By then the MiGs had disappeared from the AWACS radar— probably by landing back at the base they had started from, though the controller wasn’t immediately sure. Doberman angled the Hog back toward the highway, but he knew that by now the trucks would be long gone. Worse, the Hogs were down to ten minutes of loiter time, thanks to all the maneuvering.
“What’s going on up there?” Dixon asked over the ground radio just after Doberman and A-Bomb had crossed over the road without, of course, spotting the Scuds.
Tersely, Doberman explained that they had been shunted off the trail by the AWACS. And that they were almost bingo fuel.
“Did you pass the location on to the AWACS?” BJ asked.
“Fuck no,” said Doberman. “We fucking couldn’t find them.”
“Aw shit.”
“Yeah, copy,” said Doberman. “Shit-damn fucking hell in a whore house.”
“Bad news, Dog Man. I’m bingo,” said A-Bomb. “Bingo” meant he had used up the fuel allocated for loitering. He now had only enough left to get home, with a modest amount left over for emergencies.
“Yeah,” muttered Doberman. The two planes had to stay together and in any event, he was pretty low himself. He blew a deep sigh from his mouth, cursed some more, then finally reoriented the Hog for the long, dreary trip home. He was so pissed he didn’t bother answering when A-Bomb joked that Special Ops obviously agreed with Dixon, since the lieutenant had finally used a four-letter word on the radio.
CHAPTER 16
THE CORNFIELD, IRAQ
25 JANUARY 1991
1621
“Son of a shit. We could have blown the goddamn things up ourselves,” said Winston. He looked at Dixon as if Dixon had been the one flying the planes. “How the hell could they have lost it?”
“I don’t know that they ever saw it.”
“Well fuck. They’re in goddamn airplanes, right? How the hell hard can it be?”
The truth was, it wasn’t easy picking out moving targets from the altitudes the brass had the Hogs flying. The planes weren’t carrying super-enhanced videos, or extra-perceptive radars, or anything beyond Mark-One standard-issue eyeballs. The MiGs had been the real problem. Since the Hogs were sitting ducks against any interceptor, their only defense was to run away, and even that hardly guaranteed safety.
But it was tough to explain all that to someone on the ground— especially when the ground was in central Iraq.
“What the fuck is the sense of our being here if they’re not going to squirt the damn things when we point them out?” Winston insisted.
“They’ll get them,” said Dixon. “Give them a chance.”
Winston grunted, and turned his binoculars back toward the highway. Dixon slid back down the hill to the radio, though there was little reason to at the moment. It would take the Hogs close to two hours to refuel and return. By then they would be limited by the available light.
Dixon had just decided to brave an MRE when Leteri came sliding down the hill, nearly landing on his back.
“Patrol,” hissed the corporal. “They’re on the side of the road and they’re moving slow. Stay down.”
Dixon spun back around, pressing himself into the dirt and pulling his gun under his arm. If they came under fire, his job was to stay with the radio; they might need air support, which he could get through the AWACS controller. But holding the MP-5 made him feel safer.
Leteri continued to the very base of the hill, crawling into a shallow trench the commandos had dug and camouflaged so it could be used as an observation post. The far end of it gave him a good view of their flank as well as the road. Dixon watched him work along it slowly. Moving that slowly must be an exercise in great will power, he thought; the temptation to rush would be almost overwhelming, but doing so might expose you to the enemy. Patience was such a difficult thing in war— in life, for that matter. It was the one trait he didn’t have.
Leteri reached his post, stayed flat against the side of the trench a minute, then leaned back and gave a thumbs up. The others had relaxed as well. Curious, Dixon scrambled up the hill, flopping between Winston and Turk.
“They’re staying put, at least for now. They’re on the other side of the highway,” said Winston, handing the binoculars over. “Got their backs to us.”
Dixon peered through the glasses. Four men in tan fatigues were walking a staggered line beyond a troop truck.
“What are they doing?” Dixon asked. “Looks like they lost something.”
“They may have seen the planes,” said Turk. “The idiots probably think they mined the road. They did the same thing about a mile north.”
