It was a cruel weapon, and in an instant a dozen rebels collapsed, screaming in agony. But its worse effect hit the second wave of men as they inhaled the toxic propylene oxide fumes of the shells’ overlapping fifty-foot kill radius, burning the lining of their lungs.
Still the rebels kept coming, leaping over their fallen comrades while shouting and firing.
Stark quickly did the math and realized that there were just too many hags too damn close for the four of them to keep from being overrun, even with Ryan exploding heads with his rifle and Hagen’s thermobaric shells. It didn’t matter how much his men fired at them, the zealous bastards would not seek shelter, would not stop running, screaming, and firing like a crazed and unstoppable mob.
But just as he was about to give the order to pull back to the rocks, the distinct shape of an A-10 Warthog zoomed overhead, its twin turbofans scorching the air, probably no higher than twenty feet.
A blink of an eye later, as he smelled the burned fuel from its engines, its 30mm Avenger Gatling-type cannon burst into life with the sound of a thousand thunderclaps, vomiting rounds at the incoming threat at the rate of 2,100 per minute.
Even someone as battle hardened as Stark was momentarily taken aback as the enemy, less than two hundred yards away, vanished in a cloud of sand and blood kicked up by the Warthog’s massive display of force. He could feel the ground tremble like an earthquake as the rounds transferred their energy, pounding the ground, drowning out even Larson’s Browning.
And for an instant, as the A-10 dropped over the enemy, decimating it, and Stark prepared to call the marines back to go secure the damn compound, he couldn’t help but wonder how the hell that pilot got there so damn fast, all the way from KAF.
8
Red One One
COMPOUND 49. KANDAHAR PROVINCE. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
Many called it a flying tank, but U.S. Air Force Captain Laura Vaccaro called it a bad motherfucker. The A-10, hated by many in the air force as it was designated solely to support ground forces and not for air-to-air combat or bombing runs, earned it the nickname “Warthog.”
To Vaccaro, however, the armor-plated ugly duckling was her baby, and she brought it in low and fast, preparing to open the massive Avenger on the designated target along the sixty miles of mountains and ridges between the towns of Lashkar Gah and Kandahar City.
“Red One One, Zulu Six Eight. Position marked. Confirm,” said the marine on the ground, professionally and accurately providing his men’s location and the area where the Taliban was holed up.
“Roger Zulu Six Eight. Confirm. Purple smoke. Rolling in hot,” she responded, surrounded by metal, the smells of oil and perspiration always prevalent in the cockpit despite the air-filtering system. All this Vaccaro was used to. What she would never get used to and never forget was the excitement, the pride, and the fear of combat—something that few would ever experience.
The platoon was in trouble and there was no time to make confirming passes or send a marking round at the target to adjust for a second pass. The late afternoon sun was getting too close to the top of those mountains, meaning she had little time to get those marines cleared up for exfiltration before nightfall.
She had to get the first run right and follow up with more until she ran out of gas or bullets or the marines were safe.
The last point being the most important to the air force captain.
No pilot in any war ever got used to the feeling of flying in combat, coming to the aid of guys on the ground, putting rounds on bad guys, dropping bombs, pulling out, and circling back, doing it again.
Nothing like it, Vaccaro thought.
However, it did become, if you were not careful, a little too routine. Perhaps it was the way our psyches work to protect us. Perhaps all who experienced combat were made a little nuts. The issue was that there was no such thing as “routine combat.” Nothing in combat was routine—nothing about someone trying to kill you should lull anyone into complacency. But it happened to many. The trick was to survive your own shortcomings, as it was certain that the assholes trying to kill you would take advantage of any and all mistakes that you made, physical, emotional, or mental.
“Red One One, Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. SitRep.”
Vaccaro frowned at the controller at KAF, Kandahar Airfield, call sign B96, requesting a situation report while she was clearly in the middle of a damned strafing run.
Where do they get these guys?
