For long agonizing seconds they hung in the air as they swung out beyond the karst face and over the soldiers below.
Those that remained were shooting frantically at the four men on the hoist. Wolf Lochert hugged the penetrator with his left arm, leaned over and back holding the CAR-15 like a pistol in his right hand, and methodically fired short bursts into them.
Then the storm swept over them and they were alone in a world of stinging rain and spinning vertigo. The buffeting and noise were appalling. There was a moment where Kelly thought it was all over, when it felt as if they were in free-fall, then with a lurch they were hanging on a taut cable again. It was as if the helicopter had plunged ten feet before being recovered.
Kelly knew Shilleto was flying the helicopter on instruments in the rainstorm. A slight miscalculation either way and their swaying pendulum of humanity would hit a cliff or the treetops, and pieces of them would be ripped off, like the man whose foot had wedged in a tree during an emergency extraction and been torn from his leg. Kelly heard that the man, a Special Forces soldier, had bled to death before he had been winched into the helicopter. He held the cable and looked down at the three men seated and strapped to the penetrator. The Asian was still unconscious and slumped like empty clothes against the shank.
He was held in place by the belt under his arms and around his back. The big Caucasian with the CAR-15 had slung the gun over one shoulder and was helping hold Dominguez against the shank. Dominguez seemed to be moving his head, but Kelly couldn"t be sure. Then Kelly had to pull the visor in his helmet down over his eyes because movement through the rain made the drops sting like pellets from a BB gun.
Kelly sensed the penetrator was more upright, which meant they were approaching the hoist. Then the sound of the rotor was deafening and he saw the bulk of the big ship looming in the clouds above him and then he was level with the door and Bemick snapped a long safety strap onto his harness and pulled him in. Bernick toggled the penetrator up to the door and the two of them pulled the three men in one by one and stretched them out on the floor of the cabin. Bernick began checking their wounds, Dominguez first. Kelly grabbed the unattached intercom cord and plugged in.
"We"re all aboard, Colonel," he said.
"You"d better ... get up here ... and take it, Joe," Paul Shilleto said in barely audible words.
Alarmed, Kelly got up and went forward to the c.o.c.kpit and climbed into his seat on the left. He put his hands on the controls and monitored the instruments to maintain level flight band.
"Okay," he said, "I"ve got it." He was surprised his hands were so steady.
He felt Shilleto release the controls and heard a loud groaning sigh over his headset and saw from the corner of his eye that Shilleto had slumped back in his seat, head rolling back and forth with the buffeting of the helicopter. His hands rose to his chest, then fell back into his lap.
"Flight mech," Kelly said into his boom mike, "get up here soon as you can. I think the Colonel"s been hit."
Kelly concentrated on turning the helicopter toward Udorn, then called Cricket and told the controller what had happened.
"Roger, Jolly Green Two Two," Hillsboro responded. "Understand you"ve made the pickup and have wounded on board.
Where are you headed and are you declaring an emergency?"
Kelly had checked the gages and found the number two engine was running hot. There was no transmission warning light, meaning the most critical piece of machinery to maintain flight was apparently not damaged. Then his eyes widened when he saw the failure warning light for the number two (second stage) hydraulic flight control system was glowing amber.
The main system was functioning properly but if it failed without backup the helicopter would plummet out of control.
"I"M headed for Udorn. And yeah," Kelly said with reluctance, "I"m declaring an emergency." All pilots hated to declare an emergency unless the aircraft had obvious problems, like being on fire or a wing half shot off. For an HH-5313, any flight control problem was an emergency.
"Jolly Green Two Two, Udorn is closed due to severe thunderstorms. The whole area is in bad shape. We"ll put you in touch with Invert Radar, they will vector you to Ubon.
NKP is closed. You got enough fuel?"
"Roger," Kelly said. "Okay on the fuel. Going to Invert." He changed frequency, identified himself to Invert, and received a vector and a7 promise of flight monitoring to Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base. He settled on course. He didn"t dare take his hands from the controls to check the slumped Shilleto.
Five long minutes pa.s.sed before Bernick came forward to attend to Paul Shilleto. He bent over the man, opened his straps, and unzipped his flight suit. He found no wounds nor saw signs of blood. When he took off Shilleto"s helmet he noticed the blue pallor on his face and around his lips. He grabbed his wrist to feel for a pulse. After a moment he slowly straightened.
