by CW Ullman
The Cascading
Knights of the Fire Ring
by
C.W. Ullman
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by C.W. Ullman
WGA Registered 1729035
ISBN 978-1-891037-02-3
To my parents, John and Cecily Ullman, and to the Benedictine Nuns from Monte Cassino and the Augustinian Priests from Cascia Hall in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Have We not made the earth as a cradle and the mountains as pegs? And We created you in pairs, and
We appointed your sleep for a rest; and
We appointed night for a garment, and
We appointed day for a livelihood. And
We have built above you seven strong ones, and
We appointed a blazing lamp and have sent down out of the rainclouds water cascading…
Quran
PROLOGUE
In the darkness of the closet, with footsteps getting closer, Charlie Palmer anticipated his end. The images from his life poured forth: the bed sheets on the clothes line blustering in a Tulsa breeze, camping with his dad in the Oklahoma wilds, a touchdown pass thrown when he was a high school quarterback and rattling chains as a roughneck off Delacroix Island. He was with the knights of the fire ring, and saw the smile on the cop’s face after Charlie was caught running drunk and naked on a highway in Nevada.
The footfalls stopped outside the door of his hiding place and he waited to be discovered. He was no longer in fear, having surrendered to the inevitable. His hands relaxed in the Shuni Mudra, with the tip of his middle finger touching the tip of his thumb and he had an overwhelming taste of honey. The door opened slowly and a fifteen-year-old boy stood holding a gun to fire at forty-one-year-old-Charlie as he recalled the day of the helicopter, the girl, and the rescue.
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CHAPTER I
Under full power at take off, the five-ton helicopter was pulled back to earth by people clinging to the outside skids. Except for the two Vietnamese pilots and one old man, the aircraft was filled to capacity with children. The aborted liftoff happened amidst hysterical pandemonium at a military base outside of Saigon. The lead pilot unholstered his .45 caliber gun and threatened to shoot people clutching the outside of the helicopter. This was the second time the chopper had been grounded by the extra weight of those still clinging to the hope of securing passage to United States warships sailing in the South China Sea.
After eighteen years of fighting the French and twelve more years of battling the United States, North Vietnam’s long-held desire to subjugate the South was met with little or no resistance on this day in April 1975. The unchecked fury of the North Vietnamese Army rolled down upon the country of South Vietnam, crushing everything in its path and igniting an exploding cascade of terror, riot, and slaughter. Once the United States, South Vietnam’s erstwhile ally, had pulled out of the war, there was no opposition to the North’s rampaging conquest of the South.
A group of renegade officers from the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam, or ARVN, had secured this military outpost by blocking entrances to the base with large diesel trucks. The children aboard the helicopter were those of the ARVN officers. The officers ordered enlisted men in the guard towers to shoot anyone attempting to breach the gates or climb over the concertina wire fences. The sentries in the towers were promised seats on the last helicopter sorties, but to earn their places they had to hold off the desperate crowds and keep the base secure. It was not working.
People outside the fortress found holes in the fence perimeter or dug under the barriers to enter the compound. The frenzied horde and the swirling chaos made it impossible to restore any semblance of order. Already, people had been shoved into the helicopter’s tail rotor and the carnage blown onto the surrounding mob. Some children were being trampled by adults pushing their way onto the aircraft.
One of the tower guards, seeing the advancing North Vietnamese Army, shouted down that in a matter of minutes the NVA would be at the gates. Because guards had shot so often at civilians, they had all but exhausted their arsenal of ammunition. They calculated there would be just enough ammo to allow them to board the returning aircraft. Periodically, they looked to the distant horizon hoping to see helicopters, but the sky was devoid of any aircraft.
In the child-laden helicopter the overhead rotor, driven by a roaring jet engine and the shrill piercing screams of the crowd caused the lead pilot, Captain Trang Trung, to lean inches from his copilot and yell in Vietnamese,” We’re not going to get lift unless we lighten this load. You need to shoot one of the people on the skids to scare the others from holding on. Then, I’m punching full throttle to get us into the air.”
The copilot did not believe he was hearing his pilot correctly. He asked, “Did you say shoot…?”
Trung glowered at the quizzical expression on his copilot’s face and slapped him hard on the head.
“We’re going to be overrun by the NVA, and the only way to survive is to get this thing off the ground. Shoot somebody or I’m pushing you out the door,” he shouted.
The pilot forced his .45 into the copilot’s hand and pointed to the skid where people were struggling to hold on. The copilot reluctantly took the gun from his superior officer who slapped him again. Trung roared, “Now!”
The copilot had never shot anyone. Until now, his normal duty was to fly senior officers out to observe battles or take them on excursions with their mistresses to Vung Tau. How could he shoot somebody? He lowered the gun, his hand shaking, and while summoning the courage to pull the trigger, the weapon discharged. The unexpected blast knocked the gun out of his hand. He had shot one of the passengers, a five-year-old boy, in the back and the bullet passed through him into a woman trying to muscle her way onboard. The child’s blood exploded out of the chopper into the downdraft from the overhead rotor, spraying those hanging onto the skids. Feeling the blood mist, the crowd backed up in horror as the woman catapulted backwards and the child tumbled onto her. It was then the pilot shoved the controls forward and jerked the helicopter into the sky. They were finally off the ground.
