Captain Frank Birchak scowled as we approached the province chief’s headquarters buildings in Cao Lanh, just down the street from Special Forces Camp B-43.

I was 15 minutes late getting to the jeep, waylaid by a nasty case of the trots. Worst of all, he’d had to kick open the screen door to our hooch and wake me up. I was exhausted from running to the latrine all night.

It was 0615.

“You’ve given Charlie a chance to cover his trail,” he said without looking at me.

I didn’t answer.

We both knew the only trail “Charlie” (for Viet Cong) was making was to a canal for morning ablutions, but I didn’t speak. We’d been down that road and my gut was too fragile to advance a point that would be dismissed in any case.

We slipped through a concertina wire barricade and pulled up to the province chief’s headquarters. We acknowledged the guards with a wave, and Birchak jumped out and disappeared through a side door that led to the province intelligence office, where he would pick up a Vietnamese observer. FACs were nominally expected to take Army or Vietnamese observers on the theory they knew the area. Crew chiefs were not authorized on missions, but our FACs often ignored the regulation. My partner Nolan Campbell and I could use the then-novel automatic-advance camera, drop smoke and hold the airplane steady from the rear seat. And we had always looked forward to going along. But I was in no shape to fly, that much was obvious, and I was glad he was taking someone else.

This morning the observer would probably be Thieu-uy (pronounced Tee-wee, meani

-ng Lieutenant) V.T. Nguyen, or Teewee Te, who never failed to vomit in the airplane. I was hardly a hearty passenger myself, especially during air strikes, but at least I used the bag. The Vietnamese observers never did, even though I’d pointed it out to each of them on multiple occasions.

I squirmed in the jeep. I needed to get out and retreat behind the building. I could smell the creek a few paces off. But I did not dare move for fear of unraveling. Instead, I willed myself elsewhere, dreamed of picking my way along the creek that ran through our neighborhood to the Sacramento River delta. There I’d watch the water bugs flit through the algae and crawdads vanish in clouds of mud. Some of my friends fished the crawdads, but seldom to eat. They usually ended up in makeshift terrariums where they died after a few days. In many ways, the Mekong Delta reminded me of the creek with its ripe water and swarms of insects.

Birchak emerged from the building, followed by Te, a squat little man whose protruding lower jaw made him resemble a Boston terrier.

After they settled in, I backed and injected the jeep into the morning clatter of Lambretta taxis and pedicabs. Shortly before seven, Cao Lanh was coming awake and the Vietnamese were going to work, on foot, riding motor scooters or bicycles or sitting in the back of yellow Pedi cabs with red trim, peddled by men with conical hats and heavily muscled legs. Pedi cab drivers were stubborn, mindful that the roads had belonged to them, long before the Ford jeeps, the two-and-a-half-ton trucks and armored personnel carriers (APCs). Birchak had sworn the Pedi cab drivers were all dopers and still hopped up from the night before. The women, meanwhile, were finishing their morning toilets along the canal past town limits. Some looked up and smiled sweetly. I instinctively slowed for a closer look.

“Watch the road, not the women, Mike,” Birchak said.

Thereafter we rode in silence, over the bridges, guarded by Vietnamese regulars in shower clogs, their fatigue shirts open, carbines slung, barrels down. They waved, placing fore and middle fingers to their lips. Smoke? I downshifted and tossed the remainder of a pack to the soldiers, then slowed for the dip at the end of the bridge. They smiled and waved. It paid to maintain their good will.

Three miles out of town the road was deserted, the only people in sight were Vietnamese sitting on privies over the ditches next to the road, reading newspapers, looking up vacantly as the jeep passed. The children to whom Birchak regularly distributed sticks of chewing gum were still asleep. We bounced down the drive to the airstrip. From a distance, the airplanes were ship-shape; whip antenna popping up in the proper places behind the fuel drum revetments, wing tops glistening with a sheen of dew as the sun rose over the canebrake that hid the river.

“We’ll take 9-5-1,” Birchak said.

I had worked on 951, Miss Me (by the cursive inscription on the cowling) the day before, performing what is called an Hourly Post Flight, or HPO. This involved changing the oil, installing fresh spark plugs, cleaning the oil screens and swabbing the rocket tubes. It had taken the better part of the afternoon in the heat.

Miss Me.

