"Nothing. I just haven"t responded to it in years."
"There are other things you haven"t responded to either, you know."
Kelly and Dominguez had both been in rescue squadrons for years, but only in the last three months had they been in the same unit. Kelly had tried without success to get Dominguez to answer his concerned questions about their days at the Academy. At first Dominguez wouldn"t even respond to Kelly"s overtures of friendliness.
"Let"s go into town and get a beer," Kelly had said to him when they first saw each other at Udorn, where their rescue squadron was based.
"No, sir, thank you, sir," Dominguez had responded, face and body stiff.
"G.o.dd.a.m.n, Dom, come off it. It"s me-Joe, the old RedTagged b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
"Sir, don"t call me Dom." He had continued to stare off in the distance, his face devoid of expression.
"Well, f.u.c.k you very much, old buddy," Kelly had said and grinned. "I"m just going to bug you until you turn back into the neat guy who was once my roomie. Don"t you even want to hear what happened to TanakaT After a few missions and more urging by Kelly, Dominguez had unb.u.t.toned enough to go drink beer with Joe, always in downtown Udorn. They couldn"t go to each other"s military clubs on the air base. Officers did not go to NCO clubs and vice versa. Dominguez had seemed genuinely interested in Tanaka"s career as a fighter pilot, happy to hear he was at Ubon, and had been quite surprised that Joe Kelly had selected helicopters. "I"ll tell you why someday," Kelly had replied.
"So I don"t respond," Dominguez said to Kelly now as they sat in the c.o.c.kpit. "Don"t make a federal case out of it. Manuel"s okay, or even El C does just fine."
"So I noticed," Kelly said. He stared out the c.o.c.kpit window for a few seconds, then leaned back and put his elbow on the back of his seat.
"Barbara called me at the Academy once after you left. Did you know that? She wanted to know if I heard from you, how you were. Said she was sorry you were gone, but her dad was delighted. Said she might go east for school, Va.s.sar. Or she might get married."
Dominguez was silent.
"What the f.u.c.k, Dom," Kelly said, his exasperation clear.
"You could at least be civilized about this s.h.i.t. You seemed so much in love with her. She finally got married, you know." He looked over at his friend. "Did you know she got married?"
Dominguez spoke in harsh tones. "Look, Joe, we"ve been through this before and each time you ask more questions. I told you, I don"t want to hear about her, I don"t want to talk about her."
"For Christ"s sake, Dom--"
"And I told you not to call me Dom."
"Well, h.e.l.l, it"s the only time I get a rise out of you. Why won"t you even tell me what the honor violation thing was all about? We found out you went to the honor representative, told him something so that he convened a board on you, and blooie-you were gone."
"Dammit, Joe, you"ve got to get off my back. Okay, maybe we are friends again, but if you want to keep it that way, then don"t ask me about the Academy. You copy?" Dominguez"s dark eyes looked even darker and more unfathomable with each word that he spoke.
Kelly threw up his hands. "G.o.d, you Texans. Bite the bullet and all that s.h.i.t." He sighed and made a small smile. "Tell me, how many missions will this make, the two of us together?"
"Twenty-two."
"And how many saves?"
"You know, dumbs.h.i.t." Dominguez tried to smile.
"Yeah," Kelly said with obvious contentment in his voice, "I know.
Seven." He looked at Dominguez. "Want to make it eight?"
"Try me."
"Well, we gotta flimflam Colonel Shilleto a bit, but I"d like to see if we can get that fellow with the Wolf call sign to come up on Guard. I know just about where it was that we lost him.
The signal loss was so fast, without any fade at all, that it had to be an obstruction like a mountain crest-"
"Or a cave," Dominguez said.
"Exactly. And I"ve got a pretty good fix on the map and in my head where it all took place. We were headed almost due north when we lost the signal. I remember the karst shapes in front of me at the time, they had sort of a triple peak and an odd-shaped valley. If I can find that headed south, there is a good chance we can raise them when we pa.s.s over the ridge to the south of the peaks. We"ll make a little racket up there and call him on Guard. See if we can get an answer."
"Do you think Colonel Shilleto will keep his cool if we, you know, kind of get into it?"
"Actually, in a nutsh.e.l.l, to be perfectly honest, no ... well, h.e.l.l, that"s not right. Maybe he ... s.h.i.t, I dunno. He is ready to DEROS."
DEROS was the acronym for Date Eligible to Return from Overseas. The date was the last day a military man served overseas and would be used to count the time until his next tour. In the Vietnam War, each man and woman counted down the twelve months----except Marines, who had a thirteen-month tour-to their DEROS.
"And a man ready to DEROS runs cautious," Kelly said. "In his case, real cautious."
"I flew with him earlier," Dominguez said. "He used to be okay."
