by Jim DeFelice
He was still looking for the other Hogs when the terrain ahead erupted with a thick black explosion. A-Bomb was yelling ‘hot shit’ and Doberman pulled his right wing up and pushed straight for the thunderclap of ex-Scud, aiming to mop up what was left. He caught a glimpse of a Hog orbiting back in his direction, off at two o’clock.
“Doberman, there’s a flatbed with two guns at least to the west of the tank. Take it out,” said Mongoose.
“No, I got it,” said A-Bomb.
“Where the fuck are you?” Doberman asked.
“Right here,” said A-Bomb, pulling his A-10 through the smoke cloud. He was well off to Doberman’s right but the roiling dust was so thick Doberman broke off, unable to get a target and not wanting to screw up what was quickly becoming a turkey shoot. He gathered his wits for a better run once A-Bomb cleared.
“What else is down there?” he asked A-Bomb, his back momentarily turned to the action.
A-Bomb’s response was garbled. Someone else jumped on the frequency and Doberman heard an F-16 flight ask if the Hogs needed help.
Meanwhile, Mongoose put himself in a shallow orbit and played quarterback. He had A-Bomb hold off while he directed Doberman in to drop his bombs on a truck park north of the now-demolished Scuds.
The haze made it tough to settle his target in the HUD. As he glared into the screen. Doberman realized the enthusiasm he’d felt this morning — hell, the giddiness, there wasn’t another word — had slipped away. Even the energy he’d just had smoking the trucks was gone. His arms throbbed as he worked the stick, his legs jittered. Time to get rid of the stinking bombs and head home. A thick shadow finally loomed in the center of his HUD. He went for the trigger, pickling his bombs and arcing back toward the sky, looking for his second wind.
“One of us ought to take out that water tank,” said A-Bomb. “Discourage them from coming back.”
“Yeah,” said Mongoose. “Who’s closest?”
“I am,” said Doberman.
“You got bombs?”
“Negative. Cannon’s ready though.”
“Okay. I don’t see any more ground fire,” added Mongoose. “You?”
“They ought to be out of ammo by now. Stinking machine gun bullets won’t do much anyway.”
“Yeah, don’t get too cocky,” said Mongoose. “All it takes is one.”
“I think anyone still alive down there’s hiding in the sand,” said A-Bomb. “They got a bad case of Hog-itis.”
Doberman pushed his Hog around and double-checked his cannon. “A good burst ought to nail it. Unless it’s filled with gasoline. Then one’ll do.”
“If you wait a minute, I’ll come in behind you.”
“I’m lined up now,” said Doberman, rushing a bit, as if getting the tower was somehow a competitive event.
“Doberman, take it out,” said Mongoose. “Then we go home.”
CHAPTER 18
OVER WESTERN IRAQ
1239
Hakim Ibn Lufti was not religious by nature, but he prayed to Allah nonetheless as he snaked his way onto the catwalk surrounding the water tower. The American invaders were all around him; though he had lived in the desert his entire life, he had never felt more alone. The green-black planes had destroyed the missiles and all of his comrades; as far as he knew, he was the only one left alive.
Yesterday, Private Hakim had confided to another man that if the Americans came, he would most likely surrender; this was Saddam’s war, and he felt no particular fondness for the head of his country. But the man Hakim had told that to lay in the sand several hundred yards away; he’d caught a fist-sized piece of metal in his chest when the planes began dropping their bombs. Hakim’s ambitions had accordingly changed; he wanted nothing more than to extract some revenge on the invaders.
He had carried a missile launcher to the tower to help him do so. He wasn’t entirely sure how to use the weapon, however. It was a new model, an SA-16, and though he had heard others say it was considerably better than the SA-7, in fact he had never been trained to use either. He knew how to push a trigger, however, and had some hope that if the weapon were pointed in more or less the right direction, it could take care of the rest.
Hakim had almost fired at one of the jets zooming at him when he was distracted by a billow of thick smoke. He began to choke. By the time he recovered, the warplane was veering away.
Hakim cursed, and pushed the trigger anyway.
* * *
Doberman cursed as he watched his cannon shot spitting wide right, a bad putt on an uneven green. The first two slugs punctured the side of the tower but the plane’s pull and maybe the wind threw him off. He had too sharp an angle and then the smoke got in the way and he had to slide off and try for a better pass.
Damn it, I have to give myself more room this time, he told himself. I may be tired but I can still hit a fucking water tower.
God, he thought, I’ll never hear the end of it if I miss the damn tower.
* * *
It took a second for Hakim to realize why the weapon had not fired. The missile had a prime button which kept it from being accidentally launched.
Tears came to his eyes as he realized his error. Cursing himself, cursing his God, he unsafed the weapon and punched its stock against the steel rail in anger. The jet was far away now, and getting further.
And then, God brought it back. It was as if His hand took its nose, drew it up in the sky and yanked it backwards. Its strange, stubby wings straightened as it angled around and flew directly toward him.
Fire erupted from its mouth. The tower shuddered, crumpling above him. Hakim cringed, held his breath, waited for death to come. He felt the grating below him start to give away. He held the missile launcher up, falling as the plane flashed overhead. He pressed the trigger as his life evaporated in a steam of metal and fire.