The A-10’s fuselage, built around the Avenger, trembled the moment she squeezed the trigger, thundering across the mountain while vomiting 1.5-pound rounds at the rate of sixty-five per second. The depleted uranium armor-piercing shells tore through the enemy lines, vaporizing dozens of insurgents before continuing on to the compound, slicing it open.
The cannon carved a twenty-foot-wide track down to the basement, liquidating men and equipment. Doing so, however, drew the attention of Taliban machine gun emplacements east of the compound, their tracers arcing up toward her.
“Red One One, Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. SitRep.”
For the love of …
She pulled the control column, her jaw tight as g-forces piled up on her while shooting up to five hundred feet—just missing the compound as it went up in bursts of secondary explosions.
IEDs, she thought, ignoring the cross fire striking the 1,200 pounds of titanium aircraft armor layering the cockpit and critical flight systems.
She threw the close air support jet into a wickedly tight 180-degree turn, a few rounds pinging off the armored canopy and windshield just as the sun touched the distant western rim rock. Turning her head to inspect the damage, she completed the turn and zipped back for a second pass in the opposite direction.
This high up, the Sulaiman Mountains were thick with towering pines—unlike the stereotypical landscapes of Afghanistan in the movies. For a moment, as the sun’s waning burnt-orange light touched the tip of the ocean of pines, it reminded her of Colorado Springs, where she had trained at the Air Force Academy.
It all sure looks the same, she thought, staring at the treetops swirling in the wind at dusk just before reaching the kill zone again. All except for the ground fire.
This time she directed the Warthog at the machine guns, diving cockpit-first into the swarm of enemy tracers, flying through the barrage hammering her leading edges, tearing into the armored skin before unleashing the Avenger.
Again, the mighty energy of a few hundred 30mm shells ripped through the Taliban enclave, cutting them to pieces. She cut hard left, performing another 180 turn and making a third pass using her complement of Hydra rockets.
The swarm of 70mm rockets blasted from beneath the wings and careered toward the surviving Taliban. Some raced for the cover of trees while others aimed their weapons at her in sheer defiance.
Good luck with that.
She pulled up just as the Hydras reached their target, detonating in dozens of bursts of orange flames. But in the same instant, two rocket-propelled grenades managed to shoot up from the flames.
She cut hard left before pushing the A-10 into a steep climb, watching one RPG rush past her cockpit, losing it in the turn-climb evasive maneuver. But the second shell exploded near the tail, the shrapnel blasting through a section of the elevators and rudder.
The A-10 trembled, the jolt severe as alarms went off in her helmet, and the heads-up display blinked crazily.
“Damn!” Vaccaro screamed, trying to control it, both hands now on the stick as she strained to level the wings. But the Warthog didn’t respond; the flight controls froze on her last set of commands: a tight right turn and steep climb. Basically, she had locked the Warthog in an upward spiral.
What the hell? she thought, staring at the first stars appearing in the darkening heavens while whirling as if in the middle of a tornado. The control column suddenly trembled so wildly that it got away from her. A high-pitched metal grinding noise behind her sounded almost as if the plane was screaming in protest of
whatever damage it had just sustained.
What is happening?
Airspeed began to bleed off as the heavy jet shot past five thousand feet, and the dual turbofans failed to sustain the near-vertical rate of climb. Unlike fighter jets such as the Falcon and the Hornet, which could climb vertically to twenty thousand feet, the Warthog decelerated quickly. Unless she acted quickly, that would lead to a stall.
Work the problem, she thought, managing to grab the control column as it quavered from side to side, before forcing it forward and to the left, trying to kill the climb and level the wings.
But the jet did not respond.
And that’s when she realized that the hydraulics connecting her computerized cockpit systems—the stick and the rudder—to the Warthog’s control surfaces were not responding. She found that amazing, indeed, as the A-10 had double-redundant hydraulic flight systems to prevent precisely this type of situation.
