Walking made Doberman feel better. So did having a plan. So did knowing he was going to get Dixon the hell out of that shit.
“Hey, listen, I’m sorry,” he told A-Bomb.
“Yeah, my ass you’re sorry.”
“I got the shots,” Doberman told him. “No offense, but you know I’m better than you.”
“I ain’t offended, Dog Man. You’re Mr. AGM.”
“You got that cross thing Tinman gave you?”
“Um, well, kinda,” A-Bomb said.
“Kinda?”
“The little doohickey spring that connects to the batteries in my CD player snapped. I thought it was the batteries, but it was just the little spring.”
“You used the cross to make the connection?”
“Hey, it’s silver. Best conductor in the world. But listen, I can probably find something else.”
It was just a goddamn superstition, Doberman thought. “Don’t worry about it.” He took a step and stopped, reached down and yanked off his boot”
“Whoa— what the hell are you doing?” yelped A-Bomb.
Doberman held the small penny he’d found on the tarmac the first day of the air war. Luck? Power? Spirit world? Nightwalkers?
All bullshit.
He flung the coin into the desert.
CHAPTER 64
OVER FORT APACHE
26 JANUARY 1991
0835
This wasn’t going to be too bad. Sure, the ground looked like a splotch of her grandmother’s old blankets and her teeth were already chattering with the cold, but Rosen was sure she could make the jump. Captain Wong claimed to have done this hundreds of times, and Wong wasn’t the type to exaggerate.
Which cast his comments about the location of the base in a certain light hard to ignore, though she was trying her best to.
A lone crewman waited with them in the rear of the MC-130E. The plane had dipped to ten thousand feet and started a banking turn, which Wong had warned her would signal they were approaching the drop zone. She cinched the strap on her helmet and put her hands up as the captain snugged their two-place harness tight; there was no backing out now.
He nudged her and Rosen waddled over to the rear ramp. The crewman lugged her packed tool kit, which had its own parachute and static line, alongside them. Rosen had expected to be almost sucked out of the plane, but standing on the open ramp she felt no more pressure than she might have on a diving board.
Nerves, though, that was something she felt. Wong folded his arms around her waist and pushed his legs into hers. She stiff-legged toward the edge, then closed her eyes.
He’d told her to relax and above all not push off when they jumped; parachuting was more a surrender to the wind than a dive into the air. Besides, if she moved too sharply she would whack him in the “testicular region,” as he put it.
Rosen tried to make her body limp as she felt the ramp disappear beneath her right foot. In the next instant, she felt the air squeezed from her chest and her stomach mushroomed. Eyes closed, she started to flail with her elbow then stopped, realizing she was falling.
Or flying.
She opened her eyes. Becky Rosen was truly flying, the brown earth spreading out all below her, clear blue sky surrounding her head. Her head floated in Nirvana. She felt her jumpsuit ripple against its cuffs as the wind gusted. Wong had told her about arching, and how to spread her arms and legs in the basic free-fall position; she realized now that her body had naturally moved there, arms and legs bent perfectly, as if she had done this a million times. Wong’s body surrounded her, holding her much more tenderly than she would have imagined.
It was like being in a dream, this falling.
Then she felt herself being yanked backward, from the waist and then the shoulders and then her legs. She stood up. She remembered Wong was behind her. She felt a different kind of tug and once more they were flying, though this time much slower and in an upright position. Rosen could see only the leading edge of the oversized chute above her head, but she could feel the captain maneuvering it, steering the chute through the air as if he were a glider.
The earth was no longer a blob. She saw a flat space before her, long and narrow. There was a large lump and several smaller ones at one end.
They had fallen quite a ways before she recognized that the large lump was a helicopter under a camo netting. The objects nearby were shelters dug into the dirt.
Wong steered the chute around into a miniature landing pattern as they approached. He had told her something about landing, but she was damned if she could remember what the hell it was.
Run?
No.
Roll?
No.
That was what he didn’t want her to do.
Step off like an escalator had been what he said.
Unfortunately, she remembered too late, after he had flared the chute and plopped onto the ground in what would have been a perfect, one-mile-an-hour landing into the wind. Rosen lost her balance and fell over. Wong lost his balance and tumbled on top of her; the chute pushed them along the runway toward a group of Special Ops soldiers who were trying hard not to give themselves hernias from their laughter.
“You’re a girl,” said one of the soldiers, helping her up as Wong unsnapped the tandem harness.
“Wow, something weird must have happened on the way down,” Rosen told him, pulling the shoulder straps away.
“You’re a fucking girl,” repeated the trooper.
“Well I’m not fucking you, Sherlock,” said Rosen. “Or anyone else up here. You gonna stand there gawking, or are you gonna get me to that helicopter you want fixed?
CHAPTER 65
SUGAR MOUNTAIN
26 JANUARY 1991
0855
William James “BJ” Dixon had spent a great deal of his life wishing to become a fighter pilot, and then working toward that goal. It had taken a lot of sacrifice on his part, hard work, and once or twice some decent luck to accomplish his goals. He had always been willing to do whatever it took; the dream had defined him, and he would sooner have thought of slicing off his arm than giving it up.
