Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (57 page)

           
The rebel leader shook his head. “I
have tasted your American emergency rations—I lived on it for several months
once. I have had my fill.” Even though the man was smiling, the tone of voice
described a very unpleasant experience.

           
It was
Samar
who had ordered Bowman to be untied and for
him to be allowed to use the items in his survival kit.

           
“What are you going to do with me .
. . us?” Bowman asked
Samar
.

           
“I do not know,”
Samar
said. “It may not matter in any case. We
may all be captured at sunrise. The Chinese are all around us.”

           
“Then why don’t you run?” Bowman
said. “Head back for the hills and the jungle. I know we’re near the coast—I
can hide out until help arrives.”

           
“Help does not appear to be at
hand,”
Samar
said. “We took an awful chance coming here,
and we have failed.” He turned to Bowman and said, “You must leave your crewman
here.”

           
“No way . . .”

           
“He will slow us down. The jungle
will be too thick . . .”

           
“I’m
not
leaving him.”

           
Samar
shoved a raised hand in his face to silence
him, then stomped on Bowman’s aluminum cookstove to extinguish the fire. Bowman
heard nothing, but after six years of flying F-14s off aircraft carriers, he
wouldn’t be surprised if his hearing had deteriorated. He moved to his feet and
went over to hoist Miller onto his back, but two of
Samar
’s troops restrained him and snapped
handcuffs on his wrists, binding his hands in front of his body. “You can’t do
this,
Samar
. . .”

           
“Be silent.” He raised his rifle,
scanning the skies to the east... then stopped. Bowman followed his gaze. Far
off on the horizon, toward the northeast, three specks, arranged in a tight
diamond formation, were highlighted against the dawning sky. “Chinese patrol
helicopters. Pray they haven’t found us . . .”

           
The diamond formation was heading
south, about a mile offshore, but the specs suddenly began to wheel right
toward the coastline.

           
“Damn. They must have triangulated
our radio transmissions . . .”

           
“Radio transmissions . . . ?”

           
“Silence. Stay here.”
Samar
hurried off into the thicket toward his
perimeter guards. He returned ten seconds later. “Three men are running north
to create a diversion. The rest say they will fight. I wanted you to know that.
There’s an inlet about three hundred meters away; we must reach it before the
helicopters arrive. Run for your life.”
Samar
wheeled and dashed into the thicket,
keeping as many trees as possible between him and the oncoming helicopters.
Bowman followed close behind but was immediately passed by four of
Samar
’s soldiers. Soon Bowman lost sight of the
five men and could do nothing else but trust his hearing to tell which
direction they were heading.

           
It seemed they had been running only
for a few seconds when suddenly a ripple of explosions behind him threw Bowman
to the slimy jungle floor. Two of the helicopters were shredding the forests
with rocket fire; the third was hovering offshore, scanning the trees for the
rebel soldiers. Bowman heard animal-like screams from the jungle as the Chinese
rockets found their targets—the three rebel soldiers that were acting as
decoys.

           
Bowman struggled to his feet. He was
about to run when a dark figure body-tackled him to the ground. “Stay down!”
Samar
cried. He pressed something into Bowman’s
hands— it was his PRC-23D survival radio from his survival kit. “Use this when
the time comes—”

           
“Wait! What are you—”

           
“Start crawling toward the heavy
jungle. Stay as hidden as you can—they are using infrared scanners to find us.”
The third helicopter had started toward shore, bearing down on them—it was less
than a half-mile away . . .

           
A burst of rifle fire opened up to
their right. “No!”
Samar
screamed in Tagalog. “Don’t shoot!” But it
was too late.
Samar
’s soldiers had started to fire their rifles
at the third helicopter, which was exactly what its pilots were waiting for.
The chopper banked hard left, and a pod-mounted machine gun chattered to life,
spitting a long tongue of flame at each one-second burst.

           
“Our only hope is to get back into
the heavy forest,”
Samar
said in English. “Run away from the
sunrise. When you hear the rotors, find a mud pit or wet thicket and hide in
it. When the sound goes away, run again. The chopper’s fuel must be getting
low, so we may have enough time.” He was suddenly on his feet, dragging Bowman
with him. “Now! Run!”

           
Bowman had taken one step when he
heard rotors. He found a patch of mud and dived onto it, but it was not deep
enough to cover him.
Samar
was nowhere to be seen. He rolled to his
back just in time to see one helicopter fly overhead and one hover nearby, less
than a hundred yards away—the first two choppers had returned. It was close
enough for Bowman to see the chopper’s infrared scanner ball under the nose and
an outrigger on each side holding a torpedo-shaped weapon pod.

           
It had him ...

           
There was nowhere to run anymore . .
.

           
There was a scream from somewhere
off to Bowman’s left, some sort of battle cry, and a long staccato ripple of
automatic rifle fire. Several sparks flew off the nose of the chopper, and it
suddenly nose-dived almost straight down into the jungle not fifty yards away.
Bowman needed no more encouragement—he turned around and raced as hard as he
could away from the stricken chopper.

           
But he could not escape. Bowman
heard a short
pwoooosh,
and a split
second later a terrific explosion erupted in the first level of jungle canopy
only twenty feet overhead and a few yards ahead. The dimly lit jungle suddenly
turned bright yellow, his head felt as if it had exploded, and he felt himself
cartwheel several feet away from the concussion.

