‘Shit,’ said the staff sergeant looking back, ‘the captain’s hit.’
Nat turned to see Tyler lying face down in the mud, two soldiers lifting him up. They quickly carried his body towards the waiting helicopter.
‘Take over here, sergeant,’ said Nat, and then ran down towards the ridge. He grabbed the captain’s M60, took cover and began firing at the advancing enemy. Somehow he selected six more men to run up the hill and join the fourth helicopter. He was only on that ridge for about twenty minutes, as he continued to try and repel the waves of advancing VC, while his own support group became fewer and fewer because he kept sending them up the hill to the safety of the next helicopter.
The last six men on that ridge didn’t retreat until they saw Blackbird Twelve swoop in. As Nat finally turned and began to run up the hill, the bullet ripped into his leg. He knew he should have felt pain, but it didn’t stop him running as he had never run before. When he reached the open door of the aircraft, firing as he ran, he heard the staff sergeant say, ‘For fuck’s sake, sir, get your ass on board.’
As the staff sergeant yanked him up, the helicopter dipped its nose and lurched starboard, throwing Nat across the floor before swinging quickly away.
‘Are you OK?’ asked the skipper.
‘I think so,’ gasped Nat, finding himself lying across the body of a private soldier.
‘Typical of the army, can’t even be sure if they’re still alive. With luck and a tail wind,’ he added, ‘we should be back in time for breakfast.’
Nat stared down at the body of the soldier, who had stood by his side only moments before. His family would now be able to attend his burial, rather than having to be informed that he had been left to an unceremonious death in an unceremonious land.
‘Christ Almighty,’ he heard the flight lieutenant say.
‘Problem?’ Nat managed.
‘You could say that. We’re losing fuel fast; the bastards must have hit my fuel tank.’
‘I thought these things had two fuel tanks,’ said Nat.
‘What do you imagine I used on the way out, soldier?’
The pilot tapped the fuel gauge and then checked his milometer. A flashing red light showed he had less than thirty miles left before he would be forced to put down. He turned around to see Nat, still lying on top of the dead soldier as he clung to the floor. ‘I’m going to have to look for somewhere to land.’
Nat stared out of an open door, but all he could see was acres of dense forest.
The pilot switched on all his lights, searching for a break in the trees, and then Nat felt the helicopter shudder. ‘I’m going down,’ said the pilot, sounding just as calm as he had done throughout the whole operation. ‘I guess we’ll have to postpone breakfast.’
‘Over to your right,’ shouted Nat as he spotted a clearing in the forest.
‘I see it,’ said the pilot as he tried to swing the helicopter towards the open space, but the three-ton juggernaut just wouldn’t respond. ‘We’re going down, whether we like it or not.’
Nat thought of his mother and felt guilty that he hadn’t replied to her latest letter, and then of his father, who he knew would be so proud of him, of Tom and his triumph of being elected to the Yale student council — would he in time become president? And of Rebecca, whom he still loved and feared he always would. As he clung to the floor, Nat suddenly felt very young; he was, after all, still only nineteen. He discovered some time later that the flight lieutenant, known as Blackbird Twelve, was only a year older.
As the helicopter blades stopped whirring and the aircraft plummeted towards the trees, the staff sergeant spoke, ‘Just in case we don’t meet again, sir, my name’s Speck Foreman, it’s been an honour to know you.’
They shook hands, as one does at the end of any game.
Fletcher stared at the picture of Nat on the front page of the New York Times below the headline ‘AN AMERICAN HERO‘. A man who had signed up the moment he’d received the draft notice, although he could have cited three different reasons for claiming exemption. He’d been promoted to lieutenant and later, as a requisition officer, he’d taken command of an operation to rescue a stranded platoon on the wrong side of the Dyng River. No one seemed to be able to explain what a requisition officer was doing on a helicopter during a front-line operation.
Fletcher knew he would spend the rest of his life wondering what decision he would have made if that buff envelope had ended up in his mailbox, a question that could only be properly answered by those who had been put to the test. But even Jimmy conceded that Lieutenant Cartwright must have been a remarkable man. ‘If this had happened a week before the vote,’ he told Fletcher, ‘you might even have beaten Tom Russell — it’s all in the timing.’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Fletcher.
‘Why not?’ asked Jimmy.
‘That’s the weird thing,’ Fletcher replied. ‘He turns out to be Tom’s closest friend.’
A fleet of eleven helicopters had returned to search for the missing men, but all they could come up with a week later were the remains of an aircraft that must have exploded the moment it hit the trees. Three bodies had been identified, one of them Flight Lieutenant Carl Mould’s, but despite an extensive search of the area, no trace could be found of Lieutenant Cartwright or Staff Sergeant Speck Foreman.
Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor, asked the nation to both mourn and honour men who exemplified the courage of every fighting soldier at the front.
‘He shouldn’t have said mourn,’ remarked Fletcher.
‘Why not?’ asked Jimmy.
‘Because Cartwright’s still alive.’
‘What makes you so sure of that?’
‘I don’t know how I know,’ Fletcher replied, ‘but I promise you, he’s still alive.’
Nat couldn’t recall hitting the trees, or being thrown from the helicopter. When he eventually woke, the blazing sun was burning down on his parched face. He lay there, wondering where he was, and then the memory of that dramatic hour came flooding back.
For a moment a man who wasn’t even sure there was a God prayed. Then he raised his right arm. It moved like an arm should move, so he wiggled the fingers, all five of them. He lowered the arm and raised the left one. It too obeyed the telegraphed message from his brain, so he wiggled his fingers and, once again, all five of them responded. He lowered the arm and waited. He slowly raised his right leg and carried out the same exercise with the toes. He lowered the leg before raising the other one, and that’s when he felt the pain.
He turned his head from side to side, and then placed the palms of his hands on the ground. He prayed again and pressed down on his hands to push himself giddily up. He waited for a few moments in the hope that the trees would stop spinning, and then tried to stand. Once he was on his feet he tentatively placed one foot in front of the other, as a child would do, and as he didn’t fall over, he tried to move the other one in the same direction. Yes, yes, yes, thank you, yes, and then he felt the pain again, almost as if until that moment he had been anaesthetized.
He fell to his knees, and examined the calf of his left leg where the bullet had torn straight through. Ants were crawling in and out of the wound, oblivious to the fact that this human thought he was still alive. It took Nat some time to remove them one by one, before binding his leg with a sleeve of his shirt. He looked up to see the sun retreating towards the hills. He only had a short time to discover if any of his colleagues had survived.
He stood and turned a complete circle, only stopping when he spotted smoke coming from the forest. He began to limp towards it, vomiting when he stumbled across the charred body of the young pilot, whose name he didn’t know, the jacket of his uniform hanging from a branch. Only the lieutenant’s bars on his epaulette indicated who it had been. Nat would bury him later, but for now he had a race with the sun. It was then that he heard the groan.