“Have you ever jumped before?” he asked Tiger Cole.
“Yep, and I broke my leg.”
The terror of every combat pilot had finally become real for them.
They would have to eject into enemy territory and survive on their wits and what little equipment they carried in their survival vests. Failure to be rescued meant death or imprisonment in a tiny cell. Capture itself was a living death.
Twelve hundred pounds. The low-fuel warning light was lit.
A faint glow in the clouds caught his attention.
He adjusted the mirror. A yellow tongue of flame flicker under the left wing.
“We’re on fire,” he shouted. They would have to eject now.
“Not yet,” Cole said and put his left arm across the pilot’s chest. “Maybe a few more miles.”
“Burning jets have a nasty habit of exploding, you know,” said Jake. In his mind he could see the line in the operating manual for the A-6 Intruder: “At the first sign of visible fire, eject.”
The nose of the airplane dipped. He tugged the stick aft, but the nose continued down. There was no pressure at all on the hydraulic gauges. The fire had melted the hydraulic lines.
Tiger stopped talking on the radio and looked at Jake.
Slowly, slowly, the nose started back up, but the plane rolled left. Jake waggled the stick and rudder. No response. Devil 500 was finished.
The two men looked into each other’s eyes.
Tiger Cole reached up with both hands, grasped the primary ejection handle, and pulled it down over his head in a swift, clean motion. Instantly he was gone in a thunderclap of noise, wind, and plexiglass.
One last time, out of habit, Jake’s eyes swept the instrument panel, then he pulled the alternate firing handle between his legs. In the fraction of a second before the ejection seat smashed its way upward through the plexiglass, the image of the panel and the yellow fire reflected in the mirror indelibly seared his memory.
Something was hammering at his body, pounding every inch of his chest, arms, legs, and neck. Even as he realized it had to be drops of rain, a tremendous jolt tore at his crotch as his parachute opened.
After the deafening rush of wind on ejection there was silence. He could not see a thing. In a near panic, he groped above him for the parachute risers. The straps rising from his shoulders were firm as steel cables.
Reassured, he tried to think.
Why was he blind? He wasn’t; there simply wasn’t enough light to see by. Firmly grasping the nylon strap on each side of his neck, he let the seconds tick by. His ears momentarily picked up the faint whine of a jet engine.
The oxygen mask! If he were knocked out on landing and still had it on, he would suffocate when the oxygen in the seat pan ran out. He had to get rid of it. With his right hand he fumbled for the catches that held the mask to his helmet. He had no dexterity, and terror threatened to overwhelm him. He fought down the killing panic and fingered the place where the catches had to be. He found them and disconnected the mask and threw it out into the darkness.
Through it all, he kept a death grip on the left riser.
Again using his right hand, he felt for the quick release fittings on the lap belt. He would have no need for the seat pan, which was for landing in water.
He unlatched the right-hand fitting and was aware of the weight shifting on the back of his thighs. Carefully changing hands on the risers, he struggled with the left fitting. Finally the weight on his legs vanished as the seat pan fell away. His right hand automatically seize the right riser again.
He heard the dull boom of a distant explosion. His airplane, probably. The end of Devil 500.
A faint breeze fanned his face. Somewhere below. the jungle waited. When will it come up? The darkness was total. He thought of his flashlight in the survival vest, but he didn’t want to risk losing it on landing.
The pounding of his heart and the gentle kiss of the wind and rain and the reassuring tautness of the riser straps were the only sensory stimuli in the dark silence. He began to think. Would he land in trees or a paddy or a rock-strewn creek? Would he be dashed against the cliff? He hooked his legs together to protect his crotch and placed his left hand on his right shoulder and his right hand on his left, then lowered his face into the crook of his elbows. Now to wait.
His body was tense, awaiting the impact. relax, he told himself. No, stay tense. Keep those legs together and protect the family jewels.
Something tore at his legs, then smashed into his body. He was pummeled by a series of rapid, rock-hard blows, and he felt his legs become separated and a fire of agony ripped up his left side. He was tumbling and his arms were flailing, searching for the risers that were no longer there. He took bullwhip lashes across the lower part of his face. Then he lost consciousness.
TWENTY-FOUR
Major Frank Allen sat in the cockpit of an A-1 Skyraider over Laos. An airborne flight controller was working with the F A Cs to find Allen a target worthy of his ordnance. He and his wingman, a thousand feet below, had been holding for nearly an hour when the controller advised them of a downed aircraft, a navy A-6 Intruder, call sign Devil Five Oh Oh. Allen, after acknowledging the information, checked his fuel an noted the time on his kneeboard pad.
“Nomad One Seven, we’re going to send you up that way to see if you can make radio contact. Standby,” the controller said.
“Roger, Nomad One Seven.”
The controller reported the suspected area of the crash, and Allen scanned his chart. When the aircraft had proceeded around its holding circle and was headed in the proper direction, Allen leveled the wings and adjusted the throttle and the fuel-mixture knob. The big piston engine of the A-1 responded smoothly and the needle on the airspeed indicator slid up to 100 knots. His wingman swung into trail. Allen plotted the coordinates he had been given for the crash and measured the distance-about an hour’s flying time. He refined his heading and flipped the second radio to the Guard channel and, turning up the volume and toning down the squelch, he transmitted: “Devil Five Oh Oh, Devil Five Oh Oh, this is Nomad One Seven on Guard, over.” Silence. A number of transmissions failed to bring any response, and he quit trying. The stars illuminated the top of the overcast several thousand feet below him. He thought about the two American airmen on the ground, who were fighting for their survival. He hoped that one of them was not his old University of Texas classmate, Cowboy Parker.
The Pathet Lao guerrillas often killed their prisoners at capture rather than bother to transport and feed them. But if these two men were caught by North VietNamese Army regulars, who patrolled the Ho Chi Minh Trail, they might be taken to Hanoi to be imprisoned with the other POWS. Or they might just as easily be tied to a tree and skinned alive. As he considered the prospects of a flier in the jungle below, Frank Allen scanned his gauges and listened carefully to the beat of his engine, just as he had on more than two hundred missions.
The engine sounded healthy. His thoughts soon turned to his planned rotation date in three weeks. Should he go back to the States or extend for another tour? He was still undecided. He often mulled over the question these days at odd moments.
The clouds would cause trouble in the morning when it came time to pull the navy fliers out of the jungle. If only the clouds would break up, or lift enough for planes and choppers to work.
He turned up the volume on the secondary radio and flew on.
Jake Grafton stood alone in a large room, the windows of which were veiled in mist. Two wooden coffins yawned on the unvarnished floor. He walked toward them, his steps echoing, until he could see down in them. Tiger Cole lay in one but the Other was empty. Instead of red silk and satin, the empty coffin was lined with earth and decomposing leaves. He turned away with revulsion only to find a crowd advancing toward him shoulder to shoulder.
Businessmen in suits and college students with long hair and little yellow men in black pajamas-all closing in on him. He felt hands lift him, and he felt himself spiraling down into the darkness.
Rain striking his face awakened him. He was disoriented and unable to move. Nausea came over him in
