“Roger.” Cory looked to Sinkey for reassurance. Sinkey was nodding his head. Previously, Cory hadn’t flown into An Loc, but he knew where the town was located.
“Land at the soccer field and I will go with you for your first pickup. Cobra Six out.”
Looking over at Cory, Sinkey commented, “Well, that was short and sweet. No need to tell us what we’re doing or where we’re doing it at. Sounded pissed, too, didn’t he?”
“Probably hasn’t had a decent cup of coffee since he was assigned advisor duty,” O’Donnell chimed in.
An Loc wasn’t much of a town. Located along Highway 13, it was west of Quan Loi and straddled the highway. A couple of two-story buildings made of concrete block and stucco served as commercial stores, with apartments on the second floor. Most structures were single wood frame with metal siding and roofs. A few had concrete block siding. The largest structure was the Catholic Church located in the center of town. As the major employer was the Michelin rubber tree plantation, there was a heavy French influence in the area despite the Indochina war fought against the French in the late 1950s. Electricity was provided by a community generator that was operated only in the early evening. Air conditioning was unheard of, and a few people had electric fans.
There was a one-room schoolhouse next to the church. A small medical office saw to whatever medical needs there were, and it had been supplemented by US medical personnel when they were in the area, which was being scaled back. There were no paved roads and no sewer systems. As in all Vietnamese towns outside of major cities, human waste went into a bucket and was used to fertilize rice paddies or vegetable fields. If a town was adjacent to a river, the waste went into the river. The soccer field was located on the west side of the town. It was not much more than an open field with a goal post at each end. The local priest was the coach and attempted to gather the kids and teach them a thing or two. He was competing with the medics at the clinic teaching the kids baseball. As Sinkey spotted the military jeep parked there, he set up his approach to land next to it.
“Cobra Six, I have you in sight and will land next to you. Over,” Cory said as he scanned the town.
“Chicken-man One-Four, that would be good. Don’t shut down as we’re going right out.”
“Roger,” Cory acknowledged, looking at Sinkey, who nodded, continuing to concentrate on his approach and landing. They touched down about fifty feet from the jeep. As they did, the US advisor started moving towards the aircraft with M16 rifle in one hand and map in the other. Climbing into the aircraft, he picked up the headset O’Donnell passed to him.
“Good morning, can you hear me?” he asked. Everyone that puts on a headset, that’s the first thing they ask, Cory was thinking. Thankfully some things never change.
Sinkey turned around to face the captain and nodded his head as he switched to intercom. “Yeah, I got you, sir.”
“Good. Here’s what we got.” He placed his map on the center console between the pilots and leaned forward, pointing. Cory pulled up his own map and likewise followed the captain’s directions on it. “There’s a long-range recon element with one US advisor and four ARVNs that I need to get extracted now. They’re located here, on the side of this clearing.”
Sinkey looked up at Cory. His eyes were the size of saucers. “Sir, that’s ten klicks inside Cambodia. Have we got authorization to fly that far into there?” He looked back at the captain.
“Yeah, we cleared this with Division through the ARVN headquarters. The team’s call sign is Panther Two-Three. I talked to them about ten minutes ago and the area is quiet. They’ll pop red smoke when you call for it,” he said.
“Wait, you discussed what color smoke to pop over the radio?” Sinkey asked.
“Yeah, I wanted to be sure they understood to be ready.”
“Sir, we’re not landing to any red smoke. If you discussed that over the radio with them, chances are Charlie heard that conversation and will be popping red smoke. Let me work it out with your team,” Sinkey said respectfully, but with a tone of disgust in his voice. “Do we have any gun cover on this trip?” he asked, looking at the advisor.
“No, I didn’t see the need for gun cover,” the advisor responded. Sinkey just looked at Cory and rolled his eyes. Idiot flashed between them.
“Okay, sit back and let’s get going. Crew, we’re going low-level and guns up. Be on your toes,” Sinkey added.
“Nothing is boring with you, Mr. Sinkey,” Hector, the normally quiet door gunner, said.
“Glad to see you’re awake this morning, Hector. Sorry to interrupt your beauty rest. You can go back to sleep when we get back,” Sinkey needled him.
“Is that a promise, sir?” Hector retorted.
Sinkey looked at Cory. “You want to take us in or navigate?”
“I’ll take us in. You can bring us out,” Cory responded.
“You have the controls,” Sinkey indicated.
“I have the aircraft.” With that, Cory pulled up on the collective, bringing the aircraft up while applying slight forward pressure on the cyclic to move the aircraft forward, increasing airspeed and altitude.
“Take a heading of three-five-zero degrees,” Sinkey directed. “Climb to twenty-five hundred until we get close to the border, and then we’ll drop to treetop and go in contour. Fast and low so maybe Charlie won’t be able to get a bead on us.”
“Roger,” responded Cory as he increased speed and altitude.
In less than two minutes, they were at altitude and approaching the town of Loc Ninh, the last Vietnamese hamlet before the Cambodian border. An Loc was a metropolis compared to Loc Ninh. Not much more than twenty structures, with a store and a Vietnamese compound with about eighty ARVNs and ten US Special Forces advisors. As they approached the town, Sinkey gave a course correction.
“Bring us around to three-zero-zero degrees and put us on the deck,” he instructed Cory.