by Dale Brown
Which obviously it had.
“Poison One, targeting tank,” he said. His pipper slid over the dark shadow of the turret before he realized he hadn’t had any communication from the ground team at all since the helo had called with their time-to-landing.
It was too late to worry about that now. Red fingers jabbed out toward his eyes; he ignored the flak and pushed the trigger on his stick, pickling two five-hundred-pound bombs into the tank. As he started to pull out he saw another ground missile launch; he nudged his stick to the right and called the launch, at the same time riding forward to dump iron on the launcher. If Poison Two acknowledged, its broadcast was lost in the blur of gravity and the roar of his F-16A’s GE F-110 turbofan as he pickled, then jerked hard to get away from the new missiles.
THEY HAD JUST TARGETED THE TANK WHEN A LOUD whistle sounded above them. Before Gunny could shield his eyes, the night flashed white. The tank erupted in a two-fisted swirl of fire, dirt, and metal sailing in every direction.
“About fucking time,” growled Melfi, picking himself up. “Forward, forward! Tank’s history. Go, girls!”
One of his men began screaming on his right. Gunny ran up and found Lance Corporal Gaston curled over a large splash of tangled uniform, half his side blown open by bomb fragments. The medic reached him in the next second; Gunny saw him wince and realized Gaston wasn’t going to make it. He straightened, saw that half the kid’s arm was lying on the ground.
“Get those fucking ship missiles,” Melfi yelled, pulling his M-16 to his side. He ignored the complaint from his knee and began to run toward the heaviest gunfire.
SMITH WHIPPED BACK TOWARD THE TARGET AREA, finally satisfied that he had ducked the SAMs. A wall of tracers illuminated the coastline, thrown up by four or five Russian-built ZSU-23 antiaircraft guns. It occurred to him that he was only seeing a fourth or a fifth of the actual bullets being fired, since only the tracers showed in the dark. A shitload of lead was being propelled into the sky.
Fired blindly, but dangerous nonetheless. Knife clicked his radio, asking Poison Two for his position.
No answer.
“Two, this is Poison Leader, posit?”
Nothing.
“Two? Give me your position. Two? Posit?”
“Poison Two blind,” his wingman finally replied. “Two-one-one for one-three off egress.”
Smith blew a long sigh into his mask before plotting his wingman’s position with the bearings he’d broadcast. He thought he’d gone down.
“All right, you’re five, six miles south of me, due south,” Knife told him.
“Poison One, copy. I have you on radar. I’m Angels twenty-five. Out of arrows, Knife. I took some flak but I’m okay. Engine’s fine. Controls responding.”
“You’re hit?”
“Roger. Fuel’s fine. Nothing bad, but I can see burn marks on the wing and I felt it.”
Knife glanced at his own fuel gauge, calculating that he had enough for perhaps five more minutes’ worth of action before hitting bingo, the theoretical turnaround point. He was still carrying four GBUs under his wings.
They were intended for the Silkworms. But the ground team still hadn’t checked in, which meant that they weren’t in position to illuminate the targets with their laser designators.
He’d have to do it himself. No big deal, as long as he could find the targets beyond the wall of flak.
Assuming his wingman was okay.
“Two, if you can hold an orbit, I’m going to mop up.”
“Copy. Go for it, Knife. I’m fine.”
Smith tried hailing the ground team as he plotted a course toward the Silkworms. He climbed to just over twenty thousand feet, well out of reach of the flak. But the air seemed to percolate with it, his Viper shuddering as he came up on the dirt landing strip that marked the western end of the target zone.
The radio static cleared as he eyeballed the master arm panel.
“Poison One, we are sparking the target. Repeat, sparking your target.”
About fucking time, he thought, acknowledging and leaning slightly on his right wing. He was ten miles from the site. Eyes pasted on the video screen, he hunted for his target. There were vague blurs, but no cues, no nothing. The LANTIRN targeting gear was having a hell of a time sorting through the battlefield smoke. In the meantime, the cloud of flak had moved in his direction.
