by Joseph Badal
Then Michael ripped off his bloody fatigue shirt, picked up the AK-47 he’d taken from Josef, and crouched low, hoping the Apaches would return before the other Serbs discovered what had happened.
Dombrowsky focused on the valley below and the road bisecting it. The men they were looking for had to be down there. He checked the coordinates he’d punched into his controls. Correct. “Scooter, let’s go back up the road one more time.”
“Roger,” Scooter replied. “But those MIGs are going to be on our asses any second now.”
The choppers turned for another pass – to Michael it seemed like a miracle. The beat of the rotors drummed the still morning air. Michael looked across the road – no sign of the other Serbs. He stood and waved his bloody shirt in great, exaggerated arcs.
The Apaches raced by overhead.
“Did you see that?” Scooter and his co-pilot, Billy Herrera, shouted into their headsets at the same time.
“Yeah! I’m going back,” Dombrowsky answered. “Scooter, you follow me around, but let’s not fall into a trap. And Ernie, Billy keep your eyes open. Those MIGs could be here any second.”
Dombrowsky steered straight for the man in the T-shirt still standing in the ditch. But now, instead of waving his shirt, he had an arm pointed across the road.
“Looks like our guy, Scooter,” Dombrowsky shouted. “I think he’s trying to tell us something. Hang back. I’ll yell if I need help.”
He hovered closer while the man in the ditch ducked back down, using the shirt to protect his face from the stinging dirt being whipped up by the aircraft.
Several men rose up from the ditch across the road and began firing their weapons at Dombrowsky. His hand already on the helicopter’s M230 automatic cannon’s firing grip, he let loose a barrage of 30mm shells that chewed up the edge of the road in a procession of explosions marching toward the men who were firing at him. One of the men flew backward, his torso erupting in a pinkish spray.
But then Dombrowsky noticed something wrong with the Apache. It wasn’t responding properly. Black smoke began to fill his cabin. He could hear Ernie screaming. Despite its special armor, the Apache had been critically damaged.
Michael had watched the helicopter inch its way toward the road, like a giant, supernatural insect hovering and waiting for the sight of prey. Then the Serbs had fired on the aircraft and the Apache returned fire with devastating force. He felt elated by the turn of events. Then he saw smoke plume from the back of the Apache’s cabin when it veered away from the road. Momentarily distracted, he almost missed seeing the dust-obscured figures of two men still standing on the other side of the road, continuing to fire at the fleeing, wounded helicopter. He raised Josef’s AK-47 and fired through the dust screen. One of the men screamed and both dropped out of sight.
Crouching down and peering over his shoulder, Michael watched the burning aircraft stagger toward a hillside. He looked around for the second chopper. There was still hope, if the second aircraft engaged the Serbs hiding in the ditch.
There it was. The other chopper now hovered near its wounded partner. Still spewing black smoke, the chopper’s engine whined sickeningly while the aircraft began to auto-rotate and lose altitude.
Michael looked across the road again. He rested his rifle on the top of the ditch and waited for someone to show themselves. But he was assaulted by a shock wave that shook his damaged ribs and froze the blood in his veins. Two jets with Serb markings shrieked overhead. He realized then he’d also have himself to blame for the destruction of the second helicopter and the deaths of its crew.
Scooter James was no coward, but he believed discretion really was the better part of valor. He couldn’t help his crewman, wingman, or Danforth if he got blown to bits by a Russian-made rocket. He shouted into his headset while he turned tail. “Target alive! Lobo One is down. MIGs in the area. I’m outta here.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Michael’s heart sank as the second helicopter flew out of sight over a hilltop and the two jets came screaming around to pursue it. That helicopter had represented escape. Salvation. Life. Michael knew in his gut the helicopter was done for. No whirlybird could survive a two-jet attack. He concentrated on his own predicament. He snuck a look toward the opposite ditch and ducked back down in time to avoid getting a bullet in his forehead. Dirt and rock fragments exploded at the top of the ditch, inches from his head, sending what felt like thousands of needles into his face. It was time to move. He wasn’t about to wait here so the assholes across the road could come after him.
