“My guys got it buffed and shined, Colonel. Shit, you give them any more time and they’re going to put a sunroof in.”
“I’ll take it up,” snapped Knowlington.
“Sir?”
The ‘sir’— with its attached tone of surprise— hurt. Knowlington endeavored to turn it into a joke. “Afraid I’m going to break your plane?”
“No, sir, Colonel. Not at all. I just thought maybe you’d borrow somebody from one of the other units.”
Though he commanded the squadron, Knowlington had come to his post through a round-about series of events. He actually had barely a hundred hours in the A-10 cockpit, by far the lowest of the squadron’s pilots. The inspection flight called for a prescribed set of maneuvers designed to stress its systems in different regimes; it was far from a picnic, and ordinarily handled by a functional test pilot, someone who had considerable experience with the plane.
Still, it was no reason for the concern evident on his chief’s face.
“You’re thinking I can’t do a milk run?”
“No way, sir. You’ll do fine.”
“Good. When do you need me?”
“As soon as you can, Colonel.”
“Good. I’ll be right over.”
Clyston held eye contact for just a second longer than necessary. Knowlington chucked his old crew chief a sharp punch to the shoulder. “Meet you out back, Chief,” he said, heading away before his old friend could decide what words ought to go with that look.
CHAPTER 6
OVER IRAQ
21 JANUARY 1991
1743
In normal times, Lieutenant Col. Fred Parsons flew a commercial 747 for American Airlines. The big Boeing was a handsome plane, predictable, steady and recently upgraded with every bell and whistle the Seattle wizards could stuff into the cockpit. She was everything the FAA and a travel agent could want in an airliner.
Which meant she was boring as hell.
The G model F-4 Phantom he was hot-sticking had more miles on her than a fleet of Greyhound buses. Smoke poured out of her tail thicker than a wet barbecue, making her easy to spot at a distance. In full-afterburner go-for-it mode she could top the sound barrier, but the Vietnam-era mainstay couldn’t come close to matching the top end of an Eagle or even the Grumman Tomcat, her Navy successor. This particular plane also had a tendency to drag her left wing— not so much that the maintenance crew could figure out what the hell it was, but enough so the pilot felt it on a hard-butt turn.
He loved it.
Never very good as a twisty-turny hot rod, the Phantom hailed from an era when designers first realized missiles and beyond-visual range tactics were the way to go in a dogfight. They got so excited about the future that they forgot about the present. Her real value was as a sled for every imaginable weapon and fantasy the air force and navy could load under her wings. The Phantom was still flying now, nearly forty years after being conceived, because the two-seater could accommodate all manner of equipment without completely compromising performance. Just over fifty radar antennas were currently feeding data to Parson’s backseat wizard, who in the great tradition of weapons officers or backseaters went by the name of “Bear.” The Phantom could carry nearly her weight in arms and fuel— and at 29,000 pounds soaking wet, that was a very full load of groceries. The fact that she had a backseat allowed Parson to concentrate on flying while Bear studied the dials and maybe the latest copy of Playboy.
Equipped with extra fuel tanks, the Phantom could also stay aloft for an incredibly long time, an asset that Parsons was putting to good use at the moment, just entering his third hour in Indian country. He and another Weasel had started the afternoon with a bombing package, looking to suppress integrated SAM defenses deep in Iraq. The other Weasel had launched a pair of missiles at one of the sites, but otherwise the mission had been so quiet Parsons had gladly brushed aside his fatigue when the request came to assist the Hogs on their Scud-hunting gig.
“I’m beginning to think they’re out,” said Bear, whose dog tags identified him as Captain Harvey Jackson, another member of the Air National Guard and a high school English teacher in what he called “the real world.” Intel suspected that at least one battery of SA-2’s and another of SA-6’s were still breathing below.
“If they’re not coming up for those Hogs, they’re not coming up,” Bear predicted. “They should be able to see them. I say we got three minutes to worry about, then it’s downhill. I hope these assholes try something— I want that SA-6.”
