The Storm

“Zach, you listenin'?” Henry’s voice shook me out of my thoughts, and I focused back on Gunny. “Henry’s trackin' device had just turned on as we flew low over the jungle tree tops. 'Thirty minutes out,' came the pilots voice over my headset, and I told my men to prepare. Our orders were to fly in low and get Henry and his team out if possible. The door gunner would take the team out if needed, if they had no chance and were overrun. We were an unmarked Huey, so as not to be recognized, but we would still be fired upon by the Vietcong. This was the risk of a close Ops." Henry broke in on top of Gunny’s conversation, “Gunny, let me take it for a while frommy point of view, so the boy here won’t think you're some kind of monster. Sure, we wanted to be evacuated. Sure, I wanted to roll into that chopper floor like we had done so many times before. My whole team wanted to get air-lifted out and not die in that jungle. We knew the risks and our orders and suspected the orders of the evacuation team were to get us out or take us out. We screwed up and got the VC hot on our trail, and they were breathin' down our necks." "Those little guys can run through the jungle like deer, and we were already exhausted tryin' to evade 'em. We could hear the chopper comin', and so could the VC. We weren’t even supposed to have a tail, but there we were, runnin' for our lives, and the VC were closin' in. Killin' us all was not their intention.

Capture was. They knew somehow that we were The Ghost Team, and they wanted us bad."

"We were 100 yards from the LZ (landing zone) when a volley of AK-47 rounds ripped through the underbrush and hit

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