by Jim DeFelice
He’d been so focused on finding the dish in the small television screen that he hadn’t quite been aware how low he was. The pilot reacted with shock as the rapidly approaching earth caught his full attention. Two thousand feet lay between him and the roof of the building he was auguring toward.
* * *
A-Bomb lost Doberman through the clouds. He was at ten thousand feet, just barely in range of any of the heavy stuff the Iraqis had lefts, but they could have fired bulldozers at him at this point and A-Bomb wouldn’t have noticed. He put the A-10A on its wing, winced as a piece of a CD flew by him, then got a lock on his prime target, one of the trailers housing the GCI equipment. He fired; as the missile left the plane, he realized there was only half a trailer there. No matter; he was already lined up perfectly on the microwave transmitter, and that sucker was intact.
Not for long.
CHAPTER 47
OVER IRAQ
0555
The powerful sensors in the Pave Low caught the Iraqi ground intercept radar as it snapped on.
Captain Hawkins glanced back at his squad members, then up toward the cockpit. Concerned, he looked at his watch for the thousandth time in the last five minutes. His eyes followed the second hand as it crept across the dark face. He hated digital watches, even if they were considerably more accurate and disposable. Digital watches didn’t bring you luck, though at the moment he didn’t need luck, he needed the damn Hog drivers to do their job, wherever they were.
He glanced over at Sergeant Winston. He was wearing a headset, with one hand on his gun.
“Sun’s coming up,” muttered Winston.
Hawkins nodded. His eyes remained pasted on his watch.
“Think the radar means they’re hitting it?” Winston asked.
Hawkins shrugged.
“Can’t afford to wait much longer,” said Winston. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to find our British friend.”
“How’s our Sandy doing?” Hawkins asked. “Sandy” was an A-10A assigned to maintain contract with the downed flier and chase away any bad guys on the ground.
“Still hanging in there. Gas is getting tight, though,” said Winston.
“As soon as our boys take out the radar site, send him home,” said Hawkins. “I don’t want to have to pick him up too.”
“Yes, sir.”
If he needed it, Hawkins could get a flight of Eagles for CAP and a pair of Spectre gunships up in about ten minutes. The Eagles would take care of enemy fighters. The Spectres were specially designed Hercules C-130s equipped with cannons; they could eliminate a battalion of ground troops in three minutes flat. But they weren’t supposed to come north if the dish was still operating.
“He hasn’t come up on the radio yet, has he?” the captain asked. The last thing he wanted to do was disobey orders for someone who’d already been captured.
“He’s not supposed to for another five minutes. Sandy last talked to him an hour ago,” said the sergeant. “Said he felt chipper, whatever that means.”
“All hell’s breaking loose at that GCI site,” the chopper pilot called back. He continued talking over the crew’s com set as Winston jumped up to find out what was going on. The quiet but tense boredom was replaced by a cacophony of voices, everyone talking at once.
“Three, four aircraft. Hogs — northeast,” reported one of the crew members, relaying the radar information.
“Right on schedule,” shouted Winston. “Hot damn! Radar is fried! AWACS says go.”
“Go, go, go,” Hawkins yelled.
“AWACS is reporting contact to our northwest, too low for a clear read.”
“Ignore it. Go!”
CHAPTER 48
OVER IRAQ
0555
They were like sleigh bells now, shaking in a steady, rhythmic beat. Dixon was entranced by the beauty of the sound, as if he were listening to some heavenly concert.
He wondered where the sound was coming from. His eyes flew over the control panels, but could find no indication of a problem. The airplane vibrated steadily around him in a reassuring hum.
So what the hell was it? Some angel whispering in his ear? An undocumented G effect?
He glanced at his oxygen hose. It seemed unobstructed.
And still the bells rang, growing louder now, slightly more urgent, yet losing none of their beauty.
The nose of the A-10A broke through the last tuft of clouds into the clear air at approximately 5500 feet. Only then did Lieutenant Dixon realize what he was hearing.