Winston took the smallest of sips from his canteen, rolling the water around and around the inside of his mouth before swallowing. “Crazy fucks.”
“They use their own men to trip mines?” Dixon asked.
“Saddam doesn’t give a shit,” said Winston. He screwed his canteen closed. “We’re going to have to move off this hill.”
“Why?” asked Dixon.
“It’s the tallest feature on the landscape, the most obvious place to check the road from. If they really are looking for mines, even if they’re fucking picking up litter, they’re paranoid enough to figure out that someone on the ground brought the planes here. Besides, maybe the trucks turned off down the road a bit. They may be setting up to bomb Tel Aviv right now.”
“Trucks were headed east,” said Turk. “Are we going to follow them to Baghdad?”
“Shit, why not?” said Winston. “Let the Lieutenant get a chance to practice his Arabic.”
“I don’t know Arabic.”
“Fuck no,” said Winston in mock horror. “And here I thought you went to college.”
Turk laughed.
Dixon couldn’t think of a comeback. He waited a bit, and when Turk changed the subject, he slid back down the hill. When the time came to move out, he told Leteri he’d take a turn humping the com gear, then did his best to ignore the trooper’s surprise as he shouldered the ruck and got into line.
CHAPTER 17
APPROACHING THE IRAQI BORDER
25 JANUARY 1991
1752
Two hours and one record-time tanking later, Doberman found himself clicking his mike button and getting nothing but a steady stream of static. They’d been trying to find Dixon for the past five minutes without any luck. He was about to try hailing the Delta unit again when A-Bomb beat him to it.
“Devil Flight to Ground Hog. Yo, Dixon, where the fuck are you?”
“Real military,” Doberman told A-Bomb over the short-range fox mike radio, tuned to the squadron’s private frequency.
“Yeah, well you try.”
“Just keep their frequency open. I’m going to have Cougar double check for us, in case we’re out of range or something.”
Cougar was the call sign for the AWACS. The controller told them— as he had only a few minutes before— that the ground unit had not come back on the air after signing off to change position. This wasn’t unusual, implied the operator, who all but directed the Hogs drivers to just “chill.”
“Man, I’ll tell you something. I’m getting a little fed up with Cougar,” said A-Bomb. “Kinda like havin’ my fourth-grade teacher lookin’ over my shoulder. Hangout. Break. Run away. We need somebody back there who’s a Hog driver, you know what I’m talking about? Like, here’s a couple of tanks to splash while you’re waiting.”
Doberman let A-Bomb rant on as he examined the map unfolded in his lap. The two Hogs were at 16,675 feet, flying a wide, perfect circle around the coordinates where the ground team had spotted the trucks. As they swung through the northern arc, the Euphrates edged into their windscreens, a thick brown line in the distance.
Doberman had read somewhere that civilization started along the Euphrates. The Sumerians had built an impressive empire well before the Egyptians, taming the wiles of the river with massive irrigation projects. They had enjoyed tremendous wealth, building cities of gold.
/> Hard to imagine that now. This was supposed to be part of the country’s fertile area, but the terrain looked blotchy at best. Doberman had flown over Iowa cornfields – now those looked like something, orderly lines of green extending out as far as you could see.
Part of the problem was, they were too stinking high, as per their orders to maintain a safe altitude. Safe for whom? Might just as well be on the moon as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t get a very clear view of the highway, let alone make out what exactly might be moving on it. Scud launcher or a milk truck looked the same from here—smaller than an ant’s behind.
“Getting kind of dark,” A-Bomb hinted.
“Copy,” said Doberman. “Let’s take a run over the highway down where we can see something bigger than a fucking battleship.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” snapped A-Bomb.
Doberman pushed his wing over and threw the Hog into a tear-ass dive, plunging downwards so fast even the A-10 seemed to have been caught by surprise. He moved his stick until the gray line of the road fell into his windshield. He was below five thousand feet before he started to recover, pulling the Hog back level in a smooth, precise arc, his wings leveling. The GE power plants hummed behind almost gently, their steady rhythm a subconscious soundtrack as he flew.
