I PREFER HEIGHT

OH-6 CAYUSE

Another secret run. Documents for the 25th Division G-2, Cu Chi.

Picked up outside Tây Ninh East, on the runway next to B-32 Special Forces Camp.

No Huey this time. A Loach — Hughes OH-6 Cayuse, shaped like an egg, fast and beautiful. I climbed in and knew. Helluva ride ahead.

I was a wannabe pilot. This was hog heaven. The warrant officer grinned and asked if I wanted some fun. I said yes before he finished asking.

A Loach was a Ferrari at Le Mans. Small, quick, hard to hit. I felt safe. I felt alive.

We took off. Nose down, steep dive, leveled out three feet over a river. Palm trees blurred past. Sunlight cut through the canopy in gold shafts. Paradise, with a war bolted on.

We chased that river for miles, low enough to feel the spray. Sampans appeared ahead, one after another, and we tore past at treetop speed. Faces snapped up — startled, wide-eyed, mouths open — gone before they could finish the thought. Farmers. Fishermen. Nothing in their lives had ever moved this fast, this low, this loud. I laughed into the wind. This was flying.

Then the pilot pushed it further.

Ten feet up. Straight down a village’s main street. Huts blurring by on both sides.

Then we saw it.

A cable.

Strung across the street. Right ahead.

The pilot hauled back.

Too late.

Our skids caught the last two feet of cable. The helicopter snapped — violent, uncontrolled, bucking like something alive and furious.

He fought it. Won it. Seconds before a grove of rubber trees.

I looked back. Leaves were exploding off the treetops where our tail rotor and skids had torn through.

Neither of us said a word for the rest of the flight.

Another lucky day in sunny Vietnam.