There was a rising but quiet pitter patter rhythm in the distance that my ears had been yearning to hear. The sound was unmistakable, two Blackhawk helicopters making their way across Maydan Shahr district in Wardak Province heading to FOB Airborne. I was soon able to make them out as their silhouettes passed in front of the mountains, cautiously avoiding any consistency of pattern in order to avoid giving the insurgents a reliable flight path for an attack. Their shapes, vague and nearly indiscernable at first, were soon heading straight for us with noses up, preparing to land.
The noise was deafening as the helicopter's rotors beat the air with a fury, allowing the helo to land gracefully on the pad at the HLZ (helicopter landing zone). The sand and small rocks were flying through the air under the bright and clear blue sky on that warm March day. The door opened and out came a few new guests to FOB Airborne as I waited too anxiously for the all clear signal to load the first helo.
The signal came and with what seemed like the speed of the fastest speed walker on Earth, I grabbed all 200 pounds of gear and labored across the pad. The crew chief helped me load my bags and I jumped into a window seat by the door, my favorite place to fly.
I've flown over a hundred times in Afghanistan, but this time my heart was in my throat, my leg bouncing nervously and my hands struggling to connect the clasps of the seat belt. Soon the belt was tight and I sat back to look out the window. The door closed tightly next to me and the crew chief jumped aboard.
When a helo is sitting on the landing pad, the engine revolutions are reduced and there is only a little vibration. I stared out of the window as we waited for the pilot to take off, a thousand memories passing through my mind. My first landing on FOB Airborne, my first mission to a remote COP, the room I lived in for nearly a year, the countless missions outside of the wire and meetings with governance officials, friends I'll cherish, friends I lost, enemies I'll despise, snow storms, sand storms, IEDs, firefights, noise.
I felt the engines rev higher in preparation for takeoff, the vibrations of the helo passing through my body as I realized this was it, this was my freedom flight, this was the last day I would ever spend in Wardak Province, Afghanistan. My body seemed to relish the strengthening vibration as memories and stress, pain and fatigue, loneliness and aggravation began sifting out of me.
The last four weeks have been the most stressful of the deployment. The number of "green on blue" incidents where trusted Afghans shot their American counterparts in cold blood, the Koran burnings, the murders of the women and children just south of us, and the IEDs and firefights starting again all made me very nervous, very often. My head was constantly on a swivel and I trusted no Afghan I saw on my FOB that I didn't know personally, and even those I did know I wasn't sure I could trust. Outside the wire where I had usually been in a relatively relaxed posture, I brought extra ammo and kept an extra weapon on red status just in case my primary failed. But there would be no more missions outside the wire, no more Afghans soldiers I didn't know wandering around me.
These last few moments before takeoff lasted an eternity as every sense was more finely attuned to my surroundings. The sound of the rotors had a peculiar secondary sound on each beat of the blades that I'd never noticed before. There's was a soft, bell-like chime from one of the latches that reminded me of a Christmas ornament dangling on a brightly lit tree. There were a few loose bolts on the seats as a metal-on-metal clank matched the pattern of the rotor pulse. My strong exhale, trying to calm down a little, ripped through the other sounds in my head with a thunderous rancor that was unexpected.
My body knew we were flying before my eyes did as it felt the small changes in balance as the pilot gently lifted us off of the pad. He kept the helo level as we rose slowly and inched toward the outer edge, turning to the opposite direction. As we nosed down, moved forward more quickly and rose up, I watched the buildings of the FOB fade into the distance until they appeared as they did when I first saw a map image almost 14 months ago.
I sat back in my seat, closed my eyes, and imagined Carrie Lou and the girls straining for a glimpse from the end of a jetway in Boston, smiles on their faces, their eyes sparkling beautifully on a sunny day. Fourteen months after I started on this adventure, I can imagine the walk together out of the terminal, arm in arm, hardly able to let go of each other, ready to pass into the next phase of our lives.