"He"s dead, sir," he said on the intercom to Kelly. "Heart attack, I think."
Captain Joe Kelly didn"t fly the HH-53B above 150 feet once he was clear of the battle zone, in case he had engine or control problems. Unlike fixed-wing pilots, helicopter pilots are not comfortable at high alt.i.tudes. Fixed-wing pilots love all the alt.i.tude they can get so they can trade it for distance if they need to glide to a safe area. In combat, fixed-wing pilots also like a lot of alt.i.tude between them and ground fire. While that is true of helicopter pilots also, they get nervous sometimes if they must fly too high when they are not being shot at, particularly if they have a problem. Helicopter pilots don"t want to trade anything for anything; the one thing they cannot gain or lose if something goes wrong is time. They do not want the excess time necessary to descend from alt.i.tude if they have a problem. Helicopters are unique in that fashion-a problem usually means they have to get on the ground immediately before something catastrophic happens, like a rotor or gearbox failure. There is no glide whatsoever in those cases.
It is a straight-down plunge. When a gearbox breaks up, a helicopter becomes a very inelegant projectile. Helicopter pilots have a saying: Never hover high when you can hover low; never hover when you can land , Kelly wanted to get on the ground now, even if he had to put it down in some Thai rice paddy.
The weather was clear. Invert handed him off to Lion Radar, who set him up for approach and told him to call Ubon Tower on 236.6. The Tower cleared Jolly Green Two Two for approach and landing from any direction to runway 23; altimeter 29.55, winds from the west at 5. Kelly manipulated the controls to fly forward into a rolling landing. As soon as the wheels touched, he gently lowered the collective and pulled off, the power. At an intersection he turned off the runway onto a ramp.
When he stopped, he was surrounded by crash-crew fire trucks who aimed their foam turrets at the helicopter like cannons in battle. Kelly shut the engines down. When cleared in by the fire chief, two blue ambulances backed up to the right side door and two flight surgeons carrying medical kits and several male nurses scrambled into the cabin.
They shooed Kelly and Bernick out of the craft. In less than five minutes they had the situation in hand and motioned for litters from the ambulances.
Kelly and Bernick stood by the door and were surrounded by the colonels who commanded the fighter wing, the base, and various other organizations at Ubon. The commander of the Ubon Rescue Detachment, a sandy-haired lieutenant colonel, listened while Kelly told his story.
Kelly stopped in mid-sentence and they watched as the medics started to remove the litters from the helicopter.
Bakke was first out. His face was slack and he wore a sleepy morphine smile. A male nurse carried an IV jar that dripped liquid into his arm through a tube. Bernick moved anxiously alongside and accompanied him into the ambulance. Manuel Dominguez was on the next litter. His helmet was off and he wore a wide gauze bandage around his head. His eyes were swollen and black-and-blue and his gaze was c.o.c.keyed. Joe Kelly walked over to him and took his hand.
"Hey, El C, whaddya know? How do you feel?"
"I feel terrible, like some mule done kicked me in the head."
Kelly looked up at the flight surgeon accompanying the litter.
The doctor said, "A 5.56 slug entered his helmet from behind and slid halfway around the inside." He thumbed over his shoulder toward the helicopter. "You should get the helmet. Keep it as a souvenir for him."
"Will he be okay?" Kelly asked as they levered Dominguez into an ambulance.
"Probably, but we"ve got to keep him under close observation for several days. Skin line torn all the way around, but we won"t know about bones until we X-ray." The flight surgeon climbed into the wagon.
Kelly turned and saw the stocky civilian on a litter. An IV tube led to his right arm. He was accompanied by a nurse and a flight surgeon whose USAF fatigues bore the name Russell.
The civilian held up his hand to stop the litter. "I hear your name is Kelly. Mine"s Lochert." Wolf Lochert held up a hairy paw. "You did a great job. How"d you like to work for me?"
Kelly smiled and shook his hand. "Well, thanks, Mister Lochert, but I"m sort of employed as it is right now."
"I"m not a mister, I"m a Special Forces lieutenant colonel.