Some pilots flew by making the plane an extension of their bodies. They moved their arms and legs and the plane moved; they felt the wind curling in a slipstream around their bodies and their eyes were part of the radar nosing ahead. At some point the line between man and plane blurred; they flew as much by instinct, by stomach or gut, as they did by carefully accumulated knowledge and deliberate action.
Doberman considered himself more a director, or maybe a sitter— he sat on top of the plane, pushing its levers the way an experienced heavy equipment operator might move a bulldozer through a construction site. The plane went where he wanted it to, not the other way around.
No luck involved in that. You knew the data, worked with it. Wind had a certain effect, depending on the altitude and angle of your attack; you calculated it, you compensated for it, you pushed the button to drop your load. Anything else was bullshit.
“Six is clean,” called A-Bomb.
Doberman eased his stick right, following the road’s curve northward. Now he could see damn well. A bus appeared ahead, a Matchbox-sized vehicle with a light-brown color. A half-mile in front of it was something that looked more military; grayish-brown waves of camo flopped over the back of a medium-sized truck. Might be a troop carrier.
Drawing closer, he saw that the tarp was pulled up over some ribbing, and the exposed bed was empty. But his disappointment quickly melted as he saw two flatbeds further along, carrying tanks. They were behind two long tractor-trailers and a tarp-covered flatbed. A pair of armored personnel carriers cruised in front of them. Further ahead, something similar to a Land Rover led the procession.
Hot damn! Something worth hitting.
Doberman banked to the right, pulling into a quick orbit while he consulted his map. The two A-10s were a few miles east of the point where they had lost the Scud carriers earlier. It seemed to him possible, if not entirely probable, that these vehicles might be going wherever the Scuds had gone. He checked his fuel: he and A-Bomb had about a half-hour more of linger time.
“Let’s follow these guys for a ways and see if they take us anywhere,” he told A-Bomb. “Peg your altitude at seven thousand feet where they can’t hear us. We’ll give Dixon ten minutes to come back on the air. They’re still sleeping, we take these guys.”
“I’m counting the seconds,” replied his wingman.
Doberman walked his eyes slowly across his instruments as he rode his Hog back around to the road. He had good fuel and a clean threat indicator.
Doberman put the road just above his left wing-root. He lowered his neck slightly, drew a long breath, gathering himself exactly as if this was an exercise over Germany. The tail end of the Iraqi convoy nosed into his screen, a small blur the size of a cockroach’s foot. Gradually, it started to grow. He thought he recognized the roadway and figured the trucks were now beyond the point where they had started looking for the Scuds. The road curved and straightened for nearly two miles in an arrow toward the river. Then it came almost due east, heading in the direction of Iran.
No way the damn Scud carriers could have outrun them. They had to have turned off somewhere. On the other hand, the briefings had the Scuds going the other way, so who knew what the story was. He wondered if Dixon had dished him the wrong location or marker.
The convoy was now the size of fat cockroaches. Doberman hesitated a moment, scouting ahead, rechecking his compass heading and then the altimeter, making sure his gas was still good. He couldn’t see a turnoff and certainly no Scuds.
“Stay with me,” he told A-Bomb, marking his INS for a reference point before tacking north with a tight turn. This time he kept his eyes trained on the ground, trying to sort the shadows and shades into something, anything that would tell him where the Scuds had gone. He saw a rock quarry and beyond that a group of buildings which seemed to be abandoned, but nothing thick enough to be a missile. From the air, the Scud carriers looked like longish milk trucks; the dedicated launchers looked like soap dishes with turds on top. He saw neither. The long shadows were starting to play tricks; even if they didn’t go bingo soon they were going to have to head home.
“Our friends must have seen us,” said A-Bomb.
Doberman pulled the Hog around and saw the vehicles kicking up a storm of dust to their south. They’d left the highway.
“How’s your fuel?” he asked his wingmate.
“Twenty-something to bingo, give or take,” replied A-Bomb. “You still want to wait?”
“Fuck it. Let’s shag ‘em,” Doberman told him. “I have the tanks.”