"I know. But after a couple hairy ones in North Vietnam and that helo that was shot from under him, he"s ready to hang it up. s.h.i.t, he"s been in Rescue off and on since Korea. Got more saves than Billy Graham.
We"ll work something out. When I say "look at the view," you say you saw something and want permission to fire. I"ll make sure I"m flying and will do a quick 360. Hose off a few more rounds and we"ll see who the noise brings up on the radio. Let"s try to ease into this thing, keep the pulse rate low and steady."
"What about that 12.7 that hosed us yesterday? We go too low, we"ll raise more than some guy on a radio. That gun"s effective as h.e.l.l up to 3,300 feet."
"Trust me, Dom. Trust me." Kelly laughed. "Listen, I"m due some time off pretty soon. What say we make it to Bangkok together?"
"Fraternizing with enlisted is still off-limits, Joe."
"Come off it, El C. You want to go or not?"
"Sure." Dominguez turned to look at his friend. "Red-Tagged b.a.s.t.a.r.ds Hang Together," he said.
0830 Hours LOCAL, FRIDAY 11 OCTOBER 1968 NA KHANG, LIMA SITE 36.
ROYALTY OF LAos The rain had let up. At eight-thirty, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Shilleto strode through the steamy mist to Jolly Green 22. He had Bakke and Bernick with him. Kelly sat on the back ramp, munching the last of his crackers and peanut b.u.t.ter and washing them down with water from his canteen. Dominguez had gone to get his flight gear from the other helicopter.
"I hear she"ll fly," Shilleto said in a cheerful voice to Kelly. "What say we crank up and take her home? I checked and the weather is just fine once we get to Udorn. Got thunderstorms due in here by noon, though. Sergeant Bernick talked to the maintenance officer and convinced him we have an airworthy airplane. We have one-time permission to fly it back for repair "Sure thing, Colonel," Kelly said and got to his feet. The two officers walked forward to begin the preflight with Bernick.
Shilleto personally inspected each of the eleven patch jobs.
"Excellent, excellent," he said to Bernick. "That should get us home."
Dominguez walked up, carrying two C-ration boxes stacked on top of each other. They seemed very heavy and he was sweating from the load.
"You sure must like to eat that Army stuff," Shilleto said, smiling at his little witticism.
"Ali, yes, sir," Dominguez said and hurried into the cabin through the side door, where Bakke was preflighting his equipment.
After the preflight, and while Shilleto was still outside talking to Bernick, Kelly walked up the ramp to where Dominguez had stowed the two boxes in the cabin.
"Look," he said, "I know better. Those aren"t C-rats. What you got in those boxes, El C?"
Dominguez made a wry grin and opened the top box. It was packed with a dozen of the Mason jars HH-53 helicopter crew chiefs use to take fuel samples.
"You plan on doing a lot of samples or something? What the h.e.l.l are these for?" Kelly asked.
"These," Dominguez said, and opened the second box, which had twelve M26 hand grenades and several bandoliers of 7.62 ammunition. "Pull the pin on the grenade, hold the handle in place, stuff it in the jar, screw on the cap, and you have a little something to drop on the bad guys." He touched the ammo. "I always carry a couple hundred extra rounds. You never know."
Kelly clapped him on the shoulder. "s.h.i.t hot. You"re right, you never know." He went to the c.o.c.kpit and was surprised to see Lieutenant Colonel Paul Shilleto sitting in the right seat of the machine. He put on his parachute and eased into the left seat. Just the opposite with fixed-wing aircraft, the pilot in command sits in the right seat in helicopters, the copilot in the left. All crew members wore parachutes, but only the PJs and the flight mech had any real chance of a successful bailout in an emergency.
"Joe," Shilleto said, "since this is my last flight, I"d like to be the AC. I"d like to handle everything-the radios, the navigation. No autopilot, just hand-fly the whole route."
"Hand-fly?" Kelly interrupted. "You must be some kind of a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t, Colonel." The HH-53B was a notoriously difficult helicopter to hand-fly.
Pilots on cross-country flights engaged the automatic flight control system that provided heading, alt.i.tude, and roll stability. It was simply too fatiguing to spend long Hours at the controls. Best to save your energy and freshness for ingress, pickup, and egress from high-threat areas.
"Yes, hand-fly," Shilleto said. "I"m going to some Pentagon staff job, and who knows how long it will be before I ever fly a helicopter again.
Maybe never." He knew Kelly was on orders for the whole deployment and that Kelly could designate who flew what position.
Kelly knew and understood what was going on in Shilleto"s mind. "Sure, Colonel, go ahead. It would be my pleasure to fly as your copilot."
Shilleto looked relieved, then bent to his duties. He spread out the chart he had made on his kneeboard.
Kelly looked over at Shilleto"s map and could see the direct line he had drawn to Udorn without any deviation. The area he felt sure held the survivors, though only ten minutes south of their takeoff location at Lima 36, was several miles to the east of the line.
