The bombardier reset the armament switches that enabled the pilot to manually drop the four RockEye cluster bombs still hanging under the wings.
“Your pickle is hot,” he told Grafton. He put his face back against the scope hood and examined the terrain ahead.
Grafton kept the engines at full throttle as he scanned the darkness for an antiaircraft artillery piece he could destroy with the waiting RockEyes. It would have to be fairly close to his track and firing off to one side so that he could approach it safely. He referred to this portion of the mission as “killing rattlesnakes.”
Somewhere below, a North VietNamese peasant heard the swelling whine of jet engines approaching, first faintly, then rapidly increasing in intensity.
As the whine quickly rose to a crescendo, he lifted an ancient bolt-action rifle to his shoulder, pointed it at a 45-degree angle into the night above, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet punched a tiny hole in the lower forward corner of the canopy plexiglass on the right side of the plane. It penetrated Morgan McPherson’s oxygen mask, deflected off his jawbone, pierced the larynx, nicked a carotid artery, then exited his neck and spent itself against the side of the pilot’s ejection seat. Reflexively, Morgan keyed his ICS mike with his right foot, gagged, and grabbed his neck.
Jake Grafton looked at the bombardier. Blood, black in the glow of the red cockpit lights, spurted from between McPherson’s fingers.
“Morg?”
McPherson gagged again. His eyes bulged and he stared at the pilot. His eyebrows knitted. He spat up blood. “Jake,” he gurgled. He coughed repeatedly with the ICS mike keyed.
Jake tore his eyes from McPherson and thought furiously as he checked the instrument panel. What could have happened?
Without noticing he had dragged the stick back and the aircraft was up to 700 feet over the delta tableland and exposed on every enemy radar screen within range. He shoved the stick forward. “Don’t try to talk, Morg. I’ll get you home.”
He leveled the plane at 300 feet and was once again hidden amid the ground return.
Jesus! Jesus Christ! Something must have come through the canopy, a piece of flak shrapnel or random bullet.
A whisper: “Jake . . .” McPherson’s hand clutch Jake’s arm, then fell away. He raised his hand and again clutched at Jake, this time more weakly.
Morg slumped over, his head resting on the scope holder. Blood covered the front of his survival vest. Holding the stick with his left hand, Jake struggled to unfasten McPherson’s oxygen mask. Blood spilled from the rubber cup. Blood stains covered the sleeve of his flight suit where McPherson’s hand had seized him.
A battery of guns opened up ahead with short bursts of orange tracers that floated aloft: 37 millimeter. They were shooting generally off to the right, so Jake Grafton turned the plane slightly to fly directly over the muzzle blasts.
He guided the plane into a gentle climb and as the guns disappeared under the nose, he savagely mashed the bomb-release pickle on the stick bump, thump, thump, thump; the RockEyes fell away a third of a second apart.
“Take that, you motherfuckers!” he screamed in his mask, his voice registering hysteria.
He looked again at McPherson, whose arms dangled toward the floor of the cockpit. Blood still throbbed from his throat.
With one hand on the stick, Jake pulled the bombardier upright where the shoulder harness engaged and held him. He searched for the wound with his fingers. He could feel nothing with his flying glove on, so he tore it off with his left hand and probed for the hole with his bare fingers. He couldn’t find it.
He glanced back at the instruments. He was rapidly becoming too busy, an error that he knew would be fatal for both himself and McPherson. The plane would not fly itself and certain death was just below. Raise the left wing, bring the nose up, climb back to 500 feet, then attend to the wounded man. He felt again in the slippery, pulsing blood of McPherson’s neck. Finding the wound, he clamped down with his fingers, then turned back to flying the plane.
Too high. Flak ahead. Trim the plane. He jerked his left hand from the stick to the throttles, which he pushed forward. They were already hard against the stops. He could feel the throbbing of the flow from McPherson’s neck noticeably lessening. He felt elated as he wrestled the plane, thinking that the pressure on the wound might be effective, but the euphoria faded quickly.
How could he possibly land the plane like this?
His head swiveled to the unconscious man beside him, taking in the slack way his body reacted to each bump and jolt of the racing aircraft. Jake pressed harder on the wound, pressed until his hand ached from the unnatural position and the exertion.
He remembered the hot-mike switch that would allow him to talk to the bombardier without keying the ICS each time. He released the stick momentarily and flipped it on with his left hand. “Hey, Morgan,” he urged, “hang in there, shipmate. You re going to make it. I’ll get you back. Keep the faith, Morg.”
He could feel nothing now, no pulse, no blood pumping against his fingers. Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away and wiped it on his thigh before grasping the stick. He found the radio-transmit button and waited until the scrambler beeped. “Black Eagle, Devil Five Oh Five, over.”
“Devil Five Oh Five, this is Black Eagle, go ahead.
“My bombardier has been hit. I’m declaring an emergency. Request you have the ship make a ready deck for recovery on arrival. I repeat, my bombardier has been shot.” His voice sounded strong and even which surprised him as he felt so completely out of control.
“We copy that, Five Oh Five. Will relay.” The radio fell silent.
As he waited he talked to McPherson. “Don’t you give up on me, you sonuvabitch. You never were quitter, Morg. Don’t give up now.”
More flak came up. He pushed at the throttles again unconsciously trying to go faster. They were already traveling at 505 knots. Perhaps he should dump some fuel. He still had 10,000 pounds remaining. No, even with the fuel gone the old girl would go no faster; she was giving her all now, and he might need the fuel to get to Da Nang if the ship couldn’t recover him immediately.
Finally, the white-sand beach flashed beneath. Grafton turned the IFF to Emergency. “Devil Five Oh Five is feet wet.” McPherson had not moved.
“Black Eagle copies, Devil Five Oh Five. Wagon Train has been notified of your emergency. Do you have any other problems, any other damage, over Wagon Train was the ship’s radio call sign.
Jake Grafton scanned the instruments, then stole another look at Morgan McPherson. “Just a BN terrible shape, Black Eagle.”
“Roger that. We have you in radar contact. Your steer to the ship is One Three Zero degrees. Squawk One Six Zero Zero.”
“Wilco.
The pilot settled on the recommended course, then flipped on the TACAN, a radio navigation aid that would point to the carrier’s beacon. As the needle swung lazily several times he turned the IFF to the requested setting, the “squawk.” The TACAN needle stopped swinging, steady on 132 degrees. Jake worked in the correction. He leveled off at 5000 feet and kept the engines at full throttle. The TACAN distance measuring indicator finally locked in, showing ninety-five miles to the ship.
The overcast hid the moon and stars. Inside the clouds he felt as though he were the only human being alive on earth. He kept glancing at McPherson, whose head rolled back and forth in rhythm to the motion of the plane. He squeezed McPherson’s hand tightly, but there was no response. Still he held on, hoping McPherson could feel the presence of a friend. He tried to speak on the ICS but found his voice merely a croak.
The commanding officer of the U.S.S Shilo was on the bridge when news of Devil 505’s emergency reached him. Captain Robert Boma had spent twenty-seven years in the navy and wore pilot’s wings on his left breast. Tall, lean, and graying, he had learned to live on three hours sleep with occasional catnaps; he was in his elevated easy chair on the bridge every minute that the carrier had aircraft aloft. “How far is it to Da Nang?” he asked the officer- of-the-deck (OOD) as he weighed the options. Da Nang was the nearest friendly airfield ashore.
“Nearly two hundred miles, sir.”
