There were other machine guns positioned around the landing strip, but it was the multiple-fifties he was worried about. He had had a good deal of trouble getting them onto the Table of Authorized Equipment, and then talking the G-1 into providing their crews. Each weapon had a four-man crew: the vehicle driver, the assistant vehicle driver, the gunner, and the assistant gunner. The assistant vehicle driver also functioned as an assistant gunner, which meant he kept a steady supply of loaded cans of .50-caliber ammunition moving from the ammunition trailer that the White towed, and helped the assistant gunner in other ways, including using an entrenchment tool to shovel red-hot fired cartridge cases from the bed of the White.
A really astonishing number of them would accumulate whenever the four Brownings were fired.
One of the problems Major Donald had recognized and done what he could to get around was that the crews of the multiple-fifties were aware that the enemy had yet to stage aerial attacks on an Army airstrip. That translated to mean that their assignment was bullshit. They just sat there in the hot sun (or, now, the getting-colder-by-the-day icy winds) and nothing happened.
Major Donald had done what he could to motivate them. He told them that if the enemy attacked from the air, they would be the first, and really only, defense the airstrip and indeed the entire X Corps Headquarters complex was going to have. He told them they had a great responsibility.
And he also arranged for them to have quickly removable canvas sun shields to protect them in the summer, and, preparing for the winter, to have oil-fired stoves called Cannon heaters specially rigged so they could be mounted in the bed of each of the Whites and keep the crews warm in the cold.
Thus, Donald had spent a lot of time and thought and effort establishing airstrip protection, and thought he had done a good job, especially in motivating the men. He was convinced they were on the alert, ready to instantly fill the skies over the airstrip with a steady stream of .50-caliber projectiles the moment they thought the airstrip was being threatened.
Threatened, for example, by a rotary-wing aircraft of a type they had not seen before, and which was painted black and completely devoid of American markings.
Major Donald knew that the Killer wouldn’t have ordered him to fly into the X Corps airstrip on the way back from dropping two stay-behind teams in the mountains unless there was a good reason, but wished that the Killer had elected to travel by some other means than in one of the Big Black Birds.
Major Donald thought there was a very good chance his careful planning and training for the defense of the X Corps airstrip was about to come around and bite him in the ass.
Major Donald had ten—not five—minutes to consider what the fire from a multiple-fifty would do to the delicate innards of an H-19A Sikorsky before the radio went off.
“Army four zero zero three, Jade.”
“Go.”
“You are cleared for an approach from the north and touchdown on the threshold of the active runway. You will hold, I say again, you will hold, on the threshold until further orders. Be advised there is light aircraft traffic in the area. Acknowledge.”
“Four double zero three understand approach from the north and hold on the threshold after touchdown. Beginning approach at this time.”
As he made the approach, Major Donald was able to clearly see—which surprised him not at all—the four large black barrels of the White-mounted multiple-fifty tracking his approach with care and what he thought might just be eagerness.
“Jade, I’m on the ground and holding on the threshold.”
“Four zero zero three, I have you in sight. You will be met.”
McCoy pointed out the cockpit window. Two jeeps, each with a pedestal-mounted .30-caliber air-cooled Browning, were racing down the runway toward them.
Both stopped twenty yards from the Big Black Bird. The .30s were now trained on the cockpit.
A lieutenant colonel got out of one of the jeeps, drew his pistol, and marched somewhat warily up to the helicopter.
Donald put his head and both of his arms out his window and waved.
“Sir, it’s Donald,” he called from the window.
The lieutenant colonel almost certainly couldn’t hear over the roar of the engine, but he recognized the face.
Neither could Donald nor McCoy hear the lieutenant colonel mutter, in either disbelief or disgust, “Jesus H. Christ!”
But they saw him holster his pistol, make arm signals to both the machine-gunners in