Armed with a knife and the AK-47 – the extra magazine he took from Vassily’s jacket pocket now stuck in his pants pocket, he began to crawl north along the ditch. Any place had to be better than hiding like a gopher in his hole. Maybe he’d be able to find a place to hide. Or a way out of here.
He paused twenty yards up the ditch and rolled onto his back. Peering at the hills to his left, he looked for a sign of the helicopter. Nothing. He couldn’t even hear the sounds of the jets’ engines. If he got out of this, he knew he’d have to live the rest of his life with the guilt of having been responsible for the deaths of two helicopter crews. But, he couldn’t dwell on that now. He was a long way from making it back to the American lines. He was a long way from ever having the luxury of feeling guilty about anything ever again. Guilt was an emotion reserved for the living.
Michael rolled back to his hands and knees and moved farther up the ditch.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
“Lobo One, Lobo One, this is Nighthawk flight leader. I’ve got you pinpointed on my screen. Hang in there, we’re on our way.” It was the voice of an F-16C’s pilot.
Scooter felt he hadn’t breathed for several minutes. His chest muscles ached from tension and fear.
“Nighthawk leader, this is Lobo Two. Lobo One’s down. I got two MIGs after me and not enough juice to outrun them. I got to find a place to hide.”
“Give us thirty seconds, Lobo Two.”
Scooter’s radar showed the MIGs were, at most, five miles away. He knew Russian-trained pilots tended to wait for actual sightings of targets before firing. Their target acquisition system was not nearly as advanced as the American system.
“Get us out of here, Scooter,” Billy Herrera yelled.
Scooter focused on the terrain two hundred feet below. He spotted a large barn, nestled against wooded hills on the far side of a bowl-shaped valley. He dropped the Apache behind the barn and hovered just three feet off the ground. He eyed his radar screen while the two blips from the MIGs closed on him. Just when they were about to come over a hilltop across the valley, he turned the nose of the Apache away from the barn and lifted the chopper as high as the barn roof.
“Jesus, Scooter, what the hell are you doing?” Billy screamed.
In the zone now, Scooter heard Billy yell something, but he wasn’t concentrating on anything but the jets. He knew the MIGs’ radar had probably picked up the Apache, but hiding behind the barn would prevent the Serb pilots from sighting him. And they were flying way too fast to have had the chance to eyeball him when he lifted the chopper above the barn. If they’d spotted him, they would’ve loosed their heat-seeking missiles and turned the Apache – and him and Billy – into one great big piece of charred fused material.
When the jets roared overhead, Scooter hit the toggle switches on two Hellfire missiles. The Apache jolted when the heat-seeking projectiles exploded out of their pods. Scooter hadn’t had enough time to lock on either of the MIGs; but he hoped the heat coming off at least one of the jets would attract the missiles. Both Hellfires zipped upward, following the heat trail of the MIG on the left.
The two jets took evasive action, peeling away from each other like two sides of a banana skin. Scooter guessed their missile warning alarms were whining in their cockpits and they would hit their antimissile counter measures, dropping metal chaff into the air in an attempt to confuse the missiles’ guidance systems. The evasive action fooled one of the Hellfires
, which drifted off target and disappeared. The second missile found its target and struck the MIG 29 in its afterburner. The plane exploded and fell to the ground in a shower of flaming metal.
The American F-16C pilots pushed the speed of their planes to near capacity while they raced across the Serb sky at twelve hundred miles per hour. The flight leader had both MIG 29s on his radarscope. Then the bloom of an explosion showed on the scope and one of the MIGs disappeared. The flight leader centered the crosshairs of his target acquisition system over the remaining MIG’s image. In a fraction of a second, he considered the weapons choices available to him – 20mm multi-barreled cannon, two wingtip missiles, air-to-air missiles fixed to underwing hardpoints. He thought for a moment about getting into a dogfight with the MIG pilot – mano-a-mano. But this was enemy territory and his orders were to finish the job and return to base quickly. He selected one of the air-to-air missiles, waited for the electronic tone telling him he’d locked onto the MIG, and hit the FIRE switch.
