Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan
Inside the cockpit of his Bell AH-1Z Viper combat assault helicopter, Marine captain Scott Chandler waited impatiently with his co-captain, Jorge Rovera. This was their third rescue mission in less than twenty-four hours. As far as Chandler was concerned, the sooner they got started the sooner they’d get it over with. The increased stress of each mission was taking a toll on him.
With 10,000 U.S. soldiers already killed since the United States invasion, 38,000 returned home wounded, and 103,000 combat soldiers still patrolling Afghanistan with an additional 50,000 from allies, Chandler’s eleven more months of service at Bagram Air Base felt like a lifetime he would never survive.
At the signal from the makeshift tower, the Bell Viper GE T-700 twin engines roared to life and Chandler quickly rechecked the mission profile on his clipboard:
“Rescue eleven Marines pinned down south entrance Salang tunnel, Hindu Kush altitude 10,423. Take out enemy. Anticipate heavy fire. Possible SAMS. Coordinates on GPS.”
“Sucks big time,” Rovera said.
“Roger that.” Chandler checked the instrument panel, flipping switches, studying tachometers and fuel levels. He pulled the collective stick with his left hand, controlling the pitch of the blades, and lifted the hydraulically boosted cyclic that controlled forward movement. “Staying alive. It’s a serious job, mi amigo, he said. “Es lastima. Time to get out there and fight for that oil.”
“Yep,” Rovera nodded. “Time to blow the hell out of some terrorists—before they crawl back like army ants.”
Rovera reviewed his arsenal of air-to-ground weaponry:
The armament configuration included a choice of 16 Hellfire missiles, 6 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, a 20mm gun with 750 rounds, and 7 and 19 shot 2.75" rocket pods. The gross weight of the aircraft was 18,500 lbs and Rovera knew he only had 2,176 lbs of useful load left for munitions on a hot day. The Bell Viper, historically a two seat combat chopper, had been expanded in the cargo area by Boeing three years ago to hold up to a dozen soldiers so they could execute air-to-ground missions picking up wounded solders, and transporting them into battle. Six FFAR rockets completed the Viper bomb load docket. “Locked and loaded,” he said to Chandler. “The world’s best pilot and best blow-shit-up man together in one fine machine. Let’s get lucky.”
“Let’s just stay lucky.”
Chandler worked the foot pedals controlling the tail rotor and the cyclic forward speed. He thrust the collective upward, and felt the Bell Viper lift off the tarmac in a swirl of dust.
As the helicopter headed north toward the mountains, eleven minutes passed before Rovera pointed out a plume of smoke in the distance. “Over there,” he said.
Chandler goosed the chopper to 9,300 feet, then turned it northeast cross-mountain. The Salang Tunnel opening was a dark speck in the distance. Chandler pointed out puffs of mortar and gun fire 400 meters to the west of the tunnel entrance. He raised his right thumb. “On your mark,” he said.
Rovera nodded.
The Bell Viper’s radio came alive. Encrypted language from the Marine ground unit confirmed line-of-sight contact. Rovera confirmed one dead, one wounded.
Despite the sweat that ran down his forehead, Chandler’s eyes remained riveted to the instrument panel, fighting back memories of too many times he’d been shot at by rocket and gun fire. The Purple Heart he’d received nine months ago memorialized the shrapnel embedded in his right hip, that had given him a slight limp. The Bronze Star for bravery had been awarded to him when his Bell UH-1 Huey fell out of the sky back in mid July. Chandler had carried one of the wounded Marines over his shoulder away from the crash before it burst into flames.
The Bell Viper AH-1Z he commanded today was better equipped. It could turn and dodge on a dime. The medals meant nothing to him. They both sat in the boxes in which they had been given to him, tucked in the back of his sock drawer. He’d once told Jorge Rovera that the true meaning at the end of a man’s life was not about how much money and possessions he’d accumulated, but about how many lives he had touched. Jorge replied that he wished he’d stayed back in Cuba to help all his friends and family.
Chandler leaned over the GPS, punching in new coordinates. The Marines were farther east than they’d been told. Rovera now had a fix on the insurgents’ position west of the tunnel entrance. He looked at Chandler and said, “Ready, captain.”
“Fire at will,” Chandler commanded.
Along with an unrelenting stream of 20 mm shells, the Viper unleashed a screaming attack of Hellfire missiles. The Taliban position was ablaze with massive explosions, confirming they’d hit the insurgent ammo dump.
Chandler grinned. “Bingo,” he shouted.
Rovera returned a thumbs-up.
Then the Bell Viper banked away from the target, swooped to 300 feet above the Marines’ position, and hovered.
