Run Between the Raindrops Read Online Free Page A

aircraft is due to carry it there. If I can snivel my way aboard that C-123, I might make Phu Bai before dark.
    A pilot in a jaunty blue overseas cap is standing outside the airplane, watching the forklift operator load his bird. Code of the grunt: Innovate and adapt, do what you have to do when and where you have to do it. The Air Force lieutenant eyes my slovenly condition through tinted flight glasses and smiles like a man who knows he’s about to become a mark for a needy grunt. He’s been there and done that a bunch driving airplanes around The Nam.
    “Excuse me, sir. I got a real problem and I thought maybe I could ask one of you officers for some help.” I give him everything but the tears and digging my toe in the dirt. “My brother's up at Dong Ha at Charlie Med. He got hit yesterday and I got permission to go up and see him. But the Marines say there ain't anything flying north.”
    And here is a clear opportunity for this guy to demonstrate that the Air Force could and would fly where the vaunted Marines would not. “So you want the Air Force to take you up there?”
    “Yes, sir, and if I don't get up there today, my brother might die and I would never see him again.” I am prepared to whine and wheedle further but it isn’t necessary. This guy sees his chance to trump the Marine aviators and be remembered for all time by a hard-pressed grunt as Really Good Joe. He motions for me to say no more and get my gear aboard the aircraft. “When you see your brother, tell him the Air Force got you there on time, hear?'
    His dual-engine transport claws for airspace over Danang creating a peculiar but familiar sensation back in the cargo compartment. It’s as if the airplane doesn’t want to leave the earth and get up there in triple-A range with its ass hanging out. There is a reluctant little lurch when the wheels lift off the runway and the deal is done. I snuggle under a retaining strap stretched across the floor of the cargo bay, hoping the staff sergeant down below at the booking desk picks up a bad burst of clap on his first low-level mission over a female back in The World.
    My delicate stomach wakes me from a sweaty stupor as the aircraft suddenly dips and tilts. Visible below is the red clay of Dong Ha and the pilots are taking no chances on incoming artillery. They manhandle the airplane around the pattern and roar into a final landing approach at the last possible moment. Dong Ha puts me close, but I still have to make my way to Phu Bai. Leaving me on a steel-matted runway, the aircrew unloads rapidly and then spins it around to head back for cold beer and clean sheets.

Dong Ha
    Dong Ha is headquarters for the 3 rd Marine Division, but it looks more like a sleepy outpost. Somebody ought to let them know the yellow horde is about to descend according to the vaunted oxymoron known as military intelligence. There is just one lonely Huey parked on the matting in front of the shanty passenger terminal. Two or three Marines sprawl in the red dust near the building in various stages of stupor. Grunts are incredibly flexible in a lot of interesting ways. Despite the heat boiling up off the runway matting, these guys manage to arrange their limbs under, over, or around 60 pounds of bulky equipment and sleep like babies. Code of the Grunt : Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down, and never lie down without going to sleep.
    There is a familiar form crapped out on a Willy Peter bag inside the terminal door where dark shadow provides a little shade. I’ve humped enough clicks behind that rawboned body to recognize it from any angle. He doesn’t bother to lift the helmet covering his eyes when I walk over and kick at his scruffy jungle boots.
    “On your feet, Douchebag! There’s a war to fight—or so they tell me down in Danang.”
    “Hey, dude, I was wondering if I'd run into you on this deal.” My buddy Steve is a solid combat correspondent, competent in a firefight, with a weird