The Last Wolf Home
by Pat Clark

CHAPTER ONE
October 1970

The monsoon rains of the wet season were letting up and the war had turned ferocious again as the clouds thinned above the Trail. Mike Edwards had been out there for three and a half hours pushing his F-4 Phantom, and now he pondered another run through that bleak gray valley. Below him, dark karst ridgelines rose like fortress walls and random craters pocked the earth along a brown muddy road. It twisted past yawning caves and concealed gun-pits, ugly and menacing, like an alley through hell. Mike wiped the sweat out of his eyes and lowered his visor. He’d search that valley one more time, and if he found the right cave he’d fill the valley with fire.

He eyed those bomb craters, stained green and red and yellow by the Tritonol from the bombs; the scene distracted him. Like the surface of the moon. Grimly surreal. But running five passes down low through that valley was another stretch of reality. Those gomer gunners would be aching for a chance to hammer him. Just west of the North Alligator, Harley’s Valley wasn’t a place to spend much time if a man wanted to last a full tour as a Wolf. Mike knew it, but he couldn’t resist. He’d found the pipeline. Shiny steel pipes, not even camouflaged, blatantly snaking out of North Vietnam, slinking down through Ban Karai Pass into Laos. One of the few remaining targets worth the risk of running visual reconnaissance along the Ho Chi Minh Trail where it detoured out of North Vietnam and spread like a disease through the jungles of Laos.

Mike almost loved the test, each day proving to himself that he hadn’t lost his nerve. Going all-out, sometimes ten days without a break; always on the lookout for those muzzle flashes winking as tracers filled the sky. When he’d pull out of his dive after strafing a tanker truck, watching as it billowed into a ball of fire, he always felt the odd satisfaction that made it all worthwhile. Then, he’d jink past the smoke and debris glowing with a giddy feeling, like he’d won in a crap-shoot. And all the time, the gomers blazing away. Four, five hours a day over the roads, getting after Ho’s truckers. And the gunners getting after him. A challenge to survive. He prickled with excitement each time he jammed the throttles into burner and thundered down the runway, launching for another day of running the Trail.

Art Donnelly rode in the pit, the back seat of the Phantom, and he’d long since lost interest in anything but staying alive. He often complained drunkenly to the bar girls about how his macho decision to join the Wolfs had been a dreadful mistake. He told everyone who still listened how much he hated riding in the pit and fighting in a war that was lost. The only other thing he liked to talk about, besides his adventures in the bath houses, was getting home and bailing out of the Air Force. He bragged about a job waiting at United and laughed at the idea of ever upgrading to the front seat of the Phantom.

Art always grumbled when he drew the last go, the dusk patrol. Mike hated it too. The worst time of all, and a real grind so far. They’d been working Harley’s Valley for three and a half hours, and that whole area gave Mike the willies. Too many guns and no safe place to head for if you got zapped. But they’d just come back from their third hit on the tanker. The external fuel tanks had run dry, but a full load of internal fuel still weighed the Phantom down. Hard to keep the airspeed up.

“I’m hot, sweaty, and tired,” Art groaned. “We’ve taken a hundred rounds at least from those 57s across the border. Fifth time through here and we’ve found nothing but pipes. It’s about time we got our asses on down the road. Let’s head home.”

Typical Art, hot to get back to Ubon Air Base and have a cold beer at the bar. He sounded really irritable. The curving orange streaks of the tracer rounds had all bent away behind them, but the fiery muzzle flashes had unnerved Art. Long bolts of bright red flame, they belched from the gun pits and evaporated into clouds of dark drifting smoke.

Screw him, Mike thought as he pushed up the power and grunted, “One more pass through the valley of death, Art. I’m finding that pump. It’s hidden in one of those caves down there. And then I’m gonna water their eyes.”

If he found that cave, he’d call in Calcite flight. They were hanging on the tanker with a wall-to-wall load of laser bombs, hoping someone would find a decent target. Mike itched to see what a 3,000 pound bomb would do to a cave full of gasoline. Be beautiful, he thought; fire everywhere, boiling out of the crumbling cave and streaking down the pipeline in both directions. And he could orbit high and watch the fire burn; watch that black smoke billow, proving there was still a way to hurt the bastards.

Afterwards, he could slip across the border and vaporize those 57 mm triple-A guns. There’d be plenty of gas and left over bombs. According to the Rules of Engagement, that would classify as protective reaction. He smiled awkwardly inside his oxygen mask, thinking about the foolish terminology for the ridiculous set of rules. They were designed by politicians and overseen by the generals in Saigon who never got as close to the war as that silly snatch, Jane Fonda. Today, he might nail a few of those sly little cowards shooting from across the border.

