Sons of Fortune Read online

  “This is Blackbird One to flight,” said the pilot, breaking radio silence. “Don’t switch on your underbelly lights until you’re thirty seconds from rendezvous, and remember, I’m going in first.”

  A green tracer of bullets shot in front of the cockpit, and the rear gunners immediately returned fire.

  “The VC have identified us,” said the flight leader crisply. He dipped his helicopter to the right and Nat saw the enemy for the first time. The VC were advancing up the hill, only a few hundred yards away from where the chopper would try to land.

  Fletcher read the article in the Washington Post. It was an heroic episode that had caught the imagination of the American public in a war no one wanted to know about. A group of seventy-eight infantrymen, cornered in the North Vietnamese jungle, easily outnumbered by the Vietcong, had been rescued by a fleet of helicopters that had flown over dangerous terrain, unable to land while encountering enemy fire. Fletcher studied the detailed diagram on the opposite page. Flight Lieutenant Chuck Philips had been the first to swoop down and rescue half a dozen trapped men. He had hovered only a few feet above the ground while the rescue took place. He hadn’t noticed that another officer, Lieutenant Cartwright, had leaped off the aircraft just as he dipped his nose and rose back up into the sky to allow the second helicopter to take his place.

  Among the bodies on the third helicopter was that of the officer in command, Captain Dick Tyler. Lieutenant Cartwright had immediately assumed command, and taken over the counterattack while at the same time coordinating the rescue of the remaining men. He was the last person to leave the field of battle and climb on board the remaining rescue helicopter. All twelve helicopters headed back to Saigon, but only eleven landed at Eisenhower airfield.

  Brigadier General Hayward immediately dispatched a rescue party, and the same eleven pilots and their crews volunteered to go in search of the missing Huey, but despite making repeated sorties into enemy territory, they could find no sign of Blackbird Twelve. Hayward later described Nat Cartwright—an enlisted man, who had left the University of Connecticut in his freshman year to sign up—as an example to all Americans of someone who, in Lincoln’s words, had given “the last full measure of devotion.” “Alive or dead, we’ll find him,” vowed Hayward.

  Fletcher scoured every paper for articles that mentioned Nat Cartwright after reading a profile that revealed he had been born on the same day, in the same town and in the same hospital.

  Nat leaped off the first helicopter as it continued to hover a few feet above the ground. He assisted Captain Tyler as he sent back the first group to board the Huey while a wave of bullets and mortars shrieked across the nose cone.

  “You take over here,” said Tyler, “while I go back and organize my men. I’ll send up half a dozen at a time.”

  “Go,” shouted Nat as the first helicopter dipped to the left before ascending into the sky. As the second helicopter flew in, despite being under constant fire, Nat calmly organized the next group to take their place on board. He glanced down the hill to see Diek Tyler still leading his men in a rearguard action while at the same time giving orders for the next group to join Nat. When Nat turned back, the third chopper was dropping into place to hover above the small square of muddy ground. A staff sergeant and five soldiers ran up to the side of the helicopter and began to clamber on board.

  “Shit,” said the staff sergeant looking back, “the captain’s hit.”

  Nat turned to see Tyler lying facedown in the mud, two soldiers lifting him up. They quickly carried his body toward the waiting helicopter.

  “Take over here, sergeant,” said Nat, and then ran down toward the ridge. He grabbed the captain’s M60, took cover and began firing at the advancing enemy. Somehow he selected six more men to run up the hill and join the fourth helicopter. He was only on that ridge for about twenty minutes, as he continued to try and repel the waves of advancing VC, while his own support group became fewer and fewer because he kept sending them up the hill to the safety of the next helicopter.

  The last six men on that ridge didn’t retreat until they saw Blackbird Twelve swoop in. As Nat finally turned and began to run up the hill, the bullet ripped into his leg. He knew he should have felt pain, but it didn’t stop him running as he had never run before. When he reached the open door of the aircraft, firing as he ran, he heard the staff sergeant say, “For fuck’s sake, sir, get your ass on board.”

  As the staff sergeant yanked him up, the helicopter dipped its nose and lurched starboard, throwing Nat across the floor before swinging quickly away.

  “Are you OK?” asked the skipper.

  “I think so,” gasped Nat, finding himself lying across the body of a private.

  “Typical of the army, can’t even be sure if they’re still alive. With luck and a tail wind,” he added, “we should be back in time for breakfast.”

  Nat stared down at the body of the soldier, who had stood by his side only moments before. His family would now be able to attend his burial, rather than having to be informed that he had been left to an unceremonious death in an unceremonious land.

  “Christ Almighty,” he heard the flight lieutenant say.

  “Problem?” Nat managed.

  “You could say that. We’re losing fuel fast; the bastards must have hit my fuel tank.”

  “I thought these things had two fuel tanks,” said Nat.

  “What do you imagine I used on the way out, soldier?”

  The pilot tapped the fuel gauge and then checked his milometer. A flashing red light showed he had less than thirty miles left before he would be forced to put down. He turned around to see Nat still lying on top of the dead soldier as he clung to the floor. “I’m going to have to look for somewhere to land.”

  Nat stared out of an open door, but all he could see was acres of dense forest.

  The pilot switched on all his lights, searching for a break in the trees, and then Nat felt the helicopter shudder. “I’m going down,” said the pilot, sounding just as calm as he had throughout the whole operation. “I guess we’ll have to postpone breakfast.”

  “Over to your right,” shouted Nat as he spotted a clearing in the forest.

  “I see it,” said the pilot as he tried to swing the helicopter toward the open space, but the three-ton juggernaut just wouldn’t respond. “We’re going down, whether we like it or not.”

  The whirring of the blades became slower and slower, until it began to feel to Nat as if they were gliding. He thought of his mother and felt guilty that he hadn’t replied to her latest letter, and then of his father, who he knew would be so proud of him, of Tom and his triumph of being elected to the Yale student council—would he in time become president? And of Rebecca, whom he still loved and feared he always would. As he clung to the floor, Nat suddenly felt very young; he was, after all, still only nineteen. He discovered some time later that the flight lieutenant, known as Blackbird Twelve, was only a year older.

  As the helicopter blades stopped whirring and the aircraft glided silently toward the trees, the staff sergeant spoke, “Just in case we don’t meet again, sir, my name’s Speck Foreman, it’s been an honor to know you.”

  They shook hands, as one does at the end of any game.

  Fletcher stared at the picture of Nat on the front page of the New York Times below the headline AN AMERICAN HERO. A man who had signed up the moment he’d received the draft notice, although he could have cited three different reasons for claiming exemption. He’d been promoted to lieutenant and later, as a warrant officer, he’d taken command of an operation to rescue a stranded platoon on the wrong side of the Dyng River. No one seemed to be able to explain what a warrant officer was doing on a helicopter during a front-line operation.

  Fletcher knew he would spend the rest of his life wondering what decision he would have made if that plain brown envelope had ended up in his mailbox, a question that could only be properly answered by those who had been put to the test. But even Jimmy conceded that Lieute