Instinctively, she switched to manual mode, bypassing the hydraulics and computers, engaging the backup mechanical flight system. It consisted of old-fashioned stainless steel wires and pushrods connecting her control systems to the elevators, ailerons, and rudder of the A-10 through a system of pulleys.
Push, Laura.
Loosening the harness securing her to the ejection seat, Vaccaro wedged the control column between her thighs and sternum, using her entire body to press it forward and to the left. Slowly, the array of wires transferred her commands to the control surfaces and the A-10 pitched down while killing the turn.
Taking a deep breath as the horizon reappeared in her windscreen and the spinning stopped, Vaccaro also noticed she was losing pressure on her left turbofan, which began to spew smoke. But even operating on one and a half engines and on manual bypass, she still had full control of her bird, and she rolled left to go back and finish her job.
She grinned under her mask, realizing what a sight it would make on the ground, with smoke pouring out of her engine, the tail damaged, and deadly rounds spewing out of the Avenger.
The dusky sky broken only by her ominous presence, she made the pass quickly, squeezing the trigger, tearing up anything that may have survived the initial passes, before pulling up, tapping the mike, and saying, “Zulu Six Eight, Red One One. That should do it, over.”
“Red One One, Zulu Six Eight, you saved our dirty marine asses. Over.”
“Zulu Six Eight, you’re buying the drinks. Watch your sixes while you RTB.” Return to base.
“You’ve got it, Red One One.”
Turning back to Kandahar, Vaccaro decided it was time to talk to the controller. Tapping her mike she said, “Bravo Niner Six, Bravo Niner Six, Red One One lost hydraulics and also losing pressure on left engine but still operational. Flying manually. Requesting priority handling.”
“Copy that, Red One One. Loss hydraulics and left engine problems. Flying manually,” the KAF controller replied, before adding, “Need a helo?”
Keeping both hands gripping the quivering control stick while continuing to exert her muscles to keep the wings leveled and the nose straight ahead, she frowned at the KAF controller. Prior manual landing attempts at KAF on the Warthog had resulted in disaster. The plane was difficult enough to keep airborne without hydraulics, much less trying to land. So the air force had long briefed A-10 pilots in such circumstances to reach friendly lines before bailing out.
And that was all fine, except she flew in Afghanistan at dusk, meaning unless she could actually pull the ejection handles right over the damn airfield, she risked starring in her very own YouTube video after a short canopy ride. No way she could last long down there, especially after dark, which was minutes away.
Although she didn’t think that often anymore about being a female military pilot, it was at moments like this that the thought of what the Tallies would do to her if she were captured momentarily entered her mind.
Quickly pushing that image aside, she said, “That’s a negative, Bravo Niner Six. Red One One requesting priority handling and permission to land. Clear out the airspace.”
“Red One One, standby.”
She shook her head and decided to just follow the GPS to give herself vectors to final, but the Warthog fought her all the way back, especially the crazy control stick. It continued shaking the moment she eased pressure, forcing her to keep her thighs taut against it as she struggled to maintain level flight or make shallow turns while holding 250 knots. Plus there was that steady metallic screech from the tail that sounded like nails on a chalkboard on steroids.
In situations like this her training commanded her to focus on what was actually working, like the electrical system lighting up her cockpit, radios, and navigation equipment, and also her right turbofan, which she used to help her keep her wings leveled and her nose on the horizon.
If the A-10 began to dip, she added rear pressure on the control column while also advancing the throttles, using forward thrust to bring the nose back up. If the Warthog started to bank in the wrong direction, she added a dash of power to the opposite engine, using the asymmetrical thrust to assist her stick and rudder work, canceling out the unwanted turn.
Vaccaro did this on automatic, feeling the plane, the wire tugs, the subtle changes in pitch and roll, hands and feet working in conjunction with power settings, mile after mile, minute after minute, breath after breath.
You can do this.
