Dixon moved a few hundred yards further east. Stopping, he saw figures moving beyond the shell of another wrecked vehicle. A few yards further and he had several more wrecks in view. Finally, he saw what must be the truck, back near the road. He was three-quarters of a mile from it, about ten degrees to the west of due south. Dixon turned carefully and scanned the area where he thought the helicopter should be; he finally found it further to his left than he thought, but much closer, only a few hundred yards away. The rotor and the very top of the motor housing were the only parts visible because of the topography.
He scanned around in a complete circle. Nothing else was moving. Stooping, he retreated further south before turning back in the direction of the helicopter and Leteri.
He began considering contingencies. If the Iraqis put up a flare, what would he do?
Throw himself face first on the ground, push up his M-16 and kill them all.
Yeah, right. He would keep his head. Firing first would give his position away. More than likely they wouldn’t even know he was there. Even if they did, the flare wouldn’t necessarily give him away.
He would hit the ground and wait for them to make the first move. And the second. Firing his weapon would be a last resort.
Dixon walked and trotted toward the helicopter, going slightly uphill, for what seemed like an eternity— though by his watch it was barely ten minutes. He crossed a dry irrigation ditch, climbed back up and finally had the helicopter in good view. But now he couldn’t see the Iraqis or the truck, though he heard its motor still coughing away.
The Little Bird looked unharmed, sitting as if it were waiting for its pilot to hop in. Even if it were in perfect working condition, it wouldn’t make any difference to him – the only thing he knew about flying a helicopter was that it was a lot different than flying a plane.
Maybe he ought to blow it up, to keep the Iraqis from getting it.
Right.
So where the hell was Leteri? Dixon scanned down from the helo’s cockpit, in front and around the aircraft and then behind it, without seeing him. He took a few steps to his right and looked again. He was now less than twenty yards away, and could see fairly well without the NOD. He used the binoculars but still couldn’t pick out Leteri.
Shit. Had he even been there at all?
Dixon took another step, still scanning, hoping the whole thing hadn’t been a hallucination. As he took a third step, he heard the truck motor cut off. He ducked instinctually, catching a shadow he hadn’t noticed before on his left and to the north across another ditch. He brought the NOD to his eyes slowly and saw there were four Iraqis there, two pointing their weapons in his general direction.
They hadn’t seen him, but if he stayed here they would. Dixon began moving slowly, as quietly as possible, hoping to get on the other side of the helicopter, which he figured was what they were interested in. He took three steps and tripped, skidding face-first down the ditch, which he hadn’t realized was so close. He bounced against the stones and dust of the dry creek bed, lost his gun, and found it again as he threw himself against the bottom.
The amazing thing was, the Iraqis didn’t start shooting.
The NOD and the binoculars had fallen somewhere along the way. Dixon left them, crawling and then walking sideways along the ditch, which came halfway to his chest. The enemy soldiers hadn’t reacted in any way that he could tell. When the tail end of the AH-6G hulked about twenty yards away, Dixon stopped and rested on his haunches, trying to get his eyes to see more and his heart to stop pounding so he could hear if the soldiers were following him.
The Iraqi truck started up again, revving in the distance, smoother now. It roared, then backed off, then started revving wildly; as if it were stuck in the sand. He hoped that the men he had seen had gone back to help get it free.
But where the hell was Leteri? Assuming he hadn’t been hallucinating, the trooper must have heard the Iraqis playing with their truck earlier and taken cover. He couldn’t have gone all that far; it was just a question of finding him.
The truck screeched and ran steady. It sounded as if it were coming toward him.
Dixon gripped the M-16 tightly and continued along the dried streambed. It got progressively deeper and wider, angling away from the helicopter and battlefield. Debris had been piled in several spots; finally he moved around one and saw a shadow ahead. It moved and realized it was a man.
“I figured you had to be around here somewhere, Joey,” he said.
The man answered with an incomprehensible shout in a language that definitely wasn’t English.
CHAPTER 55
THE CORNFIELD
26 JANUARY 1991
0530
There was a moment when he saw him clearly; saw the confusion, the question and the plea, the hope, dreams, small comforts and desperate wishes welling in the man’s eyes. The next second Dixon had pulled the M-16’s trigger, holding it there long enough for the three rounds to smoke through the Iraqi soldier’s stomach and chest.
The 5.56 mm slugs streaked through his vital organs so quickly that it took a moment for the blood to actually flood into the holes they had made. The man stumbled back, dropping his Kalishnikov, aware he was going to die, aware of it long enough to begin to shake his head.
Dixon caught his breath somewhere down around his stomach. His legs began to buckle, and only the sound of Iraqis shouting behind him kept him from collapsing. He threw himself on the side of the ditch, waiting for something to shoot at. At the top edge of the dry creek a shadow appeared; a leg that looked like a thick cornstalk. He pushed the trigger of his M-16. The man went down, but Dixon realized he had actually missed, and now he had to move, and quickly— the creek side began boiling with lead.