Shells were exploding all around him.
The concert turned into a sinister screech. The Hog’s grunts were drowned out by the reverberation of proximity fuses and high explosives. The pilot could see a gun emplacement directly below, centered precisely in his screen. He watched as a black puff erupted from it, and then saw the shell rise, coming for him like a messenger from Hell itself. It grew larger as it neared him, so large that it seemed bigger than the airplane. Suddenly it opened its mouth, and its jaws exploded in a profusion of red and yellow, petals of a spring poppy bursting in the warm sun.
In the next millisecond, Dixon snapped out of his daze. Time began moving at its proper pace as his body reconnected to his brain. He pulled the stick and pumped the rudder pedals, jerking the Hog away from the gunfire, recovering from the dive in time to skim away from the antiaircraft shells. Here was a real G effect — he could feel the bladders in his suit erupting as the plane came around to his eyes, its forked tail bending to his will, the two turbofans pushing themselves to keep up with the pilot’s hands. Dixon jerked to the left, kept accelerating. He nailed his eyes to the horizon bar, making sure he was upright as he ran south as planned, away from the guns.
Mission accomplished — at least the most critical part of it.
He took a breath and made sure he had a good memory of it — coming through the clouds in ultra-slow motion, the light sound of bells, breaking the clouds, realizing it was flak. What part was hallucination and what part was real, he couldn’t say, but he remembered it all.
He hadn’t chickened out.
Where was Mongoose? He did a quick scan and couldn’t find the other silhouette. He could feel the first twinge of panic starting in his throat — he’d lost his leader again.
But no — Mongoose had been behind him. He’d called him off. By now he ought to be somewhere ahead, to the south, as planned.
The dark green shadow of an A-10A Warthog appeared in the upper left quadrant of his windscreen. Its forked tail was like something you’d see at a barbecue, not on an airplane; the round power plants glopped onto the fuselage seemed to have been stolen from a 707.
Dixon had never seen anything so damned beautiful in his life.
“Hey, kid. I thought I lost you there for a second,” said Mongoose, his transmission fuzzed with static. “We’re a little closer than we planned. Hang loose until Doberman gives us the word.”
“Gotcha.”
“You got your Mavericks ready?”
“Copy, uh, affirmative. Yeah.”
“Easy. You’re looking good.”
Dixon’s radio lost half the transmission. He pounded the com panel, but that only made the answering static worse.
“Okay, the big guns are gone and the dish is out,” said Mongoose. “There’s a ZSU-23 off your right wing. You see it winking at you?”
“Got it,” said Dixon, already lining up the Maverick shot.
“All yours. Stay in the orbit after you fire.”
Dixon pushed his lungs slowly empty, then fired the Maverick. It was easy now, easier than in training — Mongoose was floating off his left wing, lining up and firing on his own target. They planned to hold one Maverick back apiece, just in case Doberman and A-Bomb missed the radar dishes.
“How’d you do back there?” said Mongoose as the two planes swung back around to take a look at the damage.
“Okay.”
“Hot shit! Look at the ground.”
Dixon sta
red through the canopy. The Mavericks had hit, all right. There was smoke all over the place.
And no more winking. Or flak.
The pilot followed the flight leader into a wide, orbiting turn to the east, still climbing. He checked the fuel stores — a good ten minutes of loitering time left at least.
How’d he do back there?
Not horribly. Pretty good actually.
But he wondered about the bell thing. Some sort of weird trick with his mind, or maybe the radio?
Mongoose said something, but it was completely lost in static.
“I’m losing your transmission,” he told the major.
There was no response. He saw Mongoose tucking back toward the GCI site, and pushed his Hog to follow.
CHAPTER 49
OVER IRAQ
0555
Doberman screamed a pair of curses, one at himself, the other at Saddam, as he pulled the stick back with every ounce of strength in his body. The Hog coughed before finally agreeing to change direction, her nose nudging away from the yellow-gray splotch of earth very reluctantly. Sky edged into the top of Doberman’s windshield as the HUD ladder told him he was at five hundred feet.
