Skull chose positively.
His grip on the stick unclenched. He flexed his thumb back and forth, across, holding the plane’s control stick firmly but gently. The thumb was one place he always got cramped in combat. As if all his tension went there.
You could live with that, though. He knew guys with back spasms. Now that was a ball buster.
Bottom line was, he was bringing Mongoose home. His man, his responsibility. Some people might think he’d lost a step― he’d seen that question in Clyston’s eyes― but they were wrong.
He did worry about his eyes. Vision was the reason he’d plunked MiGs two and three from the sky. The others you could argue luck and flying skill, but two and three― he nailed them because he spotted them, saw the specs and knew instantly what their direction was, where their energy was pointed.
See the enemy first and he’s yours; that was the old fighter-pilot maxim. And forget about 20-20 vision. You needed 20-10, at least.
Skull’s were 20-05, X-ray sharp, on a bad day.
Maybe not now, though.
Didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered, as long as he kept his muscles loose, worked the cockpit well, stayed within the limits of the plane.
He was going to get Mongoose back, or die trying.
Thing was, if he went out that way, then people really would think he was a hero.
A few might even be relieved.
Skull started to laugh.
Fourteen minutes to KKMC.
CHAPTER 36
On the ground in Iraq
21 January 1991
2355
Mongoose clawed against the hard earth, pushing himself up the hill, away from the light, not even daring to pray that they hadn’t seen him. Suddenly the ground disappeared and he felt himself falling forward, tumbling in confusion. Gunfire erupted behind the hill, but he barely heard it as he found his feet again and began to run.
What he did hear were the trucks. Their engines erupted as lights swung across the sky. The night turned reddish white― the Iraqis had fired a flare.
Open space lay in front of him. No trees, no rocks, no buildings, nowhere to hide.
His pistol was in his hand. He whirled, sighted toward the crest of the hill.
No one there.
Maybe they hadn’t seen him after all. Maybe they weren’t even here. Maybe this whole goddamn thing was a stinking mirage, the result of him hitting his head on the cockpit fairing or some such bullshit when he pulled the handle and got out of the plane.
Maybe he really wasn’t in Iraq at all.
He started running again. The desert seemed to rise up around him, the flare starting to fade. He slipped on something, felt his ankle twist out from under him, had to put his hand out, and lost the pistol.
When he looked up, three men were standing in front of him, three rifles pointed directly at him less than ten yards away.
“You will surrender,” said someone over a loudspeaker from the truck. The English was fairly good, with an American twist to the pronunciation. “You will give up now and you will not be harmed.”
The Beretta was only a few inches from his fingers. He could reach it. He could get these guys.
“You will surrender now.”
He glanced behind him, saw the other truck driving up. He rolled back on his butt, suddenly very tired.
***
When Mongoose didn’t get up fast enough, one of the Iraqi soldiers pulled his rifle back to hit him. Another caught him, and an officer ran up and began berating the man, screaming something in his face. At the same time, a pair of arms took hold of the American from the back, pulling him away and upward at the same time.
Something inside Mongoose snapped; he decided to try and shoot them all. He raised his arm and snapped his fingers closed, squeezing off the trigger.
Only to remember he had lost the gun.
The man pulling him backwards released him and he fell into a heap. Something heavy and hard caught him in the ribs. The blow pushed the air from his chest and he hunched toward his legs, gulping in pain, darkness edging the corner of his brain as if he were taking ten g’s.
More yelling. Hands over him. Pulling and pushing. Somebody spit. He fought to breathe. They searched his flight suit with hard pats that were more like punches.
They were more than halfway done with their searching before his lungs started working again. By then he was on his back, an Iraqi on each arm and leg. He tried to get his head back into checklist mode, knew that was his job now. The anger had to be stowed where it couldn’t hurt him. When they released him, he rose slowly, standing with his arms held out in a gesture of surrender.
“You are our prisoner,” said the man who had stopped the soldier from battering him. It was his voice he’d heard on the loudspeaker. His English was perfect, though he spoke very deliberately. “You will follow our orders precisely, or the consequences will be grave.”
Mongoose said nothing, but did not offer any outward resistance. One of the trucks swung closer, illuminating the area with its headlights. Four or five Iraqi soldiers stood around him, well armed and equipped. Other men were continuing the search of the area.
“Where is your copilot?” asked the officer.
“I don’t have a copilot,” said Mongoose. “I fly alone.”
“What type of plane do you fly?”
Mongoose hesitated. The truth was, his unit patch had a Warthog on it, so it wouldn’t take much detective work to figure out the answer. But answering the question felt like surrendering.
“It’s only got room for the pilot,” he told the officer. “One man. Me.”
“A fighter?”
“Yeah.”
The officer nodded, and shouted something to the others. It might have been that he didn’t trust Mongoose; their search continued.
The soldiers shifted, each staring openly at his face and uniform. One seemed angry; the rest looked merely curious, as if they were looking at a giant ape who had escaped from the zoo.
