But to Maj. TC, an HH-60 Pave Hawk combat search-and-rescue pilot, nothing could have been more beautiful on the dark night of April 7 over the Iraqi desert.

TC and crew, along with a second HH-60 from the 301st Rescue Squadron at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., were nearing the end of a dramatic mission, picking up two critically injured Special Forces soldiers in an open field just south of Baghdad. A firefight blazed just two to three kilometers away.

The men had been picked up, treated by the helicopters’ pararescue jumpers, and delivered to a forward airfield near the Iraqi town of Najaf for flight to a hospital in the region.

But now, behind him, TC’s flight engineer was counting down the last of the HH-60’s fuel. Normally called out in 100-pound increments, the numbers now came more quickly, 10 pounds of fuel at a time.

That’s when the HC-130 from the helicopters’ sister unit at Patrick, the 39th Rescue Squadron, flew past, ready to refuel the nearly dry HH-60s.

“What a pretty sight, to see those guys go screaming past us,” said TC, who like most pilots at this base near the Iraqi border asked to be identified only by his call sign.

“Those tanker guys could have said, ‘No way, we’re not coming that far north, too hot,’ ” said Lt. Col. Pony, another pilot on the mission. “But when TC came on and said, ‘We’re thirsty,’” they got the message.”

U.S. Central Command officials credit the rescue crews with saving the lives of the two Special Forces troops, despite a sandstorm that reduced visibility to a quarter-mile or less for much of the mission. Lt. Mark, a combat rescue officer who treated one soldier, described significant leg wounds that might have required amputation, especially if medical help hadn’t arrived quickly.

“[CENTCOM] told us those two guys had a 95 percent chance of making it. That made us feel pretty good,” TC said.

They flew their mission from Tallil, a captured Iraqi airfield in southern Iraq. Just hours after returning there, the crews were scrambled again to search for a downed A-10 Thunderbolt pilot south of Baghdad.

The pilot was quickly found by Army troops in the area, and the pickup was uneventful. But on the way in and out of the area, automatic systems on the HH-60s dispensed flares used to defend against antiaircraft missiles, a possible indication that man-portable surface-to-air missiles had been fired at the helicopters.