The two pilots and Bernick the flight mech went through the ENGINE START and BEFORE TAKEOFF procedures.
"Number two oil temp is a little high, but everything else looks good to me," Shilleto said. "Let"s launch."
Kelly and Bernick agreed, Shilleto got a release from Air America ops on the radio, and they were airborne.
Shilleto followed the Air America instrument departure plan for helicopters, and at 5,000 feet above the ground they broke through the clouds that cl.u.s.tered over Lima Site 36. Their altimeter registered 8,000 feet. Beneath them and to the south were scattered small puffy white clouds.
"Beautiful day," Shilleto hummed and fixed course for Udorn.
In minutes they were almost abeam the point where Kelly was sure the survivors were hiding.
"Ah, sir," he began, "maybe we could just swing a bit east. Quite a view over there. Maybe we might hear something from those guys who called us yesterday." He had surrept.i.tiously switched the intercom so that the two PJs and the flight mech could hear the conversation.
"No," Shilleto said. "I specifically asked Compress about that. We are to bring this airplane straight back, no deviations.
They said they"d have somebody up there to check the whole thing out."
Maybe Paul Shilleto wasn"t Rescue Crew Commander for this flight, but he was a lieutenant colonel who knew an order when he heard one.
"Well, they don"t know quite where to look," Kelly said, "and we do." He hoped Dominguez would get the drift and act accordingly. Since he wasn"t flying, Kelly couldn"t make the 360-degree turn he had promised.
"Not with this bird, we don"t. You forget, we got shot up yesterday.
We"ve got patched-up holes and a damaged engine. And who knows, they probably have even more guns there now. Besides, if you don"t get a shootdown off the ground right away, he"s as good as captured. No, we"re pressing on for the home drome."
They whirred on for thirty more seconds, then both pilots jerked at the sound of a 7.62mm Gatling gun as it spun up and made a deep-throated moan.
"For Christ"s sake," Shilleto cried over the intercom. "What was that for?"
"Left gun, sir. I wanted to test-fire my weapon. Make sure it was clear. Thought it had a problem yesterday, sir," Dominguez responded.
Then the right gun and the aft gun opened up for a split second.
"Yes, sir," Bakke said on the intercom. "Thought we"d check them all out."
"Okay," Shilleto responded, "but you should have informed me first."
Kelly looked down and saw they were now due west of where he thought the survivors were. He recognized the triple peaks and the odd-shaped valley. The small white clouds looked like low flak bursts, he thought.
In a few seconds they would be past the karst ridge, and if the survivors were still alive and free, their radio should be in range.
He verified he was receiving Guard Channel, then decided to h.e.l.l with what Paul Shilleto thought and switched his transmitter to Guard.
"Wolf, Wolf, if you read Jolly Green Two Two, come up on voice or beeper. Wolf, come up on voice or beeper."
"That won"t do you any good," Shilleto said. "No one will answer, and if they do, we can"t do anything about it anyhow."
At those words, all three guns fired a quick burst.
"Sor, sor, is shoot, is shoot," Tewa said as he shook Wolf Lochert.
"Shoot?" Lochert said as if from a great distance. "Who"s shooting at us?"
"Sky gun is shoot. Sky gun is shoot," Tewa said and pointed his finger to the entrance of the cave.
Wolf blinked and through force of will brought his mind to bear on the subject at hand, a sky gun. The two words sounded melodic to his ear, they had a nice rhythm and rolled off the tongue well, but what on earth did they mean? Then he heard the muted roar of the minigun and knew what it meant: there was an American airplane of some kind in the local area and he had to get their attention immediately.
"Radio," he said to Tewa. "Give radio." His thirst was nearly unbearable. His tongue felt thick and he had trouble speaking.
Tewa placed the radio in Wolf"s hand. Wolf extended the antenna, placed the transmit switch from OFF through VOICE to BEACON. Instead of transmitting words when the b.u.t.ton was pushed, the little radio now sent out a distinctive and continuous whooping sound over Guard Channel. The signal both drained the battery quickly and prevented other transmissions on Guard. To receive, Wolf would have to turn the switch to VOICE. He placed the radio on the floor of the cave by his side and pushed it toward the entrance so the antenna was pointing out of the opening. He felt woozy and had to get the attention of the Americans, and the automatic beeper was the fastest method until he could get his thoughts collected.
The eerie whoop-whooping sound of the beacon in their headsets caused Kelly and Shilleto to swing their heads and look sharply at each other.
Kelly had been alert for just that sort of signal while Shilleto piloted the helicopter, and quickly switched on the direction-finding equipment.
The needle swung to their eight o"clock position.
"Sir," he said over the sound of the loud signal, "turn port.
They were still at 8,000 feet.