Ahead, the Osprey cruised like an airplane, with its rotors in the forward position. In Parson’s goggles, the blades appeared to turn almost languidly, not caring if they generated propulsion or not. Just an illusion, he knew, but it looked strange as hell. A flying machine invented by crazy men.
Near the target, the Osprey rotated its nacelles to place the rotors overhead. Banked and descended.
Rashid said something in Pashto, and the Afghan troop commander repeated it. The troops gripped their rifles more tightly, placed hands over their seat belt buckles. Then Rashid said in English, “Two minutes.”
As the Osprey overflew the fort ruins, ground fire erupted. Tracers spat upward, burning needles directed at the aircraft. The Osprey’s gunner returned fire with a cascade of light. Still on night vision, Parson watched scintillating particles slam against the hillside, a storm of air-to-ground tracers. He could not tell what damage it did to the enemy, and the Osprey itself did not seem to be hit.
The Mi-17 descended toward a dirt path that led to the ruins and bunker complex. Rashid touched down smoothly. The troop commander shouted, “Zah, zah, zah!” and half his men leaped from the helicopter. Parson pressed himself against the cockpit bulkhead, gathered up his interphone cord to let the men get by him. With a twist of the throttle and a tug on the collective, Rashid lifted off again to place the rest of the soldiers on the other side of the target area.
Aloft once more, Parson strained to see the Osprey. It was on the ground now, gun blazing from its open ramp. So much for catching the enemy asleep. Ground-to-ground tracers flashed singly and in threes—Blount and his Marines opening up on semiauto or with short bursts. Seen through NVGs, the bullets cut brilliant vectors, a bizarre geometrical show of illuminated angles.
The Mi-17 banked. Figures ran among the trees and rocks below. Some looked to be armed; with others it was hard to tell. Were they insurgents attacking the troops who’d just disembarked? Captors chasing kids trying to escape? Parson struggled to think, to make sense of what was happening. It was an officer’s job to understand in the midst of confusion, to bring order to chaos. But the scene below him defied understanding: random gunfire, innocents among enemies.
He heard Pashto chatter on the interphone. The crew chief began firing the PKM door gun. Expended brass dropped away, tumbling green cylinders in the pixels of Parson’s NVGs.
Dear God, Parson thought, I hope he knows what he’s shooting at. And he hoped Gold stayed safe, unseen up on that knoll, with nothing to do but observe.
The landscape blurred as Rashid accelerated. He flew an arc around the southeastern end of Kuh-e Qara Batur, descended for another landing. Metallic cracks echoed inside the aircraft. Bullet strikes.
A liquid burning sensation seared Parson’s neck. He dropped his NVGs, let them swing from their lanyard. Placed his palm to his throat. His first thought was blood, but it was too hot for that.
Hydraulic fluid. A round must have punctured a line. Warm, slick ooze covered his hand, dripped down his flight suit.
More babble on interphone, nothing Parson could understand. But he could imagine: What’s wrong with the aircraft? You’ve lost hydraulics, sir. An oily odor filled the cabin.
The crew chief let loose another burst of fire. Swiveled his gun left and right. Kept firing. Then he slumped over the weapon as if he’d suddenly grown tired of fighting and had fallen asleep. Parson pulled him by the shoulders. The man’s head lolled back. He’d taken a round through the face and died instantly.
Rashid was having trouble controlling the chopper. The helo yawed, pitched. The standby hydraulic system should have kicked in, but with battle damage, maybe backup hydraulics weren’t working. Pashto chatter grew more heated on interphone. Rashid was fighting an aircraft that was bleeding out, approaching the moment when its controls would lock up and fail.
Two of the Afghan troops unbuckled their seat belts. They helped Parson pull the crew chief out of his harness and away from the gun. The Mi-17 banked left, pitched down.
“Put it on the ground,” Parson shouted. “Land it while you still can.”
Rashid dumped the collective, touched down hard. Gave an order in Pashto. The copilot rose from his seat. Took the crew chief’s place in the door and began firing the PKM.
More orders in gibberish. The APU started, and the engines whined to a stop. The flight engineer got up from his jump seat.
“What the hell are you doing?” Parson asked.
“Engineer fix,” Rashid said on interphone.
The copilot kept shooting, laying down suppressing fire. The flight engineer pulled a flashlight from his helmet bag. He swung himself out the door. When the rotors stopped, he climbed atop the helicopter. Parson heard bangs from overhead; the engineer was using the flashlight as a hammer. Beating a valve into obedience, Parson supposed.
The crew’s actions started to make sense. Standby hydraulics should have engaged but had not. The engineer needed to force the standby system to work and replace the lost fluid. To do that, he had to get up top to the hydraulic reservoir. Which he couldn’t do with blades spinning.
They know their aircraft better than I do, Parson thought.
But now that he understood, he knew how to help. He fumbled in the dark, found the extra quarts of hydraulic fluid. Gunfire chattered as he clawed two aluminum cans out of the bin of spare fluid. Slipped in the spill on the floor, scrabbled back to his feet. Doffed his headset.
He ducked past the copilot firing the PKM and heaved himself, grasping for handholds, up the side of the Mi-17. This job normally belonged to the crew chief, but the crew chief was dead.
Bullets cracked overhead as the engineer flipped open the hydraulic reservoir. Parson drew his boot knife, stabbed two holes into one of the quart cans. Poured the fluid, spilled half of it on himself.
He tossed away the empty can. The heat of the engines burned him through his flight suit and gloves as he spiked holes in the remaining quart. Parson dumped in the fluid and climbed back down for more. Stabbed two cans, handed them up to the engineer.
Tracers speared the night as the engineer poured the rest of the fluid into the reservoir. More tracers cracked around him as he slid down the side of the helicopter. The PKM door gun answered the enemy’s weapons with a rate of fire so rapid, it sounded more like a tornado than a series of shots. Parson figured that door gun was the only reason he and the engineer had come off the top of the Mi-17 alive. The insurgents couldn’t shoot accurately because they’d had to keep their heads down.
Back inside, Parson put on his headset as the engineer scrambled into the cockpit. Parson pressed his talk button and said, “You got more fluid, Rashid, but I don’t know how long it’ll last.”
“Marines call,” Rashid said. “They want Afghan soldiers at bunker.”
Must be getting hot up there, Parson thought. The plan called for the Afghans to provide only a blocking force. But no plan survived contact with the enemy.
Rashid punched the starter buttons. The turbines took forever to spool up again. When they finally reached idle, the engineer leaned over to shut off the APU. Then the engineer took over the gun, and the copilot strapped back into his seat. Rashid opened the throttle, lifted off.
The climb revealed a battle gone to hell. Through his NVGs, Parson saw bullets burning paths all over the hillside. Not from organized lines, but from everywhere. Worse than any shoot-house scenario a trainer could concoct. The Osprey, flying again, orbited the target area. Probably looking for a chance to use its gun from the air.
“Where you gonna put ’em down, Rashid?” Parson asked.
Rashid spoke only in his own language. The PKM quit firing. Too hard to tell Marines from insurgents, Parson thought.