CHAPTER 19
OVER WESTERN IRAQ
1244
A-Bomb saw the flash from the tower, saw the rocket shoot out wide, and saw the tower disintegrate, all at the same time. He barked a warning to Doberman and pounded his own plane hard left, shooting flares and giving it gas and pushing his body to the side, trying to add mustard to the evasive maneuvers. Doberman jinked ahead, twisting, diving and climbing behind a shower of flares.
The missile had shot straight out from the tower, perpendicular to the Hog’s flight path. An ordinary SA-7, if it happened to get lucky and catch a whiff of the exhaust, would choke out its engine swinging back and fall harmlessly away.
This one didn’t. This one came around in a tight arc, snorting for Doberman’s turbofan.
“It’s still on you,” yelled A-Bomb.
* * *
Doberman sensed the missile before A-Bomb warned him. Something had moved on the tower as he closed in; a sixth sense told him there was a suicidal maniac on the rail with a shoulder-missile. The pilot pushed the Warthog hard in the direction of the launch as he flew past, tossing flares and jinking as wildly as he could. His cannon burst had slowed his momentum, and there wasn’t a huge amount of altitude left to use gathering speed. He danced and shook, shoving the forked-tail of the Hog in a wild streak across the desert, riding a roller coaster of right angles and flares. His stomach rolled into a pea as G forces slammed against his body in every direction. The pilot felt the flesh on his cheeks peeling under the sudden weight of the oxygen mask, plunging itself into his face. But it was a good feeling, blood running away from his head despite the best efforts of his suit. The heady, floating weightlessness told him he was alive.
Doberman had practiced this sort of escape under these sorts of circumstances at least a hundred times. He realized he should be clear now, a few miles and a dozen hard turns from the missile. The Russian-made SA-7 was a good weapon, but couldn’t hang with you on a serious G turn. He kept going a few more seconds just to be sure, pulled one more turn with more flares, being extra cautious, then turned around, looking for his buddies. His eyes shot over to the altimeter ladder on
the HUD, focusing on the white numbers as he reoriented himself.
In that second, a sledge hammer hit his right wing.
CHAPTER 20
OVER WESTERN IRAQ
1245
The next five seconds defied all known physical laws of time and space. Simultaneously, the universe moved at infinite speed and stood completely still. Doberman was paralyzed beyond comprehension.
Hit a bit beyond midway on its right wing, the Hog slumped in the air. Small bits of the wing were sucked into the turbo fan. The GE groaned, its fire quenched by the in-rushing rain of debris.
The engine munched the shrapnel, spit it out, and then, helped by the momentum of the air rushing through the blades as the plane hurtled downwards, kicked itself back to life. Doberman felt the surge in his arms as he coaxed just enough power to stay airborne; stutter-stepping off the ugly brown earth, he managed to hold the plane in a slow but steady climb. He was even going in the right direction, southeast — though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how he got that way.
Once the plane was stable, the pilot pitched his head back to look out the right side of the cockpit, back at the wing. The missile had gone straight through, blowing a fair-sized hole en route. A bit of the aileron had been taken away; he couldn’t quite bend his body around far enough to see how much or what other damage had been done.
On the bright side, the missile had missed the fuel tank.
That, or angels really did drive Hogs in heaven.
* * *
A-Bomb waited for the canopy to blow, then worried that Doberman had been hit too low, too fast, too hard to save himself. The distance between the two planes closed as quickly as the bile rose in his throat, the empty sickness of seeing a buddy go down.
“Dog man, get out,” he shouted again and again. “Eject. Eject.”
“Now what the fuck am I going to eject for?” growled Doberman. “A-Bomb, would you shut the hell up so I can think?”
Suddenly, the nose of Doberman’s Hog changed direction. The plane began lifting itself off the deck.
A hand reaching down from above wouldn’t have shocked A-Bomb more.
“Jesus Christ,” he yelped. “You are one lucky mother fucker.”
“Yeah, right. You’re going to explain your reasoning as soon as we put down.”
Adjusting his speed, A-Bomb pulled almost directly over the damaged Hog. The wing had a gaping hole, exposing organs and underwear, not to mention the ribs that held it together. But it was intact.
Just another day in the life of a Hog driver, thought A-Bomb. Damn, I love these planes.
* * *
The first thing Mongoose did when he realized Doberman was still alive was curse himself for not taking out the water tank first thing with bombs. Better, he shouldn’t even have bothered. The Scuds were the priority, and they were gone. Getting greedy was a good way to get killed.
It was one thing to put himself in danger, and a hell of a different thing to put his guys there. His job was to get them home. Period. Everything else was way second.
Fucking water tower.
“I have a question for you I need a real honest answer on,” he told Doberman as soon as the pilot had the damaged Hog headed toward the border.
“Shoot.”
“How far you think you can fly that thing?”
“Me? Hell, I’ll fly around the world if you want.”
Mongoose took a second before responding. His own arms and legs were tired as hell; Doberman’s must be aching even more. The control surfaces on the right side of the stricken Hog’s wing were shot to hell, and he’d feathered his right engine. Doberman’s fuel situation was strong enough to get him back to Al Jouf with only a little sweat, assuming he didn’t spring a leak. But that meant sailing through Indian territory just about the whole flight.