“Me too. But not if it nails our little buddies.”
“Hey, those Hogs are tough bastards. I bet you could put a missile through each wing and they’d still come home– after they made their bomb run.”
“Probably been done.”
“Don’t worry, Fred. I’m not letting them get hit.”
In some of the early model Phantoms, the backseater could look past his control panel and see the pilot; in fact, it was possible to pass notes back and forth and even lean forward or backward for an ataboy. In the Gs, though, the two crewmen were separated by an “iron wall”— actually a wall of aluminum and glass, electronics, wires and gauges, but it might just as well be iron as far as Bear in his cave was concerned. Fly with the same guy long enough, though, or through enough shit and the distance disappeared. His thoughts became your thoughts; the back-and-forth chatter became a kind of binary code plugging into your head.
“I’m going to take us further north near that SA-6,” Parsons told Bear. “I have a feeling they’re down there and waiting.”
“Hang loose, Colonel.”
It wasn’t the words but the tone that told the pilot his backseater had a tingling. The APR-47 radar attack and warning receiver sniffed out a quick hit as Parson’s grip on the stick tightened.
“Oh yeah. He’s turning it on and off. Just a two-second burst. I have him. SA-2. Hasn’t launched yet. Okay, okay.”
“Roger that. Scope’s clear except for Squeaky,” answered Parsons. “Putting him on beam.”
“Still looking for the SA-6.”
“I have ten miles to target. That SA-2 battery’s going to launch any second. You ready to fire?”
“PPI has it,” said the pitter, referring to the Plan Position Indicator, which displayed enemy threats in relation to the Weasel. “I’m handing off.”
It took a bare second for the Phantom’s computer to send the targeting information to the HARM AGM-88 missile under her wing. The antiradiation missile took in the numbers, crunched them to fit, and blipped the light on Bear’s panel telling him it was ready to talk turkey with the Iraqis.
“Got a light.”
“Launch.”
“Missile away.”
“They’ve launched!” Parsons saw the ground flash and blew hard into his mask. The SA-2 had been in action since the Vietnam War; it had a small bag of tricks, and to a plane as fast and as high as Rheingold One, it did not pose much of a threat. Still, he had to be careful. He was just about to push the Phantom into a roll when his backseater shouted into the com set.
“Son of a bitch— there’s two batteries. Hold it— there’s our SA-6. Colonel, go to twenty-five mile scope.”
“Roger that. We got a telephone pole headed in the other direction. Get the six first. How far is it?”
“Fifteen miles. In two, start your turn to the left. We’ll take a beam shot, then go back for the twos.”
“Shit— more launches. The twos. I thought these motherfuckers were hit day one. It looks like Cape Canaveral down there.”
Parsons tightened his grip on the control stick. The SA-6s, persistent missiles immune to the ECM pods used by many USAF planes in theater, had top priority.
The Hogs were on their own against the SA-2s.
CHAPTER 7
OVER IRAQ
21 JANUARY 1991
1751
Somewhere at the edge of his consciousness, the radar warning receiver was lit up like a Christmas tree, telling Mongoose tha
t the missile was coming at him from the northeast. By the time the information fully registered, the pilot had already begun turning the plane to “beam” the missile’s radar guidance system— pulling the Hog ninety degrees to the radar to defeat its pulse-doppler signals.
“Missile in the air,” said A-Bomb, his voice cold and crisp in Mongoose’s helmet.
When his first maneuver and the chaff failed to shake the missile, Mongoose rolled the Hog, tucking his right wing to the earth as his eyes hunted the sky for the enemy bullet. Gravity crashed into his face and side, Newton’s laws of motion making him work for a living. His fingers tightened on the control stick as he felt the Hog tug a bit. The Mavericks and Rockeyes were still tied to his wings but the plane wasn’t complaining so much as letting him know it could still do its job once this diversion was over.
First he had to get clear. He poked his nose back, still coming down, but the last thing he wanted to do was fly right into the son of a bitch.
But it was fine. Around it was okay. Away from it was better.