The airplane had been named a year before by Captain Meredith “Joe” Ganger, a FAC who had earned a silver star flying her during the 1968 Tet Offensive. I first saw the airplane at Binh Thuy Air Base, when Major Irvine Holmes had flown in to take me to Cao Lanh for the first time. I’d speculated then with the flight line mechanics that it was either a girl’s nickname or a plea to be remembered.

“No way,” said my friend John Palmieri, distressed that I was being sent to the field. “It means ‘MISS ME with your fucking bullets.”

Years later, in an e-mail, Ganger told me that is exactly what he meant.

I set a boot on a foothold beneath the cowling latches and boosted myself to a step point on the left-wing strut. Balanced waist-high above the wing, I turned the gas cap full tight. I had been half-turning the caps for months now before leaving the airstrip each evening. It had been reported that the Viet Cong would pull the pins on grenades, wrap the spoons tight with rubber bands, and drop them into fuel tanks. Several hours later the rubber bands would dissolve, and the grenades would explode—on the ground or midair, it didn’t matter to them. Invariably, the V.C. would turn the caps full tight before leaving.

I hopped down and loosened the tie-down ropes under each wing, kicked at the main gear and checked the tail wheel chains. As a further precaution for grenades, I rocked the wings. Next, I opened the cowling and removed the red safety streamer from the oil filler cap. A Bird Dog would fly about 10 seconds without oil, so a streamer was affixed to the cotter pin as a fail-safe reminder to ensure the cap would not work loose inflight. I showed the streamer to Birchak, and after he nodded, stuffed it into one of the flap pockets of my pants (called cargos now), then ducked under the engine to inspect the safety wiring on the oil sump plug. Satisfied, I closed the cowling and moved on to the cockpit. Yanking the combination lock, I cracked the hatch, and the bottom door swung free, whacking the right-wing strut. I secured the upper hatch to a latch on the underside of the wing and stooped under the instrument panel to connect the battery cable to the ignition system.

I scanned the instrument panel, noting the “Aerobatics Prohibited” sticker above the attitude indicator, an order Birchak had violated each of the last several times I’d flown with him. I checked the ashtray for butts (Birchak was a nonsmoker and complained if he found it full) and waggled the stick to eyeball the ailerons. Finally, I opened the pilot’s lap belt and climbed out.

“Come on, Mike, let’s hurry it up,” Birchak said as he climbed into the cockpit. I stepped forward then and belted Te into the back seat, which unlike the pilot seat, was not enfolded in a Kevlar shield. When I had flown my first airstrike with Holmes, Campbell’s predecessor, a Sergeant Olson, joked while I was boarding that I could either wear or sit on my flak vest. I opted to sit. Eventually, I used two of them. I reached over the pilot seat and draped the harness over Birchak’s shoulders while he stowed his ball cap in the hatch and slipped on his olive-drab ballistic flight helmet. He buckled the harness into his lap belt and adjusted the seat while I moved to my customary starting position on the port side of the airplane.

“Switches on.”

“Switches on.”

The prop turned through with a whine, then snapped into a whirring black disk with a yellow fringe as Birchak coaxed the engine into a hearty roar. It was a sweet sound, solid and dependable, a healthy six-cylinder Continental O-470. Birchak shoved the throttle forward and bounced across the rock-hard clay to the edge of strip. I ran after him to pull the safety pins on the rocket tubes and ensure that the triggers were still engaged on the ignition plates. This done, I trotted to the side and handed a fistful of pins to Te to tuck in the pilot seat-back, after which Birchak briefly ran the engine to check for magneto drops. There were none. Not with fresh plugs. Next, he idled down, double-checking the flight controls, taxied onto the strip, throttled up and rode the brakes until it seemed the Bird Dog would shake itself to pieces.

Finally, he looked at me, raised an upthrust thumb, to which I replied in kind. In the universal language of pilot and crew chief, it was:

“Everything’s OK.” And…

“Good luck.”

Then he let go and the airplane lunged forward, tail snapping up, and flung itself down the macadam strip until it hopped into the air. It skimmed over the the paddy, picking up altitude as it crossed the nearer tree line, white wings flashing, nosing higher, beyond the far palm grove cutting through the mist, fluttering like a cabbage butterfly, dancing on the updrafts.

And he was gone.

