“You ready, sir?”

“Let's do it,” I tell Chief Warrant Officer Jensen, my gunner today. “One more flight, and then it's back to piloting a desk until next time.”

“Ah, you know you love doing the paperwork, El Tee. Face it, that's why they have you commissioned officers in the wing,” Jensen jokes, and he's not that far off. The warrant officers of the wing may be crack pilots, and they've got balls of steel when it comes to helicopter skills, but they are the closest thing the Army has to fighter jock types. They blow off paperwork like it's nothing.

“Yeah well, just remember that when your leave request to go to Okinawa for New Year's gets mysteriously lost and you end up being barracks OIC for the whole time,” I joke, and Jensen laughs. He and I have flown together now for three weeks, and we're at the point now where we are starting to work together as a crew and not just two professionals.

We climb into the cockpit of our AH-64D Apache, loaded for a patrol mission. We're not loaded heavy, but it's still enough to tear some shit up if we need to. These sorts of patrols are routine, and the NKs might holler a lot, but they know not to start any stupidity with us.

Yung Sool Kwok, our Korean Army attachment, is just finishing up his final preflight checks as I warm up the electronics. “Hey Kwok, looking good?”

“You clear, sir!” Kwok calls back in his very strong if accented English. I've spent a good chunk of the time since getting to Korea learning the local language, expanding on something I started back at Ft. Rucker. I figure if I'm going to be here a year or more, I might as well know when someone's been talking shit about me.

“Good. Clear the area,” I call, firing up the engines. The engine whines a little, but catches just fine, and we've got two good engines quickly enough.

“Gimpo Flight Control, this is Gambit One Two. Requesting clearance for takeoff.” We're not at Camp Humphreys, having ferried from there to Gimpo in order to be closer to the DMZ. The first time I flew close enough to realize that off to my left shoulder, easily visible, was North Korea itself, I felt a rush. Now, it's still enough to put my adrenaline pumping, but it's nowhere near as scary as it was.

“Roger Gambit One Two, you are cleared for takeoff. Good flying, boys,” the air traffic control unit calls back.

I feed more power to the rotors, until we're just at that moment where everything in the Apache trembles, like a racehorse ready to jump out of the gate. The wheels are just barely touching the ground, if I feed in any more power we'll take off, but if there's an issue now, Kwok can give me the cut signal, and there's nothing damaged. Instead, Kwok pops me a salute that I pop back. I give the rotors full power, and we're off.

“Set nav for checkpoint Alpha,” I tell Jensen. He's got a full set of controls up in his seat, the Apache can be flown by just one person, but it's nice to have him up there worrying about weapons and checking radar scopes and listening in on the radios.

“Checkpoint set, sir. Just remember, if you have to veer off course, try to veer south,” Jensen jokes, and we start off. The patrol route is a sort of looping wobbly triangle, mostly following a series of country highways from Gimpo to another village to the west, before heading back. All in all, it's not that hard of a flight, and only a few times will we be within spitting distance of the border.

“So Jensen, the North Koreans whining at us yet?” I ask as I make a course adjustment for Jiseok-Ri, one of our checkpoints. My first flight up here, Jensen took over the controls for ten minutes while I got to listen to the wider radio band, and the nearly constant chatter from the North Koreans telling us in alternating Korean and English that we were in danger of violating their airspace, we'd be meeting our makers, and oh by the way they'd be happy if we defected and joined the glorious communist revolution and happy place known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. I think they actually have live people over there reading the damn script. That's gotta be a fun job.

“Of course, sir,” Jensen says, still keeping to the honorific. I don't have a nickname yet, so I'm either El Tee or sir. After this exercise, I'll get one, I'm sure. I hear they're kicking around either Joker, because of my facial scar, or Artie, after King Arthur, since I have an admittedly aristocratic look to my face. Well, other than the half a Glasgow smile. “You getting any better at understanding their gobbledygook?”

“A bit,” I admit. “But the accents different. Imagine someone from Ohio being sent to Scotland to talk to the folks up there. Kwok told me that the closest word the South Koreans have to the Northern accent is the equivalent of calling it redneck Korean. No offense, Chief.”

Jensen, who's from Kentucky, shakes his head. “None taken. Kwok just better remember that when the shit hits the fan, it's us rednecks who are going to save....”

Suddenly, red lights go off all over the cabin, and my Apache starts to buck and shimmy in the air. “What the fuck? Gimpo control, this is Gambit One Two, I've got major mechanical problems with my aircraft. Over.”

“Roger, Gambit One Two. Can you set her down?”

I try my stick, but there's no movement left or right, and I hiss. “Chief, you got any stick?”

“Negative, sir!” Chief yells. “Shit, we're headed north!”

Goddammit, this had to happen just as we were looping to the north for the return leg of the patrol. “Understood. Gimpo control, we are dead stick, I repeat, dead stick. I'm heading north, I'm going to try and cut power and ditch before we cross the border. Notify the North Koreans that I am not hostile, repeat, not hostile.”

Not hostile, right. Like they're going to fucking believe that the hundred and forty rockets, my chain gun, and the Stingers on my outboard points are just because I want to make sure I don't get blown out of the sky. “Chief, start resetting any and every fucking thing you can. I'm going to dump gas.”

It's a risky move, dumping my fuel, but I'm less than two miles from the North Korean border. I reach for the hard line that's connected to the emergency dump and pull, the big plume of mist behind me at least telling me my engines will be sucking dry in fifteen seconds. I hear the turboshafts sputter, then come to a stop, and we're coasting on autorotating, the closest thing to a crash landing system in the Apache. “What's our altitude, Chief?”

“Nine hundred feet, sir!” Chief yells, and I curse. Goddamn minimum flight levels set by not wanting to scare the locals and their pets more than save my ass! It's just high enough that we're going to coast over the line into North Korea.

“Get the survival kits ready, Chief! Hope you liked SERE school!” Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE. Where you learn what it's like to be dumped behind enemy lines and forced to get your ass back to the good guys. Not fun as a school, yet still nowhere near as bad as the real thing, I've heard.

The radio cuts out, some circuit or another frying, and I can only watch, trying with a dead stick to do something, anything to lessen the impact of what's about to happen. I hear a pinging sound on the outer skin of the chopper, and I realize that whoever the hell is over there in North Korea, they're shooting at us. Thankfully, the cockpit is protected against anything short of a fifty caliber round.

The ground rushes up, faster than I'd like, and I send up a quick prayer. If there's any higher power protecting me, I just hope that I can see Ashley again. I never told her the question I wanted to ask, if she'd marry me.

There's scrub trees, and some brush. A rice paddy comes up, and my Apache splats into the middle of it, probably saving my life. Still, my head rocks forward, and I feel a tremendous jarring before everything goes black.