“Hold on!” Kat commanded as she jammed the right rudder pedal down, shifting the pitch of the tail rotor, which swung the Huey around to the right in a gut-wrenching maneuver that threw them all to the left.
The other Huey suddenly filled the right-side windows as the startled pilot of the trailing helicopter pulled up sharply to avoid a collision.
Kat thought over the possibilities as fast as she could. Too wild an evasive maneuver, and she could lose control of a machine she didn’t really know how to fly.
Another round of bullets rattled the cyclic, forcing a decision. Kat pulled back and kicked the Huey into a tight left turn, reversing course and climbing as she slowed, pirouetting around before the pursuer was able to react. It was a gamble whether she could do it without stalling, but she had to get out of their sights.
Kat could see the other helicopter now through her left window. The shooters in the doorway hung on for their lives as the pilot tried to turn left to get behind her again. She pulled a bit tighter, feeling the Huey respond and steady out, the feedback vibrations on the cyclic stick reassuring her that she wasn’t pushing too far.
No way in hell are you getting on my tail again! Kat thought to herself, her teeth gritted, as she continued the turn, spiraling closer above the other helicopter. The two of them were essentially circling each other. She could see the two men in the open door trying to regain their balance, one of them obviously yelling instructions forward as the pilot tried to give the shooters a stable firing platform.
Kat looked at the airspeed. She was down to thirty knots and the Huey was beginning to wallow, the stick becoming mushy and more finicky as her control inputs grew frenzied. She tried to stabilize her heading while she waited for the other chopper to reach her altitude; they were climbing fast. As soon as they reached her level, she shoved the collective lever to the floorboard, causing the helicopter to drop almost in free fall, her stomach immediately protesting the maneuver.
“What the hell are you doing up there, girl?” Dallas yelled at her as the other Huey shot up in her perspective, the pilot caught off guard by their sudden maneuver.
Kat watched her altimeter unwind, and at a thousand feet, she began pushing the nose down to pick up forward momentum as she brought in the collective and leveled out, kicking the Huey around to the right in another tight turn.
As expected, the other pilot had followed her down, dropping rapidly, and was now flattening out his descent as he dropped below Kat.
Now you’re vulnerable! she thought, aiming straight toward him and shoving the stick forward to race at and just over the top of the other UH-1.
I’ve almost got this thing under control! Kat told herself, with a flash of relief, as she shot fifty feet over the top of the confused adversary and kicked her machine around to the left, staying behind and above him as he turned to find her.
The airspeed was dropping again, changing the requirements from basic stick-and-rudder flying to the skills of a helicopter pilot as she fought to stabilize her control inputs. But suddenly it wasn’t working. Her hand jerked the stick around, her rhythms and ability to commune with the machine suddenly compromised. The Huey was beginning to wobble off on its own, the airspeed now down to less than twenty as she tried to hover, gyrating left and right and even up and down as she fought to dampen her inputs and regain control. Sweat was breaking out on Kat’s forehead as the other pilot seized the moment to maneuver back into firing position.
Dammit! Fly! she snarled to herself, bringing the rudder pedals into the destabilized ballet as well, which worsened the gyrations.
The other Huey was turning on Kat’s right, bringing its open left-hand door into view. As she struggled with the bouncing, turning machine, she could see the two shooters raising their guns for another try as they came along her right flank. The advantage she had gained had been lost just as fast. She’d reverted to being a sitting duck, too low to use the sudden-drop maneuver, and too underpowered and out of control in a hover to suddenly pop up. The other helicopter was close now, the pilot controlling his speed of passage to give the gunmen plenty of time.
Robert MacCabe had been holding on just behind the center console. He spoke up suddenly. “Kat, they’re going to strafe us!”
“I know.”
“We’d better turn — or something.”
She nodded, her right hand finally reacquiring something close to a usable rhythm on the stick. The Huey settled down and moved forward, correcting to the right to aim directly at the oncoming machine.
“Kat! Ah… I don’t think ramming him is the solution,” Robert said as she accelerated directly at the windscreen of the onrushing Huey. She could see the pilot’s head moving as he altered his course to her right, unprepared for her maneuver.
Kat pulled up suddenly, trading the small amount of forward speed for altitude as the attacker slid below her.
More slugs tore through the Huey, most of them along the left side.
“Now!” Kat barked out loud as she kicked the rudder and banked excessively to the left, feeling the HU-1 almost stall as she tried to slip behind him.
Oh, no! Too much! They were heeling left at a violent angle, the side window suddenly filled with the top of the other machine.
“Kat! LOOK OUT!” Robert yelled. The tail boom of the other helicopter rose toward them at a frightening speed as they slipped to the left at too great an angle to recover.
“NO!”
The shuddering impact of the left skid with the whirling tail rotor of the other helicopter produced a momentary buzz-saw sound of colliding metal and threw them all to the right in a violent roll. Their destabilized chopper staggered sideways in the air before recovering, its basic airworthiness remarkably undamaged — but its left landing skid was a twisted mess, after an amazing shower of sparks.
“Good Lord, Kat!” Robert exclaimed.
“Wasn’t planned.” She banked to the right and skidded around the turn, expecting the other pilot to be lining up for another shot.
Instead, the sky to the right was clear.
Kat kept turning, scanning ahead, thoroughly startled when Robert grabbed her shoulder and pointed below.
“There!”
“Hang on!” the pilot had shouted to Arlin Schoen and the other man in the door as he pressed hard on the vibrating rudder pedals and tried to stop the world from whirling. He’d dropped the collective and tried to descend as soon as he realized that the other pilot, however inexperienced, had succeeded in damaging his tail. There was no doubt the tail rotor was in deep trouble, because the ship was vibrating at a furious rate. But the blades must still be there, so maybe he still had some control.
With a sudden lurch, the vibrating stopped as the damaged tail rotor flew off its hub, leaving him with no turning control. Instantly the spinning of the helicopter around the main axis of its rotor became worse. The pilot used all the tricks in the book: forward airspeed, unloading, sudden throttle pullback, but nothing worked. He was losing it, and the jungle floor was rising fast in a spinning, spiraling blur.
The crippled Huey slammed into the first of the trees, the tail boom swinging into a tree trunk and flipping the body of the helicopter over with a horrendous sound as the fuselage dove the remaining fifty feet to the ground.
The plume of flames and dust following the impact below heralded a crash too severe to be survivable, Kat figured. She kept her Huey moving at greater than forty knots as she circled at a distance and watched the funeral pyre of smoke rising from the wreckage.