Three hours later I was feeling better. I’d visited the paddy a couple of times, remembering when the Hollywood actor, Troy Donahue, had squatted in the same spot. He was on a one-man USO tour and no one had been at the strip to meet him. I was alone with the Vietnamese guards, changing the oil on one of the airplanes. He walked up and asked to use the “restroom.” I pointed to the paddy. The poor guy. While he was miserably at his business, it dawned on me that he was someone famous, so I walked over, looked down and asked, “Hey, aren’t you Tab Hunter?” That made his day.

After completing some daily chores around the tarmac, I climbed into the jeep and pulled out a paperback until I eventually dozed off, lulled by the morning radio traffic across the Delta: The vibrato voices of the chopper pilots on dawn operations; Vietnamese Skyraider pilots up for a little altitude R & R at 10,000 feet; and every so often I would hear Birchak checking in with Dave Potter, our radio operator on duty at the compound. I had been jarred awake by the approach of an Australian Caribou, bringing more 55-gallon drums of jet fuel. The Aussies waited until the last minute to drop the clumsy twin-engine planes onto the strip, yawing over the tree line, then slapping down the machines, tires squealing and smoking, just shy of the steel plank overrun. Jet fuel delivery meant another helicopter operation was imminent. Endless flights of Huey slicks and gunships (called hogs) would rattle-pop in, refuel, rearm and make running starts down the strip, the bean-pot cannon on the noses of the hogs nearly scraping the macadam. I was thrilled the first time I saw them. But the novelty had worn off after a few weeks. Choppers meant clouds of red dust; dust in the oil, dust in the fuel, dust in your crotch and armpits, dust up your nose, even dust up your ass, the latter a means of concern on initial discovery. On using the john, I thought I was having an intestinal bleed. I panicked and ran to the medic, who only laughed.

“It’s the red dirt, get used to it.”

I checked my watch and stepped out of the jeep to stretch. I hadn’t heard from Birchak, who would normally call in, but I expected it would be soon. I decided to set out some rockets by the fuel stand in the event of a quick turn-around. Lieutenant Stu Berry was out from the compound in a deuce-and-a-half (two-and-a-half-ton truck) with two Cambodian mercenaries awaiting the daily mail plane, that might also have a beer ration and a welcome pallet of food off the Saigon docks. We had been eating a lot of hotdogs.

“Are we keeping you awake, sergeant?” Berry yelled.

I grinned and started toward the truck.

“Millers Brutes 4-4 Mobile, Millers Brutes 4-4.”

It was Potter.

I ducked into the jeep and snatched the mike out of its cradle.

“4-4 Mobile here.”

“4-4. Is Bomber 4-0 in the pattern?”

“Negative. Is there a problem?” I asked. Sometimes the pilots became so focused on reconnaissance they neglected to call in. But it was Potter’s job to check on the pilots. I had not thought about Birchak’s silence. “4-4 here. We haven’t heard from 4-0 in nearly an hour.”

“4-4 mobile, what about Bravo Tango (Binh Thuy)? Think he went there?”

“Negative. Were his tanks full?”

“Roger that,” I answered, checking my watch. “He’s got about 45 minutes left. What about guard?”

“Uh roger, checked that, and no beacons, hold one.”

By “beacon,” Potter meant the emergency beeper in the plane the hand-held device in the web survival vest slung over the seat back. The pilots seldom wore the vest. I stepped out of the jeep and scanned the tree line for the wink of a landing light. The sky was piercing blue and banked by a stack of billowing thunderheads, “tops” the pilots called them. I slumped into the passenger seat, turning the mike over in my hand. Nothing like this ever happened to us. Birchak was skimming down a canal, utterly absorbed. We had flown the 30-minute trip to Binh Thuy on the deck on a maintenance trip the week before, during which I raised up out of my seat a few times. It had been so unlike him.

“4-4 mobile, 4-4.”

Good. Potter had likely heard from Birchak on another channel. Very high frequency (VHF) or “victor” was used primarily between the pilots and Potter. Frequency modulation (FM), “fox mike,” is what the army used in the field. I had an ultra-high frequency (UHF), “uniform,” set in a box between the seats in the jeep. We all used uniform. The aircraft emergency frequency channel, “guard,” was only to be deployed during crises, but routnely violated, often for comedic effect. Early one day, after the Armed Forces Network disc jockey opened the broadcasting day with “Good morning, Vietnam,” a chopper pilot on guard answered “Vietnam, you suck!”

“4-4 mobile, go ahead.”

“4-4. We are checking other stations. Stand by.”

“Roger.”

