By now his electronic warfare officer had climbed in the rear seat. They could not see each other but communicated by live mike. He fired up the left engine, moving the throttle forward and watching the rpm and exhaust gas temperature gauges rise. When the left engine reached idle, he started the right one and switched to internal electrical power. The ground crew pulled away the support vehicles beneath the plane. He reached up and chunked the canopy shut. Signaling back and forth with the ground crew, he tested the speed brakes, flaps, and ailerons. The crewman gave him the thumbs-up. The sun had climbed over the tree line on the horizon, burning off moisture, leveling a hard slant of heat across the streaked expanse of the airfield. His wingman was ready now, too.
“Two up.”
“Three ready.”
He taxied briskly along the runway. At the head of the runway a serviceman ducked under the fuselage and activated the bomb racks and missiles.
“Blue one ready for takeoff,” he told the tower.
“Blue one cleared.”
He signaled his wingman and pressed the throttle, running the engine up from idle to one hundred percent power—10,200 rpm. The airspeed indicator needle jumped to fifty knots, and then he moved the throttles outward and forward to the afterburner stop. Maximum power, jet fuel exploding in the exhaust nozzle. Give me everything, he prayed, let’s fuck the sky. The plane jolted forward, the runway flashed past. The wheels thudded over the line of cement—football field lengths shooting beneath him—and then the nose gear quieted, lifted, and the plane arced skyward. He pulled the flaps up and again the plane lurched forward, the airspeed needle climbing past three hundred knots. The pneumatic system whistled as the plane groaned and banged and shuddered its way up to speed, the two immense engines feeding a roaring, cylindrical inferno that pressed the seat against his back. Beneath him, above him, around him, air rushed over the fuselage. Ground fell away. One thousand feet, two thousand, three thousand feet. In the sky.
The four planes joined in a combat spread and vectored north, cruising at forty thousand feet, wingtips ten feet apart. He was so near his wingman he could see the rivets and scratches on the canopy frame, the stenciled emergency markings beneath it. The flight passed into an encompassing cloud rack—four airborne sharks in pale depthlessness. The radio gargled layers and layers of garbage sound: other Air Force radio conversations, the mocking and occasionally confusing interruption of Hanoi women broadcasters (false coordinates, insults, sexual taunts—all in a sneering, provocative voice), and the screeching static of North Vietnamese ground technicians trying to jam the frequencies. The noises tore through one another, became louder and softer, choppy, windy, punctuated by blasts of music and faraway unintelligible voices.
The clouds cleared, and seven miles below stretched a landscape of flooded rice paddies, shattered mirrors of the sky, fed by a river that wound lazily like the ever-switching tail of a cat. Above them stretched a ceiling of cirrostratus.
“Blue lead,” came the ground air controller, “this is Red Crown. Bandits at two-four-oh degrees, thirty-two miles.”
“Roger,” he said into the helmet mike. “Blue flight, make a ten-degree turn south, let them chase us.”
“Blue lead, Blue two. SAMs at forty degrees, five miles.”
“Right.” The North Vietnamese were throwing up resistance to drive them south, make them waste fuel.
“Blue lead, this is Red Crown. Three SAMs up ahead.”
“Bandits must be in contact with the ground.”
“You have an altitude on SAM, two?”
“Eighteen thousand.”
Setting up a SAM envelope, chasing them into it. The SAM detonation settings would be varied to explode over a wide range.
“Blue lead, MiGs seven o’clock, eight miles.”
“Roger.”
“I’ve got three up ahead, Blue lead.”
“Blue lead, make a hard turn north. You have SAM coming at you five thousand feet and closing.” He pulled on the stick and the jet veered to the north. He saw a flight of MiGs above and behind him. The SAMs were exploding harmlessly a mile back.
“Bandits high.” The flight came out of its turn. He had to decide whether to press on toward the bridge, still fifty miles away, or engage the MiGs, which hovered behind them like black mosquitoes with red wing stripes. They were close to air-to-air range.
“Blue lead, I’ve got four SAM launches.”
He could see the SAMs, white telephone poles rising in a long curve directly in front of him.
“MiGs closing.”
“Blue lead, you have two MiGs on your—”
He saw them coming, and also saw a SAM rising up in front of him. The North Vietnamese ground technicians knew their exact altitude by now, had reprogrammed the SAMs’ detonation height. A direct hit could turn a plane into a million pieces of burnt metal, pattering like rain into the forest. He climbed, and the SAM exploded four hundred feet beneath him.
The MiGs were close. “Blue lead, you have—”
“I see them!”
The closer MiG fired. He went into a hard dive. The heat-seeking missile followed him. The G’s were staggering. He tightened his leg muscles to force the blood back to his brain. He grunted. It was coming—a roaring, weaving, smoke-trailing dart that altered its course every time he did. His peripheral vision went black, he couldn’t see. The airframe would buckle at 7.33 G’s. He flew by feel, the plane vibrating. The missile had to be within fifty yards now. He cut sharply out of the dive, breathed once, twice. The missile had sailed past. His vision came back, he looked for his wingman. But as he completed his turn, the radio cried, “SAM! SAM!—” and a roar of light enveloped the right side of the jet.