A-Bomb yelped something else. The words rushed by incomprehensibly.
Mongoose looked in the direction the warning unit advised but saw nothing. The edge of his helmet slammed against his neck as he jerked his head around; the sting crept down his back like a pack of night crawlers.
The Weasel pilot barked something at him, another break most likely.
More missiles. His warning unit had them.
One problem at a time.
He sucked air hard twice before his eyes found what looked like a thick telephone pole pushing toward him. It looked more like a tree trunk propelled by a tornado than a missile, more blunted than streamlined. Mongoose caught a good glimpse of its nose as he pushed the Hog down, trading altitude for energy and speed. He was lucky; he could already tell from the trajectory the missile would miss him. It was too big to come back to his course. Too big, too fat, too ugly, too old, even for a slow mover like the Hog.
He was clear; none of the other missiles had locked on him.
He had a good view of one of them. Big bastard, but kind of a wimp— didn’t even have the guts to spin back in his direction and keep the fight going.
Then he realized the missile was going after A-Bomb, whose big green shadow passed through a low cloud a depressingly short distance from the thirsty, blunt nose of the SA-2.
CHAPTER 8
Over Iraq
21 January 1991
1752
A-Bomb fired another round of chaff and kicked a couple of flares out the back for good measure. He could feel the missile starting to breathe in gulps, like a tiger closing in for the kill.
“Screw yourself,” he told it, bending the nose of the Hog as he jackknifed the airplane toward the ground. He rolled and caught sight of the missile closer than he’d suspected, so close in fact that he knew he’d almost blown it big time.
He saw the wobble and then the shock wave that consumed the SA-2’s long shaft as the warhead exploded. He saw that before he felt it, before he hunched his shoulders up and reflexively ducked his head, steadying the stick and telling the Hog not to worry. Energy and shrapnel rushed toward him; he swept his plane to the left, riding some of the wave but rocking like all hell, knowing they were going to make it okay. He squeezed the A-10 close to him, swaying with her like a teenager at a prom, whisking her off to a quiet corner of the dance floor where he could feel beneath her bra without the chaperones taking notes.
Of course, that was exactly the sort of thing that got him kicked out, that and the beer cans in his tux, but what the hell.
His plane stable again, the pilot keyed his mike, not for Mongoose or Rheingold but for the Iraqi who’d launched the missile:
“Missed, Saddam. Kind of a sissy explosion, if you ask me.”
Mongoose replied but A-Bomb didn’t have time to explain, spotting a fresh trio of missiles silhouetted against the ground, rising off his right wing just as he began pushing his nose back toward the few scattered clouds in the sky.
“More missiles,” he called. He squeezed his chaff button and began a new jinking routine.
All this maneuvering was starting to work up a good sweat, the kind of thing Gatorade was invented for.
Problem was he hadn’t packed any. A-Bomb pitched the Hog back for the ground. This time he was putting the plane down so low not even a gopher could follow it.
All three missiles were coming for his butt, not his commander’s. Which was what he got for making smart ass remarks over the radio.
One of the SA-2s inexplicably disappeared. The other two kept coming. A-Bomb leaned forward in his seat as the radar warning receiver started to get frantic. He was out of tinsel and didn’t have all that much sky left in front of him either.
SA-2s ought to get lost in the ground effects, their guidance system confused by the natural shadows and echoes thrown up by the earth.
Nope. They were coming for him big time.
The Hog didn’t like this. She had her head down and was running for all she was worth, screaming as she broke below two thousand feet.
She didn’t like to run away. She wanted to turn around and nail the missile in the teeth with a few rounds from her gun.
A-Bomb held on, skimming the ground at five hundred, four hundred, two hundred feet. By all rights he should have been clear by now — that or bagged— but he could feel he wasn’t. As he jinked, the shadow of one of the missiles poked into the far corner of his vision, dark and ugly. Stinking Saddam must have loaded this one up personally and fueled her with his piss, because the bitch was staying with him.