Berry, meanwhile, slipped into the driver’s seat and thoughtfully studied the radio, drumming his fingers on the canvas roof. “Why don’t you try him,” he suggested. “You never know…if there was no beacon.” He shrugged.

“Bomber 4-0, 4-4 mobile.”

(Silence)

“Bomber 4-0, 4-4 mobile.”

(Nothing)

“Bomber 4-0, 4-4 mobile, do you read?”

(Still)

“No contact. 4-4 Mobile clear.”

I rested the mike on my knee. “He’s probably landed at Chau Doc or someplace,” I said hopefully.

“He’d have called Potter if he was going to do that,” Berry said. “Captain Birchak especially would do that. Wouldn’t he?”

“Yes, he would. That would be standard procedure.”

I left the jeep, walked to the edge of the airstrip, hands on hips and once more did a 360-degree scan of the pattern. A Huey slick chugged through the heavy air over the river about a mile away. I thought about the man I had come to know so well over the last few months. Standard procedure for Frank Birchak (and all our FACs) was overflying our assigned zone everyday at 3,000 feet and, much as remotely piloted drones do today, looking for changes below that might reveal enemy activity. If he spotted Charlie, he would descend to 1,500 feet, drop green smoke to draw fire, and if confirmed, call it in to Potter who would summon fighters for an airstrike. He would return to 3,000 feet until the fighters arrived, then dive to 1,500 once more to mark the target with white phosphorus rockets.

That was the way it was supposed to go.

I imagined myself in the rear seat. The Continental O-470 engine thrummed and the wind and prop blast rushed through the cockpit. Birchak would turn occasionally to check an anomaly, his lips pursed on his headset mike, brow knit in intense concentration. Sometimes he would ask me to hold the airplane steady while he double-checked coordinates on his hectare map and then noted them with grease pencil on the wind screen. If something attracted his attention, he slipped into an orbit so tight we were hanging in midair, or so it seemed, above the lush panoply of the Delta whirling below.

The low-level flight to Binh Thuy days before gnawed at me, but I was not going to tell Berry.

Four hours passed. Birchak’s fuel tanks were empty.

No one at any Delta base within range of the Bird Dog had seen or heard from him, which meant Miss Me was down, either on some small strip with no radio…or really down. Somewhere out there Birchak and Te were in trouble. The strip was jumping by then, transformed, in less than an hour, from a remote airstrip with a shack for a terminal, to a rescue control center. An HH-43 Husky rescue chopper, call sign “Pedro”—with blades that criss-crossed as they turned—had clattered in and broke down, dumping black oil on the apron. It was soon replaced and now the strip had four varieties of helicopters, Bird Dogs from other sites and at least 10 jeeps crammed into every available open space. Officers and senior NCO’s, including our air liaison officer, Lieutenant Colonel Huxley, gathered in tight circles around the hoods of the jeeps in their starched fatigues and aviator’s glasses, studying maps, offering educated guesses about what Birchak had been doing and where he might be. They plotted coordinates and squares on their hectare maps.

It was tough going.

Birchak had not offered many details to the army or Vietnamese intelligence about his reconnaissance. The coordinates he had roughly sketched had been searched with no results. Now the province would have to be explored, hectare-by-hectare, canals and rivers, tree lines and paddies, hillocks and mountains, until they spotted the aircraft. I was asked the same question again and again:

“Didn’t he say where he was going? What was he checking?

“No sir.”

“Don’t the two of you ever talk?”

“Not so much about operations, sir.”

My immediate fear was that I might have screwed up the hourly post flight the day before. I counted the maintenance steps on my fingers and ran through my actions, checking off each task from start to finish. It had been by the book. I had safety wired the works myself. It was second nature. I dismissed the thought.

And then I bedeviled myself for not being with him…I still do.

“I GOT HIM! I GOT HIM!”

It was one of our FACs, Major Russ Greenberg. Huxley snatched the mike out of the jeep.

“Bomber 4-5, this is 4-4 Mobile. What have you got?”

“He’s down in a tree line on the bend of a creek off the Thop Moui (a major canal, and dangerous). It’s under a canopy of hardwoods. But you can tell the airplane’s been pretty smashed up. No beacon or sign of 4-0 or the observer.”

“Roger copy 4-5, hold one.”

Huxley looked inquiringly at Brookshire, the Special Forces major who was executive officer of the compound and nominally in charge of any army rescue operation this day. He’d greased-penciled the coordinates on his map.