At an altitude of twenty-five feet, the helicopter tipped toward the copilot’s side, weighted down by people still gripping the starboard skids. The pilot assumed they would let go, but when he looked out the starboard door, he realized if he could not shake them off, the helicopter would drift into a building sixty feet away. He tried to hover, but was losing control of the tail which was listing to one side. With tail drift, the chopper was about to spiral out of control, giving him just seconds to act.
He saw his gun on the floor and grabbed it. An eleven-year-old girl, My Ling, was seated on the door’s ledge with her feet dangling out of the helicopter. She turned and looked at the pilot just as he picked up the weapon. She instantly knew what was about to happen; the pilot was aiming for a man trying to board between her and her eight-year-old brother, Quang. The aircraft was so out of control, she was afraid the pilot would miss the interloper and hit her or her little brother. In one coordinated movement, she pushed her brother to the right and with her left hand shoved the gun back. She pulled her legs inside the helicopter up to her chest, aimed them to the right and kicked the man in the chest, knocking him out of the helicopter.
Once the
man fell away from the door, the helicopter rolled back to a neutral position. This motion of the craft caused images to blur for My Ling as the pilot righted the tail and gained control. She looked back at the pilot who was working the yoke while slapping the copilot. The copilot finally grabbed the yoke and helped pull the helicopter to a flying position. The pilot looked back at My Ling and raised his chin as sign of respect. Captain Trung then turned his attention to the front windshield and worked the controls. He banked the aircraft to the right for a starboard turn. As they quickly gained altitude, My Ling looked at the throng below and feared she might never see her family again. While straining to locate their faces in the mass, she realized none of them would escape the compound and the advancing NVA.
Enveloped in the noise of the helicopter, the crying children, the wailing old man, and the yelling pilot, My Ling caught the fleeting image of her father’s face staring up from the crowd. Her mouth formed, “Papa.” She wanted to wave or jump or scream, but she knew she could not, because her brother needed her. If she fell apart, he would be lost. While locking eyes with her father, he gestured as he always did when they would separate, or when he felt much affection, or when he was putting her to bed for the night: he touched his eye, then his heart and pointed at My Ling. Frustration, rage, and fear were ripping at her. She wanted to return the gesture, but could not let go of the post in the helicopter or her brother. All she could do was pull her brother to her chest, push his head under her chin, and hold him there with her wrist while she gestured a small wave to her father. Though stilling herself to be brave and strong, she could no longer hold back the tears brimming over, rolling down her cheeks and onto her brother’s hair. She could not wipe them away as she had no free hand. She closed her eyes tight to pinch the tears out. She wanted to look upon her father for as long as possible, but her eyes were still too misty. She opened her eyes wide and shook her head to fling away the tears, but in doing so, she lost her father’s face in the crowd. Because she did not want to scare her brother, she could not even shout a farewell.
My Ling was torn from this agony when the view of her father, the crowd, and the fortress was replaced by a fireball hurtling out of the ground from her distant left. Instantly, the pilot rolled the chopper over on its side and My Ling was staring up at the sky. She thought the NVA-fired rocket might miss the fuselage, but hit the main overhead rotor. In fact, it missed the entire aircraft. At two hundred feet, the chopper rolled and swerved so much, some of the children fell out.
She yelled at her little brother, “Quang, hold onto me tight.”
He kept his head buried in her chest and squeezed her stomach so tightly, she could scarcely breathe. When she felt him shaking with fear, she said, “You know what to do. Pray. Say your prayers.”
His murmuring was a comfort to her because she knew his eyes were closed tightly when he prayed, which meant he would be spared the horror unfolding below them. However, her own eyelids would not close. Advancing down the road toward the camp, the NVA was one hundred yards from the main gates. Even though she did not want to watch as they set the artillery piece and trained its 105 millimeter cannon barrel at the center of the gates, she could not turn away or shut her eyes. It was as though an outside force compelled her to watch. Time and motion for My Ling slowed to a crawl. She saw it all: the cannon ready to blast, the sentries jumping from the towers, the crowd caught between the gates and the cannon, the NVA troops shooting at her helicopter, and the baby on the road.
The six-month-old baby sat in the middle of the pavement, crying with outstretched arms for her mother on the side of the road. The mother looked at the child, then to the cannon, and then up at My Ling’s helicopter. Her face looked familiar to My Ling even though it was disfigured by pain. The woman, stricken with fear, could only reach for her child. She watched as the men opened the breach of the cannon and rammed in an artillery shell. The mother on the side of the road screamed. The realization of what was about to happen almost stopped My Ling’s heart. A baby in the line of fire separated from her terrified mother would have been traumatic enough, but she suddenly recognized the victims as her eighteen-year-old sister, Trieu, and My Ling’s nephew, Tu.
