Free Hard Ground by Joseph Heywood Page B

found himself choking on words, but when he was done, Haliday said over the intercom, “You were born to this shit, Rosey. I ain’t seeing diddly squat up this way, so we’re gonna press south.”
    Haliday suddenly began talking in a strange tone of voice. “First time I had to put a bird down was in pilot training at Harlingen, that’s down in the unshaved armpit of south Texas. Instructor had a coronary just as our hydraulics went south. Normally, we both woulda punched out, but he passed out, and I couldn’t leave that sonovabitch up there alone, and I couldn’t get the asshole to talk, so I declared an emergency, swung the bird toward the field, got her lined up on final, and both fucking engines flamed out. It was like flying a flagpole with graham crackers for wings, aerodynamics of a fucking brick, but I damn near got her to the hard top. I landed her in a plowed field filled with rattlesnakes and horned toads. Pilot was already dead, but I didn’t know that till we were down. No fire. Mangled the bird some, but I dragged his ass out, and the meat wagons got to us quick-like. No big deal except for him, I guess, but what could be better than dying doing what you love most, next to sex, eh, Rosey?”
    Elliot Rose felt his sphincter tighten. “Uh . . . I guess?” Oh, man. I don’t want to hear this shit.
    â€œMy first tour in Vietnam I drove a Misty FAC, a hot and temperamental F-100. Reliable enough, but tricky; had to stay ahead of the power curve with that little fucker. Then some fuckhead Charlie with a popgun put a lucky fricking round through my hydraulic line on final approach. Hell, I even saw the damn tracer. Had to belly that mamu in, but they fixed her up, and she flew again, no big deal.”
    Just get this night over with and get us back on the ground.
    â€œMy second tour I was driving Thuds, Republic F-105s, great old iron-horse birds, well past their prime and not worth shit at high altitude, but great down on the deck. I was out of Takhli in northern Thailand. Got hit by triple A near the old Dien Bien Phu, cripped my ass over into Laos, landed on a road the goddamn NVA and Pathet Lao were building toward a hush-hush CIA station on a mountaintop. The CIA boys and their little Hmongs come to my rescue. That bird got torn up for scrap metal by the CIA and locals. Ass-end of the world, that place. Take my word for it.”
    Elliot Rose did not want to hear anymore, but Haliday was on a roll. “Aren’t we getting close to the Garden?” Rose asked.
    â€œNah. I just want you to relax, Rosey. My third tour was also in Thuds, Wild Weasel two-seater, our job to go in ahead of the strike force and try to get the bad guys to shoot their SAMs at us so the gaggle could come in when the enemy was out of ammo. Sort of like tonight. We hit us the fucking jackpot one night. Frickin’ secondaries all over the frickin’ landscape, it looked like the surface of planet Mercury below us, shit cooking off all over the place, flak all around us, and goddamn if a flak fragment didn’t hit my GIB smack in his plastic hat, I shit you not. The bird got hit numerous times but kept flying, and I took her back to Laos, hooked up to a tanker, and we siphoned his fuel directly through us until he got us over the Fence, and I put her down hard at Naked Fanny. Two hundred or more holes in the bird, but my Guy In Back got a chunk in the head. He survived, sort of. Lost part of his brain, and now he makes sounds like a baby deer and drools like a Newfy, poor bastard.”
    Jesus, what is his problem? “Are you trying to tell me we’re gonna crash?”
    Haliday laughed. “Hell no, Rosey, au fricking contraire, I just want you to understand that hard flyin’ and hard landings don’t have to be lethal.”
    â€œWhat about the men who were with you?”
    â€œBullshit. Crashes didn’t get them boys; chance got ’em both, bad