“We got a couple of choppers ready and waiting over there,” Brookshire said, motioning to some Huey slicks near the end of the strip. “We can be on our way in a matter of minutes. What about enemy activity? Any signs? You know, we’ve suspected a battalion headquarters in that area, but we’ve never been able to smoke them out. Maybe Birchak did. Ask Greenberg.”

“4-5, 4-4 Mobile,” Huxley said, embarrassed that he’d hadn’t thought to ask about the presence of Viet Cong. “Any signs of Victor Charlie?”

“Not that we can see,” Greenberg radioed. “Some signs of sampan activity on the canal bank. But we’ve dropped smoke and nobody’s shot at us…at least not yet.”

Huxley looked again at the florid Green Beret officer. He was burly, with flaming red hair and a ready smile.

“Let’s mount up,” Brookshire said, briskly folding his map.

“ 4-5, 4-4 Mobile. Choppers are on the way with a rescue team. Remain in area, copy?”

“Copy,” Greenberg called.

Huxley turned to say something more to Brookshire, but the major was already was running for his chopper with a squad of Special Forces troops at his heels.

“Wait! We’ll need to make room for my crew chief!” Huxley yelled. He turned to me. “Get the crash ax and bring your tool bag. You’re coming along.”

I hesitated. I had never imagined myself jumping out of a chopper in enemy territory.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Huxley spat. “Come on, we got a man down out there!”

“Yessir!” I shouted and ran for the storage container. While burrowing for the crash ax, I could not help noticing the bright blue and white chevrons on my sleeves. They were like signal flags. I was a perfect target. My shirts with the black stripes were at the laundry in town along with most of my underwear. I finally found the ax amid cases of oil, a bin of spark plugs, spare tail wheel, steering chains and a pair of rusty marshaling batons. The batons and ax had never been used, at least not during my tour. I picked up my canvas tool bag and sprinted to the chopper.

“Your weapon! Where’s your fucking weapon, sergeant!” Brookshire hollered over the whine of the chopper’s jet engine and the wash of the rapidly accelerating blades. Huxley held the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and shook his head. I skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust and peeled back to the jeep.

“Why is he coming with us?” I overheard Brookshire shout into Huxley’s ear. “We don’t know that L-Z is secure. Hell, we could get ambushed, even with traffic overhead. They’ve done it before. He won’t know what to do. He’s a mechanic for Christ sake.”

“Hell, I won’t know what to do,” Huxley hollered. “Don’t worry, we’ll run right up your backs.”

Berry stowed my tool bag and the crash ax aboard and settled me on the web seat that ran the length of the rear bulkhead. I tightened my lap belt, held on to my rifle (which to that point I had only fired from the rear hatch of the airplane) and tried not to look at Brookshire. But that was impossible. The major’s eyes drilled into me, just as they did in the lounge whenever I needed a haircut or had grown a mustache or wore non-issue clothing. It was a running joke. I couldn’t help it. He was Kaa the snake mesmerizing the monkeys in Jungle Book. I was the monkey. My eyes swept through the chopper, finally locking on Brookshire, who continued to stare at me. He grinned.

“Don’t fuck up, sergeant!”

I quickly looked at the deck, as the pilot eased the chopper into a shallow hover and pointed the nose toward the end of the airstrip. The chopper interior was gray throughout, from the diamond plate steel deck to the bulkhead padding, instrument panel, even the flight controls and pedals. The red nylon web seats were the one exception – they were same color as the mailbags tossed from the Caribou’s everyday. I craned my neck to watch the pilot, who had total command of the horizon through a Plexiglas bubble in the nose, above and below the instrument panel. He manipulated a stick and rudder pedals not unlike those in the Bird Dog. The only major difference was a lever in the center consul called a “collective” that controlled vertical lift. It resembled an emergency brake with a handle like a telephoto lens. The chopper made a running start down the strip gaining altitude until it sailed over the tree line at 1,000 feet and was still climbing. The door-gunners, clad in brown Army flight suits and ballistic helmets, had taken their stations in jump seats near the door and now cleared their M-60 machine guns in a series of short bursts. One of the gunners methodically worked a stick of gum as he scanned the flora below: water palms with fronds as wide as beach umbrellas and two stories high; swan-necked coconut palms cooling the canal and river banks; groves of banana, mango and papaya in geometric rows; the open greenswards of elephant grass swaying in the heat away from the thatched roofs and the hidden common areas of the hamlets.

