The Elimination Game

TANNENBAUM PUBLISHING COMPANY

THE ELIMINATION GAME

CHAPTER 1

ETLINGEN, WEST GERMANY
5:37 P.M., THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 1980

Chief Warrant Officer Two Crystal Lambert quickly scanned the cockpit panel—all instrument indications were normal. She and First Lieutenant Sandra Boswith were returning from a long day of picking up Special Forces troops at one location and dropping them off at another and they were bone tired. The exertion on the helicopter had been immense, hovering at fifty feet while the Special Forces guys practiced their rappelling. Lambert wouldn’t have been surprised to see an overload on the engine, but everything was in the green.

As they headed towards home, Lambert, the pilot-in-command of the UH-1 Huey helicopter, began to relax. Although the lieutenant had done most of the flying, as most copilots do, Lambert had retained responsibility for the entire flight—the radios, navigation, coordinating with the Special Forces commander, and ensuring the Huey ended up where it needed to be and when.

Arching her eyebrows at her copilot, Lambert squeezed the intercom on the cyclic and teasingly asked, “So, Lieutenant, how did your big date go this past weekend?”

Everyone in the company was agog that the Operations Officer, Captain Kyle Wittgenstein, had asked Lieutenant Boswith out. Not only were there so few women in the unit to begin with that their every move was scrutinized, but Wittgenstein, who had been in the company for two years, hadn’t been known to date a single female in all that time. Boswith had just arrived a few months earlier from flight school.

Boswith turned her head to the right, and Lambert could only see the back of her flight helmet. “It was fine,” Boswith said, speaking through the helmet microphone as she squeezed the intercom.

“Come on, Lieutenant,” Lambert urged. “Give me some details. We’re all girls here!” She turned towards the crew chief in the back, Staff Sergeant Sharon Gregory, and grinned. Gregory gave a thumb’s up, but Boswith had her head facing out of the cockpit and didn’t see.

“Well,” she said, “I hadn’t dated a captain before.”

“Did you—you know—do the down and dirty?” Lambert smiled lasciviously.

Boswith whipped back around. “Crystal! You know I wouldn’t talk about that! Especially in front of …” She turned slightly towards the crew chief.

“Yes, I know,” Lambert said with a shudder of disgust. “Not in front of the enlisted folks. Got to keep you pure, right, Sharon?”

Gregory keyed her mike and laughed uproariously, “Yes, ma’am!”
Boswith kept on flying, steadfastly looking out of the cockpit and examining the horizon, pretending to ignore her companions.

All of a sudden, a loud beeping sound filled the cockpit.

“What the hell?” Lambert angrily demanded.

The “Transmission Oil Low” light had illuminated. Army doctrine taught every pilot to put the helicopter down immediately.

“I have the controls,” Lambert said, grabbing the cyclic and collective.

Glancing over to visually verify this, Boswith then confirmed it by saying, “You have the controls.”

From the first day of flight school, pilots are taught to always keep an emergency landing spot in mind while flying, and Boswith had a place in her mind’s eye when Lambert took control. Although Boswith was perfectly capable of making the landing, many pilots-in-command are hard put to take a training session that far or to extend that much trust in their copilots. Besides, the helicopter and the safety of its occupants are the responsibility of the pilot-in-command.

As it turned out, Lambert was aiming towards the same landing zone. Simultaneously, she keyed the radio mike and made a Mayday call to the last approach tower they had been in contact with.

“Nuremberg Tower, this is Army 67245, going down at coordinates—“

Boswith was frantically determining the UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) coordinates off the map. She keyed the radio and said “Lima Mike 9165 4523.”

“Got that, Nuremberg?” Lambert asked sharply.
“Roger, Army 67245.”

Lambert clicked her mike twice—a way to indicate affirmation or agreement without conversation. “Call out my instruments for me, Lieutenant,” she said in a clipped voice. She began to focus all her attention on getting the helicopter down, past a village to a farmer’s field surrounded by tall trees. Being West Germany, the whole area was densely populated and heavily wooded, and this was the best choice available. With her years of aviation experience and a couple of other emergency landings under her belt, Lambert felt confident they would come out of it okay, but it was still dicey.

“Your speed’s high. Slow it down. You’re at two hundred feet. One hundred feet. Still too fast.” Boswith nervously kept close watch in and out of the helicopter.

She and Gregory watched the trees come rushing towards them from below as Lambert adjusted the collective and cyclic in minute increments. Barely clearing the treetops, the helicopter began settling into the small open area, with Lambert decreasing speed dramatically while further reducing altitude.

At five feet above the ground, they all breathed a sigh of relief.

“We made it!” Lambert said triumphantly, as she slowly lowered the collective to land the helicopter.

At that moment, the helicopter burst into flames, killing all three women aboard instantaneously.