He threw himself back and ran to his right, nearly tripping over the Iraqi he had killed. As his foot kicked the man’s rifle, he heard a fresh burst of machine-gun fire behind him. Dixon fell against the ground. He crawled a few feet; realizing the shooting had stopped, he hauled himself up the embankment, rolling onto the nearly flat ground behind it.
As he tried to figure out where his enemies were, they did him a favor, firing off a flare from behind the truck. He froze as it ignited; willing his body to become part of the dirt he was splayed against.
The flare began dropping above and behind the closest Iraqis. It seemed designed to help Dixon instead of them, though of course the Iraqis couldn’t have known where he was, nor that they were facing only one man and not an entire platoon. Eight or nine shadows moved forward across the open ground toward the creek bed where he’d killed the first soldier. They moved at glacier speed, obviously unsure of their enemy.
He edged backwards, but dared not move too quickly or much further. When they were at the lip of the dry creek, the Iraqis split into two groups. One held their ground; the others moved off to his left, probably intending to roll up the flank of the creek bed. He guessed they thought he was hiding in one of the piles of debris.
The men on the other side of the creek bed were all fairly close together. He could nail them and then the ones in the creek itself with the M-16s grenade launcher.
Assuming he could figure out how to fire the damn thing.
He knew how to do it. It was easy, like a shotgun.
Dixon pumped and loaded, pushed his right knee down into the dirt to brace himself and then squeezed his finger against the launcher’s thin metal trigger. As he did, the gun rammed into his shoulder; he threw as much of his weight against it as he could, awkwardly dancing the weapon in a half-pirouette that would have been comical under other circumstances. The whishing sound of the grenade zipping through the air was followed by a deep, authoritative bang; he had missed wildly, firing at least a hundred yards beyond and well to the east of his enemies.
The Iraqis responded with equally misplaced shots, firing not in his direction but towards the explosion. He cocked again, pointing the barrel eastward into the creek this time.
As he was about to pull t
he trigger, something moved to his right. He swung around to nail it, stopping his finger only at the last second.
“Lieutenant, shit. What the hell are you doing here?” said Leteri, hunkering toward him.
“I almost put a grenade right through you.”
“Nah, I saw your first shot. You would have missed by a mile,” he said. “You don’t mind if I take a whack at that, do you?”
Dixon quickly traded for Leteri’s gun, an H&K MP-5. A fresh flare arced into the air from this distance, igniting overhead just as Leteri launched the grenade into the soldiers on the other side of the ditch. The corporal pumped a fresh one into the chamber and let it fly into the far end of the creek itself.
Dixon leaped to his feet. The Iraqi truck was about a hundred yards away, heading in their direction with troops behind it and its lights on. He had a clear shot at its front end; he nailed the trigger on the submachine-gun straight back, running half the clip through the front of the truck. He pushed the barrel upwards, working his aim with his body as if he were firing the cannon in the Hog, smashing the radiator and the hood and then the glass. He stopped firing, saw something move to the left of the truck and emptied the rest of the clip at it.
He ducked down as he ejected, reaching to his pocket to reload, forgetting that he had only M-16 cartridges in his pockets now.
“They’re out of ammo,” said Leteri.
“What?”
“They just wasted their clips.”
“They were firing?”
“The whole time,” said the sergeant, passing him a pair of MP-5’s long clips. “Now would be a good time for a strategic retreat.”
“Okay,” said Dixon. He jumped up.
“Afraid I can’t go very fast,” said Leteri, grabbing him. He pointed to his side, caked with a black substance that looked like tar. There was a second blotch on his leg. “My head hurts, too.”
“Lean on my shoulder,” Dixon told him. “Wait— maybe we ought to blow up the helicopter first. You got more grenades in that thing?”
“Let’s not fuck around.”
Dixon hesitated for another second. He thought he heard something move on the other side of the creek. That cinched it – he squatted down, his back to Leteri. “Get on. Let’s go.”
Leteri started to protest, but before he finished, Dixon has him on his back.
“Just hang on,” he said, rising. “And try not to bleed on my uniform. I had it dry-cleaned yesterday.”
“In that case I’ll puke on you, too,” said Leteri, as Dixon waddled away from the battlefield.
CHAPTER 56
King Fahd
26 January, 1991
0530
Skull wasn’t terribly surprised to find Mongoose in Cineplex, even though it was relatively early. Even though there was no one else in the squadron room, he decided to talk to him down the hall in his office. Mongoose’s grin practically lit the way.
“So?” asked the major as Skull closed the door.
“Sit down and relax.”
“Colonel –”
“I wanted to ask you something first.”
Mongoose’s expression quickly changed. He was once more the solid-faced, on-guard DO who had done so much of Knowlington’s work during the first weeks of the squadron’s creation and deployment.
“What’s your wife think of you staying here?” Skull asked him.
“Does it matter?”
“It might.”
“She thinks it’s great.”
“You haven’t told her, have you?”
“She’ll go along with what I think is right.”
Skull pushed his fingers along his left ear, then around to his neck. He still hadn’t made up his mind. It was going to take a lot to keep the major with the squadron, though he had no doubt he could pull the strings.