He eased off on the stick, back in control of his muscles as well as the plane. All hell was exploding around him as he struggled to orient himself. A fresh string of curses tumbled from his mouth when, for a quick second, he thought the engines had stalled because of the sharp pullback. Realizing they were still cooking — his fatigue was playing tricks on him — he began to bank toward his right, which ought to be north and therefore out of most of the heavy triple-A.
I did this yesterday, he thought to himself. I can do it again. I got the lucky penny.
The Hog began bucking as a sold wall of flak appeared right in front of him. Doberman jinked back to his left, unsure now what to do next. He was surrounded by bursts.
He asked himself which way he should go? Left? Right? Forwards? Back? The possibilities froze him.
Maybe it was luck, going one way or the other.
Good luck? Or bad luck?
Damn it to hell, he told himself. Luck had nothing to do with it.
He decided left, but as he began to pull the plane in that direction, he saw that his maneuvering had put his nose nearly head-on with a trailer.
“Here’s some good luck for you, Saddam!” he screamed, bringing his cannon to bear. The trailer disintegrated in a haze of smoke that seemed to magically part as he flew into a patch of sky completely clear of flak. He brought the Hog around quickly and served up another Maverick to the dish he had hit the day before.
* * *
By the time Doberman called the shot on the infamous first dish, A-Bomb had seen the explosion. He was at eight thousand feet and hadn’t seen any flak yet. Suddenly, Tower Two and its Tonka Toy-like trailer appeared smack in the middle of the Maverick targeting tube.
Tower Two was supposed to be Doberman’s — and even for him it was a low-priority, secondary, hit-it-if-you-got-it, left-at-the-end-of-the-war, what-the-hell-we’re-going-home-anyway shot. But this was way too good to miss. A-Bomb pressed the trigger to kick out the Maverick.
The exact second the Maverick fell off his wing, the damned tower went boom.
“Damn it, Dog Man,” A-Bomb yelled, dipping his wing back to look over the remains of the CGI site. “You’re taking all my shots.”
“Stop screwing around then.”
There was a pile of rubble where the hidden dish had been. The one Doberman had gotten yesterday, further south, was now twice-fried meal. Running out of real estate — and feeling more than a little frustrated — A-Bomb pushed off his last Maverick at a trailer and began climbing back into the clouds to get into position for a cannon run. Doberman was already overhead, reorienting himself for a fresh attack.
“What do we have left down there?” he asked the element leader.
“There ought to be a couple of trailers back near that second dish,” said Doberman.
“Negative,” said A-Bomb. “They’re crispy critters. I just passed that way.”
“Uh, copy, uh, how about that microwave transmitter out near two?”
“You got it and I got it. That’s two gots.”
“The bunker then. How’s the flak?”
“They still have some peashooters, but nothing too serious that I saw.”
“Follow me in.”
A-Bomb had only a vague notion of where the target was, but how hard could it be to find a bunker? Besides, Doberman had a sixth sense about these things. A-Bomb followed him around, dipping his wing into the plunge.
The busted CD cartridge slid across the floor as he poked the A-10A back toward the target. Doberman screamed something along the lines of “got it,” only with a lot more curses. A-Bomb followed into a thunder-burst of flak, the plane bucking like an out-of-balance washing machine. Doberman was gone and the bunker had disappeared in a cloud of cement dust.
Shifting slightly to the south for a fresh target, A-Bomb found a huge gun battery almost smack dab in the middle of his HUD aiming cue. He started to pull the Hog onto it, but miscalculated somehow; it slipped out of the crosshair and then fell totally out of view. There wasn’t time to screw around — flak was flying all around him. A-Bomb pulled left, found a truck in his screen, and pushed the trigger. The two-second burst hit. As he continued through his banking turn he saw another gun emplacement, and fired, but missed badly. There was so much antiair now, he looked like he was dodging through a snowstorm.
