Occasionally, one or the other didn’t make it to the two-minute mark, having the controls taken away by the other pilot or relinquishing them in a horrible moment of loss of control.
“I HAVE THE CONTROLS!!” Greg hollered out as Pete went into another of his 20-degree banks to his left from 50 feet off of the desert deck. As Greg pulled the bird back up to stable flight, a glance at his altimeter registered just 05 feet, so… that right there was patent cause for the crapping of masonry building materials.
What Good is a Combat Controller with No Lights?
With four minutes remaining to Serpent, Chief called forward to his USAF Combat Controller and instructed him to throw on Infrared landing lights for an incoming flight of four to finally give him a horizontal reference to the horizon.
“Uh, yeah — no, no lights,” came the response.
“You don’t understand, Serpent… we have a situation here with no horizon and are disoriented!”
“Yeah, sorry, no lights.”
“Ok, I am declaring an emergency and request lights ASAP, or we will crash!”
“Uuuuh… sorry, Sir — no lights.”
Now Greg knew he would simply have to pull through this catastrophe and make it back to the FARP one way or another so he could fulfill his new life’s quest — to whoop that CCT boy for being such a jackass:
“Oh, dear Lord… steady my hand, make my path straight and true. Shine your beacon on my destination so that I will not be led astray by the devil’s wicked vertigo. Show me the way to the Forward Arming and Refueling Point (FARP) so that I may beat that fly-boy feller’s ass… I ask this in your name, Amen.”
“We have a light; we have IR light at the FARP!” Pete sang out.
And indeed, there was an IR beam shining the way to the Serpent. “Wow,” thought the Chief, “the power of prayer, dude!” Chief took the controls for the remaining final moments and laid the bird down neatly, though facing completely backward from the way it was supposed to. Not giving a honey badger shit, he rolled out onto the ground and kissed the dirt whilst thanking the Creator. Ranger Ely ran over from his scout bird:
“Christ Sarge… that really sucked bad!” and he crumpled to kiss the ground.
Inside the CCT controller’s kiosk, the plywood “door” suddenly flew open smacking the “wall” hard startling the Airman seated at his crate desk. It startled him so that he spilled ever so slightly from the cup of camomille tea that he was sipping from.
“Tiiisk!! This is dreadful! exclaimed the airman as he stood and blotted tea from the papers scattered on his crate, “What the hell is the meaning of this?!?”
In the “doorway” stood the world’s most disenchanted, disgruntled, disenfranchised by IR light, uninterested-in-anything-other-than-whipping-an-ass Chief ever to tread the realm of Chiefery.
“Woah, woah, woooah there, big fellah… can I help you there, Chief?”
“Oh, you could’ve helped me — but you didn’t… and now I’m here to express how uncomfortable that made me feel.”
What used to be the back “wall” of the controller’s kiosk was now a back door, a double-wide back door that you could have moved a pool table through sideways… if that sort of accouterment even existed in the whole country, let alone at Objective Serpent. One hoped none of them would actually be at the Serpent long enough to start pining the day away over billiards.
It was just then that the yuk-yuk Hooker came barrelling in:
“Hey, there you are, Coker… or should I call you Flipper after the way your bird was dolphining through the sky tonight — aha-ha-ha… ha-ha… ha… ummm, you ok, Coker?”
“Hooker, you see that boy laying down there?”
“That guy laying in the dirt over there?”
Talk Nice to the Gunship Drivers
“Well FUCK, Hooker — YEAH, THAT guy! That guy’s biggest problem in Iraq right now is that he doesn’t know how to talk to a gunship driver — now he knows, and his problem is solved. There’s another heaping helping of the same thing waitin’ for you if you don’t shut your Goddamned pie hole!”
CWO4 Gregory “Gravy” Coker helped the poor no-IR light-illuminating USAF CCT controller boy up and took him over to the Ranger medic for a prescription of a newt’s eye voodoo potion and a spoonful of Hasidol to take the edge off of the pain of his swelling face.
“You’ll be ok, boy… just keep your finger poised over that IR light button from now on, ya hear?” Chief Greg admonished, “Next time a Night Stalker asks for IR illume, all we want to see is a heavenly glow on the horizon and angels of freakin’ mercy flappin’ their stinkin’ wings.”
The Chief was a nice guy… just up until the point that he wasn’t a nice guy no more — GOD BLESS TEXAS!
The next morning the good Chief rolled out of his (stupid) woobie from under his gunship and stretched. Scattered on the ground all around him were dead blackbirds… that’s right dead blackbirds — WTF?! His platoon leader came by with his shit-kit on his way to the pipe-n-plank and stopped there momentarily:
“Well, I’ll be… what’s with all these dead blackbirds, Greg?
“I’m not sure, maybe some local kids with Red Ryder BB guns?
“Huh, possible I guess, just doesn’t really seem likely though — maybe Daisy or Ben Franklins.”
“Yeah, skipper… it sure is a mystery.”
“You comin’ to the pipe-n-plank, Greg?”
“Hadn’t really planned on it, why?”
“Oh, just gives us a chance to sit and talk.”
“Well, if it’s all the same to you I’d rather sit and talk just about anywhere else.”
“Have it your way, then” (whistling a chorus from Bohemian Rapsody).
Christmas 2040 Somewhere in Georgia
“Grandpa, can you tell us a story of when you were an Army Airborne Ranger!”
“Hmm, well kids… did I ever tell you about the time me ‘n the boys rescued the Night Stalker Chief from an attack by a deadly venomous cobra snake?”
“(sighs) Yeeeeeesssss Grandpa — only about a hunjrud times already — GYOLLL!”
“What about the time when the boys’n me saved that same Chief from the attack by the deadly flock of vicious blackbirds?”
“NO! — yeah, yeah, tell us that one; we never heard that one before, Grandpa — YAAAAAY!!”
“Well, there we was — me ‘n the boys was, just a-guardin’ the Night Stalker Chief there where he lay a-sleepin’ under his helicopter gunship wrapped in a (stupid) woobie — the Chief was wrapped in it, not the gunship… when all of a sudden he came under attack by a flock of deadly evil blackbirds!!”
“Oooooooooo… aaaaahhhhhhhh… ooooooooo…”
And so it went.
By Almighty God, with honor, and on behalf of CWO4 Gregory “Gravy” Coker,
geo sends
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Editor’s Note: Let’s all do Geo a solid. Go out and buy his book and visit his website. I promise it’s all good stuff. — GDM
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