He had never, in all his life, dreamed of being a ground soldier, much less a commando. A year ago, even a week ago, the idea of running around with a gun deep in enemy territory would have seemed as unlikely as playing quarterback for the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl.
But he was here, and his life was now defined by two irrefutable facts:
The man with the SA-16 had to be eliminated.
The only one who could do it was him.
He expected Leteri to protest when he told him what he was going to do; Leteri did, suggesting that he go instead. But it was obvious to Dixon that the corporal would never manage to get across the ledge and around the mountain to surprise the Iraqis.
Leteri also mentioned another alternative.
“We can just bug out.”
“How the fuck are we going to do that?” Dixon asked him.
“I’m not saying we should,” said Leteri. “I’m just saying it may be better than committing suicide.”
“You gonna leave Winston?”
“No.”
“If Hawkins sends a helicopter for us, these bastards will nail it,” Dixon said. “Those shoulder-launched missiles are tough to get away from. Even the Hogs will be in trouble.” He got up. “I’ll leave you the M-16 and grenade launcher. I can’t use it for shit anyway. You okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
This time, Leteri didn’t offer a salute, and Dixon somehow interpreted that as an even higher honor.
###
He had to crawl the first ten yards to get around the side, but beyond that it was safe to walk, protected both by the ridge and the Iraqis’ own over-confidence. They weren’t necessarily incompetent, Dixon reminded himself; they were just so far behind the lines that they couldn’t imagine American soldiers were sitting right next to them. He guessed tha
t he acted the same way hanging out at Cineplex in Hog Heaven.
The fire was burning again at the back of his head, stronger now. His eyes were hard little spotlights, searching the rocks. The MP-5 was part of his hands; he didn’t have to think about it as he moved.
A lookout had been posted at end of the ravine he needed to climb down to get around the ridge and up onto the cratered hilltop where the missile launcher was. Dixon had a clear, easy shot of no more than ten yards— but no way to take it without alerting the entire Iraqi contingent.
The soldier faced the road, alternately standing and sitting, his Kalashnikov hanging loosely at his side. Dixon was only partly protected from view by the corner of the rock face and some large boulders. The man’s attention seemed focused entirely on the road and desert in front of him.
Somewhere in the foggy early days of his military training, Dixon had been taught how to smash the back of an enemy’s skull with the butt end of a bayoneted rifle, then twist the gun around and stab him in the throat.
Or the heart. He couldn’t remember which. He did remember that he hadn’t done very well in any of those lessons or exercises.
And anyway, the MP-5 didn’t come with a bayonet.
If he could sneak close enough to the man, he could smash him across the side of the face with the gun. Then he’d haul out his knife and finish him off.
Dixon judged that the soldier was twenty pounds lighter and maybe six inches shorter than he was. He ought to be able to take him in a fight, especially if he was able to surprise him.
Could he? The ground seemed fairly stable, no large rocks or boulders to trip over or send flying, tipping him off.
Ten yards. Two seconds?
More like three or four. If he got off cleanly.
The Iraqi started to turn in his direction. Dixon ducked back behind the rocks, barely in time.
Or so he thought. As he held his breath, he heard the man start to climb toward him.
Dixon pushed his knee against the rock and bit the corner of his lip, trying not to breathe, not to exist. Retreating was impossible; there was no cover behind him for five or six yards.
His finger edged lightly on the trigger. He’d kill this bastard at least, and two or three of the next men who came for him. Dixon pushed his right shoulder up, steadied himself for a shot.
The man stopped right next to the crevice wall, not three feet away around the corner, and began fumbling with his clothes.
He was taking a leak.
Go!
Dixon caught him in the side of the head, smashed him with the hard stock of the machine-gun butt.
Stunned, the Iraqi fell backwards, his gun falling away.
Dixon went after him, losing his balance and plunging his gun barrel-first into the soldier’s chest. The man struggled to turn over, both of them sliding downwards. Dixon took two wild swings, then lost the gun somehow, tumbling against the soldier and feeling a hard knee in his ribs. The fire in his head flared; his right fist found the soldier’s chin once, twice, three times in succession, pounding the man temporarily limp. Without thinking about exactly what he was doing, Dixon snatched his knife from his belt and stabbed it point-first into the man’s throat. He slid it around, slashing inside the wound as if he were taking out an apple core.
Finally, he realized the man was dead and jumped up mid-stab. He took a step backward and picked up his gun, conscious of the noise they had made, worried that someone might have heard the commotion. He held both the submachine gun and the knife in his hand as he ducked down as he scanned the area, keeping his breath still nearly sixty seconds, listening for the sound of men running to avenge their comrade’s gruesome death.
All he hear was silence. He straightened, then stooped to wipe the bloody knife blade on his pants leg. He slid the knife back into its sheath, and noticed that his uniform was black with the dead man’s blood.
Pants still undone, the Iraqi sprawled obscenely on hillside, blood oozing from his neck and chest. Dixon felt a twinge of compassion; he stooped down to pull the man’s pants closed.