The plane jolted, the fire panel lit up.
Get altitude! The fire was in the bombing electronics panel. He hit the armament release button, cleaning off the plane by sixteen thousand pounds. The bomb racks dropped earthward.
“Blue lead, you’re on fire. Wing damage visible.”
The plane lurched, and he pulled on the stick to get control. If the wing twisted back violently, the plane would start spinning, and that would be the end. But if he ejected here and made it to the ground alive, he’d be checking into the Hanoi Hilton. The hits didn’t seem close to the fuel lines, so lighting the afterburner was not a bad bet. On the other hand, the faster speed would increase the stress on the damaged wing. He’d take the chance.
“Blue flight,” he said, “engage burner, switch to emergency procedure. I’m going to try to haul out as far as I can. Two, get RESCAP on the radio, tell them what’s happening.”
He switched to the intercom to talk with his backseater. “Larry, I’ll ride this, get us a better ditch spot.”
“I’m with you.”
He lit the burner. The plane jammed forward. Yes, he thought, blast me out of here, burn me home. The shimmering torch appeared in the tail of the plane next to him. Here we go. Then three red lights blinked on. The hydraulics were losing pressure, leaks in the primary and redundant systems. Without them, he couldn’t maneuver the plane. He was flying an unguided plane at a thousand knots an hour, a roaring perversion.
“Blue flight. Hydraulics gone. Check ground position. I’ll be punching out.” The jungle rushed beneath him. He felt for the ejection ring between his thighs, so placed because in a falling plane the increased G-forces made it impossible for a pilot to raise his arms.
“Blue lead. RESCAP notified.”
“Get ready, Larry.” The main panel went dead. Primary electrical system out. Perhaps he’d passed over into the DMZ. The stick froze in his hands. The fire was moving internally through the fuselage. Was South Vietnam below? If so, he had a chance. He couldn’t recognize the mountain formations. Estimated speed Mach 1.1 and slowing. Six seconds a mile. The ground below blurred by.
“Blue lead, Blue lead, your wing is breaking up. Get out.” He felt the plane go sloppy. Slowing. Hold. Just hold. South past the DMZ. Every six seconds … they were
losing speed, don’t spin, don’t spin, he counted one, two, three, four … you had to duck during ejection, design fault, tall men sometimes decapitated … eight … don’t flail on ejection, easy to break arms … nine—
“Charlie, get the fuck—”
He blew the canopy. Then ejected—into a wall of wind he hit at four hundred knots, driving his heart into his spine, jamming his shoulders against the seatback, compressing his trachea, the air burning over the exposed skin at his wrist and neck, spinning him heels over head. The roar, the silence. His blood could not catch up with his spinning body, his guts were in his mouth. Still moving a hundred knots. His ejection seat dropped off, and the parachute riffled noisily above him. Straps tightened around his chest and thighs, he took quick breaths in the thin air, felt his heart catching up. Okay, okay. A mile away the Phantom dropped in a violent spin, a long plume behind it. He looked around for his backseater, who had ejected simultaneously. Where’s the chute? he wondered. C’mon. He looked between his feet and saw a flailing, helmeted figure below him, still strapped to the ejection seat, falling like a stone. Negative chute on Larry. Jesus.
He’d be in the air another thirty seconds. He turned his beeper off to conserve the battery, give the North Vietnamese a harder time tracking him, if they were around. A low haze hung over the forest, which rose toward him, a green floor. He maneuvered his parachute toward a knoll that looked as if it had recently taken some fire; perhaps RESCAP knew the terrain. In a few minutes Blue flight would hook up with the KC-135 refueling tankers that circled in a racetrack oval in a safe area, then would return to establish radio contact. A-1 Skyraiders and a RESCAP AC-47 would come in for flak suppression, if there was any, while a chopper would drop straight down on the knoll to pick him up. Sometimes it worked, other times went wrong. A pilot’s beeper failed, the sky got dark, chopper failure, navigation error, heavy ground fire.
The wind ripped at his parachute lines. Under his feet the trees became distinct. No fire. He tensed and relaxed his calves, awaiting the shock of the ground. The knoll came up quickly now, and he picked out a place to hide the parachute. Then, toward the west, the sun glimmering off their rifles, he saw a Vietcong patrol cutting through ground vegetation. They didn’t want just him, they wanted to position themselves for a flak trap on the rescue attempt. Rescue pilots were taught to troll for fire to expose ground forces. But the VC were capable of unholy restraint, willing to use a dead pilot’s beeper to draw a rescue attempt and then wait out a cautionary rocket attack by the Americans. Now one of the VC watched him with binoculars and told the others which direction to go.
He landed, rolled, stood up. He tore off his helmet but couldn’t remove the cumbersome G suit without staying in the open for a minute, too dangerous to do. He stepped out of his parachute and ran to the edge of the knoll, pulling the chute with him. He found a low place covered with vines and wriggled inside, then sat sweating in the leaves and insect hum. He checked his flight watch, nervously tapped his pistol. Either the patrol had encountered difficulty hacking through the underbrush or it was waiting for the rescue effort. He spied a blackened crater ten yards away. Probably caused by a stray rocket or mortar round and better cover in a firefight—better, anyway, than vines and leaves. He scrambled forward on his hands and knees over blackened roots, rolled into the hole.
