Slaughterhouse

EIGHTEEN.

As the formation of Hueys draws closer to the airport, the lead helicopter bucks slightly. BANG! The engine begins winding down. Fire lamp snaps on. Copilot laughs and pulls on the fire extinguisher plunger as N¹ winds down. Fire lamp goes out, but the engine isn’t responding. The pilot rolls off the fuel as the windscreen on the left side of the cockpit puckers inward for an instant before shattering. Something strikes the copilot in the neck and shears his head off. A fountain of scarlet splashes across the overhead console as the man bleeds out. The pilot titters as warm crimson droplets splatter him. The copilot was been shot, and the Huey is still receiving fire as it leads the others toward the airfield ahead. It’s all funny as hell. Death is a laugh a minute.

With power falling off, the Huey doesn’t have a lot of air time left. Rotor RPM is decaying, falling past 260 rotations per minute. The pilot pushes forward on the cyclic, lowering the chopper’s nose, sending it into a shallow dive, using his airspeed to keep the main rotors turning. The helicopter wouldn’t make it to the airfield proper, but it could definitely make the parking lot in front of the terminal building.

As the Huey swoops in and the pilot prepares to make the autorotation, movement at the terminal building catches his eye. Civilians emerged from the structure, watching the helicopters approach. Even from a few hundred feet out, the pilot can see their faces, all turned toward the approaching flight. Waiting to be saved.

The pilot laughs so hard he almost blows the approach, and the UH-1 makes a short run-on landing, scraping across the mostly empty parking lot on its landing skids for thirty feet before coming to a halt.

This is gonna be fun.