Fueled by trained focus and an iron will, determined to bring her wounded bird back in one piece, she concentrated on holding a thousand feet while slowly adjusting her heading. Her eyes never stopped scanning, reviewing her instruments, the darkening horizon, her flanks, and making minute adjustments; always correcting, always tweaking, countering the aerodynamic forces playing against her. She slowly eased the throttles to bleed off airspeed while making a final shallow turn.
“Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. SitRep.”
“Bravo Niner Six, Red One One. Six-mile final. Two Three.”
“Roger, Red One One. Clear to land, Runway Two Three. Winds light and variable but there’s a storm coming in from the west. Should be no factor. Altimeter two niner niner three.”
“Red One One cleared to land. Two Three,” she read back, as the lights of Kandahar grew visible through the haze and the last of the day’s heat rising from this scorched land. To the west, as the controller had indicated, she could see lightning flashes from incoming storm clouds, but it was indeed too far away to matter. One way or the other, this Warthog would be on the ground in a couple of minutes.
For a moment she wondered if she should listen to the controller, eject, and take her chances with a rescue helicopter. But an instant later some asshole in a village rushing beneath her took a dozen pot shots at her, the muzzle flashes of what was likely an old Russian Kalashnikov reinforcing her decision to stay the course. A single round pinging harmlessly off what remained of her armored skin served as a constant reminder that, while in-country, she was always one decision away from getting brutalized by these bastards.
No way in hell, she told herself again, deciding that she had not graduated from the Air Force Academy at the top of her class and then gone on to fly A-10s in countless sorties through five rotations—three in Iraq and two at KAF—just to end up in the hands of these medievalists.
I’ll end it before that happens.
The thought made her think of her father, U.S. Navy Lieutenant James Vaccaro, an A-6 Intruder pilot in Vietnam who got shot down over some forgotten jungle and chose to fight to the end, taking as many Vietcong with him as he could rather than letting the bastards capture him alive.
She exhaled heavily in her oxygen mask, decelerating as much as practicable as runway lights became visible against the many square miles of this well-illuminated metropolis in the middle of Taliban country.
Her textbook final approach speed stated 150 knots, but today she held her airspeed at 175 knots, concerned about getting too close to the stall speed of 120 knots, given the uncertainty of the damage sh
e had taken. Those published airspeeds assumed a healthy fuselage, and at the moment her squealing Warthog was anything but.
However, if there was one thing this tank of a plane could take it was punishment. Its designers built it to fly with just one engine, half its tail section, and while missing up to 30 percent of its wing surface.
At least on paper.
Vaccaro doubted the good people at Fairchild actually flew such a variant.
So she decided to play it on the conservative side, and given the damage the wings had endured, she wasn’t sure if she should risk lowering the flaps—or even if they would work. At the moment, in her current configuration, as much as the stick shook and the overall frame wailed like a stuck pig, she could still control her descent while keeping the nose aligned with the runway.
Using throttles to manage her sink rate, she held her course and speed while slowly losing altitude, lowering the landing gear the moment she flew over the perimeter wall and the adjoining water treatment plant.
That’s how KAF greeted you: with a large pond filled with shit.
But to Vaccaro it was a welcome sight as she crossed it and approached the long paved strip, exhaling in relief when the gear-down indicator confirmed that all three were down and locked.
Deciding she could use every last inch of the 10,500 feet of runway, Vaccaro restricted her commands to minor adjustments, focusing not on the inevitable landing but simply on flying the plane while maintaining a slow but steady rate of decent.
The runway lights rose up to meet her as she floated in the ground effect for several seconds—the laws of aerodynamics resulted in increased lift the instant she got within twenty feet of the asphalt. And again she only made minor corrections.
The wheels touched down with just a slight skid one-third down the runway, and she cut back throttles to idle, gently applying the brakes before taxiing onto the flight line under massive floodlights.
She followed the directions of the ground crew marshal wearing a reflecting vest, acoustic earmuffs, and handheld illuminated beacons, guiding her to her tie-down spot.
Without Fear Page 9