The missile was now in terminal-intercept phase— its onboard guidance system had locked on the Hog. It didn’t have to hit him; it just had to get close. There was no question of outrunning the missile in the much slower airplane, and A-Bomb didn’t seem to be lucky enough to outlast it.
No way the damn missile should still be on him. At two hundred feet?
Maybe it smelled his Twinkies.
He yanked the Hog back, pushing, shoving, straining, standing the sucker on her tail as its nose spat right in the missile’s face before he shoved back toward the dirt in almost the opposite direction.
It was like flashing a mirror in front of a charging bull and then diving down a manhole. The SA-2 twisted to follow the last echo of its radar, shuddering as its momentum carried it beyond the Hog.
It exploded with an angry tear, but by then A-Bomb had revved the engines higher than an Indy race car, flinging himself away from the last SA-2, which had been flying roughly parallel maybe a hundred yards behind the first. He was so low he could have landed. Its explosion rattled the American plane bad, pushing it down and yanking its tail sideways so violently that, at first, the pilot thought he’d been hit.
By the time he managed to steady the plane and dance his eyes through the gauges to confirm that the plane was still in one piece, A-Bomb was heading for a small observation post on a hill that stood over the desert like a crow’s nest. He had maybe three inches of clearance over the roof of the tent and had he lowered his landing gear he could have wrecked it.
A-Bomb would have left the post alone and started tacking north to hook up with his lead if it weren’t for the fact that the Iraqis manning the post decided to protest his low flight by firing every weapon they could find at him. Fortunately, they had nothing more formidable than AK-47s, and possibly the newer AK-74s, which had almost no recoil, a really good bark when you pulled the trigger, and a bullet that squished up good like a dum-dum.
Deadly against a person at a few hundred yards, but useless against a Hog.
Still, it was the thought that counted. Hunkering in his titanium bathtub, A-Bomb brought the plane around in a quick, tight bank. No one fired at a Hog without paying for it. He dialed up his cannon, steadied his hand, and let loose with a stream of high-explosive and depleted uranium that turned the position into a dervish of sand and burnt flesh.
Past the outpost, he gunn
ed the throttle and nosed northwards, looking for Mongoose.
As he did, he reached inside his flight suit and hit the replay on his CD unit until he could hear the beginning of “Born in the USA.” Something about that song brought out the best in an airplane, no shit.
CHAPTER 9
OVER IRAQ
21 JANUARY 1991
1757
Whoever was working the Iraqi SA-6 missile battery was either very good or very cautious, or both. Since the brief blip that alerted Bear to his presence, the intercept radar had been completely silent.
It didn’t matter though— the Weasel Police had his number. Parsons took a half second to make sure the SA-2s weren’t a threat and then closed for the kill.
The Phantom wasn’t completely immune to the SA-6. The missile had a range of approximately fifteen kilometers. Its control radar used two different bands and could acquire multiple targets. The SA-6 itself could out-maneuver a fighter and contained its own semi-active radar; once fired, it stood a better than average chance of hitting its target even with counter measures going full tilt.
“Turning,” called Parsons, pulling the Phantom in a sharp bank, directly toward the missile’s now-silent radar.
“Two is back up. Okay, here’s our six again. We’re going to nail the bastard. Okay. Hand off.”
Bear was busier than a one-armed paper hanger behind the iron wall separating the two men. The computer took the target information on the SA-6 and gave it to the HARM missile’s onboard guidance system. The big AGM-88 took the info, hiccupped, then thundered away. Immediately Bear dialed in one of the two SA-2 radar sites the plane had detected.
“Got the light,” he told Parsons.
“Fire!”
“Away.”
The thud of the rocket igniting beneath the gull-shaped wings felt reassuring. Parsons had already started a jink to keep his butt clean, planning on spinning back to pull the Phantom in the direction of the last SA-2 battery. He could see ground fire from anti-aircraft cannons, too far off to bother anyone. One of the A-10As was cutting paper dolls out of sky in the distance, evading a SAM.
Hogs #2: Hog Down Page 4