That was the old Dixon— the good, overachieving kid next door whose impulses sometimes led him to do foolish things, and whose conscience never let him forget them; the kid who worried about failing and struggled to do his duty.
But the new Dixon hauled the dead Iraqi up into the crevice out of sight, dropping him quickly and unceremoniously against the side of the rocks. He let the dead man and his old self go without wasting another second thinking about the frenetic impulse that to kill that flamed like kerosene in Dixon’s hands and eyes. He felt the fire in his head, and used it to push him up the ravine toward his goal.
CHAPTER 66
OVER IRAQ
26 JANUARY 1991
1005
Colonel Klee made one slight concession to the Hog drivers, Doberman specifically. He sent one of his flunkies to tell Doberman that if he wanted to go north early in case they were needed with the helo pickup, that was all right.
Doberman wasn’t sure how the colonel figured out that he intended on going away, but it didn’t alter his opinion of him. He hadn’t thought Klee was a fool, just a douche bag.
They tanked after taking off to gain a little more time for the mission. Done, Doberman pushed his plane out over the desert toward central Iraq. Truth was, both planes and men were being stretched beyond their reason, but he couldn’t give a shit about that. Numbers, formulas, all that crap— that was engineering, and right now he didn’t care for any of it. He was driving a Hog.
Still, it was a long haul north with little to do except sweat. He kept turning his eyes back to the Maverick’s small television monitor, thinking about the double whammy he had to make.
What if the lock drifted or got lost or he couldn’t get the little pipper precisely right as he rode in? What if somebody started firing at him, breaking his concentration?
If anybody could make it, Doberman could. No bullshit. Mr. AGM.
Just like he could hit an inside card to make a Royal Straight Flush.
If there was such thing as luck, his was for shit. He had the luck of Job. Period.
Maybe he should’ve gotten the cross from Shotgun after all. Or at least not thrown the penny away.
Fucking goddamn crazy people were polluting his mind.
“Devil Flight this is Apache Air One. Are you reading me?”
Doberman acknowledged the helicopter’s call and took his coordinates, then gave a quick glance to the map on his kneepad. They were right on schedule, right where they were supposed to be.
“We are one-zero minutes from the Cornfield,” said the commando in the helicopter.
“Acknowledged,” said Doberman. “Wait for the green light.”
“That’s cross at the green, and not in between,” joked A-Bomb over the squadron frequency.
Doberman found his way point and made a slight course adjustment. He didn’t bother acknowledging, but listened only to the Hog and his breath as he slammed onward.
###
Five minutes later, cued not only by the INS but by the highway below, Doberman pitched his wing over and fell toward the ground. The Hog grunted appreciatively, readying her cannon as she accelerated toward the ground, steadying herself under her pilot’s hand into a stable downward plunge that gave Doberman a perfect view of the countryside. The disabled AH-6G sat directly in the middle of his HUD. The remains of the Iraqi column sat on the lower ground a few hundred yards away, the broken tank at the top left of his screen with the other vehicles behind it as Doberman began pulling the stick back. He eased out of the dive at a still relatively safe four thousand feet. He was pulling over four hundred knots, cranking by on his first run just to see if there was anything below still moving. He was past the highway and large stream, then pulling around. Trailing in Devil Two, A-Bomb told him nothing had moved.
“This one’s low and slow,” Doberman told him, already stepping the Hog down into a more leisurely glide. He could see some
tracks leading off the highway but couldn’t tell if they belonged to the wrecked vehicles or someone else. If it was someone else they were gone. The tank and APCs the Hogs had splashed sat like twisted wrecks, forlorn and waiting to be claimed by the junkman. Nothing moved.
He wasn’t letting Apache One take a chance, though, not with Rosen aboard and Dixon depending on them. He slipped back around and stepped down to Hog country— five hundred feet, speed dropping now to just under three hundred knots, tiptoeing over the enemy’s dead bodies.
The downed helicopter sat in front of a shallow plateau, looking as if she’d just set down. Doberman put the A-10 on her wing, waltzing through yet another pass, this one as close to a walk as he could manage, though he was still moving so fast he couldn’t be sure there wasn’t someone hiding in the wreckage.
But no one had fired at him, and the helo was now under two minutes away.
“See anything, Dog?” asked A-Bomb.
“Looks clean,” he told him. “You?”
“Negative,” said A-Bomb.
Doberman saw a small bee zipping in from the southwest. It was Apache One.
“Greenlight,” he told the commandos. “Kick ass.”
“Kick it yourself,” was the reply.
CHAPTER 67
OVER IRAQ
26 JANUARY 1991
1015
Rosen jumped out of the arriving helicopter right behind Captain Hawkins, her tool case in one hand and an MP-5 in the other.
She’d have trade both for a manual. She was a damn expert in avionics and com gear, a whiz at everything electronic, and had worked on gas turbines enough to smell like them— but her mind went blank as she ran toward the helicopter.
Just fuzzed. She knew it would come back, but until then, how to jump start it? She glanced quickly at the top of damaged helicopter and its tail, saw that they were intact, then lugged her tools into the cockpit.
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