“You wanna look, sir?” the starboard door gunner shouted at Huxley, who nodded and unhooked his belt so he could rise and see more directly below the aircraft. My belt was so cinched so tight that I had nearly cut off circulation.

“Pilot says we’re coming up on the wreck, sir,” the gunner advised. “Be off to the right, bout’ a mile ahead.”

Huxley turned and knelt in front of me.

“When we land, stick close to the army guys, and do everything they do,” Huxley yelled over the rotors. “When we get to the airplane, the first thing you do is salvage the radios. If they’re beyond repair, smash them. That also goes for the instruments or anything else Charlie could use.”

“What about Captain Birchak?”

“If he’s there and wounded, the medic will see to him,” Huxley said. “If not, we’ll find him.”

The chopper slowed, dipped and circled. Below was a small boundary forest straddling a creek. On the other side of the forest, a quilt work of drying paddies gave onto the canal, which flowed in a straight brown line to the Tien Giang, the northern tributary of the Mekong River.

“THERE!” the gunner shouted.

We saw a spec of gray and white amongst the greens and the browns. The wings had been yanked parallel to the fuselage, like a chopper with its blades tied down for the night.

“Get ready!” Berry called.

The chopper descended nose up on the paddy, about 100 yards from the forest. Five feet off the deck, it shuttered into a hover and four Green Berets, led by Berry, cocked their weapons, jumped out, braced for fire and then ran in a crouch toward the tree line.

“No fire,” Brookshire hollered. “Let’s go.”

We waited for the chopper to settle before Brookshire led us out the door. I slung my my rifle and grabbed my tool bag, but had trouble pulling my crash ax from under the seat. It was caught on something…

Brookshire turned.

“For Chrissake!”

I dropped the tool bag and strained at the handle with both hands, but the head was caught in the lap belt anchors. I reached through the webbing, cursing as I tried to untangle it. Any other time it would have come away easily. But now, in the middle of a goddamn rice paddy—an arm extended in front of me, grabbed the head, twisted and sprung it loose. I looked up. Berry was back, intense, but grinning.

“We got to get outta here, Mike. Come on. I got your ax.”

I snatched my tool bag and jumped into the paddy. It was not as dry as it seemed from the air. It was gooey and deep, the color of butterscotch, and interwoven with grass like adobe clay. The chopper blades picked up speed, blowing off my hat as I strained through the mud. I pulled up to see where it went, but Berry clutched my wrist and pulled me along like a child. Into the tree line at last, breathless, we lost our footing on the lip of a depression and tumbled into it, rolling ass over end in the red soil until we came to a stop directly in front of the cowling of 951– the cowling that read Miss Me.

“Shit,” I said, rising to my knees.

The prop, curled like Christmas ribbon, was still attached and the cowling in place. In fact, the entire airplane was intact, except for the wing, which, as I said, had been twisted off by the forest canopy and neatly laid atop and in line with the fuselage. The gear was splayed. All eight white phosphorous rockets were strewn about the large swale where Miss Me came to rest. The swale was part of glade at the bend of a creek, more like a small river, even in dry season. The water murmured as it traced the wide bend, spreading itself thin over an exposed shoreline at low tide. The Mekong Delta is an enormous tidal basin, a flushing machine that surges and pumps mud, vegetable matter and shit into the South China Sea. A network of trails, clearly marked, snaked through the forest, the main one leading from the swale to the creek’s edge.

“Take it easy you guys.”

I stood and saw Huxley already inspecting the instruments, jotting the numbers in his notepad. His manner was brisk and businesslike, belying the grim turn of his mouth.

“Is he–”

“No, he’s not here, Mike. They took him away,” Huxley said. “He must be hurt pretty bad. Looks like a round went through the throttle quadrant. Make a note of that. There’s quite a bit of blood.” He shook his head. “It’s not good.”

I stared at the wreckage, almost in a trance. I’d launched this airplane not six hours before when Birchak taxied out of the revetment. Having swooped over the Mekong with him only a few days before, I sensed immediately what he’d been doing when he was hit. He’d come down for a closer look. His arms shot up in reflex when he was hit, and the airplane plunged out of control, ripping through the treetops and burrowing into the mud in this place…quiet now, but for the throbbing of the choppers scanning in ever-widening circles for some sign of Birchak or his captors.

“Mike? The radios. Come on, get moving.”