Come see me in the hospital." Wolf looked over and saw the next litter being carried out with the tiny body of Tewa covered completely by a blanket. They placed the litter flat on the ramp.
Wolf looked mutely at the nurse.
"Sorry, sir. He didn"t make it. He"s been dead a long time.
Never knew what hit him. He took one right through his heart."
"Awwr," Wolf said, and motioned to his bearers to carry him away. He looked pale and his eyes didn"t seem to focus well.
Alarmed, Kelly looked at Doc Russell, who said, "Probably mild concussion and some dehydration confusion." He stood back as Wolf Lochert was loaded into the ambulance, which drove away.
The last litter out carried the body of Lieutenant Colonel Paul Shilleto. The bearers laid it on the ramp next to that of Tewa.
"Ma.s.sive heart attack, died instantly," Doc Russell said.
Kelly remembered the lurch. Bernick had told him on the flight back to Ubon that during the rescue Colonel Shilleto had made a disturbing loud groan on the intercom and seemed to have lost control for an instant.
"The bird sank ten feet or so," Bernick had said, "while you guys were hanging on the wire. I thought for sure he had been hit and we were going in.
G.o.d, I thought we"d had it."
Kelly looked at Doc Russell. "I don"t think he died instantly.
He had to fly for at least another ten minutes before I was able to take over."
Doctor Conrad Russell looked thoughtful and solemn. "Then you had a dead man flying your ship."
1030 Hours LOCAL, SAt.u.r.dAY 12 OCTOBER 1968 OFFICER"S CLUB DINING Room, 8TH TACTICAL FIGHTER WING URON.
ROYAL THAI AIR FORCE BASE.
KINGDOM OF THAILAND.
"Hard day at the office?" Doctor Conrad Russell inquired of Major Court Bannister, who sat at a table in the Ubon Officer"s Club dining room.
Russell took a chair across from him and picked up a menu.
"Normal-normal. Excitement, terror, high blood pressure, lots of laughs." Court tried to joke while behind his eyes he saw Beercan Two Two explode on the night karst. He wore a black flight suit with his name and rank st.i.tched in small white letters on the left breast. His hair was cut short and bleached nearly blond by the sun. His face was Nordic, eyes gray-blue.
The Phantom FACs, the sixteen-man flying unit Court Bannister commanded, flew their F-4s only at night, which meant their days were reversed by twelve Hours. It was now 1830 (6:30 P.m.) by the Phantoms" daily clock, not early morning, and their working day was over. Some of the men had gone to the bar, others were working out at the base gym.
They felt elite, the Phantom FACs. They said they supposed pilots were okay, but they really wouldn"t want their daughter to marry one.
Court had had his daily meeting with the wing commander and all the other squadron commanders at 0730. Now he was having shrimp-fried rice for dinner. There was the usual hum and buzz of conversation as air-crew ordered breakfast from the Thai waitresses and talked among themselves. Doc Russell looked up as a waitress glided up to his side.
He ordered #5: Bacon (crisp), Eggs (poached), Toast (dry), Jam (raspberry), Coffee (black). The poached eggs usually arrived as hard-boiled golf b.a.l.l.s wobbling around on a saucer.
Doc Russell was a bit overweight, rotund in fact. His round, young-looking face vaguely resembled that of Baby Huey, the cartoon character. He wore standard Shade 45 USAF blue two-piece fatigues. His name, rank, and flight surgeon wings were embossed on a piece of leather st.i.tched to his left breast.
At Ubon, Doc Russell was doing what he loved best, serving as a flight surgeon to combat fighter crews in the United States Air Force.
Court and Doc Russell had known each other since their time together at Bien Hoa, South Vietnam, in 1966. Bannister had been flying F-100s on ground support missions; Russell had been the squadron"s flight surgeon.
Court knew Russell was competent, hardworking, and, unlike many military doctors, not in the service merely to pay off his medical schooling tab picked up by the USAF, or for the varied experience that would take a civilian ten years of general practice to acquire. Those kind of MI)s usually snickered at the servicemen they treated and could hardly wait until they could get out and earn eighty grand a year and tell funny stories about the nincomp.o.o.ps in uniform.
"You"re not smoking anymore, I notice," Doc Russell said.
"Trying to quit. Working out a little, too. Weights, running."