“Poison One, have you acquired?”
“Negative,” he groused. “Just make sure you got it on.”
“We’re taking fire.”
Yeah, no shit. Join the party.
He was less than five miles from the target and running over a minefield of antiaircraft fire before the target finally crystallized in his monitor. The sparkle had a big, fat Chinese-made SS-N-2 missile dead on; he goosed off one GBU, then released another, just to be sure.
“Find me another target,” he barked.
The magic flashlight moved to a new target. As he was about to launch he realized he was about to overfly his target. He pickled anyway, got messed up, confused, lost himself for a second pulling around to retarget. His RWR screamed a fresh warning and for a half second Mack Smith fell completely apart, lost his concentration and the plane, fell behind himself in a whirl of gravity-fed vertigo, the F-16 responding to his sharp jerk on its fly-by-wire stick.
Jesus, he thought. Oh, God, I’m screwed.
THE ANTISHIP MISSILE SITE ERUPTED WITH A CASCADE of secondary explosions, each bigger than the last, as if a series of larger and larger gas cans had been ignited with a pack of firecrackers.
“That’s it, let’s go, let’s go!” Gunny shouted. The explosions were so intense he could feel their heat on his face, and he was nearly a half mile away.
“The pilot wants more targets!” shouted the corn specialist.
“Tell him he’s blown everything to hell,” shouted Gunny, grabbing the man with the target designator and yanking him backward. “We’re going while the going is good! Come on, girls! Come the fuck on!”
His men finally snapped to behind him as he trotted back toward the LZ. The explosions at the missile-launching pad had shocked the defenders silent, but Gunny knew that wasn’t going to last. He fanned his arms through the air, urging his men back toward the waiting Chinook.
He found himself standing at the spot where Gaston had been hit.
He glanced down, looking for the remains of the poor kid’s lost arm, thinking to give it a decent burial.
Wasn’t there.
A fresh explosion snapped him back to life. He whirled around, saw his point man trotting toward him, a grin on his face. Jerry Jackson was first in and last out.
“Hey, Sarge.”
“Jackson, knock that fucking watermelon grin off your face and get moving,” Gunny yelled.
“Gee, sweetheart, I didn’t know you cared,” mocked the corporal as he caught up.
“We got everybody?”
“Didn’t see no one,” said Jackson. “Better check around for Gaston, though. You know how he likes to jerk off in the bushes.”
“Yeah,” was all Gunny could manage.
KNIFE’S STOMACH PITCHED TOWARD HIS MOUTH. HE clamped his teeth shut, holding steady on the control stick as the dark, oxygen-deprived cowl slipped back from over his face. The F-16 could withstand more than nine g’s, at least one more than its pilot under the best of circumstances, and this was hardly the best. The plane was pointing nearly straight down, shrapnel streaking all around, an SA-3 somewhere in the air, hunting for his belly. He could escape it—he’d been in more difficult spots—but only if he could keep his head clear. And right now that seemed damn impossible.
Gravity clamped its thick fingers around his temples. Squeezing with all its might, it began to mash his skull into powder. The wind ran from his chest, and a long, jagged sword began ripping up his stomach.
An image shot into his head—Zen Stockard, his body being propelled from the F-15 cockpit, hurled sideways in a tumble.
Poor bastar
d.
Just not good enough. Not as good as me.
I am not getting fried here.
Smith regained control of himself as well as the plane, rolling through an invert and now tracking to the north, the RWR still bleating. Even so, he began hunting for a target. Everything was on fire below, everything; he couldn’t find anything to hit.
Knife jinked and saw a large shape passing through the air maybe four hundred yards away. It was the missile the Somalians had fired, but to Knife it seemed like the demon that had tormented him all through the attack, the panic that had tried to sneak up on him, panic and rust and doubt.
“No fucking way,” he screamed. He pulled himself up in the slant-back seat, straining against the restraints. The enemy missile shot clear, unguided, lost, no longer a threat.