“Where are the others?” I asked, picking my way around the fuselage with the ax. Only Berry and two of the army guys were in the glade, poking through the underbrush.

“The major’s reconnoitering the area,” Huxley said. “Greenberg went back for fuel. I expect we’ll hear him overhead pretty soon.”

I squeezed into the twisted cockpit and peered over the rear seat to examine the radios. The only one intact was the UHF. There wasn’t enough space to work, so I backed out, grabbed the ax and whacked away at the stem of the fuselage, just behind the rear window. The thin metal and Perspex gave more easily than expected, driving home how vulnerable the pilots were in these things. I reached in and released the quick disconnects and the radio came loose, still in pretty good shape. Something could be salvaged. Miss Me had been a good bird. Dependable. No quirks. And Birchak was an excellent pilot. The underside of the engine was so mired in the mud that I couldn’t check the safety wiring — not unless a Chinook came and extracted the fuselage. I checked the forest canopy. No way. The oil cap was still accessible, though. Huxley was already there, trying to pry open the cowling.

“Mike?”

“On the way, sir.”

I picked my way around the fuselage, ax in one hand, radio dangling from its plug and the tool bag in the other.

“You must have read my mind,” Huxley said, stepping back from the cowling and wiping his hands on his flight suit. “Why don’t you see if you can open that cowling and we’ll see what we can see.”

I handed him the ax, set down the radio and bag and dropped to my knees.

“Hey! Come here! Look at this! Over here!”

It was Berry. Huxley left in the direction of the lieutenant’s voice with me on his heels. We climbed out of the swale and found Berry under a large teak on the trail to the creek. He pointed at something on the ground.

“What do you think?”

It was a pair of pants. Green. ARVN issue. Tailored for an officer. Te’s. Only…they’d been folded, neatly, legs together, smoothed, folded again, once, twice, smoothed again, carefully laid down.

“I’ll be damned,” Huxley said. “How do you figure that?”

“You tell me, sir,” Berry said. “You see some strange shit out here, but why would anyone take the time to fold a pair of pants, unless…”

“He was one of `em?” I offered.

“It’s a thought, but would you volunteer to be shot down?” Huxley said. “I sure wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, you and I wouldn’t, but you don’t know Charlie, sir,” Berry said. “They’ll throw themselves at the wire so their comrades can run up their backs. Look over here, there’s something else.”

Berry led us down the trail to the creek. It was so cool and quiet, the water so inviting I imagined slipping off my boots for a wade, like in one of those small lakes in Golden Gate Park. It was an ideal place for wading, but not such a hot spot to die. I eyed with a rising sense of alarm the thick brush on the opposite bank where someone could be drawing a bead. Meanwhile, the lieutenant squatted before a pulpy object about the size of a large grapefruit. It was coated with brown sand and had rivulets of blood oozing from a web of tiny fissures, like milk through crust in a bowl of oatmeal.

“Now what do you suppose this is?”

“Looks like an organ of some kind,” one of the army troops opined.

“Hmmm,” Huxley said. “Probably from some animal, a water buffalo or something like that…”

“They were taking a lunch break, then Birchak came along?” the troop continued.

“That’s enough,” Berry said, “let’s do what we came to do before the major gets back.”

Off in the distance, gunships fired salvos of 2.75 high explosive rockets and 20-millimeter cannon and Gatling guns. I could feel the rounds striking through the soles of my boots as the glade floor shook. Charlie was on the run. I scrambled back to the airplane, and this time plunged my hands into the mud and somehow managed to snap open the cowling latches. A quick scan revealed the oil cap securely in place. Huxley nodded.

Brookshire by then had returned from his reconnaissance and pronounced it time to go. We gathered up the rockets, set charges on them and climbed out of the swale as the choppers swept in.

I followed Berry as we dashed across the paddy, doubled over, bounding for the choppers, low to the ground, knuckles dragging like a troop of baboons with lions in hot pursuit. Huxley was already on board. I handed over the radio and tool bag, extended my hand and Brookshire pulled me up. “Come to Jesus, boy!” The choppers lifted off, again without incident, while the gunships closed on the glade to destroy what remained of Miss Me. The war was over for her, and for Frank Birchak, who was still out there, somewhere, maybe being prodded by the barrel of an AK-47 or maybe dead or bleeding to death. I slumped against the bulkhead feeling safe and ashamed of it.