The American pilot again checked his radar screen. The missile blip flashed on and off, moving in the direction of the Serb jet. Then he felt a rush of adrenaline, making his stomach feel as though it was filled with a thousand crawling creatures, when the MIG disappeared from his scope and the aura of a flash of light exploded over the hills in the distance.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Colonel Dennis Sweeney figured he’d already blown his career by sending two Apache helicopters into Serbian territory without authorization. But, candidly, he didn’t give a shit. He’d been a brand new second lieutenant when he was assigned to Vietnam in 1972, near the end of the active American military presence there. He’d made a promise to himself he’d never leave one of his men behind, whether dead or alive. Just thinking about the MIAs in Vietnam made his stomach hurt and his heart ache. Now he had Captain Danforth and a helicopter crew down in Serbia.
Sweeney moved to the telephone linking him to Major Taylor. He got Taylor on the line and told him he wanted a helicopter ready to take off. He could tell from Taylor’s reaction the man thought his commander had finally gone around the bend. But the man had the good sense not to object.
After looking around the room and seeing that everyone seemed busy, and that no one seemed to be paying special attention to him, Sweeney walked to the entrance door and slipped outside. He’d covered about ten yards, when he heard footsteps behind him. Turning, he saw Bob Danforth approaching.
“Going somewhere, Colonel?” Danforth said.
Before Sweeney could decide how to respond, Danforth said, “You can waste time bullshitting me, Colonel, or we can run to that helicopter and together try to find Michael. Don’t try to stop me. I didn’t fly all the way from the States to sit on my ass.”
Sweeney shook his head. What the hell, he thought, in for a pence, in for a pound. He pointed at Danforth and said, “Wing tips and a Brooks Brothers suit. What the modern soldier wears into battle.” He turned and ran for the landing pad, Danforth on his heels.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Michael scrambled up the ditch until it took a bend. Something just ahead flashed brightly in the morning sun. He peered around the bend and saw the shiny, open-mouthed end of a corrugated metal culvert running under the road.
He crawled to the opening and looked inside. It would be a tight fit. There was no light visible at the end of the brush-clogged tunnel. Slipping inside, he splashed through shallow pools of stinking, stagnant water. The culvert’s corrugated skin, rippled every three inches with two-inch high ribs, made progress slow and painful – bruising his hands and knees.
He soon reached a mass of dead, water-sodden brush that completely plugged the culvert. He poked the muzzle of the AK-47 into it, braced the toes of his boots against the metal ridges of the culvert, and pushed. He managed to dislodge some of the debris, and then some more. Suddenly, rats as big as cats leaped, squeaking, out of it. He recoiled and banged his head against the top of the culvert while they ran past him and over him. He swatted one off his arm and it flew against the curved wall before following the others out.
Michael took several deep breaths, then slithered forward again to the debris plug. This time he broke all the way through it and crawled ahead toward now-visible daylight at the culvert’s far end.
He slid halfway out at the other end of the culvert, blinking while his eyes adjusted to sunlight. This end of the culvert hung about eight feet above a pebble-bottomed creek bed. Michael looked to his left and saw he was well beyond and slightly below the road and the ditch that paralleled this side of the road. The Serbs were nowhere to be seen.
Michael carefully lowered the AK-47 to the steep slope from which the culvert projected. Then he pulled himself out of the tube and dropped to the creek bed with a grunt. He stretched upward to retrieve the automatic weapon from the embankment and walked crouching back along the creek until he reached the spot below the place he guessed the Serbs might still be hiding.
The dirt slope was dry and crumbly, difficult to climb. Halfway to the top, he lost his footing and fell on his damaged ribs, on top of the rifle. He let out an oomph and slipped backwards. He held his breath, heart pounding. If the Serbs were still there, they must have heard him.
Michael looked up toward the top of the incline and saw the Serb Captain stand up in the ditch, pointing his weapon down toward him. Michael continued to slip down the hillside on his stomach. But he managed to get his rifle pointed uphill and blindly fire.
