Victory Point - Ed Darack [119]
Minutes later, the escort gunships arrived. AH-64 Apaches, driven by Shock Army aviators who wanted nothing more than to smoke bad guys and help the Dustoffs get the wounded out, roared overhead, energizing the grunts’ spirits with their menacing head-on profiles and the growling drone of their engines. Heavily armed, rotary-wing CAS—delicious, Konnie thought to himself. The unarmed Blackhawk Dustoffs orbited in the safe distance.
Pigeon, talking the Apaches onto their position, then built the situational awareness of the Shock aviators to the greater battlefield. Although forged from different air-ground combat doctrine (the Army considers helicopter gunships to be “maneuver” platforms, used to attack ground targets without ground control, a mission called “close-combat attack”), Pigeon and the Shock aviators seemed to read one another’s minds. His hair practically standing on end at the sight of the raw skill and professionalism of the Apache aviators as they coursed up the valley, Pigeon knew that the tide of the morning battle had decisively shifted to the side of the Marines. The FAC passed his plan to the Shock aviators: scan the ridgelines first for enemy, engage them if found, then the FAC would bring the Dustoffs in to land.
“We’re taking small-arms fire,” the lead Apache coolly informed Pigeon as the craft passed over one of Cheshane Tupay’s ridges to the east of Fox-3. Pigeon radioed a quick six-line brief, a set of instructions, similar to a nine-line, first developed by the 160th SOAR(A) aviators for autonomous aerial fire missions.
“Cleared to engage.” Pigeon gave the call for the Shocks to attack the targets. The two Apaches lit up the ridgeline with their 30 mm guns and 2.75-inch Hydra rockets. They made a second pass—and then a third. The grunts of Fox-3 stood in awe as the Shock pilots maneuvered their aircraft in ways the Marines didn’t even think possible—at one time one of the Apaches hung vertical, facing directly onto a ridge, while firing, then rotated ninety degrees, then another ninety on another axis, as the pilots continued the attack. One of the most amazing displays of combat aviation he’d ever seen, the performance of the Shock aviators that morning caused Pigeon to wonder if he should have flown helicopters instead of Hornets.
Topographic map of the upper Chowkay Valley
“Cherry ice,” the lead Shock AH-64 called, indicating that the landing zone was cold, that is, ready to safely accept the unarmed Dustoffs. The AH-64s continued to reconnoiter throughout other parts of the valley. But Shah’s skilled, motivated men were still feeling bolstered by their successful ambush of the Navy special operations team and subsequent shoot-down of the MH-47 just weeks before. As the aviators of the lead Dustoff approached the designated landing zone, they hoped for a quick extraction. The Marines had chosen a good location—good cover from the ground troops, a relatively flat top to the hill, and no tall vegetation to threaten the spinning rotor blades. Pigeon ordered a green smoke flare popped to indicate the exact location on which to put down, as well as the direction and speed of any wind. The pilots rolled in hard, as usual for the Dustoffs, and pulled back steeply. The aviators could feel the ground effect cushioning their craft’s close approach to the deck. Instinctively, they scanned right, then left . . . okay. Wait . . . What was that? One of Shah’s men popped up from behind a refrigerator-size rock, toting a loaded RPG, high on the slopes of Hill 2510. Somehow, he’d hidden his position from the Marines, the Shocks, and the A-10s. Somehow, he knew that the wounded would be extracted from the hill to his north. But the Dustoff pilots already had their craft flaring hard. They couldn’t pull out; they’d fully committed. Would this be a repeat of the special operations disaster? the crew wondered, icy chills zipping up and down their spines. The Dustoffs had no choice but to continue on their path; they had no weapons onboard to defend themselves, and the Apaches were too far off to provide