All that, and I’d left the ax behind for Charlie.

I did not sleep for two nights, imagining what was happening to him. Was he alive? Was he being tortured? Was he frightened, alone in the dark, so close and so far away? This was someone I’d sat and chatted with during meals, who taught me to play chess and served as my catechism teacher for my conversion to Catholicism. He had been hard on me as a supervisor, but only because he insisted on the perfection, he sought for himself each and every day. A part of me was out there with him.

My questions were answered when his body arrived in late afternoon of the second day. He’d been found face down in a paddy. No sign of Te. Huxley and I went to the chopper pad and Huxley verified it was him. I was staggered and broken hearted. The colonel nodded to the Dust Off crew.

I retreated to the edge of the chopper pad and retched, hands on knees. My tour seemed, by then, to be a succession of vomiting over one thing or another. No wonder I’d turned to skin and bone. It would get worse. But with Frank Birchak’s death I knew I was experiencing more than physical revulsion. He was scheduled to go to Australia for a week on R&R, and a couple of months after that home to his wife—and that should have been the end of him for me. Well out of range of my life, he’d have resumed his career, pinned on major’s leaves and retired as a lieutenant colonel. Instead, he was leaving Cao Lanh feet first. A knot welled in my throat, growing so large it should have burst. But instead, it burrowed deep inside of me, and wells up still now and again, in dreams or moments when I least expect it.

They zipped up the bag, lifted it gently and lowered it onto the chopper deck. The crew chief assumed his station behind the gun. The engine whined and the blades churned the fine red dirt into dust devils that bit into our bare flesh and forced us to duck and cover our faces. The engine roared, throaty and popping, the blades whistling, the skids elevating, ever so slightly, then more, the chopper’s tail section flicking like a scorpion, turning, accelerating, rising over the swamp that encircled the compound, collision lights winking in the pink sky, which gave on to lavender, and then purple the higher one looked, effaced by radio towers, bamboo and barbed wire. Soon the machine was throbbing in the distance, heading southeast.

Years later, many years later, on a drive to California with my wife and son, we stopped off to see Russ Greenberg at his home in Red Bluff. That evening, after midnight, Russ and I were chatting in the kitchen when he told me what “really happened” to Frank Birchak. Speculation abounded as to pilot’s fate. I had been given to understand at the time that Birchak had been mortally wounded, taken away and left to die miles from where he had been shot down. Beyond his neatly folded trousers, Te’s fate was unknown.

But Greenberg revealed that night that Te managed to escape captivity and returned to tell the tale. According to Te, the VC marched him and the wounded Birchak, four kilometers toward the battalion headquarters that I would visit 34 years later—on vacation. On the way, they transferred to sampans, which Birchak refused to board. That’s when they killed him. In ensuing years, I have read on the FAC Association website that Birchak and Te died when they were “shot down in flames,” which neatly conforms to the romance of the Air Force song. And only recently, another source claimed that he was indeed marched four miles, after being shot in the stomach with an AK-47 and died during the sampan transfer. The former claim is patently ridiculous because I was there. The latter defies belief, but I honestly could not say. At the time, I was too young and shocked to play coroner and catalog his wounds. Knowing Frank Birchak as I did, Greenberg’s tale of his refusal to board the sampan came as no surprise.

This was confirmed in 2021 by Frank’s brother, Paul Birchak, himself a retired Air Force pilot. According to Paul, Frank had said earlier he would never allow himself to be captured, and this seemed to be confirmed when his father viewed Frank’s body and noted a bullet hole in his forehead. No way Frank was getting in that sampan.

But we’ll never really know what happened, how the events played out, and does it truly matter after all these years? But I still had a critical question for Greenberg that night.

“Were they shot down?” I asked.

“Yes,” Greenberg said. “He said Birchak then lost control.”

A long silence hung between us then.

“If I’d been along, I might have made a difference,” I offered. “I could have pulled us up and at least made the airstrip before we went down.”

Greenberg shook his head. “It was too quick, too violent,” he said. “You could not have reacted in time…and you wouldn’t have survived either.”

“…And all because I had diarrhea.”

“You were not supposed to be there, anyway. It wasn’t your fault, Mike,” he said, patting me on the back.

We finished our shots and beers and turned out the lights. I padded down the hall and slipped into bed next to my wife.

“Are you OK, honey,” she murmured.

“Yes,” I said.

I kissed her and turned over, wide awake.

It was a lie.