It contained a charred corpse, eyes burnt out, face cooked tight over the skull. Judging by the sandals, VC. Hey, buddy, he thought, fuck you. The air was hot. So quiet. It seemed he could just stand up and wait. He checked his watch again. Larry. Larry’s wife. The arrival of the Air Force sedan outside the base housing, the two officers easing slowly from the car—the wives knew what that meant. Ellie would whisper, “Oh no.” Then he saw the Phantoms high up in the sky. He turned on his beeper. They would establish a circling pattern at about six thousand feet and direct the slower craft to the knoll. The RESCAP prop plane came grinding over the jungle, an ugly, blunt-nosed piece of machinery. It would establish a tight orbit at about two thousand feet and be the middle tier of the rescue operation.
A low rumble over the earth, choppers. He’d have to show himself. At that moment the RESCAP gunship started to circle, continuously firing its 20-millimeter cannons. He put his head against the burnt soil and counted to thirty. The two airmobile choppers, big green insects, rose above the edge of the forest. Took a certain kind of guts to fly air rescue. The door gunners sat behind their miniguns. He pulled on his helmet, jumped out of the hole, and ran to the middle of the clearing. One of the choppers dropped over the trees and lifted its nose, readying to land.
From the other side of the clearing came a flash. A shadow movement in the green foliage. One of the door gunners lurched backward, clutching his neck. The chopper lifted up to suppress the ground fire. He retreated to the edge of the jungle. The choppers gained altitude, under steady fire from the Vietcong, then banked back toward the clearing, machine guns and pod rockets blasting. They raked the other side of the clearing. The RESCAP plane lifted up. A flight of A-1 Skyraiders dropped low in front of him and began to release a string of rockets. They came right at him, buzzed within forty yards on either side. The explosions caught up—thumping the air. He lay against the earth, his head buffeted by the shock waves. The Skyraiders lifted up, tipping their wings. Smoke rose from the jungle. Time to move. He couldn’t believe the Vietcong had survived.
One chopper descended and the other circled the clearing at high speed, door gunner firing. He ran through the flattened elephant grass toward the first chopper as it hovered waist-high off the ground. The door gunner aimed the gun, then motioned him to duck. Rounds whipped over his head. He scrambled forward on hands and knees, thirty yards to go. Fire came from all directions, rounds ping-pocking the side of the chopper. He glanced back to see a Vietcong soldier step forward from the jungle with a rocket-powered grenade launcher on his shoulder. The chopper’s gunner signaled to the pilot to lift up. Now he stood up to run the last fifteen yards. Something whistled by him and fire billowed out of the chopper, blowing the pilot door open, shattering the windscreen. He fell to his knees. The chopper blades slowed in a ball of flame and the whole rig sagged to the ground. Burning men leapt to the grass and flailed about. The heat pushed against him and he scrambled away from the fire. Then the chopper’s gas tanks exploded and he was slapped to the ground, a burning wheel landing next to him.
He lay still. He waited.
Automatic rifle fire. The screaming of men. The shots slowed. Voices searching. He assumed a dead position. Two more shots, pop-pop. Voices closer. Kill me now. I’m sorry, Ellie. I thought I was going to be okay. I love you, Ben. I love you, Julia. Voices in the grass. Something grabbed his ankles and turned him over. Their eyes met. Then they were clubbing him with their rifles, he knew that.
SURFACING FROM A DARK DEPTH. Light refracted, sound diffused. He discovered his own existence. Then he felt the pain, something wrong with his back. He opened his eyes to see that he sat inside a low hootch on a wooden crate, hands bound tightly in front of him. His survival vest and gun were gone. His head felt cottony. A North Vietnamese officer stood studying a slim volume. An interpreter, a short man with a happy expression, watched. The officer looked up, then read a few sentences aloud and the interpreter translated: “You never return to United State, you must understand this now. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam fight for fifty year. It is nothing, we fight for independence two thousand year. Mongolian, Japanese, French, American, you see, it no matter. Your United State government do not understand, we see. So, for you no go back. Captain Charles Ravich, you war criminal. I say to you, if you cooperate with question, you may live with peace. If you say no, you receive some punishment. Maybe it hurt. Your forces give much death to our comrades. We are intelligent people. You do not know us. We are good people. We do not ask you to make this decision very fastly. We know you make ideological change to us. We know you trained to not do, to resist. I say to you, Charles Ravich, consider what your
heart say, not what United State say. You understan?”
There was some discussion in Vietnamese.
“What kind of jet you fly?”
In a near-whisper he said his name, rank, and serial number.
“We have seen the tag on your neck, yes. I ask what jet?”
He repeated himself.
“The jet. Say it.”
“No.” He looked at the interpreter. If they thought he would cooperate, they had the wrong guy. “I will not.”
Afterburn: A Novel Page 2