Chandler barked orders to the ground force, guiding them to a landing zone, then the helicopter settled to the ground. The Marines ran toward the craft. Chandler and Rovera watched as the dead and wounded Marines were carried by others to the copter.
After the last Marine climbed in, Chandler lifted the Viper into the air at a slant.
At one thousand feet, the cockpit warning buzzer sounded and red and amber lights flashed on the control panel.
Chandler shouted back into the cabin, “Incoming SAM. Hold on.”
Jorge Rovera was desperately trying to get a lock on the incoming missile to counter fire, but it was coming too fast.
The Marine captain saw that their chances of escape were slim-to-none. Only one option, and it was high risk. The incoming ground-to-air missile was a Chinese made QW-1 MANPAD that the Iranians had enhanced and supplied to the Afghan insurgents. Chandler also knew the ground-to-air missile profile: 1.447 meters long, filled with sixteen and a half kilos of explosives, enough to blow his sixty-five foot Viper out of the sky. The QW-1 was a heat seeking missile that rarely missed its target.
In front of him loomed a mountain wall of rock. “Hold on,” Chandler shouted to the Marines, and thrust the helicopter up to 3800 feet-- the rocket in hot pursuit.
The Marine sitting behind Rovera shouted, “We’re fucked.”
“Not quite,” Chandler screamed above the engine roar.
Eyes riveted on the altimeter and the GPS, in a blur of motion his two hands worked the collective, the cyclic, and instrument panel, his feet working the directional pedals.
As the shoulder-launched rocket honed in on the heat from the Bell Viper’s engines, Chandler suddenly switched both engines off and reversed the prop blades to ease the descent.
The Viper fell out of the sky, dodging the rocket by fifty yards.
“Mother of Christ. We’re fucking dead,” someone in the back screamed.
As the missile smashed into the rock face in a brilliant red-orange explosion of flame and smoke, the Bell Viper had plummeted 650 feet. Chandler’s eyes were fixed on the spinning altimeter needles.
He flipped the ignition switch to turn on the port engine, but it sputtered and false-started. He tried the second engine and it choked a burst of exhaust and fell silent. Everybody in the cabin watched in horror. The craggy earth below was speeding toward them at thirty-two feet per second. They could hear nothing except the sound of the wind, rushing by like a hurricane. Chandler had already done the math: falling at thirty-two feet per second, he knew he had less than two minutes in the air before his Bell Viper would crash and burn.
Rovera crossed himself.
On Chandler’s third attempt, the starboard engine roared to life. Only 400 feet from the ground, Chandler regained control and his port engine fired up restoring full power to the craft.
The Marines in the back let out an explosive cheer of relief, congratulating their pilot on his precision maneuver.
But as the helicopter lifted around the north side of the mountain, heavy ground fire resumed. The sharp ping of armor-piercing bullets flooded the cabin. Somebody in the back screamed, “I’m hit.”
Rovera didn’t see the shower of blood and sinew that covered the Viper’s ceiling above Chandler’s head. What he saw was his pilot clutching the remains of his left arm, teeth clenched in pain.
“Son of a bitch, man. You’re shot.”
Chandler’s left arm was shattered. He was losing blood fast. As bullets chopped holes in the chopper’s flight deck, Rovera saw Chandler trying to control the helicopter with his right hand. Rovera ripped off his shirt sleeve and scurried behind Chandler to tie a tourniquet tightly around his left bicep to stop the flow of blood. The ulna and radius bones of Chandler’s left arm spiked out of his field jacket like two sharp bayonets. The two fingers that had formed a V just moments ago had been shot off, along with Chandler’s thumb.
“Leave it alone,” Chandler shouted. “I’m okay.”
“Bullshit, man. I’ve got it.”
“The fuck you do. It’s my ship. I got it, God damn it. Get out of the way.”
Chandler used his right arm to alternately work both the cyclic and collective, pushing Rovera back into his seat. But he was losing control.
“You’re fucking crazy, Chandler. You saved us all. Let us save you.”
Chandler shook his head violently. “I got it, God damn it. I got it. Let me go.” Then he lost consciousness.
But the instant he knew Chandler was hit, Rovera, using the EFIS- Electronic Flight Information System, had put the helicopter on autopilot. They were heading back to Bagram.
#
Captain Scott Chandler was rushed to the base hospital, where his left arm was amputated. Three weeks later, he was sent back home to spend four months in rehab at Fort Harrison Veteran Hospital in Montana, where he would be fitted with a prosthesis. When he returned home to St. Mary’s, Montana, Chandler placed his second Purple Heart and Bronze Star next to the other medals. In the sock drawer.