They could turn and fly directly south, safer if he had to punch out, but that made Al Jouf a stretch. King Khalid, another FOB the Hogs had used this morning to refuel, was even further.
And what did he do once he got there?
Mongoose took another glance at Doberman’s plane. The Hog looked shot to hell. How long could it stay airborne with a football-sized hole in the wing?
But the matter had to be broached delicately.
“Do you think you could tank?” Mongoose finally asked.
“If I have to. Why?”
“What I’m thinking is the tough thing for that Hog is going to be landing. Your flap’s probably not going to set right, and I’ll be honest with you, it’ll be a miracle if your landing gear works right.”
There was silence from the other plane,
“You can go ahead and respond,” he told Doberman.
“You want me to bail out.”
“Not necessarily. But that may end up the only option.”
“You’re also thinking we shouldn’t go straight back to Al Jouf because you think I’m going to have to bail before I get there.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re thinking that.”
“Yeah,” admitted Mongoose. “If we go back to the base we’ll be over Iraq most of the way.”
“You ain’t going to jinx it by admitting it,” said Doberman. “Be straight with me.”
“I’m trying.”
“If we refuel, maybe we can coax it all the way back to Hog Heaven,” said A-Bomb. “Bail out in the sand and walk in for a shower.”
“I’m not bailing out,” snapped Doberman. “Period.”
Mongoose worked his lips together, not sure what to say. He would feel the same way. But feelings were irrelevant. What had to be done had to be done.
If it came down to it, would he order Doberman to jump out of the plane? Was it his job to do that?
Absolutely.
Not that ejecting was risk free. The seat manufacturer put survivability at eighty percent.
And they bragged about that.
The flight leader checked his own gauges, calculating distances and plotting a course in his head. There was no sense answering Doberman — what could he say? I’m in charge here?
“Yeah, okay,” said Doberman finally, breaking the uneasy silence. Mongoose couldn’t tell if he was disgusted, or just tired. “Let’s try for a tanker and then on to King Fahd. Line it up.”
CHAPTER 21
AL JOUF FOB
SAUDI ARABIA
1314
Dixon couldn’t find the F-16 pilot, if he existed. There were two F-16s at the base, one of which had been pushed off the side of the runway and left for scrap metal. Neither pilot had been anywhere near Tweedledum — or Taqaddum, the actual name of the Iraqi installation. They didn’t know anything about a lake, but they had seen plenty of things on fire.
Military intelligence at its finest, the lieutenant thought as he returned to the intel Humvee.
Bauer didn’t seem all that broken up about the lack of information. He sent him to debrief a pair of French pilots who had somehow wandered up to Al Jouf in their Jaguars.
Unfortunately, Dixon didn’t speak French. And though the other pilots spoke English, it rolled off their tongues the way a Mk 82 would fall down a flight of stairs at Versailles.
Like the A-10, the aging Jaguar was primarily designed to support front-line troops, but it represented an entirely different philosophy, something more akin to the F-16’s― get in and out as fast as possible. And that was about the only element of their mission Dixon could understand― the two pilots gestured freely as they described an attack on an installation that for all the world sounded like a circus tent. Even more of a mystery was how the pilots had managed to get way the hell out here. They were based at Al Ahsa, back near Riyadh. Dixon hadn’t seen the entire ATO; the air order dictating the first day’s game plan ran hundreds of pages. He knew the Frenchies had started out in the eastern part of the theater.
Every time he asked how they got here, the two pilots began replaying what sounded like a seriously awesome, close-in fur ball gun
battle. Their desert-brown ships bore no evidence of a gunfight, however, and Dixon got a firm “no” whenever he used the word “damage.”
Eventually, the lieutenant decided he had as much information as he was ever going to get. He thanked the men, who now began to pepper him with questions about how in God’s name they could get home from here. Dixon nodded cheerfully, answered “yes” as much as possible, then turned and ran for Bauer.
At last he was getting the hang of this intelligence stuff.
The major reinterpreted the pilots’ pigeon English and added a few notes to a thick stack of papers on the Humvee seat. Looking up, Bauer pointed to an F-14 that had swung its wings out wide to land and announced that it belonged to the Saratoga, a carrier in the Red Sea; it had been part of a Navy package striking deep into west Iraq and lost its INS, among other things.
“You want me to go debrief him?” Dixon asked.
“Nah. I’ll get that one myself. Got a cousin on the ship I want to say hi to. Listen, the parts you were waiting for landed about ten minutes ago. Ought to be at the repair area by now. Why don’t you go make sure they get to the right place? Thanks for helping. If you’re ever looking for a job in intelligence, come see me.”
* * *
The Hog had been moved several times in the past few hours, and was at the far end of the maintenance areas. A tubular steel ladder had been erected around part of the wing and fuselage, and a small figure was atop it, busily tossing pieces of the plane to the ground. As Dixon got closer, he realized a succession of curses was accompanying the work. He also realized something else; the tech sergeant working on the plane was a woman.