The ground team’s Chinook was two miles away and taking fire; there were armored cars approaching from behind the buildings. He took a quick breath, switching the mode on the LANTIRN bomb-guidance system to allow him to designate the target himself. The targeting cue instantly zeroed in on the lead vehicle.
“Good night, motherfucker,” he said, loosing the GBU from his wing.
GUNNY AND JACKSON WERE TWO HUNDRED YARDS from the helicopter when the ground began percolating with heavy machine-gun fire. The two Marines dove into a ditch, where they found themselves pinned down with half a dozen other Marines. They could hear but not see the helicopter beyond a row of low trees or bushes. An armored car or personnel carrier, maybe two, rounded out from behind the near building and began firing.
“We have to move!” yelled Gunny. “Move!”
“Move!” echoed Jackson, trying to urge the others to stop returning fire and retreat to the Chinook. “We’ll cover you.”
The far end of the ditch burst with an explosion. Gunny cursed, falling forward and hitting his chin on Jackson’s boot.
“Damn it,” he said, starting to pull himself up. “Down! Down! Incoming!” yelled Jackson.
Something roared above them and the armored car hissed. Red metal flew through the air.
“The Chinook’s moving!” yelped Jackson.
“Go! Go!” yelled Gunny. Above them one of the F-16’s was wheeling through the sky, trying to cover their retreat. The Somalians had temporarily turned their attention to it, throwing everything they had into the sky.
“You got balls,” Gunny told the F-16 as he burned a clip in the direction of the Somies. “Even if you are a pansy-ass Air Force pilot.”
KNIFE WAS OUT OF GBUS AND ABOUT HALFWAY through his store of cannon shells, slashing and dashing the Somalian forces as the Chinook tried desperately to round up the last members of its fire team. The helicopter pilot’s aircraft had been hit and he was worried about making it back to Ethiopia, but the man didn’t want to leave without every one of his passengers aboard.
Somewhere in the past two and a half minutes, Knife had told the pilot that he’d hang in there as long as needed. Somewhere in the past two and a half minutes, Mack had decided he had to stay close and help keep some of his guys alive. And somewhere in the past two and a half minutes, Major Mack “Knife” Smith had realized that he was flying maybe twenty feet over the trees and taking a hell of a lot of risk with all this metal flying through the air, not to mention the damn fireworks from the still-exploding missile stores.
Flames from the two vehicles he had smashed gave him a clear view of the remaining troops firing on his Marines. Smith swooped in for a low-level cannon attack. The Chinook stuttered to his left as he rode in, the barrels on his M61 beginning to churn. He cut a swath through the Somalians, then picked up his nose to bank around for another pass. As he did, he saw a pair of wheeled vehicles moving forward behind the far building. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw an H-shaped shadow at the top of one of the vehicles—a missile launcher maybe, but he was beyond it too fast. His RWR stayed clean.
“Poison One, this is Poison Three, we are moving to engage four bogies at this time,” snapped the lead pilot of the second group of F-16’s. “Repeat, we have company. MiGs. Possibly Libyan. They’re coming south and they are hot!”
“Copy,” said Knife. It was past time to call it a day. “Pelican, get the hell out of there,” he told the Chinook pilot. “Go! Now! Go!”
He banked around to cover the helicopter’s retreat. He hunted the shadows for the two vehicles he’d seen, his forward airspeed dropping toward two hundred knots. He saw something loom on his left; by the time he got his nose on it a tongue of fire ignited from the top.
Missile launcher. Probably an antitank weapon or something similar, but he felt sucker-punched as the missile sailed toward the helicopter. He began to fire his cannon, even though he wasn’t lined up right; he pushed his rudder to swing into the shot, but was too high and then too far to the right. He thought he heard a stall warning and went for throttle; rocketing upward, he realized he was low on gas.
The helo was still hovering. The missile had missed.
His RWR bleeped. The MiGs were on them already. Shit.
“Pelican! Get the fuck out of here!” he screamed.