He’d drifted a little low—down to 2500 feet, but holding four-fifty and pulling four-g turns. He rolled over into 130 degrees of bank and relaxed the g’s, floating for a second as he inspected a shallow cave in a wall of karst. Following the pipes, he turned hard left as a flow of bright-orange tracers flashed past in a stream, right below the nose. Reversing then, he cranked hard into a right turn, but the gunners were laying it on. A hollow metallic thud told him it was too late to jink again. His heart stopped for two seconds. A solid hit. The gunners were level ten.

“We’ve been hit,” Art screamed. “Now, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Pulling the nose up hard into a climbing turn to the west, Mike slammed the throttles into afterburner. “Get on guard frequency, Art. Call a Mayday. Try to raise Calcite flight. They’re on the tanker with a full load of gas. I’m sorting out the damage.”

Two good engines, three hydraulic systems. That Phantom would burn for a long time without blowing up. Maybe get them home. Warning lights flashed on, though; red and yellow indicators of the failed systems. Mike shifted in his seat, hoping for an easy answer. Nut-cutting time now. Time to make the decision of a lifetime. Thirty miles east to get feet wet over the South China Sea; but that meant a trip across no-man’s-land, the panhandle of North Vietnam. A thousand guns and a million gomers who’d love to rip his heart out if they got their hands on him. And if he made it to the beach, the gas would run out before he could limp down the coast to the base at Da Nang. Then they’d end up in the water. Keep on heading west, he decided. Eighty-five miles across Laos to the Mekong River; on the other side, Thailand. To the east, their best hope was a little orange dinghy bobbing around off the coast of North Vietnam. But they’d be in the midst of sea snakes, sharks, and boats filled with angry gomers.

The warning light panel had lit up like a Christmas tree: Fuel Level Low; Chk Hyd Gages; Bus Tie Open; Pitch Aug Off; Right Overheat; Left Overheat. Those two overheat lights were the most immediate concern. Mike jerked the throttles out of afterburner and the red glow dimmed. The fuel gauge—showing just over 10,000 pounds when he’d last checked it—now read 6500. But that fuel-level-low light gleamed. Bright. Ominous. The worst one of all. It came on when the total fuel dropped below 1800 pounds. He’d rather burn than run out of gas. But something didn’t compute. He’d lost more than 3,000 pounds of fuel and was probably still losing it. But which one to believe, the low-level light or the gauge?

Mike shoved the throttles back into afterburner. If he was losing fuel, he might as well burn what was left. Get as far west as he could. Screw the overheat lights. The engines could melt for all he cared. They wouldn’t be turning much longer. If the fuel gauge was right, they’d get far enough west to clear the main roads. If the low-level light was right, they were in deep shit.

“Fuel’s dropping fast, Art. We’ve either got 1800 pounds or we’ve got 6500. Either way, old 628 has made her last trip across the river. We’re in real trouble.”

Art muttered, “Shit,” repeating the word over and over again.

Calcite flight suddenly checked in on guard frequency. Ben O’Malley, Mike’s roommate, flew Calcite One, and the sound of his voice gave Mike’s confidence a boost. Ben knew how to make the right moves in a situation that wouldn’t tolerate mistakes. And Mike knew this would be a close one.

“Hey, Wolf, this is Calcite One up on guard. What’s your position?”

“Roger, Calcite, Wolf Five’s just west of Ban Laboy, climbing through 15,000, heading two-three-zero. We took a bad hit and we’re loosing fuel fast. Don’t know how far west we’ll get, but we ain’t making it to the fence. I’d say we’ve got eight minutes max before flame-out.”

“Calcite is balls to the wall, Wolf. We’ll be with you in less than five minutes. Hang in there, guys. We already talked to Blue Chip and they’re working up a SAR. With any luck we’ll get you out today.”

“Wolf copies, Calcite.” Then, “See if you can pick them up on radar, Art, they’ll be high.” Mike thought briefly about the luck of the draw that had put Art in his pit on the day he needed all the help he could get. If Art had his priorities straight he’d have been searching already instead of sitting back there moaning about Harley’s Valley. He hadn’t been much help so far.

“Roger, wilco,” Art whined, his voice full of sarcasm.

Typical Art, Mike thought. Pissed off at him instead of the gomers, or the dipshits in Saigon who ran the war. Big pussy thought fighting in a war came without risks.

The arrow of the TACAN bearing-pointer quivered, then steadied out on a two-three-zero degree heading. Mike called Ben. “Calcite, Wolf just locked onto channel 93; we’re showing the zero-five-zero radial for 98 miles.”

“Copy that, Wolf. Calcite has a radar contact and now we just picked up a visual. We’re your one-thirty high, about six miles.”

Mike squinted into the sun, searching through the right quarter panel of the windscreen. Finally he caught sight: four Phantoms in loose formation, descending in a right turn, silhouetted against the puffy white clouds building in the west. He watched as they rolled out, closing in from the rear. Friends! No longer so alone and vulnerable.