As long as the officer was here, Mongoose thought, he wouldn’t be killed; he might not even be beaten. Most likely there was a reward for his safe return to Baghdad.
Or maybe not. Maybe the officer wanted to torture him himself.
When they had searched him, the soldiers found and taken all of his important gear, including his radio, knife and maps. But for some reason they missed his small flare gun, tucked into a leg pocket near his boot; he realized that as he stood uneasily in the semi-circle of soldiers.
Something, at least.
They’d also taken Kathy’s letter. But there wasn’t much he could do about that.
One of the soldiers in the distance shouted. The officer motioned several of his guards toward the shouts and they ran off. The search beam popped on and suddenly everyone was firing. Mongoose cringed, but tried otherwise not to react; he knew it was some sort of mistake, a false alarm. Instead, he focused his eyes on the ground, trying to think of something he could do.
No way he could run off and make it. He was pretty much stuck here.
It took the officer some minutes to calm his men. “You are not afraid?” he asked when he returned. His eyes were set wide in his face; up close he was a homely man, who didn’t appear particularly wise or compassionate.
“I’m very afraid,” Mongoose told him.
“You did not take cover when my man began to shoot?”
“Just now? I told you, there’s no one else. They’re shooting at shadows.”
“A good thing for you,” said the officer. He turned and shouted at the guards— apparently telling them to get up, since they did. He barked out more commands. All but two left to join the others.
The man seemed about his age, maybe a little older. Barely five-eight, he was thin; his uniform hung around him as if meant for a heavier man.
“I could kill you,” the officer told him.
“That’s true,” said Mongoose.
The officer smiled and nodded. “W
hat is your name?”
“Major James Johnson.”
“I am a major as well,” said the man. He switched his pistol from his right hand to his left.
And then he extended his arm to shake Mongoose’s hand.
Not knowing what else to do, Mongoose took it.
Had he thought about it, he might have expected something hard and callused. But this was soft and gentle, almost feminine.
The man smiled and nodded as he pulled back. Then he fished into his pocket and produced the blood chit — a note in English and Arabic that promised a reward for his return to allied hands.
“What is this?” asked the Iraqi captain. It was obvious he had already read it; his voice sounded like a reprimand.
“My people will reward you for returning me safely.”
The officer made a show of ripping the note up and throwing it aside.
“And this?” He held up an envelope — Kathy’s letter. “War plans?”
“A letter from my wife.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Mongoose shrugged. The man glanced at the letter, smiled, then held it toward him. Mongoose hesitated, then slowly took it.
After returning the envelope to his shoulder pocket, Mongoose looked up to see the Iraqi’s pistol in his face.
“Do not think that because I show you kindness I am weak,” said the man. “If you try to escape, you will be killed. You understand?”
He nodded.
“Into the truck.”
With that, one of the other guards grabbed him roughly and pushed him toward the front of the open flatbed.
CHAPTER 37
Upstate New York
21 January 1991
1555
(2355, Saudi Arabia)
She saw them through the window. At first she thought the man and woman in the car were lost, looking for a neighbor’s house. Then another car pulled up behind, followed by a van.
The van had a television station’s logo on the side.
Robby stirred in her arms. He was hungry again. She sat on the couch, opened her blouse and let him suckle. Ordinarily, he was more active in the afternoons, but he seemed to sense that his mother needed him to be calm. He poked her a few times with his hand, happy to be getting his milk, then settled back down.
Her in-laws were still out, not due back until five. The Air Force people, none of whom she knew, were on the way. They were far from an air base, and because the squadron had been patched together at the last minute from other units and reserves their stateside home base existed only on paper. Still, she knew the procession of blue cars would soon make their way through the twisty rural streets, hunting for the tiny house.
Part of her preferred to be alone, though now that the reporters were outside she wasn’t sure what to do. Sooner or later, one of them would ring the doorbell.
She’d locked the door earlier, but double–checked it now just to make sure.
When she realized that the commentators had no real news to report, Kathy had turned the sound off on the television. She kept glancing toward the screen every so often, however, alternately hoping for good news and dreading what she might see.
A new map of Iraq flashed on the screen, too vague to give any real idea of the country. It was followed by a picture of the A-10A lifted from Jane’s, the encyclopedic military reference work. A retired Air Force colonel appeared on the screen, a man she hadn’t seen in any of the sequences before.
The words, “Former POW,” flashed under him.
Had Jimmy been captured? Was he alive?
She reached for the remote control, put the sound back on.
The phone rang as she did. She jumped up and startled the baby. He started to cry.
It was more a moan, forlorn and passive. Not his usual cry.
By the time she soothed him, the answering machine had picked up. A woman’s voice came over the speaker. “Mrs. Johnson, my name is Teresa Fisher. I’m a reporter for WFDC over in Calhoon. We’re very sorry to hear about your husband.”
There were about a dozen reporters outside, the woman told the tape. They wouldn’t come in and bother her, but if she wanted to say anything, they would be waiting outside. Three times the woman said she was sorry about her husband. Her voice sounded sincere.