He plunged his aircraft back toward the remaining vehicle, again firing before he had a definitive target. Meanwhile, Poison Three called a missile launch; things were getting beyond hot and heavy.
Knife reached to put the throttle to the redline, already plotting his escape southwest toward Poison Two.
Something thudded directly behind his seat. He felt the Viper’s tail jerk upward, and in the next instant realized the control stick had stopped responding.
“I’m hit,” he snapped. And in the next instant he pulled the eject handles, just before the plane tore into a spin, its back broken by not one but two shoulder-fired SA-16’s.
GUNNY AND JACKSON WERE STILL FIFTEEN YARDS FROM the Chinook when it started to pull upward. But the old sergeant had been prepared for this—he’d removed the flare pistol from his vest pocket to signal them.
Before he could fire, something exploded above him. He jerked his head back and saw the plane that had been covering their escape erupt in a fireball. Something shot into the air; a second or two later he realized it was the pilot.
Gunny turned around.
“Gunny, Sarge, shit. Helo’s this way,” said Jackson, grabbing his arm. “Come on.”
“We got to go get that pilot,” Gunny said.
“Fuck that.”
“Here,” Gunny said, pressing the flare gun into his point man’s hand. “I’ll catch up.”
“The hell you will,” said Jackson. The corporal tugged the older man around.
“I’m giving you an order to get the hell out of here,” said Gunny.
“If you’re stayin’, I’m stayin’. I got point,” said the Marine, pushing past in the direction of the parachute blossoming in the firelit sky. It was falling over the low hill to his right, away from the Gulf of Aden.
It was probably a moot point by now, since the Chinook was thundering off in the distance. Still, Gunny appreciated the sentiment.
“I hope to hell that pansy-ass pilot’s got a radio,” he grunted, following up the hillside.
IV
Whiplash
Dreamland
21 October, 2000 local
COLONEL BASTIAN WALKED THE TWO MILES FROM HIS office to the base commander’s “hut,” the wind chilling his face. He’d shipped the summary of his report via the secure e-mail link and packed off the full package, committing himself before he could change his mind. You were supposed to feel good when you followed your conscience, but he felt as if he’d just stabbed a friend.
A lot of friends. Not to mention himself.
Dog paused near the entrance to the low-slung adobe structure that was his temporary home at Dreamland. The guard assigned to his premises had taken shelter in a blue government Lumina parked a few yards away; Dog nodded in his direction, then turned his eyes toward the old boneyard that began twenty or thirty yards away. Surplused aircraft and failed experime
nts sulked in the darkness, watching him with steely eyes. Among the planes were craft once considered the nation’s finest—a B-58 Hustler, some ancient B-50 Superfortress upgrades, three or four F-86 Sabres. They were indistinguishable in the shadows, tarped and in various stages of disrepair. But Dog felt their presence like living things, animals driven to cover.
Time moves on, he thought to himself.
He waited for something more profound before finally shaking his head, realizing he was freezing out here. The desert turned cold once the sun was gone. He trotted toward his front door, deciding to throw himself into bed and rest up for the inevitable storm tomorrow.
The phone was ringing inside as he opened the fiberglass faux-wood door. He picked up the handset, bracing himself for an angry blast from one of the many generals and government officials connected with the F-119 project.
But the caller was his own Sergeant Gibbs.
“Colonel, we need you back at the office,” said Ax. “What’s going on?”
“You need to make a secure call back to D.C.,” said the sergeant. “Whiplash has been activated.”
“Does Danny know?”
“Captain Freah is on his way here,” said the sergeant. “He had to round up his men.”
“Send a car.”
“It should be there in about ten seconds,” said Ax.
Dog put down the phone. While in theory the team could be headed anywhere, even a training mission, Dog realized it must mean things had popped in Somalia. More than likely, that was why Washington wanted to talk to him.
Better that than the JSF.
He took a moment to pull on his old leather flight jacket, then went back outside, where a Humvee was waiting for him.