“It’s nice to have some company, Calcite.”

“Roger, Wolf, we’re glad we can help out.”

Far to the west Mike picked out the shimmering ribbon, tinted faintly pink by the lowering sun. The Mekong River. It wound below gigantic thunderstorms towering ominously like specters guarding the threshold of safety. The most profound prayer of every airman flying out of Thailand was to come up with an even number of trips across the Mekong. They were coming out odd this time, Mike thought. For sure they weren’t crossing again in a Phantom jet. And it was getting late, maybe too late for a Search And Rescue. Sunset was less than an hour away.

“What’s our gas now, Mike?” Art sounded really uptight, and Mike knew the feeling. Bad city when you knew you were running out of gas, but a real pisser when you didn’t know how much was left.

“Showing 500 pounds on the counter,” Mike said. “Make sure you’re strapped in tight. We’re stepping over the side in a minute or two.”

He was breathing hard and so was Art. The hot intercom amplified the rhythmic sound of sucking oxygen. Familiar tingling, beginning in his stomach, spread down through his intestines, reaching to the hard knot of flexed muscles in his bowels. Puckered up tight. More from anticipation of what was ahead than from fear. Soon, the violent exit from the womb-like comfort of the cockpit; and then, the gut-check. The test of how well he could resist panic when his life was on the line. And luck. He’d need that, too. Maybe more than courage. With luck he’d be at the Ubon bar that night or the next, drinking whiskey and telling a good war story. Without luck . . . for a second Mike wondered what had possessed him to join the Wolfs.

Punching the mic button, he called Ben. “Calcite, Wolf’s down to 100 pounds now. Be flaming out any second. I’ll coast as far west as I can. Jump out over Lloyd’s Hill if we can make it. What’s the story on the SAR? Have they launched yet? It’s getting late.”

“Roger, Wolf. Sandys and Jolly Green are on the way. We might have enough daylight to find you and pull you out. Depends on how much trouble the gomers give us. With any luck we’ll get you out today, but you better stand by for a night on the ground if things turn shitty.”

“Roger, copy . . . ” Suddenly light in his seat, Mike floated against the shoulder harness. Silence roared through the cockpit as the vibration and whine died abruptly. Flame out. Both engines winding down. Thirty-four thousand pounds of thrust gone. The radio dead too. Only the breathing on the intercom, louder now and more deliberate. Mike lowered the nose to maintain airspeed and watched 14,000 slip by on the altimeter.

“Soon now, Art.”

Below them, main roads, side roads, and bypasses wove south toward Tchepone. Visible only where the bypasses ran close to the river, the main complex of the Trail was concealed over long stretches by the dense growth of towering trees. The map showed Tchepone as a major Laotian town, but hardly anything remained on the ground. Only a dirt-road intersection with a bombed-out highway bridge built many years earlier by the French. High pillars of concrete were all that remained of the arched bridge that once crossed the X-shaped intersection of two kinky rivers.

With supply complexes concealed in the surrounding jungle and trans-shipment points all along the river, Tchepone had become a prime target. And that meant the gomers would be waiting there holed up in hidden gun-pits. About the worst place Mike could imagine for a Yankee Air Pirate to spend a night in the woods. But ten miles west a forbidding mound of karst rose a thousand feet above the surrounding terrain. The closest road was more than five miles away, and the thick jungle all around made it mostly inaccessible to anyone on the ground. Lloyd’s Hill. The best evasion area for miles. If he could coast that last few miles, they’d have a chance, but they were sinking fast. Almost time to bail out. Mike hit the RAT handle, popping out the Ram Air Turbine, restoring electrical power, and the radio came alive again.

“ . . . flamed out. I can’t raise them, but they’re headed toward Lloyd’s Hill. It looks like they might make it. How far out are you now, Sandy?” That was Ben talking to the SAR people.

“We’re about 40 minutes out now, Calcite. We’ll head for Lloyd’s Hill. Jolly Green’s 15 minutes behind us. If we find them quick we can pull them out before dark. Otherwise, they’re gonna have to lay low.”

Mike sucked in air and held it, trying to slow his breathing. His heart pounded and he tried to calm himself. With luck, they might be back for happy hour. Just had to glide a few miles more.

Then a hammer blow. The coarse shriek of grinding metal jerked him away from those hopeful thoughts. Orange tracers streaked across the wings. Art hollered, “Jink, god dammit,” as Mike pulled hard right; but the Phantom shuddered, burbling on the edge of a stall. The stick felt mushy and hydraulic pressure had dropped below 1,000 PSI.

Rolling sluggishly back to wings-level, he hit the mic button. “Calcite, Wolf just took another hit and we’re loosing flight control hydraulics. Descending through 9800 and we’ll be ejecting any second now. Better watch those guns along Route 911. They just hosed us good.”