“If you need anything,” added the reporter, “let us know. We’re sorry we’re disturbing you. You should know that the whole country supports you. We’ve already had calls at the station, saying how much everyone is praying for you.”
Kathy stared toward the kitchen hallway as the phone clicked off. Behind her on the TV, the newscaster was repeating that there was no new information about Major Johnson or the other pilots lost over Iraq.
Then he asked the retired Air Force officer about the possibility of torture.
Kathy pushed the red button on the remote, killing the power.
__PART THREE__
SMOKE ‘EM
IF YOU SEE ‘EM
CHAPTER 38
Over Iraq
22 January 1991
0415
Colonel Knowlington’s eyes were scratchy, straining in the darkness as they swept the cockpit instruments. His shoulder muscles were still a little tight, but otherwise he felt settled in the plane, the Warthog strapped around him. He couldn’t quite tell the performance by feel alone yet— part of his problem was that he expected things to happen faster than they did— but maybe that was just as well; it meant he took less for granted.
A-Bomb was in a combat trail not quite a mile behind him in the dark sky. They flew on silently, observing the general rule that unnecessary transmissions were almost always the ones the enemy used to home in on you.
One thing about the Gulf War that made it a hell of a lot different than Nam— Big Brother was definitely looking over your shoulder. There was an airborne controller working close-in and a fleet of AWACS charting everything but the pigeons from here to Berlin.
Pigeons probably had their own radar planes. Knowlington had always approved of the concept in theory— it greatly increased the odds of holding off enemy interceptors, which in turn meant better survivability for bombers. But it also chipped away at a pilot’s autonomy. Skull had been taught that individual initiative was the cornerstone of successful air combat— in contrast to the heavily orchestrated and ground-controlled Soviet system. The fact that information from the four AWACS on station was relayed back to the command center in Riyadh meant that it could easily be fed to Washington, D.C. Given what had happened in Vietnam, the colonel shuddered at the possibility of some White House janitor helping coordinate the air war on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
That hadn’t happened yet, at least. The two Hogs of Devil Flight had full autonomy to carry out their mission as an unscripted part of the search and rescue team.
Knowlington wanted a drink, but he could deal with that. It was like dealing with the SA-2s or -8s or -13s or Rolands, except that the launch warning was always sounding. You did your jinks, threw your chaff, lit your flares—
Belay the flares at night. Blind the shit out of you. And useless against a radar missile.
Skull rechecked his position on the INS, making sure he was precisely on beam. They were at eighteen thousand feet, which in his mind felt low though it was near the top of the Hog’s comfortable operating envelope. Fires burned in small sparkles in the distance; bulky shadows stretched out around them. Knowlington resisted the impulse to assign positions to the shadows; it was too easy to get the wrong idea stuck in your head. Better to stick to the abstract numbers.
His pulse hadn’t picked up yet. He figured it would, eventually. The adrenaline would start pushing into his stomach. There’d be a quick shock of fear, a motivator, not a paralyzer.
He could deal with fear. He’d been afraid before, plenty of times. Being afraid was familiar.
You took that whale breath, blew it out, let the muscle spasms pass through your system. You went through the wall and on the other si
de there was perfect clarity.
Usually.
Way point reached. Skull pushed the Hog gently, easing her left wing toward the earth as he brought her onto the prearranged course for the crash site. The plane slipped into the long, shallow glide as smoothly as a canoe edging onto a quiet lake.
The A-10A had two personalities. One was balls-out mud-fighting bitching, in Saddam’s face, screaming. The other, a surprise to Knowlington, was actually gentle. Partly it was her responsiveness to the controls, her tendency to go where you told her. Partly, too, it might have been her lack of top-end. But there was something else there, as if the plane were as human as he was. Maybe it too was trying to monitor the emergency frequency, listening for the piercing squeak of the rescue beacon or, better, Mongoose’s familiar voice.
Nothing but static.
Knowlington worked his controls carefully, putting his eyes around the cockpit and going through his paces, getting ready for the adrenaline. This was a marathon race, and they hadn’t even gotten to the start line yet.
There were sparkles far, far off in the distance. Somebody was taking flak.
Or more likely, an Iraqi gunner was spooked.
If the Hog’s navigational systems were working, they were now about two miles from the spot Mongoose and A-Bomb had been attacking when the plane went down. The colonel eased the Hog’s throttle off further; they were making two hundred and five knots and crossing seven thousand feet. The planes could not be heard above five thousand, and in the dark with their blackish green camo they were essentially invisible to anyone without radar. They’d trace out the attack route as closely as possible at this altitude, then gradually bring it down.
Skull definitely wanted to bring it down; while they were still in bad guy country and ought not push their luck too far, he figured the Hog sound would be instantly recognizable to Mongoose. If anything would provoke a flare, the hum of two Hogs would.
Hogs #2: Hog Down Page 14