My Ling tried to yell, “Run,” but her throat froze in a suffocating panic. The artillery soldier pulled the lanyard and stepped back to avoid the cannon’s recoil. My Ling swung her gaze back at Trieu who was on her knees. Trieu and My Ling frequently finished each other’s thoughts and sentences and just as My Ling was thinking that the cannon had misfired, the same thought dawned on Trieu, who was up on her feet sprinting for the center of the road. In a sweeping motion, without slowing, she scooped up Tu just as the soldier pulled the lanyard a second time. When the cannon exploded, belching smoke, Trieu and Tu were on the other side of the road running into the woods. My Ling knew if anyone could survive it would be Trieu, who was named after a third century Vietnamese female warrior.
The cannon round smashed into the main gate and the thirty people huddled in front of it, allowing the NVA soldiers to advance into the compound unimpeded.
Captain Trung saw the gates blow up and knew that the NVA’s attention would now turn back fully to his helicopter. He pushed the yoke forward and dove the craft down behind a grove of trees, which was enough cover to allow the helicopter to fly away from the road. The pilot knew their best protection was to fly as low to the ground as possible. Flying too high gave anyone with a gun notice that a helicopter was approaching and would provide the enemy a chance to fire upon it. If it flew two hundred feet or lower, the helicopter would be upon the enemy and pass them just as the sound of the rotor blades beating the air notified them of its presence.
“Are you going to be all right?” Captain Trung asked his copilot.
The copilot nodded, “Do you know the frequency for the ships?”
“Yeah, it’s twenty-three, but don’t call yet, we’re going to signal once we’re over the ocean. I don’t want to give away our position. Take the controls for a minute. Keep us low on a course of one-one-niner,” said Trung.
The copilot nodded. Captain Trung wanted to distract his mate from the shooting of the boy and the woman. He needed him to be engaged in the mission and the best way of accomplishing that was to have him fly the helicopter.
“We’re going to get through this. We’ll land on a U.S vessel out in the South China Sea,” Trung said, lightly punching his copilot on the arm.
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In the South China Sea, Petty Officer Second Class Charlie Palmer served on a 93,000-ton aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, one of forty three hundred sailors sharing the Enterprise with forty one hundred refugees taken onboard as the country of South Vietnam was being overrun by the North.
On Level D of the ship, Charlie was in charge of five other sailors and thirty refugees. From Tulsa, Oklahoma, he was prep school-educated and had spent summers bailing and hauling hay in the Oklahoma heat and humidity. He spent the summer of his junior year roughnecking off Delacroix Island on an offshore oil well where he fell in love with the sea. He followed his father into the Navy and was in his fourth year of service. Charlie was very protective of the men with whom he served and of the refugees stowed in his compartment. He knew the Vietnamese were frightened and he wanted to allay their fears, but none of his men spoke Vietnamese and none of the refugees spoke English. It was difficult to communicate with them, except for one of the sailors in his charge, Rusty.
Seaman Russell Armstrong, nicknamed Rusty because of his red hair, did not know Vietnamese either, but always wore a gentle smile. His usual prankster personality was quieted when people like these refugees were in dire straits. Charlie admired Rusty’s ability to relate to the refugees by pointing, smiling, and gesturing. If Rusty had not been there to smooth things along with them, he did not know what he would have done.
Charlie and Rusty shared the good feeling that grew out of securing, feeding, and helping these people who had lost everything when they fled their countr
y. Charlie wished he could do more for them, but was limited by the conditions on the over-crowded ship.
Charlie looked out the sea door of Level D and saw an approaching squall. The seas were rolling and he felt the ship pitching steeply side to side. He knew there were more people onboard than the Enterprise was designed to carry. Circumstances seemed ominous, but he could never have imagined how events of that day would transform his and Rusty’s lives forever.
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Captain Trung checked around the helicopter to assess damage. This UH-1 helicopter had been used by the Americans prior to its current employment by the Vietnamese Army. There was still some English written on the interior walls of the chopper. The UH-1, the workhorse of the war, was known by everyone as a Huey. This Huey had seen better days. The dials on it were questionable and the rudder was heavy and sticky, but the main rotor felt responsive. This aircraft had been used as a gunship and judging by the still-legible markings on the outside doors, a medivac as well.
Captain Trung scanned for bullet holes and found none. Then he looked at the wide-eyed children, most of them six or younger, huddled next to the few older ones, who were no more than thirteen. This was the pilot’s first and probably only flight of the day. He had picked up the chopper near the delta two days before and planned to fly into Cambodia, until hearing of another pilot who had just flown there. When that pilot landed, the Cambodians who met him were the Khmer Rouge; a blood-thirsty gang of morons who killed the pilot and then discovered none of them knew how to fly a helicopter. Trung then heard of the mass evacuation plan to the American vessels, but it came with an added hitch. If the American vessels were approached by Vietnamese helicopters with only pilots onboard, those aircraft were prevented from landing. He figured his ticket to freedom was to gather up some children and he would be home free. If left up to him, he would have thrown half the kids off the chopper, but his copilot would likely have reported him to the Americans.
