far away.”
The pilot thought he was going to go for it anyway-bingo and emergency fuel figures always had an extra margin included “for the wife and kids”-but there was another helicopter already en route, so why risk losing a helicopter if they screwed up the fuel flow and quantity numbers? “Paul, looks like you’re going to go swimming for a while,” the pilot said. “Feel up to it? Three-Two is only thirty minutes out. Last water temp was sixty-seven.”
“No sweat, Lieutenant,” the rescue swimmer, Petty Officer Paul Malkin, said. He wore a twelve-millimeter one-piece cold-water wet suit, which would keep him safe in water down to forty degrees. He sat on the open door’s sill, removed his headset, put his mask and snorkel in place, and gave the copilot a thumbs-up.
“Stand by on the rescue container,” the pilot said. He maneuvered over to the raft. “Now!” The sensor operator threw the orange-and-white fiberglass container overboard out the starboard door. When it hit the water, it automatically opened and deployed a four-person covered life raft with water, survival, and medical equipment secured inside. The pilot translated slightly, getting as close as possible to the survivors without flipping their raft or the rescue raft over with his rotor wash. When he was sure he was clear of both rafts, the rescue swimmer jumped out the door, holding his mask firmly in place.
“Swimmer in the water,” the sensor operator reported on intercom. A moment later: “Swimmer signaling okay, heading for the survivors.”
“Emergency fuel,” the copilot reported.
“We are outta here,” the pilot said. “Radio the Rourke, have them make a ready deck, we’re going to be on fumes.”
The rescue swimmer Australian-crawled over to the buoy attached to the lanyard of the four-man rescue raft, attached the ring to his waist, then swam over to the survivors, towing the bigger raft behind him. One crewman was atop the other, and the one on top looked pretty messed up-maybe a broken neck. He felt for a pulse and didn’t feel anything, but survivors’ bodies immersed in seawater for long periods of time were known to shut down so much that a pulse was undetectable, only to be revived later. He rolled the crewman on top off the other one, letting him float by himself faceup using his own still-inflated personal flotation vest.
The one on bottom definitely had a pulse. He still wore his flight helmet, gloves, and survival vest, but he was sitting in seawater that had mostly filled the little raft. “Sir, this is Petty Officer Malkin, USS Rourke, United States Navy,” the rescue swimmer shouted. “Can you hear me?” The crewman’s head moved, he coughed, and his eyes fluttered. “If you can hear me, sir, listen up, I’m here to rescue you,” Malkin said. “You’re going to be okay, buddy. I’m going to get you and the other guy in my raft. My chopper will be back in no time. Hang tough and do what I tell you, okay? Are you hurt? Any broken bones? Do you feel any pain?”
The survivor coughed, spitting up a mouthful of water, then actually tried to sit up. He looked at Malkin…and it wasn’t until then that he could see that the he was really a she! Not only that, but she was an Air Force colonel, the equivalent of a captain in the Navy! She was by far the highest-ranking person he had ever rescued! The name on her badge below her command pilot’s wings read CAZZOTTA. “Can you hear me, Colonel Cazzotta?” he shouted.
Cazzotta coughed again, rolled to one side, then looked at him. “Thank you for rescuing us, Petty Officer Malkin,” she said, “but can you please stop yelling now?” Malkin couldn’t help but chuckle-here they were, bobbing in the Gulf of Aden hundreds of miles from help, and this zoomie colonel was cracking wise. She looked around. “Where’s Frodo?”
“Frodo?”
“The other crewmember-Major Alan Friel.”
Malkin looked at the other crewmember’s flight suit and verified the name. “He’s right here,” he said, “but he looks like he’s hurt bad. Let’s get you into the big raft first. Can you move? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“My neck and back are killing me,” Boxer said, “but I think I can move.” As Malkin pulled the big raft over, she tried to sit up and was rewarded with a shot of pain that sped through her neck and zapped her all the way down to her legs. But she was still able to get up far enough to grab the other raft, and with Malkin’s help she rolled herself off her raft and into the other, suppressing a cry of pain but thankful not to be lying in a raft full of water.
