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 stared 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. H
e 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 somewhere 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.
Springsteen properly avenged, A-Bomb decided discretion was the better part of valor— or however the saying went— and kicked butt in the opposite direction.
“Lost airman, A-Bomb,” Doberman was saying on the radio. “Yo— acknowledge me, asshole. Where the fuck are you?”
“Who you calling lost?”
“What the hell are you firing at down there?”
“A cement outhouse.”
“Yo, we’re bingo.”
“Damn, and I just bought this card. How come I never win?”
Winging southeast of the site, out of range of the antiair weapons, A-Bomb pointed the Hog’s nose upwards. He found Doberman skimming the cloud ceiling, heading back in his direction.
“Are you out of your mind?” Doberman yapped, twisting his Hog due south for the tanker?
“You have to ask?”
“Didn’t you hear me calling you? Why the hell didn’t you acknowledge?”
“I just did.”
“We should be halfway to the refuel by now. Sometimes I think all that candy goes to your brain.”
“Man, you are a boring date.”
Starting to feel the fatigue of the mission and the long day before, A-Bomb dug into his vest for a Three Musketeers Bar. The A-10A accelerated as it hunted for its companion’s wing and the route back to the tanker.
CHAPTER 50
Over Iraq
0605
The clouds suddenly broke. Mongoose turned and looked through the canopy, out across the clear sky toward Dixon’s plane. The second Hog was still climbing to take its position on his wing, its black-green body none the worse for its dash at the ground cannons.
From what Doberman had just told him, there was nothing left to fire the Mavericks at. Mongoose decided to hold them back, either for targets of opportunity on the way home or for a future mission. It was time to go home.
The kid had done okay, no doubt about it. Mongoose told himself he’d overreacted yesterday: he owed the kid one. HE keyed the mike and gave Dixon an ataboy.
“Repeat, Devil One, you’re scratchy,” answered Dixon over the Fox Mike radio.
“Good work,” he repeated. “Now get up front and dial us a course for that tanker.”
Mongoose eased the Warthog toward the south, waiting for the younger pilot to overtake him. He couldn’t help but glance at the INS, which was still stuck back in Saudi Arabia somewhere.
How hard could it be, he wondered, to stick a state-of-the-art geo-positioner in the plane? More to the point, how much could it possibly cost? Bureaucrats and congressmen were screwing with defense appropriations and contract bids and all that crap while people’s butts were on the line.
But then, the Warthog had always been the Air Force’s forgotten stepchild. Low, slow, and ugly, the A-10A Thunderbolt II was supposed to be a limited plane with a limited mission, a throwback unsuited to modern warfare.
This group of Hogs— and the hundred or so that had flown during Desert Storm’s first hours— had proved that was all bullshit. The naysayers were wronger than wrong.
Check That. They were right about one thing. The A-10A Thunderbolt II was a kind of a throwback, a blue-collar tough guy with an old-fashioned work ethic who could get all hell pounded out of him and still come at you. Maybe the Thunderbolt moniker the brass had stuck it with— a nickname no one used— was right after all. The P-47 Thunderbolt was a kick-your-butt fighter in World War II, a hell of a ground-attack machine.
But maybe the B-17 was a better parallel. Now there was a plane that could get sawed in half and still make it back to the airfield. The comparison seemed sill until you considered that a Hog could carry twice the bomb load as the World War II bomber. The Flying Fortress was damned ugly too. But ugly pretty.
Like the Hog.
Mongoose checke
d over his instruments, looked carefully at the artificial horizon in front of him, and made sure his furel was okay. They had a very good margin for error to the tanker, at least ten more minutes than he’d planned.
Dixon gave his wings a gentle wag as he set his course. At least, Mongoose assumed he did that on purpose; because of the Hog’s trim controls, you never could be sure. The old joke was that if you took you hand off the stick when you were under fire, the plane would jink and jive for you.
“I got your wing,” Mongoose told him. “Let’s get some breakfast.”
***
Dixon exhaled loudly. His heartbeat was back to normal, his adrenaline already drained. His body felt as if it were covered with cement. A hundred different muscles ached, and his eyeballs were squeezed dry.
But he’d done it. He’d fought through the panic and made it.
He was who he’d hoped to be.
Except. Except that he’d lied to Major Johnson, to everybody, about what happened yesterday.
That was the part he hadn’t made up for.
***
Mongoose had just stretched a cramp out of his legs when the long-range radio crackled.
“Devil Flight, this is Cougar,” said the AWACS controller. “Devil One, acknowledge.”
“This is Devil One. Go ahead.”
“Devil One, we have a situation.”
The calm voice ignited a fire in Mongoose’s chest. Every part of him snapped back to attention. He leaned forward unconsciously as he told the E-3 Sentry crew to fill him in.
“We have two low-level contacts on an intercept to Buddy Boy,” said the controller. “We believe they are helicopters, probably transports, possibly Mi-8’s.”
“Copy. You want them driven off?” Mongoose asked, completing the controller’s sentence.
“Affirmative. Sandy bingo’d a few minutes ago. First Team CAP was diverted and the backup is five minutes off.”
“Give me a heading,” snapped the pilot.
Hogs #1: Going Deep Page 18