“Just leave something for me,” said A-Bomb.
The procession had stopped about three hundred yards off the roadway. The two tank carriers— long, narrow crickets on broken leaves— sat on the western flank. Doberman eyeballed them, then pushed his face almost into the Maverick’s targeting screen where the cursor was already flat on a turret.
The long shaft of a 125 mm smoothbore pointed down from the back of the tank, the stick of a lollipop stuck to the cockroach’s back. Doberman flicked his thumb back and forth over the stick— it was a habit he’d picked up just a few days before, a tick that was now part of his routine before pushing the trigger. Bing-bang-bam, he told himself, and pickled. As one AGM-65 dropped from his wing he quickly dished up a second, hurrying the cursor into the meat of the second tank as the screen flashed with Saddam’s latest hamburger special.
Bing-bang-bam. The second Maverick clunked from its firing rail, the Tikol motor catching with a whomp that sent the missile in a direct line toward the image burned into its brain. As it neared the T-72, the Maverick suddenly pulled up, arcing so that it could nail the target at the exact weak point of its armored hull, the turret top.
By then, Doberman was no longer paying attention to the tanks or the truck near them. For A-Bomb had shouted a warning about something much more interesting: one of the armored personnel carriers had stopped and set up a position on a slope near the highway.
Except that it wasn’t an armored personnel carrier; it was a four-barreled ZSU-23 antiaircraft gun, an old but effective flak dealer that had already started to fire at him.
CHAPTER 18
OVER IRAQ
25 JANUARY 1991
1723
“That’s the kind of thing that really pisses me off,” said A-Bomb as the ZSU began chewing up the air in front of Doberman. The Iraqi gunner was firing without his radar, but that arguably made him more dangerous, since nothing short of a high-explosive sandwich could jam the bastard’s eyesight. A second unit began spinning its turret two hundred yards to the west, and A-Bomb whistled. He might be pissed that anyone dared fire at a Hog, let alone his wingmate, but he had to admit that the scummer
s at least had some balls in their pants, trying to go after the A-10s without using their radars and in a nice, isolated, and easy-to-hit spot besides. Granted, their flak was falling in a useless though artistic pattern across the desert as Doberman jinked away, but you couldn’t hold that against them.
Well, actually he could and would. A-Bomb fell into the attack, adrenaline pumping. For the briefest second he contemplated taking the Hog in and using the cannon; this was exactly the sort of down-in-the-dirt, no-holds-barred mud fight the Hog was built for, flying into Adul’s 23mm shells, tickling proximity fuses, and laughing at the shrapnel spiking the air. Mano a mano, sweat versus sweat, my dad can take your dad, and your mom’s ugly, too. It had been almost twenty-four hours since A-Bomb had revved up the gat, and he felt like he was going through withdrawal.
But, truth be told, that would take too long and might give the Iraqis the idea that firing at a Hog was an acceptable thing to do. So he sighed, dialed in his Mavs and push-buttoned the mobile anti-air batteries to hell.
The AGMs’ flights to target were short and sweet. The penetration of the flat, tank-like turrets and the all-too-thinly armored bodies of the ZSU-23s was a thing of beauty, erotic in a way, shaped-charge warheads slicing in and the guns bursting in an orgasmic riot of flames, smoke and debris.
A-Bomb loved art as much as anybody, but he pried his eyes away, turning his attention to the long trailer in the middle of a group of vehicles beyond the tanks. He pushed his Hog into a hard, sharp angle downwards, near sixty degrees— the theory being that the closer to straight down, the less chance for error. This was actually a math thing, having to do with cosines and angles, the sort of thing that Sister Carmella had made such an issue of back in high school. A-Bomb had a soft spot in his heart for Sister Carmella, but didn’t particularly like math, so he fudged the wind correction and just let the cluster bombs go when the feeling struck him. He pulled his stick back hard, recovering from the dive and pushing to track back into the figure-eight Doberman ought to be cutting above their target. The vehicles disappeared in a flash of black and red, the four bombs smashing perfectly on target.
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