Court pulled a Zippo with a rubber band wound around it from his left-sleeve zippered pocket. "Kept this for old time"s sake."
"Makes your old doctor"s heart happy," Doc Russell said He stared at his greasy bacon and pushed it away. "Maybe I should do a bit of the same."
He looked up. "Better get over to the hospital," Doc Russell said.
"Admitted an old pal of yours last night from that shot-up Jolly Green that recovered here."
Court looked up in worried antic.i.p.ation. "Wolf Lochert," Doc Russell said, then added hurriedly when he saw the concern on Court"s face, "But he"s going to be okay. No wounds, just a mild concussion. You can ride back with me after your breakfast ... ah, dinner."
Army Lieutenant Colonel Wolf Lochert occupied a bed in a tiny two-bed room in one of the connected trailers that made up the Ubon hospital complex. The other bed was empty. An IV rack stood in one corner. It had held, one after the other, the six bottles of 5-percent saline solution that had been dripped into Wolf Lochert"s veins. While Doc Russell studied Wolf"s chart, Wolf smiled and shook hands as best he could with Court Bannister. They had known each other since 1966, when Lochert had been on temporary duty with the III Corps Mike Force team outside Bien Hoa Air Base. Court had seen Wolf recently at a celebration party following Wolf"s court-martial acquittal.
Wolf told Court about his mission to survey the Lima Sites in Laos and what had happened during and after the C-46 shootdown. "Now I know why you pilots never let a Jolly buy a drink," he rumbled. "They"re magnificent."
"So you were on your way to Eagle Station," Court said. He recounted his experience three days before with the shot-up F-4.
He described his morning recce of the site after the attack as easy, all was calm.
"No one shot at you?" Wolf asked. "No big guns?"
"Didn"t see a thing. That doesn"t mean there weren"t small arms. You can"t hear them, so you can"t tell about that until you get some holes, and we didn"t have any holes. The controller on the ground, Lima 14, said all was quiet for the moment, but he thought that it was a probe and there was more to come."
"Yeah," Wolf said. "I read the report and I think there will be more."
He looked thoughtful. "You know, there is a lot of hidden meaning behind the fact the attackers withdrew so easily and that no one shot at you. Lost radio contact, you say, at the first moment. Sounds like taking out the radio antenna was intentional, not just a lucky round.
That point wasn"t made in the report. No one thought to call you to see if you saw anything unusual."
"That"s normal," Court said. "If I"d been a slow FAC, maybe they would have." Slow FACs flew propeller airplanes, not jets.
"Here"s what I think," Wolf said, elbowing himself to sit up.
"Eagle Station is probably the most important post in all of Laos to help hit the targets in North Vietnam. What greater coup than to knock the site out to slow down the air strikes?"
"Is what you think an official evaluation?" Court asked.
Wolf barked a deep laugh. "Not at all. It"s just a supposition at this point. I need more data before I can be sure."
"How soon are you going back to Vientiane?" Court asked him.
"This afternoon."
Doc Russell looked up sharply. "Negative on that, Colonel. You are going to log a minimum of forty-eight Hours" observation right here in this room on this air patch." Doc Russell made what he hoped was a menacing face. "What it is," he said to Court as much as to Wolf, "is a mild concussion.
Pulse, respiration, and blood pressure are fine, which leads me to believe there is no hemorrhage in the brain. But there could be a slow seepage from a ruptured blood vessel or capillary.
We check his vital signs every thirty minutes to see if there is any dramatic change. So he can"t leave for two days."
Wolf barked a sharp laugh. "I"ve already been in contact with Udorn.
They"re sending an airplane down to pick me up at 1600 today. That will have given you"-he consulted his wrist.w.a.tch--"nearly twenty-four Hours to observe. I"ve got work to do."
Doc Russell came to his bedside. "Wolf, if you can climb out of bed, close your eyes, and stand on your right foot for one minute, I"ll personally drive you to the flight line to catch that flight."
With a disdainful look, Wolf Lochert leapt from the bed, his green hospital gown flapping around his legs, closed his eyes, lifted his left leg, and promptly crashed back onto his bed.
Court and Doc Russell lifted his legs and straightened the grizzled Lochert on the bed. "What happened?" Lochert asked in a surprisingly quiet voice.