“Those cases on the side of the raft have bottles of water and survival blankets, ma’am,” Malkin shouted. “Can you reach them?”
“Get Frodo,” Boxer said. “I’m okay.”
Malkin returned to the second crewmember to do a more thorough examination. “I’m afraid he’s dead, Colonel,” he said a few minutes later. He brought the body over to the raft, climbed aboard, pulled him inside, then pointed out his injuries to Boxer. “I’m very sorry, ma’am,” he said. Boxer was too exhausted and dehydrated to cry anymore. Malkin had her drink a tiny bit of water, checked her over carefully for any injuries, wrapped her in a survival blanket, then covered the body with another survival blanket.
About twenty minutes later he heard on his radio: “Sierra, Trident Seven-One, standing by to authenticate.”
“This is Sierra,” Malkin responded. He looked at the code card secured to the radio and mentally computed the proper challenge based on the current time and the daily authentication code. This was a standard challenge-and- response security procedure for communications on an unsecure channel. “Authenticate tango-mike.”
“Seven-One authenticates ‘charlie.’”
Malkin computed the response on his card and came up with a matching answer. “Good copy, Seven- One.”
“Roger,” the helicopter copilot replied. “Sierra, authenticate yankee-hotel.”
Malkin did the reverse on his card and responded, “Sierra authenticates ‘bravo.’”
“Good copy, Paul,” the copilot of the second Seahawk radioed. “We’ve got a good DF steer and it checks with the GPS coordinates, about two minutes…”
Suddenly Malkin saw two streaks of white flash across the sky overhead…and a second later he saw a bright burst of fire in the sky to the east. “What the hell…?”
“That was a missile!” Boxer croaked through salt water-coarse lips. “Someone fired a missile!”
“I think the helicopter got hit!” Malkin shouted. “For God’s sake, who would shoot down a rescue helicopter?” Seconds later he saw a jet fighter fly high overhead, but he couldn’t identify it. With shaking fingers he keyed the microphone button on his radio: “Seven-One, Seven-One, this is Sierra, how copy?” No response, even after several more tries. His face was a frozen stunned mask of confusion. “Holy crap…!” He keyed the mike again: “Mayday, mayday, mayday, any radio, any radio, any radio, rescue helicopter down, possible hostile antiaircraft fire, any radio, please respond.” He then reached over and activated the raft’s satellite EPIRB, or Emergency Position-Indicating Rescue Beacon, which would broadcast location information via satellite to rescue coordination centers around the world.
“I think we’re going to have company, Petty Officer,” Boxer said. “Keep trying to raise someone on the radio.” Boxer found her personal satellite locator in her harness and saw that it had not automatically activated upon ejection-because she’d been flying near possibly hostile forces, she did not want it to automatically activate-so she activated it now, and activated the beacon on Friel’s vest as well. She then started to drink as much of the water as she could without throwing up, and she stuffed nutrient bars from the survival rations into her flight suit.
The thing she feared showed up about fifteen minutes later: a Russian-made Ka-27 naval helicopter. This one was fitted with pylons carrying antiship missiles, a machine gun in a turret in the nose, and machine gunners in the side doors. Neither Malkin nor Boxer could see any other flags or markings. With guns trained on the Americans in the raft, two black-suited divers dropped into the water, swam over to the raft, and climbed inside. They wore black balaclavas; neither could tell if the men were black or wore black camo paint on their faces. They motioned for Malkin to raise his hands.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Malkin shouted. He raised his hands but kept the mike button on the portable radio keyed. “Who are you?”
“Don’t resist, Petty Officer,” Boxer said. “They’ll gun you down just to save weight.” Again, neither American could see any insignia on the uniforms, and they said nothing so it was impossible to identify them by their voices or accents. While the first commando pushed Malkin over on his front and secured his arms behind his back with plastic handcuffs, the second removed Boxer’s survival harness, ignoring her cries of pain, wrapped Malkin’s radio and the EPIRB in the harness, and dropped it into the ocean; the weight of the radio pulled everything underwater. A rescue basket was lowered, and in just a few minutes both Americans were aboard the Ka-27.