What he doubted was whether it was the right thing to do. And he felt awkward about asking; he’d never been good at the personal questions, even when it was his job to ask them.
“Why don’t you want to go back?” he asked. “Are you afraid?”
“I can’t really explain it,” said Mongoose.
“Don’t you love your kid? I’m not trying to insult you, ‘Goose. But what you’re asking— it’s unusual.”
“I love my wife and my son. Shit, he was just born. Of course I love him. And I want to see him, too. But not yet. Not until this is over.”
There was pain on the major’s face; Knowlington saw that he hadn’t quite figured it out either.
“I can’t explain it,” said Mongoose. “They’re all I’ve thought about since I’ve been here. But to go to them now, it feels wrong. It feels like I’m running away when I have a hell of a lot more to do.”
“It’s not your fault you got shot down. I’m serious.”
“I know. Look, I ought to stay until this thing is over. How long can it last?”
Under other circumstances, Knowlington would have laughed for quite a while. Instead, he only said, “We thought that about Vietnam, too.”
“This isn’t then.”
“I know. Thank God.”
It wasn’t Vietnam, truly. Knowlington couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Mongoose had obviously told him as much as he would— and maybe as much as he could.
“What about it?” the major asked finally.
“If you want to stay with the squadron, here, doing what you can, I don’t see that I can really deny that request,” said Knowlington slowly. “In a lot of ways, I owe it to you. But I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do, and not a little string pulling. And you can expect half-a-million people to show up on your doorstep with questions.”
“I can handle them.”
Skull scratched his chin. “I have to be honest with you, ‘Goose, I’m not exactly sure I’m making the right decision here.”
“You are,” said the major. And with that, he got up and practically ran from the office, as happy as Knowlington had ever seen him.
CHAPTER 57
FORT APACHE
26 JANUARY 1991
0605
The commandos owned the night, but the day belonged to the Iraqis. Any of a thousand things might give them away— a passing Bedouin, a flyover by an Iraqi plane. They had lookouts covering the approaches and the highway under surveillance for nearly twenty miles, but the general plan for dealing with the day was to lay low, hiding and sleeping as much as possible.
But Hawkins wasn’t about to sleep. Nor did he think about the danger they were in, or his injuries. He was determined to get back the helicopter and the men he’d left behind. He started working out a plan as soon as his AH-6G, now officially dubbed Apache One, touched down on the weathered concrete.
Apache One had been hit in several places, including its fuel tank; while they were lucky that the bullet or shrapnel hadn’t ignited the fuel, the damage itself was minimal and easily repaired. More serious were the hits the electronics and rear rotor assembly had taken. His men could patch a fuel tank and bang out damaged metal under the direction of their injured mechanic, but they didn’t know very much about electronics or propulsion systems. The mechanic’s splints made it tough for him to inspect, let alone repair, the damage. He was a gamer, but he didn’t look in particularly good shape, clearly exhausted after only a half hour’s work.
It would be a bitch for him to get the downed chopper working if there was a serious problem with it. And if something went wrong with Apache One on the way, they would be truly fucked.
The colonel had promised at least two more technicians; Hawkins decided to open the line to Al Jouf and find out if they were coming. He gave Colonel Klee the good news first— the Blue and Green teams had reported in; two Scud erectors and missiles had been smashed overnight.
“So how are we getting our helo back?” said the colonel.
“We’ll get it,” said Hawkins. “Am I getting those mechanics?”
“You have a runway yet?”
“In two hour
s, I’ll have fifteen hundred feet.”
“Too short.”
“Can you send a Pave Low?”
“Not this morning, no way. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night, if then.”
“Too long,” said Hawkins. “If you have the mechanics, parachute them in.”
“In daylight?”
“I’ll take the risk,” said Hawkins. “I’m not sure about getting the helo fixed without them.”
“It’s not yours to take. I’m also not crazy about breaking someone else’s leg.”
“Do a tandem if they’re not jump-qualified.”
“Easier said than done.”
“But you do have the mechanics?”
“I said I’m working on it.”
Hawkins frowned but said nothing. The colonel clearly didn’t have anyone.
“We should have a BDA report on the mountain bunker in an hour or. I’ll get back to you. Sit tight until I do.”
CHAPTER 58
NEAR SUGAR MOUNTAIN
26 JANUARY 1991
0643
Dixon carried Leteri a few hundred yards until they were sure they weren’t being followed. Leteri managed to do fairly well the rest of the way on his own, though they had to stop a dozen times. The last time Dixon didn’t think he’d be able to get going again; it was the wounded Leteri who actually pulled him to his feet and gave him a push to help him along.
Dixon told Leteri about the bombing raid. Leteri told him about the action at the Cornfield. An explosion, probably a mortar shell, had knocked the sergeant unconscious. He had a hazy memory of the Hogs attacking and the second chopper appearing, but he had blacked out again in there somewhere. When he finally regained his senses he was near the downed Little Bird. He had no idea how he’d managed to drag himself there, since it was quite some distance from where he’d been hit. When he heard the Iraqis fiddling with the truck, he went and hid in the creek. He had heard Dixon challenge the Iraqi soldier.
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