9mm ball ammunition with 112-grain bullets. Running the ballistic calculator, he ran the bullet drop values for 100, 200, 300, and 400 yards.
He was surprised to see that at 400 yards he would have to hold over-aiming at a point far above his target-a whopping 228 inches. He determined that was roughly three and a third man-heights. He was also disappointed to see that the energy of the bullets decreased from 451 foot/pounds at the muzzle to just 176 foot/pounds at 400 yards. Andy jotted down the yardage and bullet drop values.
Back at his CHU, he printed out a small drop table with a fine point Sharpie pen on an index card, trimmed it to fit on the top of one of his magazine pouch flaps, and taped it on. He knew that he’d be horribly outclassed in a long-range gun battle with anyone armed with a center-fire rifle, but at least he wouldn’t be in the dark about how much to hold over.
Andy and Lars had been taught about long-range pistol shooting by their father, five years before the Crunch, Robie had attended a class by Cope Reynolds of Southwest Shooting Authority in Luna. Robie was enthusiastic about sharing his new skills. After completing the class, Robie could hit a man-size target at 250 yards with roughly 50 percent of his shots from his Lahti 9mm pistol. When Andy came home to visit their father on leave, Robie showed both of his sons the basics of what he’d learned in the course. Soon they were scoring fairly consistent hits on a twenty-four-inch steel disk at 200 yards.
Andy was officially released for his return to Germany, but he was in limbo. He was desperate to find transport-any transport-out of Afghanistan. The Military Airlift Command (MAC) flights had already become less frequent because of the ongoing troop drawdown, but more recently flights had been nearly suspended. The reason cited was the new Fuel Austerity Program (FAP) that was mandated by Congress. Cutting the military fuel budget by 80 percent left most naval ships idling at port and most transport planes grounded. The U.S. military’s new catchphrase was “Billions for bailouts, but not a nickel for fuel.”
After more than a week of begging on the phone and texting, Andy was finally allotted a seat on a German Luftwaffe C-160 transport. To make this flight, Laine had to be at the military side of the Kabul airport in just five hours. This would be impossible by road travel, so Andy called in a favor with the FOB commander to prevail on a West Point classmate who was the commander of the nearby 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which had organic air assets. Just forty minutes after his call, an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter flown with an empty gunner’s seat touched down on the main pad at FOB Wolverine. The helicopter never shut down. It took a while to cram Laine’s gear into a cargo compartment and into the gunner’s seat, where Laine also sat. Unlike the older Cobra gunships, where the copilot/gunner sits in the rear, with the Apache, the copilot/gunner sits in the front seat. The pilot, a crusty CW4 named Halverson, gave Andy a nickel ride, winding up the main rotor and pulling pitch with gusto, making the tips of the main rotor come within five feet of the ground, and kicking up a substantial cloud of dust.
After getting his helmet on and figuring out the microphone switch, Andy exclaimed, “Thanks for the lift!”
“Not a prob, sir. I love making unscheduled flights like these. I just hope that someone’s willing to do the same for me when I’ve got my date with the Freedom Bird. Just enjoy the scenery and, uh, needless to say, keep your nose-picker off the controls-aside from the ‘Rambo mic switch’-and we’ll be on the ground in about thirty-five minutes.” That mention of the microphone switch referred to the red button atop most U.S. military helicopter control sticks. In a notorious movie gaffe that made military helicopter pilots groan, that was the button shown used for launching rockets.
“That sounds great! You are a gentleman and a scholar.” Andy felt a huge rush of emotion. He was finally headed home. Watching the landscape below, he mainly thought about Kaylee. He snapped almost fifty digital pictures of Afghan villages, typical walled family farm compounds, the outlines of ancient ruins, and, finally, the hazy skyline of Kabul. He clicked the red microphone switch and commented: “I wish my fiancee could see this.”
The warrant said, “No you don’t! Because if she were seeing this, then she’d be deployed here in the Big Sandbox.”
Laine laughed, “I suppose you’re right.”
Andy stood on the tarmac at Kabul International, watching the AH-64 fade to a speck in the distance. Even though it was now October, it still felt hot. He had a comfortable two hours before his Luftwaffe flight was scheduled to take off. He shouldered his pack and duffel and his M4 carbine, then walked over to the FLOPS shop- the new, dramatically scaled-down and consolidated U.S. Army Aviation Flight Operations Center, Kabul. There he quickly bummed a two-minute ride to the German hangars. Part of the route cut across an active taxiway, which was unnerving, but the specialist who was driving acted as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. Just another day in the land of Kipling.
Checking in for the Luftwaffe flight was a breeze, even though he didn’t have a scrap of documentation for the flight itself, just his movement orders. All of the arrangements had been made by phone, and the German officers had gotten the word that he was expected. They handed him a complex itinerary marked
Thinking about the SIG 9mm pistol buried near the bottom of his duffel, he felt a bit of anxiety. Strangely, even the obvious presence of his M4 carbine was not questioned. Since nearly all of the Heer troops around him carried Heckler & Koch G36 rifles, it didn’t look out of the ordinary. Some of these troops carried their rifles by their long top-carry handles, and this almost made Andy laugh. It looked like they were carrying attache cases. None of his bags were inspected. Only his military ID card and the flight itinerary sheet were checked.
The series of cargo shuttle flights, by way of Azerbaijan, took a grueling thirty-seven hours. The planes were too noisy for a comfortable conversation, and most of his fellow passengers-a mix of Heer ground troops and Luftwaffe airmen-seemed tipsy from preflight drinks. At least they shared Andy’s joy to be heading home.
8. Ankunft
After what seemed like an eternity, Andy’s flight touched down at Rhein-Main air base. But the hurry-up- and-wait was far from over. He still had to travel to the Stryker Cavalry Regiment’s headquarters in Bavaria for his last few days of outprocessing.
He spent the next night holed up at an Air Force Bachelor Officers’ Quarters (BOQ), waiting for a flight to Ramstein Air Base-the base nearest to Vilseck with regularly scheduled flights.
The long-distance phone lines in the United States were “temporarily out of service,” so Andy was not able to call Kaylee. But he was able to e-mail her and get her e-mails in reply. They each sent dozens of notes during the two days and nights that Laine was stuck at Rhein-Main. For some reason the Skype voice and video service wasn’t working. He knew their headquarters were in Luxembourg, but he wondered where the Skype server was, and if that was causing the problem. He surmised that the server was probably in a fire-gutted building in some riot-
