sudden sunbeam that quickly disappeared into the stratus. The Stallion was on instrument flying, the copilot thanking God for the upgrade that had finally given the CH-53Es the forward-looking infrared and radar.
“Eight o’clock! Eight o’clock! AA!” The ramp’s right-side rear gunner was shouting to alert his ramp and crew-door colleagues. Aussie was able to glimpse only part of the helo’s two arcs of red tracer that were streaming earthward as they sought to silence the two anti-aircraft batteries manned by gunners who from this height looked no bigger than toys.
“More at six!” bellowed Eddie Mervyn.
“I see ’em!” acknowledged the crew-door gunner. This was followed by long, concerted bursts from the Stallion’s gunners, the interior of the “fuse,” the Stallion’s long troop cabin, filling with cough-inducing cordite fumes together with the smell of perspiring bodies, the heat having been turned way up to counteract the freezing rush of the slipstream through the open ramp and front crew door. Aussie saw Freeman talking animatedly on the radio phone and then caught sight of the Harrier, its 25 mm GAU cannon obliquely spitting devastating white fire into both AA batteries, knocking them out.
Several marines were being sick without time to grab the thick, brown paper “lunch bags” issued earlier by the crew chief. Over the noise of machine-gun fire, the rotors’ whoomp whoomp, and engines roaring, there was now a series of almost inaudible, soft, popping noises as the Stallion released its flares in hopes of drawing any anti-aircraft missiles to them rather than to the helo. Upon entering Russian airspace, everyone with the Bird Rescue armada had been worrying about SAMs, the big Russian surface-to-air missiles that had taken such a heavy toll of the B-52s and other American aircraft in ’Nam. Freeman, however, with the Priest Lake catastrophe fresh in mind, was more worried about the smaller, deadly Igla and other shoulder-fired MANPADs at this relatively low altitude. Iglas had a range of more than two miles. He was praying that the AA gunfire was all the flak that would come the helos’ way. The general checked the Super Stallion’s airspeed indicator: 167 m.p.h. With the Stallion’s engines on maximum power, they should be over the site soon, unless more AA batteries were waiting in ambush down the valley.
A marine lurched forward, his insides blown across the aisle. There was a tremendous flapping noise as ragged aluminum edging from the fist-sized hole that had been shot out of the Stallion’s starboard side trembled violently like a flag in a stiff gale. There was panic, half a dozen marines covered in entrails and blood, one of the most disgusting sights Freeman and his team had ever seen. The crew chief, though, had witnessed it before, and with astonishing agility, given the crazy gyrations of the Stallion as its pilots fought to regain control after the impact, he had produced two large khaki plastic bags, which he dumped at the feet of those covered in the blood and entrails which, moments before, had been their buddy, Private First Class James Cartwright.
“This bag,” yelled the crew chief, opening one, “has clean rags in it. The other is for the dirty rags. Got it?”
One marine, his face splattered with his dead comrade’s blood and other unidentifiable pieces of flesh and bone, couldn’t respond, his eyes frozen, his body rigid with fear. The crew chief shook him hard by the shoulder, the chief’s canvas glove immediately soaking up blood. “Hey!” shouted the chief, his right hand grabbing the marine’s chin. “You hear me, Marine?” He said it with a DI’s command voice, an undisguised call to duty, a tone born and bred daily by the corps, in the corps, for the corps. The marine answered the crew chief by assuring him that he was okay.
Freeman glimpsed a marine beside him. It was Melissa Thomas, down on her knees by the dead marine, placing a red gelatinous lump of something she picked up into the dump bag. The AA fire was already past, but no one noticed for several seconds. Freeman’s team had seen dead and dying from Southeast Asia to Iraq, but several of the marines were traumatized by the sight of one of their comrades with his entrails blasted out of him. Aussie assured the traumatized marine, “You’ll be right, mate. Hang on.” Unable to find his “lunch bag” in time, the marine was throwing up violently into his helmet. He fumbled for his canteen.
“Nah,” said Aussie, giving the marine his own sick bag and taking the man’s helmet from him. Aussie turned to the crew chief. “Got some extra water, Chief?”
“Right with you,” said the chief, and went back to his seat under which he had a four-gallon plastic drum of distilled water, which he passed to Aussie. The SpecFor man dumped the helmet’s contents into the big plastic “out” bag. The cloying stench of sick mixing with the smell of aviation exhaust was enough to make several others feel ill, including Johnny Lee and Choir. Aussie washed out the sick marine’s helmet, and gave it back to him. His name patch read “R. Kegg.”
“Listen,” Aussie lied to the grateful young marine, who looked no older than sixteen, “combat’ll be easier than this.”
The marine nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
“Anytime, mate.” Aussie could see, however, that the young marine was abnormally strung out with anxiety. “Listen, press your tongue hard up against your palate. It forces you to breathe deeply. You’ll relax.” Aussie paused. “They teach you that at Parris?”
“I wasn’t at Parris, sir,” the youngster said, almost apologetically.
“Oh,” said Aussie. “So you must live west of the ole Mississippi. “You were trained at Point Loma then?”
“Yes, sir. I’m a — I’m a ‘Hollywood Marine.’” He tried to smile.
“So, did they teach you that trick?”
“What — oh, about pressing—”
“Yeah, pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, what the fuck
“I’m not sure,” she answered, embarrassed by the sudden attention.
“Not sure? Hey!” Aussie yelled so loudly he startled young Kegg. “You marines! Listen up. A tip from Uncle Lewis. On long op flights, or short ones, in any sticky situation, you press your tongue hard up against your palate. You
“Who are you?” demanded a marine.
“Grandstander!” offered another.
Aussie ignored them and winked at Melissa, who was helping him and who, unlike some of the others, understood that Aussie Lewis was only trying to boost morale, distracting them from the horror that had been visited upon them by the anti-aircraft fire.
“You’ve seen this stuff before,” Aussie told Melissa.
“I was a nurse’s helper in an ER for a while,” she replied. “Before I joined the corps.”
“Good for you, marine,” said Aussie.
Melissa returned the smile which, given the bloody circumstances aboard the Super Stallion, struck some of the marines as disrespectful at best, at worst, obscene, in the presence of the dead marine. But Melissa couldn’t help her response to Aussie; it was the first time since Parris that a man, and a renowned SpecWar warrior at that, had said something so warmly to her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“He made a pass at you?” taunted one sullen marine as Melissa returned to her seat at the rear of the helo and buckled up.
“No,” she replied. “He said something nice to me.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Hey, Thomas,” asked a marine who was nursing a SAW. “This Aussie. Isn’t he the guy who coldcocked that A-rab fanatic?”
“All A-rabs are fanatics,” proffered a mortar squad loader.
“Bullshit!” said another marine.
“Whatever he used,” said the SAW marine, “that’s him. Right?
“Yes,” said Melissa. “That’s him.”
“My old man told me ’bout that convoy,” put in another marine. “The A-rab was belted and was using a baby as cover, tryin’ to blow up the whole fuckin’ convoy when Thomas’s boyfriend here wasted the fucker. So, technically, he didn’t coldcock him. He used a shotgun.”
“Horseshit!” argued another. “The Aussie took him out with a piece.”