“Roger, Wolf, copy that. Come up voice as soon as you’re on the ground. Sandys are 35 minutes out. You guys stay cool and we’ll see you at the bar tonight.”

Ben, working to sound encouraging; but down below, maybe two miles behind them, was that road running into Tchepone; in an hour it would be crawling with gomers. Gently, Mike pulled the nose up, leveling off. “It’s time, Art. I’ll wait a couple of seconds and be right behind you. Keep your back straight and shut off your automatic beeper after your chute opens. Good luck. I’ll see you back at the bar. Go now!”

A muffled explosion sounded. Flames flashed in the rearview mirrors as a rocket charge fired the back seat up the rail. Wind sucking through the empty back cockpit built to roar. Mike mouthed a prayer as he reached between his thighs, grasped the steel handle, and pulled hard. The whooshing air muffled the explosion, and the kick in the ass compressed his body more violently than he’d expected. For a frightful instant flames and debris surrounded him and he felt the heat. Then, the rocket booster accelerated him clear of the cockpit.

Still strapped tightly into the ejection seat, he hit the slipstream at 230 knots, rolling and tumbling through eerily disorienting time and space. A second later he stabilized as his parachute opened, yanking him clear of the seat. Staring between his dangling legs, he watched in a trance as the seat plummeted toward the jungle. And far below him, he caught sight of the dying phantom as it rolled into a vertical dive, a jagged hole gaping from its white belly. Mike watched in fascination as the plane turned slowly once before slicing into the trees.

A delayed distant rumble, almost like thunder, rolled up off the hillside. Filtering lazily out of the jungle, a pall of rising dust marked the grave of another downed Phantom. For a second, guilt stabbed at Mike; a twinge of remorse. Old 628, the one with his name painted below the canopy. Island Queen, he’d named her, and because he’d had to make that one last pass, she was buried now in the red earth of Indochina. Back in civilization that tail-number would be casually erased and she’d become another meaningless statistic of a meaningless war. And he wondered if that would be his fate, too.

Gunfire thumped rhythmically, jerking Mike back to the reality of his desperate situation. Those 37s again. The fighters droned above him, and Mike prayed the gunners were shooting at them, not at Art and him. He glanced up at his parachute, admiring the way it puffed and billowed, then, remembering his advice to Art, he pulled down the left riser and shut off the automatic radio beeper. Ben would see the chutes and know they’d gotten out okay. The beeper would only jam voice communications on the survival radios also tuned to guard frequency.

Below and a little to the east, Art’s canopy floated, a round blossom of alternating orange, white, and olive-drab panels. The wind drifted them slowly to the west, away from the road as gunfire rattled again, intense, ferocious, more intimidating when you could hear it. Turning in his harness, Mike searched for the blinking muzzle flashes, and in the distance he caught sight of a Phantom in a steep dive. As he watched, a fat bomb separated. A veil of white vapor obscured the fuselage and wing-roots of the Phantom as the pilot pulled into his six-g recovery. He would escape again from Mother Earth, the ferocious gunfire, and the deadly shrapnel of his own bomb.

Squinting, Mike followed the trajectory of the bomb. Large and bulbous, it was the big one they called Fat Albert. “Hey, hey, hey, you bastards, Fat Al’s away,” he muttered as he waited for the impact. Then, in a glorious instant, an orange flash turned bright red as a bloated ball of fire boiled out of the jungle, swelling gradually into a mushroom cloud of dust and smoke. The gunfire grew ferocious as Mike counted the seconds, feeling grudging admiration for the way those balsy little bastards kept on shooting after a three-thousand-pounder smoked the gun-pit next door. He was up to 15 when he heard the hollow echoing thump. Two and a half miles maybe, much too close for an uncontested pickup. They‘d have to asshole those guns before a chopper could get in.

Mike glanced down below, watching as Art headed toward a small clearing. Art’s parachute canopy began to sag, and then it collapsed. He was on the ground in good shape; he’d drifted onto an isolated limestone outcropping jutting out of the thick jungle. The gomers would play hell trying to climb up after him but the Jolly Green wouldn’t have a problem spotting him from above.

Mike drifted farther west toward the crest of Lloyd’s Hill and a cluster of towering teak trees. The branches below him were thatched together into a green barrier maybe 200 feet above the ground. Not a good spot for an easy pickup, but the gomers wouldn’t get him anytime soon. His seat survival kit was strapped tightly to his ass, and he left it there to shield his crotch; he brought his elbows in hard against his ribs and tucked his chin against his chest protecting his other vitals. He crashed through the limbs and foliage, plummeting 15 feet before his parachute snagged on a limb, jerking him to a sudden stop. Then he dangled, swaying gently in the shadows.

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