As Arroyo settled into the ambulance, he managed to yell back to the rest of the team, ‘How about getting one for me?’ At that point, the operation began to take a new, emotional course. It was an article of faith with SEALs that, once they had come under attack by gunfire, they should withdraw and not return to the same area. But Telfer and his men were uniquely frustrated on this operation. The January 30 insertion was the last one that they could possibly make during their tour in Vietnam. Any revenge against the VC who had shot Arroyo would have to be accomplished that day, or never.

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The men of Zulu Platoon were acting on emotion when they lifted off the second time. Telfer decided that they should land at the point where Arroyo had been hit. Along with the transport chopper pilots and crew, the SEALs had determined that the rounds fired must have come from a tree-and-grass-covered dike about one mile west of their original objective. Telfer ordered the two Seawolf helicopter gunships, commanded by Lieutenant Nelson, to be ready to make firing runs against the dike from south to north. The SEALs would land to the west of the dike next to another dike that ran parallel to the objective.

The loss of Arroyo severely reduced the squad’s firepower and its ability to communicate. Arroyo had carried a combined over-and-under CAR-15 commando rifle (a modified M-16A1 with a shorter barrel and a short, expandable metal stock) and a 40mm grenade launcher as well as the squad’s radio. Telfer had asked his second in command in Zulu Platoon, Lt. j.g. Thomas Richards, who carried a Stoner light machine gun, to accompany the patrol. Richards also carried the squad’s radio, a model PRC-77. He had met the aircraft when it arrived with the wounded man and did not need much prompting to accompany the team.

About 15 minutes after taking off from Nam Can for the second time, the SEAL squad approached its new objective from the southwest. The helicopter inserted Telfer’s squad at 1430 in an open, dry rice paddy about 250 meters southwest of the dike from which the gunfire had come on the previous flight. The Seawolf light fire team–the two gunships under Nelson–was hovering only a few minutes away to provide fire support if it was needed. The insertion went smoothly. Telfer’s SEALs moved away from the transport helicopter toward an intervening dike about 50 meters to the northeast.

Small-arms fire started hitting around the squad as soon as the men began to move north, up the intervening dike. The fire was aimed, moderately heavy and clearly dangerous, and it came from the dike that was their objective, which was now about 150 meters away from the platoon. Telfer recalled that the fire seemed to be largely from AK-47 rifles. That kind of fire was a bad sign. It raised suspicions that either a VC Main Force or an extraordinarily well-armed local unit was involved. On the other hand, the SEALs did not hear any machine-gun fire, and the absence of that kind of fire was a good sign.

Telfer called the Seawolves on the PRC-77 radio and requested a heavy strike from south to north on the dike where the VC were positioned. The Seawolves put on a good show. Each gunship made one run firing rockets and miniguns (extremely high-speed machine guns capable of firing up to 6,000 rounds per minute). Telfer later remembered seeing a palm tree near the VC being lofted end-over-end into the air. Futrell was hit in the face by either a casing fragment from a rocket or a piece of palm tree. The noise, smoke and debris that resulted from the Seawolf attack were impressive, and the VC fire died away.

Over the radio, Nelson announced from his gunship that he could see two VC lying in the open, motionless and apparently dead, just to the east of the dike line. He could also see weapons near them, as well as at least one VC fleeing to the north, away from the area. In retrospect, Nelson’s report represents the crucial juncture of the operation. The SEALs had been detected and fired on, and Telfer was faced with the distinct possibility that he was moving his squad into danger. But two things nagged him on. First, he wanted to be able to report some concrete evidence of VC casualties and damage when he saw Arroyo and the rest of the squad. Second, he was encouraged by Nelson’s report of two VC killed in action and one running out of the area.

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