sounded from down the flight line. They made blowtorch hisses as they spat out compressed air for the tankers to start their engines.

  B-66’s loaded with electronic warfare equipment had taken off earlier to get set up on station over eastern Laos, where they would help flood enemy radar with false signals to mask the inbound Thuds.

  The van drove up to the pilots, the headlights illuminating them like deer in a field as it stopped. Each man automatically squinted and looked away to preserve his night vision. Equipment clanging and thumping as they moved, they climbed in and arranged themselves on the benches along each side.

  Court noticed the other pilots didn’t have much to say to Frederick. Whether it was from dislike or inarticulateness brought on by being around a living legend, Court couldn’t tell. One pilot, Pintail Four, a lieutenant, chattered inanely about the low prices at Jimmie’s Jeweler. His voice was thin and edged with nervousness. Court knew it was his eleventh mission, but his first in the Pack 6 area. All new pilots usually flew their first ten missions in the relative safety of Pack 1 before being admitted into the fraternity of the men who flew beyond the Red River into the Hanoi and Haiphong areas. The lieutenant’s jumpiness is catching, Court thought, as he caught himself in a jaw-cracking nervous yawn.