The Hog was in exactly the kind of environment it had been designed for — hot and dirty. The pilot hulked down in his seat, cradled by the plane’s titanium plates, and wheeled toward a row of antiair guns on tank-type chassis. He was so low now that had he hopped out of the plane, he could have hit the ground and bounced over the cockpit.
“Turkey shoot!” A-Bomb shouted. The airplane’s Gatling exploded with so much energy he felt the Hog move backwards in the air. His first two shells missed low, but the rest drew a thick line through the guns, metal evaporating as the pilot worked his rudder to literally dance sideways through the sky, erasing the Russian-made weapons in one violent smear. Barrels, turrets, trucks erupted as he whipped by.
“You do not shoot at Hogs, no sir,” A-Bomb told them, pulling that A-10A into a bank to come back for anything he’d missed. As he turned, the Springsteen CD tumbled from behind his seat, cracking into pieces as it flew through the cockpit.
I really ought to make those bastards pay for that, he thought to himself. But there didn’t appear to be anything left to hit. Most of the ground fire had stopped, and the radar intercept complex was now a former radar intercept complex, with emphasis on the “former.”
Damn, A-Bomb thought. I was just getting going.
Out of the corner of his eye, as he turned, he saw a small building with a gun emplacement on its roof just to the south. The glimpse was so fleeting, he couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but he knew he hadn’t hit it before.
What the fuck, the pilot said to himself as he pushed the Hog’s nose back. I still have bullets.
This one’s for the Boss.
* * *
Doberman, back on top of the clouds, took stock of his airplane as he looked for his wingman. As far as he could tell, the plane was running Dash-1, exactly according to spec. He practically bumped his helmet on the canopy glass craning back to make sure his wings and fuselage were still there.
The attack had taken a bit longer than they’d planned, but they’d taken out everything they’d come for and more. The problem now was getting home — or rather, to the tanker that would give them enough fuel to make it home.
“Devil One, we’re done,” he told Mongoose. “Dishes are down, we’ve blown up every trailer we could find, and I think A-Bomb got a hot-dog wagon on the last run. Time to go home now. Copy”
He scanned the sky as he waited for an answer, still looking for the black shadow of A-Bomb’s Warthog. But his wingman was still somew
here below the ever-thickening clouds.
“Devil One, do you copy?” he asked Mongoose, wondering where the flight leader was.
“Affirmative. Saddle up. We’ll meet you at BakerCharles after the refuel.”
“Gotcha,” snapped Doberman. He put his eyes out of the plane again, craning his neck for a sign of A-Bomb. “Devil Three, this is Two. We are out of time. A-Bomb, what you doin’, boy?”
* * *
The thing was, the ZSU-23-4 was a very good gun. While its radar could be distracted, even by eye the cannon threw serious lead at you. The stripped-down version had done in quite a number of pilots, dating back to Vietnam. You had to five it to the gun’s Russian manufacturers — once they got something right, it stayed right.
A bit of A-Bomb’s bravado, though not his courage, began leaking away as the shells whipped past. He realized that the Iraqi gunner was shooting high, and that this particular set of buzzing bees were probably not going to strike him. But he guessed smaller-caliber weapons nearby would be firing any second now, and given the general hail of bullets, one of two had no choice but to hit his plane. Titanium hull or not, the Warthog was not invincible.
Still you couldn’t, on general principals, break off an attack this easily. An American taxpayer back home in Duluth had just written his congressman asking for some bang for the buck. It was A-Bomb’s job to deliver.
The building jumped into his gun sight. Square and squat, the cement structure was just the sort of thing that could be used as a command and control center.
Or an outhouse.
A-Bomb pushed the magic button. The GAU barrels rattled around, spitting 1.6-pound shells of spent uranium — augmented by the occasional round of high explosive — from the plane’s nose. The ground in front of his target opened: a trench seemed to consume the building and its gun. It was as if the Devil had decided to reach up and pull it down to Hell where it belonged.