One of the bullets smashed into the metal firing mechanism of Sokic’s rifle and broke its magazine loose. The impact blew the weapon out of Sokic’s hands and shards of lead from the shattered bullet tore into his arms, neck, and face.
Sokic roared in pain. He looked down at his rifle and knew it was useless. Grabbing the knife from his scabbard, Sokic climbed over the edge of the ditch and charged down the slope.
Michael had reached flat ground and regained his feet just when Sokic smashed into his already damaged rib cage. The collision drove the air out of his lungs, but he managed to deflect Sokic’s knife by hitting the Serb’s wrist with the rifle. The blow threw Sokic off balance and he fell back against the slope.
Sokic rolled and came immediately to his feet, still gripping the knife. He charged at Michael, who attempted to use the rifle to parry the thrust, but Sokic kicked it from his hands. Stepping back, Michael reached down to pull Josef’s knife from inside his boot. Sokic kicked at the ground and sent a spray of dirt into Michael’s face. Momentarily blinded, Michael tried to rub the dirt from his eyes with one hand, and groped for the knife with the other.
Sokic leaped before Michael could get the knife from his boot and drove him onto his back. Through his still-blurred vision, Michael saw the Serb raise the knife above his head, poised to drive it downward into his throat.
Michael believed he was about to die. He heard his own wheezing while he half-blindly raised both arms to try to block the knife. Then there was a loud crack! And time segued into slow motion. Sokic’s arm remained extended above him as though in suspended animation, seemingly forever. Then he toppled over, plunging the knife into the ground three inches from Michael’s left ear.
Normal time resumed. Michael pushed Sokic’s body away and threw himself toward the AK-47 lying in the dirt a few feet away.
“I hope you’re not going to shoot me,” a man said.
Startled, Michael looked up at the road above. His eyes still blurred and stinging from the dirt, he had difficulty seeing more than the outline of a standing figure backlit by the sun.
“Not if you did this,” Michael said, looking now at Sokic, a dark bloodstain rapidly spreading across the back of the Serb’s shirt.
“Got here just in time, didn’t I?” The man above chuckled.
“I’ll say. Who the hell are you?”
“Captain Danforth, I’m Jess Dombrowsky, an illustrious member of the 82nd Airborne’s Aviation Brigade. We’ve been looking all over for you. Nearly got ourselves ki
lled trying to find you.”
Michael picked up the rifle and carefully made his way up the slope, his breathing almost back to normal. There were two bodies lying in the ditch. He shook Dombrowsky’s hand. “Thanks! Where’d you come from?”
Dombrowsky made a hitchhiking motion over his shoulder with his thumb, pointing at a column of smoke rising from a spot up against the nearest hill. “Parked my Apache over there,” he said.
“That was you?” Michael exclaimed. “I thought you were a goner, for sure. Did your co-pilot make it?”
“Yes! He’s back by the wreckage. Leg’s broken.” Dombrowsky sighed. Then his face went white and he collapsed in the ditch.
Michael dropped to his knees to check the man’s pulse. It was slow but steady. He put his arms around Dombrowsky and tried to lift him, but his hands slipped. The pilot’s back was wet and when Michael took his hands away he saw they were red with blood. He rolled Dombrowsky onto his side, took the knife from his boot, and sliced open the pilot’s blood-soaked flight suit and undershirt. Blood seeped from an eight-inch-wide wound caused by a jagged piece of metal embedded in his upper back. Michael hefted the pilot over his shoulder, picked up the AK-47, struggled out of the ditch, and began walking toward the downed aircraft. He hoped a search-and-rescue team would arrive soon.
He’d just laid Dombrowsky on the ground next to his wounded co-pilot, when he heard the familiar sound of an approaching helicopter. Then the ear-splitting roar of jets filled the area between the low hills around them. Michael’s heart sank at the thought of the Serb jets returning. But when he saw the American markings on the F-16Cs, he felt a chill at the base of his neck – the same feeling he got every time he heard the national anthem.