           
He opened his eyes. The chopper was
just a few dozen yards away, nose aimed right at him. Its rotors were whipping
the foliage around as if they were in a hurricane, but Bowman could not hear or
feel anything. The chopper was translating, lining up the blunt muzzle of the
weapon pods directly on him. When he tried to move his arms or legs, nothing
worked. His vision was blurring, growing dimmer, everything was going dark. . .
.

           
With the target flitting over the
jungle, it would have made a difficult shot—not impossible, but very
difficult—but the chopper suddenly stopped, obviously lining up for the kill,
and now it made an easy target. Marine Corps Captain Fred Collins swung the
nose of his MV-22A Sea Hammer tilt- rotor aircraft a bit farther left to line
up the aiming “donut” of his Stinger missile system on the infrared image of
the Chinese patrol helicopter, then waited until he heard the familiar “growl”
in his headset, indicating that one of his heat-seeking missiles had locked on.
He lifted the protective cover off the safety release, pressed the release with
his right thumb, got a “Ready Shoot” indication on his integrated helmet
display system, then pulled the trigger with his right index finger. “Fox two,
Able Zero-Seven.”

           
From less than a half-mile away, the
kill was quick and spectacular. The Stinger missile flew directly into the
unbaffled, unprotected engine exhaust of the Chinese Zhishengji-9 combat patrol
helicopter, turning both engines and its fuel tanks into balloons of fire. The
orange and yellow balloons seemed to hold the helicopter in midair for several
seconds, but soon it dropped straight down and crashed into the jungle.

           
“Splash one chopper,” Collins
radioed. “Where’s the other two?”

           
“Lost contact with bandit two,”
replied the controller aboard an Air Force E-3A Sentry radar plane from
Andersen Air Force Base. “Bandit three is at your
nine o’clock
position, same altitude, range six miles,
airspeed niner-zero and accelerating, turning south. He appears to be
extending.

           
“I’m coming up on bingo fuel,
Basket,” Collins said. “I either chase him or continue with the pickup. I can’t
do both. Where’s he now?”

           
“Bandit three now heading southwest,
your
ten o’clock
position, eight miles, airspeed one-zero-zero knots, altitude three thousand.
Appears to be buggin’ out.”

           
Collins knew that the guys could
turn and re-attack quickly, but he had no choice—he was too far away to pursue.
“All right, Basket, I’m staying. Give me a heads-up if he comes back. Switching
to Guard channel.” To his copilot in the Sea Hammer’s left seat, Collins said,
“You got the aircraft.” The copilot shook the control stick to acknowledge the
order, and Collins released the controls. “Start an orbit over the area. I’ll
see if I can find him on the FLIR.”

           
Collins’ copilot climbed to five
hundred feet, stabilized, then began a slow orbit over the area. Collins
activated the AN/AAQ-16 FLIR, or Forward Looking Infrared, sensor ball, which
presented a thermal image of the forest below in his helmet-mounted sights. At
the same time he keyed the microphone button: “Bullet, this is Able Zero-Seven
on Guard. Bullet, if you read me, give me a tone on Rescue one. Over.”

           
A few seconds later, Collins heard,
“Able Zero-Seven, this is Bullet on Guard. I read you loud and clear.” The DF
direction-finder read southwest. The accent was strange, the voice clipped and
precise—too precise. There Was also a lot of background noise. It could be his
own rotors ... or it could be someone else.

           
Collins said, “Bullet, go to Rescue
One and hold down for ten. Over.”

           
“Able Zero-Seven, I cannot. Land on
shoreline. I can see you. Land on shoreline.”

           
“Bullet, go to Rescue One. Over.”

           
“Able Zero-Seven, I am injured. I
cannot work my radio. Land on the shoreline. I am just a few meters inland.
Hurry. Over.”

           
The DF readout still read
southwest—but that could mean a hundred yards southwest or ten miles southwest.
The Navy pilot was not following orders because he was panicking—or because it
wasn’t a Navy pilot talking. The term “meters” worried Collins, but more
military guys were using metric measurements like meters and “klicks,” so that
wasn’t a definite giveaway. On the Guard emergency channel, Collins said,
“Stand by, Bullet.” To his copilot, Collins said, “Swing west a few miles.
Let’s see if we can triangulate this DF steer.” The MV-22 swung west away from
the coastline, keeping as close to the treetops as possible.

           
“Able Zero-Seven, this is Bullet,
come in. Come in, Able.”

           
Bowman was groggy but awake. He had
a pounding headache and completely washed-out vision. He felt paralyzed, and
when he tried to move, a red-hot wave of pain rolled up and down his back. Same
for his left arm—it wasn’t just his elbow anymore, the entire arm felt broken.
His wrists were still handcuffed together and the survival radio was gone . . .

           
No, not gone. He could hear faint
voices coming from somewhere. Fighting through the pain in his back and arm, he
scratched his fingers across the mud and foliage toward the sound. Just as he
thought he was going to pass out from the pain, his fingers brushed the thick
rubber of the short antenna. A spark of hope shot through his pain-tortured
brain, and he was able to grab the radio and drag it to his body.

           
“Stand by, Bullet,” Bowman heard.
“Bullet, switch to Rescue One, if able. Over.”

           
“Unable to switch. Help me. Land on
the shoreline. I will find you.”

           
Able... that was the call sign of
the Navy rescue choppers on
Ranger
on
the day that Bowman was shot down. The PJs finally found him! But who was he
talking to? There was another Bullet crew member out here? Who was he talking
to? Miller? Was Cookin’ alive? He couldn’t believe it— Miller had really made
it!